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Title: The Empresses of Rome
Author: McCabe, Joseph
Language: English
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THE EMPRESSES OF ROME
[Illustration: CRISPINA
BUST IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM]
THE EMPRESSES OF ROME
by
JOSEPH McCABE
Author of “The Decay of the Church of Rome”
With Twenty-four Illustrations
[Illustration]
New York
Henry Holt and Company
1911
NOTE
The period embraced by this work extends to the fall of the Western
Empire, or to the middle of the fifth century. It was felt that a more
extensive range would involve either an inconveniently large work or an
inadequate treatment. While, therefore, the Empresses of the East have
been included down to the fall of Rome, it seemed that the collapse of
the Empire in Rome and the West indicated a quite natural term for the
present study. The restriction has enabled the author to tell all that
is known of the Empresses of Rome within that period, to enlarge the
interest of the study by framing the Imperial characters in occasional
sketches of their surroundings, and to weave the threads of biography
into a continuous story.
CONTENTS
PAGE
INTRODUCTION 1
CHAP.
I. THE MAKING OF AN EMPRESS 7
II. THE END OF THE GOLDEN AGE 23
III. THE WIVES OF CALIGULA 46
IV. VALERIA MESSALINA 60
V. THE MOTHER OF NERO 79
VI. THE WIVES OF NERO 105
VII. THE EMPRESSES OF THE TRANSITION 122
VIII. PLOTINA 136
IX. SABINA, THE WIFE OF HADRIAN 149
X. THE WIVES OF THE STOICS 163
XI. THE WIVES OF THE SYBARITES 179
XII. JULIA DOMNA 194
XIII. IN THE DAYS OF ELAGABALUS 210
XIV. ANOTHER SYRIAN EMPRESS 222
XV. ZENOBIA AND VICTORIA 233
XVI. THE WIFE AND DAUGHTER OF DIOCLETIAN 250
XVII. THE FIRST CHRISTIAN EMPRESSES 265
XVIII. THE WIVES OF CONSTANTIUS AND JULIAN 286
XIX. JUSTINA 306
XX. THE ROMANCE OF EUDOXIA AND EUDOCIA 322
XXI. THE LAST EMPRESSES OF THE WEST 340
INDEX 351
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
CRISPINA. Bust in the British Museum _Frontispiece_
From a photograph by W. A. MANSELL & CO.
FACING PAGE
LIVIA AS CERES. Statue in the Louvre 20
JULIA. Bust in the Museum Chiaramonti 28
AGRIPPINA THE ELDER. Bust in the Museum Chiaramonti 46
MESSALINA. Bust in the Uffizi Palace, Florence 70
AGRIPPINA THE YOUNGER. Bust in Museo Nazionale, Florence 82
OCTAVIA. Porphyry Bust in the Louvre 112
POPPÆA. Bust in the Capitoline Museum, Rome 118
From a photograph by ANDERSON.
DOMITIA. Bust in the Uffizi Gallery, Florence 130
PLOTINA. Statue in the Louvre 142
From a photograph by W. A. MANSELL & CO.
SABINA. Bust in the British Museum 154
From a photograph by W. A. MANSELL & CO.
FAUSTINA THE ELDER. Bust in the Louvre 164
From a photograph by A. GIRAUDON.
FAUSTINA THE YOUNGER. Bust (reputed) in the British Museum 172
From a photograph by W. A. MANSELL & CO.
LUCILLA. Bust in the National Museum, Rome 184
From a photograph by ANDERSON.
JULIA DOMNA. Bust in the Vatican Museum 202
From a photograph by ANDERSON.
JULIA MÆSA. Bust in the Capitoline Museum, Rome 214
From a photograph by ANDERSON.
JULIA MAMÆA. Bust in the British Museum 226
From a photograph by W. A. MANSELL & CO.
MARCIA OTACILIA SEVERA 236
From a photograph by W. A. MANSELL & CO.
ZENOBIA 248
Enlarged from coin in the Berlin Museum.
SALONINA AND VALERIA 262
Enlarged from coins in the British Museum.
FAUSTA AND FLAVIA HELENA 280
Enlarged from coins in the British Museum.
ÆLIA FLACCILLA AND HONORIA 316
Enlarged from coins in the British Museum.
EUDOXIA AND PULCHERIA 330
Enlarged from coins in the British Museum.
PLACIDIA AND EUPHEMIA 342
Enlarged from coins in the British Museum.
THE EMPRESSES OF ROME
INTRODUCTION
The story of Imperial Rome has been told frequently and impressively in
our literature, and few chapters in the long chronicle of man’s deeds
and failures have a more dramatic quality. Seven centuries before our
era opens, when the greater part of Europe is still hidden under virgin
forests or repellent swamps, and the decaying civilizations of the East
cast, as they die, their seed upon the soil of Greece, we see, in the
grey mist of the legendary period, a meagre people settling on one of
the seven hills by the Tiber. As it grows its enemies are driven back,
and it spreads confidently over the neighbouring hills and down the
connecting valleys. It gradually extends its rule over other Italian
peoples, bracing its arm and improving its art in the long struggle. It
grows conscious of its larger power, and sends its legions eastward,
over the blue sea, to gather the wealth and culture of Egypt, Assyria,
Persia, and Greece; and westward and northward, over the white Alps,
to sow the seed in Germany, Gaul, Britain, and Spain. A hundred years
before the opening of the present era the tiny settlement on the
Palatine has become the mistress of the world. Its eagles cross the
waters of the Danube and the Rhine, and glitter in the sun of Asia and
Africa. But, with the wealth of the dying East, it has inherited the
germs of a deadly malady. Rome, the heart of the giant frame, loses its
vigour. The strong bronze limbs look pale and thin; the clear cold
brain is overcast with the fumes of wine and heated with the thrills
of sense; and Rome passes, decrepit and dishonoured, from the stage on
which it has played so useful and fateful a part.
The fresh aspect of this familiar story which I propose to consider is
the study of the women who moulded or marred the succeeding Emperors
in their failure to arrest, if not their guilt in accelerating, the
progress of Rome’s disease. Woman had her part in the making, as
well as the unmaking, of Rome. In the earlier days, when her work
was confined within the walls of the home, no consul ever guided the
momentous fortune of Rome, no soldier ever bore its eagles to the
bounds of the world, but some woman had taught his lips to frame the
syllables of his national creed. However, long before the commencement
of our era, the thought and the power of the Roman woman went out into
the larger world of public life; and when the Empire is founded, when
the control of the State’s mighty resources is entrusted to the hands
of a single ruler, the wife of the monarch may share his power, and
assuredly shares his interest for us. Even as mere women of Rome, as
single figures and types rising to the luminous height of the throne
out of the dark and indistinguishable crowd, they deserve to be passed
in review.
Some such review we have, no doubt, in the two great works which spread
the panorama of Imperial Rome before the eyes of English readers. In
the graceful and restrained chapters of Merivale we find the earlier
Empresses delineated with no less charm than learning. In the more
genial and voluptuous narrative of Gibbon we may, at intervals, follow
the fortunes and appreciate the character of the later Empresses. But,
no matter how nice a skill in grouping the historian may have, his
stage is too crowded either for us to pick out the single character
with proper distinctness, or for him to appraise it with entire
accuracy. The fleeting glimpses of the Empresses which we catch, as
the splendid panorama passes before us, must be blended in a fuller
and steadier picture. The tramp and shock of armies, the wiles of
statesmen, the social revolutions, which absorb the historian, must
fall into the background, that the single figure may be seen in full
contour. When this is done it will be found that there are many
judgments on the Empresses, both in Merivale and Gibbon, which the
biographer will venture to question.
For the study of the earlier Empresses the English reader will find
much aid in Mr. Baring-Gould’s “Tragedy of the Cæsars” (1892). Here
again, however, though the Empresses are drawn with discriminating
freshness and full knowledge, they are constantly merging in the great
crowd of characters. The aim of the present work is to place them in
the full foreground, and to continue the survey far beyond the limits
of Mr. Baring-Gould’s work. It differs also in this latter respect
from Stahr’s brilliant “Kaiser-Frauen,” which is, in fact, now almost
unobtainable; and especially from V. Silvagni’s recent work, of unhappy
title, “L’Impero e le Donne dei Cesari,” which merely includes slight
and familiar sketches of four Empresses in a general study of the
period.
The work differs in quite another way from the learned and entertaining
book of the old French writer Roergas de Serviez, of which an early
English translation has recently been republished under the title “The
Roman Empresses, or the History of the Lives and Secret Intrigues
of the Wives of the Twelve Cæsars”--an improper title, because the
work is far from confined to the wives of the Cæsars. The work is
an industrious compilation of original references to the Empresses,
interwoven with considerable art, so as to construct harmonious
pictures, and adorned with much charm and piquancy of phrase, if some
hollowness of sentiment. But it is so intent upon entertaining us that
it frequently sacrifices accuracy to that admirable aim. Serviez has
not invented any substantial episode, but he has encircled the facts
with the most charming imaginative haloes, and where the authorities
differ, as they frequently do, he has not hesitated to grant his
verdict to the writer who most picturesquely impeaches the virtue of
one of his Empresses. Roergas de Serviez was a gentleman of Languedoc
in the days of the “grand monarque.” His Empresses and princesses
reflect too faithfully the frail character of the ladies at the Court
of Louis XIV. For him the most reliable writer is the one who betrays
least inclination to seek virtue in courtly ladies.
It need hardly be said that the present writer is indebted to these
authors, to the learned Tillemont, and to others who will be named
in the course of the work. But this study is based on a careful
examination of all the references to the Empresses in the Latin and
Greek authorities, with such further aid as is afforded by coins,
statues, inscriptions, and the incidental research of commentators. We
shall consider, as we proceed, the varying authority of these writers.
We shall find in them defects which impose a heavy responsibility
on the writer whose aim it is to restore those faded and delicate
portraits of the Empresses, over which later artists have spread their
sharper and more crudely coloured figures. One may, however, say at
once that it is not contemplated to urge any very revolutionary change
in the current estimate of the character of most of them. If a few
romantic adventures must be honestly discarded, we shall find Messalina
still flaunting her vices in the palace, Agrippina still pursuing her
more masculine ambition, Poppæa still representing the gaily-decked
puppet of that luxurious world, and Zenobia, in glittering helmet,
still giving resonant commands to her troops.
But it will be well, before we introduce the first, and one of the best
and greatest of the Empresses, to glance at the development of Roman
life which prepared the way for woman to so exalted a dignity. The
condition of woman in early Rome has often been restored. We see the
female infant, her fate trembling in the hand of man from the moment
when her eyes open to the light, brought before the despotic father
for the decision of her fate. With a glance at the little white frame
he will say whether she shall be cast out, to be gathered by the
merchants in human flesh, or suffered to breed the next generation of
citizens. We follow her through her guarded girlhood, as she learns
to spin and weave, and see her passing from the tyranny of father to
the tyranny of husband at an age when the modern girl has hardly begun
to glance nervously at marriage as a remote and mystic experience. We
then find her, not indeed so narrowly confined as her Greek sister,
yet little more than the servant of her husband. Public feeling,
it is true, mitigated the harsher features, and forbade the graver
consequences, of this ancient tradition. For many centuries divorce was
unknown at Rome. Yet woman’s horizon was limited to her home, while
her husband boasted of his share in controlling the Commonwealth’s
increasing life.
In the second century before Christ we find symptoms of revolt. The
wealthier women of Rome resent the curtailing of their finery by the
Oppian Law, now that the war is over (195 B.C.). Old-fashioned Senators
are dismayed to find them holding a public meeting, besetting all the
approaches to the Senate, demanding their votes, and even invading the
houses of the Tribunes and coercing them to withdraw their opposition.
The truth is that Rome has changed, and the women feel the pervading
change. The passage of the victorious Roman through the cities of the
East had corrupted the patriarchal virtues. Roman officers could not
gaze unmoved on the surviving memorials of the culture of Athens, or
make festival in the drowsy chambers of Corinthian courtesans or the
licentious groves of Daphne, without altering their ideal of life. The
splendour of Eastern wisdom and vice made pale the old standard of
Roman _virtus_. The vast wealth extorted from the subdued provinces
swelled the pride of patrician families until they disdainfully burst
the narrow walls of their fathers’ homes. The hills of Rome began to
shine with marble mansions, framed in shady and spacious gardens, from
which contemptuous patrician eyes looked down on the sordid and idle
crowds in the valleys of the Subura and the Velabrum. Rome aspired to
have its art and its letters.
Roman women were not content to be secluded from the new culture, and
could not escape the stimulation of their new world. The Roman husband
must be kept away from the accomplished courtesans of Greece and the
voluptuous sirens of Asia by finding no lesser attractions in his wife.
So the near horizon of woman’s mind rolled outward. An inscription
found at Lanuvium, where the Empress Livia had a villa, shows that the
little provincial town had a _curia mulierum_, a women’s debating club.
The walls of Pompeii, when the shroud of lava had been removed from its
scorched face, bore election-addresses signed by women. The world was
mirrored in Rome, and few minds could retain their primitive simplicity
as they contemplated that seductive picture.
By the beginning of the first century of the older era the women of
Rome had ample opportunity for culture and for political influence.
In the great conflicts of the time their names are chronicled as the
inspirers of many of the chief actors. They rise and fall with the
cause of the Senate or the cause of the People. They unite culture
with character, public interest with beauty and motherhood. At last
the conflicting parties disappear one by one, and a young commander,
Octavian, the great-nephew of Julius Cæsar, gathers up the power they
relinquish. A youth of delicate and singularly graceful features, of
refined and thoughtful, rather than assertive, appearance, he hears
that Cæsar has made him heir to his wealth and his opportunities; he
goes boldly to Rome, adroitly uses its forces to destroy those who had
slain Cæsar, forces Mark Antony to share the rule of the world with him
and Lepidus, and then destroys Lepidus and Mark Antony. It is at this
point, when he returns to Rome from his last victories, when the whole
world wonders whether he will keep the power he has gathered or meekly
place it in the hands of the Senate, that the story opens.
CHAPTER I
THE MAKING OF AN EMPRESS
On an August morning of the year 29 B.C. the million citizens of Rome
lined the route which was taken by triumphal processions, to greet
the man who brought them the unfamiliar blessing of peace. From the
Triumphal Gate to the Capitol, past the Great Circus and through
the dense quarter of the Velabrum, with its narrow streets and high
tenements, the chattering crowd was drawn out in two restless lines, on
either side of the road, ready to fling back the resonant “Io Triumphe”
of the bronzed soldiers, bubbling with discussion of the war-blackened
stretch of the past and the more pleasant prospect of the future. The
hedges of spectators were thicker, and the debate was livelier, under
the cliff of the Palatine Hill and in the Forum, through which ran the
Sacred Way to the white Temple of Jupiter, towering above them and
crowning the Capitol at the end of the Forum. There the conqueror would
offer sacrifice, before he sank back into the common rank of citizens
of the Republic. Would the young Octavian really lay down his power,
and become a citizen among many, now that he was master of the Roman
world?
Possibly one woman, who looked out on the seething Forum and the
glistening temple of Jupiter from a modest mansion on the Palatine
Hill, knew the answer to the eager question. Possibly it was unknown
to Octavian himself, her husband. She heard the blasts of the leading
trumpeters, and saw the sleek white oxen, with their gilded horns
and their green garlands, advance along the Sacred Way and mount the
Capitol. She saw the people rock and quiver with excitement as painted
scenes of the remote Dalmatian forests, where her husband’s latest
victories had been won, and the gold and silver of despoiled Egypt,
and the very children of the witch Cleopatra, were driven before the
conqueror. She saw the red-robed lictors slowly pass, their fasces
wreathed in laurel; she saw the band of dancers and musicians tossing
joyful music in his path; and she saw at last the four white horses
drawing a triumphal chariot, in which her husband and her two children
received the frenzied ovation of the people.
Octavian was then in his thirty-fourth year. Fifteen years of struggle
had drawn a manly gravity over the handsome boyish face, though the
curly golden hair still seemed a strange bed for the chaplet of laurel
that crowned it. His full impassive lips, steady watchful eyes, and
broad smooth forehead gave a singular impression of detachment--as if
he were a disinterested spectator of the day’s events and the whole
national drama, instead of being the central figure. The busts which
portray him about this period seem to me, in profile, to recall David’s
Napoleon, without the slumbering fire and the hard egoism. Men would
remind each other how, when he was a mere boy, fifteen years before, he
had found his way through a maze of intrigue with remarkable dexterity.
Now, Mark Antony was dead, Brutus and Cassius were dead, Lepidus was
dead, and the followers of Pompey were scattered. It was natural to
assume that dreams of further power were hidden behind that mask of
strong repose.
Behind Octavian went the body of Senators, with purple-striped togas,
and silver crescents on their sandals. The lines of spectators broke
into gossiping groups when the tail of the procession had passed on.
The white oxen fell before the altar of Jupiter. Octavian gave the
customary address to the Senate, and joined Livia in the small mansion
on the Palatine. But for many a day afterward Rome bubbled in praise
of him. Not for years had such combats reddened the sands of the
amphitheatre, such clowns and conjurors and actors filled the stage
of the theatre, such sports fired the 300,000 citizens at the circus.
Never before had the uncouth form of the rhinoceros or hippopotamus
been seen at Rome. Not since the beginning of the civil wars had so
much money flowed through the shops of the Velabrum and the taverns
of the Subura. Such wealth had been added to the public store by
the despoiling of Egypt that the bankers had to reduce the rate of
interest. To a people grown parasitic the temptation to make a king
was overpowering; and it was easy to point out, to those who clung to
the strict democratic forms, that Octavian was extraordinarily modest
for a man who had reached so brilliant and resourceful a position. So
within a few months Octavian was Imperator, and Livia became, in modern
phrase, the Empress of Rome.[1]
Livia, unhappily for Rome, gave Octavian no direct heir to the purple,
and we may therefore speak briefly of her extraction. She came of the
Claudii, one of the oldest and proudest families of the Republic,
one that numbered twenty-eight consuls and five dictators in its
line. A strong, haughty race, more useful than brilliant, religiously
devoted to the old Republic, they had helped much to make Rome the
mistress of the world. Livia’s father, Livius Drusus Claudianus, had
taken arms against Octavian and Antony, and had killed himself, with
Roman dignity, when Brutus and Cassius fell, and he saw the shadow of
despotism coming over the city.
Livia was then in her sixteenth year,[2] and had early experience of
the storms of Roman political life. Her husband, Tiberius Claudius
Nero, had been promoted more than once by Julius Cæsar, but, after the
assassination of Cæsar, he had passed into what he regarded as the
more favourable current. He seems to have steered his course with some
skill until the year 41 B.C., when, like many other small schemers,
he came under the influence of Mark Antony’s wife, Fulvia. Antony was
caught at the time in the silken net with which Cleopatra prevented
him from carrying out the ambition of Rome at the expense of her
country. Fulvia, a virile and passionate woman, tried to draw Antony
from her arms by provoking a revolt against Octavian. She induced
her brother-in-law and other nobles to rebel, and Nero, who was then
prefect of a small town in Campania, joined the movement.
Octavian swung his legions southward, and scattered the thin ranks of
the insurgents. With her infant--the future Emperor Tiberius--in her
arms the girl-wife fled to the coast with her husband, and endured all
the horrors of civil warfare. So close were the soldiers of Octavian
on their heels that at one point the cry of the baby nearly destroyed
them. Octavian had little mercy on rebellious nobles before he married
Livia. At last they reached the coast, where the galleys of Sextus
Pompeius hovered to receive fugitives, and sailed for Sicily. They were
cordially received there by the Pompeians, but went on to Greece, and
were again hunted by the troops. Long afterwards in Rome they used to
tell how the delicate girl, the descendant of all the Claudii, fled
through a burning forest by night before Roman soldiers, and singed her
hair and garments as she rushed onward with her baby in her arms. The
troubled history of Rome for a hundred years was stamped on her mind by
a personal experience that she could never forget. With worn feet and
aching heart, she and her husband at last found shelter, until the feud
between Antony and Octavian had been composed.
From the straits of exile they returned to their pretty home on the
Palatine Hill, and the story of her adventures ran, and gathered
substance, in Roman society. If the experts be right in assigning to
Livia a small mansion which has been uncovered on the hill, we find
that she was, in the year 38 B.C., living only a short distance from
the house of Octavian. Among the palatial buildings which now whitened
the slopes of the Roman hills, Nero’s house--later, Livia’s house--was
poor, but its mural paintings are amongst the most delicate that have
been discovered under the overlying centuries of mediæval rubbish. A
small portico gave shelter from the summer sun, and the small, cool
atrium (hall) led only to some half dozen modest rooms. But Livia was
happy in her husband, and sober in her tastes. She was then in her
nineteenth year, a young woman of regular and pleasing, though scarcely
beautiful, features and rounded form, one of those who happily united
the old matronly virtue to the new love of society and gaiety. All
Rome discussed her adventures, and the generous feeling which her
romance engendered made people give her an exceptional beauty and
wit--qualities which neither her marble image nor her recorded career
permits us to accept in any large measure. There was no whisper of
slander against her until the days of her power. From this peaceful and
happy little world she was now to be suddenly removed.
Octavian, who mingled very freely with his fellows, and often supped
with the literary men who were now multiplying at Rome, heard the
gossip about the youthful Livia, and sought her. He was already
married, and a word may be said about the _impératrices manquées_
before we unite him to Livia.
In early youth he had been affianced to the girlish daughter of Publius
Servilius Isauricus, but a mere betrothal had little strength at a time
when even the marriage bond was so frail. When he came to face Mark
Antony, with many grim legions at his command, and a fresh civil war
was threatened, peacemakers suggested that the storm might be turned
from the fields of Italy by a matrimonial alliance. The soldiers, weary
of slaying each other, acclaimed the proposal. Servilia was sacrificed,
and Octavian was married to the young and hardly marriageable daughter
of Fulvia. As we saw, there was a fresh rupture with Antony in the
year 41, and Octavian sent back the maiden, as he described her, to
her infuriated mother. Some of our authorities declare that Fulvia had
tried to draw Antony from the arms of Cleopatra by making love to his
handsome rival, but one can only suppose that Antony would smile if he
were told that his unpleasant spouse--the woman who is said to have
gloated over the bloody head of Cicero, and thrust her hair-pin through
his tongue--was offering her heart to Octavian. We cannot, therefore,
accept the rumour that, when Octavian sent back her daughter to Fulvia,
he maliciously explained that he was anxious to spare Fulvia the
mortification of thinking that he had preferred the pretty insipidity
of Clodia to her own more assertive qualities.
The marriage with Clodia had been frankly political, and it naturally
broke down in the new political dissolution. The second marriage had
the same origin, and the same welcome termination. He had married
Scribonia, a woman older than himself, during the rupture with Antony,
because her brother was one of the chief members of the Pompeian
faction. The leader of this party, Sextus Pompeius, held Sicily, and
not only welcomed fugitives from Octavian’s anger, but commanded the
sea-route to Rome. Through his devoted friend Mæcenas, the famous
patron of letters, Octavian proposed a marriage with Scribonia. It
would not be unnatural for a woman in her thirties, who had already
outlived two husbands, eagerly to espouse, and probably love, so
graceful, ambitious, and advancing a youth as Octavian; but to him the
alliance was only one more move in the great game he was playing. He
could bear the strain of a diplomatic marriage with ease, since there
is no reason to reject the statement of Dio and Suetonius that he found
affection among the wives of his nobler friends.
It has been commonly held that Octavian masked a tense and
unwavering ambition with an affectation of simple joviality, and his
irregularities have been excused on the ground that he used them as
means to detect political whispers in Roman society. But this view of
Octavian’s character may be confidently questioned. His tastes, we
shall see, remained extremely simple when he might safely have indulged
any feeling for luxury, when every rival had been removed. That he was
ambitious it would be foolish to question; but his ambition must not
be measured by his success. There are few other cases in history in
which fortune so wantonly smoothed the path and drew onward an easy and
vacillating ambition. Octavian could well believe the assurances of the
Chaldæan astrologers that he was born to power.
With all his simplicity, however, Octavian had some sense of luxury
in love-matters, and his imagination wandered. Scribonia’s solid
virtue was unrelieved by any of the graces of the new womanhood of
Rome, her sparing charms had already faded under the pitiless sun of
Italy, and she had a sharp tongue. Moreover, his marriage with her
had proved a superfluous sacrifice. Fulvia’s stormy career had come
to a close shortly after the return of her daughter, and Antony and
Octavian had divided the Roman world between them. Antony married his
colleague’s sister, but the pale virtue of Octavia had no avail against
the burning caresses, if not the calculated patriotism, of Cleopatra.
At the second rupture between Antony and Octavian she was driven from
Antony’s palace at Rome, where she was patiently enduring his distant
infidelity, and sent back to her brother. In the meantime Octavian had
discovered a pleasanter way of obtaining peace with the Pompeians than
by the endurance of Scribonia’s jarring laments of his infidelity. He
found, or alleged, that Sextus Pompeius did not curb the pirates of
the Mediterranean as he ought, and he determined to wrest from him the
rich appointments that he held. He was in this mood when, in the year
38 B.C., the young Livia came to Rome, and the exaggerated story of her
adventures and her beauty began to circulate among the mansions of the
Palatine.
Some of the authorities describe Octavian as hovering about her for
some time, and say that the splendour with which he celebrated his
_barbatoria_, or first shave of the beard, was due to the generosity
of his new passion. It is more probable that he at once informed Nero
of his resolution to marry Livia. Tacitus expressly says that it is
unknown whether Livia consented or not to the change of husband. Great
as was the liberty then enjoyed by Roman women, they were rarely
consulted on such matters. Scribonia received a letter of divorce, in
which it was suggested that the perversity of her character made her
an unsuitable spouse for so roving a husband. She had given birth to
a daughter a few days before, and we shall find the later chapters of
this chronicle lit up more than once by the lurid hatred which was
begotten of this despotic dismissal. For the moment I need only point
out that later Roman writers borrowed their estimate of the character
of Livia from Scribonia’s great-grandchild, the Empress Agrippina,
and we must be wary in accepting their statements. Scribonia herself,
who came so near to being an Empress, we must now dismiss, save that
we shall catch one more glimpse of her when she follows her dissolute
daughter into exile.
Roman law imposed a fitting delay on the divorced wife before she
could marry again, but Octavian was impatient. He consulted the sacred
augurs, and, if the legend is correct, the diviners gave admirable
proof of their art. They gravely reported that the omens were
auspicious for an immediate marriage _if_ the petitioner had ground
to believe that it would be fruitful. The verdict entertained Rome,
because Livia was well known to be far advanced in pregnancy, and
Octavian was widely regarded as the father. Whether that be true or no,
Octavian intimated to Nero that he must divorce Livia, and we cannot
think that she felt much pain at being invited to share the mansion in
the Palatine to which all Roman eyes were now directed. An anecdote
of the time lightly illustrates the ease with which such matrimonial
transfers were accomplished at Rome. Dio says that, during the festive
meal, one of those bejewelled boys who then formed part of a Roman
noble’s household, and whose vicious services were rewarded with an
extraordinary license, said to Livia, as she reclined at table with
Octavian: “What do you here, mistress? Your husband is yonder.” The
pert youngster pointed to Nero at another table. He had given away the
bride, and was cheerfully taking part in the banquet.
Livia’s second son, Drusus Nero, was born three months after her
marriage, and was sent by Octavian to Nero’s house. Nero died soon
afterwards, and made Octavian the guardian of his sons, so that they
returned to the care of their mother. The extreme fondness of Octavian
for the younger boy lends no colour to the rumour that Drusus was
his own son. The probability is that Octavian, in his impetuous way,
married Livia as soon as his fancy rested on her. The accepted busts
of Drusus do not give any support to the calumny that Octavian was
his father. He loved both the boys, and assisted in educating them,
in their early youth. It is only when his daughter Julia brings her
handsome children into the household that we detect a beginning of an
estrangement between him and his successor, Tiberius.
The household in which these first seeds of tragedy slowly germinated
was, in the year 38 B.C., one of great simplicity and sobriety. They
lived in the comparatively small house in which Octavian had been
born, and Livia adopted his plain ways with ease and dignity. In that
age of deadly luxury, when the veins of Rome were swollen with the
first flush of parasitic wealth, Octavian and Livia were content with
a prudent adaptation of the old Roman ideal to the new age. The noble
guests whom Octavian brought to his table found that his simple taste
shrank, not only from the peacocks’ brains and nightingales’ tongues
which were served in their own more sumptuous banquets, but even from
the pheasant, the boar, and the other ordinary luxuries of a patrician
dinner. Rough bread, cream cheese, fish, and common fruit composed his
customary meal. Often was he seen, as he came home in his litter from
some fatiguing public business, such as the administration of justice,
to munch a little bread and fruit, like some humble countryman. Of wine
he drank little, and he never adopted the enervating nightly carousal
which was draining away the strength of Rome. While wealthy senators
and knights prolonged the hours of entertainment after the evening
meal, and hired sinuous Syrian dancing girls and nude bejewelled boys
and salacious mimes to fire the dull eyes of their guests, as they
lay back, sated, on the couches of silk and roses, under fine showers
of perfume from the roof, sipping choice wine cooled with the snow of
the Atlas or the Alps, Octavian withdrew to his study, after a frugal
supper, to write his diary, dictate his generous correspondence, and
enjoy the poets who were inaugurating the golden age of Latin letters.
When there were guests, he provided fitting dishes and music for them,
but often retired to his study when the meal was over. After seven
hours’ sleep in the most modest of chambers he was ready to resume his
daily round.
Since Octavian retained these sober habits to the end of his life,
years after they could have had any diplomatic aim, it is remarkable
that so many writers have regarded them as an artful screen of his
ambition. Nor can we think differently of Livia. If Octavian presents
a healthy contrast to the sordid sensuality of some of his successors,
his wife contrasts no less luminously with later Empresses, and is no
less unjustly accused of cunning. How far she developed ambition in
later years we shall consider later. In the fullness of his manhood, at
least, she was content to be the wife of Octavian. With her own hands
she helped to spin, weave, and sew his everyday garments. She carefully
reared her two boys, tended the somewhat delicate health of Octavian,
and cultivated that nice degree of affability which kept her husband
affectionate and the husbands of other noble dames respectful. Dio
would have us believe that her most useful quality was her willingness
to overlook the genial irregularities of Octavian; but Dio betrays an
excessive eagerness to detect frailties in his heroes and heroines. We
have no serious evidence that Octavian continued the loose ways of his
youth after he married Livia. The plainest and soundest reading of the
chronicle is that they lived happily, and retained a great affection
for each other, even when fate began to rain its blows on their
ill-starred house.
But before we reach those tragic days, we have to consider briefly the
years in which Octavian established his power. His first step after his
marriage with Livia was to destroy the power of the Pompeians. Livia
followed the struggle anxiously from her country villa a few miles
from Rome. Sextus Pompeius was experienced in naval warfare, and, as
repeated messages came of blunder and defeat on the part of Octavian’s
forces, she trembled with alarm. Her confidence was restored by one of
the abundant miracles of the time. An eagle one day swooped down on a
chicken which had just picked up a sprig of laurel in the farm-yard.
The eagle clumsily dropped the chicken, with the laurel, near Livia,
and so plain an omen could not be misinterpreted. Rumour soon had it
that the eagle had laid the laurel-bearing chick gently at Livia’s
feet. As in all such cases, the sceptic of a later generation was
silenced with material proof. The chicken became the mother of a brood
which for many years spread the repute of the village through southern
Italy; the sprig of laurel became a tree, and in time furnished the
auspicious twigs of which the crowns of triumphing generals were woven.
Whether it was by the will of Jupiter, or by the reinforcement of a
hundred and fifty ships which he received from Antony, Octavian did
eventually win, and, to the delight of Rome, cleared the route by which
the corn-ships came from Africa. Only two men now remained between
Octavian and supreme power--the two who formed with him the Triumvirate
which ruled the Republic. The first, Lepidus, was soon convicted of
maladministration in his African province, and was transferred to the
innocent duties of the pontificate, under Octavian’s eyes, at Rome.
Octavian added the province of Africa to his half of the Roman world,
and found himself in command of forty-five legions and six hundred
vessels. Fresh honours were awarded him by the Senate, in which his
devoted friend Mæcenas, who foresaw the advantage to Rome of his rule,
was working for him.
Then Octavian entered on his final conflict with Mark Antony. I
have already protested against the plausible view that Octavian was
pursuing a definite ambition under all his appearance of simplicity.
Circumstances conspired first to give him power, and then to give him
the appearance of a thirst for it. He really did not destroy Antony,
however: Antony destroyed himself. The apology that has been made for
Cleopatra in recent times only enhances Antony’s guilt. It is said that
she used all that elusive fascination of her person, of which ancient
writers find it difficult to convey an impression, all her wealth and
her wit, only to benumb the hand that Rome stretched out to seize her
beloved land. The theory is not in the least inconsistent with the
facts, and it is more pleasant to believe that the last representative
of the great free womanhood of ancient Egypt sacrificed her person
and her wealth on the altar of patriotism than that her dalliance
with Antony was but a languorous and selfish indulgence in an hour of
national peril. But if it be true that Cleopatra was the last Egyptian
patriot, Antony was all the more clearly a traitor to Rome. The quarrel
does not concern us. Octavian induced the Senate to make war on Egypt;
and we can well believe that when, in a herald’s garb, he read the
declaration of war at the door of the temple of Bellona, the thought of
his despised sister added warmth to his phrases. The pale, patient face
and outraged virtue of Octavia daily branded Antony afresh in the eyes
of Rome.
Livia and Antonia followed the swift course of the last struggle
from Rome. They heard of the meeting of the fleets off Actium, the
victorious swoop of Octavian, the flight of Antony and Cleopatra. What
followed would hardly be known to Livia. It is said that Cleopatra
offered to betray Antony to Octavian, and such an offer is in entire
harmony with the patriotic theory of her conduct. While his able but
ill-regulated rival, deserted by his forces, drew near the edge of
the abyss, Octavian visited Cleopatra in her palace. Her seductive
form was displayed on a silken couch, and from the slit-like eyes the
dangerous fire caressed the young conqueror. Cleopatra probably relied
on Octavian’s weakness, but his sensuous impulses were held in check by
a harder thought. He felt that he must have this glorious creature to
adorn his triumph at Rome. Cleopatra saw that she had failed, and she
went sadly, with a last dignity, before the throne of Osiris. Octavian
returned to Rome with the immense treasures of Egypt, to enjoy the
triumph I have already described and to await the purple.
The domestic life of Livia and Octavian lost none of its plainness
after the attainment of supreme power. Some time after the Senate had
(27 B.C.) strengthened his position by inventing for him the title of
“Augustus”--a title by which he is generally, but improperly, described
in history after that date[3]--he removed from the small house which
his father had left him to a larger mansion, built by the orator
Hortensius, on the Palatine. This was burned down in the year 6 B.C.,
and the citizens built a new palace for Livia and Octavian by public
subscription. At the Emperor’s command the contribution of each was
limited to one _denarius_. If we may trust the archæologists, it was
modest in size, but of admirable taste, especially in the marble lining
of its interior. On one side it looked down, over the steep slope of
the hill, on the colonnaded space, the Forum, in which the life of
Rome centred. On the other side it faced a group of public buildings,
raised by Octavian, which impressed the citizens with his liberality
in the public service. The splendid temple of Apollo, the public
library and other buildings, adorned with the most exquisite works of
art that his provincial expeditions had brought to Rome, stood in fine
contrast to his own plain mansion, of which the proudest decoration
was the faded wreath over the door--the Victoria Cross of the Roman
world--which bore witness that he had saved the life of a citizen.
In this modest palace Livia reared her two children in the finer
traditions of the old Republic, while Octavian made the long journeys
into the provinces which filled many years after his attainment of
power. Livia was no narrow conservative. She took her full share in the
decent distractions of patrician life, and, like many other noble women
of the period, she built temples and other edifices of more obvious
usefulness to the public. A provincial town took the name Liviada
in her honour. We have many proofs that she was consulted on public
affairs by Octavian, and exercised a discreet and beneficent influence
on him. One of the anecdotes collected by later writers tells that she
one day met a group of naked men on the road. It is likely that they
were innocent workers or soldiers in the heat, and not the “band of
lascivious nobles” which prurient writers have made them out to be.
However, Octavian impetuously demanded their heads when she told him,
and Livia saved them with the remark that, “in the eyes of a decent
woman they were no more offensive than a group of statues.” On another
occasion she dissuaded Octavian from executing a young noble for
conspiracy. At her suggestion the noble was brought to the Emperor’s
private room. When, instead of the merited sentence of death, Cinna
received only a kindly admonition, an offer of Octavian’s friendship,
and further promotion, he was completely disarmed and won. We shall see
further proof that the wise and humane counsels of Livia contributed
not a little to the peace and prosperity which Rome enjoyed in its
golden age.
[Illustration: LIVIA AS CERES
STATUE IN THE LOUVRE]
For it was in truth an age of gold in comparison with the previous
hundred years and the centuries to come. The flames of civil war had
scorched the Republic time after time. The best soldiers of Rome were
dying out; the best leaders were perishing in an ignoble contest
of ambitions. Corruption spread, like a cancerous growth, through
all ranks of the citizens of Rome, and far into the provinces. The
white-robed (_candidati_) seekers of office in the city now relied on
the purchase of votes by expert and recognized agents. Hundreds of
thousands of the citizens lived parasitically on the State, or on the
wealthy men to whom they sold their votes, and from whom they had free
food and free entertainments. The loathsome spectacle was seen of vast
crowds of strong idle men, boasting of their dignity as citizens of
Rome, pressing to the appointed steps for their daily doles of corn.
Large numbers of them could hardly earn an occasional coin to buy a
cup of wine, a game of dice, or a visit to the _lupanaria_ in the
Subura. By means of other agents the wealthy refilled their coffers by
extortion in the provinces, and paraded at Rome a luxury that was often
as puerile as it was criminal. Rome, once so sober and virile, now
shone on the face of the earth like some parasitic flower, of deadly
beauty, on the face of a forest.
No man, perhaps, could have saved Rome from destruction, but Octavian
did much to clear its veins of the poison, and its chronicle would have
run very differently if he had not been succeeded by a Caligula, a
Claudius, and a Nero. He chastised injustice in the provinces, purified
the administration of justice at Rome, fought against the growing
practices of artificial sterility and artificial vice, and genially
pressed on the senators his own ideal of sober public service. From
his mansion on the Palatine he looked down without remorse on the idle
chatterers in the Forum, from whom he had withdrawn the power, of which
they still boasted, of ruling their spreading empire. Nor were there
many, amongst those who looked up to his unpretentious palace on the
edge of the cliff, who did not feel that they had gained by the sale
of their tarnished democracy. There was more than literal truth in
Octavian’s boast that he had found Rome a city of brick, and had left
it a city of marble.
Yet all the augurs and soothsayers of Rome failed to see the swift
and terrible issue that would come of this seemingly happy change.
Corrupt and repellent as democracy had become, monarchy was presently
to exhibit spectacles which would surpass all the horrors of its civil
wars, and outshame the sordid reaches of its avarice. The new race of
rulers was to descend so low as to use its imperial power to shatter
what remained of old Roman virtue, and to embellish vice with its
richest awards. From the sobriety and public spirit of Octavian we pass
quickly to the sombre melancholy of Tiberius, the wanton brutality of
Caligula, the impotent sensuality of Claudius, the mincing folly of
Nero, and the alternating gluttony and cruelty of Domitian, before we
come to the second honest effort to avert the fate of Rome. From the
genial virtue of Livia we are led to contemplate the dissolute gaieties
of Julia, the cold ambition of Agrippina, the robust vulgarity of
Cæsonia, the infectious vice of Messalina, and the insipid frippery of
Poppæa. Had there been one syllable of truth in the divine messages
which augurs and Chaldæans saw in every movement of nature, not even
the beneficent rule of Octavian would have lured men to sacrifice even
the effigy of power that remained to them, and that they had lightly
sold for a measure of corn and the bloody orgies of the amphitheatre.
CHAPTER II
THE END OF THE GOLDEN AGE
In tracing the further career of Livia we enter upon the opening acts
of the tragedy of the Cæsars, and we have to consider carefully if
there be any truth in the charge that Livia herself initiated the long
series of murders that now make a trail of blood over the annals of
Rome. With the coming of the Empire we more rarely find legion pitted
against legion in the horrors of civil war, but we have nerveless
ambition stooping to the despicable aid of the poisoner, autocracy
paralysing the best of the nobility with its murderous suspicions,
and folly growing more foolish with the increasing splendour of
the imperial house. We already know that the germs of this disease
were found in the quiet home of Livia and Octavian on the Palatine.
Scribonia had received her letter of divorce a few days after the birth
of her daughter Julia. As Livia bore no direct heir to the Emperor,
while Julia became the mother of many children, we have at once the
promise of a dramatic struggle for the succession. When we further
learn that the strain of Imperial blood, which takes its rise in Julia,
is thickly tainted with disease, we are prepared for a bloody and
unscrupulous conflict. And when we reflect that on this unstable pivot
the vast Empire will turn for many generations, we begin to understand
the larger tragedy of the fall of Rome.
Let us first glance at the interior of the modest household on the
Palatine. Besides Livia and Octavian, with whom we are now familiar,
there is Octavia, sister of the Emperor and divorced wife of Mark
Antony, a gentle lady with the matronly virtues of the time when a
Roman could slay his wife or daughter for irregular conduct. With
her were her children, Marcellus and Marcella, of whom we shall hear
much. Then there were Livia’s two sons--the elder, Tiberius, a tall,
silent, moody youth, with little care to please; the younger, Drusus, a
handsome, buoyant, fair-headed boy, threatening the elder’s birthright.
Octavian closely watched the education of the boys. He taught them to
write on the wax-faced tablets in the fine script on which he prided
himself, kept them beside him at table, and drove them in his chariot
about public business.
But the most interesting and fateful figure in the group was Julia.
Octavian had removed her at an early age from the care of Scribonia,
and adopted her in the palace. She learned to spin and weave, and
helped to make the garments of the family, under the severe eyes of
Livia and Octavia. The Emperor was charmed with the pretty and lively
girl, and would make a second Livia of her. Knowing well, if only from
his own youth, the vice and folly that abounded in those mansions on
the hills of Rome, and roared in its dimly-lighted valleys by night, he
kept her apart. None of the young fops who drove their chariots madly
out by the Flaminian Gate, and sipped their wine after supper to the
prurient jokes of mimes, were suffered to approach her. And, not for
the first or last time in history, the veiling of the young eyes had an
effect quite contrary to that intended. A Roman girl became a woman at
fourteen, a mother at fifteen. At that early age, in the year 25 B.C.,
Julia was married to her cousin Marcellus, who was then seventeen.
Marcellus was so clearly a possible successor to the throne that
courtiers hung about him, and taught him the art of princely living.
The doors of the hidden world were opened, and the tender eyes of Julia
were dazed.
The authorities are careless in chronology, and we may decline to
believe that Julia at once entered on the riotous ways which led her to
the abyss. Her marriage concerns us in a very different respect. All
the writers who adopt the view that Livia was a hard and unscrupulous
woman--a view that Tacitus must have taken from the memoirs of her
rival’s granddaughter, the Empress Agrippina, which were made public in
his time--consider that this marriage of Julia and Marcellus marks the
beginning of her career of crime. She is supposed to have been alarmed
at the marriage of two direct descendants of Cæsar, seeing that she
herself had no child by Octavian. Most certainly she was ambitious for
her elder son. The boy whom she had clasped to her breast, when she
fled along the roads of Campania and through the burning forests of
Greece, was now a clever and studious youth, and she wished Octavian to
adopt him. Unfortunately, Tiberius was of a moody and solitary nature,
and was easily displaced in Octavian’s affection by the handsome and
popular Marcellus and the beautiful and witty Julia.
The first cloud appeared in the year 23 B.C. Octavian fell seriously
ill, and Livia’s hope of securing the succession for her son was
troubled by two formidable competitors. One was Marcellus, the other
was Octavian’s friend and ablest general, M. V. Agrippa. He was of poor
origin, but of commanding ability and character, and was suspected
of entertaining a design to restore the Republic. He was married to
Marcella, and had some contempt for the spoiled boy, her brother
Marcellus--a contempt which Marcellus repaid with petulance and
rancour. Octavian recovered, sent Agrippa on an important errand to
the East, and made Marcellus Ædile of the city. Marcellus was winning,
the eager observers thought, when suddenly he fell seriously ill and
died. The death was so opportune for Tiberius that we cannot wonder
that a faint whisper of poison went through Rome when his ashes were
laid in the lofty marble tower that Octavian had built in the meadows
by the Tiber. But we need not linger over this first charge against
Livia. Even Dio, who is no sceptic in regard to rumours which defame
Empresses, hesitates to press on us so airy and improbable a myth.
It was a hot and pestilential summer, and Marcellus seems to have
contracted fever by remaining too long at his post, before going to
Baiæ on the coast.
The death of Marcellus, far from promoting the cause of Tiberius,
brought a more formidable obstacle in his way. Octavian sent for
Agrippa, and directed him to divorce Marcella and wed Julia. The
general, who was in his forty-second year, thought it immaterial which
of the two young princesses shared his bed, and Octavia consented to
the divorce of her daughter--as some conjecture, to thwart Livia’s
design. To the delight of Octavian the union of robust manhood and
amorous young womanhood was fruitful. During the ten years of their
marriage Julia gave birth to three sons and two daughters. Happily
unconscious of the tragedies which were to close the careers of these
children in his own lifetime, Octavian welcomed them with great
enthusiasm. During his whole reign he was engaged in a futile effort
to induce or compel the better families of Rome to take a larger
share in the peopling of the Empire. When he penalized celibacy,
they defeated him by contracting marriages with the intention of
seeking an immediate divorce. When he made adultery a public crime,
there were noblewomen--few in number, it is true; the facts are often
exaggerated--who enrolled themselves on the list of shame, and noblemen
who took on the degrading rank of gladiators, in order to escape the
penalties. He created a guild of honour for the mothers of at least
three children; but the distinction seemed to the ladies of Rome to be
an inadequate reward for so onerous an accomplishment, and they scoffed
when Livia was enrolled in the guild, though the only child she had
conceived of Octavian had never seen the light.
Far greater, however, was the amusement of Rome when Octavian held up
Julia as a model of maternity, and ostentatiously fondled her babies
in public. A coarse and witty reply that she is said to have made,
when some one asked her how it was that all her children so closely
resembled her husband, was then circulated in Roman society, and is
preserved in Macrobius.[4] Beautiful, lively, and cultivated, the young
girl had exchanged with delight the dull homeliness of her father’s
mansion for the rose-crowned banquets of her new world. Her marriage
with Agrippa restrained her gaiety for a time, but her husband was
often summoned to distant provinces, and she was left to her dissolute
friends. Octavian was curiously blind to her conduct, but when Agrippa
was compelled to undertake a lengthy mission in the East, he ordered
Julia to accompany him. The journey would not improbably foster her
vicious tendencies. There is truth in the old adage that all light
came to Europe from the East, but it is hardly less true that darkness
came to Rome from the East. Julia would not be ignorant how the
ancient Roman puritanism had been corrupted by the introduction of
Eastern habits and types--the poisoner, the Chaldæan astrologer, the
Syrian dancer, the eunuch, the cultivated Greek slave, the priests of
orgiastic Eastern cults. A mind like hers would seek to penetrate the
depths from which these types had emerged. In Greece she would find the
remains of its perfumed vices lingering at the foot of its decaying
monuments. In Antioch there would not be wanting freedwomen to gratify
her curiosity in regard to its unnatural excesses and the world-famed
license of its groves. In Judæa she was long and splendidly entertained
at the court of Herod, a monarch with ten wives and concubines
innumerable.
They returned to Rome in the year 13, and in the following year Agrippa
died of gout, and Julia was free. One of the most surprising features
of her wild career--one that would make us hesitate to admit the
charges against her, if hesitation were possible--is that Livia was
either ignorant of her more serious misdeeds, or unable to convince
Octavian of them. Livia would hardly spare her, as Julia was inflaming
Octavian’s dislike for Tiberius. Refined, sensitive, and studious,
the young man avoided the boisterous amusements in which other young
patricians spent their ample leisure, and his cold melancholy made him
distasteful to them. One of the Roman writers would have us believe
that Julia made love to him during the life of Agrippa, and that she
incited Octavian against him in revenge for his rejection of her
advances. The story is improbable. We need only suppose that Julia, in
speaking of Tiberius, used the disdainful language which was common to
her friends. Neither Livia nor Tiberius seems to have attempted to open
the Emperor’s eyes to Julia’s conduct. Octavian disliked her luxurious
ways, but was blind to her vices, though the names of her lovers were
on the lips of all. One day Octavian scolded her for having a crowd of
fast young nobles about her, and commended to her the staid example of
Livia. She disarmed him with the laughing reply that, when she was old,
her companions would be as old as those of the Empress. One writer says
that Octavian compelled her to give up a too sumptuous palace which
she occupied. One is more disposed to believe the story that, when he
remonstrated with her for her luxurious ways, she replied “My father
may forget that he is Cæsar, but I cannot forget that I am Cæsar’s
daughter.”
In spite of their mutual aversion Octavian now ordered Tiberius to
marry her. He was already married to Vipsania, the virtuous and
affectionate daughter of Agrippa, and this enforced separation from
one whom he loved with an ardour that was fading from Roman marriage,
and union with one who contrasted with Vipsania as the wild flaming
poppy contrasts with the lily, further soured and embittered him. We
may dismiss in a very few words his relations with the woman who ought
to have been the second Empress of Rome. After a few years spent, as
a rule, in distant frontier wars, he returned to Rome in the year
6 B.C., to find that his wife had passed the last bounds of decency
and Octavian was as blind as ever. In intense disgust, and in spite of
his mother’s entreaties, he begged the Emperor’s permission to spend
some years in literary and scientific studies at Rhodes. Not daring to
open the eyes of Octavian to the true character of his daughter, he
had to bow to his anger and disdain, and seek consolation in the calm
mysteries of the planets and the fine sentiments of Greek tragedians.
[Illustration: JULIA
BUST IN THE MUSEUM CHIARAMONTI]
Julia now cast aside the last traces of restraint. A half-dozen of the
young nobles of Rome are associated with her in the chronicles, and,
gossipy and unreliable as the records are, in this case the issue of
the story disposes us to believe the charges. Round such a repute as
hers legends were bound to grow, and the conscientious biographer must
be reserved in giving details. Dio tells us, for instance, that she
expected her lovers to put crowns, for each success she permitted them
to attain, at the foot of the statue of Marsyas--a public statue, at
the feet of which Roman lawyers were wont to place a crown when they
had won a case. However that may be, it is certain that in the nightly
dissipation of Rome, when plebeian offenders sought the darkness of the
Milvian Bridge, or wantoned in the taverns and brothels of the Subura,
Julia’s party was one of the boldest and most conspicuous. Not content
with the riotous supper, which it was now the fashion to prolong by
lamp-light, in perfumed chambers, until late hours of the night, Julia
and her friends went out into the streets, and caroused in the very
tribunal in the Forum--the Rostra, a platform decorated with the prows
of captured vessels--from which her father made known his Imperial
decisions.[5]
The thunder of the Imperial anger scattered this licentious band some
time in the second year before Christ. In the earlier part of the year
Octavian had entertained Rome with one of the thrilling spectacles
which he often provided. To celebrate the dedication of a new temple of
Mars, which he had built, he had the Flaminian Circus flooded, gave the
people a mock naval battle, and had thirteen crocodiles slain by the
gladiators. Julia had hoodwinked the Emperor so long that she and her
friends seem to have abandoned all restraint, and their adventures came
to the knowledge of the Emperor.
The charges against Julia must have been beyond cavil, since Octavian,
who loved her deeply, at once yielded her to the course of justice. A
charge of conspiracy was made out against her companions. One of the
young nobles killed himself, and the rest were banished. Julia was
convicted of adultery--the evil that her father had fought for ten
years--and from the glitter of Rome she was roughly conducted to the
barren rock-island of Pandateria (Ponza), in the Gulf of Gæta. In that
narrow and depressing jail, with no female attendants, no wine and no
finery, accompanied only by her unhappy mother, the fascinating young
princess spent five years, looking with anguish over the blue water
toward the faint outline of the hills of Italy, or southward toward
those rose-strewn waters of Baiæ, where she had dreamed away so many
brilliant summers. Rome, touched with pity for the stricken woman,
implored Octavian to forgive her; and when he swore that fire and water
should meet before he pardoned her, the people naively flung burning
torches into the Tiber. Hearing, after a few years, that there was a
plot to release her, Octavian had her removed to a more secure prison
in Calabria. There she dragged out her miserable life until her father
died, and Tiberius came to the throne. When he in turn refused to
release her, she sank slowly into the peace of death.
There is no charge against Livia in connexion with this tragic fate
of Julia, but another possible rival of Tiberius had disappeared
during these years, and there is the usual vague accusation that the
Empress assisted the action of nature. Drusus, her younger son, died
in the year 9 B.C., and Livia is charged with sacrificing him to her
affection for her elder son. The charge is preposterous. Drusus had, it
is true, been much more popular than Tiberius at Rome. His genial and
engaging manner gave him a great advantage over the retiring and almost
sullen Tiberius. But the brothers loved each other deeply, and when
Tiberius, who was making a tour in the north of Gaul, heard that Drusus
was dangerously ill in Germany, he at once rode four hundred miles on
horseback, and held Drusus in his arms in his last hour. Livia was at
Ticinum, in the north of Italy, with Octavian when the news reached
them. That either Livia or Tiberius--for both are accused--should have
in any way promoted the death of Drusus is a frivolous suggestion.
The epitomist of Livy, Tacitus, and Suetonius, describe the death as
natural. Drusus was thrown and injured by a frantic horse. The libel
that his death was in some mysterious way accelerated may have been
set afoot by his partisans. It was generally believed that he favoured
a restoration of the Republic, and the corrupt officials who, at his
death, lost their faint hope of returning to the days of peculation
and bribery, may have begun the charge. No evidence is offered for it.
Livia and Octavian accompanied the remains to Rome with great sorrow.
Seneca says that the Empress was so distressed that she summoned one of
the Stoic philosophers to console her.
The next charge against Livia requires a more careful examination. By
the beginning of the present era, when the poor health of Octavian
gave occasion for many speculations as to the succession, there were
only two rivals to the chances of Tiberius. These were the elder sons
of Julia, and Livia must have reflected gloomily on their fortune.
While Tiberius remained in retirement at Rhodes the young princes were
idolized by Octavian and by the people. Tiberius had proposed to return
to Rome after the banishment of Julia, but Octavian peevishly told him
to remain in Greece. Every astrologer in Rome must have read in the
planets that either Caius or Lucius was born to the purple. They were
spoiled by Octavian, enriched with premature honours, and, glittering
in silver trappings, appeared in the spectacles as “Princes of the
youth of Rome.” Let those youths be removed from the scene by any
accident, and so prurient a city as Rome will be bound to discover some
insidious action on the part of Livia; and later writers, brooding over
a chronicle in which ambition leads freely to the most brutal murders,
will be disposed to believe her guilty.
It is somewhat surprising to find more recent writers caught by the
fallacy. We are not puzzled when the scandal-loving Serviez opens his
chapter on Livia with a glowing enumeration of her virtues, adopts
nearly every libel against her as he proceeds, and closes with a
very dark estimate of her character; but we are entitled to expect
more discrimination in Merivale. Even Mr. Tarver, in his recent
“Tiberius the Tyrant” (1902), does much injustice to the mother in
vindicating the son. He speaks of her as “hard, avaricious, and a
lover of power,” and, without the least evidence--indeed, against all
probability--suggests that it was Livia who urged Octavian to keep
Tiberius in retirement at Rhodes. He makes Livia hostile to Tiberius
in favour of Julia’s sons, on the ground that she would find them
more pliant than Tiberius. Every other writer suggests precisely the
contrary. They make her murder Julia’s sons in the interest of Tiberius.
The death of the younger son, Lucius, is obscure. He was sent on a
mission to Spain in the year 2 A.D., and died at Marseilles on the
way. Since the only ground for the rumour that he was poisoned is the
indubitable fact that he died, we need not delay in considering it.
Octavian then sent the elder brother Caius on a mission into Syria
under the care of his old tutor Lollius. His counsellor unhappily died
in the East, and the young prince was left to the vicious companions
who regarded him as the future dispenser of Imperial favours. He fell
into Oriental ways, and was at length (A.D. 3) treacherously wounded
by a Syrian patriot. Instead of returning to Rome, he remained in the
unhealthy atmosphere of the East, indulged in its habits of languor
and vice, and died eighteen months after the death of his brother.
There is no obscurity about his death. It is beyond question that he
was severely wounded by a Syrian. But the deaths of the two brothers
happened so opportunely for Tiberius that one cannot wonder at the
suspicion, in certain minds, that Livia had had the youths poisoned.
Nothing more than this vague rumour is given us by Tacitus, Dio,
Suetonius, or Pliny; and it is from a sheer pruriency of romance that
later writers, like Serviez, have accepted and emphasized the suspicion
recorded in the Roman historians. Not on such slender grounds can we be
asked to sacrifice the conception of Livia’s character which is forced
on us by the plainer facts of her career. The youths were delicate;
Caius, at least, had undermined his frail constitution by luxury, if
not by vice; and the Roman world harboured death in a hundred forms.
If we still hesitate to choose between the artifice of Livia and the
unaided action of natural causes in this removal of the obstacles to
the advancement of Tiberius, we have only to glance at the fate of
the rest of Julia’s children. The third son, Agrippa, was as robust
in body as his brothers were weak, but he was defective in mind and
devoid of moral control. His boorish conduct as a boy gave great pain
to Livia and Octavia, and his great physical strength broke out in
uncontrollable gusts of passion. In his adolescence he readily adopted
the worst vices that Rome could teach him, and Octavian was obliged
to condemn him to imprisonment and exile. There remained the two
daughters, Julia and Agrippina. The younger, the sanest of Julia’s
children, lived to intrigue for power, and greatly to embarrass Livia’s
later years; though we shall find the same tragic fate befalling her
after the death of the Empress, who protected her. The elder, Julia,
was banished (A.D. 9) for incest, and, like her mother, lacking the
courage or virtue to end her shame as the nobler Romans did, she
protracted her miserable life for twenty years, her hard lot only
alleviated by the charity of Livia.
Fate had removed every possible competitor to the succession of
Tiberius. He returned to Rome, and his judicious and sedulous activity
removed the last traces of the Emperor’s resentment. Peace returned,
after many years of storm, to the mansion on the Palatine. But Octavian
had suffered profoundly from those terrible and persistent storms.
The Rome of his manhood was gone. All his friends and counsellors had
disappeared, and the future of his people filled him with apprehension.
The patrician stock was decaying from luxury and vice; the ordinary
citizens clamoured for free food and free entertainment with a blind
disregard of the laws of national health. He shrank from the public
gaze, and leaned affectionately on Livia and Tiberius.
In the year 14 he remained at Rome in the early heat of the summer,
and became seriously ill. Livia and Tiberius went down with him to
the coast, where he rallied, and some pleasant days were spent on
the island of Capreæ (Capri), which he had bought. They passed to
the mainland, where Tiberius left them, but he was soon recalled by
a message from his mother that the Emperor was sinking. On the last
morning of his life Octavian dressed with unaccustomed care, and
summoned his friends to his bedside. Was Rome tranquil on receiving
the news of his dangerous condition? Did they approve of his conduct
and accomplishments? They gave him the assurance he desired, and were
dismissed. Could they have foreseen the line of rulers who were to
stain the purple robe with blood, and load it with shame, for so many
decades to come, they would have wept. The last moments were for Livia.
He died kissing her, and murmuring: “Be mindful of our marriage, Livia.
Farewell.” So ended, peacefully, a union that had lasted fifty-two
years in a city where divorce was as lightly esteemed as marriage.
There can be little serious doubt about the character of the first
Empress of Rome.
Livia probably concealed the death of Octavian until Tiberius arrived
from Dalmatia. A report was given out that Tiberius arrived in time
to receive the last injunctions of the Emperor. This may be doubted
without any serious reflection on her character; if, indeed, it
was she, and not Tiberius, who spread the report. There were grave
fears--well-founded fears, as we shall see--that a plot, in the
interest of corruption, had been framed to prevent the succession of
Tiberius. In the coolness of the night, so as to avoid the intense heat
of August, they bore the remains with great pomp to the capital. There,
on a bed of ivory and purple, preceded by wax effigies of Octavian
and of earlier rulers of Rome, the body was carried to the temple of
Julius, where Tiberius read a funeral oration. The cortège went on
to the Field of Mars, by the Tiber, through lines of black-draped
citizens. The pile was fired, and zealous eyes saw the soul of Octavian
mount toward heaven in the outward form of an eagle.
Livia, on approved custom, remained by the sacred ashes for five days,
and then returned to face the new life which opened for her. With
the especially wild suggestion that she had accelerated the death of
her husband we may disdain to concern ourselves. It was owing to her
devoted care that the ailing and delicate Octavian had lived to old
age. But a second libel in connexion with the death of Octavian must be
briefly considered.
The apprehension, or the secret information, of the dying Emperor
was correct. No sooner was his death announced than a servant of the
imprisoned son of Julia hurried to the coast, and set sail for the
island of Planasia, with the intention of bringing Agrippa to Rome as
a candidate for the purple. He arrived only to find a bleeding corpse.
The centurion in charge had dispatched Agrippa as soon as the Emperor’s
death was made known to him.
Who gave the order for this execution? One cannot call it murder, for
Agrippa was unfit to be restored to society, and any attempt to raise
him to the throne would have been disastrous to Rome. The authorities,
as usual, merely give us the rumours that circulated at the time,
and leave us to choose between Octavian, Livia, and Tiberius. We can
have little difficulty in choosing. It would be so natural for either
Octavian or Tiberius to crush the conspiracy by executing Agrippa that
the introduction of Livia is superfluous. Most probably Octavian had
left directions with Agrippa’s custodian. There is a curious story,
in several contradictory versions, but credible in substance, that
Octavian in his later years paid a secret visit to Planasia, to see
personally what Agrippa’s real condition was. Quite the most plausible
theory is that, after personal verification of his madness, Octavian
felt it best for Rome, and not inhuman to Agrippa, to have him put to
death as soon as the question of succession was opened.
We come to the last phase of Livia’s career. Tiberius was now a
tall, handsome man, though slightly disfigured, with long fair hair
and features strangely delicate for one of his exceptional physical
strength. A better soldier than his predecessor, and not an inept
statesman, he was well enough fitted to wield the power which Octavian
had virtually bequeathed to him. But a retiring disposition, an unhappy
youth, and long years of study, had made him shrink from the society
of any but scholars, and he long hesitated to ascend the throne to
which the Senate invited him. We have not good ground to regard this
reluctance as feigned. At last he consented, and the critics of Livia
would have it that her ambition now passed such bounds as had been set
to it by the ability of Octavian. We may freely admit that she looked
forward to being closely associated in power with the son whose career
she had followed with such devotion and helpfulness. On the other hand,
we shall see how advantageous to the State her influence was; the evils
that at once begin to darken the life of Rome when Tiberius rejects
her counsels will plainly show this. Nor is there any evidence that
she sought power from any other motive than the good of the State. She
might take pride in what she did, and even exaggerate it, but such
a pride is not inconsistent with the view that she was ever gentle,
humane, and generous.
The first searching test of her character occurs a few years after the
accession of Tiberius. As the news of the death of Octavian slowly
travelled over the Empire, there were mutinous movements among the
legions in many provinces. In Lower Germany, especially, the troops
considered that their commander, Germanicus, the nephew of Tiberius,
was entitled to the purple, and they asked him to lead them to Rome.
He was a handsome, engaging young general, of imperial blood, with
moderate ability and much conceit, and had won the regard of the
soldiers by visiting the sick and wounded, advancing their pay out
of his own purse, and other popular acts. He was married to Julia’s
daughter, Agrippina, who lived in camp with him. They dressed their
little son Caius in soldier’s costume, and his quaint appearance
in miniature military boots won for him the pet-name Caligula
(“Little-boots”) by which he is known to history. The legionaries
thought that they had with them a model Imperial family, and promised
to wrest the throne from Tiberius. Germanicus weakly composed the
mutiny--mainly by forging a letter in the name of Tiberius and then
treacherously executing the leaders--and endeavoured to cover his
blunders by vigorous and rather aimless attacks upon the Germans.
Tiberius recalled him to Rome to enjoy a “triumph,” and to keep him out
of further mischief.
Merivale acknowledges that his conquests were “wholly visionary,”
but Germanicus had inherited the charm and popularity of his father,
Drusus, and Rome was easily won for him. People streamed out from
the gates to meet him, and gazed with awe on his gigantic blue-eyed
captives and on the large highly-coloured paintings of his victories in
Germany. It was a new source of concern for Livia and Tiberius, and,
to the satisfaction of Livia’s critics, the danger ended like all the
others.
Germanicus and Agrippina were sent on a mission to the East. Tiberius
seems to have had some disdain for his spoiled and conceited nephew,
and he was well aware of the interested aims of those who affected to
see in him a restorer of the old republican liberty. He chose an older
statesman, Cn. Calpurnius Piso, to go out as Governor of Syria, to
watch and prudently direct the movements of Germanicus. With Piso was
his wife Plancina, an intimate friend of Livia. From these Tiberius and
Livia shortly heard exasperating accounts of the progress of Germanicus
and Agrippina. Piso found, on calling at Athens, that Germanicus had
been flattering the Greeks for their ancient culture, instead of
pressing the dominion of Rome. He made free comments on the young
general’s conduct, pushed past his galleys, as they dallied in Greek
waters, and was hard at work in Syria when Germanicus arrived. The
wives conducted the quarrel with more asperity than their husbands.
Rome had now its party of Germanicus and party of Tiberius, and the
news from the East was heatedly discussed. Germanicus has gone to
Egypt, without asking the Emperor’s permission, and is patronizing
the Greek and Egyptian cults, which Tiberius represses, and going
about in Greek instead of Roman dress. Piso has had a violent quarrel
with Germanicus, and left Syria. And before they have time to discuss
this important intelligence there comes a report that Germanicus
is dangerously ill; that bones of dead men, half-burnt fragments
of sacrificial victims, leaden tablets with the name of Germanicus
scrawled on them, and other deadly charms, have been found under the
floors and between the walls of his house. At length the news comes
that Germanicus is dead, and that with his last breath he has urged
his friends to avenge him. Rome goes into mourning. All the shops are
closed, and crowds gather everywhere to discuss this fresh tragedy
of the Imperial house. In the middle of the night a rumour spreads
that Germanicus is not dead, and people fill the streets with the
glare of their torches, and break into the temples. But the fatal
news is confirmed, and, when at last Agrippina comes with the golden
urn containing his ashes, such mourning is seen as no living man can
remember.
People observed that neither Livia nor Tiberius appeared at the
funeral. Livia had no reason to be present, and Tiberius knew that the
demonstration was due largely to a spirit of hostility to himself.
For the rest, it was merely the feeling of a frivolous people for a
handsome and unfortunate youth. But Livia incurred more serious censure
during the trial of Piso which followed. The ex-governor of Syria
defended himself resolutely for a day or two, and then, hearing that
his wife had deserted him, committed suicide. The anger of the citizens
now turned on the wife, Plancina. The Empress, with whom she had been
in close communication throughout, begged Tiberius to save her, and he
reluctantly checked the prosecution. Livia was, of course, accused of
sheltering a murderess. It must be recollected that the accounts of
the story are taken in part from the memoirs of Agrippina’s daughter,
and are coloured with prejudice against Tiberius and his mother. One
cannot see anything more serious than indiscretion in Livia’s conduct.
Her conviction of the innocence of Plancina is intelligible enough, and
one can equally understand how she would distrust a trial held at Rome
in the inflamed state of public feeling. There is no serious reason to
suspect, in the death of Germanicus, the action of any other poison
than the tainted atmosphere of the East.
But the interference of Livia annoyed Tiberius, and the ten years that
follow are full of differences between mother and son. The Emperor’s
resentment of his mother’s share in public affairs had begun with his
reign. Livia had proposed to erect a statue to the memory of Octavian.
Tiberius interfered, and referred her to the Senate for permission.
She then proposed to give a commemoratory banquet to the Senators and
their wives. Tiberius restricted her to the wives, and entertained
the Senators himself. He reduced her escort, frowned on the public
honours that were paid to her, and resented her interference in public
affairs. On one occasion her friend Urgulania was summoned for debt,
and, presuming on her intimacy with the Empress, treated the process
with contempt. Livia asked Tiberius to quash the proceedings, and he
deliberately lingered so much on his way to the Forum that the case was
allowed to proceed.
These are a few of the stories which illustrate the want of harmony
between them. For this Livia was largely to blame. It was not unnatural
that she, who had been so often and so profitably consulted by
Octavian, should expect a larger power under the young Emperor, but
she failed to take discreet account of the extreme sensitiveness of
Tiberius. If a story given in Suetonius is correct, she so far lost
her discretion in one of their quarrels as to produce old letters in
which Octavian had made bitter reflections on the defects of Tiberius.
The fault was not wholly on her side, however. Tiberius was jealous
when he contrasted the honour and respect paid to her with the general
feeling of reserve and distrust toward himself, and he pleaded the
old-fashioned idea of woman’s sphere as a pretext to restrain her. He
grumbled when he one day found her directing the extinction of a fire,
as she had done more than once in Octavian’s time, and he was seriously
angry when he found that she had placed her name before his on a public
inscription.
But we may leave these lesser matters and come to the next tragedy in
the Imperial chronicle, the shadow of which darkened Livia’s closing
years. She had retired from the palace to the house which she had
inherited from her first husband, Tiberius Nero. Here she remained a
saddened and helpless spectator of the coming disaster. Tiberius, whom
she saw only once more before she died, had become a peevish and gloomy
old man. His tall spare frame was bent, his head bald, his face, which
had always been disfigured with pimples, now hideous with eczema, or
concealed with bandages. His large melancholy eyes so startled people
that they believed he could see in the dark. Astrologers and students
of the occult gathered about him in the palace he had built on the
Palatine, and the way lay open for adventurers.
The two chief aspirants for power were Agrippina, the widow of
Germanicus, and Sejanus, Tiberius’s favourite general. Julia’s younger
daughter seems to have concentrated in her person all the masculinity
of her family. “Implacable,” as Tacitus says, proud, and ambitious, she
added to the gloom that was deepening on the Palatine. Merivale calls
her the “she-wolf.” It seems probable that she sought marriage with
the aged Tiberius in order to secure power for herself or her son. The
only son of the Emperor had been poisoned by Sejanus, as we shall see
presently, and her son had a plausible title to inherit the purple. The
authorities tell us that Tiberius one day found her in tears, and was
entreated, when he asked the reason, to find her a husband. She thought
it expedient to forget the supposed share of Tiberius in the death of
her husband.
Her innocent manœuvres were met, however, by the sinister intrigues
of Sejanus, one of the most unscrupulous characters we have yet
encountered. Under a cloak of friendliness he was countering her
schemes and ruining her house. He had seduced her daughter Livilla,
the wife of Tiberius’s son Drusus, and had, with her connivance,
poisoned the young prince, and kept the secret from the Emperor for
many years. It is said that he then made proposals to Agrippina to
unite their ambitions, and, when these were rejected, he determined
to destroy her and secure the supreme power for himself. He put his
great ability astutely at the service of the Emperor, and once had
the good fortune to save his life, by arching his herculean body over
Tiberius when the roof of a cave fell on them. It is probable that
he inflamed the resentment of Tiberius against his mother, and then
used the estrangement to increase the unpopularity of the Emperor.
Scurrilous libels on “the ungrateful son” were current in Rome. These
are sometimes attributed to writers in the service of Livia, but it
would be a natural part of the scheme of Sejanus to spread them. On one
occasion a noble lady, Appuleia Varilia, was charged by the Senate with
accusing Tiberius and Livia of incest. Tiberius consulted his mother,
and declared to the Senate that they wished to treat the libel with
contemptuous indifference.
To Sejanus also we must, on the authority of Tacitus, attribute a plot
against Agrippina, which other writers assign to Tiberius or to Livia.
At a banquet in the palace it was noticed that Agrippina, pale and
sullen, passed all the dishes untouched. Tiberius at length invited her
to eat a fine apple which he chose. Under the eyes of all she handed it
to a servant to throw away, and Tiberius not unnaturally complained of
her unjust suspicions. Tacitus, who gives the most credible version of
the story, says that the agents of Sejanus had warned her that she was
to be poisoned at the banquet, so that she would act in a way that the
Emperor would resent.
Tiberius, weary of the violent passions of the capital, now lived
chiefly in Campania. It is not improbable that his disfigurement made
him sensitive. Rome would not spare the feelings of so unpopular
a ruler. It is not at all clear that he shrank from his Imperial
duties--Suetonius expressly says that he thought it possible to rule
better from the provinces--or that he wished to indulge in the wild
debauches which some attribute to him. Probably Sejanus, to secure
more power for himself, persuaded him that he could best discharge his
duties from a provincial seat.
At this juncture, in the year 29, saddened by the estrangement from
her son, by his helpless surrender to an unscrupulous adventurer, and
by the increasing degeneration of Rome, Livia died. She had, by sober
living--Pliny adds, by the constant chewing of a sweetmeat containing
a certain medicinal root, and by the use of Pucinian wine--attained
the great age of eighty-six. She had seen her husband dispel the long
horrors of civil war, refresh the Empire, and adorn Rome; and she
had felt the gloom and chill of a coming tragedy in her later years.
Few of the Empresses have been so differently estimated as Livia.
Merivale regards her as “a memorable example of successful artifice,
having obtained in succession, by craft if not by crime, every object
she could desire in the career of female ambition.” He adds: “But she
had long survived every genuine attachment she may at any time have
inspired, nor has a single voice been raised by posterity to supply the
want of honest eulogium in her own day.”[6]
The more concentrated research of the biographer has often to reverse
the verdict of the historian, and in this case it must acquit Livia of
either craft or vice. It is a singular error to say that Livia had no
“honest eulogium” in her own day. The Roman Senate is exposed to the
disdain of historians for its obsequiousness to the reigning Emperor,
yet, at the death of Livia, it sought to honour her memory in spite
of the resentment of Tiberius. The Emperor had refused to go to Rome,
either to see her before death or to attend her funeral. He gave to
Rome an example of silent indifference. Yet he had to use his authority
to prevent the Senate from decreeing divine honours to Livia, building
an arch to her memory, and declaring her “mother of her country.”
Dio remarks that the Senators were moved to do these things out of
sincere gratitude and respect. Few of the less wealthy members of the
Senate had not profited by her generosity. Their children had been
educated, and their daughters had received dowries, from her purse. Her
generosity is recognized by all the authorities. Her humanity is made
plain by the contents of this chapter.
The adverse estimate of Livia’s character is chiefly based on the
“Annals” of Tacitus, and it has long been recognized that Tacitus
drew his account largely from the memoirs of the younger Agrippina,
daughter of the woman who hated Livia. Yet Tacitus adds, when he has
recorded the death of Livia: “From this moment the government of
Tiberius became a sheer oppressive despotism. While Augusta lived one
avenue of escape remained open, for the Emperor was habitually deferent
toward his mother, and Sejanus dared not thwart her parental authority;
but when this curb was removed, there was nothing to check their
further career.”[7]
We have seen that Livia had used the same restraining influence on
the impetuosity of Octavian. With her died the attribute, or the wise
policy, of Imperial clemency, only to be revived by Emperors who
adopted that Stoic creed in which she found consolation after the
death of her son. That she was “hard” and “unscrupulous” is entirely
at variance with the most authenticated facts of her career. To say
that she was “avaricious” is a sheer absurdity. She maintained her
sober personal habits to the end, and took money only to bestow it on
the indigent and worthy, or expend it in raising public buildings. We
may grant that she had some ambition, but may claim that it was well
for Rome that she had it. She fell into many errors of judgment in her
later years, when Roman life was confused by such strong undercurrents
of intrigue; but these very errors tend to discredit the notion that
she employed a consummate art and strong intelligence in the furthering
of her own interests. In a word, it is the vices and follies of later
Empresses that have disposed historians to regard her sober virtues as
a mere mask.
NOTE
For the guidance of the general reader it is advisable to add
a few words on the Latin authorities, whom we now constantly
quote. Tacitus, the chief source of our knowledge down to the
year 70 A.D., is not only weakened as an historian by the very
strength of his morality, but he has too lightly followed the
memoirs in which the later Agrippina defamed the rival Imperial
family. Suetonius, who takes us as far as Domitian, is no less
honest, but he has too genial and indulgent a love of anecdotes
to discard any on the mere ground that they are untrue or
improbable. Dio Cassius, who covers the first two centuries, is
usually described as malignant; but one may question if he does
more than indulge still further the same amiable preference of
piquancy to truth. The “Historia Augusta,” which is our chief
authority for the greater part of the Empresses and the richest
source of scandal, has been much and profitably discussed
since Gibbon placed such reliance on it. It is now thought
by some experts that the original writers of this series of
biographical sketches of the Roman Emperors lived at the
beginning of the third century, and had a comparatively sober
standard of work. Toward the close of the third, or beginning
of the fourth, century the work was written afresh by the
group of less scrupulous writers whose names, or pseudonyms,
actually stand at the head of its chapters. But a still later
writer once more recast the work, and lowered its authority. He
wrote frankly from the point of view of the piquant anecdotist,
omitting much that would interest only the prosy student of
exact facts, and filling up the vacant space with such faint
legends of Imperial vice or folly as still, in his time,
lingered without the pale of history, or arose in the field
of romance. The question is fully discussed by Otto Schultz,
“Leben des Kaisers Hadrian” (1905), and Professor Kornemann,
“Kaiser Hadrian” (1906).
CHAPTER III
THE WIVES OF CALIGULA
The remainder of the reign of Tiberius does not properly concern us,
but a very brief account of it will serve at once to confirm our
estimate of the influence of Livia, and to prepare us for the almost
incredibly degraded scenes that were witnessed under his successor.
We saw that two persons were intriguing for the purple mantle which
must soon fall from the shoulders of the aged and unhealthy Emperor.
One was a woman of great ability and masculine courage, who sought the
succession for one of her sons. The other was a strong soldier and
an astute minister, a man of the most unscrupulous and hypocritical
character. The change in the form of government had already betrayed
its evil. The fate of the vast Empire seemed but a ball tossed from
player to player. But the issue was even worse than the most sober
observer anticipated. Before Tiberius died both the strong man and the
strong woman were to be destroyed, and the Imperial power was to pass
to one who was grossly unfit to exercise it.
[Illustration: AGRIPPINA THE ELDER
BUST IN THE MUSEUM CHIARAMONTI]
Less than a year after the ashes of Livia had been laid in the marble
tower by the Tiber, the Senate received a letter from the court
impeaching Agrippina and her two elder sons. According to Tacitus, it
was “commonly believed” that this letter had been written some time
before, and had been withheld through the influence of Livia. The
only reasonable interpretation that we can put on this rumour is that
people were so convinced of the humanity of Livia that they did not
think the letter would have been written or sent if she were still
alive. However that may be, Agrippina and her sons were put on trial
and condemned to exile, in spite of the angry crowds that gathered
about the court-house. Agrippina passed with dramatic suddenness from
her dream of ruling the world to a dreary exile in Herculaneum, and,
after a time, to the far more terrible prison of Pandateria, where her
mother had spent four years of agony. There, with all the strength of
her proud and ambitious nature, she awaited the death of Tiberius. But
the only messages which came over the sea to her gradually broke her
spirit. Her sons, Drusus and Nero, had been convicted of unnatural
vice, as well as conspiracy; and although we may entertain some doubt
about the conspiracy, the other charge is only too credible when we
know the habits of the class to which the youths belonged. Nero was
imprisoned on one of the islands of the Ponza group, and it was not
long before his mother, on the neighbouring island, heard that he had
starved himself, or been starved, to death. After some time she learned
that Drusus had followed his example, and the despairing woman refused
food in her turn, and went into the kindlier exile of death. The last
of Julia’s children did not escape the tragic fate which hung over the
family. We have yet to see how the curse falls on the third generation.
Sejanus, whose action we may confidently see in the ruin of Agrippina,
now stood near the steps of the throne, waiting impatiently for the
passing of the despised Emperor. He was betrothed to Livilla, the widow
of Tiberius’s only son Drusus, whom he had poisoned, with Livilla’s
assistance. With a consort of Cæsarean blood he felt that he could
easily fill the place of Tiberius. And in the height of his corrupt
power and criminal hope the vengeance of the fates fell on him like a
stroke of lightning. It is said that the wife he proposed to divorce
disclosed to Tiberius that Sejanus was the murderer of his only son.
Within a few hours he was impeached, condemned, and put to death.
All who had gathered about him in the hope of his coming power were
scattered or destroyed by the frantic anger of Tiberius. Livilla was
urged by her mother to bury her shame in the grave. She refused, and
was banished. We shall meet her again in the chronicle of vice and
violence.
After this terrible ordeal Tiberius withdrew to Capreæ, where he had
built a palace. Wandering, some years ago, among the ruins of what is
believed to have been the palace of Tiberius, I found that the echoes
still lingered there of the dark stories which men told in Rome of his
later years. Men said that he had shut himself in that sea-girt palace
only to indulge, unseen, in the grossest perversions of a sensual
nature, and that a new profession of ministers to lust, of which a
description may be found in Tacitus, had grown out of his weariness
even of unnatural vice. One does not readily admit such orgies in a man
between his seventy-second and seventy-eighth year, and it seems to me
that one may offer an explanation of the myth, which will also serve to
introduce the third Emperor of Rome and his wives.
Suetonius describes Tiberius as surrounded by learned men and absorbed
in obscure problems of astrology, mythology, and letters. The most
resolute adherent of the more romantic story must have some difficulty
in reconciling this band of prosy pedants with the sensual orgies which
popular rumour located in the lonely palace. When, however, we learn
that two young princes of the least intellectual and most immoral
character formed part of the household, we see that there may have been
two entirely distinct lives sheltered by the palace at Capreæ. If we
suppose that these young men and their sycophantic attendants freely
indulged in the vices which were then common to Roman youths, while
their elders were intent on the glorious planets of a Neapolitan sky,
we have a satisfactory explanation of the legend. The horror of Rome
at the Emperor’s bloody avenging of the murder of his son would not
dispose people to discriminate conscientiously.
One of these princes was Herod Agrippa, son of the King of Judæa, whom
Octavian had brought to Rome for security. The other, a year younger,
was “Caligula,” as the soldiers had nicknamed the surviving son of
Agrippina and Germanicus. Caius Cæsar--to give him his real name--was
in his nineteenth year when his mother was banished. Tiberius a few
years later took him to Capreæ, where he would prove an apt pupil to
Herod in Oriental ways. The vein of moral perversity, if not insanity,
which we trace in all the descendants of Julia, is most clearly
exhibited in Caligula, and the tragedy of the Cæsars deepens when, in
the year 37, Tiberius dies, and Caligula is called to the throne.[8]
He had been married in 33 to Junia Claudilla, daughter of Junius
Silanus, a proconsul of eminent services and distinguished family.
She was happily spared the fate of sharing the throne with Caligula
by dying in childbirth. What her life in Capreæ must have been is
not obscurely suggested by her early death. No prospect in Europe is
more pleasant than that which unfolds its superb and far-lying beauty
to the spectator on the green summits of Capri, from which the eye
may wander over the broad blue bay, with its silver fringe of surf,
or round the crescent of evergreen land that begins with Sorrento,
and sweeps majestically, past the foot of Vesuvius, to the distant
haze in which Baiæ once lived. Yet to a refined and sensitive young
woman this splendid palace must have been a deathly jail. Repelled
alike by the purblind scholars and the licentious princes, the heavy
monotony of learning and vice unrelieved by visits to Rome, she sank
under her burden in three years--just missing by one year the title of
second Empress of Rome. Her father, a grave and illustrious Senator,
endeavoured to check Caligula’s extravagance in the first year of his
reign. The brutal Emperor bade him “take his greeting to the spirit of
the dead.” With a last sad glance at the future of his country, Junius
Silanus obeyed.
We are credibly told that Caligula then made love to Ennia, wife of the
Prefect of the Guard. Sejanus had persuaded Tiberius to form a corps
of “Prætorian Guards,” an Imperial body-guard which was destined to
have a disastrous influence on the future of Rome. The actual prefect
or commander of this regiment, Macro, was the most powerful person in
the suite of Tiberius. With or without his connivance, his wife yielded
to Caligula, on the condition that he should marry her when he became
Emperor. Macro and Ennia accompanied Caligula when he bore the will and
the ashes of Tiberius to Rome. A gloom had settled over Italy during
the later years of Tiberius’s reign, and men hailed the young Caligula
as the sun and the blue sky are hailed after days of dark tempest at
sea. Standing by their flower-girt altars, coming out with torches
at night, people greeted him with frantic epithets of affection. He
was their “star,” their “chicken,” their “dear child,” as he had been
to the soldiers in Germany years before. Not that he was a handsome
youth. His frame was thin and lanky, and his movements awkward. He was
prematurely bald, and his sunken eyes looked out with a scowl from his
pallid face. But he was the son of Germanicus, the grandson of Julia.
All the follies which the family had perpetrated were forgotten.
For a month or two he fulfilled the hope of his people. The reign of
terror was ended at once. He recalled his sisters from exile, and
brought to Rome, with great respect, the ashes of his mother and
brothers. The circus and the amphitheatre rang once more with the
cheers of the populace. The golden age of Octavian had been restored,
men said. But the emasculated system and feeble mind of Caligula were
unequal to the nervous strain. Early in his reign Ennia reminded him of
his written promise to marry her, and Macro had an air of patronage in
advising him. In a sudden blaze of ferocity he ordered Ennia and her
children to be executed, and graciously permitted Macro to end his own
life. He had found a wife--his sister Drusilla.
His incestuous relation with Drusilla was soon the topic of Rome. It
had probably begun before she was banished, and when he recalled her
to his palace, a young and beautiful girl of about twenty summers, he
conceived a violent passion for her, divorced her from her husband,
and announced that he intended to marry her. The Emperor was above all
laws, he said. Rome laughed the laughter of fools. He was providing it
with stupendous entertainment. The games of the circus ran for twelve
hours, day after day, and the night was turned into fresh day with
illuminations, banquets, and such pleasures as they could get with the
money he freely distributed. In the midst of it all he fell ill; not
improbably he was paying with epilepsy the price of his wild excesses.
There was such sorrow in Rome as had rarely been felt at the illness
of its greatest citizens. Men vowed their lives for the life of the
beloved Emperor; and Caligula, when he recovered, saw that they kept
their vows. He was ill for many weeks, and, when his strength returned,
he had lost the little sanity and sobriety that nature had ever put in
his ill-compacted frame. The rest of his reign was a nightmare.
Drusilla died during his illness, or soon after his recovery. Some
writers suggest that her malady was a feeling of deep shame, but the
description which Dio gives of her does not support this view, nor does
the single virtue of remorse seem to be known among the descendants
of Julia. The grief of Caligula was no less insane than his passion
had been. No illustrious Roman was ever honoured with such pomp of
funeral as this woman, whose incestuous life he cried over the world.
A Senator saw her soul mount to heaven from the burning pile, and was
rewarded with a million sesterces. The degraded Senate declared her a
goddess, and it was decreed that henceforward women should swear by
the divinity of Drusilla. Earth and heaven resounded with his demented
moans; and even before Drusilla was put among the gods he had married
again.
Livia Orestilla, the second Empress of Rome, is one of those ladies who
are known to us only in the familiar phrase, that she was a young woman
of great beauty and illustrious family. In her case we need no ampler
portrait, as she was Empress only for a few days. Before the end of
the first year of his reign (37), and in the midst of his lamentation
over Drusilla, Caligula was invited to the wedding of Calpurnius Piso,
a noble of rank and wealth. Caligula fancied the bride, and at once
made her his Empress. With equal license he divorced her a few days
afterwards, and she learned what it was to fall from the height of a
throne. He forbade her to have any commerce with the husband of whom he
had robbed her, and then, alleging that his order had been disregarded,
banished both of them to remote and distinct parts of the Empire.
The next lady on whom his unbridled imagination rested was Lollia
Paulina. Caligula was probably more attracted by her wealth than by the
remarkable beauty, the high character, and the distinguished ancestry
which the chronicles ascribe to her. The rich spoils of conquered
provinces had accumulated in her family, and her husband, the Governor
of Macedonia and Achaia, was industriously adding to their wealth.
People told at Rome that she once went to a marriage-supper in pearls
and emeralds that were valued at fifty million sesterces. Her high
virtue seems to have been consistent with a display that made her a
topic of table-talk, and that brought upon her a lamentable fate.
Caligula, piqued by the stories of her wealth and beauty, ordered her
husband to bring her to Rome, and she was soon afterwards established
in his palace as the third Empress of Rome. Within a year Caligula
divorced her on the ground that she gave no promise of perpetuating his
line.
It is often said that Caligula had only married her for the purpose of
seizing her fortune, as his prodigal expenditure was rapidly emptying
the treasury. This seems to be an error, as we shall find her in the
next chapter incurring a miserable fate on account of her immense
wealth. The truth was that Caligula had in the meantime discovered a
lady whose temper wholly suited his own, and of whose fertility he was
actually assured.
In the spring or early summer of the year 39 we find him perpetrating
one of his stupendous acts of folly at Baiæ. He was accustomed, in the
warmer weather, to cruise about the coast of Campania with his wife and
suite. He had two great Liburnian galleys built, each with ten banks
of oars, their prows blazing with gold and jewels, their decks adorned
with vines, colonnades, and divers freaks of irresponsible wealth. As
they cruised by the bay, some one reminded him of an old proverb which
spoke of riding from Baiæ to Puteoli, across an arm of the bay, as one
of the most certain impossibilities. At once he ordered a bridge to be
built across the water and elaborately decorated. In what was supposed
to be the armour of Alexander the Great, over which was thrown a mantle
of purple silk, the conqueror of impossibilities rode from Baiæ to
Puteoli. On the following day he drove his chariot across; and far into
the night, the hills around being lit up with immense fires, he carried
the debauch which celebrated his glorious feat. In their intoxication
numbers reeled from the bridge into the scented waters.
Eager for fresh victories, he transferred his delirious court to Gaul,
and declared that he was proceeding against the fierce Germans. The
tribes were not in revolt, and the whole expedition was a comedy; some
of the Roman writers say that a few tame captives were conveyed across
the river and hunted, so that the Emperor might truthfully inform the
Senate that he had gained a victory and merited a triumph. Suetonius
even adds that, when he did eventually return to Rome and celebrate his
triumph, a few slaves were forced to learn a little German and dye
their hair, to pose as conquered tribesmen before his chariot. In the
meantime, events which concern us more closely were happening at Lyons.
The extravagance of Caligula was rapidly emptying the treasury. In
twelve months he spent 2,700 million sesterces. His baths were of the
most precious ointments; his banquets were especially designed to
waste money--one alone cost £80,000, in modern coinage--and, when the
flow was not fast enough, he drank pearls dissolved in vinegar, and
had gold fashioned in the shape of food and served to his guests. He
disdainfully swept the palaces of Octavian and Tiberius, with other
mansions, from the Palatine, and erected a palace of extraordinary
proportions and barbaric splendour. Such habits drew about him a crowd
of ignoble parasites, and one can well believe that he had discovered a
conspiracy against him at Lyons. He had prostituted the honour of Rome
in a manner so childish and base that few could be unmoved. Observing
the wealth of the Gauls--for Lugdunum (Lyons) was then the centre
of a prosperous and cultivated region--he began to sell to them the
possessions of the Imperial house. He was present at the auction, and
the proceeds were so satisfactory that he sent to Rome for wagon-loads
of furniture, heirlooms, and curios from the Imperial palaces, and, as
they were offered for sale, pointed out himself the historical value of
each object.
In his suite was the first husband of his sister Drusilla. This
distinguished noble, Lepidus, may have exchanged views on the insanity
of the Emperor with the disgusted Gauls. At all events, Caligula sent
word to the Senate that he had discovered a plot against his life,
and added that his sisters, Livilla and Agrippina, had been convicted
of adultery with Lepidus. He put Lepidus to death, and compelled
Agrippina, a proud and spirited young princess, to carry on foot to
Rome the urn containing the ashes of her alleged lover. We shall see
how, on his return to Rome, Caligula made atonement to vice for this
drastic punishment of adultery. In fact, he already had a mistress in
the Court at Lyons, and this lady now displaces Lollia Paulina, and
becomes the fourth Empress of Rome.
Milonia Cæsonia is one of the oddest figures in the very varied gallery
through which our story conducts us. Julia and Messalina are imperial
in their vices. Cæsonia, whose vices are so little discussed, stands
entirely apart from the other Empresses--at least of the first century.
Wholly destitute of character or culture, already worn with the bearing
of three children, she seems to have won and retained the fancy--one
cannot call it affection or regard--of Caligula by a handsome figure,
a robust masculinity, and an entire lack of refinement. He often
exhibited her nude to his friends, and encouraged her to dress as
an Amazon and ride her horse before the army. His disordered mind
puzzled at times over the charm by which she held him. He would stroke
her strong white throat, and murmur pleasantly that at one word from
him the knife of the executioner would sink into it; and he would
sometimes, with the same brutal humour, threaten to have her tortured,
in order to discover what philtre she secretly administered to him.
She had much tact and no scruples. Their daughter Drusilla was born
on the day of their marriage, according to Suetonius, or thirty days
afterwards, according to more credible authorities. As the child grew,
it showed the temper of a wild cat. Caligula watched its frenzies with
delight, as it screamed and bit its nurse; there was, he said, no room
for doubt about the paternity.
With such a spouse, and with his favourite courtesan Pyrallis, whom
also he had established in his new palace, Caligula indulged his
insane impulses without the least restraint. Within a few months of
inflicting so terrible a punishment on his sister, he was giving
imperial lessons in incest and adultery. So low had much of the Roman
nobility fallen that no sword was drawn on the Emperor, or employed
on its possessor, when he concluded his banquets with a command of
promiscuous intercourse to the men and women of patrician rank whom he
entertained. Nor were his excesses confined within the walls of his
palace, and known only by uncertain rumour. He developed a passion for
driving chariots, and frequented the company of grooms and gladiators.
Rome genially applauded, since it implied more and longer shows in the
circus and amphitheatre. The struggles of the different factions in the
races--of whom Caligula supported the Greens--more than ever enlivened
the dull days of an idle populace. Caligula forced nobles to exercise
the base and dangerous profession of the gladiator, and to drive
chariots before the mob in the circus.
But the amusement of Rome reached its height when Caligula, in the
year 39, discovered his divinity. Other Emperors were content to leave
it to the flattery of their people to detect a divinity in them after
their very human careers were over. “I am turning into a god,” said one
of them ironically, as he died. Caligula believed that his splendour
was already divine. Vitellius, a contemptible courtier, father of the
later Emperor, shrewdly borrowed the idea from Oriental monarchs, and
suggested it to Caligula. Then were witnessed scenes in Rome which
even the wildest extravagances of Nero cannot rival. Its citizens had,
at the peril of their lives, to restrain their laughter, and bend in
respectful worship, when the slim, ungraceful youth--he was yet only in
his twenty-seventh year--with the weariness of dissipation on his pale
face, trod their streets in the garments of Jove, with a beard of gold
thread, or marched past them with the bow and quiver and golden halo of
Apollo, or dressed to the more congenial part of Venus. A machine was
made by which he could, in a puerile way, imitate the thunder of the
rival god; and he ordered the heads to be struck off the statues of the
Greek deities and replaced by copies of his own. A deity must have a
cult. Caligula appointed himself and his horse, for which he provided
a marble palace and an ivory manger, the high priests of his cult.
Cæsonia was associated in the priesthood, and the position of ordinary
priest of the cult was sold to various nobles at the price of eight
million sesterces each. Poor men were forced to ruin themselves and
put an end to their lives; wealthier men meekly posed as the ministers
of a divinity who gorged himself with food and wine at each meal, and
resorted to the vomit that he might return to the table.
How long nature would have suffered this madness to debase the fallen
city one cannot tell, but the exhaustion of the treasury now led
Caligula to do things which roused a few Romans from their lethargy. He
repeated in Rome the auctions he had held at Lyons, and many stories
are told of his brutal irresponsibility. The truth of these stories
is always doubtful, but one may be quoted as an illustration of the
popular feeling. It is said that a Senator fell asleep during one of
the sales. Caligula malignantly called the auctioneer’s attention
to the fact that the sleeping man was nodding at every bid, and the
Senator awoke to find that he had bought thirteen gladiators and
other property at fabulous prices. Caligula even stood at his palace
door to receive gifts, pleading that the addition to his family had
impoverished him.
He then discovered a new source of funds in the execution of the
wealthier nobles. Brutal and sanguinary from the first, his growing
madness and his delight in gladiatorial shows fostered his cruelty. He
had an actor burned alive in the Forum for venturing even to hint, in
an ambiguous phrase, that the Imperial behaviour was reprehensible.
Others he had tortured and executed in his presence, in order that he
might enjoy the sensation of seeing them suffer. But it was mainly in
quest of money to maintain his terrible expenditure that he stooped
to the lowest excesses. No man of wealth in Rome was safe. Informers
were eager for the fourth part of a victim’s property, to which they
were entitled after a successful impeachment; Caligula hungered for the
remaining three-fourths. Every ten days he would “clear his accounts,”
as he put it, or doom to death any wealthy Senators whom he had
chosen to put on his list of suspects. He would return from the court
boasting to Cæsonia of the heavy work he had done while she slept. A
great terror brooded over the city, and men talked of the Emperor in
whispers. Omens and signs multiplied. The statue of Jupiter Olympus had
been brought to Rome, and one day the workmen rushed in alarm from the
temple in which it was placed, crying that the marble god had burst
into a fit of laughter.
On January 24th, in the year 41, this appalling gloom came to an end,
and the third Emperor and fourth Empress of Rome were justly removed.
The long hesitation of the Romans must not too readily be ascribed to
cowardice. The Prætorian Guards were now encamped at the edge of the
city, and were richly paid for personal loyalty to the Emperor; so that
there was very faint hope of a successful rising of the citizens. For
the greater part these formidable soldiers were mercenaries, caring
nothing for the honour of Rome, faithful as dogs to the liberal master.
It was not until an officer of this regiment headed a conspiracy that
any action could be taken with a prospect of success. This officer was
a favourite of Caligula, but the Imperial friendship was expressed in
such coarse and stinging epithets that he was driven to rebel. He and
his associates determined to assassinate Caligula when he attended the
Palatine games in the later part of January. A large wooden theatre
had been erected for the occasion, and Caligula presided with delight
at the repulsive spectacles. Such was the popular enthusiasm that the
conspirators surrounded Caligula day after day without daring to touch
him. His German guard, insensible to the grievances of the Romans,
would at once and blindly oppose a rising, and the people seemed to
have forgotten his tyranny in the blood-reeking show he had provided
for them.
They came to the fifth and final day of the games. Caligula was unwell,
and wished to remain in the palace, but he was persuaded to make an
effort to attend the final performance. Before a vast audience the
actors represented the crucifixion of a band of robbers, and the stage
was washed with blood. The chief actor of the time had a trick of
pouring blood from his mouth, and the other actors clumsily imitated
him. When it was over, Caligula, elated with the wild applause of the
citizens, entered the narrow passage which led from the theatre to his
house on the Palatine. The conspirators seized their last chance, and
fell upon the Emperor with their swords. Within a few hours Rome so far
changed that it was the turn of the partisans of Caligula to tremble.
His body was removed and stealthily buried by Herod Agrippa.
Cæsonia seems to have remained in, or preceded Caligula to, the palace,
with her little daughter. There the cries of the guard and the noisy
confusion in the palace would soon announce the disaster to her. She
had no time to escape, or devise any policy. A centurion rushed to
her room and stabbed her to death. Her infant was roughly seized by
a soldier, and its brain was shattered on the walls of the palace,
where the brief infamies of its father and mother had degraded the
civilization of Rome.
CHAPTER IV
VALERIA MESSALINA
The fall of Cæsonia was hardly less romantic than the succession
to her position of the woman who is known to every reader of Roman
history, and to many others, as Messalina. When Caligula entered the
narrow passage leading to the Palatine, after the performance in the
theatre, a few members of his suite walked before him. One of these was
his uncle Claudius, a slow-witted and despised man, in his fiftieth
year, whom Caligula had rescued from humiliation and put in office. He
had already entered the palace when the raucous cries of the German
guard and the flash of weapons informed him of the assassination of
the Emperor. The guards were cutting down such of the conspirators as
they could reach. In instinctive terror Claudius hid behind a curtain,
nor was he reassured when he saw the soldiers pass with the heads of
the nobles they had slain. Presently a soldier of the Prætorian Guard
noticed his feet below the curtain, and drew him out. Claudius fell to
the ground in terror, and implored them to spare his life. The soldiers
had recognized him, however. They put him in a litter, and carried him
on their shoulders to the camp. Citizens whom they passed in the street
pitied the harmless and, as was generally believed, half-witted prince.
At last some one learned, or divined, the purpose of the guards, and
Claudius awoke from his terror to hear the strange cry of “Salve,
Imperator,” and realized that he was to be made Emperor of Rome.
He had been married three years before to Valeria Messalina, who thus
became the fifth Empress. As the youngest son of Drusus, brother of
Tiberius, and Antonia, daughter of Mark Antony and Octavia, he was
the natural heir to Caligula. The Imperial power was in no sense
hereditary, but the attachment of the Prætorian Guards to the ruling
family, and their irresistible domination over Rome, for some time
ensured a kind of hereditary succession. There had, however, been no
deliberate proposal to put Claudius on the throne. While the future
of the Empire was being determined by the rough mercenaries in the
Prætorian camp, where Claudius promised a substantial largess for
his elevation, the Senate was actually discussing the question of
restoring the Republic. Somewhat deformed in person, clumsy in gait
and corpulent, stuttering in speech, deficient at least in the power
of expression, Claudius had always been regarded as a negligible
offshoot of the Julian stock. His mother had spoken of him as “a little
monster,” Octavian had genially treated him as half-witted, and, when
he arrived at early manhood, Tiberius had refused to give him any
rank or office. Caligula, however, had given him consular rank, and
promoted him in the palace, though he treated his uncle with the brutal
jocularity which his mental infirmity was held to justify.
We shall see that this treatment was far from just, for Claudius had
some excellent qualities; but the disdain of his family threw him upon
the society of his servants, and led him to seek consolation in the
pleasures of the table and the dice-board. He had in early youth been
betrothed to a daughter of Julia. This contract was dissolved when
Julia’s vices were discovered, and he was married to a young lady of
distinguished and wealthy family, Livia Medullina Camilla. She died
on the wedding-day, and he married Plautia Urgulanilla, a daughter of
the Empress Livia’s intimate friend, Urgulania. Suspecting, after a
few years, that her friendship with his emancipated-slave friends was
warmer than he intended, he divorced her, and married Ælia Pætina, who
in turn was shortly divorced.
In the year 38 he married the notorious Valeria Messalina, whose
name conveys to every student of history or morals a summary
impression of the worst features of the early Empire. The spirit of
our time is so resolutely bent on visiting the sins of the children
on their fathers--so determined to seek the secret of character
in heredity--that the older biographical practice of drawing out
genealogies cannot be entirely abandoned; though one may wonder whether
the tainted atmosphere of Rome may not have been more deadly than a
tainted stock. It is enough to say that both her parents were of the
Julian family, and were first cousins of Claudius. Her father, Valerius
Messala Barbatus, was a Senator of distinction. He is known to us as
the Senator who, in the old Roman spirit, made a futile effort to
restrain women from invading public life and the camp. Her mother has a
less reputable record. We shall see that she eventually falls under a
charge of conspiracy and magic; but we may find that her more serious
offence was an intense hatred of the Empress Agrippina, who brought the
charge against her.
Messalina, as we may now briefly call her--with a passing protest
against that uncouth expression, “the Messaline”--was in her sixteenth
year at the time of her marriage. An indulgent imagination will be able
to appreciate the dangerous situation of the young girl. Entering,
in her teens, a world of the most seductive pleasure and the utmost
license, with so responsive and impulsive a nature as she had, she
needed the guidance of a man whom she could at least respect. Instead
of this, she found herself mated to a man of forty-eight years, whose
full paunch and long thin legs and tremulous head were the jest of the
Palatine, and who spent his hours in the company of Greek freedmen,
or in too prolonged an enjoyment of rich dishes and costly wines.
Claudius, it is true, adored her, but his adoration only made him the
surer dupe of her craving for indulgence. Her misconduct probably
began early. When, after the evening meal, she left her spouse
intoxicated and snoring over the emptied dishes, when his throat had
been tickled with a feather, so that he might disgorge and return to
the Imperial dainties, the young girl would naturally yield to the
counsels of the unscrupulous courtiers who abounded in such a palace.
The path to the abyss was made smoother for her by her husband’s
reliance on his freedmen. In the later years of the Republic, when the
dominion of Rome was extended over the East, the practice had grown
of employing the more accomplished slaves of Greece and Syria in the
patrician palaces. Equally expert at keeping accounts or pandering to
vice, they won their emancipation and acquired large fortunes in the
service of their new masters. They were usually regarded with disdain,
but, as we saw, Claudius had been driven to associate familiarly with
them, and they attained great power when he ascended the throne. Rome
now discovered a new evil in the Imperial rule it had adopted. All who
wished to approach the Emperor with a petition had to flatter or bribe
the freedman Callistus, to whom this part of Claudius’s duties was
entrusted. His steward of finances, Pallas, his secretary, Narcissus,
and his adviser in letters, Polybius, stood at one or other avenue
of the palace, and exacted toll of all who approached. Offices were
distributed through their avaricious hands, and it was soon noticed
that they built magnificent villas in the neighbourhood of Rome.
Whether the rumour was true or not, it was believed in Rome that some
of the noblest ladies paid an ignominious price to these men for the
favours they sought, or were surrendered to them by the Empress. It is
at all events clear that Messalina soon came to an understanding with
them. Both they and she needed to dupe the purblind Emperor, and it was
felt that a friendly co-operation would be better than a precarious
contest for supremacy.
Before the end of the first year of Claudius’s reign this corrupt
collusion began to show its influence. Claudius had begun well. He set
to work at once to redress the injustice and follies of Caligula. A
general amnesty was granted, the courts of justice were purified, the
administration was opened to the abler provincials, and the public
funds were expended on public works of solid usefulness. How far the
freedmen were responsible for these measures it is difficult to say,
but it seems that we must grant Claudius, not only good will, but some
quality of judgment. At the same time, there is evidence from the first
of some infirmity of mind. His work as a judge seems to have been more
remarkable for industry than enlightenment. On one occasion an angry
knight (_eques_) threw books at him in the court-house; on another,
during a shortage of corn, the people pelted him with mouldy crusts in
the Forum. Humane he was, apparently, in those early months, but he
does not seem to have shaken off his earlier repute and exhibited any
personal dignity.
It was not long before even his humanity was warped by the malignant
persuasions of his wife and the corrupt connivance of his freedmen.
In our age of apologists there has been some effort to relieve the
character of Messalina from its heavy burden of infamy, or at least
to discredit the evidence adduced for it. I have already said enough
about the Roman authorities to justify one in making some reserve in
regard to the details transmitted to us about Messalina. When we read
Tacitus we have to remember that he had before him the memoirs of her
bitter enemy and successor, Agrippina. When we read Suetonius and
Dio and later writers we must not forget their love of vivid colours
and romantic details. Yet these writers had in their time official
records, and something like public journals, belonging to the earlier
period, which put the malignant and unscrupulous action of Messalina
beyond question; of the less startling stories of her infidelities we
have proof enough in the remarkable and authentic episode which will
close her career. It cannot reasonably be doubted that the traditional
estimate of the character of Messalina is substantially just, though
we must use some discretion in admitting particular statements about
her.
With this reserve we may follow, in fair chronological order, the
career of this young girl of nineteen, who is dazed by the sudden
attainment of Imperial wealth and power, until, in her twenty-fifth
year, her childish efforts to pierce her bosom with a dagger are ended
by the manly thrust of a soldier’s sword. She had borne a daughter,
Octavia, before the accession of her husband, and she was far advanced
in child-bearing when Caligula was assassinated. Claudius, unable to
believe his good fortune, expecting daily that some fresh movement
would dislodge him from the throne, kept in the palace with her. A
month after his accession she bore a son, Tiberius Claudius Germanicus
(later known as Britannicus), and Claudius ventured out, to exhibit
his heir to the people and express his joy. He never entirely lost his
fear. Soldiers served him at table, and all who approached him were
searched. But his clement and comparatively enlightened rule won him
some popularity, his gluttony and weak wit were genially overlooked,
and he gave promise of a prosperous reign.
The first indication of the evil of his feeble dependence on Messalina
and the freedmen occurred before the end of the year 41. Claudius had
recalled from exile Caligula’s sisters, Julia Livilla and Agrippina,
and restored their property. Agrippina, whose character and career will
occupy the next chapter, was in her twenty-fifth year, Livilla in her
twenty-third. Both had the beauty of the Julian women in its ripest
development. Agrippina quickly realized her situation and discreetly
concealed her ambition, but the younger woman was too proud to be
diplomatic, and she was suspected of an ambition which she possibly
did not entertain. Messalina became jealous, and denounced her to
Claudius for adultery. Claudius was persuaded that an open trial would
entail scandal on the Imperial family, and the unfortunate woman was
exiled without the chance of defence. She was starved to death in her
prison shortly afterwards, and, when the further course of this story
has been read, one will hardly hesitate to accept the assurance of
the chroniclers that this grave crime was committed by the orders of
Messalina.
That the charge against Livilla was malignant cannot be doubted when we
learn that her lover was said to be the famous Stoic moralist, Seneca.
The disease of Rome had already evoked a natural remedy. The austere
code of morals which Zeno had formulated some centuries earlier in the
marble colonnade at Athens was now adopted by the best of the Romans.
Pointing to the enfeeblement and degradation which this epidemic of
Eastern vice and luxury had brought on their city, the philosophers
argued that the curb must be placed once more on sensual impulse, and
the old virility of Rome restored. Seneca was the most distinguished
representative of this growing school at Rome, and, ambiguous or even
reprehensible as his conduct may seem to us at a later stage, we should
in this case prefer to attribute his punishment to the known vice of
Messalina rather than to a frailty on his part of which we have no
indication. The wise and just counsel that he gave to Claudius was
probably distasteful to Messalina and the freedmen. Without trial or
defence he was banished to Corsica. It is sometimes said that, as
Seneca nowhere impeaches the virtue of Messalina, we may distrust the
charge of vice against her which we find in all the later chroniclers;
but Seneca also fails to refer to her greater and quite indisputable
misdeeds, so that the omission has no significance. Seneca remained in
exile six years, and had no more personal knowledge than Suetonius of
the debauches of Messalina.
Her first success emboldened the Empress. Within a few months she
selected another lady, Julia, the daughter of Drusus, and denounced her
to Claudius. Such virtue or discernment as Claudius may have possessed
was now attenuated by the sensual excesses in which his wife and his
ministers encouraged him to indulge, and his humanity was contaminated
by the passion for gladiatorial displays which he gradually contracted.
We must not too hastily admit the lowest estimate of his powers. If
Octavian could be so long and so easily duped by Julia, we may admit
that Claudius’s ignorance was consistent with some measure of good
sense, which he still displayed in provincial administration and the
accomplishment of public works. But from the end of the first year of
his reign he lends himself so basely and ignobly to the schemes of
Messalina that it is impossible to defend him. No sooner did his wife
accuse Julia than she was banished, without trial, and it is easy to
believe that her speedy death at the hands of the centurion in charge
of her was due to the orders of Messalina. It was said that Julia had
excited the Empress’s suspicions by too tender a regard for Claudius.
The more prudent Agrippina now sought the protection of a husband. She
is said to have chosen the future Emperor, Sulpicius Galba, and urged
him to divorce his ailing wife; but the wife’s mother took her part,
and ended the intrigue by boxing Agrippina’s ears in public. The wife
died soon afterwards, but Galba feared the resentment of Messalina too
much to wed Agrippina. She then induced Crispus Passienus, a wealthy
and distinguished noble and a famous orator, to divorce his wife
and marry her. She had inherited a moderate fortune from an earlier
husband--the father of her son, the future Emperor Nero--and the
great wealth and distinction of Passienus put her in a much stronger
position. Passienus died soon afterwards, leaving his fortune to
Agrippina and Nero. How the fortune was used for the advancement of
mother and son, and how Agrippina was eventually murdered by her son,
will be told in the next chapter. Serviez repeats without hesitation a
rumour, lightly reproduced in one of the chronicles, that she murdered
Passienus to secure the wealth. The charge is of the most frivolous
character. Her husband had afforded her some protection: a fortune
without a husband would rather attract than divert the passion of
Messalina.
The year 42 was marked by a conspiracy that unhappily disposed Claudius
more than ever to confide in Messalina and the freedmen. The troops in
Dalmatia were to be employed in the dethronement of Claudius. At the
last moment, however, the soldiers were startled by so many and such
undeniable signs of the anger of the gods that they returned to their
loyalty and slew their officers. The standards could not be dragged out
of the ground--a not unnatural event, one would think, in a Dalmatian
winter--and the wreaths had fallen from the eagles.
The plot was reported to the palace, and Messalina and the freedmen
drew up long lists of men whom it was desirable to remove or despoil.
Wealthier men redeemed their lives by paying considerable sums; others
were put to the torture, or were consigned to prison or the grave. A
story is told in the record of this persecution which should guard us
from admitting the common fallacy that the older spirit of Rome was
quite extinct. A distinguished patrician heard that his name was on the
list of the condemned. His wife urged him to escape the ignominy of a
public execution by ending his own life, and, when he hesitated, she
buried the dagger in her own bosom, and then handed it to him with the
words, worthy of a Corneille: “It does not hurt.” Another victim was
Appius Silanus, who had married Messalina’s mother, Domitia Lepida.
The chroniclers say that his crime was to have rejected the advances
which Messalina made to him. Whatever the motive was, she induced the
freedman Narcissus to tell Claudius that he saw, in a dream, Silanus
thrusting a dagger into the Emperor’s heart. Claudius nervously
consulted his wife, who confessed, with artistic horror, that the same
dream had frequently tormented her. They had meantime summoned Silanus
to the palace, and, as he entered at that moment, the Emperor ordered
him to be executed at once.
Such are a few of the dark crimes attributed to Messalina that we
cannot seriously question, and that fully prepare us to believe the
less inhuman misdeeds which it might otherwise be possible to doubt.
In the following year (A.D. 43) Claudius went to Britain, leaving his
Empress at Rome. It seems to have been at this time that, unless we are
arbitrarily to set aside one group of charges in the records and admit
another, Messalina indulged in the practices which have secured for
her an unenviable immortality. The perfectly authentic sequel of the
story will show that she had so extraordinary a disregard for even the
pretence of moral feeling that the statements of the chroniclers cannot
for a moment be set down as improbable. In a word, Messalina surpassed
Caligula both in her own misconduct and in the propagation of vice.
Envying the trade of the lowest women of Rome, she had one of the rooms
at the palace equipped on the model of the chambers of the _meretrices_
in the tenements of the Subura, put over the door the name of one
of the most notorious women of that caste, Lycisca, and offered the
lascivious embrace of an Empress to any who cared to pay the price for
which she stipulated. Others place the scene in an actual brothel. Not
content with her own abasement, she compelled the most distinguished
ladies of Rome to follow her example. She bestowed the honours and
offices, which Claudius left at her disposal, on the husbands who would
complacently witness the defilement of their wives, and offered the
alternative of her deadly lists to those who refused. Uncertain as we
must always be whether these statements are not mere exaggerations of
her conduct in the popular mind of the time, they are consistent enough
with the accredited facts of her career.
In the year 44 Claudius returned with joy to what he still regarded
as the chaste and tender arms of his young Empress. So lively was his
esteem of her virtue that he obtained from the Senate permission for
her to ride in the ceremonious car (_carpentum_), an honour which was
restricted to the priestly rank and rigorously forbidden to women. He
granted her, also, the signal distinction of riding in his chariot on
the day of his triumphal procession. The ease with which she duped him
led her to fresh excesses. It is said that when she saw his wine-soaked
body laid to bed at night, she placed one of her maids with him, and
went with the companions of her debauches. If we may believe a story
which has no inherent improbability, and has some confirmation later,
she made the blind Emperor himself purvey to her vices. She one day
complained to Claudius that the popular actor, Mnester, would not obey
her when she commanded him to leave the stage and enter her private
service. Claudius forced him to do so; and three years later, when
Messalina’s conduct was exposed, Mnester exhibited to the Emperor the
scars on his body which gave proof of Messalina’s brutal familiarity.
Even when she used the bronze coinage of Caligula, which had been
withdrawn from circulation, to make a statue to Mnester, Claudius
suspected nothing.
This licentious conduct continued until the year 47. Messalina was only
in her twenty-fifth year when her long impunity led her to take the
step which ruined her. A bust of her that is preserved at Florence,
and a cameo at Vienna, give a representation of her that we have no
inclination to distrust. The curly golden-yellow hair--Juvenal tells
us its colour--is elaborately dressed over the low forehead, and the
large deep-set eyes are abnormally close. There is some irregularity in
the undeniable beauty of the face; and the thin lips and small mouth,
drooping weakly at the corners, would irresistibly suggest a record of
adventure, if such a story were not assigned to her in the chronicles
of the time. With that record before us it is, no doubt, easy for
physiognomists to detect a moral distortion in the features, and to
discover unknown, as well as verify the known, vices of the Empress
in the truthful marble. Yet any thoughtful observer will be disposed
to see in those pitiless lineaments a revelation of the truth about
Messalina and her race. It is a picture of strength worn to decay by
reiterated storms of passion, of beauty fading with the disease
which foreruns death.
[Illustration: MESSALINA
BUST IN THE UFFIZI PALACE, FLORENCE]
One last crime must be added to the record of Messalina before we come
to the crowning folly of her career. There remained one woman in Rome
more beautiful than she; and one distinguished patrician whose virtue
rebuked her, and whose wealth allured her. She resolved to bury the two
under a common ruin.
Valerius Asiaticus, a patrician of consular rank and great merit,
had withdrawn from Rome to Crete as the madness of Messalina and the
blindness of Claudius increased. Unhappily for him, he owned the
beautiful and famous garden which Lucullus had laid out on the summit
of the Pincian Hill, and Messalina was now eager for it. She employed
the tutors of her children to declare to the Emperor that Asiaticus
was at the head of an important faction at Rome, and had gone to fire
the Eastern provinces with his rebellious spirit. The omens which were
reported from the East seemed to Claudius to make mere human testimony
superfluous. The moon had been darkened by an eclipse, and a new island
had risen from the Ægæan Sea. The Chaldæan sages interpreted these
signs with their customary art, and Asiaticus was brought to Rome.
He listened in disdain to the charge of conspiracy and adultery which
the tutors, Sosibius and Suillius, brought against him, but, when they
proceeded to accuse him of unnatural vice, he broke into an angry
denial of the whole accusation. Messalina was present at the trial--a
wholly irregular proceeding, in Claudius’s chamber--and saw that the
Emperor was moved. She whispered to Vitellius, the sycophant who had
first discovered Caligula’s divinity and shaded his eyes from the
blaze, that Asiaticus must on no account escape, and left the room.
Vitellius, with ready wit, fell at the feet of the Emperor. He enlarged
at length on the great merits of the accused, and concluded with an
artful plea that Claudius would grant Asiaticus the favour of being
allowed to take his own life, instead of handing him over to the
public executioner. Easily confused by this stratagem, and fancying
that he was showing some clemency, Claudius assented. Asiaticus, true
to the finest traditions of his fathers, returned to his palace,
bathed and supped in perfect tranquillity, and then opened his veins.
Messalina secured the gardens of Lucullus.
The lady with whom Asiaticus is said to have offended was Poppæa
Sabina, the only woman in Rome who surpassed Messalina in beauty. That
would be quite enough to arouse the jealousy of Messalina, but we are
told that she had the still greater mortification of believing that
Poppæa was too intimate with the actor Mnester, whom the Empress had
appropriated. The daughter of Poppæa will presently come before our
eyes in the gallery of Roman Empresses, and, if we may infer from her
conduct the nature of her mother’s precepts and example, we cannot set
aside the charge as improbable. There is, however, no need for us to
discuss it. No sooner was Asiaticus condemned than Messalina sent the
news to Poppæa, and she put an end to her own life. Sosibius received
a million sesterces, in the form of a special reward for his service
in instructing the young princes; and other ministers to the cruelty,
avarice, and passion of the Empress were richly endowed.
Messalina now ventured upon so flagrant a violation, not merely of
decency, but of the moderate discretion that had hitherto concealed
her conduct from her husband, that her career of infamy was brought
to a violent close. She had for some time entertained and indulged a
passion for Caius Silius, one of the most handsome men among the Roman
nobility. Tacitus assures us that there was no secrecy in the amour.
She persuaded Silius to divorce his wife, visited his house with a
large retinue, and made him repeated gifts of slaves and other property
belonging to the Imperial house. An obscure passage in Tacitus seems
to imply that her impatience of all laws led her to form the design of
marrying Silius while married to Claudius, and the details of what
immediately followed have come down to us in contradictory versions.
It is said by some that Silius proposed to her to remove Claudius and
share the throne with him, and that she hesitated only from fear that
Silius might divorce her as soon as he had secured the purple. Other
writers say that the phœnix appeared in Egypt, as it had done before
the death of Tiberius, and that the nervous Emperor was further told of
a prediction that the husband of Messalina would die before the end of
the year. In order to cheat this decree of the fates, Suetonius says,
Claudius signed the divorce of Messalina, and went down to the coast,
leaving her free to marry Silius. He intended to return and recover her
as soon as Silius had fulfilled the prophecy by dying.
It is clear that a good deal of legend has mingled with the true
account of the events which led to Messalina’s downfall, and one
can merely try to construct a plausible story out of the discordant
versions. Tacitus, the highest authority, knows nothing of the
prophecy, or the divorce which it is said to have occasioned. His
silence is not conclusive, and the course attributed to Claudius,
however extravagant it may seem, is not inconsistent with his
abnormally timorous nature. On the whole, however, one is disposed to
agree with Merivale, that Claudius heard of no prophecy, signed no
divorce, and knew nothing of the liaison until a later stage, as Dio
implies. But Merivale is plainly wrong in suggesting that the marriage
of Messalina and Silius is a libellous legend borrowed from Agrippina’s
memoirs. When he submits that such a marriage could not have taken
place without the Emperor’s knowledge, he forgets that, as all the
authorities state or imply, Claudius had left Rome and gone down to
the coast. The Emperor returned to the city as soon as he heard of the
marriage.
The real course of events seems to be that Claudius was vaguely
informed of the existence of a conspiracy against him. He complained
bitterly to the Senate, confined himself for some time to the palace,
and then, in October, went to Ostia to inspect certain public works
which were in progress there. Delighted at his removal, Messalina
went through the form of marriage--the laxer, not the more solemn,
form (_confarreatio_)--with Silius, and cast aside the last shade
of reserve. Base as her nature was, she must have been weary of the
nightly spectacle of the repulsive old man sinking back in satiety on
his couch, while slaves tickled his throat with a feather to induce
a vomit. Silius was young, handsome, and not without wit. A better
future seemed to open before her. Perhaps the slow-witted Emperor would
make no struggle for his throne; perhaps the city and the guards would
gladly sacrifice him for this handsome young Imperial pair. There is
calculation in the carven face of Messalina. But the news was speeding
to Ostia, and the dreadful end was near.
Shortly after the marriage came the festival of the vintage, the
Bacchanalia, which was celebrated by the bride and bridegroom and their
friends with the wildest merriment. That last scene in the licentious
career of Messalina must have made a deep impression on the feeling of
Rome, and it is lit up for ever by one of Tacitus’s most vivid flashes
of description. Messalina had bestowed on Silius the Imperial palace
and its contents, and in the garden of the palace they paid full honour
to the orgiastic cult of Bacchus. Wine-presses were set up, and the
women of Messalina’s company, their white limbs and bosoms scantily
covered with strips of fawn skin, sang and danced the Bacchic dance
round the large vats of grape-juice. Messalina, her golden hair flowing
loose under her ivy wreath, shook her thyrsus and led the wild dance.
Silius lay at her feet, crowned with ivy, nodding his head to the air
of the lascivious chorus. Wine flowed freely on that autumn afternoon,
and the gay world and distant Ostia were forgotten; or so little heeded
that when Vettius Valens, one of Messalina’s discarded lovers, had,
in boyish exuberance, climbed a high tree, and they crowded round and
asked what he saw, he gaily cried: “A hurricane from Ostia.” But
before the evening was out the hurricane came from Ostia and scattered
the revellers in terror. News was brought to the garden that Claudius
was hurrying to Rome to avenge his dishonour.
The freedman Narcissus had disliked the idea of Silius obtaining power,
especially as Messalina had recently taken the ominous step of securing
the execution of his colleague Polybius. In the suite of Claudius
at Ostia were two female attendants, to describe them courteously,
Calpurnia and Cleopatra, who were taken into counsel by Narcissus, and
learned their parts in his scheme. Calpurnia flung herself at the feet
of the Emperor, crying, “Messalina is married to Silius.” Cleopatra and
Narcissus were summoned by the Emperor, and they assured him that his
life was in danger, and he must hasten to Rome. Other advisers, who had
been trained to their part by Narcissus, were drawn into the group, and
the dazed and vacillating Claudius yielded to their guidance. He was at
once placed in his chariot, and Vitellius and Narcissus rode with him.
Claudius feebly discussed the news as they travelled, and Vitellius,
not sure which party would triumph, remained silent; but the freedman
assiduously fed the slow-kindling anger of the Emperor.
Silius had fled from the Bacchanalian garden to the Forum, and tried
to conceal his part by a zealous absorption in business. Messalina saw
all the companions of her revels fly for safety, and leave her to face
the storm alone in the palace-garden. From the disordered relics of the
feast she hurried to her Lucullan gardens on the Pincian. There her
courage seems to have revived, and she determined to make an effort
to disarm her husband. Directing the head of the Vestal Virgins to
follow with her children, she went out upon the road which entered Rome
from Ostia. The news had now spread over Rome. With three companions
only out of the gay throng of her followers, and Vibidia, the Vestal
Virgin, whose person was sacred, she braved the pitiless gaze of the
citizens, who had so long seen her chariot flash by in triumph, and
walked on foot to the gate of the city. There her strength failed, and
she was forced to mount the common cart of a gardener. When they had
covered a short distance from the gates, they saw the Emperor’s chariot
approaching, and she dismounted. Whether from real affection for her,
or from an indolent dislike of trouble, Claudius hesitated once more
when the piteous figure of his young wife appeared in his path; but
Narcissus reminded him of her marriage, and ordered the charioteer to
drive on. Her last despairing appeal was unheeded. The chariot galloped
on, and left her standing on the road. A little further on the Vestal
Virgin, relying on her high position, demanded that Claudius should
grant his wife an opportunity of defending herself, and thrust his
children before him. The sight of his beloved Octavia and Britannicus
again moved the wavering Emperor. Narcissus bade the charioteer drive
onward, and Messalina slowly turned to meet her fate in Rome.
In order to dispel the last shade of tenderness from the Emperor’s
mind, Narcissus conducted him first to the house of Silius, and showed
him the treasures of the Imperial palace which Messalina had showered
on her lover. He then led him to the camp of the Prætorian Guards, and
induced him to make a speech to the soldiers. The feeble spirit of the
Emperor was cowed by the full revelation of Messalina’s perfidy. Now
completely docile to the masterful freedman, he took his place at the
tribunal, and passed sentence of death, which was at once carried out,
on Silius, Mnester, Vettius Valens, and all Messalina’s accomplices.
Mnester vainly stripped off his robe, to show that he had received
from the Empress rather the imprint of her anger than the embraces of
which he was accused. The Emperor signed the doom of all, and returned
wearily to the palace. Restored by food and wine, he began to resist
the dictation of Narcissus, and ordered him to inform Messalina that he
would hear her on the morrow. The freedman knew that a delay would ruin
his design. He left the room, and told the guard that the Emperor had
commanded the immediate execution of his wife.
Messalina had returned to her garden on the Pincian, where she was
joined by her mother. Night had come on, and they sat in an arbour
debating the mad brilliance of the past and the terrible gloom of the
future. Domitia Lepida felt that there was no hope of recovering the
favour of Claudius, and urged her daughter to end her life as Roman
tradition prescribed. Strong only in her clinging to life, like most
of the other frail women of the Julian house, Messalina fell at her
mother’s feet and sobbed. Presently the stillness of the deserted
garden was broken by the tramp of soldiers and a summons at the gate.
Still Messalina shrank from the eternal darkness which she had so
suddenly confronted. Only when the officer of the guard told her the
order that Narcissus had given him, and the freedman who had come with
the guard began insolently to revile her for her crimes, did she take
the dagger from her mother’s hands. In the light of the single lamp of
the arbour the little group looked on with pity and disdain, as the
nerveless hands of Messalina lacerated her white bosom with futile
gashes. Then the tribune mercifully drove his sword through her heart.
Her children came up, and found their mother’s lifeless body in a pool
of blood.
This authentic closing of the career of Messalina must dispose us
to think that there may be little or no exaggeration in the stories
that are told of her. Stahr, in his brilliant apologetic study of
the Empresses, ventures to say that Seneca did not reproduce these
stories about Messalina because he knew that they came from the pen
of an embittered libeller; and it is safe to assume that Tacitus did
derive much of his material from the memoirs of the woman who had
shrunk from the vindictive cruelty of Messalina, and came in time to
replace her. But so much crime is authoritatively laid to the account
of the Empress, and her last adventure reveals so shameless a disregard
of either law or decency, that not a single detail is incredible or
improbable. We shall find such excesses ascribed to later Emperors, by
writers who were not merely recording rumours that may have gathered
volume during decades of passage from mouth to mouth, that nothing can
be deemed impossible to a Messalina. The humane biographer can but
plead that she entered a world of the most dazzling allurement of vice
and crime with a nature already tainted and distorted by the sins of
her fathers, and that the horror of that last scene in the gardens of
Lucullus may be left as a merciful shroud over her unhappy memory.
CHAPTER V
THE MOTHER OF NERO
Tacitus has given us a spirited picture of life in the Imperial palace
during the months which followed the execution of Messalina. Claudius
himself had sunk into a state of drowsy indifference when the storm
excited by his discovery had spent itself. “Where is the Empress?” he
asked, as he sat at supper the night after her death, and noticed the
empty place on the couch. Narcissus told him that she was dead, and he
asked no more. But the palace about his slumbering figure soon began
to hum with conflicting intrigues for the succession to her chamber.
Ladies who had visited the Palatine with nervous prudence while
Messalina lived now came to display their charms, and express their
tenderness, to the doting Emperor. From the sombre night of the tragedy
Rome passed with relief to the light enjoyment of the new comedy.
The freedmen, who surrounded and controlled Claudius, selected their
candidates.
Claudius had inserted one sentiment of his own in the speech which
Narcissus had induced him to make to the Prætorian Guards. He had sworn
that he would not marry again. There were ladies in his household, such
as Calpurnia and Cleopatra, who would encourage the resolution; but the
freedmen decided that he was bound to capitulate under so fair a siege,
and it would be better to have some share in the making of the new
Empress. Each of the Greeks chose a different lady. Narcissus, who had
been promoted to high public service for his zeal, favoured the suit
of Ælia Pætina, whom Claudius had lightly divorced twenty-one years
before. Callistus took up the cause of Lollia Paulina, the wealthy
and beautiful woman whom Caligula had torn from her husband and used
so unjustly. The steward, Pallas, was more fortunate in his choice.
He advocated marriage with Agrippina; and, as the mind of Agrippina
coincided more decisively with that of her champion than seems to
have happened in the case of her rivals, his campaign succeeded. She
discovered a most tender and considerate affection for her uncle,
visited him assiduously, and persuaded him to betroth his daughter
Octavia to her son Lucius Domitius (later Nero).
Octavia was already betrothed, and Agrippina is said to have removed
the first obstacle to her designs by a cruel and unscrupulous act. We
are told that she induced, and it is at least clear that she permitted,
the sycophantic courtier Vitellius, who favoured her suit, to accuse
the young man, to whom Octavia was betrothed, of incest with his
daughter-in-law. Tacitus has so mean an estimate of the young people
and their generation that he does not regard the charge as a serious
libel. He insists, however, that Agrippina had the case against them
forged, and thus opened her dark Imperial career with a crime.
We are now approaching the generation in which the great historian
lived, and we are considering the very woman whose memoirs furnished
him with his more serious charges against her rivals and predecessors.
It may therefore seem strange that, if we are to follow our authorities
with docility, we must ascribe a very vicious and unscrupulous
character to Agrippina herself. We have rejected the rumour that
she poisoned her second husband, but that is by no means the only
charge that is brought against her before she married Claudius. The
authorities uniformly assert that she had had incestuous relations with
Caligula in her early teens, had been notorious for her amours during
the life of Messalina, and now very flagrantly placed such honour as
she had at the disposal of Claudius. These charges we cannot control.
We shall find even more serious accusations against her later, and
shall have to regard them with reserve or frank incredulity. It was
the literary fashion to make a consort of the Cæsars imperial in her
vices. On the whole, however, we are compelled to think that the eldest
daughter of Agrippina and Germanicus had the taint of her stock. She
inherited the virile ambition of her mother, and she had even less
scruple in pursuing it. The best that can be said for her is that she
aimed rather at making the future of her son than her own. And when
that son proves to be the Emperor Nero, the murderer of his mother, we
are disposed to read her record with the lenient eye of pity.
When the elder Agrippina had been banished by Tiberius, as we saw, in
the year 12 A.D., her children were brought up in the house of their
grandmother Antonia. In this plain home of old Roman virtue Caligula
is said to have infected and corrupted all his sisters. Agrippina left
it, in her thirteenth year, to marry Cn. Domitius Ahenobarbus. As the
authorities are sharply divided in regard to his character, we cannot
trace his influence in the development of her character. He died in
the year 40, leaving her with a three-year-old boy, Lucius Domitius.
Agrippina was still a young and beautiful woman, and is said to have
availed herself of the loose morals of Roman society until, as we
saw, the attitude of Messalina forced her to marry. She was soon a
widow for the second time, with considerable wealth. Her ambition
revived at the death of Messalina, and she paid the most winning and
flagrant attentions to Claudius. We should go beyond the letter of the
chronicles if we suggested that she bribed Vitellius and Pallas to
promote her suit. It is enough to say that they overcame the reluctance
of Claudius, and they profited materially by her accession to the
throne.
Claudius professed that he had a scruple about marrying his niece, and
proposed to adopt her as his daughter. That empty honour was hardly
recompense enough for the daily contemplation of his senility and
sensuality. Vitellius induced him to submit his delicate feeling to the
Senate and the people, and then artfully represented to the Senators
that, if Claudius married Agrippina, she might rid them of the hated
influence of the freedmen. Tacitus, whose disdain for the obsequious
Senate of the early Empire always aggravates his comments on their
conduct, describes how they raced each other to the palace to inform
Claudius of their decision, and how the people not improbably incited
by Vitellius, assembled below the Palatine Hill and clamoured for the
marriage. The obtuse and weak-willed Claudius assented, and a few days
later, in the year 49, Agrippina became the sixth Empress of Rome.
Little did she dream that she was entering upon the last decade of her
eventful life, and that it would close with the most ghastly horror.
She was in her thirty-third year, Claudius in his fifty-eighth.
Years of sensual indulgence had not improved his character or his
intelligence, and no one in Rome can have expected him to live more
than the few years which remained for him. Agrippina was looking to the
time when she would be sole mistress of the Empire. The fine statue of
her which is exhibited in the Lateran Museum has a moral physiognomy
so concordant with the authentic record of her career that we picture
her to ourselves with confidence. In face and figure she is all that
the word imperial suggests to the imagination. Haughty, strong,
and reposeful in her self-reliance, she has lost the last shade of
apprehension with the passing of Messalina, and has the majestic air
of a mistress of the world. Her low brow and large, finely-carved oval
face are said by some physiognomists to have every mark of purity and
refinement, but the close observer will discover in her features only
such a refinement of passion as her ambition would lead us to expect.
In a word, it is the face of a woman who will not stoop to vice or
crime to gratify a sensual impulse, but may have recourse to either
when her ambition lends it a certain expediency.
[Illustration: AGRIPPINA THE YOUNGER
BUST, MUS. NAZ., NAPLES]
The career of Agrippina shows that she really was a moral opportunist
of this character. We need not pass any censure on her ambition.
Unhappy would be the State in which men and women were not at times
fired by the impulse to exert their powers more energetically than
their fellows. But it is impossible to ignore the persistent and
harmonious statements of the Latin historians in regard to the
way in which Agrippina pursued her ambition. We may overlook the
amorous adventures of her earlier years; we may reject, as a light
and implausible rumour, eagerly caught up by prurient diarists, the
charge that she made any dishonourable advances to Claudius before her
marriage, or to the steward Pallas or her son Nero at later dates;
and we may hesitate to admit that she was concerned in the murder of
Claudius. But we cannot find any other motive than a not too nice
ambition in her marrying the aged and repulsive Emperor, and we have
strong reason to suspect her of conduct that is little short of
criminal in many of the events that follow.
The most formidable of her rivals for the throne had been Lollia
Paulina. Beautiful, wealthy, and popular, the former wife of Caligula
seemed to threaten Agrippina’s security. In their eagerness to avoid
the rock of hereditary power the Romans had steered their vessel into
the Charybdis of intrigue, and any prominent man or woman was regarded
with concern by the one who wore the purple, or aspired to wear it.
Agrippina had a strong and legitimate hope, but no guarantee, that
her son would succeed. Messalina’s son, young Britannicus, was ailing
and epileptic, and was generally ignored in the speculations as to
the succession. It was, therefore, quite natural that Roman gossip
should accuse Agrippina of destroying Paulina, and Tacitus is not less
generous in recording the charges against her than in admitting her
slanders against Livia. He affirms positively that it was the Empress
who persuaded Claudius to have Paulina prosecuted on the charge of
consulting oracles and astrologers as to the duration of his marriage,
and that, when her property was confiscated and she was sent into
exile, Agrippina sent a soldier to compel her to commit suicide. Dio,
as usual, improves upon the narrative. He describes Agrippina gloating
over the bleeding head of her rival, as Fulvia had rejoiced over the
head of Cicero, and opening the mouth to see certain peculiarities of
the teeth by which it might be identified.
The fatal defect of Dio’s more vivid account is that, as we know
from Pliny, the double canine teeth, of which he speaks, belonged to
Agrippina herself, not to Paulina, and were regarded as a sure presage
of good fortune. The substance of the story, however, we cannot lightly
reject. A beautiful and happy woman was driven to death for no graver
cause than, at the most, an idle patronage of the Oriental charlatans
who then abounded in Rome; and, since this consultation of oracles was
common, there must have been a special reason for the selection of
Paulina. The motive suggested by Tacitus is only too probable. He adds
that Agrippina also banished a lady named Calpurnia. If we may identify
this lady with the Calpurnia whose services to Claudius were so amiable
as to embolden her to disclose to him the crimes of his beloved
Messalina, she would hardly remain long in the palace of Agrippina.
Apart from such episodes as these, in which jealousy or avarice led
her to make an unworthy use of her power, she ruled judiciously and
serviceably. Claudius was in his sixtieth year. His poor mind was in
complete decay, and it was both fitting and useful that Agrippina
should rule in his name. The coinage of the time bears witness of her
activity. There is, in fact, a living memorial of her rule in the
city of Cologne, which, under the title of Colonia Agrippina, she
established as an outpost of civilization on the farthest confines of
the Empire. She gave dignity and etiquette to the easy-going court of
Claudius, had the right to enter the precincts of the Capitol and to
ride in the gilded imperial chariot of ceremony, and, when the famous
British prince Caractacus was brought to Rome, her throne was raised
by the side of that of the Emperor. The older Roman idea of woman’s
sphere was now discredited by the philosophers and contemptuously
ignored by the women themselves, but the citizens moved slowly, and
there was much discontent and consulting of astrologers. They were
expelled from the city, but in the guarded chambers of patrician
families they continued, in imposing Chaldæan dress, to scan horoscopes
and wave preternatural wands over their symbolical tripods--much as
they do in Bond Street to-day. The more enlightened reader, who is
disposed to regard the superstition with leniency, must reflect that
the prophets might at times, for the vindication of their art, be
tempted to lend a little human aid when nature tarried in bringing
about the deaths which the planets had so plainly foretold.
Within the palace the whole care of Agrippina was centred in the
education of her son for the purple. To the delight of Rome, she
recalled the philosopher Seneca from exile, and gave him charge of
her son’s studies. When the real character of Nero was revealed in
later years, it was said that Seneca had always disliked his task,
and had even predicted that the boy would become a savage monster.
Seneca himself merely says that the boy was spoiled, and his training
thwarted, by his mother. Nero would fly to Agrippina when Seneca
had made some attempt to check his wayward impulses, and the whole
lesson would be lost in her injudicious caresses. Apart from this not
unnatural weakness, Agrippina made the most commendable efforts to
prepare her son for the throne. The corrupt tutor whom Messalina had
brought to the palace was dismissed--Dio says that he was executed
for attempting the life of Lucius Domitius--to make way for the most
distinguished moralist of the time, and the military instruction was
entrusted to Burrus, whose integrity we shall learn presently. Pallas
was rewarded with such honours as no freedmen had ever borne before,
and Vitellius was rescued from some obscure charge of conspiracy and
restored to his rank.
Agrippina was now in a position of very great wealth and power. She
drove about Rome in a superb chariot, flaunted the stored jewels of the
Imperial house, and received presents from the ends of the earth. A
white nightingale, which had cost 6,000 sesterces, and a talking thrush
were amongst the rare presents sent to conciliate her. The lingering of
Claudius must have been irksome to her, but it was necessary to secure
the succession of her son before the Emperor died. The one apparent
obstacle was the boy Britannicus, who, as the son of Claudius and
Messalina, had a juster title to be chosen. He was, however, subject to
epileptic fits, delicate in health, and peevish in temper. Agrippina
had little difficulty in thrusting him aside in favour of her own
handsome and engaging boy. The _toga virilis_, or garment of the man,
was usually donned by the Roman youth in his seventeenth year, but the
age was anticipated in the case of princes, and Domitius was to receive
it at the end of the year 50. During the year, however, the convulsions
of nature so plainly portended some momentous event, probably the
passage of Claudius to join his divine forerunners, that Agrippina
pressed for the immediate performance of the rite. Three suns were seen
in the sky, an earthquake shook the solid earth, and birds of evil omen
rested on the temple. Claudius assented, and manhood and other high
distinctions were prematurely conferred on the future Emperor, whose
name was changed to Nero. He joined the priestly college, received
the authority of a proconsul, marched at the head of the guards, and
drew the attention of all at the games by the insignia of his manly
dignities, while Britannicus sat in the _prætexta_ and _bulla_ of the
boy. It was Nero who pleaded in the Senate for distressed cities, Nero
who was made prætor when Claudius was absent from Rome. In the year 52
he was married to Octavia, and all Rome regarded him as the virtual
heir to the throne.
There can be no serious doubt that Agrippina had no affection for
Claudius, and must have waited impatiently for his removal when the
succession was secured for her son. Certainly Rome held that view,
and interpreted the events of the succeeding years in accordance with
it. We must therefore be prepared to find much libellous conjecture
in the chronicles about this time. Serviez, who can never resist the
fascination of scandal, gives us a lively picture of Agrippina stooping
to any expedient course of vice or crime in the furtherance of her
ambition. We may have to tell a less romantic story, but it will be
romantic enough.
It is clear that the Empress now entered into a conflict with
Narcissus, the freedman who had ruined Messalina, and had then favoured
the suit of Ælia Pætina in opposition to her own. Her critics suggest
that she wished to remove this faithful servant in order to attempt the
life of the Emperor more easily, but the suggestion is superfluous.
Narcissus had found the rival freedman Pallas raised to such high
honours, and felt that his own service in exposing Messalina had
been so soon forgotten, that he clearly intrigued against Agrippina.
Tacitus says that it was he who spread the rumour, which reached the
ears of Claudius, that Agrippina was too intimate with Pallas. We are
quite unable to examine the truth or untruth of this charge, and may
dismiss it. Agrippina took an early occasion to attack and discredit
the Greek. In the centre of the Italian hills was a sheet of water, the
Fucine Lake, which had no regular outlet, and often caused disastrous
floods. Claudius ordered that a channel should be made to conduct its
superfluous water to the river, and celebrated the opening of it,
in the year 52, with a naval battle on the lake. Three thrones were
erected: one for the nodding, heavy-paunched Emperor, who had somehow
been squeezed into glittering armour, one for Agrippina, in her robes
of gold cloth, and one for Nero.
The play did not run smoothly, and Agrippina did not spare Narcissus,
who controlled it. The great ships drew up before the Emperor, and the
men who were about to risk or lose their lives to entertain him rang
out the usual salutation. Forgetting that if he returned the salute he
absolved them from their dangerous duty, Claudius hailed them, and they
claimed the right to abstain. The Emperor is described by Suetonius as
running alongside the lake, angrily urging them to fight. The battle
proceeded, but at the close it was found that the water could not be
released, and Narcissus was bitterly assailed. The performance was
repeated later, when the works were pronounced complete, but a number
of people were drowned, and the quarrel was renewed with spirit.
Agrippina suggested that the funds for the undertaking had been
diverted; Narcissus foiled the attack with a charge of ambition against
the Empress.
The Emperor was visibly failing, and there was great excitement at
Rome when, at the beginning of the year 54, nature announced once
more that some stirring chapter was to run from the reel of the
fates. The standards and tents of the soldiers were enveloped in
mysterious flames; a rain of blood, in which a modern naturalist
would doubtless discover an innocent microbe, spread terror over one
part of the Empire, and the birth of a pig with claws like those
of a hawk caused equal consternation in another; while Rome heard,
with reiterated shocks, that the doors of the temple of Jupiter had
been opened by unseen hands, and a horrible comet, followed by the
customary pestilence, had appeared in its skies. More significant still
to prudent people, perhaps, was the report that Claudius, returning
to dine at the palace after presiding at the trial of an adultress,
gloomily observed that he had been unfortunate in his marriages; he had
punished one unfaithful wife, and would know how to deal with another.
In this observation of Claudius we need see no more than an echo of the
whispers of Narcissus, but one can imagine how Rome must have throbbed
with expectation and abounded in gossip at the beginning of the year
54. Nor was this faith in natural oracles disappointed. Two tragedies
were added to the sombre chronicle of the city in that year, and in
both of them our Empress is accused of having acted criminally.
The first was the condemnation to death of one of the greatest ladies
of Rome, Domitia Lepida, sister-in-law of the Empress; and in this
case there is every reason to suspect a guilty action on the part of
Agrippina. When Agrippina had been exiled by Caligula, her boy had
lived for a few years with his father’s sister, Domitia Lepida, the
mother of Messalina. Lepida was far more indulgent even than Agrippina
to the pretty and wayward child, and, when the mother returned to Rome
and he was restored to her, there was an acrimonious struggle between
the two women for his affection. As it became clear that he would
inherit the purple, the struggle became more passionate. Narcissus
saw in it an opportunity to escape the ruin which would befall him
if Agrippina obtained full power, and, on the ground of his charge
of inconstancy against the Empress, he urged Claudius to make Lepida
guardian of Nero. It is very probable that this intrigue of Narcissus
is the only source of the charge of license brought against the Empress
in her mature years.
Angry and anxious, in view of the expected death of Claudius, she took
a bold step, and impeached Lepida of criminal conduct. How far Lepida
was guilty we cannot say, but as she was charged only with assailing
the Emperor’s marriage with imprecations, and exercising so little
control over her Calabrian slaves as to endanger the public peace,
the prudent reader will acquit Agrippina of anything more than an
exaggeration of the facts. That exaggeration sufficed, however, to ruin
her distinguished rival. Nero, schooled by his mother, gave witness
that his aunt had tried to alienate his affection; her very natural
comments on the Emperor’s marriage were made to assume the dark form of
magical imprecations; she was condemned to death.
But those lively convulsions of nature had portended something more
momentous than the death of a noble matron, and Rome continued to wait
for the great tragedy. Before long it was announced that Narcissus had
retired to Sinuessa for the treatment of his gout.[9] The Emperor was
now entirely surrounded by adherents of Agrippina, and we can quite
understand the conviction of Rome when Claudius was taken seriously ill
at a banquet, and died within twenty-four hours. Tacitus emphatically
attributes his death to his wife. Suetonius alone says that, while
it was certain that Claudius was poisoned, it was not certain who
was guilty; a feeble reserve, since Agrippina was so predominantly
interested in his death.
It is not surprising that recent historians have generally followed
Tacitus. Roergas de Serviez, who rarely has such ample authority for
the crimes he loves to attribute, fastens the murder on Agrippina
without the least hesitation. Merivale sees no ground to question
it, though he points out several inconsistencies in the pages of
Tacitus. Mr. Henderson follows the traditional story in his recent and
discriminating study of the reign of Nero.[10] But Mr. Baring-Gould
insists that the death of Claudius was quite natural, and any candid
student of the evidence must admit that it is inconclusive.
The facts are that on October 12th, A.D. 54, Claudius attended a
banquet of the priestly college with Agrippina. After eating some
mushrooms (or figs, according to others) from a dish that was served,
he became violently ill and vomited. He was taken back to the palace,
attended by his (and Agrippina’s) physician, but gradually sank,
and died on the morning of the 13th. The theory of the opponents of
Agrippina is that she employed a notorious poisoner, Locusta--a Gaulish
woman, who was certainly in Rome at the time, and was afterwards
employed by Nero--to concoct a slow poison (“a drug that would disturb
his mind and inflict a slow death,” says Tacitus). This is supposed
to have been inserted in a fine mushroom (or fig), which was taken by
Claudius when Agrippina had eaten one from the dish to encourage him.
He fell back and began to vomit, and the theory runs that Agrippina,
fearing that he might recover and suspect her, called in the physician
Xenophon, a dependent of hers, who tickled the Emperor’s throat with a
poisoned feather and made an end of him.
Mr. Baring-Gould points out that, since Tacitus expressly describes
the poison as “slow,” Agrippina could hardly be surprised and alarmed
when it did not take immediate effect. He concludes that Claudius
contracted a violent indigestion from eating too many figs. This is
no more convincing than the opposite theory. An attack of vomiting,
whether from a natural cause or as an unintended effect of poison,
might easily alarm Claudius, who was very suspicious, and so induce
Agrippina to act. An attack of indigestion, on the other hand, would
hardly have so violent and immediate an effect. The circumstance of
tickling his throat with a feather to cause a vomit, and at the same
time introducing poison, is puzzling; but it was an age of skill in
poisoning, and the feat may have been possible. The question must
remain open. The discrepancies in the narrative are not fatal to it,
but the story itself is no more than a retailing of Roman gossip, which
was at all times more prurient than scrupulous. The problem really
turns on the character of Agrippina, and this is ambiguous enough
to make us hesitate. One may scan the record of her career with the
most penetrating charity without discovering any plain indication of
high character, while the ruin of Lollia Paulina, Domitia Lepida, and
others, may be confidently traced to her. We can only conclude that she
was quite capable of accelerating the death of her husband, and would
have no light interest in doing so; but the circumstances of his death
are quite consistent with the kindlier view that it was due to his
own intemperance. We have not yet, however, reached the close of her
career, and it may be felt that her conduct after the death of Claudius
confirms the darker estimate of her character.
The malcontents of Rome would be sure to agitate in favour of
Britannicus unless the succession was secured for Nero before the
death of Claudius was known. The art with which Agrippina averted
this danger may excite our admiration of her virility and astuteness,
but must inevitably lessen our appreciation of her sensibility. She
announced that Claudius was dangerously ill, and called an assembly
of the Senate. Conscious that the servants of a palace commonly draw
their pay from some one without, she put guards at every approach to
the chamber of the dead man, and devised and carried out a tragi-comedy
of the most extraordinary character. The clothes were drawn over the
lifeless body, bandages and poultices were ostentatiously applied to
it by her servants, and even the mimes, who had been wont to dance
and ring their bells and crack their jokes before the Emperor, were
brought in to perpetrate their follies in the chamber of death. In a
neighbouring room Agrippina joined her conjugal sobs with the laments
of the youthful Britannicus. We are asked to believe, and we have
little difficulty in believing, that while she clung in tears to the
weeping youth, she was merely, with cold calculation, preventing him
from leaving the palace, lest he should fall in the way of the Guards,
or some ambitious partisan, and be proclaimed Emperor.
By noon the preparations of her agents were completed. The gates of the
palace were thrown open, and Nero was sent out, under the care of his
military tutor Burrus, the commander of the Guards. A few voices were
heard to mutter the name of Britannicus, but the cry was feeble, and
the response insignificant. The Guards were long accustomed to see the
superiority of Nero over the sickly young prince, and their support
was secured by a liberal promise of money. They conducted Nero to the
Senate, and bade that helpless body accept him. The same evening a
courier from Agrippina brought word to Sinuessa that Nero was Emperor.
Narcissus had lost, and his figure passes from the scene--with the
inevitable rumour that he was imprisoned or poisoned by Agrippina.
When the Guards came to Nero that night for the watchword he gave
them “The best of mothers,” and Agrippina looked confidently from her
supreme height into the future. Within five years her son would put her
to death with horrible brutality, and jeer at her naked body. No one of
the hundreds of thousands who hailed him with the wildest delight, and
smiled at his amiable irregularities, can have foreseen so rapid and
portentous a degradation. He was then a youth of seventeen, strikingly
handsome both in face and figure, with blue-grey eyes and light curly
hair and finely proportioned limbs. His tutor in arms pronounced him
“a young Apollo.” But his moral and intellectual trainer had failed
as signally as his physical trainer had succeeded. Seneca had vainly
endeavoured to implant in his mind the germs of the noble Stoic
philosophy. Men have disputed from all time whether it was the teacher
or the doctrine that was at fault, while the eugenic school of our time
would relieve both from censure, and regard Nero’s mind as an incurably
corrupt soil. One may venture to differ from both, and wonder if
circumstances had not the greater share in his demoralization. However
that may be, his accession to irresponsible power at such an age, in
such surroundings as we shall discover about him, was a tragedy. His
real advisers were young men, slightly older than himself, and better
versed in the ways of luxury and vice; and the first use he made of his
Imperial power was to toss aside the treatises of the moralists, and
give his whole attention to art, to chariot-racing, and to dissipation.
What sinister use he made of the later hours, or earlier hours, of the
day, and in what melancholy condition his girl-wife must have been,
we shall see in the next chapter. Here we have to consider only his
relations with his mother.
For a few years after Nero’s accession his mother willingly and
profitably ruled in his name. It must not be imagined that she
had, with the astuteness of a Marie de’ Medici, educated him in an
indifference to politics so that she might indulge her own ambition.
The appointment of Seneca as his tutor is the most creditable, though
unhappily the most futile, act of her career. When, however, the
young Emperor refused to be interested in any problem graver than
the art of driving a chariot or playing the flute, she undertook his
Imperial duties, or continued to have that share in the ruling of the
Empire which she had had under Claudius. She received embassies, was
surrounded by a special German guard when she went abroad, and was
associated with Nero on the coinage. It would be difficult to measure
with any precision the influence which she had on Roman affairs during
this period, since Seneca and Burrus had an equal, if not greater, part
in the government; but it may be recalled, with some honour to her,
that the first four years of Nero’s reign were amongst the happiest and
most prosperous that Rome witnessed during the first century.
The first thing to trouble her prosperous and happy use of power was
a certain discontent arising from the old prejudice against women in
politics. The Senators were annoyed because she injudiciously listened
to their debates. They met at this time in the Imperial library,
and the Empress had a door pierced into it from the palace, and sat
listening behind a curtain. The Senators are said to have punished
her indiscretion by making unflattering remarks in the course of the
debates, though it is difficult to believe that they were still capable
of so courageous a protest. On one occasion an important embassy came
to Rome from Armenia, and Agrippina declared that she would sit by the
side of Nero when he received it. This seems to have been a startling
innovation, and Seneca had to avert trouble by advising Nero to descend
from his throne, when his mother entered, and lead her affectionately
from the room.
An incident that shortly occurred gave a nucleus for the
crystallization of this diffused annoyance. A distinguished noble,
Junius Silanus, died, and the familiar whisper of foul play went once
more through all classes of the citizens. His brother Lucius Silanus
was the young noble who had been betrothed to Octavia, and had so
cruelly been separated from her by Agrippina. Was it not natural that
Junius Silanus should wish to avenge his younger brother, and that
Agrippina should detect his plot and have him removed? Tacitus and Dio
fully believed this. As in so many of these cases, however, the only
ground for the charge, as far as we know, is the fact that Silanus
undoubtedly died, and we will not waste time in discussing it. The
Senator had so little of the conspirator in him that even Caligula used
to call him “the golden sheep.” But Rome was convinced that the Empress
was guilty, and the story spread, and is fully accepted by Tacitus,
that she meditated a long series of executions of the men who had
opposed her progress, and that Seneca and Burrus had to restrain her
bloody vindictiveness.
One may decline to accept this charge on such poor and disputable
evidence; but Agrippina now incurred the anger of her son, and
descended rapidly from the height of her power. The young Emperor had,
as I said, used his Imperial license to ignore his tutors and indulge
his low and sensual tastes. He attracted to his side a band of the most
dissipated youths in the city, and his nightly exploits were the talk
of Rome. One of the less hurtful of his indulgences was his passion for
Acte, a beautiful freed slave from the Eastern market, whom Dumas has
made familiar. Agrippina resented the liaison--apparently from a sense
of justice to Octavia--and rebuked Nero. He turned on her with violence
the moment she tried to check his licentious ways, and threatened
to discharge her favourite Pallas. Agrippina was alarmed. She saw a
powerful party, deeply hostile to herself, growing up about her son,
and she felt that the support of Seneca and Burrus was being withdrawn.
She ceased to speak of Acte, and regarded with silent distress the
coarse ways that her son was exhibiting on the streets every night. A
reconciliation at this heavy price could not last. Shortly afterwards
Nero sent her some rich jewels and robes from the Imperial treasures.
She chose to regard this as a reminder that the Imperial wardrobe was
no longer at her disposal, and angrily refused the gifts.
Pallas was at once impeached for treason. The charge was so clumsy, and
Seneca defended him so ably, that he had to be acquitted; but Agrippina
forgot discretion in her victory. In the course of a quarrel with
Nero, she threatened to retire to the camp of the Prætorian Guard with
Britannicus and have him proclaimed Emperor. The only effect of this
was to open Nero’s long career of crime. The few months--we are still
at the beginning of the year 55--of unrestrained license and flattery
had destroyed the little moral restraint that Seneca had taught him,
and he determined to murder Britannicus. In the Roman prison was the
skilled poisoner, Locusta, whom Agrippina was believed to have employed
in the murder of her husband. Nero ordered her to prepare a deadly
poison, and, when the first preparation failed, he had her brought to
the palace. With blows and oaths he forced her to prepare a more deadly
drug under his eyes, and it was used the same evening. Britannicus
sat with his friends on one of the couches in the dining-hall at the
palace, and asked for a drink. It was winter-time, and the wine (not
soup, as Serviez says) was heated. He complained that it was too hot,
and the poison was administered with the cooling water, so that the
taster would not need to take a second sip.
A great horror fell upon the room as Britannicus, writhing with pain,
sank to the floor. Octavia sat in silent terror by the side of her
husband, who carelessly observed that Britannicus had one of his usual
epileptic fits. Agrippina openly betrayed her horror and disgust, and
from that date was regarded by her son with bitter hostility. Whether
or no it be true that Nero whitened with chalk the spots which broke
out on the body, the substance of the story cannot be discredited.
It is true that Nero was yet in his eighteenth year only, but his
conduct had been vicious and unbridled to a criminal extent. Within
a very short time we shall find him sinking to the lowest depths of
brutality. The fact that he is praised in the treatise “On Clemency,”
which Seneca wrote about that time, can only show either that the too
indulgent tutor refused to believe the crime, or that, as we have too
many reasons to know, the distinguished Stoic came perilously close to
that art of casuistry in which moralists of many schools have been apt
to excel.
In her abhorrence of the foul deed Agrippina drew closer to the tender
and virtuous Octavia, and confronted Nero with a sternness that had
been too long delayed. The breach between them widened. One day Nero
ordered that two and a half million denarii should be given to his
favourite secretary. Agrippina had the mass of coin brought under
the eyes of the Emperor, to make him realize his extravagance. He
laughingly observed that he did not think the sum was so small, and
ordered it to be doubled. The more lavishly he squandered, the more
carefully Agrippina saved, until the frivolous or malicious companions
of his revels suggested that she was gathering funds for the purpose
of dethroning him. He at once withdrew the guard he had given her, and
ordered her to leave his palace.
Agrippina had enjoyed only for one year the power which she had sought
so long. She was yet only in her fortieth year. The envoys of kings
had sued humbly at her feet, and her litter and guard had flashed
through the streets of Rome with an impression of greatness that no
other woman then known had ever possessed. But the reins passed from
her hands to her brutal son and his despicable courtiers. From the
palace she passed, with a few devoted followers, to the small mansion
of her grandmother Antonia, and the sycophantic courtiers deserted her.
Graver citizens, watching the rapid degradation of the Imperial house,
followed her with sympathy, but few dared to visit her in the lonely
mansion. Unfortunately, she quarrelled with one of these few, and came
near to losing her life.
Her old friend Julia Silana, a woman of great wealth but very faded
beauty, proposed to marry a handsome young Roman knight. Agrippina
imprudently advised him not to marry a woman of such advanced years
and so adventurous a record. Her words were repeated to Julia, and
friendship was exchanged for the most bitter animosity. Julia Silana
was childless, and it is conjectured that Agrippina hoped to inherit
her wealth if she died unmarried. Whether she believed this or no,
Julia conceived a deep hatred, and induced two of her clients to accuse
Agrippina of high treason. Nero seems to have been in an uncertain
mood, and an ingenious plot was devised to win him.
One night when he lay, flushed with wine, after the banquet, his
favourite comedian Paris came to amuse him. Nero noticed that the man
was agitated and less merry than usual, and asked the reason. Paris,
who was acting in the service of the plotters, confessed with artistic
tears that there was a conspiracy afoot to dethrone his noble master;
that Agrippina was about to marry Rubellius Plautus, a Senator of
Imperial descent, and seize the throne. The inebriated Emperor at
once demanded their heads, but Seneca and Burrus restrained him, and
compelled him to hear Agrippina on the morrow. In her speech, which
Tacitus has preserved, she refuted and routed her assailants with such
vigour that she was, apparently, reconciled to Nero and restored to
some authority. Julia Silana was banished, Domitia’s chamberlain (who
had instructed the actor) was executed, and Agrippina’s own followers
were rewarded.
The two years that followed this reconciliation are obscure, and we can
only dimly conjecture that Agrippina had some peace and prestige, but
no longer shared the Imperial rule. Then, in the year 58, another and
unexpected woman came into the field, and Agrippina sank rapidly toward
an abyss of tragedy.
In an earlier chapter we saw that Messalina drove to death a very
wealthy and beautiful Roman lady named Poppæa Sabina. It was her
daughter, who had inherited her wealth and her beauty, that now
attracted the amorous regard of the Emperor. She had married one of
Nero’s favourite companions, who babbled in his cups of her dazzling
beauty, and inflamed the desire of Nero. In the next chapter we
shall read of her natural charms, of the singular art with which she
cultivated them and the coquetry with which she employed them, and of
the superb and fabulous splendour of her equipage. It is enough to
say here that Nero visited her, learned that she was willing to be
an Empress, but not the mistress of an Emperor, and resolved to make
any sacrifice to secure so unique a treasure. The first victim to be
sacrificed to the new passion was Octavia, and the delicate and timid
girl would make little resistance. But Agrippina had espoused her cause
with a spirit that redeems much of her irregular conduct, and she now
saw that her own interest, as well as that of Octavia, required that
she should oppose Poppæa with all her strength. In that resolution she
wrote her death-sentence, not ignobly.
Even if we refuse to admit some of the incredible statements that are
made regarding it in the chronicles, it is clear that an extraordinary
struggle now took place about the person of the Emperor. The
antagonists were Poppæa and Agrippina. Octavia was one of those frail,
lily-like Roman women who never struggled; Poppæa’s husband was easily
set aside. Poppæa affected coyness, and refused to have any other
than conjugal relations with Nero, while she employed all her charms
to inflame him. Agrippina fought so desperately that Roman gossip,
and Roman historians, ascribed the most infamous devices to her. In
spite of his expression of doubt, it is plain that Tacitus shares the
popular belief, which he relates, that Agrippina used to sit with her
son in loose robes when he was heated with wine, and to ride in the
same litter with him. Against this charge, however, Dio defends her
(lxi, 11). He says that one of Nero’s courtesans resembled his mother,
and that a light remark of his on that circumstance gave birth to the
libel. Poppæa would not be indisposed to encourage the story. On
the other hand, Mr. Baring-Gould attempts an untenable defence when
he speaks of Agrippina as “the poor old lady.” She was only in her
forty-second year, and was a woman of great beauty and little scruple.
Whatever arts Agrippina employed in the struggle, she rapidly lost
ground before so formidable a rival, and Poppæa incited Nero against
her. He harassed her with lawsuits when she was in Rome, and sent men
to insult her when she withdrew to her villa in the country. Before
long Agrippina became sensible that her struggle for power had passed
into the appalling experience of a struggle for life against her own
son. Nero made several attempts to poison her, but she was on her guard
against this familiar weapon. It is said that she had an antidote
compounded of walnuts, figs, rue, and salt. Then a freedman in Nero’s
suite suggested a more insidious scheme. Her country house was in
repair, and Anicetus directed the workmen to saw through the heavy
timber over her bed, so that the room would collapse when she went to
rest. Agrippina was warned, however, and the plot was defeated.
By the early spring of the year 59 Nero had fallen into a mood of the
most sombre and bitter dejection. Poppæa continued to taunt him with
his dependence on his mother, and to display her maddening charms just
beyond the range of his eager arms. The better citizens of Rome, on
the other hand, now perceived his horrible design, and watched the
struggle with anxiety. As he sat at the theatre one day in this mood,
his attention was caught by one of the elaborate mechanical spectacles
which were often put on the stage at the time. A ship sailed into view
of the spectators, fell into pieces, and disgorged a number of wild
beasts upon the stage. Nero asked Anicetus, who was a skilful mechanic,
whether he could build a ship that would thus fall to pieces on the
water at a given moment. The man promised to do so, and Nero went down
to the coast in more cheerful temper.
It was the month of March, when wealthy Romans were wont to forsake
the city for the marble villas which shone in the spring sun on the
flowered hills about the northern corner of the Bay of Naples. The
season began with the festival of Minerva on March 19th. With some
surprise and suspicion, Agrippina, who had gone down to her villa,
received an affectionate invitation to join her son at Baiæ for the
celebration; and she heard from other quarters that he had announced
a desire to be reconciled with her. She went on board the Liburnian
galley which lay off the gardens of her villa at Antium, and sailed to
Baiæ. Nero met her in the Imperial galley, kissed her affectionately,
and invited her to a banquet which his friend Otho, the husband of
Poppæa, would give that night in honour of their reconciliation. She
consented, but it is clear that she wavered between her consciousness
of the utter unscrupulousness of her son and the bright vision of a
return to happiness which he held before her.
When the hour came for going, she was told that her galley had met with
an accident, but that a superb gilded galley, with sails of silk and a
military guard on board, had been sent as a love-gift from her son in
commemoration of their restored affection. She gazed with suspicion on
the beautiful object, as it lay mirrored in the waters of the little
haven, and decided to go overland, on a litter, to Otho’s villa. But
the amiable behaviour of Nero at the banquet dispelled the last shade
of her suspicion. In the joy which his caresses and his well-feigned
affection gave her, she did not notice the passing of the hours until
midnight, when she rose to go. The beautiful ship with the gilded
flanks and the silken sails awaited her once more, and this time she
embarked on it. Nero kissed her eyes and her hands, put his arms about
her and pressed her to his bosom, held her while he gave a last long
look into her eyes, and then--abandoned her to the murderer Anicetus.
The galley shot out over the smooth scented waters under a canopy
of brilliant stars. Agrippina sat in her cabin, in the soft spring
air, and talked about the happy future with her one male attendant,
Crepereius Gallus, and her one maid, Acerronia Pollia. And suddenly, as
they reached the deep water, there was an ugly crack, and the roof of
the cabin fell on them. Gallus was killed outright, but the two women
were saved, as the stout walls failed to collapse, and there was some
misunderstanding among the crew in the dark. The maid rushed to the
deck calling for aid for the Empress--others say that she represented
herself as the Empress--and was slain. Agrippina listened with terror
to the crash of timber and the rush of armed men, and realized the
treachery of her son. Still she did not court death. She dropped
quietly over the side, and swam toward the distant shore. Her strength
gradually failed, and she was about to abandon the awful struggle, when
some men who were fishing by night picked her up and took her ashore.
Wounded by the falling timbers, exhausted by the struggle, stricken
to the heart by the brutality of her son, she nevertheless rallied
at once, and devised a fresh plan. She calmly sent a message to Nero
that, by the favour of the gods, she had survived the wreck of the
galley which he had given her, but requested that he would not come to
visit her until her wound was healed. Without a word to her attendants
about the horrible plot, she ordered the remedies for her condition,
and trusted that Nero would repent. Through the remaining hours of
the night she lay on her couch, with one maid in attendance, her room
feebly lit by a single light. The whole country without was alive with
men. The shore was lit up with their torches, and they gathered about
the house to express their joy that Agrippina had escaped shipwreck on
the very night of so auspicious a reconciliation. As the first light
of dawn broke on the encircling hills, Anicetus and his men entered
the house with Nero’s reply. She read something of its tenor in their
faces, and said to their leader: “Hast thou come to visit me? Then tell
my son that I have recovered. Hast thou come to slay me? Then I say it
is not my son who sent thee.” A sailor struck her over the head with a
stick, and she saw that the end had come. Tearing aside her loose robe,
and baring her white body to the men, she said sadly: “Strike here,
Anicetus, for it was here that Nero was born.” She fell dead under a
shower of blows.
Nero had heard that his mother had escaped. Dreading that she might
stir into flame the resentment of Rome, he called a council of his
friends. Seneca is said to have been silent, Burrus indignant. At that
moment Agrippina’s chamberlain entered with her message. In a flash of
cunning Anicetus threw a sword at his feet, and pretended that he had
been sent by Agrippina to kill Nero. The Emperor accepted the sordid
pretext, and, as Burrus bluntly refused to send his soldiers to execute
her, Anicetus gladly charged himself with the task. He was appointed
admiral of one of the fleets for his services. It is even recorded,
though details like this must always be regarded with reserve, that
when the servants bore their mistress’s body to the garden, and
stripped it for the pile, Nero stood by and said, jeeringly: “I had no
idea she was so handsome.”
A report was issued, and a formal announcement made to the Senate,
that Agrippina had attempted the Emperor’s life, and that, when
Nero sent men to arrest her, she took her own life. And the Senate
licked the feet of Nero, decreed games and festivals in gratitude
for his preservation, and led the enthusiasm of the people. So well
known was the murder that an actor referred mockingly to it in the
theatre. “Farewell, my father,” he said, eating a mushroom--“Farewell,
mother,” he added, imitating the action of a swimmer. The common folk
repeated numbers of these grim jokes. But they enjoyed the games of
thanksgiving, and Senators and nobles took part in them on the stage
and in the arena, and Rome sank swiftly into the terrible degradation
of Nero’s later reign, which will occupy us in the next chapter.
It is hardly necessary to add a summary estimate of Agrippina’s
character. In the view of Stahr and Baring-Gould and a few other recent
writers, she was “queenly, honourable, and pure,” and had only the
doubtful vices of ambition and pride. For Tacitus and the other Latin
writers she was capable of any enormity, and guilty of most. It will
be seen that I hold an intermediate view. She was a woman of great
distinction, ability, and strength. Had she lived in an age when virtue
was not inexpedient, she would have been an illustrious and virtuous
queen. But she had to struggle to obtain and retain power in an age
when a new and more intellectual moral standard was replacing an older
and more instinctive standard, and, where it seemed profitable, she
availed herself of the moral scepticism which such a change always
engenders. She was queenly, but she was not entirely honourable, and
she was almost certainly not pure. But she served Rome well, and left
it happy and prosperous; and her unselfish passion for the advancement
of her son, her chivalrous and fatal defence of his injured wife, and
the bravery with which she met his unspeakable brutality, do much to
outweigh her evil deeds in the scale of Osiris.
CHAPTER VI
THE WIVES OF NERO
Nero was no longer “the young Apollo” of his boyhood. Unbridled
dissipation and precocious crime had made their impress on body no
less than on mind. He was a little above the average height, but his
prematurely swollen paunch was poorly balanced on his slender and
ungraceful limbs, and his skin was blotched and repellent. The dull
grey eyes betrayed his unceasing indulgence, and the yellow hair,
dressed in stages of short curls, framed a face that was certainly no
longer handsome. His mind was in unmistakable disorder. Our kindly age
would invoke this mental trouble in extenuation of the brutal crimes he
had committed and the stupendous folly he is about to perpetrate. Were
this a biography of the Emperors, we might boldly essay to prove rather
that the insanity followed the matricide, but that does not concern us.
He was, as yet, only in his twenty-second year.
To this precocious monstrosity of vice and crime was mated one of the
gentlest young matrons of the Cæsarean house, Octavia, the daughter
of Claudius and Messalina. Married at the very early age of thirteen
to Nero, her timid girlish nature was paralyzed by the coarse habits
of her husband, and she merely hovers about the stage, like a dimly
perceptible shadow, during the earlier part of Nero’s reign. It must
have been shortly after their marriage that Nero disdained her for
the beautiful Greek slave, Acte, to whom he was more constant than
to any other living thing, and who, in return, paid the last tribute
to his despised remains. At first one of Nero’s associates screened
the entanglement, but, as we saw, it became known in the palace, and
Agrippina made a fruitless effort to press the rights of his girl-wife.
The injustice was, however, one that Roman ladies were not unaccustomed
to bear. Nero soon fell into more disreputable ways. Octavia would see
him leave the palace after supper with his wild companions, and needed
little effort of imagination to follow his course when he returned,
in the early morning, with torn garments and flushed, if not bruised,
features and, occasionally, the painted signs that he had wrenched from
shop-doors, or the cups he had stolen in a raid upon some low tavern.
He had gathered about him a band of older youths, who encouraged him
in the licentious use of his power, and endeared themselves to him by
the fertility of their imaginations. Chief among them was Salvius Otho,
a young noble of Etruscan descent, five years older than Nero--the
Emperor Otho of a later date. He had entered the palace in virtue
of an amorous relation with one of Agrippina’s ladies, and his wide
knowledge of adolescent amusements won him the regard of Nero, whom he
led into the wildest adventures. They would wander at night through the
streets, and revel in the taverns and brothels of the popular quarters
of the city, the mysterious dim-lit valleys on which patrician maidens
looked down from the mansions on the hills. In those centres of nightly
disorder Nero and his companions were the most daring Mohocks, if we
may use a phrase that belongs to later history. They violated women and
boys, and played the most brutal pranks upon unarmed folk. One night
Nero was severely thrashed by a Senator, whose wife he had insulted.
The man learned afterwards that it was the Emperor whom he had beaten,
and went to the palace to apologize. Nero forced him to atone with his
life for the injury he had done to the Imperial dignity. He withdrew
the guards from the Circus, in order that he might enjoy the fights of
the rival factions, and from the Milvian Bridge, at night, so as to
give complete liberty to vice in that nocturnal resort.
The chaste and trembling Octavia, who was still only in her sixteenth
year, shrank from his brutal disdain. It was enough for her to have the
title of Empress, he said to his mother, when she urged the rights of
Octavia. Presently Nero declared that he would divorce her, and marry
the handsome Greek girl, but Seneca and Burrus succeeded in preventing
him. To check his disorders entirely they were quite powerless, and
they seem to have thought it better to direct, than to resist, his
vices. Suddenly, however, in the year 58, Nero transferred his passion
to the daughter of Poppæa Sabina, and began the long, tragic struggle
to secure her as his Empress.
Poppæa, who will be the next figure in our gallery of Roman Empresses,
and therefore may at once be introduced, was one of the prettiest,
vainest, and most discussed ladies in Rome. Her mother, with whom
we are already acquainted as one of Messalina’s victims, had been
the daughter of a very wealthy and illustrious provincial governor,
Poppæus Sabinus. Poppæa’s father, Titus Ollius, had been a friend of
Sejanus, and had been swept away in the flood of Tiberius’s anger.
She was, therefore, of mature years, but she had protected her charms
so industriously that she still had the soft beauty and the fresh
complexion of a girl. She had inherited also the wealth, the wit,
and--it is said--the easy morals of her mother. The pretence of
modesty which she made, by wearing a veil whenever she went abroad,
was redeemed by the splendour of her establishment and the elaborate
culture of her fair skin and pretty face. The mules which drew the
litter of the veiled lady were shod with gold, and the traces of their
harness were woven from gold thread. When she moved to her country
house, or to Baiæ, five hundred she-asses ran in the train of her
litter and cars, to provide the milk for her daily bath. If we may
trust the busts to which her name is attached, she had a childish grace
and delicacy of feature, instead of the tense face of the adventuress;
and we know that her amber-coloured hair was so much admired that it
set, or revived, a fashion in amber.
She had married a knight, Rufus Crispinus, by whom she had had a son.
This marriage was ended by divorce, and she became the wife of Nero’s
favourite, Salvius Otho. It is suggested, and not difficult to believe,
that she had married Otho on account of his intimacy with the Emperor.
He was by no means handsome, though he covered his baldness with a
wig, dressed sumptuously, and had wealth, wit, and taste for art. From
him Nero heard, over their cups, the piquant story of Poppæa’s beauty
and luxury, and it was not long before Imperial messengers were sent
to her mansion. They were not admitted, and even Nero, when he sought
entrance, was coyly reminded that Poppæa was married, and was devoted
to her husband. After a stormy siege she gracefully capitulated so far
as to receive innocent visits from Nero, and inflame him to madness
with the display of her cultivated beauty. He spoke bitterly of his
mother as an obstacle in the way of their marriage. Poppæa twitted him
with his dependence on her, and we have seen the outcome.
When Agrippina had been removed, Nero proposed at once to divorce
Octavia and wed Poppæa. The silence of Seneca at all these critical
points in the degradation of Nero is painful to every admirer of the
distinguished moralist. It was the less courtly and less virtuous
Burrus who defended the young Empress. If Nero abandoned Octavia, he
brusquely said, he must also give up her dowry--the throne--and Burrus
was too generally respected to be flouted. Octavia therefore remained
in her lonely chamber at the palace, a helpless witness of the vices of
her husband.
For a month or two after the murder of Agrippina he behaved as one
stricken with a wild and haunting remorse. He went feverishly from
place to place, and gathered about him a band of magicians and
charlatans. He feared to go to Rome until he was assured that Rome
was rejoicing at his escape from his mother’s plot. Few pages in the
story of that degenerate city are sadder than that which records
the reception, in the month of May, of the Imperial matricide. The
Senators and their families, dressed in their gayest robes, hurried
out along the Appian Way to meet him, and his route was lined deep
with cheering crowds. He rewarded them royally. Five or six theatres
opened their doors, day after day, to the degraded citizens. New
things--things that had never before been seen in the whole history
of the city--were provided for their entertainment. Men and women of
the highest rank played the most lascivious parts of the mimes on the
public stage, and drove their chariots in the public circus. Nero was
a champion of the “green” faction, and pitted his royal skill daily in
the circus against the charioteers of the other factions. He sang in
the theatre, and organized a band of five thousand handsome youths,
in splendid costumes, to lead the applause, and shower upon him his
favourite epithet of “Apollo.” He even ventured to win praise in the
amphitheatre, but the one young lion which he vanquished had been
prudently gorged and stupefied before he encountered it. He announced
that his skill might be hired for private banquets, and nobles paid
him a million sesterces for his services. Apollo, he reflected, had
no beard in Greek statuary, so he shaved his beard, and the handful
of yellow hair was enclosed in a golden casket studded with pearls,
and carried in solemn procession to the Capitol. In the mighty
rejoicing over this complete assimilation to Apollo of the tun-bellied,
lanky-legged, half-crazy youth, it is recorded that a noble dame in her
eightieth year danced on the stage in the theatre. The descendants of
the greatest Roman families voluntarily entered the base ranks of the
comedian and the charioteer.
Mr. Henderson is reluctant to admit, in his study of Nero, that he was
insane. It would, no doubt, puzzle the most penetrating psychologist to
assign the respective portions of guilt and of irresponsible disorder
in his conduct; but that there was mental disorder it is at once more
natural and more charitable to assume. In any case, a year or so of
this delirious life wore out his robust frame, and a serious illness
suspended for a time the disgraceful performances. Unfortunately, when
he recovered, he lost the one man who had had some power to restrain
him, and sufficient honesty to use it. Burrus died in the year 62, and
at the same time the slender influence of Seneca was destroyed. This
is no place to discuss the difficult and delicate problem of Seneca’s
conduct in his association with Nero. Enough to say that he was now
accused of conspiracy, and, although he successfully defended himself,
he ceased to have any power at the palace.
It was now possible for Nero to rid himself of the pale young prude,
who shrank in her apartments, and there were men enough to devise
the procedure. Salvius Otho had already been sent to a remote part
of the Empire, and his place had been taken by a horse-dealer, named
Tigellinus, of little culture and even less character. With this new
favourite Poppæa entered into alliance, and the young Empress presently
found herself accused, with brutal levity, of adultery with Eucer,
an Alexandrian slave and musician, and of covering her shame by the
crime of abortion. Tigellinus easily obtained witnesses, but most of
Octavia’s servants refused, even under torture, to belie the virtue of
their gentle mistress. The coarseness of Tigellinus had carried him too
far, and public feeling was strongly aroused in her favour. Nero fell
back upon the ground of her childlessness, of which he could probably
have furnished a simple explanation, and divorced her. In deference to
the sentiment of Rome, he at first gave her the house of Burrus and
the fortune of a noble whom he had executed. A little later, however,
probably under pressure from Poppæa, he banished her to Campania. He
had married Poppæa a fortnight after the divorce of Octavia.
But the flagrant outrage quickened the better feeling that Rome had
not yet entirely lost, and Nero was forced to recall her. To the deep
mortification of Poppæa, the crowds invaded the outer court of the
palace, crying the name of Octavia. They removed the statues of the
new Empress from the temples and public places, and restored to their
positions, and crowned with flowers, the discarded statues of Octavia.
Poppæa angrily pressed Nero to assert his power, and the resourceful
Anicetus, the murderer of Agrippina, was summoned to Rome. Bolder
even than Tigellinus, he swore that he himself had had commerce with
Octavia, and, after a pretence of trial, she was banished to Sardinia.
Poppæa was not yet content, and Nero next announced that Octavia had
been detected in an attempt to corrupt the commander of the fleet. She
was taken to the rock-island of Pandateria that had already witnessed
tragedies.
The good feeling of Rome seems by this time to have been exhausted, and
Octavia was lazily surrendered to the brutal band who now surrounded
Nero. There is a peculiar melancholy in the closing of that frail and
innocent career. Rough soldiers seize the timid form, carry her to the
bath, bind her limbs, and open her veins. Timid and shrinking to the
end, the young girl--even now she is only in her twentieth year--starts
back with horror from the great darkness, and piteously implores them
to spare her life. She faints, and the flow of her blood is arrested.
The last pretence of pity is tossed aside, and she is stifled in the
vapour-bath.
Poppæa, Tacitus says, sent for her head. It is difficult to decide
whether the frequent repetition of this horrible detail in the
chronicles increases or lessens its credulity. But we can have no
hesitation in believing Tacitus when he says that the Senate ordered
services of thanksgiving in the temples for this fresh preservation of
the life of the Emperor.
Another Empress had stepped in blood to the throne, and was in turn
to stain it with her blood after a few years of imperial folly. We
have seen what type of woman it was whom Nero put in the place of
Octavia. Wealthy, coquettish, and beautiful, Poppæa saw in life only
a sunny path for the pursuit of butterflies. When she is represented
to us as licentious we must remember that no definite scandal attaches
to her name, and that she is actually described as “pious” by no
less an authority than the Jewish historian Josephus. In fact this
circumstance, and a peculiar feature of the disposal of her body, which
we will consider, gave birth to a speculation in early times that she
had become a Christian. Serviez finds the story of her conversion by
St. Paul, and subsequent “return to her abominations,” too piquant to
admit of doubt. But the conversion is even more disputable than the
abominations. It is now much disputed among our leading divines whether
St. Paul ever visited Rome, and there is a simpler explanation of the
phrase used by Josephus. The Roman governor of Judæa--the biblical
Felix, a brother of Agrippina’s favourite, Pallas--had dealt harshly
with the Jews, and sent some of their priests in chains to Rome.
Josephus and others went to intercede for them, and luckily met a
Jewish comedian who was in the favour of Poppæa and Nero. The historian
was received with distinction at the palace, and was so successful in
his suit that he might well ascribe piety to Poppæa. We may agree that
the incident probably argues some culture on her part. But we shall
discover her later in conduct that makes it undesirable to count her as
a disciple of St. Paul.
Before the end of the year Poppæa presented Nero with a daughter, and
a few weeks of wild rejoicing restored her to general favour, and
obliterated the memory of Octavia. The title of “Augusta” was, in an
excess of flattery, bestowed upon both the mother and the infant.
Senators raced each other to the Imperial villa at Antium, to express
their joy at this substantial promise of a continuance of the Cæsarean
house which had dragged them in the mire. The whole of Italy was lit up
with rejoicing. Poppæa felt that her position was at last secure. And
then, by one of those dread changes which were almost as common in the
life of Rome as in the tragedies of Greece, and made men assume that
there was a stern and mighty fate behind their puny and indulgent
gods, the storm broke over Italy once more. The child withered and
died, and Nero’s mind fell once more into dark disorder. He glanced
round with insane suspicion for possible aspirants to the throne, and
Poppæa’s remaining son was the first victim. One day he saw her boy
(by her former husband) playing at being emperor in his games with the
other children. In a few days Poppæa heard that the boy had lost his
life while fishing. Many another execution was ordered with the same
levity.
[Illustration: OCTAVIA
PORPHYRY BUST IN THE LOUVRE]
As before, these terrible deeds were mingled with the most splendid
and the most licentious entertainments. Noble dames of the highest
rank wrestled and fought in the amphitheatre before the frivolous
crowds; the city abounded in schools where the nobility learned to
ape the Emperor’s folly, and contribute to the gaiety of Rome with
the flute, the zither, or the dance. Nero conceived a new idea, and
pursued it with zeal. He would contest the crown with the artists of
Greece. Poppæa saw him training in the palace, lying for hours with
heavy plates of lead on his chest, restricting himself to a diet of
leeks and oil. She saw him exhibit his skill in the theatre, lifting
up his blotched and swollen body, in extraordinary contortions, on his
thin legs, as he strained after the high notes. Woe to the man who
openly laughed, or who excelled him! One of his masters was put to
death because Nero perceived that he could not equal the man. At last
his training was complete, and Rome sighed with relief as the thousand
carts, drawn by silver-shod mules, and the five thousand youths of
the Augustan band, set out for the coast. They gratified Naples with
a show as they passed through. For several days Nero kept the amazed
citizens in the theatre, and took his meals in the orchestra, so as to
lose no time. Then came the inevitable epilepsy; and it was announced
that Nero, perceiving the grief of his subjects at the prospect of his
departure, had postponed the Grecian tour.
On his return to comparative health, and to Rome, he once more
kept the citizens agog with alternate bursts of frantic dissipation
and sanguinary melancholy. From the death of her child until her
own violent end, two years later, Poppæa appears very little in the
chronicles; but, as we shall see that, willing or unwilling, she
supported her husband in his bloody crimes, we may assume that she
joined him in his less criminal orgies. One instance will suffice. He
ordered that a banquet should be given on a raft, on the large sheet
of water known as Lake Agrippa. When the citizens crowded to the shore
on the appointed evening, they found the great raft towed by vessels
plated with ivory and gold, manned by youths who had won distinction
in infamy. Round the shore taverns, brothels, and dining-rooms had
been erected. And when the night fell, and the beautiful scene was
lit by the light of innumerable torches, the public found that women
of the highest rank were no less accessible to them than prostitutes
in the houses by the lake, and the slave was at liberty to embrace
his mistress under the eye of her husband. Nero even outdistanced
Caligula in the Imperial teaching of vice. In the garb of a bride, he
went through the religious ceremony of marriage with a man of base
character, named Pythagoras. He had nude children fastened to stakes,
and rushed upon them fittingly clad in the skin of a wild beast.
And round the frontiers of that vast Empire, which the strength and
sobriety of his ancestors had created, the weary soldiers watched the
barbarians who prepared to invade it.
It was about this time that the great fire occurred which turned the
laughter of Nero’s subjects into resentment. For six days and seven
nights the flames ate their way through the blocks of tall tenements,
divided only by narrow streets, in the parching heat of July. Nero was
in the provinces at the time, and from the conflicting accounts it is
impossible to pass an opinion on the rumour that he had ordered the
burning of Rome. Dio gives us the familiar picture of Nero twanging
his zither, and chanting the “Fall of Troy” from the summit of a high
tower on the hill. Others declare, however, that he at once ordered
the most expedient methods for checking the conflagration. But it was
angrily whispered among the camps of the homeless that men had been
seen throwing torches upon their houses, and that they were acting
under orders from the palace. Nor were the citizens appeased when he
threw the blame on the obscure and unpopular devotees who went by the
name of Christians, and afforded them the brutal spectacle of driving
round the circus to the light of burning men and women, whose living
bodies had been wrapped in tow and soaked in wax and tar. Few believed
in their guilt. Even Seneca at length broke his casuistic or diplomatic
reserve, and retired in disgust from Rome. Nero went down in great
dejection to Baiæ, leaving orders that, in the restoration of the city,
a new palace should be built for him that should transcend anything
within the memory of Rome or of history.
This “golden house,” which Nero raised round the more modest palaces of
his predecessors, gave a fresh grievance to discontent. The great and
unselfish Octavian had been satisfied with a small patrician mansion;
Tiberius had built a palace; Caligula had enlarged it; Nero flung out
its wings over a vast space. It seemed that Emperors squandered the
money of the State in proportion to their uselessness. The colossal
edifice and its wonderful park stretched from the Palatine to the
Esquiline, across the intervening valley, and was surrounded by a
triple colonnade in marble. Citizens huddled in the crowded blocks
of the Subura and the Velabrum, while Nero created a miniature world
within his marble girdle. There was a great lake, filled with salt
water from Ostia, with a small town on its shore; there were vineyards,
cornfields, groves in which wild beasts ran loose, fountains, and
gardens. The palace itself was of such proportions that a statue of
Nero one hundred and twenty feet high could be conveniently lodged in
its porch. Some of the rooms were plated with gold and adorned with
precious stones. The supper-room had a ceiling of ivory, with openings
through which flowers and costly perfumes might be shed upon the
guests. The Egyptian roses whose beauty withered in one banquet in this
chamber had a value of £35,000 in our coinage.
There now dawned on Rome some consciousness of the price that the
Empire was paying for the stupendous folly it had so long applauded.
While the treasury was being exhausted in entertainments that all could
enjoy, the murmuring was confined to the sober few. From the moment
when this colossal symbol of Nero’s selfishness towered above the city,
the murmurs became audible and were multiplied. Nero, alarmed at the
sullen looks and the vague reports of plots, went down angrily to the
coast. Then a slave brought a definite accusation of conspiracy against
his master, and the stream of blood began to flow.
It is an unhappy fact, and one that confirms the darker view of
Poppæa’s character, that almost the only detail related of her in the
chronicles, after the death of her child, is that she was one of the
council of three who directed this horrible series of executions. Nero
would not trust the ordinary procedure of Roman justice. With Poppæa
and Tigellinus as associate-judges, he himself examined, or endorsed,
every charge that cupidity or malignity brought to the palace. Rome was
reddened for weeks with torture, murder, and suicide. Students of the
decay of Rome have, perhaps, not sufficiently appreciated the effect of
this periodic effusion of the best blood in the city. In the earlier
wars, both civil and foreign, the good and the base alike had fallen.
In these inquisitions for conspiracy, which fill Rome with mourning
time after time from the death of Octavian to the accession of Trajan,
it is chiefly the men and women of honour who suffer. They constitute a
natural selection of the cowardly and the sycophantic.
The city “teemed with funerals,” in the terse phrase of Tacitus, and
the gatherings of its citizens were black with mourning. Large numbers
of officers and patricians were executed or driven to suicide, and
their children were scourged or banished to the provinces. Seneca paid
the penalty of his tardy outspokenness, and his admirable end sustains
our trust that his character may, in spite of our unconquerable
hesitations, have been not inconsistent with his high creed. He and his
wife, who nobly asked permission to quit the world with him, had their
veins opened, and Seneca passed into the silence with quiet dignity;
his wife was, to her regret, recalled to life by the soldiers.
Poppæa did not live to share the punishment which these crimes brought
upon Nero. Her end came more swiftly and in more terrible form. The
carnage had been interrupted by a fresh outburst of rejoicing. A man
declared to Nero that he knew where the fabulous treasures of the
Carthaginian queen Dido, which Vergil had so recently sung in the
“Æneid,” were buried. A fleet was sent to Africa to recover them,
and from his sombre brooding Nero passed into a new fit of prodigal
entertaining. He emptied the last depths of his treasury in spectacles
and donations. When the fleet returned at length without a single cup
or coin, his anger stormed with ungovernable fury, and one day, when
Poppæa expostulated with him, he kicked her in the abdomen. The outrage
proved fatal, as she was pregnant, and Nero’s light mind turned from
rage to the most extravagant lamentation. Her body was not burned, as
was usual at Rome, but embalmed, and vast quantities of rare perfumes
were sacrificed on the funeral pile. This peculiarity of her funeral
has been thought to strengthen the interesting legend of her conversion
to Christianity. It was more probably due to Nero’s frenzied desire to
give a unique burial to so unique a goddess, as the Senate declared her
to be. It is unthinkable that Nero should make such a concession to
Christian ideas, even if she had shared them in any measure, and her
life does not dispose us to claim that honour for her. The legend has
no foundation in history, and the early Church may easily be relieved
of the stain of having counted Poppæa among its adherents.
It is not our place to pursue the insanity of the Emperor through
all the forms it assumed after the death of Poppæa, but he took a
third wife, whom Mr. Baring-Gould seems to have overlooked, and we
must briefly relate the story of her experience. Immediately after the
death of Poppæa Nero took a consort whom the pen almost shrinks from
describing. It seemed to him that he discovered a resemblance to his
beloved Poppæa in one of his freedmen, Sporus. The man was entrusted to
the surgeons for a loathsome operation, and then solemnly married to
the Emperor. Dressed in the Empress’s robes and jewels, he travelled in
Nero’s litter, and was publicly kissed and caressed by him.
This abominable comedy soon lost its interest, and Nero decided to
marry Octavia’s sister, Antonia. Recollecting the recent fate of her
sister, she boldly refused, and she was put to death on a charge
of aspiring to the throne. Nero then chose Statilia Messalina, the
granddaughter of a distinguished and wealthy Senator who had been
driven to take his own life under Agrippina. The last part of the
“Annals” of Tacitus, which would cover this date, is missing, and if we
are to believe the less reputable chroniclers, Messalina had already
been familiar with Nero, and had married, as her third husband, one of
his close companions in debauch, Atticus Vestinus. She is described as
beautiful, witty, wealthy, and lax; but the description is applied to
so large a proportion of the ladies of the time that it gives little
aid to the imagination. From some later details we shall conclude
that she had more culture, and probably more character, than most of
the courtly ladies of Nero’s time. One is disposed to think that she
married Nero on the maxim, literally interpreted, that it is better
to be married than burned. Her husband was one night entertaining his
friends when soldiers from the palace entered the room. They took him
to his bath, opened his veins, and let him bleed to death; and Statilia
Messalina became the tenth Empress of Rome.
[Illustration: POPPÆA
BUST IN THE CAPITOLINE MUSEUM, ROME]
There is every reason to believe that she shrank, with prudence,
from the executions and entertainments which again proceeded with
ghastly alternation. Her five predecessors had been murdered; the
preceding lady of Nero’s choice had been murdered; and she had herself
been divorced by murder. Messalina seems to have concentrated her
resources upon remaining alive, until a last and most just murder
should release her from her odious connexion. Men were wearying even
of Nero’s ridiculous performances, and were stung by his cruelty. He
put soldiers amongst his audience, to note the absent and detect the
scoffer, so that his festivals became an affliction. Men were driven
to the subterfuge of shamming death, and being borne out by their
slaves, to avoid the exacting part of admiring spectators. Nero swore
that he would exterminate the whole senatorial order; it is the most
honourable mention we find of them in the chronicles for many decades.
To their relief he now announced that he would proceed with his Greek
tour. The silver-shod mules and the gay regiment of the Augustans were
set in motion, Nero’s hair was permitted to attain an artistic length
and negligence, and the comedy was transferred for a time to the land
of Aristophanes. How he won every prize for which he competed, how he
plundered the temples and the mansions of the Greeks, how his retinue
passed like a flight of locusts over the helpless province, must be
read elsewhere. After some eighteen months he was recalled to Italy by
grave tidings.
It has been impossible to refrain from speaking in accents of disdain
of the way in which Rome had silently witnessed, or joyously acclaimed,
the successive follies of Nero, but, as I have previously noticed, it
was in a peculiarly difficult situation. The Prætorian Guards were
an army of twenty thousand disciplined soldiers, and were paid for
personal service to the ruling house, and blind to any other interest
than their own. They kept an irresistible check upon every impulse to
rebel. That there were such impulses, and probably some attempt to
seduce the Guards, the unfailing stream of blood at Rome justifies us
in believing. The hope of the Empire was in the more sober and more
industrious provinces, and it was here that the revolt began. The
leader of the troops in Gaul, Vindex, entered into correspondence with
the troops in Spain. The Spanish commander, Servius Sulpicius Galba,
was a Roman of illustrious family, venerable age, and stern character.
Nero had heard that the purple had been offered to Galba, and that the
legions of Gaul and Spain were preparing to advance on Italy.
On his return to Italy, however, Nero hears that the German legions are
advancing against those of Gaul, and that Galba is hesitating. He gaily
resumes his follies, and is deaf to political exhortations. At last a
manifesto is put into his hands, in which Vindex refers to him as a
“miserable player,” and the insult to his art cuts deeply. He writes
to the Senate to demand redress, and sets out for Rome. Nothing in the
whole of his extraordinary career is so tragi-comic as this penultimate
scene. Clothed in a mantle of purple embroidered with gold stars,
wearing the Olympian chaplet on his head, he enters Rome as the god
of art. Servants bear before him the 1,800 crowns or chaplets he has
won in Greece; the five thousand Augustans march behind his chariot.
A sacrifice is made to Apollo, and the games resume their familiar
course. Then Nero is told that, though Vindex has committed suicide,
the German and other legions have joined Galba, and the fire of revolt
is spreading round the Empire. He announces that he will advance on
Gaul. The ladies of his harem, who form a fair regiment, have their
hair cut short, and, with toy shields and other theatrical properties,
masquerade as Amazons.
The last scene is brief and inevitable. Galba is marching on Rome,
the Prætorian guards have been won for him, the nobles find it
safe to desert Nero. The nerveless brute whimpers and weeps in his
helplessness. He will fly to Alexandria, and earn his living as a
musician. The great “golden house” is silent and deserted. Rome is
openly deriding him. His servants have fled; one has even stolen the
box in which he kept poison for such an emergency. The faithful Acte,
Sporus, and a very few of those who fed on his folly, remain with him.
Messalina has deserted him, and will appear later as the friend of one
of his successors.
In the great silent house, with its walls of gold and its ceilings of
ivory, he puts off the purple robes and clothes himself in an old shirt
and a ragged cloak. On a miserable horse he rides with them across the
vast deserted park, and makes for the house of one of his dependents, a
few miles from Rome. There they admit him by a hole they have made in
the wall, give him black bread and water, and cover him with a blanket.
They discuss the situation, and conclude by offering him a dagger.
He shrinks, like Julia, like Messalina, from the horrible darkness,
and vainly strains his eyes for a ray of hope. At last they hear the
clatter of cavalry on the road, and Nero feebly points the dagger
at his breast, for a servant to drive home. And when the customary
cremation is over, there are none but Acte and a faithful old nurse to
lay the degraded ashes in the tomb.
So the tenth Empress of Rome laid down her brief dignity. Statilia
Messalina had had little reason to follow Nero in his humiliation.
Whether the charge of laxity that is brought against her be true or
no, she was a woman of exceptional intelligence and culture, and
had probably only married Nero out of fear. We meet her again, at a
later stage, in the chronicles. After Galba’s short hour of supremacy
we shall find an equally short reign of Salvius Otho, the man who
once pillaged taverns with Nero in the Subura. Provincial government
had sobered him, and he wrote affectionate letters to Messalina. He
would, no doubt, have made her Empress once more if he had lived, but
the throne was wrested from him, and Messalina retired to the calmer
world of letters and rhetoric. Our last glimpse of her discovers
her delivering orations of great eloquence and learning among the
intellectual ladies of Rome.
CHAPTER VII
THE EMPRESSES OF THE TRANSITION
The house of Cæsar had perished with Nero, and few sober folk can have
regretted that it had no living representative to win the fancy of the
frivolous people or the blind cupidity of the Guards. There must have
been men living in Rome who had witnessed the whole of that appalling
degradation, so swift it had been. The Cæsars had sunk in little over
forty years from the sobriety of Octavian to the insanity of Nero;
their consorts had fallen from the strong standard of Livia to the
insipidity of Poppæa; the resources of the Empire had been squandered
in spectacles that had left its people nerveless and debauched; the old
Roman ideal of character had been almost obliterated in the Imperial
city. It was our concern to see what part the Empresses played in this
lamentable history of four decades. It is, on the whole, one that their
biographer must blush to acknowledge. We must remember, however, that
corrupt rulers would necessarily choose weak or corrupt wives, and we
cannot affect surprise or disappointment when we find them floating in
the swift current.
We have now to open a new and more attractive gallery of Imperial
portraits, to pass in review the wives of those great Emperors who
restored the high character of Rome and strengthened anew the fabric
of the Empire. A very brief summary of events will suffice to link the
Cæsars with the Antonines, and introduce to us one or two curious types
of Empresses who dimly figure in the transition.
For a year after the fall of Statilia Messalina the throne of the
Empress was vacant, and that of the Emperor had three successive
occupants. Galba was a widower at the time of his elevation to the
throne. We saw in an earlier chapter that Agrippina had wished to marry
him twenty-six years earlier, and he had refused. His wife, Lepida, was
a delicate woman, of high character, and he refused to divorce her. She
had an energetic champion in her mother, who fought Agrippina sturdily
and, if the story be true, laid fair patrician hands on her. But Lepida
died long before her husband was made Emperor, and he refused to marry
again. His reign was brief. Tradition has blamed him for an excessive
sternness and parsimony. They were not inopportune vices, but Rome had
been too long habituated to indulgence, and Galba was too confident.
The discontent at Rome was inflamed by the news of the revolt in the
provinces, and within a few weeks the Guards, to whom he had refused
the customary donation, set up a new Emperor, and put Galba to death.
The new ruler was no other than the first husband of Poppæa, the
companion of Nero’s revels, Salvius Otho. Rome acclaimed the choice,
and expected that the circus and theatre were about to reopen their
doors. But Otho, who had matured during his years of office in Spain,
turned from them in disgust. He did, it is true, restore the statues of
Poppæa, and contemplated restoring the discarded statues of Nero, but
the alienation of Roman feeling from him is a proof that he intended
to rule with sobriety. The same spirit is seen in the fact that he
corresponded affectionately with Statilia Messalina, and apparently
thought of marrying her. But the legions in the provinces almost
immediately rebelled against him, and, in the midst of the struggle, he
committed suicide.
There had been no Empress of Rome for twelve months. With the death of
Otho, and the accession of Vitellius, we come to the eleventh Empress,
Galeria Fundana, a very new and incongruous type in the series of
Imperial women.
The name of Vitellius is already familiar to us. His father was the
fulsome courtier who had inspired Caligula with the idea that he was
a god, and who had worn one of Messalina’s little silk shoes under
his tunic. His wife, Sextilia, was a woman of strict morality and
unambitious temper, but their son, the younger Vitellius, lived in
too tainted an atmosphere to prefer the plainness of his mother to
the craft and greed of his father. He had learned vice in the band of
young men who brought so evil a fame on Tiberius’s villa at Capri, and
had made his way astutely through the successive reigns of Caligula,
Claudius, and Nero. He had made a considerable fortune as proconsul of
Africa, and had, on his return to Rome, married Petronia, the daughter
of a wealthy consul. She settled her large fortune on her son, and when
Vitellius, having consumed his own wealth in luxury and riot, went on
to sacrifice his son for the purpose of securing the fortune held in
his name, Petronia angrily remonstrated, and was divorced.
He then married Galeria Fundana. She was, says Tacitus, “a pattern of
virtue,” and since this defect--as Vitellius would find it--was united
with plainness of person, modesty of taste, and dull, if not defective,
conversation, the match was a singularly unhappy one. Vitellius had
so far squandered his money that he was unable to pay his expenses to
Lower Germany when Galba gave him the command of the troops there.
How he obtained that important appointment is not clear. Some say
that Galba selected him because he was not ambitious; others that he
secured it through the influence of the “blue” faction at the Circus,
of which he was a partisan. He mortgaged his house, and Sextilia sold
her jewels, to obtain funds for the journey. Fundana and her child were
left in a poor tenement at Rome, little dreaming that they would be
summoned from it to Nero’s “golden house” in a few weeks.
It is expressly recorded that Sextilia and Fundana had no ambition, and
dreaded lest Vitellius should aspire to reach the dizzy heights which
some early prophet had promised him. They were, therefore, dismayed
to hear, shortly after his arrival on the Rhine, that the troops
were offering to secure the throne for him. His genial and indulgent
treatment of the soldiers was a betrayal of his trust to the stern
Galba, and may have been deliberately effected to win their support.
He became very popular, and was hailed as a second “Germanicus.” Galba
was presently murdered, and, as the German legions had had no part in
the choice of Otho, they urged Vitellius to lead them against him.
Vitellius wavered for a time between the safe and considerable means
of self-indulgence, which he had as commander, and the uncertain,
but immeasurably greater, prospect which the throne suggested to his
sensual dreams. The officers conquered his hesitation, and he set out
for Rome in the rear of the eight legions who had declared for him.
Sextilia and Fundana seemed to be in peril when the news came to Rome
that Vitellius was marching upon the city. It is said that Vitellius
threatened reprisals if his family were injured, but there is no
indication that Otho would stoop to take a revenge on women and
children. They saw him march out at the head of his troops to give
battle to Vitellius, and waited anxiously, with all Rome, to hear the
issue of the civil war. And while Senate and people were enjoying the
mummery of the theatre, a horseman rode in with the news that Otho
had taken his own life, and Vitellius was leading his German troops
upon Rome. Senate and people united at once to receive him, and sent
him the title of Augustus. He politely declined it for the time, and
continued his leisurely march upon the city. There had been many a
triumphant march over the roads of Italy in the annals of Rome, but
never one so singular as that of the new monarch. “The roads from sea
to sea groaned with the burden of his luxuries,” says Tacitus; and, if
we distrust Tacitus, as an admirer of Vitellius’s rival and successor,
all the Roman writers agree that his first use of supreme power was
to command a stupendous ministration to his sensual appetites. He
ordered his legions to move slowly southward, while he, in their train,
exhausted each successive region of its delicacies, and filled the days
and nights with his princely feasting. His example encouraged his wild
German troops, and their line of march could be traced across Gaul and
Italy by their pillage, cruelty, and debauchery.
The repeated messages from the provinces filled Rome with laughter,
in spite of its anxiety. People remembered this princely epicure
sheltering, a few months before, in the poorer quarter of the town and
evading the duns. The modest and virtuous Sextilia and Fundana shrank
in pain from the hollow flattery which was paid them, and followed
the march of the Emperor with disgust. He was approaching Rome at
the head of sixty thousand men. Legions of tall, fierce, fur-clad
Germans, with heavy javelins, were thundering along the Italian
roads and terrifying the peasantry. In their rear was a vast army of
slaves, cooks, comedians, charioteers, and other ministers to the
Imperial appetite. He had sent for the whole of Nero’s servants and
appointments. It was said that he even intended to outrage one of the
most sacred traditions of the city by entering it in full armour, at
the head of an army with drawn swords; but the friends who met him at
the Milvian Bridge persuaded him to change his costume, and sheathe
the swords of his soldiers. He entered, in civil toga, at the head
of the terrible Germans, his officers clad in white as they bore the
eagles. After visiting the Capitol, and addressing the Senate in terms
of pleasant submissiveness to that body and of somewhat nauseating
praise of himself, he settled in Nero’s magnificent palace with Fundana
and her child. His troops, debauched with the license of their march,
scattered in disorder through the city; and Rome resigned itself to the
inauspicious rule of its eighth Emperor.
We may dismiss the nine months in which Galeria Fundana was Empress
of Rome in a phrase: she was a helpless and disgusted spectator of
the most imperial debauch that Rome had yet witnessed. Dio strangely
accuses her of haughtily complaining of the poverty of the robes she
found in Nero’s golden house, but the testimony to her modesty is
too strong for us to admit this. A more credible statement in the
chroniclers is that she begged to be allowed to retire to a humble
dwelling of her own, and Vitellius refused. His mother did not long
survive her mortification. One rumour preserved in Suetonius is that
Vitellius had her starved to death, as it was predicted that she would
outlive him; another version says that he sent her poison, at her own
request. Fundana was left alone to bewail his colossal gluttony. She
saw his chief officers encourage him in his stupefying orgies, while
they enriched themselves; and she had to submit in silence while his
sister-in-law, Triaria, “a woman of masculine fierceness,” goaded him
to continued excesses. During the few months of his reign he spent
900,000,000 sesterces (about £7,000,000) in eating, drinking, and
entertainment. He had three meals during the day, and ended with a
costly and drunken supper. His brother one day entertained him at a
banquet, at which two thousand choice fishes and seven thousand rare
birds were served. Vitellius in return gave a banquet, at which one
dish--a compound of the livers of pheasants, the tongues of flamingoes,
the brains of peacocks, the entrails of lampreys, and the roes of
mullets--cost more than the whole of his brother’s dinner.
From this loathsome and stupid dream of Imperial power Vitellius was
at length awakened by the echoes of rebellion in the provinces. After
a few futile executions, and several relapses into his besetting
gluttony, he was forced to set out for the north. He quickly returned,
however, and wandered about Rome in hysterical impotence, while the
followers of Vespasian closed upon the city. Civil war had broken out,
and the Romans gazed with horror on the sacred Capitol besieged by the
German troops and bursting into flames. At last Vitellius came out with
Fundana and her child, in mourning dress, and announced that he would
resign. The consul refused his sword, and the mournful procession
directed its steps towards his brother’s house. He was persuaded to
return to the palace, but the Vespasianists captured Rome, and he was
taken to Fundana’s house on the Aventine. From this he somehow wandered
back to the palace. “The awful silence terrified him; he tried the
closed doors, and shuddered at the empty chambers,” says Tacitus. Dazed
and incapable of flight, he hid in the sordid room where the dogs were
kept. Here the soldiers found him, torn and bleeding, and forced him
to walk the streets, while they kept his head erect with the point of
a sword, and the people flung filth and epithets at him. They then
inflicted on him a slow and painful death, and flung his remains in the
Tiber.
Fundana was spared, and her daughter honourably given in marriage, by
his magnanimous successor. From the brief and unwelcome splendour of
the “golden house” she passed into private life, and lived only to
bemoan the cruel fate that had lifted her husband to the intoxicating
height of the Roman throne.
There was no Empress in the reigns of Vespasian and Titus, but a word
may be said of the two remarkable women who shared their power to some
extent. Vespasian, whose sober and solid administration it would be
pleasant to contrast with the orgiastic reigns of his predecessors, was
a rough soldier, of humble extraction and homely ways. He had, in the
time of Caligula, married the mistress of a knight, Flavia Domitilla,
who remains little more than a name in the chronicles. He had won
distinction under Narcissus, but the triumph of Agrippina drove him
and Domitilla into exile. Nero employed him to crush the rebellion in
Judæa, and it was during this campaign that his wife died, leaving
him with her two sons--his successors--Titus and Domitian. He was,
therefore, a widower when the Eastern troops made him Emperor, but he
took into his palace, and treated as Empress, an emancipated slave of
the name of Cænis.
The mistress of Vespasian has the distinction of being
associated--actively and usefully associated--with him in one of the
soundest attempts to restore the decaying Empire. She had been in the
service of Antonia, the grandmother of Agrippina, and is said to have
been the one who first disclosed to Tiberius the perfidy of Sejanus.
From the first she was a dangerous rival of Domitilla, and, when his
wife died, Vespasian entered into the quasi-matrimonial relation with
her which is known in Roman law as _contubernium_. She would probably
have been Empress if the law had permitted him to contract a solemn
marriage with her. She had considerable ability, but an unhappy
reputation for extortion and the sale of offices. It is not clear,
however, that the wealth she obtained did not contribute to Vespasian’s
rehabilitation of the resources of the Empire. They abandoned and
destroyed the golden house of Nero, the central site of which is now
marked by the Flavian Amphitheatre, or Coliseum. In their quiet gardens
in the Quirinal they received any citizen who cared to visit them, and
maintained no timorous hedge of soldiers between themselves and their
people. They wished to see money spent on public purposes, or hoarded
for public emergencies, rather than squandered. “My hand is the base of
the statue: give me the money,” Cænis is said to have told a wealthy
man who proposed to raise a statue to her; but Dio informs us that this
and other stories of Cænis’s avarice properly belong to Vespasian. She
died, however--if the date assigned in Dio is correct--in the second
year of Vespasian’s reign, and must not be credited with too large a
share in that great purification of Rome and reinvigoration of its life
with healthy provincial blood which Tacitus regards as the beginning of
the recovery of the Empire.
Titus, who succeeded his father in the year 79, and reigned for two
years, threatened at one time to give Rome an even more singular and
unwelcome type of Empress. He had in early youth married Arricidia
Tertulla, who died soon afterwards, and then Marcia Furnilla, a lady
of illustrious family. He left his wife in Rome when he took command
under his father in Judæa, and became infatuated with a brilliant
princess of the Herod family, Berenice. He divorced Furnilla, and
brought Berenice to live with him at Rome. But the Romans resented the
prospect of a Jewish Empress, and she was forced to return. On his
accession to the throne he made no attempt to enforce her on them. He
reigned alone for two years, “the love and delight of the human race,”
and maintained the sober administration of his father.
With the accession of his younger brother, Domitian, Rome received
a new Empress, and, by an unhappy coincidence, saw the imperial
palace return to the evil ways of the Cæsars. Those of our time who
attach almost the entire importance to stock or birth, and little to
circumstances, in the formation of character, will find a peculiar
problem in Domitian and his wife. The Emperor was the second son of
the “plain Sabine burgher” and sturdy soldier, Vespasian, and of the
lowly provincial woman, Flavia Domitilla. The Empress, Domitia Longina,
was the daughter of Domitius Corbulo, one of the strongest and ablest
generals that Rome produced in the first century. Yet of these sound
and vigorous stocks came, in one generation, one of the most morbid of
the Emperors and an Empress who, in some respects, rivalled Messalina.
Rome knew them both, and had no false hope.
Domitia--as she is usually called--makes her first appearance as a
young girl of great beauty and promise, caressed and protected by the
wealth and prestige of her distinguished father, who, it is interesting
to note, was a brother of Caligula’s masculine wife Cæsonia. She was
married to a noble of distinction and character, Lucius Ælius Lamia
Æmilianus, and she seems to have been an estimable young matron until
her father incurred the anger of Nero and was forced to commit suicide.
Procopius and Josephus, indeed, represent her as virtuous to the end,
but there seems to be little room for doubt that the nearer and less
indulgent authorities are correct. Her young mind opened on the sordid
scenes of the closing part of Nero’s reign and the folly of Vitellius.
She then met the fascinating and effeminate Domitian, and very speedily
capitulated to his assaults.
[Illustration: DOMITIA
BUST IN UFFIZI GALLERY, FLORENCE]
Gibbon speaks of him as “the timid and inhuman Domitian,” while Dio
opens his biographical sketch of the Emperor with the deliberate
epithet, “bold and wrathful.” We shall find a very natural dread
of assassination in Domitian’s later years, but he was undoubtedly
bold and crafty in the service of Venus, and a stranger to moral
sentiment. His elder brother Titus had developed the manly qualities
of their father on the battlefields of Judæa, and had proved strong
enough to crush his irregular feelings on his accession to the throne.
Domitian had remained at Rome, discharging only civic duties, and had
become one of the most heartless dandies in the group of degenerate
young patricians. During the civil strife of the Vitellianists and
Vespasianists on the streets of Rome he had made his escape in the
fitting disguise of a priest of Isis. Titus knew his vicious and
luxurious ways, and endeavoured to check him by offering him his own
charming daughter Julia in marriage; but Domitian was engaged in
fascinating the pretty and accomplished wife of Lamia Æmilianus, and
refused. Titus, on his accession, associated him in the government, and
his first act was to separate his mistress from her husband, and marry
her.
Domitia’s triumph was quickly tempered with mortification. Julia
married her cousin Sabinus, and, out of pique or devilry, Domitian
now discovered her charm and seduced her. To such a pair as these the
attainment of supreme power meant an occasion of Imperial license, and
sober Romans saw their community rapidly lose the ground that had been
won in the previous reigns. It was even rumoured that Domitian had
hastened his brother’s death by putting him in a box of snow during
his last illness, though this remains no more than an idle rumour.
At all events, Domitia soon discovered the despicable character for
whom--or for whose prospects--she had abandoned her saner husband.
While the affairs of the Empire needed his most strenuous attention,
he would spend hours catching flies and spitting them with a bodkin;
and from the spitting of flies he presently passed to the larger
sport of murdering men. He conducted his little frontier-wars from
safe and luxurious quarters, and came home to enjoy a triumph and
erect a colossal bronze memorial of his valour. He banished eunuchs
from Rome, and kept them in his palace; waged war against vice in
all forms, and practised it in all forms. In the general relaxation
of Roman manners even the Vestal Virgins had been for some decades
permitted an alleviation of their onerous vows. Domitian posed as
a moralist, on no other apparent ground than that he was closely
acquainted with every shade of immorality, and drastically punished
them. He raised fine public buildings, and depleted the public treasury
by reckless expenditure and incompetent administration; prosecuted
officials for extortion, and put men to death for their wealth; gave
brilliant entertainments, and darkened the city and the Empire with his
sanguinary brooding.
If we were to accept Josephus’s estimate of the virtue of Domitia, we
should conceive her as living in melancholy isolation in the gloomy
palace, an outraged spectator of her husband’s relations with Julia.
But there is good evidence that she sought relief with something of
the freedom of a Messalina. An authentic occurrence in the third year
of Domitian’s reign puts her guilt beyond question. He had the actor
Paris murdered in the street, and divorced Domitia. The people boldly
sympathized with her, and covered with flowers the spot on which Paris
had been killed. The Emperor had a number of them executed, but public
feeling seems to have been expressed so strongly that he was forced to
recall Domitia to the palace, and the sordid comedy ran on amid the
jeers of Rome. A poet was put to death for making it the theme of his
verse; Domitia’s former husband and others were executed for their
freedom of speech. Then the beautiful and captivating Julia perished
miserably in an attempt of Domitian’s to destroy the too obvious proof
of their incest, and he became more sombre than ever.
This is not the place to tell the long and dreary story of the reign
of Domitian, of which, for twelve further years, the Empress remains
an inconspicuous, and perhaps a sobered, spectator. For a few years he
maintained his singular and obscure mixture of good and evil, but the
brighter features of his administration gradually faded, and a horrible
gloom settled on the palace and the city. Hosts of spies and informers
sprang up; large numbers of nobles, of both sexes, were executed or
banished, on the slightest suspicion, and their wealth divided between
the informers and the Emperor’s shrinking treasury. So great was his
dread of assassination that he lined the portico at the palace, in
which he used to walk, with white glazed tiles that would reflect the
approach of any person behind him. But an extraordinary incident that
Dio relates will suffice to give some idea of the reign of terror under
which the Empress and all Rome suffered.
A number of the leading citizens of Rome were summoned to a banquet
at the palace at a late hour of the night. They were frozen with
horror when they found that the entire dining-room--walls, ceiling,
and floor--was draped in black, and a miniature tombstone, with his
name engraved on it, was placed opposite each guest. As they gazed, a
number of nude boys, whose bodies were washed with ink, burst into the
room and danced amongst them, and then the dishes of a funeral banquet
were served. The guests sat silent and shivering; the Emperor grimly
discoursed to them of deaths and executions. When the banquet was over,
they were relieved to find themselves dismissed. They found, however,
that their litters had been sent away, and they were put into strange
vehicles, with strange servants. The gloomy journey ended at their own
houses, and they were beginning to breathe, when they were thrown into
fresh alarm by the news that a messenger had come from the palace. The
messenger to each guest was one of the dancing boys, now cleaned,
perfumed, and clothed with flowers, bearing the gold and silver vessels
which the guest had used at the banquet. The boys and the dishes were
presented to them with the Emperor’s greeting.
Unhappily, Domitian did not confine himself to intimidation. The
heads of the wealthier nobles fell in quick succession, and, in great
secrecy, amid an army of spies, the Empress and a few others came to an
understanding. The story of the actual fall of the tyrant has clearly
been embroidered with a good deal of unauthentic detail in popular
gossip, but even in its most sober version it does not lack romance.
The version which Dio assures us he “had heard” is one that the
conscientious historian must hesitate to accept. The Emperor, he says,
had been informed of the conspiracy, and had drawn up a list of those
who were to be executed for taking part in it. He put the list under
his pillow, with the sword which he always kept there, and went to
sleep. We have previously seen something of the bejewelled boys who
used to run with great freedom about the palaces of the Romans of the
first century. Domitian, the great censor of other people’s vices, had
a number of them, and the legend is that one of them, playing in his
bedroom, noticed the parchment under his pillow, and took it out into
the palace. Domitia met the boy, and idly glanced at the parchment.
She saw her own name at the head of the list of the condemned, and at
once summoned the other conspirators. They entered the Emperor’s room,
snatched the sword from under his pillow, and despatched him.
Pretty as the story is, we must prefer the more prosaic account given
us by Suetonius, who lived in the next generation. Domitia felt that
the Emperor had at last conceived a design on her life, and she sent
her steward to despatch him. He offered Domitian a fictitious report
of a plot, and stabbed him while he read it. Other servants rushed in
at the signal, and completed the assassination. It is the one action
that historians have recorded to the honour of the twelfth Empress of
Rome, and we leave her company with little regret. She was an ordinary
woman of the patrician world at the time--fair, frail, accomplished,
and luxurious. With the death of her husband she merges in the
indistinguishable crowd of selfish and wayward ladies on whom Juvenal
was then beginning to pour his exaggerated rhetoric.
It remains to describe very briefly how the sceptre passes into the
nobler hands of the Stoic Emperors and their wives. The throne was
offered to, and accepted by, M. Cocceius Nerva, an aged noble of known
moderation and long public service. He at once removed all traces of
the hateful reign of his predecessor, and entered upon a sober and
useful administration of the Empire. He was in the later sixties of
his age, and we find no mention of a wife. But the task of enforcing
sobriety on so corrupted a population was too great for his age and
moderate ability. A conspiracy against him was discovered. He disarmed
the conspirators by inviting them to sit by him in the theatre, and
even putting a sword in their hands and asking them what they thought
of its keenness; but he saw that a stronger man was needed, and he
chose as his colleague Marcus Ulpius Nerva Trajanus, a Spaniard of
great military ability and commanding personality, who was then at the
head of the troops in Germany. Nerva died soon afterwards, and, with
the accession of Trajan, we come to the thirteenth Empress of Rome and
the commencement of a new and more splendid chapter in the story of the
Empire.
CHAPTER VIII
PLOTINA
“If,” says Gibbon, “a man were called to fix the period in the history
of the world, during which the condition of the human race was most
happy and prosperous, he would, without hesitation, name that which
elapsed from the death of Domitian to the accession of Commodus”; and
he observes of Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius that “their united
reigns are possibly the only period of history in which the happiness
of a great people was the sole object of government.”
This monumental eulogy of the period which we now approach--a eulogy
which the more penetrating study of Renan and the more recent research
of M. Boissier and Dr. Dill have not materially lessened--will suffice
to warn the inexpert reader against the ancient and popular legend that
Rome continued to sink under the burden of its vices until it tottered
into the tomb of outworn nations. Under the Empresses whom we have now
to consider there was a great improvement of character and recovery of
vigour in the Roman Empire, but before we pass to that brighter phase
I would enter a brief protest against the general exaggeration of the
darkness of the period we have traversed. Even under its worst rulers
Rome was far from being wholly corrupt. The vices of a Messalina, the
crimes of an Agrippina, and the follies of a Poppæa, stand out so
prominently in that period only because they were perpetrated on the
height of the throne. Even they were hardly worse than the crimes and
follies of the wives or mistresses of kings in many a less censured
period of history; and, if you care to count them, the lilies were as
numerous as the poppies in this first series of Empresses, but the
lilies drooped earlier, and have been less noticed. Whenever, in the
course of our story, the light has passed from the throne to the less
elevated crowd, we have found fine character mingled with the corrupt
even in the darkest years of the early Empire. The heads that fell
before the Imperial monsters were as many as the heads that bowed.
The truth is that, if we are not misled by the hasty generalizations
and plebeian diatribes which Juvenal, in his “Satires,” founds upon
the dubious bits of gossip that he picked up on the fringe of Roman
society, and against which historians now warn us, there was much
the same diversity of conduct in the early Empire as in most of the
corresponding periods of luxury. The wealthier women of Rome assuredly
fell far short of the cloistered virtue of the maid and the matron of
Greece; but Greece had only succeeded in maintaining that standard of
domestic virtue in its wives and daughters by cultivating a high caste
of courtesans for their roaming husbands. It may be admitted, too, that
the Roman woman was morally inferior to the wife of the Egyptian noble,
and to the wife of the noble or the wealthy merchant of Babylonia. But
the patrician women, even of Cæsarean Rome, will compare with the women
of most of the later civilizations at the same stage of development;
at the stage, that is to say, when the nation relaxes from the strain
of empire-making, and its veins are flushed with the wealth of its
conquests. I would instance the women of the early Teutonic nations as
soon as they settle on southern Europe; the women of Italy in the early
Middle Ages; the women of England under the Stuarts and, after a later
expansion, under the Georges; the women of France under Louis XIII and
Louis XIV; the women of Russia in the nineteenth century. At Rome, in
spite of the positive insistence on vice of Caligula, Messalina, and
Nero, in spite of their determined effort to weed out the good, we
have found virtue and courage springing up afresh in each generation.
We now come to a period when, three centuries before the fall of Rome,
the Empire is purged of its exceptional corruption, and character
assumes the normal diversity that it has in any old and wealthy
civilization. The city of Rome was assuredly vicious and in decay. But
the city was not the Empire, as those rhetoricians forget who talk
of its entire demoralization. Rome had been drenched with degrading
agencies for half a century; but there was a quite normal amount of
stout will and high character in the provinces, and this is now infused
more freely into the metropolis. It is only by a similar influx of
sounder blood from the provinces that any great city survives the
feverish waste of its tissue. The remedy was retarded in Rome because
the provincials, even of Italy, but especially of Gaul and Spain, were
of alien race. Rome jealously remembered that it was the conqueror; the
rest were the conquered. Under Vespasian, however, the provincials were
admitted more freely, and with the accession of a Spaniard, Trajan, the
process increased.
In the remote and primitive settlement which Agrippina had established
on the banks of the Rhine, where the towers of Cologne Cathedral now
keep watch over a splendid city, there dwelt, in the year 97, the
commander of the forces in Lower Germany, Marcus Ulpius Trajanus,
with his wife and a few female relatives. Trajan was of a moderate
Spanish family, and had, like his father, cut his own path in the
military service of the Empire. He was unambitious, but popular. A
large, handsome man, in his forty-fifth year, of singularly graceful
bearing and serene features, he charmed everybody by his simplicity and
affability of manner, and liked a good carouse and a rough soldierly
jest. His wife Plotina was a plain, honest matron of unknown origin. It
has been conjectured that she was related to Pompeius Planta, at one
time Governor of Egypt, but the only ground for the conjecture seems
to be that Planta was a friend of Trajan’s. As she had neither beauty
of person nor romantic defect of character, the chroniclers have left
her largely to our imagination; but she was a type of woman whom it is
not difficult to picture--a woman of plain features, level judgment,
and of what is euphemistically called grave but agreeable conversation.
She was by no means brilliant, but her close friendship for Hadrian
suggests that she was not too dull and prosy, and had pretensions to
culture. Her ways were simple, and her character can be relieved of
the one imputation made against it. She compares well with Livia, but
as a higher _bourgeoise_ compares with a _grande dame_. In a word, she
had none of the autumnal colour, the beauty of decay, of the Cæsarean
women, but she had the less æsthetic and more useful quality that they
lacked, conscientiousness. To the courtly Pliny (“Panegyr.,” 83) she is
the embodiment of all the virtues.
With her at Cologne was Trajan’s sister Marciana, a widow of much
the same complexion as Plotina, and Marciana’s daughter Matidia, who
in turn had two daughters, Sabina and Matidia. We can imagine the
agitation of this tranquil establishment among the forests of Germany
when a courier came from Rome with the news that Trajan was chosen
as colleague of the Emperor. They had left Rome six years before, in
the middle of Domitian’s reign. However, they seem to have received
very sedately the prospect of a removal from the camp on the Rhine
to the Imperial palace. Although Nerva died in the following January
(98), Trajan remained for the year in Germany, completing his task of
strengthening the frontier against the northern barbarians. Then the
family set out on the long journey to the capital.
The fame of Trajan’s simplicity and geniality of manner had preceded
him, but Rome looked with surprise on an Emperor who could wait a year
before occupying the palace, enter the city on foot, without guards,
and talk so affably with any of his subjects. Nor was Plotina long
before she showed that they had received a new type of Empress. As she
ascended the steps of the palace, she turned round and said to those
below: “As I enter here to-day, I trust I shall leave it when the time
comes.” The refreshing amiability, simplicity, and moderation of the
Imperial couple captivated the Romans, and Trajan responded to their
good will with the most judicious and untiring exertions in the public
service. He trod out at once the hideous brood of informers, checked
corrupt officials, and appointed the best men to public offices.
Indifferent to the splendour and luxury of even the modest palace of
Vespasian, he spent most of his reign in frontier-wars or in long
journeys for the purpose of bracing the relaxed frame of the Empire;
and he enriched and adorned Rome as no Emperor had done since Octavian.
That he was vigorously supported by Plotina is quite certain, and there
is evidence that she was much more than a sympathetic witness of his
labours. It is related by the Emperor Julian that Trajan often sought
the advice of Plotina, and that it was always sound. At the beginning
of his reign she had occasion to use her influence. Trajan’s dislike
of informers was carried so far that, when a case of real extortion
occurred in the provinces, the injured were prevented from bringing
it to his notice. They appealed to Plotina, and she put the case
judiciously to her husband and secured relief. In many other ways she
gave useful assistance, so that the Senate offered the title of Augusta
to her and Marciana. They declined, as Trajan had refused the special
title offered to him, but he relented, and they followed his example.
The reign of Trajan and Plotina was thus one long episode of strenuous
and enlightened public service, but before we enter into the
particulars of their achievements it is proper to endeavour to obtain
a nearer view of their personalities. In this the chroniclers give us
little assistance, and the result cannot be very interesting. It is
ever the painful reflection of the biographer that the description of
a sober life--a life which neither sinks to the lower levels of vice
nor soars to some unaccustomed height of virtue--has little interest
for the majority of his readers; and this was the life of the Imperial
court during the twenty years of Trajan’s reign. The Emperor himself
was no paragon. Preferring the easy ways of a camp, he drank somewhat
deeply of nights, his jests were apt to be coarse, and he was popularly
accused of the vice which so generally infected the men of the Empire.
Yet he had this distinction in a long line of Emperors, in the prime of
life, that no woman ever shared, or sullied, his affection for Plotina.
Gibbon has remarked, in extenuation of the conduct of his successor,
that “of the first fifteen Emperors, Claudius was the only one whose
taste in love was entirely correct.” That would be a high compliment to
Messalina, but in point of fact, as we saw, Claudius was not entitled
to that distinction. The charge against Trajan is vague, and we must
rather award the distinction to him. Merivale somewhat harshly speaks
of him as only maintaining his self-respect because of the bluntness
of his moral sense. If we put his strong sense of public duty and his
fidelity in the scale against his one certain indulgence, in drink, we
shall hardly agree to that verdict.
The virtue of Plotina, on the other hand, has been more seriously
assailed by both ancient and recent writers. In the service of the
Emperor was a very handsome and accomplished youth named Hadrian, an
orphan, with great taste and skill in art and letters. He had been
employed by Trajan at Cologne, both in military service and in filling
up the long nights with an occasional carouse, and, after their return
to Rome, he was a great favourite of the ladies at the palace. They
formed a little circle in which letters were discussed and literary men
were patronized. There was something of a literary revival; it was the
age of Juvenal, Martial, Quinctilian, Pliny, Suetonius, Celsus, and Dio
Chrysostom. Hadrian was a brilliant student, and he appreciated this
open and easy way to distinction. Trajan is represented as using the
young man for companion, but not regarding him as fitted for promotion,
so that it fell to Plotina to urge, and ultimately to make, the fortune
of the future Emperor. The magnificent mausoleum which Hadrian raised
in memory of her long testified to his ardent and grateful attachment.
There is a good deal of exaggeration in this conception. We shall
see that Trajan promoted Hadrian in such a way as to mark him in the
eyes of all as his successor; and his chief advisers in this were
the statesmen Sura and Attianus. In any case, there is no proof that
Plotina, who must have been twenty years older than Hadrian, felt
more than a very natural fondness for the gifted and charming youth.
Pliny mentions that her friendship for him gave rise to gossip, but
insists that she was “a most virtuous woman.” The “Augustan History”
leaves her unassailed. Suetonius has no scandal to record. Dio alone
describes their attachment as “erotic love”; but on an earlier page
Dio has expressly said that her career was stainless. When he has
described her standing at the top of the palace steps, to say that she
trusted to leave that palace just as she entered it, he adds: “And she
so bore herself throughout the whole reign as to incur no blame.”[11]
The remarkable eulogy of Pliny, the silence of the other authorities,
and the conduct of Trajan, must enable us to choose between these
contradictory statements of Dio, and indeed compel us to reject this
unsubstantial charge against the virtue of Plotina.
The other ladies of the Imperial household were equally without
reproach, and life at the palace was harmonious and uneventful. Emperor
and Empress moved about Rome without guards, and entertained, or were
entertained by, their friends in a simple and unceremonious way. But
Trajan had little love for the atmosphere of a palace, and an outbreak
in Dacia, two years after his arrival in Rome, gave him an excuse to
return to the camp. He took Hadrian with him, and remained in Dacia a
year. In the year 103 he rejoined Plotina at Rome, but the war broke
out afresh shortly afterwards, and it now took him three years to
subdue the province and link it to the Empire by a great bridge over
the Danube. He returned in 107, and spent seven years in Rome before
he set out on his final journey in the year 114.
[Illustration: PLOTINA
STATUE IN THE LOUVRE]
The prolonged absence of the Emperor threw a good deal of
responsibility on Plotina, and it would be of great interest, if it
were possible, to trace her share in the vast work which was done for
the city and the Empire at that time. This, unfortunately, we cannot
do. There were able counsellors left at Rome in Trajan’s absence, and
no doubt most of the work was directly controlled by Trajan during his
stay in Rome from 107 to 114. We know only that he conferred freely
with Plotina, and that he left great power to her when he went abroad.
We can, therefore, only regard her, in a general way, as contributing
to the prosperity and progress that characterize the reign of her
husband. She kept Rome tranquil and content, and no doubt followed with
close interest the great improvements which Trajan commanded. The neck
of hill which linked the Capitoline to the Quirinal, in the heart of
Rome, was cut away, and a fine Forum, or broad street with sheltered
colonnade on either side, was constructed on the cleared ground between
the hills. As previous Emperors had already made slight extensions
of the old Forum, the citizens of Rome now had, in the centre of the
city, a magnificent _corso_ running out toward the great Circus, in the
porticoes of which the packed dwellers of the Subura on one side, and
Velabrum on the other, could lounge and take the air with comfort. Nor
was this a mere meretricious concession to their entertainment. Trajan
was equally attentive to their education. A beautiful basilica, two
public libraries--one for Greek and one for Roman letters--and other
splendid buildings were raised along the sides of the new Forum, and
statues of marble and bronze were brought from all parts, even from the
palace, to adorn it.
Other cities of the Empire shared in the generosity and public
spirit of the new reign. Harbours were constructed for the increase
of commerce, fresh roads were flung across the intervening country,
and many towns were enriched with stimulating public edifices. Nor
were the social needs of the Empire less regarded than the material.
Previous Emperors had given a scanty practical expression to the
doctrine of the brotherhood of men, which the Stoic philosophy was
disseminating. Trajan gave a great extension to this new philanthropy,
as we learn from the inscriptions that have been found in the soil
of Italy. It is estimated that 300,000 poor and orphaned children
were fed by charity or Imperial aid in Italy alone. The lot of the
slave was improved, and the school system of the Empire became better
than any that has since appeared in Europe until the second half of
the nineteenth century. Men were returning to the sobriety of their
fathers, and were tempering it with the new spirit of peace and mercy,
and a regard for culture. Morality improved, and character became a
qualification for office. The one open scandal of the long reign--an
intrigue of the Vestal Virgins with three young knights--was punished
with all the rigour of the old Roman law.
We must be content to know that Plotina had her part in this noble work
of restoring the jaded frame of the Empire, and refrain from attempting
to measure her particular influence. By the year 114 the administration
ran so smoothly, and the Western world was so settled, that Trajan
turned his attention to the East. The Parthians had been interfering
in the affairs of the Ethiopians, who were vassals of Rome, and Trajan
saw in this a pretext of establishing more strongly, if not enlarging,
the eastern frontier of the Empire. He had never been in the East,
and the deep attraction of its ancient cities and decadent mysticism
gave a cultural interest to his expedition. He took with him Plotina
and Matidia, his niece. Marciana seems to have died before this time,
and Hadrian had married Sabina, the daughter of Matidia. Hadrian, and
probably his wife, accompanied them.
The path to the East for the Roman lay through Athens, where Plotina
and her companions would survey the decaying splendour of the Greek
civilization in which they had long been interested. Envoys from the
Parthians met Trajan there, and tried to disarm him, but he dismissed
them, and pushed on to the field in which he trusted to win fresh
laurels. They reached Antioch at the end of the year, and had, during
their stay in that metropolis of Oriental vice and luxury, a novel
experience. A great earthquake shook the city, and even the house in
which the Emperor lodged. He was forced to make his escape by the
window. The accounts of their later movements are meagre, and we can
only imagine Plotina passing with wonder through the strange spectacles
of western Asia. During the spring and summer an indecisive campaign
was waged against the Parthians, and Trajan returned to Antioch for the
winter. In the spring of the year 116 the Emperor set out again for
Mesopotamia. He passed down the Euphrates, took the Parthian capital,
sailed on the Persian Gulf, and even directed a longing eye over the
ocean in the direction of India. The spirit of Alexander breathed
in him as he trod this theatre of the historic conquerors, but the
burden of age and an increasing infirmity put a reluctant limit to
his ambition. He had, in fact, passed the range of his powers, and
distended too far the frontier of the Empire. In the following year he
became weaker, and the Eastern tribes advanced with spirit. Leaving the
task to his generals, the Emperor turned towards Italy.
How far Plotina had accompanied her husband on these remote journeys we
are not informed. It would not be surprising, or out of harmony with a
general custom of the time, if she covered the whole, or the greater
part, of the territory with him. However that may be, we find her with
Trajan and Hadrian at Antioch once more in the course of the year 117.
Trajan was seriously ill, and had to abandon all hope of settling
the Eastern question. He maintained the troops at the frontier, left
Hadrian at Antioch as legate of the East, and slowly and sadly moved
towards Europe. His tall frame was bent with age, his hair was white,
his limbs made heavy with dropsy and numbed with incipient paralysis.
When they arrived at Selinus, a small town on a precipitous rock of
the Cilician coast, only a few hundred miles from Edessa, his illness
increased, and he died, in the month of August, 117, in the sixty-third
year of his age.
The exact truth about Plotina’s conduct at the time of Trajan’s death
will never be known, but an impartial analysis of the statements
made by the chroniclers cannot discover any clear ground for
dissatisfaction. Dio, whose authority on this point is claimed to be
considerable, since his father was then governor of the province of
Cilicia, first insinuates a suggestion of poison, in the usual form of
an unsubstantial rumour, and then insists that Plotina forged a letter
in Trajan’s name, nominating Hadrian his successor in the Imperial
power. The writer of the sketch of Hadrian in the “Historia Augusta,”
Spartianus, carries the legend further. He describes how Plotina put
a confidant in the bed of the dead Emperor, drew the clothes about
him, and directed him to murmur, in a feeble voice, to the assembled
officials that he wished Hadrian to succeed him. This second version is
wholly negligible. It comes only from an anonymous writer of the fourth
century who excites our distrust at all times by his extravagant and
unsupported statements. The latest commentators on his work warn us
that his aim is prurient and his method devoid of scruple.
The authority of Dio, on the other hand, must not be exaggerated. His
father might purvey gossip to him, like any other Greek or Roman, and
his story of the forged letter--or forged signature to a letter--might
easily be a piece of local gossip. Plotina was evidently anxious to
secure the succession for Hadrian, and one may well admit that she
concealed her husband’s death until Hadrian arrived at Selinus. That
concealment would easily give rise to conjectures. Serviez naturally
forces on his readers the more romantic version, but more sober writers
acquit Plotina of anything more than a formal use of Trajan’s name
after his death.
The suggestion of poison is frivolous. Trajan had been ailing for
months, and his assiduous travelling in a climate so different from
that to which he had been accustomed all his life must have worn
him out. He arrived in Asia Minor in the sweltering and dangerous
month of August, and a touch of the enteric fever which so commonly
overcame the European in the insanitary East of the time put an end
to his life. Plotina had for some time urged him to nominate Hadrian
as his successor. We must not hastily infer from his reluctance that
he thought Hadrian unfit to succeed him. He had just left him in a
position of the gravest responsibility, and must have appreciated
what a great historian calls Hadrian’s “vast and active genius.” But
he may not have deemed it proper for him to dictate to the Senate how
they should exercise their power of choice. What actually occurred
is certainly obscure. A letter was dispatched to the Senate, after
Trajan’s death, in which Hadrian was nominated, and Dio says that
the signature was put to this letter by Plotina. One would imagine
that such a deception, as Dio represents it to be, would easily be
detected and resented by Hadrian’s powerful enemies in the Senate. It
is probable that, as Merivale supposes, the letter was really dictated
by Trajan, and the signing of it by Plotina was only formal. We may
admit Dio’s narrative of facts, yet believe that the Empress was merely
carrying out Trajan’s will.
On the other hand, there is no reason to quarrel with, or put a base
interpretation on, her zeal for the succession of Hadrian. We shall
see how well he maintained the sound work of Trajan. He was at once
summoned to Selinus, to consult with Plotina and with the elderly
Senator Attianus, who had been his guardian together with Trajan, and
had been as zealous as the Empress in urging his advancement. They
decided that Hadrian must return to his post at Antioch, and Plotina
set out for Rome with the ashes of her husband in a golden urn. The
last resting-place of Trajan was under the magnificent column which
still bears witness in Rome to his many victories, and for centuries
afterwards the most flattering compliment that the Senators could pay
to an Emperor was to cry that he was “more fortunate than Augustus, and
better than Trajan.”
Plotina lived at Rome for four years after the death of her husband.
The first year was, as we shall see, one of great anxiety and trial.
There was much discontent at Hadrian’s accession, and before long his
reign was stained by the execution of four of the most distinguished
nobles. Matidia died in the following year, and it was known to all
Rome that Sabina lived unhappily with Hadrian. It is said that Plotina
continued to have an active share in the administration of the Empire,
though she must now have been in, or near, her seventh decade of life.
Dio places her death in the year 121. Hadrian was in Gaul at the time,
and the luxuriance of his mourning gave encouragement to the libellers.
He went into deep mourning, breathed a passionate grief in a beautiful
poem, and ordered the building of a temple for the cult of the divinity
which he conferred on her. In Nîmes, where he was staying at the time
when her death was announced, he raised the superb mausoleum which kept
her name for ages in the mind of Europe.
It is both pleasant and legitimate to believe that there was neither
rhetorical display nor the memory of an irregular love in the princely
mourning of Hadrian over the death of his patroness. Apart from his own
indebtedness to her, the world owed her much. She had been at least
a most worthy and helpful companion of a great Emperor, a type of
womanhood to which the eyes of Roman matrons might happily be directed.
On the day when her inanimate frame was borne from the palace to the
funeral pile, men could repeat that she had in truth left that home of
temptation as she had entered it. The saner and sunnier life of the
vast Empire was, in part, her monument.[12]
CHAPTER IX
SABINA, THE WIFE OF HADRIAN
We are already familiar with the extraction and the training of the
next Empress of Rome. Sabina was the elder daughter of Trajan’s
niece Matidia, and came of the sound and sober stock of the Spanish
provincials. We first meet her in the little settlement on the Rhine,
where she lived with her widowed mother and grandmother, in Trajan’s
house, during the reign of Galba and Nerva. She was in her early teens,
a grave and modest child, easily directed by the three sedate ladies
of the house. Very shortly after the accession of Trajan, a charming
young officer burst into the camp to offer his congratulations. He had
a romantic story to tell, how a jealous brother-in-law had bribed his
servants to break down the chariot on the way, and he had crossed the
great forests on foot to greet his guardian and cousin. It was the
future Emperor, and her future husband, Hadrian.
The wicked brother-in-law, Ursus Servianus, presently arrived, and
put before Trajan a proof of his ward’s enormities in the shape of
a list of his debts. But Trajan was charmed with the handsome and
brilliant young officer, kept him in his suite, and took him to Rome
when he went up to occupy the throne; and we saw that he became a great
favourite of the Imperial ladies. His father had been a first cousin
of Trajan, but Hadrian lost him at the age of ten, and was committed
to the guardianship of Trajan and Attianus. The finest masters of
Rome directed his studies in letters, art, rhetoric, and philosophy,
and he became a most accomplished and learned, as well as, by hunting
and exercise, a graceful and energetic youth. The “Historia Augusta”
expressly says that Trajan “loved him,” and he advanced quickly, and
enjoyed the brilliant literary society of the palace and the capital.
About two years after their coming to Rome he married Sabina. One
chronicler represents him as spending large sums of money to win her,
and so incurring the annoyance of Trajan; another states that he
turned with disdain from her plain propriety, and had to be persuaded
by Plotina that the marriage was to his interest. It was, at all
events, clearly a _mariage de convenance_, and was destined to have the
customary sequel.
Sabina would be in her twelfth or thirteenth year at the time, and we
can imagine the mating of the prim little maiden with the brilliant
scholar and promising officer of twenty-four. For many years she is
no more than the silent shadow of her husband, and we can only dimly
follow her movements as she accompanies him about the Empire. Whether
she accompanied him on the Dacian wars between 101 and 106, or, as
seems more probable, remained at Rome to develop a taste for letters in
the palace of Plotina, we cannot confidently say, but it is recorded
that she did lean to culture. Hadrian was back in 106, high in the
favour of Trajan, who gave him the diamond ring he had received from
Nerva. He could both fight and carouse to the Emperor’s satisfaction.
He was made prætor on his return, and gave brilliant games--at Trajan’s
expense--in which 11,000 beasts were slain. In quick succession he
became legate in Lower Pannonia and consul. The aged statesman Sura
told him that he was destined for the throne; the rumour went about
Rome, and the nobles, at first disdainful of his provincial accent and
jealous of his progress, began to respect him. He, and most probably
Sabina, accompanied Trajan on his fatal journey to the East, and we
have seen what happened.
In the year 117, in about the thirtieth year of her age, Sabina found
herself Empress of Rome, but the elevation seems to have brought her
little happiness and impelled her to no exertion. There is little room
for doubt that, either in the camp or in the tainted atmosphere of Rome
or Antioch, Hadrian had contracted the vice which prevailed among Roman
men. There is another reason, however, why Sabina remains in obscurity
in the chronicles. Hadrian’s biographer, Gregorovius, has relieved him
of the common charge that he relinquished the conquests of Trajan, and
neglected Imperial interests, in a less enlightened zeal for art and
letters. Hadrian had a clear, commendable, and vast policy. He believed
that the Empire would only be weakened by extension, and that it was
a saner ambition to enrich and uplift the life within its frontiers
than to enlarge them. His life was spent in a magnificent realization
of this design; and it was a design so far beyond the modest range
of Sabina’s political intelligence that she was forced to remain a
spectator of his work. She seems, very naturally, to have carped at
his one frailty, which so nearly concerned her, and Hadrian replied
peevishly, and merely conveyed her as an uninterested encumbrance in
the remarkable voyages which fill the twenty years of his reign.
Hadrian was then in his fortieth year, a tall, very handsome and
athletic man, of brilliant conversation, untiring energy, and great
public spirit. The most artistic of all Roman Emperors, one of the most
artistic and cultured of monarchs, indeed, he could nevertheless endure
the plain bread-and-cheese of the soldier for weeks together; and he
so much discarded his horse and his chariot, for their encouragement,
that a chronicler describes him as having covered the entire Empire on
foot. By diplomacy and by bribes, which we may or may not admire, he
secured an almost unbroken peace for the Empire during two decades;
and the works of use or adornment with which he enriched every
province of the Empire during those twenty years make up an almost
fabulous achievement. Much as we must sympathize with the Empress in
her resentment of the practice into which his Greek-Oriental tastes
betrayed him, we cannot deny that Hadrian was a great and beneficent
ruler. The sketch of his life in that prurient work, the “Historia
Augusta”--the _chronique scandaleuse_ of the middle Empire--is a
monumental, if unconscious, panegyric.
The biographer of the Empresses cannot escape the conclusion that
Sabina was not a fitting mate for so versatile and constructive
a genius. Her superiority in decency is enormously outweighed by
Hadrian’s magnificent work for the Empire. The natural alienation of
the two in sentiment would not encourage her to co-operate in his work,
in the fashion set by Livia and Plotina, but one feels that this is
not the sole explanation, and that her mediocre faculty was entirely
absorbed in a small pursuit of culture. It is not impossible that, if
there had been cordial co-operation between them, she would have saved
Hadrian from the only serious stains on the record of his reign.
The first of these occurred in the year following his accession.
Bringing to the Imperial task a fresh and vigorous mind, untainted by
mere military ambition--though he was an excellent soldier--Hadrian
glanced round the Empire, and saw that peace must first be established
on its frontiers. The East was aflame with revolt, the African and
German boundaries were disturbed, and trouble was announced from
Britain. He at once sacrificed the conquests beyond the Tigris and
Euphrates, appeased the Jews and the other peoples of the East, and
passed to Lower Germany to still the restlessness of the northern
frontier. There had been some discontent among the older soldiers
and statesmen of Rome at his being forced on them. From Judæa he had
imprudently sent one of Trajan’s most fiery commanders, the Moorish
prince Lusius Quietus, back in some disgrace to the capital, and this
man and others formed a party of opposition. When they saw that he was
sacrificing Trajan’s conquests and reversing his policy, and especially
when he proposed to evacuate Dacia also, they entered, it is said,
into something of the nature of a conspiracy.
How far Hadrian was really responsible for the execution of the leaders
of this party we cannot say, and his emphatic denial of responsibility
is entitled to consideration. We know that, when the aged statesman
Attianus wrote to urge him that the Roman prefect and other
distinguished malcontents ought to be removed, he refused to take any
action. The Senate now announced that a plot to assassinate Hadrian had
been detected, and it put to death, without trial, four men of consular
rank, Nigrinus, Palma, Celsus, and Lusius Quietus. A sullen murmur
passed through the city, and Hadrian hastily composed his affairs on
the Danube and went to Rome. He resolutely denied that he had consented
to the executions, and the question remains open.
With this public resentment in view, Hadrian at once lavished the
most princely favours on Rome, and swore that he would never execute
a Senator without the consent of his order. He remitted debts to the
treasury to the extent of £9,000,000, extended the existing charities
to orphans and widows, provided magnificent spectacles for the people,
and made a sacrifice of Attianus, by deposing him, to the anger of
the malcontents. When the Senate offered him the triumph which had
been due to Trajan for the Eastern victories, he refused it, and
placed a wax image of the dead Emperor in the triumphal chariot. The
citizens of Rome may have been less impressed when he showed a zeal for
public morals, and forbade the mixed bathing that had hitherto been
permitted; but he succeeded, by two years of untiring public service,
in removing the earlier resentment. That he wished to kill Attianus,
and did actually execute the architect Apollodorus, are idle legends.
Serviez seriously reproduces the story that the architect had snubbed
him--telling him to “go and paint his pumpkins”--when he had made a
suggestion to him in earlier years, and that Hadrian avenged himself
when he came to the throne. The truth is that the “Historia Augusta”
describes him in consultation with Apollodorus on some building project
ten years later.
The details of this vast activity of Hadrian’s do not concern us, as
Sabina seems to have taken no part in it. The busts we have of her
seem to show a cold and irresponsive temper, as if the Empress were
contemplating disdainfully the figure of the beautiful Oriental youth
on whom Hadrian’s affection became concentrated. There is distinction
in the smooth lines of the face and in the lofty forehead, and there
is a proud strength that might very well make her “morose and harsh,”
as Hadrian described her, when he gave her such palpable cause for
resentment. Her mother died in 119. In a florid oration Hadrian praised
her beauty of person and character, but the death would not be likely
to improve the relations of the Imperial spouses.
In the year 120 or 121 Hadrian set out on the first of the long
journeys which fill the rest of his career, and Sabina made the tour of
the world with him. Had their intercourse been more pleasant, the lot
of Sabina during the next fifteen years would have been one of great
fortune. They passed together over the whole Roman world from Eboracum
(York) to Arabia and Egypt, surveying the ruined Empires of the past
and the young nations of the future in the light of whatever culture
the age afforded; and so beneficent was their passage that myriads
of inscriptions and coins, bearing such legends as “Golden Age” and
“Restorer of the Earth,” handed on to posterity the memory of the great
works which Hadrian everywhere inaugurated. Through Gaul--probably
through the flourishing Greek colony of Massilia (Marseilles), the
solid and cultured city of Lugdunum (Lyons), and the little trading
centre, Lutetia, that would one day be brilliant Paris--they passed
on to Germany, and traversed the boundless forests that hid the soil
of a great modern nation. No glittering pomp of guards surrounded the
Emperor. Bareheaded alike in the snows of Germany and under the sun
of Syria, marching commonly on foot in the dress of a soldier, and
living on soldier’s fare, he restored the rigid discipline of the
legions wherever he went. Bridges, aqueducts, roads, temples, and
colonnaded squares sprang up in the rear of his march. His staff was a
band of engineers and architects.
[Illustration: SABINA
BUST IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM]
In this novel and admirable company Sabina made the round of Gaul and
Germany, and crossed over to Britain in the Imperial galleys. From the
little colony of Londinium (London), which had been destroyed sixty
years before, and was now restored by Hadrian, they passed along the
solid Roman road to Eboracum (York), the last great station from which
civilization looked out on the turbulent waves of Scottish barbarism.
It was then that Hadrian ordered the building of the great wall, to
keep off the Caledonian marauders, of which the traces still exist.
Sabina may have remained in York while Hadrian surveyed the rough
territory to the north, and it seems to have been on the Emperor’s
return that an episode occurred which must have greatly embittered her.
One of Hadrian’s secretaries was the historian Suetonius, whose work
on the Emperors has provided us with much material. With him and
the cultivated commander of the Prætorian Guards Sabina maintained
a close friendship, and Hadrian made a grievance of it. So closely
did he pry into the affairs of his friends that the rumour was set
about that he had many mistresses among their wives. It was reported
to him that Suetonius and Septicius Clarus “were behaving with more
familiarity than the dignity of the Imperial house permitted,” as
Spartianus puts it, and they were dismissed. There is no suggestion of
grave irregularity on her part. The idea of divorcing Sabina, which
Hadrian is said to have discussed, is expressly connected with what
he called her “moroseness and asperity”; and we can well believe that
her asperity took the form of bitter complaints about his own conduct.
Nothing further was done, and, though we may regard with reserve the
statement that Sabina deliberately prevented herself from having a
child, lest she should put a new monster on the throne, the Imperial
couple continued their uncongenial companionship.[13] Some of the coins
which were struck in commemoration of their passage ventured to bear
the legend, “Concordia Augusta”--struck in honour of the harmony of the
Imperial household.
From Britain they returned to Gaul, where Hadrian excited comment by
the opulence of his mourning over the death of Plotina. They then
passed to Spain, where Roman civilization had taken deep root, and on
to the land of the Moors. The colonies which Rome had planted along the
strip of territory descending from the mountains to the sea had been
devastated by the barbarians, and the frontier had been obliterated.
Hadrian drove back the tribes, restored the towns, and returned, after
an absence of more than a year, to Rome. The city was tranquil, and
the building of the great villa which still, in its ruins, excites the
amazement of the visitor at Tivoli, was proceeding. After a year or two
of peaceful administration, seeing that the west, north, and south of
the Empire were secure and prospering, Hadrian turned his face towards
the east.
We need not follow him in this journey to Greece and Asia Minor, since
it is not clear whether Sabina accompanied him, but it had a sequel
of melancholy interest to the Empress. From the cities of Greece he
made his way along the coast of the Black Sea to the region of the
Parthians, where he again restored peace, and back through Asia Minor
and the islands to Rome. Two or three years had been occupied in this
journey, and Hadrian had become less Roman in taste than ever. He
came home surrounded by Greeks, and with a great zeal for Greek and
Eastern institutions. In particular he brought in his train a beautiful
Bithynian youth whose name is from that time inseparably connected
with his. Hadrian’s passion for Antinous is the chief stain on his
character, and was probably the chief ground of Sabina’s resentment.
The Emperor had visited Bithynia, and presumably met the youth there.
Every traveller among rude and healthy nations is aware that such
practices are by no means confined to decadent civilizations, nor does
the student of contemporary morals see in them anything distinctive
of the life of ancient Syria, Greece, or Rome. Nevertheless, the
remarkable beauty of Antinous, which is familiar to us in many a
statue, and the wanton openness of his association with the Emperor,
attracted general attention and greatly embittered Sabina.
When, therefore, she set out with Hadrian, at the end of 128 or the
beginning of 129, for a fresh and more extensive tour in the East,
her enjoyment must have been heavily clouded by the daily and hourly
presence of the Emperor’s companions. The young Adonis was not the
only source of offence in Hadrian’s suite. Closer still to Hadrian
was a young Roman noble of the most effeminate charm and the most
dissolute life. Lucius Ceionius Commodus was later taken into Imperial
partnership by Hadrian, and, although he did not live to attain supreme
power, his descendants will more than once enter and disturb our
story of the Empresses. Spartianus ascribes to him a “regal beauty”
of face and person, a manner of great charm, a witty and sparkling
conversation, and an utter depravity of morals. He had won the regard
of Hadrian, not so much by the famous new dish which he had invented
for the epicures of Rome--a boar, ham, pheasant, and peacock pie--as
by the sensuous charm of his person and the exotic sensuality of his
life. He would lie, washed in exquisite Persian ointments, on a couch
strewn with roses, with a coverlet of lilies drawn over himself and his
companion. Such ways were entirely foreign to the nature of Hadrian,
but his robust vigour was singularly united with a fine artistic
sensibility and a love of the softer east, which led him into many
inconsistencies.
Sabina had for companion a Greek poetess, Julia Fadilla, of such virtue
and attainments that a statue was somewhere raised to honour her as
a pattern of integrity. The incongruous party, with its conflicting
groups of virtue and vice--a fitting symbol of the unhappy union of
West and East--crossed the sea to Athens, and then visited Corinth,
Eleusis, and the other surviving cities of Greece. The frame of that
superb civilization still gleamed, almost intact, on the soil of
Hellas, though the soul of Greece had departed. It was as if one gazed
on the smooth white corpse of a beautiful woman. Groups of sophists
still disputed in the gardens or under the shady colonnades; but they
were puny mimics of Socrates, Zeno, and Epicurus. Politicians still
babbled in the Agora; but they blessed the hand of Rome that had closed
brutally on the throat of their fair country. The Acropolis still shone
in its panoply of Parian marble, and Hadrian had restored the harbour
and repaired many of the ravages of time and violence. He regretted the
greed of his forerunners, and sought to restore the ancient spirit. But
the poor revival of art and letters and religion, which he succeeded in
effecting, was only the last flicker of the vitality of Greece.
They crossed the sea to Ephesus, which at that time rivalled Antioch
and Alexandria as a metropolis of the decaying civilizations of the
East. Its great Temple of Diana, a teeming store of art and treasure,
drew men from all parts, while priests of all religions mingled in its
streets with panders to all vices and ministers to every form of art
and luxury. Smyrna, another flourishing city of Asia Minor, attracted
them next, with its magnificent assemblage of temples, colonnades,
baths, and theatres, and they passed on to Sardis and the other cities
of that fascinating and repellent Greek-Oriental region, where new
mysticism ran like veins of gold in the old volcanic deposits. The
winter was spent in the luxury of Ephesus and Smyrna, and with the
spring they traversed the successive provinces of Asia Minor, admiring
and restoring the remains of Greek and Persian grandeur. Through Syria,
where famous Antioch detained them for a time, they went on, probably,
to the ruined cities of Tyre and Sidon, and returned to Heliopolis,
Damascus, and Palmyra. In Palestine they found the survivors of the
scattered Jewish nation living in great poverty and dejection among the
ruins of their cities, or still scrutinizing the prophets and looking
for the Messiah in the larger communities on the coast. On the site
of Jerusalem, where a few broken towers gave a melancholy reminder of
their former prosperity, Hadrian ordered that a new Roman colony should
be established.
From Judæa they moved to Arabia, and then to Egypt. Alexandria was then
the second city of the world in importance, the first in interest. All
the exhausted streams of the older civilizations had poured into it.
Never before or since was there so cosmopolitan a population, such a
gathering of old vices and new moralities, dead religions and fresh
religions, cults six thousand years old and the latest gospels of
Judæa and Persia. Its harbour still held the ships of every port in
the Mediterranean, its Serapeum, Museum, and Cæsareum sheltered the
art and culture of the world, and its deafening streets rang with the
tongues of the world. But the soul of Egypt, too, was dead, and the
Imperial party moved up the Nile to admire the surviving relics of its
past. No doubt priests and learned men from Alexandria would attend as
interpreters. They wandered in Memphis, which the sand of the desert
was beginning to bury, passed through Heliopolis, and reached Besa,
where they experienced the great sensation of the tour. The beautiful
Bithynian youth was drowned in the Nile, and Sabina had to regard
with disdain the womanly tears and the extravagant mourning of the
Emperor. It is not clear to this day whether the death was accidental
or voluntary. Hadrian, of course, said that it was accidental; but
a rumour lingers in the chronicles that the Emperor, in his new zeal
for Oriental superstition, had learned that his life was doomed unless
some loved being was sacrificed for him, and Antinous offered himself.
Hadrian has taken the secret with him, but the temples and statues he
raised all over the Empire kept the memory of the pretty youth fresh
for centuries.
This occurred about the month of October. The dates of these journeys
of Hadrian are much disputed, but a trivial detail has determined
this part of the tour. They went on to Thebes, and, in accordance
with custom, cut their names and the date in the great statue of
Memnon. They probably pushed on as far as Philæ, to see the temple of
Isis, but we find them back in Syria at the end of the year, or the
beginning of 132, and soon afterwards in Rome. The great villa had now
been completed at Tivoli, and we must assume that Sabina lived there
during the three or four years that remained for her. They were years
of continued melancholy. Hadrian was sobered, but soured. The Jews had
disturbed his cherished peace by rebelling, on account of his design
to cover the site of their holy city with a Roman colony, and he had
ruthlessly destroyed what remained of their cities, and erased the name
of Jerusalem by calling the new town Ælia Capitolina. Illness began
to enfeeble his frame, and he brooded darkly over the question of a
successor, which men were discussing. He passed in heavy dejection
through the lovely gardens and marble temples of his villa, still
mourning the loss of Antinous. An obelisk has been found there with the
inscription that it was raised to the youth by Hadrian and Sabina--a
fiction that must have angered the Empress, if it were done before her
death. But she did not live to see the darker gloom of his closing
years. She died in, or about, the year 136, “not without a rumour of
poison,” says Spartianus; the rumour is not worth considering. She had
been entitled “Augusta” by the Senate in 127, but Hadrian refused her
the divine honours which were usually bestowed on dead Empresses. They
were awarded by his successor.
The busts of Sabina which we have suggest just such a personality as
we have gathered from the meagre references to her in the chronicles.
She was a woman of smooth and regular features and fine person, without
beauty or charm. Her face gives an impression of intellect, virtue, and
silent suffering. She is the kind of woman who would neither overlook
the vice of her husband nor actively resent it, or assert herself in
any way; the kind of woman to retreat in disdain to her books. That she
was “treated as a slave” by Hadrian, as Aurelius Victor says, we may
decline to believe, and regard the statement as a popular exaggeration;
nor, on the other hand, can we agree with Gregorovius that a letter
in which Hadrian invites his mother to dine with him on his birthday,
and says that Sabina has gone into the country, shows their “mutual
dislike.” Duruy quotes this very letter in disproof of the belief
that they were estranged, and points out that it goes on to say that
Sabina had “sent her share for the family dinner.” The French historian
believes that the legend, “Concordia Augusta,” on some of the medals of
the time expressed a fact. We cannot, however, imagine Sabina resigning
herself to her husband’s passion for youths, and the few authentic
details left us about her relations with Hadrian generally indicate a
mutual aversion. As an Empress, she was a nonentity; as a woman, an
admirable blend of old-world sobriety and new-world culture.
Hadrian survived her for two unhappy years. The whole Empire was
covered with monuments of his public service, the coinage of every
province proclaimed his beneficence, the slave, the widow, and the
orphan gratefully told of his magnanimity. But the illness and
depression of his last year permitted him to commit a crime, and,
so accustomed was the new generation to good conduct in its rulers,
the recollection of his great deeds was almost obliterated. To the
astonishment of all, and the indignation of the thoughtful, Hadrian
announced that he had chosen as Cæsar his dissolute and decadent
companion, Lucius Verus. His brother-in-law Servianus, now an old man
of ninety, and the grandson of Servianus, a youth of nineteen, seem
to have been among the murmurers, and, on trivial pretexts, they were
put to death. These cruel murders brought a deep shadow over Hadrian’s
last year, but a last opportunity was given him to repair his action.
Lucius Verus, worn and consumptive from debauch, died, and Hadrian now
made choice of the most worthy man in the Senate, Titus Antoninus;
adding, however, in his quaint way of mingling good and evil, that he
must in turn adopt the son of Lucius Verus and young Marcus Aurelius,
a Sybarite and a Stoic, two antithetic types of Roman life. He went
down to Baiæ, suffering acutely from dropsy. The pain and weariness
were so great that he tried to secure poison or a sword, but Antoninus
prudently guarded and nursed him. He died in the year 138, “done to
death by physicians,” he ironically said. In his last days he composed
some slight verses, which I may translate:
Little soul, so tired and still,
Guest of this decaying flesh,
Whither, now, will thy flight be?
Pale and cold and reft of speech,
Never more to utter joke.
It was the note of the time-spirit, which was so strangely incarnated
in Hadrian. He united in his person all the contradictions that were at
strife in his era of change--asceticism and sensuality, public spirit
and selfish sensibility, Stoicism and Cyrenaicism. He needed a stronger
Empress. But the better spirit prevailed in him at the end, and the
Stoics came to the throne.
CHAPTER X
THE WIVES OF THE STOICS
On the twenty-fifth of February, in the year 138, Hadrian had
summoned the Senators to the palace. Verus was dead, and the whole
world wondered on whom the erratic fancy of the ailing Emperor
would rest next. Among the Senators was a distinguished, able, and
amiable statesman and commander, Titus Aurelius Fulvus Boionius
Arrius Antoninus, whose great merit had--as the long series of names
implies--been richly rewarded by older relatives. He had been much
consulted by Hadrian in his last years, and was respected by all. To
the great relief of the Senate the wavering finger of the Emperor fell
on this man, and he was acclaimed Cæsar. He attended Hadrian devotedly,
prolonged the useless life which lingered between him and the throne,
and--it was rumoured--saved many a noble head from execution in the
last frenzies of Hadrian. Early in July that great traveller set out on
his last journey, and Aurelius Antoninus--a name to which the Senate
soon added the appellation of Pius--ascended the throne.
The new Empress of Rome was Annia Galeria Faustina, a matron in her
thirty-fourth year, of an ancient and distinguished Italian family.
It is of some interest to regard the extraction of Faustina. Through
her the Imperial throne is about to pass once more to one of its most
ignoble occupants, and Rome will sink rapidly from the reign of Marcus
Aurelius to the riot of Commodus. The two opposing tendencies of Roman
life meet in her family, and the Stoic succumbs to the Epicurean--or,
rather, to the Sybaritic or Cyrenaic, for the gospel of Epicurus
was one of dignity and sobriety. Rome might have said, in the later
language of Goethe, as he depicted himself passing through a similar
phase:
Zwei Seelen wohnen, ach, in meiner Brust.
One soul leaned to sloth, sensual and selfish indulgence: one, with
larger horizon, was for temperance, vigour, and Imperial duty. The
curious feature of this critical stage in the fortunes of Rome is
that the two tendencies are developed within the same family, and
the Stoic yields to the Sybarite. Annia Galeria Faustina was born of
the same parents as the father of Marcus Aurelius, and was reared in
the same atmosphere of old Roman virtue, or manliness, as the word
signifies. The great-grandfather of Marcus Aurelius was Annius Verus,
a Senator of great merit and of Spanish extraction. His son Annius
Verus was twice consul, and both his sons in turn--the father and
uncle of Marcus Aurelius--were promoted to the consulate. Everything
we know of the family suggests a fine and sober patrician type, and
confirms the beautiful picture of it given us by Marcus Aurelius in his
“Meditations.”
The one element of possible weakness in the ancestry of the Faustinas
and of Commodus is in the mother of Annia Galeria Faustina. Annius
Verus had married Rupilia Faustina. Her family is obscure, and, though
one must hesitate to trace to her this strain of weakness and vice on
such slender grounds, one is disposed to believe that she was married
for her beauty, and brought into that strong family the tainted germ
which ripened in more than one of her descendants. It may, however,
very well be that the strength of the stock was decaying--Marcus
Aurelius himself was delicate--and its later descendants succumbed to
the evil influences about them. A genealogical table will show how the
fate of Rome hung on this family for more than a generation:--
[Illustration: FAUSTINA THE ELDER
BUST IN THE LOUVRE]
Annius Verus (twice consul)
and Rupilia Faustina
|
+--------------------+----------------------------+
| | |
Annius Libo Annius Verus (consul) Annia Galeria Faustina
(consul) (marries Domitia Calvilla) (marries Antoninus Pius)
| |
+-----------------+ ------+-------
| |
Annia Cornificia Marcus Aurelius Annia Faustina
(marries Annia Faustina) |
| |
+--------------+---------------+
|
Commodus
Faustina had inherited her mother’s beauty, and was reared in a very
conscientious home. It was the home in which Marcus Aurelius learned
his first lessons in virtue, as his father died early, and all the
chroniclers speak of it with great respect. We know very little about
her, however, until she becomes Empress, and, as she died three years
afterwards, we have not much concern with her. She is believed to have
married somewhat late for a Roman girl, in or about her sixteenth year
(120). Titus Aurelius Antoninus was then in his thirty-fourth year, a
tall, graceful, and handsome man, of quiet and captivating manners,
good cultivation, fine character, and a face of great dignity and
sweetness. He was of good family, and was advancing rapidly in the
public service. Shortly after the marriage he became consul, and he
remained in Rome in one or other civic capacity until 128 or 129. He
was very wealthy and greatly esteemed.
One of the chroniclers has charged her with light behaviour, and, as
this is the only period in which we can plausibly entertain it, we may
regard the charge for a moment. The book of Dio’s history for the reign
of Antoninus Pius is lost, so that neither he nor his commentators
throw any light on Faustina. Aurelius Victor and Eutropius say nothing
of her character. The one hostile witness is “Julius Capitolinus,” the
anonymous writer of the fourth century who provides the sketch of the
life of Antoninus Pius in the “Historia Augusta.” He says (c. 3): “Many
things are said of his wife’s excessive freedom and looseness of life,
which he had painfully to overlook.” Serviez enlarges on this with his
usual license. But as he makes Faustina the sister of Ælius Verus, and
says that she neglected the education of her children, which is also
untrue, we may ignore him.
It is now more customary to reject this charge against the elder
Faustina, on the ground that the single witness is a light anecdotist
of the fourth century. Moreover, when the tutor Fronto wrote a glowing
panegyric of Faustina after her death, Antoninus Pius answered that it
was even more true than eloquent, and swore that he “would rather live
with her at Gyaros [a barren island, to which criminals were deported]
than in a palace without her.” Nevertheless, we must leave the question
open. Antoninus Pius was not a puritan. When the Emperor Julian
introduces him before the gods, in his charming contest of the Emperors
for the highest praise (“The Cæsars”), he calls him “a moderate man,
not indeed in love-affairs, but in the administration of the Empire.”
Faustina was probably charming enough to merit his sincere lament. But
as Capitolinus mingles truth and untruth with a very light hand, and
the relevant book of Dio is wanting, we cannot decide the issue.
In the year 128 or 129 Antoninus was appointed Proconsul of Asia,
and he and Faustina went to Smyrna. The elder of their two daughters
died about the same time. An amusing incident in connexion with their
arrival is narrated by Philostratus in his “Lives of the Sophists.”
The Proconsul at once occupied the finest house in Smyrna, the home
of the teacher Polemo, who was absent. Polemo was the idol of Smyrna,
and was proportionately conceited. He drew youths from all parts to
his school, and had won much favour from Hadrian for the city. He
travelled in a superb Phrygian chariot, and his mules had silver
trappings; and when some grumblers had hinted that he had diverted to
his own pocket some of Hadrian’s subsidies, he had pompously written
to the Emperor: “Polemo has given me an account of money given by
you to him.” This conceited sophist reached his house in the middle
of the night, and found the Proconsul and Faustina abed there. He
promptly turned them out, and roundly abused them. Years afterwards,
when the genial Antoninus was Emperor, and Polemo came to the palace,
he said laughingly to an attendant: “See that Polemo has a chamber in
the palace, and that no one turns him out.” Later an actor came from
Smyrna to complain that Polemo, the autocrat, had turned him out of the
theatre. “At what hour?” asked the Emperor gravely. It was at midday.
“That is nothing; he turned me out at midnight,” said the Emperor.
The amiability and solid work of Antoninus must have won Polemo, as
Hadrian is reported to have said in his will that it was he who advised
the adoption of Antoninus. But the East generally so much appreciated
the Proconsul that, when he returned to Rome, he stood very high in the
favour of Hadrian. We again lose sight of Faustina until he becomes
Emperor, and then there are one or two brief references to her before
she dies in 141. At his accession he refused the greater part of the
money (_aurum coronarium_) which was due to him, by custom, from the
provinces, and drew very liberally on his private fortune for paying
the great expenses entailed. Faustina naturally demurred. “Foolish
woman,” he is said to have answered, “when we obtained the Empire
we lost what we previously possessed.” The only other reference is
contained in a letter of the younger Faustina to Marcus Aurelius: “In
the defection of Celsus my mother exhorted Antoninus to be concerned
first about his own family.” We know nothing of this revolt. Apparently
Antoninus, like Marcus Aurelius, was disposed to be dangerously
lenient. The final reference to Faustina is that she died in the third
year of his reign (141), and was deeply mourned by him. Nominated
“Augusta” in life, she was deified at death, and Antoninus built in her
honour the beautiful temple of which traces are still seen in Rome. He
also instituted in her honour a fresh charity for orphans, the “Puellæ
Faustinianæ,” and ordered that gold and silver statues of her should be
borne in the processions.
This sincere tribute of the Emperor tells at least of a great affection
and esteem, but the literary references to Faustina are too meagre
and disputable to bring her clearly before us. The busts that are
believed to represent her do not, unfortunately, assist us much. In the
Capitoline Museum at Rome is one that may depict her in her twenties
or earlier. It has a round and tranquil face, not devoid of strength,
but more directly suggesting an even and sober character. Another bust,
in the Vatican Museum, shows the same features at a later age; but a
third, in the same Museum, has not so pleasant an expression. The oval
face is hard and querulous. The loose lips droop at the ends; the large
eyes, prominent cheekbones, and strong chin have an expression that is
very far from tender or spiritual. The bust that is attributed to her
in the British Museum is between the two. The elder Faustina remains in
obscurity, and we pass to her more notorious daughter and successor.
For twenty years after the death of Faustina there was no Empress of
Rome. Antoninus, who was in his fifty-fifth year, refused to marry
again, and took a concubine--an arrangement recognized in Roman law
and practice, in which marriage had several degrees. It was an era
of general peace and great prosperity. The group of Stoic lawyers
that the Emperor gathered about him humanely moderated the rigour
of the laws, medical service was supplied to the poor in the towns,
the school-system was further endowed, and works of mercy continued
to multiply. The armies usually rested--and, it is to be feared,
rusted--the treasury was again filled, the Empire was happy and
prosperous. In the year 161 the cheerful, benevolent Antoninus passed
away, and the two men whom Hadrian had compelled him to adopt came to
their joint reign. With them are introduced two new Empresses of no
little interest.
The two boys whom Hadrian had lightly designated as the heirs to the
throne after Antoninus were Annius Verus, or Verissimus, as Hadrian
genially called him on account of his precocious gravity and piety,
and Lucius Verus, son of Hadrian’s dissolute companion. Annius was a
great favourite of the Emperor. He received office in his sixth year,
and donned the philosopher’s cloak in his twelfth. He was the pet of
his grandfather’s palace, but so serious in his Stoicism that his
mother had difficulty in persuading him to sleep in a bed instead of on
the floor. In his sixteenth year Hadrian gave him the manly toga, and
betrothed him to the daughter of Lucius Verus. In his eighteenth year
he was “terrified” to hear that he had been chosen for the succession,
and must go to live in the palace. Then Hadrian died, and Antoninus
adopted him.
Gibbon has greatly praised Antoninus for preferring the welfare of the
State to the interest of his family in this adoption. It is true that,
as we know from coins, Antoninus and Faustina had had two sons, as well
as two daughters, but they must have died before the year 138. Dio
expressly says that Hadrian ordered Antoninus to adopt the two youths
“because he had no male children at the time.” His boys, like his
elder daughter, must have died before that time; and indeed we have no
further mention of them. But if this particular grace cannot be allowed
to Antoninus, we must admire his careful control of their education and
his discriminating guidance of their fortunes. The best masters in Rome
instructed each of them, and it was only the deep-rooted difference
in their constitutions--the moral strength of the one and weakness of
the other--that led them to diverge so widely. The vigilant eye of the
Emperor observed the dissimilarity of promise. He left Lucius Verus out
of the way of promotion, and destined Marcus for the great advancement.
No sooner was Antoninus on the throne than he approached Marcus,
through Faustina, with a proposal of marriage with his daughter. She
had been promised by Hadrian to young Lucius Verus, and Marcus was to
marry Ceionia. The Emperor proposed to cancel these contracts, and
marry the younger Faustina to the young Stoic. It would be extremely
interesting if we could penetrate the feelings of the young princess at
the time. The later busts of her suggest a pretty, round-faced girl,
probably in her early teens, with small eyes and a lively temperament.
The grim and austere young scholar would not attract her, and one
can imagine her feelings when he asked time to consider whether he
would accept the hand of the Emperor’s charming daughter. Marcus
philosophically weighed the proposal in his mind until the time he
asked had expired, and then he consented to betrothal. He was appointed
Cæsar and consul designate, and given the palace of Tiberius for a
dwelling. A bust that we have of him, in the Capitol Museum, represents
him about this time--a face of singular beauty and refinement framed in
a mass of short curly hair.
Their marriage--a superb ceremony--did not take place until about seven
years later (145), a circumstance which we may regard as a further
philosophic error. During the years of waiting, and during most of the
reign of Antoninus, Marcus was absorbed in study. He was penetrated
with the aphorism of Plato, that the State would be happy whose prince
was a philosopher. What the effect was on Faustina we may be in a
better position to say later. Her mother had died in 141, her womanhood
was fully born, and the eye of her father had an Empire to survey. At
the death of Antoninus the throne was at once offered to Marcus. In his
last moments Antoninus had ordered the golden statue of Fortune, which
he kept in his chamber, to be conveyed to Marcus. From a sense of duty
he, unluckily for Rome, associated Lucius Verus with him in the Empire.
Somewhat delicate himself, he relied on Verus for such work abroad as
was immediately necessary, and continued to frequent the schools.
His peaceful studies were quickly interrupted. Fatal floods and
scarcity of food disturbed the capital; the eastern frontier was again
aflame, and the German frontier was threatened. Marcus sent Verus to
take command in the East, after betrothing him to his daughter Lucilla,
held off the northern barbarians with bribes and diplomacy, and worked
hard for the relief of Rome. For a time his policy seemed to triumph.
The Germans were pacified, and the eastern peoples repressed. Verus,
indeed, advanced no farther than the voluptuous palaces of Antioch and
the licentious groves of Daphne. Once only during the campaign did
he quit the luxury of Antioch. He heard that Marcus was coming East
with his daughter Lucilla, and hastened to meet him otherwhere than
in garrulous Antioch. Marcus did not leave Italy, however, and Verus
wedded Lucilla, and returned to his perfumed vices. Happily, there was
in the East a Roman general of the old stamp, Avidius Cassius, a strong
and blunt man, disdainful of luxury. He lashed the debauched troops
into a state of discipline, pacified the East, and let Verus return to
Rome to enjoy his triumph.
Here begin the stories that have gathered about the memory of the
younger Faustina, and have persuaded many a writer that, as one of the
authorities says, she became a second Messalina. If we are to believe
the “Augustan History,” she behaved with the most abominable license
throughout her whole married life. Four Roman nobles are specifically
named as notorious lovers of the Empress, and she is charged with
general license. One of the four was named Tertullus, and it is said
that one day, when Marcus was in the theatre, an actor made flagrant
reference to this liaison. Asked for the name of a certain lover, he
said three times (_ter_), “Tullus, Tullus, Tullus.” It is added that
Marcus--who might very well miss a point in the theatre, as he read and
wrote letters there--was quite aware of the liaison, because he one day
surprised Faustina at breakfast with Tertullus. The Empress is further
charged with adultery with the voluptuous colleague of her husband, and
with wantoning among actors, gladiators, sailors, and others of the
baser sort.
The more sober writers on Faustina have generally been unwilling to
admit this debauchery. Duruy rejects the stories altogether, Merivale
recommends reserve, and Renan thinks that “careful research has reduced
to very small proportions the accusations which scandal was pleased to
bring against the wife of Marcus Aurelius.” It seems to me that we can
only come to the same conclusion as we did in regard to Messalina; we
must regard particular legends with reserve, but must conclude that
the general opinion of Faustina at the time, which the stories embody,
must have had a serious basis. Some of the stories put on record by
Capitolinus in the “Augustan History” are palpably false. One runs that
she confessed to Marcus her passion for a certain gladiator, and that
Marcus was directed by the Chaldæan sages, whom he consulted, to kill
the man and bathe the Empress in his blood. Her passion was cured, but
her next child was the brutal Commodus. This story is so gross--I do
not reproduce all the details--that the writer does not insist on it,
but he continues: “Still, as her conduct with the gladiators is well
known, Commodus probably was the son of a gladiator.” Now the tutor of
the princes, Fronto, remarks in one of his letters, and the surviving
busts bear him out, that Commodus had a striking likeness to Marcus
Aurelius. I may add that Commodus was born in the year of the Emperor’s
accession, when such conduct is incredible.
[Illustration: FAUSTINA THE YOUNGER
BUST (REPUTED) IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM]
Other parts of the legend are just as vulnerable. Thus it is said that
Faustina poisoned Verus when he boasted to his wife of his relations
with her. He died a very natural death, as we shall see later. On the
other hand, Dio, who lived shortly afterwards, and had no dislike for
scandal, knows nothing whatever about this looseness on the part of the
Empress, and there is nothing in Eutropius or Aurelius Victor. The only
other writer who, in a general way, accuses Faustina of dissoluteness
is the Emperor Julian (“Cæsars,” c. 28). We are therefore in a dilemma,
and must not too readily speak of Faustina as a second Messalina.
The quiet assumption of her guilt in Julian, and the fact that the
stories in the “Augustan History” are professedly taken from Marius
Maximus, an historical writer not far removed from her time, imply a
very general belief in her guilt. In one place Capitolinus says (c. 23)
that the Emperor “cleared her by his letters” of the charge of loose
behaviour with actors, and in another represents him as saying, when
he is urged to divorce her on account of her vices: “If we send away
the wife, we must give up her dowry,” though the Empire could hardly
be called Faustina’s dowry. In a third place, however, Capitolinus
leaves it open whether Marcus “was ignorant of, or ignored,” his
wife’s misconduct. For many writers, in fact, the attitude of Marcus
is decisive. If such things had been done he must have known, and,
with such knowledge, he could not have spoken so highly of his wife in
his “Meditations,” and would not have dared to set up, in her memory,
an altar on which the maidens of Rome should offer sacrifice before
marriage.
The scale, in truth, is somewhat evenly balanced, yet one cannot easily
conceive that the heavy charges of Marius Maximus and the deliberate
verdict of Julian had no foundation. Whether from weakness, or from an
excess of casuistry, Marcus Aurelius lacked decision or penetration
in such matters. He married his daughter to a profligate, whom he
afterwards deified, and he committed the Empire to a son who had given
early promise of vice. His grave and ascetic ways probably repelled the
gay and beautiful woman whom he had diplomatically married, and she
seems to have sought relief. None of the busts, medallions, or coins,
which more or less convey an image of her to us, suggest character or
culture, but rather a weak control and a sensuous temper. From her
Commodus derived the enfeebled will that put him at the mercy of his
more dissolute courtiers, and the sensuality that made his short reign
an indescribable debauch. Much as we should like to relieve Marcus
Aurelius of the shame of having begotten such a monster, we must admit
his parentage, and cast what blame there is on the mother.
In this unsatisfactory haze we must leave the conduct of the Empress
during the years in which her husband wrought for the safety of
the Empire, bequeathed his austere reflections to later ages, or
contemplated the golden images of his teachers in his _lararium_. The
triumphant return of Verus was quickly followed by years of gravest
anxiety. In the pestilential East the legions had absorbed the germs
of plague, had strewn them along their route, and had now disseminated
them throughout Rome. Thousands of victims, rich and poor, succumbed
to the subtle malady. Marcus vainly summoned the ministers of every
religion and the medical men of all schools, and sacrificed those
obscure Christians on whom popular anger was ever ready to visit a
calamity. His trouble increased when it was announced that the fierce
Marcomanni of the north had burst into the Empire, and were driving
the Romans before them. With great energy he mustered the demoralized
legions in the north, and set out with Verus against the enemy. In
the middle of the war (168) Verus, who had repeatedly tried to return
to the comfort of the capital, died. He had an apoplectic fit on the
journey, and we may ignore the various suggestions that either Lucilla,
or Faustina, or Marcus put an end to his useless career.
Marcus continued for several years the task of settling the frontier
tribes. It seems that Faustina went with him on these arduous
campaigns, though whether we may see in the circumstance any merit
on her part, or a device of the Emperor to control her conduct, it
is impossible to say. She at least earned a title--“Mother of the
Camps” and “Mother of the Legions”--which is found on few coins of the
Empresses. It is probable that her disorders belonged to an earlier
date, before and in the early part of the Emperor’s reign. It is
chiefly at Gaeta, the pretty bay on the coast where many Romans had
villas, that Capitolinus places her familiarity with gladiators and
sailors. Possibly the sobriety of her later years was accepted by her
husband as an expiation, and held to justify his eulogy of her.
Those later years were full of trouble and anxiety. Not only did two
of their children die, and their daughter Lucilla become the widow
of a notorious profligate, but the gods seemed to have entered upon
a contest with the virtue of Marcus Aurelius. A great earthquake
shook the East, the plague left a blackened trail over the Empire and
infested the camps, and other disasters were crowded into a few years.
The treasury ran short, and Marcus was obliged to put up the Imperial
treasures at auction to obtain funds for carrying on the war. His one
consolation was that the Eastern frontier was tranquil, yet in the
year 175 a messenger came to announce that his great general, Avidius
Cassius, was in revolt, and claimed the Empire.
Verus, who must have felt the scorn of the stronger man, had warned
Marcus years before that Cassius was dangerous, but the actual revolt
is persistently connected in the chronicles with Faustina. Cassius had
ambition, and had only been prevented by his father in earlier years
from rising against Antoninus Pius. In 174 or 175, it is said by Dio,
he received a message from Faustina, proposing that, in the event of
Marcus dying, he should marry her, and occupy the throne. Shortly after
this a false message reached him that Marcus was dead, and he at once
announced to the legions that he assumed the Empire. The message was
quickly contradicted, but Cassius thought it too late to retire, and he
prepared for a struggle. Marcus sadly moved towards the East. Before he
had gone far, however, he learned that the soldiers, who hated Cassius
for his rigour, had put him to death.
The position of Faustina is once more in grave ambiguity. The writer
on Cassius in the “Historia Augusta” gives the rumour implicating her,
but rejects it. Unfortunately, his rejection is in this case no more
weighty than his acceptance in others. He admits that his source,
Marius Maximus, believes Faustina guilty, and ascribes it to “a wish
to defame” the Empress. Except that the hatred of Commodus at Rome
may have for some time been extended to the woman who had borne him,
there is no clear reason why Maximus should calumniate Faustina. Dio,
who lives very close to the time, gives it as a positive fact that
Faustina secretly urged Cassius to marry her, and occupy the throne,
if Marcus died. We may concur in the verdict of most of the writers on
the matter. Marcus was ailing, delicate, and overburdened with work. It
seemed to Faustina that he would not live long, and, as Commodus was a
callow and unpromising youth, and by no means sure of succession, she
sought an arrangement by which she should remain on the throne if her
husband died.
It is not generally felt that there was anything gravely reprehensible
in this, but a secret negotiation of such a character does not
present her to us in an attractive light. Her subsequent zeal for the
punishment of Cassius and his friends is equally unpleasant, even
if we recall that she had no intention of raising him against the
Emperor while he lived. Several letters which passed between Marcus
and Faustina have been preserved in the “Historia Augusta,” from
Marius Maximus, and there seems to be little ground to doubt their
genuineness. They suggest that Marcus was in the habit of consulting
with Faustina on matters of grave importance. “Come up to the Alban
Mount,” he writes her, after telling of the sedition, “and by the
favour of the gods, we will discuss the affair in safety.” Faustina
replies:
“I will set out to-morrow for the Alban Mount, as you command,
but I at once implore you, if you love your children, to visit
these rebels with the utmost severity. The soldiers and their
leaders have fallen into evil ways, and they will crush us if
we do not coerce them.”
In another letter she presses him again:
“My mother Faustina urged your father [by adoption] Pius, at
the time of the secession of Celsus, to feel first for his own
family.... You see how young Commodus is, and our son-in-law
Pompeianus is older and is abroad. Do not spare men who have
not spared you, and would not spare me and the children if they
won.”
A later letter of Marcus tells that he has read her exhortation in his
villa at Formiæ (on the Gulf of Gaeta). By that time he has heard that
Cassius is dead, and he will hear of no further revenge on his family.
He will spare his wife and children, and beg the Senate to be moderate
in punishing the accomplices, because “there is nothing that so much
commends the Emperor of Rome to the nations as clemency.” We know, in
fact, that he treated the family of Cassius with great generosity.
The Emperor and Empress then went to the East to complete the work
of pacification. In the course of the voyage, in a little village at
the foot of Mount Taurus, Faustina met her end in the year 175. As a
matter of course she was placed among the gods, but Marcus was not
content with the customary honouring of her memory. He gave the village
the name of Faustinopolis, founded a fresh charity with the title of
“Puellæ Faustinianæ,” and built a beautiful temple at Rome, which, when
he died a few years later, was dedicated in their joint names by the
Senate. As if to obliterate all the rumours about her infidelity, he
went on to ask extraordinary honours for her of the Senate. He set up
a special altar, with a silver statue of her, in the temple of Venus,
and directed that maidens about to marry should offer sacrifice on it;
and he had a golden statue of her placed on her seat in the theatre
whenever he attended its performances.
Dio gives two versions of the death of Faustina which were current in
his time. Some said that she died of gout, from which she suffered;
others held that she put an end to her life in fear lest her complicity
with Cassius should be discovered by Marcus in the East. The second
theory is superfluous. The natural cause of death seems adequate
enough, nor would she be in any serious danger if Marcus heard that
Cassius had made her the pretext of his rebellion. Her chief misdeeds
were to live after her. Frivolous, and probably licentious, in her
early married life, she seems to have settled in sober ways when she
became Empress, but we find no influence of hers in the ordering
of affairs. Had she only reared healthy children to succeed her
husband, she might have contributed worthily to the mighty task of
supporting the shaken Empire. Instead, she gave to the Empire Lucilla
and Commodus, her two surviving children, and it fell into a fresh
degradation.
CHAPTER XI
THE WIVES OF THE SYBARITES
As Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus had been equal in Imperial power,
and both were married, we have one more Empress to regard before we
pass on to the wives of Commodus; and the account we have already given
of Verus will justify us in relegating her to this distinct chapter.
Verus had married Lucilla, the eldest daughter of Marcus and Faustina;
but the ambiguous repute of her mother will warn us not to expect
a painful spectacle of vice in alliance with lofty virtue. Lucilla
carries a step further the unhappy disposition which we have suspected
in her grandmother, and more palpably detected in her mother. By her
union with Lucius Verus vice was once more decked with the Imperial
purple and justified in the eyes of Rome. We may briefly consider
Lucilla as Empress before we follow her lamentable career under the
reign of her brother.
Lucilla was born in the first year of the married life of Marcus and
Faustina. Marcus was then a pale and thin-blooded scholar, Faustina
in the full warmth and sensuousness of young womanhood, and it was
not unnatural that the child should inherit the temper of her mother
without the spiritual restraint of her sire. She was educated with
the greatest care, and was betrothed to Verus in her sixteenth year.
Presumably by the will of her father, and certainly with the full
assent of Verus, she remained two further years in the palace, while
Verus wore out his strength in the dissipations of Antioch. Marcus
heard of his conduct, and sent out Lucilla to marry him; as if a union
with a young woman of seventeen or eighteen would be apt to have a
sobering influence on a man of Verus’s habits and parentage. Verus met
her at Ephesus, married her there with great pomp, and returned with
her to his pleasures at Antioch.
They came to Rome at the peace of 166, and Marcus could not fail to
learn in full the character of the man to whom he had entrusted his
daughter and half his power. The villa which Verus occupied in the
Clodian Way was the most notorious house of debauch in Rome. It swarmed
with the dancing-girls, boys, Eastern slaves, musicians, conjurors,
etc., that Verus had brought from the East. One room was fitted up as
a popular tavern, and we must leave under the veil of a dead language
the abominations that were perpetrated there. One can only repeat such
comparatively decent details as that Verus would have gladiators to
fight in his house during dinner, and prolong the carouse until his
slaves had to bear away his stupefied form on his couch; or that, on
other occasions, he would emulate the early feats of Nero, and revel at
nights in the wine-shops and brothels of the popular quarter. One night
he gave a superbly furnished banquet, and at the close, in a drunken
fit, presented to his guests the costly plate, and even the litters,
with silver-harnessed mules, in which they were taken home.
Marcus made several futile attempts to brace him by a campaign in the
north, and must have been sincerely relieved when he at last paid, by
a premature death, the price of his excesses. Lucilla had then been
Empress for eleven years. As she is barely noticed in the chronicles,
we are left to imagine the effect on her of living through her early
womanhood in such a palace as that of Verus. Probably disgust saved her
very largely from the taint. Verus’s sister Fabia lived with them, and
was generally believed to be intimate with her brother. She at least
usurped the place of Lucilla in authority, and the Empress must have
been as much relieved as her father when Verus died. He was rumoured
to have been poisoned by Lucilla because of his relations with Fabia;
by Faustina, for betraying his relations with her; and by Marcus, to
rid the Empire of his sottishness. But an apoplectic fit would be so
natural a crown to such a career that we can dispense with so much
poison.
Lucilla was then married by Marcus to an elderly and worthy Senator,
Claudius Pompeianus. She and her mother strongly resented the marriage,
and demanded a younger and more attractive husband; but the Emperor
was unusually firm. Unhappily, his firmness was misplaced, for the
austerity or age of Pompeianus effected what the profligacy of Verus
had failed to do, and Lucilla fell into vicious ways. We may conjecture
that this did not happen until after her father’s death. Marcus had
returned to the war against the Marcomanni, and, after three years of
great exertion and sacrifice, was within sight of victory when death
carried him off. He had not married again, in spite of Fabia’s efforts
to win him. In the fashion approved even by philosophers, he took a
concubine to his bed, and virtuously refused to put a stepmother over
his children. At his death a new Empress comes upon the scene, and, as
Lucilla still retained her Imperial dignities and privileges, we shall
have to consider them in an unamiable conjunction.
The last and most fatal blunder of Marcus Aurelius was to leave the
Empire in the very uncertain hands of his son Commodus. War had drained
the treasury; plague, famine, and sloth had thinned and weakened
the population; vice had again been enthroned for all to admire and
imitate; the lusty barbarians were thundering at its gates. A new
Vespasian or Trajan was needed to restore its vigour, if such a
restoration were possible. Yet Marcus persuaded himself that the pretty
youth, with bright eyes and curly golden hair, who played at soldiering
in his suite in Germany, could bear this enormous burden. Herodian,
whose history of the Emperors now opens for us, tells us that Marcus
was really concerned on the matter as he lay in his last illness.
There were disquieting stories about the character of Commodus. It was
said that in his twelfth year he had, at Centumcellæ (Civita Vecchia),
ordered the bath-attendant to be thrown into the furnace because the
water was not hot enough. On another occasion Marcus had driven away
certain corrupting attendants, but had recalled them at the petulant
tears of his son. They were with him in Pannonia. We may at least
assume that even the fond eye of a father must have discerned the
weakness of character which, in the course of a year or two, would let
Commodus sink to indescribable depths. Marcus, however, trustful to
the end in the sublime truths of his philosophy, was content to summon
Commodus to his tent, make a pretty speech to him in the presence of
his counsellors, and hand over to him the reins of government.
For a time Commodus remained in the camp, and let the elders govern.
Before long the lighter courtiers hint that it is more comfortable in
Rome, and he talks of going. The elders frown, and Pompeianus lectures
him. He bows submissively, but it is not long before he decides to go.
Numbers of officers discover a similar call to the capital, and a gay
cavalcade sets out. Rome is enchanted, and goes out miles along the
road to meet Commodus, and strews flowers and laurel in his path, and
enthuses over his handsome face and the curly hair that shines like
gold in the sun. It was the coming of Caligula and Nero over again.
The Roman people--_quantum mutatus ab illo!_--had come to appreciate a
pretty face, and a prospect of endless games, immeasurably more than
the security of the frontier.
When Commodus had set out with his father for Germany, he had been
married--“hastily married,” the chronicle says--to a lady as young and
thoughtless as himself. Crispina was a very beautiful girl, and of
distinguished family. Her father, Bruttius Præsens, was a Senator of
great merit. It seems that she accompanied Commodus to the camp, and
returned with him to Rome. In his train were the evil counsellors whom
Marcus had banished and recalled. Their hour had come.
For three years Commodus enjoyed the pleasures which they provided or
invented for him, and left the administration in the capable hands of
his father’s servants. Possibly this was the highest virtue Marcus had
expected of him. But the ambition of his confidants steadily grew,
and a bitter feud in the palace now came to a head and gave them an
opportunity. Crispina and Lucilla were violently opposed to each
other. The Imperial title of Lucilla paled beside that of the wife of
the ruling Emperor. The fire which had been borne before her when she
went abroad now passed to Crispina, and she had to yield precedence in
the palace and the theatre. Crispina, on the other hand, resented the
familiarity of Commodus with his sister, and would hardly be ignorant
of the interpretation that was generally put on it. The adherents of
the palace were thus divided into two parties, and the Empresses fought
for the monopoly of Commodus’s favour. At last Lucilla despaired of
gaining her end through Commodus, and resolved to have him murdered.
There is no room for doubt that the daughter of Faustina and Marcus
Aurelius was an abandoned woman. Dio declares that she was “no better
than Commodus.” We may trust that this is an exaggeration, but the
other authorities speak of the looseness of her conduct, and are
emphatically agreed that she inspired the plot to murder her brother.
No one doubts that her purpose was to recover supreme power. The
inferences and impressions we draw from Imperial portraits are not very
substantial, but it is interesting that the statue of Lucilla, which we
have, suggests just the type of woman that the historians represent her
to have been. It is the figure of a full-bodied woman, of strong and
imperious temper, sensual to the limit of grossness. In her the beauty
of her mother, instead of being enhanced by the purity of her father,
is blighted by a general expression of coarseness and self-assertion.
Her criminal design was gradually imparted to her lovers. Among these
was a young noble named Quadratus, whom she soon fired with a sense of
her grievances, and a conspiracy was framed. The actual assassination
was undertaken by her stepson, Claudius Pompeianus. Herodian says that
his name was Quintianus, and he may have had this name in addition. Dio
gives a confused and contradictory account--he describes Pompeianus
as married to Lucilla’s daughter, whereas Lucilla was married to his
father, and he says that she was intimate with him, yet hated him and
wished to destroy him--but, as he lived in Rome at the time, we must
accept the substance of his story. The young Senator Pompeianus was
an intimate friend of Commodus, and only an infatuation for Lucilla
could have drawn him into the plot. He spoiled it, and ruined the
conspirators, by his melodramatic display. As Commodus entered the
amphitheatre, he rushed upon him with a drawn sword. But he announced
his purpose by crying out: “The Senate sends thee this sword,” and the
guards arrested him.
The plot gave Commodus an opportunity to make a bloody clearance of
those who hampered his plans, and caused him to regard the Senate with
dark suspicion. The male conspirators were executed, and Lucilla was
banished to Capreæ. But Crispina had no triumph by the removal of her
rival. She had herself been tainted in that atmosphere of vice, and
was detected in one of her liaisons by Commodus. She was banished to
Capreæ, and there both she and Lucilla were put to death.
[Illustration: LUCILLA
BUST IN THE NATIONAL MUSEUM, ROME]
The conspiracy took place in the year 182, the third year of Commodus’s
reign. The remaining ten years of his life it would be more agreeable
to leave in the untranslatable language of the chroniclers, but he
virtually shared his throne with a woman of a singular and interesting
type, and we must include her in the gallery of wives of the Emperors.
Among the property of the wealthy young conspirator, Quadratus,
which was at once confiscated, was a very handsome and engaging
concubine of the name of Marcia. The _concubinatus_ was, as I have
said, a legal and recognized union in Rome, and we must not regard
these women, who enter our chronicle in that capacity, in quite the
same light as the mistresses of later Christian princes. They were
sometimes of moderately good family, though they seem generally to
have belonged to the class of emancipated slaves, and were included
in the man’s property. Marcia was of the latter class. Probably an
orphan at an early age, she was brought up by a eunuch, and sold by
him to Quadratus. At the dispersal of his property, or even during his
life, she attracted the notice of Commodus, and was transferred to the
populous harem of his three hundred concubines.
A few years later (185) an event occurred that greatly increased her
growing power over the Emperor. The chief favourite of Commodus was
a low-born and despicable courtier named Perennis, who encouraged
the Emperor to pursue his morbid sensual impulses, while he himself
accumulated wealth and power. He flattered and indulged every fancy
of his besotted master, and controlled all the resources of the
State in his own interest. He was commander of the guards, and seems
to have at length conceived an ambition to displace Commodus. One
day, when Commodus presided at the games, which he very liberally
provided, before an immense crowd, a mild-looking man--said to be a
philosopher--rushed into the centre of the stage and roared out a
warning to the Emperor that Perennis was acquiring wealth and aiming at
the throne. The prefect had him burned alive, and escaped the Emperor’s
suspicion; but the end was nearer than he expected. A regiment of
fifteen hundred men from the legions of Britain marched into Rome,
demanded the head of Perennis, and forced Commodus to recognize and
punish the faults of his minister.
From that time Marcia occupies the place of _prima inter pares_ in the
harem of Commodus. A good deal of research has been expended on this
leading concubine of the Emperor, because there was a tradition in
early Christian literature that she favoured and protected, if she did
not herself belong to, the new religion.[14] It was said that she sent
the eunuch, who had reared her, to liberate the repressed Christians
of Sardinia, and the peace which they enjoyed at Rome during the reign
of Commodus is attributed to her influence. But if Marcia had ever
belonged to the austere sect of the early Christians, we must, for
its credit, entirely dissociate her from it in her Imperial days. She
seems to have been to the brutal Commodus what Cæsonia had been to the
equally licentious Caligula. She dressed willingly as an Amazon, and is
actually represented on the coins, with Commodus, in the helmet of a
female warrior. If we may put any trust in that meagre portrait of her,
she seems to have been of much the same type as Cæsonia: a handsome,
strong, vulgar woman, owing her influence to her masculine robustness.
For seven years she occupied, without a quarrel, the chief place in
a palace in which all the orgies of Caligula, Nero, and Verus were
concentrated. At her persuasion Commodus changed the name of Rome to
“the Colony of Commodus.” One might almost suspect her of genial irony
in thus removing the venerable name from the Imperial city during
the years when it was degraded by Commodus. Evil as the practices of
Caligula and Nero had been, they were surpassed by the insanities and
obscenities of the son of Marcus Aurelius. We must leave the veil over
the life that was witnessed in the palace during those ten years; but
the crimes of Commodus were not confined to the wild indulgence of his
unbridled appetites. The company of gladiators and the daily pleasure
of killing degraded him to the character of a mere butcher. He forced
the priests of orgiastic Eastern cults to perform on themselves the
mutilations which their ritual described; he beat them with the emblem
of Anubis which he carried in their processions. On one occasion he
had all the citizens of Rome with some infirmity of the feet gathered
in one place, and more or less dressed as dragons. Then the Roman
Hercules--as Commodus loved to be called--fell upon them with a club,
and killed numbers of them. This and other stories of his indescribable
lust and cruelty are told by an historian who saw Commodus daily.
In the year 189 Marcia obtained even greater power over her insane
lover. The place of Perennis had been at once occupied by another of
the Emperor’s despicable courtiers, Cleander, a Phrygian slave who had
risen, by base means, to be the first minister of the Empire. Like his
predecessor, he encouraged Commodus to wallow in his vices, while he
took advantage of his insanity to enrich himself. The highest positions
in the State were sold by him, and men could even purchase from him
the right to take vengeance on their enemies, or the privilege not
to be executed for their wealth. The treasury was again diminishing,
and noble blood poured out freely to refresh it. A great pestilence
swept over Italy, exacting thousands of victims daily in Rome alone. A
terrible famine succeeded it. The people, observing that the avaricious
minister was endeavouring to make a corner in corn, now broke into
rebellion and pressed to the palace of the Emperor.
Commodus was enjoying himself at the beautiful palace of the
Quintilians in the suburbs, which he had obtained by murder, when the
crowd surged up to the gates. Cleander turned the cavalry upon the
people, but the infantry sided with them, and they returned in a storm
of anger to the palace. None of his ministers dare approach the room in
which Commodus wantoned with his companions, but his sister Fadilla and
Marcia broke in with the news that his life was in danger. Some writers
say that it was Fadilla who informed him, some that it was Marcia. We
may suppose that both of them endeavoured to awake him. The voluptuous
coward at once sacrificed Cleander to the crowd, and returned to his
vices.
Marcia had now the leading influence over Commodus, and Rome sank
lower and lower. The butcheries of the amphitheatre were his chief
concern. He consorted daily with the gladiators, killed vast numbers
of beasts in the arena, and even fought with men who had meekly to
submit to be slain by him. Numbers of distinguished or wealthy Romans
were put to death on the most frivolous pretexts, yet the Senators were
compelled to view and applaud his daily slaughters with such cries as:
“Thou conquerest the world, O brave Amazonian.” Dio, who sat among
the Senators, tells us that one day Commodus made a grotesque attempt
to intimidate them. He had just killed an ostrich, and came toward
them with the head in one hand and the bloody sword in the other. He
grinned and wagged his head, without saying a word, as he approached
them, as if intimating that it would be their turn next. Dio says that
his appearance was so ludicrous that he had hastily to pluck a leaf of
laurel, and chew it, to prevent him from laughing. We nearly missed the
writing of one of the most valuable histories of the period.
The “Golden Age,” as the Senate was compelled to describe this
appalling decade, came to a close through a fresh excess on the part
of Commodus Pius, as he was now styled. They had reached the last
day of the year 192, and were preparing for the great festivities of
the morrow. Commodus informed Marcia that he would spend the night
in the house of the gladiators, and issue from it on the morrow at
their head. He ordered his chamberlain Eclectus and his commander of
the guard Lætus to make the necessary preparation. Marcia and the
officers were horrified at his proposal, and besought him to abandon
it. After reading the disgusting details of his career in the “Historia
Augusta”--even if we make allowance for exaggeration--one has some
difficulty in realizing their indignation. Apparently, however, this
proposal to identify himself so intimately with the degraded caste of
public gladiators was regarded by them as something of an entirely
different nature from the filth and obscenity of his practices in
the palace, and they boldly opposed him. He angrily shook them off,
and put their names on his condemned list. The “Augustan History,”
recalling a story we have heard before, introduces an element of
romance into the adventure. It makes Commodus tie the tablet to his
bed, and go to sleep, when the tablet is playfully removed by one of
his jewel-decked boys, and delivered accidentally into the hands of
Marcia.
It is better to follow the version of Dio, who was in Rome at the time.
The two officers and Marcia, realizing that they had incurred his
anger, discussed the matter, and decided to assassinate him. Marcia was
directed to poison him. She put the poison in the meat he ate, but its
effect was spoiled by the quantity of wine he had drunk, and it caused
him to vomit. He became suspicious and threatening, and went to the
bath. They then hastily took into their confidence his powerful and
athletic bath-attendant, Narcissus, and he entered and strangled the
Emperor.
One reads with something like amazement that the successful
conspirators, instead of gladly announcing that they had rid Rome of
such a brute and tyrant, deliberated anxiously how they should proceed.
So blind was the attachment of the troops to their paymaster, and
of the common citizens to any generous provider of games, that they
concealed the deed. Commodus had himself fought 735 times in the public
amphitheatre, and on those performances alone had spent 200,000,000
drachmas. The temper of the demoralized people and soldiers was
uncertain, and they decided to put the Empire at once in the hands of a
strong soldier.
In the romantic story of the accession of the various Empresses of
Rome there are few cases so dramatic as that which introduces the
next Empress in the series. There was living in Rome at the time an
experienced commander, in his sixtieth year, of the name of Pertinax.
His father had kept a kind of tavern in a village of Liguria. The
son had obtained some education, and rapidly climbed the ladder of
promotion. He had married Flavia Titiana, the accomplished daughter
of a very wealthy and distinguished Senator. Himself enamoured of
Cornificia, the sister of Marcus Aurelius, he had overlooked the
vivacity of his wife, and she had at one time attracted comment by her
open regard for a musician. At the time of the murder of Commodus,
Pertinax was Prefect of Rome. He retired to bed on that last night of
the year 192 with no suspicion of the great events that were happening
in the Domus Vectiliana, to which, it seems, Commodus had gone.
In the middle of the night he was awakened with the message that the
captain of the Prætorian Guards wished to see him. He calmly said
that he had for some time expected to be executed by Commodus, and he
continued to lie, in quiet dignity, when Lætus entered to tell him that
they offered him the Empire. He begged Lætus to abandon his unseemly
joke, and carry out his orders. He was at last convinced that Commodus
was dead, and, through the darkness of the stormy winter night, they
made their way to the camp. They announced to the guards that Commodus
had died of apoplexy, and that Pertinax was submitted to be chosen
by them as Emperor. The soldiers listened with no enthusiasm. Under
the license of the reign of Commodus they had been permitted to take
the most extraordinary liberties, and they dreaded the accession
of a commander. The news had, however, spread by this time through
the city. People crowded into the torch-lit streets, and poured out
toward the camp, hailing the name of Pertinax and execrating that of
Commodus. A promise of 3,000 denarii to each man overcame the last
opposition of the Guards, and they coldly consented to the choice. In
the Senate, too, there was hesitation. “We see behind you,” said the
consul Falco, “the ministers of Commodus’s crimes, Lætus and Marcia.”
Pertinax himself, indeed, was still very reluctant; but the Senate
urged the Imperial power upon him, and the new year dawned at Rome upon
a people angrily scattering the statues and memorials of Commodus, and
expressing a wild rejoicing over the advent of its new ruler.
Titiana never bore the title of Augusta, and we may dismiss very
briefly her few months of residence in the palace. The Senate offered
the title of Augusta to Titiana, and that of Cæsar to their son, but
Pertinax refused both. “Let the boy earn it,” he said of his son; and
Dio says that he kept the title from his wife, either because of the
insecurity of his position, or “because he would not let his lascivious
consort stain the name of Augusta.” Titiana was evidently not the kind
of woman to co-operate with Pertinax in his reforms, and she probably
shared the disdain with which her friends regarded his ways. Although
he at once began to undo the evil wrought by Commodus--to banish
the informers, regulate the taxes, and purify the administration of
justice--he alienated the Romans by passing to an extreme of sobriety.
The palace he purified in very summary fashion. He had the whole
apparatus of Commodus’s luxury sold by auction, and Rome looked on
with delight as the three hundred pretty boys and three hundred choice
concubines, the gold and silver plate, the precious vases and silks
and chariots and wonderful machines of the Sybarite were exposed to
their view. But Pertinax carried his economy too far. Patricians told
with contempt that he would put half a lettuce on the Imperial board,
and would make a hare last three days; the people missed the unceasing
stimulation of the amphitheatre; the soldiers chafed at the discipline
he sought to enforce. Within three months of his remarkable accession
to power Pertinax was assassinated by the Guards, and Titiana fell back
into the obscurity from which she had momentarily emerged.
Another Empress of a day, and one that came to the throne under no less
romantic circumstances, claims our attention for a moment before we
pass on to a more imposing figure.
It was on the 28th of March, 193, that the soldiers brutally
assassinated Pertinax. On the rumour of trouble Pertinax had sent
his father-in-law, Sulpicianus, to secure tranquillity in the camp.
As he lingered there the soldiers returned with the dripping head of
the Emperor, and he recognized that the throne was vacant. With a
callousness that is almost incredible, but is fully attested, he at
once made an offer of money to the soldiers for the Imperial power. It
occurred to some of the soldiers that a higher bid might be secured,
and they announced from the rampart of their camp, in which they had
enclosed themselves, that the throne was, virtually, on sale. In
particular, they sent word to one of the wealthiest citizens, Didius
Julianus, and invited him to make an offer. Whether or no it be true
that he yielded to the vanity of his wife and daughter--he does not
seem to have needed pressure--Julianus went to the camp, and made a
higher offer than that of Sulpicianus.
It was the early evening, and a crowd had gathered to witness the
appalling spectacle of the sale of the Empire. Julianus pointed out
that his rival was the father-in-law of the man they had killed, and
might be expected to have some design of revenge. The soldiers admitted
Julianus by a ladder, and the two Senators made bids against each
other, the soldiers on the wall announcing their offers. At length
Julianus made an offer equal to more than £200 to each soldier, and he
was greeted as Emperor. Under the close guard of the soldiers he was
conducted, amid an angry people, to the Senate, and forced upon the
Senators. They then concluded their bargain by conducting him to the
palace, and the vain old man had time to reflect on the extraordinary
situation he had suddenly reached. His wife, Manlia Scantilla, and
daughter, Didia Clara, joined him “in fear and concern” (the “Historia
Augusta” says), and he finished the day with a prolonged entertainment.
His wife and daughter were decorated with the title of Augusta on
the morrow, but they soon found that Julianus had squandered his
comfortable wealth on a dangerous bauble. Not only did the Roman people
jeer at him whenever he appeared, but the news soon came that the
distant legions were aflame with anger, and were about to march on Rome
to wrest the Empire from him. Presently he heard that the commander of
the troops in Pannonia had begun his march at the head of a formidable
army. Julianus first had him declared a public enemy, and sent men
to assassinate him; then he offered to share the Empire with him.
Severus and his hardened troops passed relentlessly over the Alps, and
proceeded along the plains of Italy. Julianus stung the demoralized
soldiers who had sold him the Empire into some pretence of resistance,
threw up earthworks in the suburbs, endeavoured to train his elephants
for the fight, and, as a last resort, fortified the palace. But his
effeminate troops quailed before the seasoned legions from Germany,
and, when Severus reached Rome, Julianus found himself deserted. The
Senate decreed his death, and he was beheaded in the palace which he
had enjoyed, at the price of his fortune and his life, for sixty-six
days. And the two broken-hearted Augustæ laid down their dignity, and
bore the body of Didius Julianus to the tomb of his ancestors.
Marcia, too, had ended her semi-imperial career with a violent death.
After the assassination of Commodus she had married the chamberlain
Eclectus, with whom she had long been intimate. Eclectus became the
chamberlain of Pertinax, and perished, not ignobly, with his master.
Marcia did not long survive her husband, however. Julianus had promised
the soldiers that he would avenge the murder of Commodus, and he sought
the remaining members of the conspiracy, Lætus, Narcissus, and Marcia,
and put them to death.
CHAPTER XII
JULIA DOMNA
With the accession of Septimius Severus to the throne, we find
ourselves confronting one of the most dominant personalities in the
long line of Roman Empresses--a woman of the standard of Livia,
Agrippina, and Plotina--and passing again into one of the brighter
periods of the life of the Empire. The degradation of Commodus’s
reign will disappear like a mist on a summer morn; the jaded frame of
the Empire will seem to recover all its vigour in a few years. These
periods of rapid recovery are not sufficiently appreciated by the
rhetorical censors of the morals of Rome, whose investigations are
almost entirely confined to the reigns of Caligula, Nero, Commodus,
Caracalla, and Elagabalus; as if it were just to define the climate of
a region by its worst days only. Let a strong man rise to power, let
an imperial encouragement be given to virtue and manliness, and even
the city of Rome takes on a normal moral aspect. The throne is but an
electric point, and, according as it is positive or negative, it draws
into the light of history either the good or the bad elements of Rome.
Both are there all the time. And if the good rulers had made as drastic
a purge of evil types, as evil rulers made of good types, when they
came to power, the Empire might not have provided so much material to
the censors of extinct civilizations.
The Empresses whom we have hitherto considered were, with a few
exceptions, the daughters of Roman patricians, or of distinguished
provincials who had lived in Rome for a generation or two. In Julia
Domna, the wife of Severus, we have for the first time a woman of
the East on the throne; and, as her family will for some time deeply
influence the fortunes of the Empire, it will be interesting to glance
at her origin.
On the bank of the Orontes in Syria, at the large village or small town
of Emesa (now Hems), there was in the second century a very ancient
and prosperous religious centre. At some early date in the history
of the land a mysterious stone had been cast on the country from the
home of the gods--a meteorite, modern science would call it--and it
had been set up as a symbol of the Regenerating God (Elagabal, which
the Greeks improperly turned into Heliogabalus, or Sun-god). A fine
temple was in time built to shelter it, pilgrims sought it from the
whole country, and the richest gifts were made to the god and his
living representatives. About the middle of the second century the
priest in charge was a certain Bassianus, who had two handsome and very
clever daughters. The planets which presided at the birth of the elder
promised her, according to the astrologers, a throne; and, as there
was a camp of Roman soldiers near Emesa, and the temple was a great
attraction to the soldiers in their exile, the pretty Syrian girl and
her horoscope came to be known very far away. In the year 186 or 187 an
offer of marriage came to the priest’s daughter from one of the highest
officials, the _legatus_, of the rich province of Lower Gaul, and she
crossed sea and land to accept it. Within six years this officer,
Septimius Severus, was Emperor of Rome, and Julia Domna was Empress.
Some doubt has been thrown on this pretty story, and Serviez, whose
chapter on Julia Domna is a piece of irresponsible fiction, describes
her as coming to Rome, on her own account, in search of adventure.
But we have abundant evidence that Severus was a most enthusiastic
astrologer, and there is nothing improbable in the story. Severus was
of the province of Roman Africa, of humble family, and, like so many
energetic men in the days of Antoninus and Marcus, had earned promotion
from office to office. He had first married a certain Paccia Marciana
at Rome. He was then made Prætor, had a military command in Spain and
Gaul, spent some years in study at Athens, and became Legate of the
Lugdunian province. At Lyons he lost his first wife, and sought a
second. Hearing that there was a maid in Syria with a royal horoscope,
he sent for her, and married her at Lyons. A child was born the first
year, and, although Bassianus (more popularly, Caracalla) is described
by Eutropius and Aurelius Victor as her stepson, he was undoubtedly her
first child. Geta, his brother and co-Emperor, was born two years later.
By that time they were living in Rome, where Severus was Consul.
Commodus, whose follies excited his ambition no less than his disdain,
gave him the command in Lower Germany. Immediately afterwards Commodus
was assassinated, and about three months later came the news of the
murder of Pertinax. It was easy to inflame the troops with anger on
this occasion, and, as Severus offered a more than usually heavy bribe,
he was acclaimed Emperor, and, as we saw, led the legions upon Rome.
We do not know whether Julia had remained at Rome, or accompanied him,
but she would be present when Rome greeted its new ruler. He rode in
full armour, in the centre of a picked body of six hundred men. When,
however, he saw that Rome had entirely deserted Julianus, he entered
the city in civic costume, on foot. Flowers and laurel and gay hangings
decorated all the houses, and the early summer sun shone on the
white-robed masses of the citizens. Another splendid, but less joyous,
spectacle was offered on the morrow, when a wax image of Pertinax
was honoured with an Imperial funeral. Then he set about the stern
business of securing his Empire. He had no title to it but his sword,
and there were two other able generals--Albinus in Britain and Niger in
Syria--urging the same title on their own behalf.
We do not know whether Julia accompanied Severus during the long civil
war that followed. Some of the authorities represent her as egging on
her husband to the destruction of his rivals. The advice would not
be unnatural, but it would be so superfluous that we disregard the
statement. With a craft that has not won him the regard of historians,
Severus held Albinus in Britain with the empty title of Cæsar, while
he proceeded to crush Niger in the East. As there are coins of the
year 196 which entitle Julia “Mother of the Camps,”[15] she probably
accompanied Severus to the East, but we need not pursue the long
campaign. Severus committed the work to his generals, and kept watch
over Rome and the West. Several years were absorbed in pacifying the
East, and he then turned toward Britain. Acting under the strain of
African barbarism which undoubtedly existed in the nature of Severus,
he sent men with a treacherous commission to murder Albinus, and the
discovery of the plot brought the British legions thundering over Gaul.
The rivals met decisively at Lyons, and a titanic conflict ended with
the triumph of Severus.
Rome had followed the even struggle with suspense, and some had
ventured to take sides. The omens were ambiguous. A strange light--the
aurora--flickered in the northern sky, and a rain mixed with
silver--Dio soberly assures us that he plated several bronze coins
with it--fell upon the city. Human judgment had been as uncertain as
that of the gods, and many of the Romans had espoused the “white”
(Albinus) or the “black” (Niger) cause, instead of that of the “grey,”
to put it in the language of the hour. For Severus to have abstained
entirely from punishing those who had supported his rivals, after the
years of anxiety they had caused him, is too much to expect; but it
must be admitted that his vengeance was cruel, and that his plea of the
security of the State was little more than a cloak for a very human
resentment, The “Historia Augusta” gives a ghastly list of forty-one
Senators whom he put to death, and crowds of lesser folk suffered from
his vindictiveness. From Syria to Gaul he marked the progress of his
triumph with a trail of human blood.
Of the attitude of Julia in regard to these executions we have no
knowledge. Severus was a cruel and passionate African, and we have no
reason to think that any one impelled him to commit these deeds. His
whole behaviour in the hour of triumph was injudicious and unworthy.
He made a most unpleasant speech to the Senate in praise of Commodus,
and directed that the highest honours should be paid to his memory. It
may be that the consciousness of his lowly origin--which his sister
tactlessly irritated by coming to Rome, and displaying her rural
innocence to the amusement of the nobles--made him more suspicious of
the patrician order than he need have been. Albinus, however, had come
of a most ancient and honourable, if somewhat decayed, stock, and his
finer blood may have influenced the Senate.
Leaving Rome under a painful impression of his harsh use of power, he
set out for the East, where the Parthians were again in arms. Julia
accompanied him on this campaign, but it is of little interest. The
Parthians retired before his advance, and he pursued them down the
Euphrates, and for a time held Babylon and several of the ancient
cities of the East. Foiled, and incurring heavy losses, in the siege
of Hatra, he retired sullenly from Mesopotamia, and sought consolation
in a pleasant tour through Palestine and Egypt. They returned to Rome,
about the beginning of the third century, for their first long stay in
the capital.
The remarkable number of inscriptions that still survive in the most
distant parts of the Empire bear witness that Julia was already
regarded as an active Empress, not merely as the companion of Severus.
Probably she comes next to Livia--some would place her before Livia--in
the general recognition of her political existence. But on her return
to Rome she found a bitter opponent in the person of Severus’s chief
minister, and for a time she confined herself to personal concerns.
This minister, Plautianus, was a fellow-townsman, possibly a relative,
of the Emperor, and enjoyed and abused his entire confidence. He
was promoted to the command of the Prætorian Guards, whom Severus,
after punishing them for the murder of Pertinax, had reorganized and
enormously increased. Finding himself at the head of fifty thousand
picked men, and entrusted, during the long absence of the Emperor, with
the supreme affairs of State, Plautianus indulged his vanity in the
strangest excesses. When his superb chariot drove through Rome, runners
were sent ahead to warn the common folk that they must turn away, and
not gaze on his august person; and there were more statues of him in
Rome than of the Emperor. He even had a hundred Romans, of all ages,
including many of noble birth, emasculated, in order that his daughter
might be attended with all the splendour and security of an Oriental
harem. Severus begged the hand of this privileged maiden for his elder
son. Bassianus was then (203) in his sixteenth year, and had just been
nominated Cæsar by his father. Plautianus consented, and a princely
wedding took place. People remarked, as the rich gifts were borne
through the Forum to the palace, that the Prefect of the Guards had
been able to give his daughter a dowry that would have sufficed for the
daughters of fifty kings.
Two circumstances conspired to wreck this auspicious marriage.
Bassianus disliked Plautilla, Julia hated her conceited and overbearing
father. A third circumstance, in the opinion of Rome, was that
Bassianus was already too intimate with a fiery little Syrian cousin,
then living at the palace, of whom we shall see much in the next
chapter. At length Plautianus brought a formal charge against the
Empress, and there was agitation in the palace. The charge seems to
have been one of adultery, and, though it was not established, some
of the later historians declare that she owed her escape only to the
fondness of Severus. Aurelius Victor (“De Cæsaribus,” xx) says that
“his wife’s infamies robbed Severus of the height of his glory”; and he
charges her with, to the Emperor’s knowledge, loose ways and treason.
Lampridius (“Historia Augusta,” “Severus,” c. 18) affirms that she was
“notorious for her adulteries and guilty of conspiracy.” Eutropius and
Herodian join with them in bringing an even graver charge against her
later. Dio, however, who was on the spot, brings no charge against her
character, and many hold that his silence is more instructive than the
chatter of later compilers. We may add that Severus was very eager
to stamp out adultery, and, although his efforts were frustrated by
the unwillingness of the citizens to use his law--Dio, when he was
consul, found three thousand charges lying unheeded in the offices--his
known temper must be taken into account. On the other hand, Dio wrote
his history in the reign of a member of Julia’s family, and may have
omitted much out of discretion.
The evidence is, as usual, perplexing, and there is no need to press
for a verdict. The Oriental religion, to which Julia adhered, was not
one to lay bonds upon the passion of love, and the removal from the
guarded seclusion of the East to the free life of the West would not
engender scruples. The charge, in fact, was not admitted by Severus
to be proved, though noble dames were tortured to wring evidence from
them. After this scorching ordeal, however, Julia moderated her open
hostility to Plautianus, and sought consolation in a close application
to letters and philosophy. Her sister, Julia Mæsa, had by this time
come from Emesa to join her in the palace, and had brought two married
daughters, of whom we shall hear more.[16] With these, and the literary
men of Rome, she formed an intellectual circle, and withdrew from
politics.
But there can be little doubt that Julia encouraged her son’s dislike
of Plautilla. Herodian declares that the young wife was “a most
shameless creature.” We may refuse to accept this description of the
unhappy young princess, and see in it only an echo of the attack upon
her. Bullied and threatened by Bassianus, she at last returned in tears
to her father’s mansion, and the Prefect renewed his attacks with
great warmth. Severus refused to hear complaints against him, until
his brother Geta suggested to him, on his death-bed, that Plautianus
was acquiring his enormous wealth with a view to seizing the throne.
From that hour Severus behaved more coldly to his minister, and Julia’s
party took courage. At length Bassianus persuaded his father that
the minister was plotting. If we may believe the romantic version,
Plautianus sent a man to assassinate Severus and his sons. The man
betrayed him at the palace, and was directed by Bassianus to return and
pretend to bring the Prefect to see the dead bodies. At all events,
Plautianus came in haste to the palace, was alarmed to see the gates
close behind him, and was led to the presence of the Emperor and
Bassianus. Shortly afterwards, the head of Plautianus was tossed on to
the street from the roof of the palace. Dio adds that a man plucked a
handful of hair from the bleeding head, and rushed with it to Julia
and Plautilla, crying: “Behold your Plautianus!” The unhappy girl was
banished to Lipara, and was executed there by Bassianus after the death
of his father.
It was perhaps inevitable that a series of executions should follow
the fall of the favourite, but in a short time the life of the palace
fell into a quiet routine. Severus, a big, powerful man, with a crown
of grey hair above his venerable features, set an example of sobriety
and industry. He was generally at work before dawn, and would return
to work after a frugal midday-meal with his boys. They were years of
peace and prosperity, and he made admirable use of the opportunity to
restore the decaying buildings and institutions of the Empire, and to
replenish the treasury. He regretted his lack of culture, and listened
with deference to the learned discussions in which his wife and her
relatives engaged. His one accomplishment in the way of science was a
thorough command of the mysteries of astrology, as the golden stars
with which he decorated the ceilings of his palace informed the visitor.
Julia joined with him in the work of restoration. We know that at
Rome she rebuilt the temple of Vesta, and the numerous provincial
inscriptions suggest a much wider interest. Under her lead the women of
Rome were encouraged to look beyond their homes. Sabina had erected,
or dedicated, a meeting-hall for women in the Forum of Trajan, but it
had fallen into decay. Julia restored this early “women’s club,” and
no doubt introduced into it the enthusiasm for letters and philosophy
which she still had. Her “circle,” as Philostratus calls it, probably
included the historian Dio, who was still at Rome, and the poet
Appian, who had some years before described her as “the great Domna.”
Philostratus himself, a Greek writer and rhetorician, one of the most
learned men of the time, was closely associated with her. It was at
her request that he wrote his famous “Life of Apollonius of Tyana.” In
his “Lives of the Sophists” (Philiscus) he speaks of her as “Julia the
Philosopher,” and in one of his letters (lxxiii) he refers with high
appreciation to her learning.
Julia was then in the prime of her life, and in her happiest days. The
bust of her that quickly catches the eye in the Vatican Museum--the
largest surviving portrait-bust of the period--will hardly be deemed to
possess the beauty with which the historians invest her. The thick lips
and large nose, which betray her ancestry, do not compare well with the
features of other Empresses. But the grave, strong, thoughtful face
and large eyes, which we may imagine instinct with Syrian fire, are
undeniably handsome. Her sister, Julia Mæsa, was with her--a woman of
similar strength, moderation, and judgment. But the younger generation
in the palace gave them concern. The young men, Bassianus and Geta,
were loose and luxurious in their ways; and one of the daughters of
Mæsa, Julia Soæmias, was a fit companion for Bassianus. Severus, noting
the advance of his gout, looked with grave eyes on the soft habits and
the constant quarrels of the sons whom he wished to leave partners in
the Empire.
[Illustration: JULIA DOMNA
BUST IN THE VATICAN MUSEUM]
An irruption of the Caledonians in the north of Britain led him to
think that a campaign under his eyes would alter the evil ways of his
sons, and he set out for the West. Julia accompanied them, but we can
hardly suppose that she ventured further north than Eboracum (York).
The mist-wrapped hills and watery lowlands beyond were to the Roman a
shuddering wilderness, fit only for the breeding of savages who were
as amphibious as rats. Dio unflatteringly describes the north Britons
and Scots of the time as “inhabiting wild, waterless mountains and
desolate, swampy plains,” and “dwelling in tents, without coats or
shoes, possessing their wives and rearing their offspring in common.”
We may find some consolation in the assurance of Lampridius that
Britain (south of this region) was “the greatest glory of the Empire.”
Even the Scots, however, had their glories. When Severus returned to
York, after having pushed to the extreme north of Caledonia, and lost
50,000 men without bringing the elusive enemy to battle, he brought
with him envoys of the Caledonians to discuss the terms of peace.
Among them was the wife of the chief “Argentocoxus”--should it be
Macdermott?--with whom the philosophic Empress held converse through
an interpreter. Julia insinuated that their matrimonial arrangements
were not all that could be desired. “We satisfy the needs of nature in
a much better way than you Roman women,” said the hardy Scot. “We have
dealings openly with the best of our men, whereas you let yourselves be
debauched in secret by the vilest.” Eugenics is an ancient practice, if
a modern theory.
Severus was borne back, weary and dispirited, on his litter to York.
Bassianus, impatient to reach the throne that he would soon disgrace,
had attempted his father’s life, and fully exhibited the brutality of
his character. Yet Severus, who had often censured Marcus Aurelius
for entrusting the Empire to Commodus, listened in turn to the fond
pleading of his parental feeling, and designated his sons as his
successors. He died at York in February, 211, and a hasty settlement
was made of affairs in Britain that they might return at once to the
capital. They placed the ashes of the Emperor in an alabaster urn, and
set out with it for Rome.
From that day the life of Julia Domna was one of anxiety, and we may
trust that it was one of pain. Even on the journey homeward her sons
were ostentatiously armed against each other’s designs. Bassianus--or
Antoninus, as he had now been named--was a strong, brutal, and
imperious youth, as eager to murder his brother as he had been to
shorten his father’s life. Geta was brighter, gentler, and more
cultivated, and the affection of the legions for him kept Antoninus in
check while they were with the army. When they arrived in Rome, their
first business was the funeral of Severus. His pale wax image was laid
on a lofty ivory couch, and the black-robed Senators and white-clad
matrons watched it for seven days. Then it was borne to the old Forum,
where the chorus of sons and women of the nobility sang the old funeral
chants, and on to the great wooden tower, stuffed with spices and
inflammable matter, in the Field of Mars; where, from the midst of the
flaming pile, the released eagle symbolized the passage of the soul of
Severus to the home of the gods.
The quarrel between Antoninus and Geta at once broke out with greater
menace than ever. They kept their separate apartments rigidly guarded
in the palace, and a troop of soldiers and athletes watched day and
night over the person of the younger Emperor. Some one suggested that
the Empire should be divided, as it was later, and that Geta should
take the Asiatic half. Herodian says--though one reads with suspicion
his full reports of speeches that were made a century before--that
Julia opposed this plan passionately. They must divide their mother,
she declared, before they should divide the Empire. The gloom grew
deeper over the palace, and the inevitable end did not tarry long.
Antoninus one day professed that he wished to be reconciled, and
invited Geta to meet him in his mother’s room. As soon as Geta entered,
the officers whom Antoninus had at hand drew their swords. Geta flew
to his mother’s bosom, and she put her arms about him; but they killed
him in her embrace, and even cut the arm in which she clasped him.
Once more the channels ran with the best blood of Rome, as Antoninus
turned vindictively upon the supporters of his brother. Even ancient
nobles who had survived several of these massacres, such as Claudius
Pompeianus, the second husband of Marcus Aurelius’s daughter, now came
to a violent end. The aged sister of Marcus Aurelius, Cornificia, was
put to death for weeping at the news of the brutal crime. Dio assures
us that no less than 20,000 men and women, including some of the finest
of the time, were put to death in that awful carnage. Surely one of the
chief causes of the deterioration of Rome--these repeated purges of its
best elements--has been overlooked in the endless speculations about
its fall!
The “Historia Augusta” tells us that Julia herself was discovered in
tears by Antoninus, and only escaped death because the Emperor feared a
rebellion if he killed her. Curiously enough, the same historian, and
several others, go on to give us a far different and less honourable
account of her conduct after the death of Geta. In the general horror
with which his abominable deeds were contemplated, Antoninus had
the astuteness to purchase the favour of the army. He bestowed an
extraordinary donation on the Guards, and entered upon a systematic
policy of enriching and indulging the troops. From the pale faces of
the citizens of Rome he retired to the military quarters on the Danube,
and endeavoured by a year of hard hunting and carousing to banish the
ghosts which, he confessed, haunted him. Inscriptions have been found
in Germany which suggest that his mother was with him. However that
may be, she joined him when he crossed the Hellespont to Asia--and
was nearly drowned in the passage--and began to take a most important
part in the administration. With the Senate, over whom he had set in
authority a Spanish juggler, he was too disdainful to deal, except on
the most important subjects. His chief aim was to wring money out of
Rome and the provinces, and spend it on the troops. He “plundered the
whole earth,” says Dio. He wore the long rough cloak of a Goth--from
which he was given the nickname of “Caracalla” (the name of the
garment)--and ate the rough food of a soldier on campaign; though he
gave himself wildly to the luxurious life of the cities of Asia Minor.
Julia settled in Nicomedia, where she spent a good part of 214 and
215, and then in Antioch. Caracalla never married again; indeed, there
can be little doubt that venereal disease was the chief cause of his
madness and brutality during these years. As a boy, “reared by a
Christian nurse,” says Tertullian, he had been most gentle and humane.
Julia, therefore, was still Empress, and she undertook the greater part
of Caracalla’s work. All letters from Rome were forwarded to her, and
she dealt with them all, except a few that had to be submitted to the
Emperor. The inscriptions cut in honour of her during these years were
remarkably numerous, and from them and the coins we learn how great
were her authority and influence. Her official title grew until it at
length became: “Julia Pia Felix Augusta, Mater Augusti et Castrorum et
Senatus et Patriæ.” All the several epithets that were ever bestowed on
other Empresses were gathered together in her name.
This intimate association with so foul an Emperor as Caracalla lent
colour to the current belief that she was linked with him in another
capacity than that of mother. Herodian (iiii), Eutropius (viii), and
Aurelius Victor (“Epitome,” xxi), give the charge as an undoubted fact.
Spartianus (“Historia Augusta,” “Caracalla,” x) gives a circumstantial
story of the mother leading the son astray, and Aurelius Victor gives
the same anecdote in his “De Cæsaribus,” xxi. She is said to have
presented herself to Caracalla in what Serviez calls “an exceedingly
magnificent and becoming dress”--_se maxima corporis parte denudasset_,
is the text--and yielded with ease. The anecdote is too common a sample
of the salacious gossip of the time to be taken seriously, but the
substantial charge is not so easily set aside. Dio, it is true, does
not give it. When he speaks (c. 10) of Caracalla having “possessed the
rascality [πανοῦργον] of his mother,” he does not indeed pay a tribute
to her character, but the word he employs seems to indicate craft,
perhaps unscrupulous craft, rather than lasciviousness.
But even Dio relates an adventure which fairly shows that this grave
charge against Julia was widely credited in his day. In the year 216,
during his tour in the East, Caracalla announced that he would honour
Alexandria with a visit. Unsparing as the Alexandrians had been in
their witticisms on the ugly, bald, and prematurely old young man,
with all his brutality and folly, they had no suspicion of his real
intention, and they prepared to receive him with great honour. Once
inside their gates, however, he savagely precipitated his troops on the
unarmed citizens and for several days directed the carnage and pillage
from the temple of Serapis. This savage onslaught is said by Dio to
have been a punishment for the jibes of the Alexandrians, and we know
from Herodian that one of their most deadly shafts was to speak of him
and his mother as Œdipus and Jocaste.
It cannot therefore be said that Dio is unaware of the current belief,
nor can we follow Miss Wilkins when she suggests that the “elderly
Empress” was incapable of such conduct. Julia had been married only
twenty-nine years before, and may very well be presumed to have been in
her early forties in the year 216. She was in “the full flush of life,”
as Dio expressly says, and is not known to have embraced any system of
ethics or religion which would lay a stigma on incest. But the general
moderation of her career and the repellent character of Caracalla,
unrelieved by a single grace of person or disposition, must weigh
heavily in the scale against the gossip of Rome.
We know, at least, that she endeavoured to curb the wild excesses that
were bringing a doom on her son and endangering the stability of the
Empire. When he debased the coinage, and despoiled his subjects, she
remonstrated, but he laughingly drew his sword and said: “Courage,
mother, while we have this, money will not fail us.” “In such things,”
says Dio, “he paid no heed to his mother, who gave him much excellent
advice.” She continued to act as the first minister of her son,
while he wandered from region to region in search of adventure. One
of his exploits will suffice to illustrate his peculiar method of
winning glory. From Egypt he advanced against the Parthians. He sent a
flattering letter to the Parthian king, submitting that the two great
Empires ought amicably to divide the world, and asking for the hand of
his daughter. His persistent lying disarmed even the crafty Parthians,
and he was admitted into their kingdom with a body of troops. He at
once flung his troops upon the vast unarmed multitude that came out to
greet him, mingled their blood with the flowers they had strewn in his
path, and sacked a large part of Medea and Parthia.
But the end of his infamous life was rapidly approaching. He had
written to Rome, some time previously, to direct that the Chaldæans
should be consulted as to the name of his successor, so that he might
slay the man named. The minister to whom he wrote had some grievance
against one of the officials in the East, Opilius Macrinus, and he
wrote to inform Caracalla that Macrinus was designated by an African
soothsayer. The more romantic historians say that this letter reached
Caracalla just as he was engaged in directing a race, and that he
gave it, unopened, to Macrinus himself to deal with. More plausible
is the story related by Dio. The letter went, as all letters went, to
the Empress at Antioch, and a delay was caused. Macrinus had, in the
meantime, learned from Rome the danger that threatened him, and he set
energetically to work. A discontented soldier in Caracalla’s body-guard
was secured, and on the 8th of March, 217, he ended that Emperor’s
infamies with the thrust of a dagger. It was a timely release for Rome.
It was discovered after his death that he had bought great quantities
of poison in Asia.
Julia indulged in an unusual display of violence when the news reached
her at Antioch. She mourned little over the removal of her son, says
Dio, as she “had hated him when he was alive”; but the prospect of
laying down her Imperial power, and retiring into private life, in
the prime of her womanhood, filled her with anger. She learned that,
after a brief hesitation, Macrinus had promised the usual bribe to
the troops, and obtained the Empire. Rumour quickly recognized in him
the assassin of Caracalla, and Julia made the most violent attacks on
him. Meantime, he had written to assure her that he would recognize
her Imperial status, and not remove her guard of honour. He feared the
attachment of the soldiers to Caracalla, and disavowed his share in
the assassination. Julia perceived his weakness, and, abandoning her
first resolve to take her life by refusing food, she entertained a
hope of unseating the upstart. But the soldiers, however much attached
to Caracalla, had little idea of putting a Semiramis on the throne of
Rome. Her plan miscarried, and Macrinus heard of her invectives. He
ordered her to leave Antioch, and go where she willed. Her sister and
nieces returned to the paternal temple at Emesa, where we shall soon
rejoin them, but Julia, failing entirely to foresee the extraordinary
adventure by which they would shortly return to power, racked with the
pain of a cancer, which she had aggravated by a blow on the breast in
her first anger, decided to leave the world. She refused food, and died
in May or June, 217. Her remains were afterwards buried with great pomp
at Rome, and her name was added to the quaint list of the Imperial gods
and goddesses.
CHAPTER XIII
IN THE DAYS OF ELAGABALUS
The fates were now preparing as strange a revolution, and bringing
upon the Imperial stage as grotesque a figure, as any that have yet
come under our notice. Three women--the sister and the nieces of Julia
Domna--are the engineers of this revolution, and, clothed with the
Imperial dignity, control the fortunes of Rome in the extraordinary
period that followed it. But before we introduce the tragi-comic figure
of Elagabalus, we must clear the stage of the temporary Emperor and his
faint shadow of an Empress.
Opilius Macrinus was a weak, vain, and unimpressive old man. Accident
had put the Empire within his reach. He timidly grasped it because no
other offered to do so, and held it until another desired it. He was in
his fifty-third year, a man of obscure African origin, an adventurer
in the public service. He was married to Nonia Celsa, of whom we know
only that her qualities were not generally believed to include the
possession of virtue. Their son Diadumenianus was a tall and handsome
youth, with black eyes and curly yellow hair. When his father made him
Cæsar, and he donned a purple robe, the spectators are said to have
melted with affection. He lived long enough to show, by urging his
parents to deal more drastically with rebels, that his heart was not so
tender as his pretty looks had suggested.
“How happy and fortunate we are,” Macrinus wrote to his family, when
his accession was secured. In little more than a year he would be
flying over the hills of Asia Minor, and he and his handsome boy would
be cruelly put to death. He set out at once, with great display,
against the unruly Parthians. But he soon purchased an ignoble peace
from them, and repaired to the banquets and pleasures of Antioch.
Anxious as he was about his position, he made the fatal error of
keeping the troops in camp, and there soon passed from legion to
legion an ominous murmur. The soldiers contrasted his luxury with
Caracalla’s sharing of their march and their cheese, and chafed under
the discipline he rightly sought to enforce. The rumour spread, too,
that Macrinus had given offence to the Senate; and that a mule had
borne a mule at Rome, and a sow had given birth to a little pig with
two heads and eight feet. The apparition of a comet and an eclipse of
the sun made it yet more certain that something was going to happen,
and confirmed those who were preparing the event. In the month of May
Macrinus heard that a boy of fourteen, supported by three women and
a eunuch, had claimed the throne, and seduced some troops. He sent a
general, with a moderate force, to bring him the boy’s head. In a week
or two a messenger returned with a head--his general’s head. He roused
himself from the drowsy luxury of Antioch, and set out with his army.
The three women were, as I have said, Julia Mæsa, sister of Julia
Domna, and her daughters, Soæmias and Mamæa. At the death of Julia
Domna they had retired to the ancestral home at Emesa, in Syria, but
with a very considerable fortune, which Mæsa had gathered at the court
of Severus and Caracalla. The two daughters seem to have lost their
husbands, though each had a son. Soæmias had a child of fourteen
years, named Varius Avitus Bassianus, a strikingly pretty boy.[17] His
cousin Alexianus was three or four years younger. Avitus was therefore
clothed with the dignity of priest of the temple, which seems to
have been hereditary, and the little group resumed the life they had
quitted, twenty years before, to dwell in the Imperial court. Mæsa,
and probably Soæmias, found this rustic tranquillity unendurable, and
followed political events with interest. The one retained dreams of
Imperial power, the other of Imperial indulgence. Their chief servant
was a clever eunuch, Gannys by name, who is strangely described by Dio
as “practically living with Soæmias.” A geographical accident brought
their vague dreams to a practical issue.
Near the little town of Emesa was a camp of the Roman soldiers.
Cosmopolitan as they now were in race and religion, and fretting at
their detention in the dull countryside, the soldiers took a close
interest in the temple of the strange god. The great wealth and fame
of the shrine, the peculiar nature of its deity and its ritual, often
attracted them, and the knowledge that these rich and handsome women of
the priestly family had been so closely connected with their popular
Caracalla increased the interest. But the chief feature that drew
their attention was the beauty of the young high-priest. The soft and
feminine delicacy of his form and features was enhanced by a long robe
of Imperial purple, fringed with gold, and a crown that flashed back
the rays of the Syrian sun from its precious gems. The romance was not
lessened when they reflected that the great Severus had often fondled
this boy in his arms, and that he might have inherited the throne. The
women, or their servants, now doubled the interest of the soldiers by
insinuating a whisper that he was the son of their Caracalla, and when
Mæsa’s gold began to pass freely into their purses, they contrived
to see a resemblance to the dark and repellent features of the late
Emperor in the girlish beauty of the boy. Soæmias had no difficulty
in paying the poor price of her reputation for a return to court.
Lampridius bluntly calls her a _meretrix_.
On the night of May 15th, 218, the three women and the two boys were
transferred to the camp. Mæsa’s fortune went with them, as the price of
Empire, and on the following day the soldiers announced that Bassianus,
as he was now called, was Emperor. The camp was fortified, and in a few
days Macrinus’s general, Julianus, appeared before it with his troops.
Their companions in the camp exhibited the young son of Caracalla on
the rampart, and, as they exhibited also the bags of Mæsa’s gold, they
convinced and seduced the assailants. Julianus’s head was cut off, and
sent to Antioch. Macrinus now marched against them, and the two armies
met in the intervening country on June 8th. The softened troops wavered
on both sides, and it looked as if Macrinus might win, when Mæsa and
Soæmias sprang from their chariots in the rear of the army, rushed into
the ranks, and spurred their flagging followers on to victory. Macrinus
fled, in an ignominious disguise, across the hills and valleys of Asia
Minor, and within a few weeks Nonia Celsa learned that she had lost her
throne, her husband, and her boy. The Emperor of Rome was the pretty
boy-priest of Elagabalus.
Imperial power, however, meant to the Syrian youth an unrestrained
indulgence of his sensual dreams, not a grave concern with the affairs
of a mighty people. He dallied in the East, and willingly left his
duties to his grandmother, while he devoted himself entirely to his
rights. He gathered about him the ignoble company of ministers to lust
which the cities of Asia Minor were at all times ready to supply, and
there was no depth or eccentricity of vice in Antioch or Nicomedia
which he did not explore. Before the end of that year the boy’s nature
was completely perverted, and the last trace of masculinity eliminated
from it. Mæsa was alarmed, for the cities of the East were wont to talk
freely of the vices they implanted or cultivated in their visitors,
and the sentiment of Rome could not be ignored. But Bassianus laughed
at her timidity, and lingered throughout the following winter in the
voluptuous chambers of Nicomedia. As to this Roman Senate, of which she
spoke, he sent the grey-beards a painting of himself in his flowing
sacerdotal robes and womanly jewels, to be placed over the altar of
Victory in their meeting-place.
In the following spring he condescended to visit the capital of
his Empire. Rome had received many a strange procession during the
centuries of its Imperial expansion, but no spectacle had aroused so
much curiosity as the arrival of the young monarch on whose picture
the Senators had gazed with bewilderment. The original was even more
extraordinary than the portrayal. For the entry into Rome the young
priest-Emperor stained his cheeks with vermilion, and artfully enhanced
the brilliance of his eyes, like a Syrian courtesan or an actress. He
wore his loose robes of purple silk trimmed with gold, his delicate
arms were encircled with costly bracelets and his white neck with a
string of pearls, and a tiara of successive crowns, flashing with
jewels, surmounted his strange figure. And, as the alternative and
real power in administration, the Romans regarded with anxiety the
two women who rode with him--the grave and dignified Mæsa, and the
richly sensuous and evil-famed Soæmias. There is in the Vatican Museum
a statue of the mother of Elagabalus as she appeared at this time.
She has chosen to be portrayed in the costume, or lack of costume, of
Venus; and the voluptuous body and soft round limbs, the low forehead,
thick lips, and large nose, combined with the hard and shameless
expression, reconcile us to the coarsest epithets the historians have
attached to her memory.
[Illustration: JULIA MÆSA
BUST IN THE CAPITOLINE MUSEUM, ROME]
To the horror of the Senate this woman was at once associated with him
in a character that no Empress, or no woman, had ever assumed in the
long history of Rome. At his first visit to the Senate the Emperor
demanded that she should be invited to sit by his side and listen to
their deliberations. Even Livia had been content to listen behind
the decent shade of a curtain. Soæmias, however, had not the wit or
seriousness to interfere in any way. She was appointed president of
the Senaculum, or “Little Senate,” of women, which Sabina had founded,
and Julia restored, in the Forum of Trajan; and she found an easier
and more congenial occupation in controlling the grave deliberations
of the matrons of Rome on questions of etiquette, precedence, costume,
and jewellery. It was left to Mæsa to wield the political power, and
she did so with sobriety and judgment. Unhappily, the Emperor was more
willing to listen to the easier counsels of his mother than to Mæsa,
and he began at once to entertain or disgust Rome with the appalling
license which makes his short reign an indescribable nightmare.
He had brought from Emesa the celestial stone, the emblem of Ela-gabal,
to which all his prosperity was due, and his first care was to provide
the god with a worthy home. A magnificent temple was raised to it, and
the stone, encrusted with gems, was borne to it on a chariot drawn by
six white horses, the Emperor walking backwards before it in an ecstasy
of adoration. In the temple a number of altars were set up, and rivers
of blood--even the blood of children--were poured out on them; while
the Emperor and his family croned the barbaric chants of primitive
Syria, and the highest dignitaries of Rome stood in silent respect. As
the earlier officials were soon replaced by men of infamy, chosen, very
frequently, on a qualification that one may not describe, we need pay
little attention to their feelings. If we suppose that the Emperor, or
Elagabalus, as he now called himself, was aware that the conical stone
was really a phallic emblem, we may find a clue to some of the stranger
vagaries of his erotomania.
Rome had long been accustomed to the barbarism of the more ancient
Oriental cults, and had indeed taken a willing part in the orgiastic
processions of the mysterious Mother of the Gods, whenever their rulers
permitted them. But the security of the Empire seemed to them in danger
when Elagabalus went on to place every other idol in a position of
subordinate respect in the temple of his fetich. Jupiter, Juno, Venus,
and Mars, were not at that time favoured very widely with a literal
belief; nor were the Romans concerned when he stole the Astarte of
the Carthaginians, and married her, in a magnificent festival, to his
lonely deity. The temples and cults of Rome were like the temples
and cults of modern Japan. They contributed to the gaiety of life.
But if there was little sincere polytheism at Rome--the educated
world was divided between an Epicurean Agnosticism and an eclectic
Monotheism--there was much superstition, and few could regard without
concern a desecration of the ancient Palladium, or statue in the temple
of Vesta, to which the fortune of the city was peculiarly attached, and
other ancient emblems. Elagabalus despotically overrode their feelings.
He broke forcibly into the home of the Vestal Virgins, and bore away
the sacred Palladium; since we may regard the later boast of the
Virgins, that they cheated him with a substituted statue, as insincere.
Of the Empresses whom he made by marriage we have little knowledge.
In less than three years he married, and unmarried, either four or
five women. The first was Julia Cornelia Paula, a woman of very
distinguished family and, if we may trust the bust in the Louvre,
a woman of dignity, refinement, and some strength of character. We
may see the action of Mæsa in the choice. A few months later he
divorced her and, to the horror of Rome, married one of the Vestal
Virgins. Possibly the beauty of Julia Aquilia Severa had caught his
fancy when he broke into their sacred enclosure. The Senators were
deeply concerned at this sacrilege, for the fate of Rome was still
closely connected with the integrity of the noble virgins who tended
the undying fire before the altar of Vesta. Elagabalus, who, it was
generally known, had no hope of progeny, brazenly argued with the
Senate that he was consulting the future of the State, since a union
of priest and priestess gave promise of a family of divine children.
In any case, he said, he was a maker, not an observer, of laws; and
he established Severa in his palace. The coins give her the title of
Augusta.
His roving eye soon afterwards was attracted by the charms of Annia
Faustina, the great-granddaughter of Marcus Aurelius. The portrait-bust
of her in the Capitol Museum has a round full face of great beauty
and an expression of sweetness and modesty. She seems to have escaped
the taint of the Faustinæ. She was married to Pomponius Bassus, and
Elagabalus released her by the familiar device of executing her
husband, and transferred her, leaving no time for mourning, to the
palace. Her beauty seems to have been too tempered with refinement to
engage his affections long. She was dismissed, and replaced by some
unknown victim. Then Elagabalus returned to his priestess of Vesta. In
all, he seems to have married four women in three years, not counting
Severa, whose marriage Dio does not seem to regard as valid.
Severa was the chief associate of his life in the palace, and it is
quite impossible to convey an impression of the sordid scenes into
which she had passed from the austere sanctuary of Vesta. Twelve
condensed pages of the “Historia Augusta” are occupied with his
enormities, and at the close of what is probably the most appalling
picture of unrestrained license in any literature--even if we admit
exaggeration--Lampridius assures us that he has, from a feeling of
modesty, omitted the worst details. It would seem that the human
imagination, in its most diseased condition, could devise nothing
lower. We do not know whether Severa was an Octavia or a Poppæa, but
the circumstance that she consented to live is grave enough. In that
vast colony of vice, to which a system of pandars, spread over the
Empire, dispatched every man who had some special physical or moral
feature to fit him for the orgies, no decent woman would have clung to
mortality. A Cæsonia or a Marcia might laugh when Elagabalus returned
at night, dressed as a common female tavern-keeper, from the low
wine-shops in which he had been rioting--might even smile when she saw
Elagabalus’s “husband,” a burly slave, beating and bruising him for his
infidelity, or when she heard at night the rattle of the golden rings
and the shameful appeal of the new Messalina behind his curtain--but
Severa was of noble birth, the daughter of a man who had twice been
consul.
One of the unpardonable sins of Rome was that it hesitated so long
to assassinate some of its rulers. The very excesses of Elagabalus
protected him for a long time, as he urged the people to share or
imitate his pleasures. No screen was drawn about his vices. He would
discuss them with the Senate, or collect all the _meretrices_ of Rome
in a hall, and address them on those various schemes of vice which
we find to-day depicted on the walls of the _lupanar_ in Pompeii.
He would invite the common folk to come and drink with him at the
palace, where they might see the furniture of solid silver, the beds
loaded with roses and hyacinths, the swimming-baths of perfume, the
gold dust strewn in the colonnades, the paths paved with porphyry. He
provided for them the spectacle of naval battles in lakes of wine,
and a mountain of snow, brought from the remote mountains, in the
middle of summer. But his chief device for cajoling the citizens was
to distribute tickets, as for a lottery, and see them press for the
sight of the gifts corresponding to their numbers. You might get ten
eggs or ten ostriches, ten flies or ten camels, ten toy balloons or
ten pounds of gold; and the mania grew until your chance lay between a
dead dog, a slave, a richly caparisoned horse, a chariot, or a hundred
pounds of gold. At times he would invite a crowd to dinner, and smother
them, with fatal effect to some, under a thick shower of flowers; or
seat them on inflated bags, which slaves would deflate in the middle of
the banquet; or have them borne away intoxicated at the end, to find
themselves in the morning sleeping with bears or lions.
The frivolous Romans were so much entertained by these vagaries that
they overlooked his personal luxury, and made no inquiry into the state
of the treasury. No dinner could be placed before him that had not cost
thirty pounds of silver. Robed in a tunic of pure gold or pure Chinese
silk, sitting under perfumed lamps, amid masses of the choicest blooms,
he picked delicately at the tongues of larks and peacocks, the brains
of thrushes, the eggs of pheasants, the heads of parrots, or the heels
of camels. He fed his horses with choice grapes and his lions with
pheasants. His chariots were of gold only, studded with gems, and they
were drawn through the streets by strings of nude women, or by stags.
Delicate in every detail, he had cords of silk and swords of gold
prepared for inflicting death on himself in case of need. He little
knew that he would die in the latrine of the soldiers’ camp.
Soæmias seems to have enjoyed this orgiastic life, but the more prudent
Mæsa was concerned. Finding that remonstrances were quite useless, she
cunningly persuaded Elagabalus to associate his cousin with him in the
government. Alexander--as Alexianus had now been named--was three or
four years younger than the Emperor, and did not share his disease. His
mother, Mamæa, inherited the prudence and sobriety of Mæsa, and guarded
her boy from the contamination with the utmost care. His excellent
disposition ensured the success of their plan, and Elagabalus began to
perceive that the younger boy was winning a dangerous popularity. It
is said that a judicious distribution of money by Mamæa fostered the
growing esteem for him, especially among the soldiers.
From suspicion Elagabalus passed to hatred, and from hatred to a design
on his cousin’s life. Mamæa secured the favour of the guards with great
adroitness, and watched the actions of Elagabalus. He first, in order
to test public feeling, sent word to the Senate and the camp that he
had withdrawn the title of Cæsar from his cousin; and he directed
that the boy should be put to death if this announcement created no
disorder. In the anxious hour that followed, Alexander waited in a
room of the palace with his trembling mother and Mæsa; Elagabalus went
down to the gardens to supervise the preparations for a chariot-race,
and await impatiently the news that his cousin was dead. Presently a
tumultuous crowd of the guards rushed across the city, and burst into
the gardens of the palace. Elagabalus fled to his room, and covered
himself with a curtain; and the soldiers conveyed the two women and the
boy in triumph to the camp, many of them remaining in the garden to
threaten Elagabalus.
Soæmias, seeing the Empire slip from her, awoke to energetic action.
She hastened on foot to the camp, and pleaded passionately for her son.
They did not wish to take his life, the guards said, but must have
a security for the life of Alexander and a promise of reform. They
returned to the gardens, and the young autocrat, in his purple silks
and jewelled shoes, had to plead with the rough soldiers to spare the
favourite ministers of his vices. He had filled the highest posts with
men whose only qualifications were such that we cannot describe them,
and his army of attendants were the scum of the Empire. The guards
forced him to dismiss the most obnoxious, preached him an inglorious
sermon on his infamies, and directed their officers to watch over the
life of Alexander.
The swords of gold and the cords of variegated silk were not employed,
but Elagabalus could never forgive the degradation he had experienced.
He made several attempts to remove the obstacles to his design: sent
the Senate from Rome, and removed or executed several of the soldiers.
Mamæa watched him assiduously, and Mæsa easily penetrated his secrets.
Not a particle of food or drink from the Imperial kitchen was allowed
to pass the lips of Alexander. Rome knew that the end was near. It was
only a few years since Bassianus and Geta had disgraced the palace
with a similar quarrel. Mæsa attempted in vain to conciliate them. On
January 1st, 222, they were both to receive the consular dignity from
the Senate. She had to threaten Elagabalus with a fresh mutiny of the
guards before he would go.
Some ten weeks later the feud came to a crisis. Elagabalus, to test
the soldiers, sets afoot a rumour that Alexander is dead. The guards,
believing the rumour, withdraw their contingent from the palace,
and shut themselves in the camp. Elagabalus takes his cousin in his
golden chariot to the camp, to show that the rumour is false, and loses
control of himself when the guards burst into exclamations of joy at
the sight of Alexander. Mamæa and Soæmias come upon the scene, and an
angry altercation follows, each mother making a wild appeal to the
soldiers. Either there is a division of feeling among the soldiers,
or some of Elagabalus’s ministers are present, for swords are drawn
and are soon at work. Elagabalus and Soæmias, the Sybarites, rush into
the latrine of the camp for safety, and are slain there by the guards.
Their bodies are disdainfully thrown out to the mob, who have gathered
outside. The effeminate frame of the young Emperor, with its soft limbs
and large pendent breasts, and the voluptuous body of his mother, are
dragged through the streets, and, as the opening of the sewer is too
narrow to receive them, they are thrown into the Tiber. And the cry of
“Ave, Imperator!” rings in the ears of Mamæa and her boy.
CHAPTER XIV
ANOTHER SYRIAN EMPRESS
To the thoughtful Roman the name of Syria must have suggested an abyss
of corruption, and the extension of the Empire over that swarm of
Asiatic peoples to whom the name was vaguely applied must have seemed
an infelicitous triumph. From the cities of nearer Asia, in which the
senile energies of the older civilizations seemed incapable of rising
above the ministry to vice, luxury, and folly, had come the larger
part of the taint that had infected the blood of Rome. It is therefore
singular to observe that, of the five women whom Syria placed on, or
above, the Roman throne in the third century, four were distinguished
for sobriety of judgment and concern for the common weal. The family
from which the first four of these women sprang is variously described
as “humble” and “noble.” We may reconcile the epithets by a conjecture
that the family which controlled the wealthy shrine of Emesa descended
from some branch of the fallen nobility of the East. Both Soæmias and
Mamæa had married Syrians, and we may assume that Mamæa had done the
same. In those circumstances, the public spirit with which Julia Domna,
Julia Mæsa, and Julia Mamæa used the great influence they had is not a
little remarkable.
Of the three--to whom we must presently add a fourth remarkable woman
of the East--Mamæa had the greatest power, and made the best use of
it. She is not blameless, as we shall see; but even if it be true, as
is commonly said, that she was unduly covetous of money and power, we
must at least admit that she employed them solely to restore peace and
prosperity to the Empire, and prolong the reign of a high-principled
ruler.
Mamæa entered upon her work with all the shrewdness which we have
already recognized in her. Instead of claiming the right, which Soæmias
had enjoyed, to sit in the Senate and sign its decrees, she preserved a
discreet silence when the Senate abolished the innovation, and poured
out their long-repressed annoyance on the memory of its author. The
Senators ostentatiously enjoyed their shadow of power: Mamæa quietly
possessed the substance. She provided the finest preceptors for the
education of her son Alexander, who was in his fourteenth year, and
selected sixteen of the most distinguished Senators and lawyers as a
Council of State. With these she worked energetically and harmoniously
for the renovation of the Empire. The palace was purged of the quaint
and the loathsome officers that she found in it, Rome was relieved of
Ela-gabal and his ghastly ritual, competent officials were substituted
for the ministers to the lust of the late Emperor, and the heavier
taxes of the previous two reigns were remitted or lessened. In this
work, which extends over the thirteen years of the reign of Alexander
Severus, Mæsa had little part. She died soon after the beginning of
this happier era, and Mamæa alone guided the willing hands of her son.
It is remarked by all the authorities that Alexander was singularly
subservient to his mother.
Troops and Senate had been happily united in the elevation of
Alexander, and all the epithets of Imperial dignity were at once
conferred on him. The title of Severus he accepted from the soldiers,
but he declined the name of Antoninus, which the Senate pressed on
him, since that revered name had been so impiously disgraced by his
predecessors. He spontaneously discarded the womanly silks and jewels
of his cousin, covered the rough shirts of Severus with the Roman
toga, and gave equal attention to manly exercises, the lessons of his
tutors, and the wise counsels of his mother. He thus grew into a
handsome and virile youth, with the piercing black eyes of his race,
but with a moderation of temper that delighted his Stoic teachers.
When we read the account of his career in the “Historia Augusta”--an
account that might have been written by a Xenophon or a Fénelon for the
edification of a young prince--we are tempted to feel that, either the
gossipy Lampridius had for the moment a more serious object than the
entertainment of Rome, or Alexander Severus was more virtuous than the
circumstances required.
Mamæa is described by the same writer as “holy, but avaricious.”
Avarice was a not inopportune vice. Elagabalus had squandered the
treasury on his follies; the troops, encouraged by him and by
Caracalla, were becoming more and more exacting; while Mamæa had, by
lightening the taxes, spared the Empire a substantial share of its
contribution. In these circumstances it was prudent to cultivate a
close concern about money, and no single writer ventures to say that
the Empress--the Senate had at once entitled her Augusta--spent much
on her personal service or pleasure. It is said that her zeal for the
accumulation of money was carried to a stage of offensiveness. But
it was necessary for her murderers to detect or invent some vice in
extenuation of their foul deed, and the position in which the charge is
found in the historians reveals that it came from that tainted source.
“Avarice” means little more than that she would not yield to the
improper demands of a demoralized army.
When we reflect that both her parents were Syrians, we notice with
some surprise that the portrait-bust of Mamæa has a singularly Roman
face; and in her strength, solidity, and sobriety she recalls the old
Roman type rather than accords with the general conception of a Syrian
woman. She had the defect of her type, and an incident that occurred
early in her reign is regarded as a grave betrayal of it. It is not
at all clear, however, that Mamæa acted with the “jealous cruelty”
which Gibbon sees in her conduct. For the wife of her son she had
chosen Sallustia Barbia Orbiana--we find the name on coins, though the
historians do not give it--daughter of the Senator Sallustius Macrinus.
Alexander, not an exacting husband, seems to have lived happily with
his bride, and her father was promoted to the rank of Cæsar. Before
long, however, we find Macrinus executed on a charge of treason, and
his daughter banished to Africa.
Gibbon believes, on the authority of Dio, that this was entirely due
to Mamæa’s unwillingness to share the power and the affection of
her son with another woman. The word of an historian and a member
of the Senate, whom we may almost describe as an eye-witness, must
assuredly have weight, yet we cannot ignore the assertion of the other
authorities that Macrinus was betrayed into acts which easily bore
the construction of treason. We may recall Merivale’s just warning,
on another occasion, that a contemporary Roman writer is particularly
apt to reproduce the unsubstantial gossip of his day. Herodian, who
nevertheless believes that Macrinus had no treasonable intention, says
that Mamæa was so cruel to Orbiana that the girl went in tears to her
father, and he repaired to the Prætorian camp with bitter complaints
against Mamæa. Such a course very strongly suggests a treasonable
design. The troops, chafing under the rule of Mamæa and her son, whom
they eventually murdered, were notoriously discontented; and flying
to the camp was commonly the first overt act in a plot to displace
the ruling Emperor. When we further find that Lampridius (“Historia
Augusta”) says, on the authority of Dexippus, an Athenian writer of
the succeeding generation, that Macrinus was expressly attempting
to replace Alexander, we must at least suspend our censures. We
know nothing of the character of Macrinus and his daughter, and are
therefore unable to say how far Mamæa’s interpretation of their conduct
may have been influenced by her feelings, and how far her harsh
treatment of Orbiana may have been justified.
The charge against her is further weakened by a circumstance that
Gibbon has overlooked. Lampridius says that Alexander married Memnia,
the daughter of the ex-consul Sulpicius, and speaks incidentally
of “his boys.” It seems, then, that the jealousy of Mamæa did not
prevent Alexander from marrying again, and that Memnia must have
shared the palace with the Empress-mother for a number of years. Of
her character we know nothing, except that, together with Mamæa, she
remonstrated with Alexander on account of his excessive affability with
his subjects. No guards, it seems, barred the entrance of the palace
against them. The austere character of the life which adorned it was
the only test of the integrity of those who approached him. After a
day of exertion he would spend the evening in the refining enjoyment
of letters or the exercise of his musical skill. He sang and played
well, but guarded his Imperial dignity by admitting none to hear him
except his young sons. Actors and gladiators he avoided, nor would he
spend much in exhibiting their skill to the public. His one luxury was
a remarkable collection of birds, which included 20,000 doves; his
one weakness a delight in the puny and almost bloodless combats of
partridges, kittens, or pups. His baths were of cold water, and his
table was regulated by the most minute directions, admitting even the
slight luxury of a goose only on festive occasions. When a string of
costly pearls was presented to Memnia, he ordered that they should be
sold, and, when no purchaser could be found in Rome, he hung them upon
the statue of Venus in the temple.
[Illustration: JULIA MAMÆA
BUST IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM]
From such details as these we may construct a picture of the quiet
and temperate life of Alexander’s palace, and we shall be disposed to
think lightly of the quarrels which are said to have disturbed the
relations of mother and son. We can hardly believe that one so frugal
as Alexander would profess much indignation at his mother’s assiduous
nursing of the treasury, nor can we suppose that Mamæa greatly resented
the young monarch’s accessibility to his subjects. Their frugality,
indeed, must not be exaggerated, as they were generous in gifts.
Instead of sending men to extort their incomes from the provinces
in which they took office, Alexander provided them, when they
left Rome, with an outfit so complete as to include a concubine. His
deference to his mother may, in fact, be said to be the only consistent
charge against him. The Emperor Julian (“The Cæsars”) insinuates that
he showed a mediocrity of intelligence in allowing his mother to
accumulate money, instead of prudently spending it. In a sense Julian
was right; though it was not weakness of intelligence, but severity
of principle, that restrained Alexander and Mamæa from this prudent
expenditure. Had they lavished their funds upon the troops, the history
of Rome during the next ten years might have run differently.
From an early period in the reign of Alexander the attitude of the
troops cast a shadow over the palace and the Empire. Five successive
Emperors, besides earlier ones, had received the purple from the hands
of the troops, and had been compelled either to refrain from pressing
the necessary discipline upon them, or to compensate the rigours of
discipline with excessive rewards. The soldiers became conscious of
their power, and sufficiently demoralized to abuse it. Less exercise
and more pay led to a lamentable enervation; and the filling of the
ranks from the more distant peoples, who had not contributed to the
making of the Empire and were insensible to its prestige, dissolved in
the legions the old spirit of nationality. From the lonely forests, the
frozen hills, or the blistering deserts of the frontiers, they sought
ever to be withdrawn to the comforts and pleasures of the cities. And
when they found that a fresh effort was being made to restrict their
indulgences and restore the earlier discipline, when they reflected
that it was only the feeble hands of a woman and a youth that would
enforce this austerity, they broke into sullen murmurs of discontent.
The most dangerous part of the army was the extensive regiment of
Prætorian Guards, which, from its camp at the walls, overshadowed
Rome with its power. Over these men Mamæa had placed a civilian, the
distinguished jurist Domitius Ulpianus. It was natural that Ulpian
should wish to extend to the guards the valuable reforms which he was
introducing into every department of the State; equally natural that
the soldiers should chafe under his discipline. The citizens took the
part of Ulpian and Mamæa, who protected him, and the irritation at
last erupted in a bloody struggle, in which the populace fought for
three days against the soldiers in the streets of Rome. The quarrel
was arrested, but some time afterwards--not in the fight, as Gibbon
says--the angry guards put an end to the reforms of Ulpian. The
statesman fled before them into the palace, and sought the protection
of the Emperor; but the insolent guards penetrated the sanctuary of the
royal house with drawn swords, and murdered, in Alexander’s presence,
the most eminent and enlightened of his counsellors. The provincial
troops were giving little less concern. We take our leave at this stage
of the historian Dio. His work closes with a mournful lament of the
condition of the army, and a just presentiment of impending calamity.
He too had endeavoured to enforce discipline on the legions, and had
found the authority of the Emperor insufficient to protect him from
their murderous resentment.
As if this lamentable situation had been communicated to the countless
peoples who pressed eagerly against the barriers of the Empire, we
find a new boldness arising amongst them, and a serious beginning of
those raids which will at last put the mighty power under the heel of
the barbarian. The tragedy of the fall of Rome reaches a more certain
stage. It is a singular and melancholy reflection that Rome suffered
most under its most virtuous rulers. During the reign of Marcus
Aurelius the gods had seemed to make a war upon virtue. The new Stoic
and his virtuous mother were destined to see the enemies gathering
fiercely about their enfeebled frontiers, and to perish tragically in a
futile effort to repel them.
The gravest trouble arose in the East. The ancient kingdom of Persia
revived, and its vigorous rulers determined to regain the provinces
which Greece and Rome had shorn from their once vast empire.
Alexander, and probably Mamæa, went to the East. If we may believe
the panegyrist of Alexander in the “Historia Augusta,” he displayed
an admirable firmness in enforcing discipline upon the troops when
he arrived at Antioch. Gathering their sullen and spoiled officers
from the haunts of Antioch and the licentious groves of the suburb
of Daphne, he punished a number of them severely, boldly confronted
the drawn swords of their demoralized followers, and set the legions
in motion against the Persians. But the plan of the campaign was
injudicious, and the execution weak. The Romans suffered a heavy
reverse, and, before they could recover and check the advancing spirit
of the Persians, Alexander was recalled to Europe with the news that
the Germanic tribes were bursting through the northern frontier.
From the sunny lands of their native East the Emperor and his mother
passed, in the year 234, to the banks of the Rhine. They had passed
through Rome, where the citizens were easily persuaded to celebrate his
triumph over the Persians. From the Capitol they had carried the young
Emperor on their shoulders to his palace, his chariot with its four
elephants walking behind them, and a great wave of enthusiasm went with
him as he started for Gaul. He was now in his twenty-sixth year, and
Mamæa must have felt that he was at the beginning of a glorious career.
They little suspected that they were going to meet their deaths at the
hands of their own troops.
One of the commanders on the Rhine was a gigantic and powerful
barbarian, half Goth and half Alan, of the name of Maximinus. More than
eight feet in height, with a thumb so large that he wore his wife’s
bracelet on it as a ring, the giant had made his way in the army by
sheer strength. A man who could eat forty pounds of meat in a day,
drink a proportionate quantity of wine, and fell you with a finger, had
the respect of the barbarian soldiers. Elagabalus had repelled him,
when he sought office, with salacious questions about his strength;
Alexander had eagerly welcomed him, and put him in command of the
younger troops. But Alexander had afterwards refused him an honour,
which Mamæa desired to confer on him, and he probably heard this. He
had given his son a good Roman education, and Mamæa thought that the
young man was a suitable match for her daughter Theoclea. Alexander
protested that his sister would find the father-in-law too boorish, and
the young Maximinus, now a tall, handsome, cultivated, and dissolute
noble, married a granddaughter of Antoninus Pius, Junia Fadilla.
Whether this affront was remembered, or whether Maximinus acted
from mere ambition, we cannot say. He began, in any case, to spread
discontent in the army. When Alexander practically bought peace from
the barbarians, instead of conducting a vigorous campaign against
them, the whispers were changed into open murmuring. These effeminate
Syrians, it was said, were unable to endure the sturdy North, and were
eager to return to the East. The Emperor was a maudlin youth, who
could not act without his mother’s permission. He had abandoned the
war against Persia in order to return to her side, and he was again
sacrificing the honour of Rome out of regard for her comfort. Her
palace at Rome was full of hoarded treasure, while the hard-worked
soldiers were insufficiently paid. These complaints circulated freely
in the camp during the long German winter. A lavish distribution
of money might have defeated the plot of Maximinus, and a speedy
retirement to Rome would certainly have saved the lives of the Emperor
and Empress. But they remained in camp until the middle of March, 235,
and then the end came.
They were at, or in the neighbourhood of, the small frontier town which
is now known as Mainz. One morning, when Maximinus rode out to control
the exercises, he was greeted with the name of Emperor. He feigned
surprise and reluctance, but the soldiers--probably in pursuance of
an arranged plan--drew their swords, and threatened to kill him if he
did not take the power from the hands of the effeminate Syrians. He
consented, promised a liberal donation in honour of his accession, and
said that all punishments that had been inflicted on the soldiers would
be remitted. He then led them toward the tent of Alexander. The young
Emperor came out to meet them, and made an appeal that seems to have
divided the followers of the usurper, as they went away to their tents.
At night, however, the guards at the Imperial tent announced that the
mutinous troops were gathering about it. Alexander rushed out, and
called upon the loyal soldiers to defend him, making a tardy promise
of money and concessions. Many of them came to his side, but at last
the massive figure of Maximinus was seen to approach at the head of a
strong body of troops. For the last time the soldiers were urged to
choose between the strong, generous man and the avaricious woman and
her child. Alexander saw the faithful few pass sullenly to the side
of Maximinus, and he returned to his tent. It is said that the last
moments were spent in a violent quarrel between mother and son about
the responsibility for the disaster. There was little time for it. The
soldiers of Maximinus entered at once, and slew Mamæa, Alexander, and
their few remaining friends.
A popular and spirited work of the fourth century described “the deaths
of the persecutors,” or the terrible fate which befell every Emperor
who persecuted the Christians. No fate in the terrible series of
Imperial calamities was so tragic as that of Alexander, though he had
favoured the Christians, and had cherished a bust of Christ among those
of the heroes and sages in his _lararium_. No other Empress in the long
line of murdered women so little deserved a violent death as Julia
Mamæa. During the fourteen years of her son’s reign she had solely
studied the welfare of the Empire. The one charge that her murderers
could bring against her was that she had hoarded money instead of
spending it on, or giving it to, the troops. On public buildings,
public works, and civic administration she had spent freely; she, or
Alexander, had even expended large sums in providing surer sustenance
and more effective transport for the troops themselves. The charge
is little, if at all, more than a cowardly subterfuge. But it needed
half-a-dozen strong and unselfish generals to restore the efficiency
and docility of the legions, and they were not to be found. We pass
into a period of anarchy, in which Emperors and Empresses rise and
wither like mushrooms, and Rome stumbles blindly onward towards its
doom. In that period of confusion, when every section of the army makes
its Emperor, only two dominant personalities are found, and they are
two Empresses of barbaric origin.
CHAPTER XV
ZENOBIA AND VICTORIA
The Emperor Alexander Severus and his mother were murdered in the year
235. We may convey a just impression of the period that followed this
odious crime by the brief observation that in forty years nearly forty
Emperors appeared on the darkened stage of the Roman Empire, and that
nearly every one of them perished at the hands of Roman soldiers. The
anarchy was arrested for a time when, in the year 270, the energetic
Aurelian came to the throne. People and Senate greeted the strong
man with genuine enthusiasm, and among the cries of joy or hope with
which the Senators hailed him we find this singular aspiration: “Thou
wilt deliver us from Zenobia and Vitruvia.” It is a piquant contrast
with the disdain that their fathers had had for women--a confession
that their vast Empire was now dominated by two women, without male
consorts. But for the timely appearance of Aurelian there was a
prospect that they would divide the rule of the world between them.
One was a Syrian, the other a Gallic, queen; but each of them bore the
title of Augusta, and they are the next commanding personalities to
engage our interest.
Many years were to elapse between the death of Mamæa and the appearance
of these two remarkable women, but we need do no more than glance at
the many Empresses of an hour whose names are hardly discernible in
that turbulent era. The huge barbarian who had purchased the throne by
a brutal murder did not long enjoy it. The Empire heard with horror
and disdain that this Thracian shepherd had seized the mantle of
Antoninus and Marcus. The people of Rome, in particular, recollected
with alarm the contempt they had shown him in his earlier years, and
offered prayer in the temples that the gods might divert his steps
from the south of Italy. He met their disdain with vindictiveness,
and ruthlessly executed those who remembered his humble origin, or
whose wealth could add to his revenue. His Empress, Paulina, vainly
endeavoured to restrain his bloody hand, and succeeded only in drawing
it upon herself.[18] At length his exactions struck a spark of
rebellion in Africa, and a new Emperor was appointed.
The African Proconsul, Gordianus, was an excellent Epicurean of the
fine old Roman type. He had wealth, culture, character, and taste.
After filling the highest offices at Rome with grace and applause, he
was now quietly discharging the duties of Proconsul, and relieving the
long hours of leisure with a tranquil enjoyment of letters, at the
little town of Thysdrus, about a hundred and fifty miles to the south
of Carthage. With him in Africa was his son Gordianus, an epicure
rather than an Epicurean, who solaced his exile from Rome with the
engaging company of twenty-two ladies. Their respective pleasures were
violently interrupted in the beginning of the year 238. The father, a
white-haired old man, with broad red face, was resting in his house
after his judicial labours, when a band of men, with blood-smeared
swords, burst into the luxurious villa, told him that they had rebelled
against the tyrant, and peremptorily informed him that he was Emperor.
His objections were unheeded, and he set out, with misgiving, for
Carthage. But the pride of the Carthaginians was quickly chilled by the
news that Maximinus’s commander in Africa was advancing against their
city. An armed force was hastily equipped, sent out under the lead of
the younger Gordian, and cut to pieces. The younger Emperor had died
on the field: the white-haired old man hanged himself.
Rome, meantime, had recognized the rule of the Gordians, and was now
throbbing with a just apprehension of the vengeance of Maximinus. The
certainty of punishment inspired it with a measure of courage, and
two new Emperors were created--a vigorous son of the people, Pupienus
Maximus, and a perfumed representative of the nobles, Balbinus. The
choice did not please the people, who beset the Senate with sticks
and stones, so a handsome boy, such as Rome loved, was associated
with them. He was a Gordianus, the fourteen-year-old son of the elder
Gordian’s daughter. The city rang with preparations for war, and in
the early summer Maximus led out his weak and apprehensive force.
The terrible Maximinus and his legions had crossed the Alps, and
were descending on the plains of Italy. Luckily for Rome, they met a
desperate resistance at Aquileia. Protected by strong and well-equipped
fortifications, with ample provisions, the inhabitants repelled the
fiercest attacks of Maximinus, and jeered at him and his dissolute son
from the walls. When the thongs of their slinging-machines wore out,
the women of Aquileia gave their long tresses to the soldiers to weave
into cords. Maximinus vented his temper on his own troops, and one
morning the besieged were delighted to see the soldiers advancing with
the grisly heads of Maximinus and his son on the tips of their spears.
Maximus returned to gladden Rome with the news, but it was decreed that
six Emperors were to die that year. The soldiers, who had had another
fight with the Romans during the war, were sullen and treacherous.
Balbinus they hated for his effeminacy, Maximus for his rigour. The
returning troops brought grievances of their own, and it was only the
loyalty of the German soldiers that held the guards off the palace.
Then there came a day when the delight of the games drew most of
the soldiers away, and the guards marched upon the palace. Maximus
hastily ordered the loyal troops to be summoned: Balbinus cancelled
the order. Their relations had been strained for some time, and each
looked upon this sudden onslaught as a device of the other. The German
troops arrived at last, to find the palace empty, and learn that the
three Emperors were in the hands of the guards. They started at once
for the camp, and found the bleeding remains of Maximus and Balbinus
on the street. With them another ephemeral Empress passes dimly before
us. The coins seem to indicate that Maximus was the husband of Quintia
Crispilla at the time of his death.
The youthful Gordian had been taken to the camp, and Rome was forced to
acknowledge him as sole Emperor. Intoxicated, as so many had been, by
the sudden obtaining of so vast a power, he seemed at first inclined
to the model of Caligula. His uncle’s concubines and his mother’s
eunuchs were in a fair way to rule the ruler. But a wise tutor,
Timesitheus, obtained a better influence over him, and he soberly chose
his daughter, Furia Sabina Tranquillina, as his Empress. The whole
prospect of the Empire changed with his marriage, in 241 or 242, but
the evil genius of Rome intervened once more. The Persians had again
crossed the eastern frontier, and the Emperor and his father-in-law
went to Asia to take command. The war was proceeding with success, when
Timesitheus contracted a mysterious illness and died. Gordian gave his
command to a dashing cavalry leader named Philip--the man who, we have
strong reason to think, had poisoned Timesitheus. Philip was a handsome
Arab, whose father had led a band of robbers in the desert. But the
son was astute, and Gordian suspected nothing. Before many months the
camps were simmering with discontent. Pay was reduced, and the troops
were reluctantly informed by Philip that it was the command of the
Emperor. Regiments found themselves quartered in districts where it was
impossible to obtain sufficient food, and Philip begged them to regard
the youth and military inexperience of Gordian. The plot culminated in
the early spring of 244. Gordian was slain, and the son of the Arab
pillager of caravans received the purple from the soldiers.
[Illustration: MARCIA OTACILIA SEVERA]
The new Empress of Rome, Marcia Otacilia Severa, attracts our attention
for a moment on account of the claim of the early Christian writers
that she belonged to the new religion. The claim must have had some
foundation, but the story on which it is generally based is regarded
with reserve by historians. St. Chrysostom and others declare that,
when Philip and Otacilia passed from the Euphrates, where Gordian
had been murdered, to Antioch, they went to the Christian church for
service on Easter-eve; and that the bishop refused to admit them in
any other character than that of penitents expiating a foul crime.
Duruy ridicules the idea that a bishop would have dared so to address
an Emperor in public before the middle of the third century, and it is
certainly difficult to believe. Indeed, historians generally suspect
that, as the story itself implies, Otacilia supported her husband in
his criminal ambition, and are reluctant to regard her as a Christian.
Her nationality is unknown, and she hardly emerges from the obscurity
in which the scanty chronicles have left the reign of her husband.
Let us hasten through the pages of ghastly adventure, and come to more
interesting women. In the year 249 the troops in Mœsia pressed the
purple on one of the ablest Roman generals, Decius, and Philip was
slain in the contest that followed. Otacilia fled with her son to the
Prætorian camp, but the guards killed the boy in her arms, and sent
her back sadly into the common ranks from which she had so unhappily
risen. The wife of Decius, Herennia Etruscilla, who is known to us
only from coins and an inscription, had little better fortune, since
Decius perished in a war with the Goths two years later (251). His son
and successor, Hostilianus, died in the following year, not without a
suspicion of crime. The colleague of Decius and successor of his son,
Gallus, was murdered in 253, together with his son Volusianus, with
whom he had shared the Empire; and the rival and successor of Gallus
was assassinated within four months. Then Valerianus, an aged and
distinguished Senator, came to the throne, and we begin to have less
fleeting glimpses of the ladies of the court, and to make acquaintance
with the two remarkable women who will especially occupy us.
The elder Valerian does not long remain on the stage. The weakness
into which the Empire had fallen was soon observed by its enemies
on every side, and the frontier provinces were being devastated.
Investing his elder son, Gallienus, with the purple, Valerian went
to the East to oppose the Persian monarch, Sapor, who threatened the
whole of Roman Asia, and after a time fell, with his army, into the
hands of the enemy. Whether or no it be true that the proud Persian
used to step on the person of the aged Emperor to mount his horse, it
is at least certain that Valerian died among the Persians after some
years of ignominious captivity, and his skin, stuffed and padded to
the proportions of a man, was long exhibited as the most glorious of
Sapor’s many trophies. There are later writers who assert that his
second wife, the Empress Mariniana, was captured with him, and brutally
treated until she died, but the authority is slender. Cohen, the great
authority on Roman coins, warns us that, though there are coins of a
certain Mariniana, who seems to have been a lady of Valerian’s court,
it is not certain that she was his wife.
So feeble did the Empire now become that its enemies made the most
extensive and destructive inroads. The Persians advanced so far as
to sack Antioch, the Franks overran Spain and reached Africa, the
Alemanni spread terror in the north of Italy and even threatened Rome,
and the Goths poured over Greece and Asia Minor. Gallienus received
the news of each successive disaster with an insipid joke. Glittering
with the jewels which encrusted his belt, his dress, and even his
shoes, his hair powdered with gold dust, he dined from dishes of solid
gold, in the company of his concubines, while his father suffered in
captivity, and his subjects groaned under the hardship of invasion,
famine, pestilence, and earthquake. His Empress, Cornelia Salonina,
seems to have disdained his cowardly luxury, and she was replaced in
his affection, though not in her position, by a charming barbarian.
Attalus, King of the Marcomanni, had a beautiful daughter named Pipa or
Pipara, whose attractiveness was brought to the notice of Gallienus.
He frivolously submitted to the Senate that, since Rome had so many
enemies, it were wise to disarm some of them; and he asked Attalus
for the hand of his daughter. The shrewd barbarian stipulated for a
large part of Pannonia, and in return for that valuable slice of the
Empire permitted his pretty daughter to be the concubine of the Roman
Emperor. She never appears on the coinage, while Salonina--whose grave,
intellectual features suggest that she found solace in culture--remains
Augusta to the end. Serviez finds an admirable trait of Salonina’s
character in the punishment of a man who had sold her some false
jewels. He was sentenced to the lions; but when the terrible gates were
opened, a harmless fowl flew out upon him, and he was discharged with
the fright. The Roman historian, however, ascribes the trick expressly
to Gallienus.[19]
In the eight years of Gallienus’s complete control of the Empire
(260–268) it was distracted and worn with misery and anarchy. The
“Historia Augusta” estimates that “thirty tyrants” arose in that short
period to dispute the power of the corrupt Gallienus; Gibbon reduces
the number to nineteen; Duruy counts twenty-eight claimants to the
throne. There was, in any case, a period of profound demoralization,
and as nearly all these generals met with a violent death, involved
many others in their fall, and very frequently led their troops in
civil warfare, the drain on the impoverished system was disastrous. It
is amongst these “thirty tyrants” that we find Zenobia and Victoria.
Zenobia was the wife of Odenathus, the ruling man in the independent
town of Palmyra. The town, which had become an important commercial
centre, lay on the edge of the Syrian desert, and had long maintained a
position of neutrality between the Romans on the west and the Parthians
to the east. It had the title of a Roman colony, and Odenathus cannot
have been more than its leading citizen and, perhaps, head of its
Senate. To this little State came the news that the Roman Emperor was
detained in ignominy by the King of Persia. Odenathus sent to Sapor
a most polite suggestion that his conduct was improper, and gilded
his remonstrance with a caravan of valuable presents. The presents
were disdainfully thrown into the Euphrates, and the blustering Sapor
threatened to punish his insolence. With great boldness the leading
citizen of Palmyra formed an irregular army out of the neighbouring
villages and the Arabs, with a few Roman troops, and inflicted a
substantial reverse on the Persian troops. Gallienus gracefully
acknowledged his service, and extended the Imperial title to him and
his wife Zenobia, who became the representatives of Roman power in the
East.
Zenobia was, says Trebellius Pollio in the “Historia Augusta,” “one of
the most noble of all the women of the East, and also one of the most
beautiful.” Her nobility rests upon her claim that she descended from
Cleopatra, a point that we are unable to examine. The portrait-bust
of her in the Vatican does not so much suggest exceptional beauty as
exceptional power. It is a face of extraordinary strength and peculiar
features. We can very well imagine her, as she is described for us,
riding out on horseback before the assembled troops, her piercing black
eyes aflame with spirit, a military helmet on her head, and a purple
robe, embroidered with gems, so attached to her person as to leave
naked the fine arm with which she emphasized her orders. She maintained
a court of Persian magnificence, but was far removed from Persian
insolence. She did not disdain to drink with her officers, and even to
endeavour to surpass them in drinking. Yet it is uniformly stated that
this remarkable independence of Syrian ideas as to a woman’s position
was united with a chastity of the most sensitive and peculiarly
scrupulous character. When we add that she was a woman of exceptional
culture, spoke Latin, Greek, and Egyptian, had so complete a command
of the history of the East that she wrote a book on it, and enjoyed
the daily companionship of the philosopher Longinus, who was tutor to
her sons, we seem to have exhausted possible merit, and ventured into
the province of legend. But we have still to say that her military
and political ability was no less than her beauty, her culture, or
her virtue. We shall see later that the finest Emperor of the age,
Aurelian, spoke with extraordinary appreciation of her skill in warfare
and in polity.
Even as the wife of Odenathus, Zenobia was not inactive. She is said
to have urged his bold attack on Persia, and she shared the longest
marches of the soldiers when the campaign began. But she was soon the
sole ruler of the East, in the interest, at first, of Rome. During
the Persian war Odenathus quarrelled with a relative and officer,
named Mæonius, and was only prevented by the intercession of his son,
Herodes, from putting him to death. Herodes was the son of Odenathus by
a former wife, and would be the natural heir to his dignity. The two
sons whom Zenobia had borne him, Timolaus and Herennianus, were mere
boys, but Zenobia had an older son, Vaballath, by a former husband. We
can understand that there would be some jealousy in the family, now
that the Roman purple and a practical sovereignty of the East were
conferred on the “king of Palmyra.” Zenobia could not but dislike
and despise Herodes. He adopted the voluptuous ways of the East, and
received from his father, as an immediate share of his heritage, the
jewels, silks, and fair ladies which he had detached from the baggage
of Sapor when that monarch retired before him.
Yet there is no ground for the assertion that Zenobia was privy to the
conspiracy which removed Odenathus and Herodes. Mæonius was consulting
his own ambition, as well as appeasing his hatred, in having them
assassinated. For a moment Zenobia was in a position of some anxiety,
but she acted with vigour. She thrust her son Vaballath--the “Historia
Augusta” at first says her two younger sons, but afterwards corrects
this--before the Palmyreans as the most worthy heir of the power of
Odenathus, and Mæonius passes into a significant obscurity. Vaballath
was declared Augustus, and Zenobia became “Queen of the East,” as she
liked to call herself. The two younger boys were entitled Cæsars.
Within a short time it was felt at Rome that a new and rival power had
arisen in the East.
The voluptuous Gallienus could at times start from his rose-strewn
couches and the arms of his mistresses, and conduct an energetic raid
upon the opponents of his Empire. The victories of Odenathus seem to
have inspired one of these fits of vigour. The legions in Gaul had cast
off their allegiance to their degraded ruler, put his son Saloninus
to death, and chosen as Emperor their able and upright commander,
Cassianus Postumus. Gallienus marched against him, pressed him hard for
a time, and then returned to Rome to enjoy a magnificent triumph. One
hundred white oxen, with gilded horns, two hundred white lambs, several
hundred lions, tigers, bears, and other animals, and twelve hundred
gladiators, in superb costumes, preceded his car. The more serious
Romans looked on in disdain. Some of the mimes, or comedians, dressed
as Persians, and went about in the procession, staring in each other’s
faces, and saying that they were “looking for the Emperor’s father.”
Gallienus had them burned alive.
But the chief interest of this dash into Gaul is that it first brings
to our notice the famous Gallic princess Vitruvia or Victoria.[20]
We find her supporting Postumus against Gallienus. When he is hard
pressed, she persuades him to associate her son, Victorinus, with him
in the Empire, and presently she herself becomes Augusta and “Mother
of the Camp”--a proof that she accompanied the army. Victorinus is
said by one of the contemporary writers to have been more manly than
Trajan, more clement than Antonine, graver than Nerva, and a better
financier than Vespasian; but this paragon of excellence had the one
serious defect that he could not withhold his covetous eyes from the
prettier wives of his officers. The responsibility of power sobered
him for a time, but before long he led astray the wife of one of his
officers, and was assassinated. At his mother’s suggestion he, with his
dying voice, named his young son his successor, but the angry soldiers
murdered the boy.
Victoria now put forward as candidate one of the soldiers themselves, a
brawny officer named Marius, who had at one time been armourer or smith
to the camp. He was accepted, but a slight that he was imprudent enough
to put upon one of his old associates led to his receiving in his own
breast one of the swords he had himself forged, after enjoying the
delirious dignity of the purple for two days. The “thirty tyrants” were
playing their parts with great rapidity. Tetricus, the commander of the
troops and a Senator, was next put forward by Victoria, and he left her
in control of the affairs of Gaul while he led the army into Spain.
Victoria’s power was not of long duration, and the references to her in
the chronicles are too meagre to enable us to picture her remarkable
personality. For many years her power in Gaul was so great that her
fame ran through the Empire, and Zenobia, as she afterwards told
Aurelian, had the design of communicating with her and proposing to
divide the Roman world between them. Her end is obscure. When Tetricus
returned from Spain, he is said to have resented her domination and put
her to death; though it is elsewhere said that her death was due to
natural causes. She did not live to witness or share the humiliation of
Tetricus a few years later.
We return to Zenobia, who had in the meantime become an independent
sovereign. Gallienus had taken alarm at the growth of her power, and
sent his general Heraclian with secret instructions to dislodge her.
Zenobia divined the real intention of Heraclian and his troops, treated
him as an invader, and destroyed his force. An invitation was then
received, or obtained, from Egypt, and Zenobia sent 70,000 men to expel
the troops of Gallienus from what she regarded as the kingdom of her
fathers. Egypt was added to her dominions. Rome was now fully alarmed
at the success of the two barbaric women, while every other province
of the Empire was overrun by invaders or detached by locally-chosen
Emperors. One of these rivals at length drew Gallienus from his palace
once more, and gave an opportunity to remove his insolent weakness from
the throne. The Emperor was besieging the pretender to the throne in
Milan, when some of the leading officers conspired to assassinate him.
He was drawn from his tent one night in March (268) by a false alarm
that the besieged had made a sally, and, devoid alike of guards and
armour, he was soon stricken with a mortal wound. Salonina is said by
some to have perished with him, but of this there is no evidence.
His successor, Claudius, an experienced soldier of obscure descent
but great personal merit, decided to leave Zenobia and Victoria in
possession of their power until he had rid the Empire of the formidable
Goths. They were said to have an army of 320,000 men, and the whole
of Greece and the north of Asia Minor had been plundered by them. The
instruments of Roman comfort or luxury that they took back into the
bleak forests of the north seemed to be drawing an inexhaustible stream
of marauders upon the debilitated south. Two years were occupied by
Claudius in destroying their power, and he had just cleansed the Roman
territory of their presence when he died of the pestilence, in the
spring of 270. The obscure brother of so virtuous and valorous a ruler
was deemed a worthy successor to the purple, but the army made choice
of a strong and capable commander, Aurelian, and, after two or three
weeks’ timid enjoyment of his power, Quintilius opened his veins and
gracefully yielded the throne.
The new Emperor was the bold and sturdy son of a provincial peasant,
who had cut his way to the position of commander. Marriage with the
daughter of a wealthy noble had further improved his position, and his
temperance, zeal for discipline, skill, and bravery had made him a
most effective leader. His first care was to complete the victory over
the Goths, who were again advancing. After an exhausting struggle he
entered into friendly alliance with them, drove back the other barbaric
tribes who threatened or ignored the northern frontier of the Empire,
and then turned his eyes toward the East. Gibbon makes him first apply
himself to the restoration of Gaul, but the historians Vopiscus and
Zosimus expressly say that he dealt first with the Queen of the East.
Zenobia had now, in 272, enjoyed her remarkable power for about
four years, and seemed, owing to the preoccupation of Rome with the
northern barbarians, to have established a solid and durable kingdom.
Parthia and Persia respected her southern boundaries; Egypt peacefully
acknowledged her rule; and even the cities of Asia Minor were beginning
to bow to her title. But Palmyra was not a Rome, and provided too
slender a base for so vast a dominion. As Aurelian and his formidable
legions marched across Asia Minor, the cities returned at once to the
Roman allegiance, and Zenobia prepared for a severe struggle. She led
her army out in person from Antioch, and met the Romans near the river
Orontes. Modern historians usually follow the account of the battle
which describes Aurelian as stealing a victory by stratagem. He is said
to have noticed the weight of Zenobia’s heavily-armoured cavalry, drawn
them into a wild gallop by a feigned retreat, and then wheeled his
troops, when they showed signs of fatigue, and scattered them. But the
“Historia Augusta,” the nearest authority, tells us that Aurelian’s
troops were really routed at first, and then recovered--owing to a
miraculous apparition--and won.
Zenobia retired to Antioch. Her general, Zabda, deluded the inhabitants
with a false report of victory, and trailed through the streets a
captive whom he had dressed as Aurelian. But the Emperor was advancing,
and they fled during the night to Emesa, where they were still able to
put 70,000 men in the path of Aurelian. The second battle proved as
disastrous to Zenobia as the first, and it was decided to retire at
once on Palmyra. For a long time the city held Aurelian at bay, and
he magnanimously allowed that its successful resistance was due to
the sagacity of Zenobia. In the midst of the long siege he wrote to a
friend at Rome:
“I hear that it is said that I do not the work of a man in
triumphing over Zenobia. Those who blame me have no idea what
kind of a woman she is--how prudent in counsel, how assiduous
in arrangement, how severe with the troops, how liberal when it
is expedient, how stern when there is need for sternness. I may
venture to say that it was due to her that Odenathus put Sapor
to flight, and advanced as far as Ctesiphon. I can assure you
that she was held in such terror in the East and in Egypt that
the Arabs, the Saracens, and the Armenians were afraid to move.”
So difficult and protracted did the siege prove that Aurelian at length
wrote to her, offering to spare her life if she would surrender. The
answer seems to have been preserved in one of those libraries of
valuable documents at Rome, from which the writers of the “Historia
Augusta” obtained their material, as they tell us. It ran:
“Zenobia, Queen of the East, to Aurelius Augustus. No one has
ever yet made by letter such a request as you make. In matters
of war you must obtain what you want by deeds. You ask me to
surrender, as if you were unaware that Cleopatra preferred to
die rather than lose her dignity. We are expecting auxiliaries
from Persia, and the Saracens and Armenians are with us. The
robbers of Syria beat your army, Aurelian. What will happen
to you when our reinforcements come? You will assuredly have
to lay aside the pride with which, as if you were a universal
conqueror, you call on me to surrender.”
The expectation of reinforcements was sincere, but was destined to be
disappointed. Day after day Zenobia and her officers looked out over
the desert from their invincible walls, and descried no sign of the
deliverers. Persia was distracted by the death of Sapor; the Armenians
and the Saracens had been seduced from her by Aurelian. Food began to
fail, and the iron legions clung tenaciously to the little strip of
country and intercepted whatever aid came to her. Zenobia resolved to
go to Persia herself in quest of aid. Under cover of the night she
stole out of the town, and fled toward Persia on a dromedary.
Within a few days the anxious Palmyreans again saw their Queen--a
captive in the hands of the Roman soldiers. It is probable that she had
been betrayed. Aurelian, at all events, heard of her flight, and sent
a company of horse in pursuit. They reached the banks of the Euphrates
just as Zenobia and her attendants had entered a boat, and brought
her back to the camp. She was one hour too late to save her liberty,
or sacrifice her life. Palmyra sadly opened its gates, and Aurelian
transferred its priceless treasures and rare curiosities to his wagons.
Its chief officers and Zenobia he led away to Emesa, and put them on
trial for rebellion.
The reader of Gibbon will expect that we have now reached a point
where the virility of Zenobia faints and the eternal feminine reveals
itself. Gibbon records, indeed, the bold answer which Zenobia made to
Aurelian’s complaint of her infidelity to Rome; but he goes on to say
that, as the fierce demands of the soldiers for her death fell on her
ears, she tremblingly pleaded for life, and, with a cowardice that her
sex only could palliate, insisted that Longinus and the others had
seduced her from her duty. Happily, we have a clear right to quarrel
with the procedure of the great historian at this point. There are two
versions of the behaviour of Zenobia: that of the Latin historians,
Trebellius Pollio and Vopiscus in the “Historia Augusta,” and that of
the Greek historian Zosimus. The Latin writers, who lived at Rome in
the generation after Zenobia, make her reply boldly to Aurelian, and do
not say a word about her casting the blame on others. The Greek writer,
a much later compiler, represents her as, in the words of Gibbon,
“ignominiously purchasing life by the sacrifice of her fame and her
friends.” Gibbon affects to reconcile the two by making the woman’s
weakness follow upon the momentary show of courage.
To this method of reconciling contradictory and unequal authorities we
may justly demur. The much later version of Zosimus is not only less
entitled in itself to acceptance, but it is seriously enfeebled when
he goes on to make the wildly erroneous statement that Zenobia died on
the way to Rome, and her companions were sunk in the Bosphorus. We have
every right to follow the Latin historians. Zenobia was brought before
Aurelian, and the soldiers fiercely demanded that she should be put
to death. Exasperated as the Emperor was, he refused to slay a woman,
and asked her why she had dared to resist the majesty of Rome. “In
you,” she replied, “I recognize an Imperial majesty, because you have
vanquished me, but I saw none in Gallienus.” Her life was spared. What
Roman general could have resisted the wish to grace his triumph at Rome
with a greater than Cleopatra? The troops, with their vast treasures
and their captives, moved slowly homeward, after executing Longinus and
some others.
[Illustration: ZENOBIA
ENLARGED FROM THE COIN IN THE BERLIN MUSEUM]
In the triumph which Aurelian had so splendidly earned, and no less
splendidly celebrated, we catch our last certain glimpse of the Queen
of the East, one of the most notable women of all time. Along the
flower-strewn lane between the dense walls of citizens passes one of
the longest and grandest processions that ever led a victor to the
Capitol. An immense number of tamed elephants, lions, tigers, leopards,
bears, and other beasts move slowly and sullenly along, and eight
hundred pairs of gladiators give promise of the impending spectacles.
Then there are cars heavily laden with the gold, silver, and jewels
of Palmyra, the rare presents of Persia, the purples of India, and
the silks of China. Then there is the long and extraordinary train of
captives, representing the nineteen nations which Aurelian has subdued,
even women who have been taken, in male costume, in the sternest
battles. At last the melancholy line is closed by the lithe bronzed
figure, with brilliant black eyes and teeth like pearls, of the woman
whose beauty, genius, and daring have been on the lips of Rome for
several years. Clothed for the last time in the heavily-jewelled robes
of a queen--she had complained that she was not strong enough to walk
under the load of jewels--she drags along the golden chains which bind
her hands and feet, and a slave sustains the weight of the gold band
round her throat. Beside her, in scarlet cloak and Gallic trousers,
is Tetricus, Victoria’s last Emperor in Gaul. The whole Empire is
again subject to Rome. And before the car of the conqueror three empty
chariots are driven: one is the gold and silver car of Odenathus, one,
of gold studded with gems, is a present from Persia, and the third is
the car which Zenobia had made for her triumphant entry into Rome.
Never had Emperor looked from his car on so superb a triumph. In less
than a year Aurelian would be assassinated.
The last phase of Zenobia’s life is not quite clear. Zosimus is
certainly wrong in his reproduction of a story that she died, or took
her life, before she reached Rome. Still later and equally negligible
writers ventured to say that she became a Christian, and even that
Aurelian married one of her daughters. The “Historia Augusta,” which
we may follow, as it was written in Rome a generation later, tells us
that Aurelian gave her a villa near Hadrian’s palace at Tivoli, where
she spent the rest of her life in the education of her children and the
prosy duties of a Roman matron, and, we may conjecture, in looking back
with sad but proud recollection on the stirring romance of her career.
Bishop Eusebius observes briefly in his “Chronicle” that she lived to a
great age, and was held in the greatest regard at Rome.
CHAPTER XVI
THE WIFE AND DAUGHTER OF DIOCLETIAN
Although we have already indicated the fate of Aurelian, we have not
yet referred to the woman who shared his Imperial title and his great
renown. Her personality is, in fact, entirely unknown; even her name is
preserved for us only on the coinage. We may fairly conjecture that she
disliked the plebeian ways of her husband, and discharged the duties
of a consort without enthusiasm. Daughter of a wealthy and prominent
noble, Ulpius Crinitus, she had conferred a useful distinction on the
ambitious peasant at a time when he was making his way in the Imperial
service, and it is conjectured, on somewhat slender grounds, that she
accompanied him on his campaigns. But his life at the palace was short
and inglorious. He disliked its pomp and luxury, and found his chief
delight in pitting his comedians against each other in eating-contests.
He pampered the common citizens by increasing their free ration of
bread, and adding pork to it. When he went on to meditate a free
distribution of wine, one of his ministers sarcastically suggested that
he might add geese and chickens. When the Empress, Ulpia Severina,
thought it fitting that she should wear silk mantles, her husband
forbade her to indulge in that rare and costly product of a precarious
commerce with China.
Aurelian was, in fact, essentially a soldier. His manner, and even the
reforms which he endeavoured to make, caused grave dissatisfaction
at Rome, and a conspiracy against him was discovered within a few
months of the magnificent triumph he had enjoyed. He crushed it with a
fierceness that almost obliterated the memory of his great services,
and then returned to Asia to meet the Persians. On his march he was
assassinated, in the beginning of the year 275, and the great promise
of his reign was unfulfilled. Ulpia Severina seems to have died before
him, as the historian speaks only of a daughter who survived him.
Once more we pass swiftly over a number of turbulent years until we
come to an Empress of whom we have a comparatively ample knowledge.
It is generally admitted, though not entirely beyond doubt, that the
throne remained vacant for the greater part of the year 275. The
“Historia Augusta,” at least, which was written in the next generation,
describes a situation in remarkable contrast to the earlier haste in
appointing Emperors. We are asked to believe that the Senate and the
army spent many months in a most edifying encounter, each endeavouring
to induce the other to choose a ruler. At length the Senators chose
one of their number, the aged and upright Tacitus, who set out to take
command of the troops in Asia. Within a few weeks, worn by the unwonted
fatigue and pained by the unruly behaviour of the soldiers, he passed
away. Some of the historians declare that he died of actual violence.
There is no trace of an Empress. We read that Tacitus, like Aurelian,
forbade his wife to wear sumptuous clothing, but this was probably in
earlier days. The absence of coins leads us to think that she had died.
He was succeeded by a young and vigorous officer, of peasant
extraction, named Probus, under whom the Empire recovered much of
its strength. For six years he laboured successfully to restore the
prestige of Rome, but his severity led at length to assassination.
During a mutiny of the soldiers, in the year 282, “a thousand swords
were plunged at once into the bosom of the unfortunate Probus,” as
Gibbon too floridly expresses it. From the absence of coins we may
almost gather that his wife had died before his accession. Carus, who
succeeded him, was an aged general of sixty years. He died after a
year of strenuous warfare, and left the Empire to his sons Carinus and
Numerianus. The younger Emperor was dispatched to the East, and Carinus
virtually reigned alone.
Even the experience of our own time has so frequently taught us to
expect a mediocre or effeminate issue from a distinguished and virile
stock that we do not wonder at this happening constantly in the history
of Rome. We need not refer it to the mystery of heredity. The vigorous
sire had developed and enhanced his strength in the laborious climb
to the heights of his chosen world. The son, finding the paths to
the summit smoothed, and an engaging luxury at his command without
exertion, allows it to degenerate. The finest steel and the purest gold
yield and crumble in a corroding atmosphere. We cannot, therefore,
affect astonishment at the almost invariable failure of the Roman
practice of eagerly welcoming a son to the place of his gifted father.
The reign of Carinus affords one of the worst illustrations of the
evil. Indolent, insolent, and luxurious, he saw in his Imperial power
an opulent ministry to his depraved tastes. He did indeed provide Rome
with the most splendid entertainments. The amphitheatre rang once more
with the coarse applause of the ninety thousand spectators of its
bloody contests; the Circus was transformed into a forest, in which
the strange or beautiful beasts of remote lands lived under the eyes
of three hundred thousand Romans. But this indulgence of the people’s
appetites was held to excuse an unbridled ministry to those of the
prince. The whisper went once more through the fetid depths of Roman
life that there were rich awards for the ingenious and industrious
pandar to a sated voluptuary, and the palace exhibited again the
loathsome spectacles that had long been expelled from it.
They have little interest for us, as although Carinus made and unmade
nine Empresses in little over a year, they are lost in the riot of
the time. One poor name, that of Magnia Urbica, has survived on a
few coins. She is given by Serviez as the wife of Carus, because she
is represented with two children on one of the coins. Cohen points
out, however, that the group does not properly consist of a mother
and two children, and he concludes that she was one of the nine wives
of Carinus. In the number of his consorts Carinus surpassed the high
record of Imperial license, and he was not less original in the grounds
for his divorces. Sterility has often been pleaded by monarchs as a
fit reason for repudiating their wives; it was reserved to Carinus to
dismiss them the moment they gave proof of fertility. So the women of
Rome succeeded each other rapidly in the dissolute palace, where the
Emperor, surrounded by his courtesans, glittering down to his shoes
with diamonds and emeralds, sat on rose-strewn couches to his costly
banquets.
The new pestilence was blown out of the Imperial city by a storm from
the East. The younger Emperor, Numerianus, was a gentle, cultured, and
delicate youth. As he led the troops home from the East, he sheltered
his eyes from the burning sun by keeping to his tent or his closed
litter. At length his complete seclusion gave rise to suspicion, and
the soldiers broke into his tent, only to find a mouldering body. The
ambition of Aper, his father-in-law, who commanded the guards, fastened
the guilt upon him, and a general assembly of the soldiers appointed
one of their abler officers, Diocletian, to judge him. Diocletian,
possibly with reason, preferred to execute rather than to try Aper, and
he was at once saluted as Emperor by the troops. The son of two slaves,
he had educated himself and pushed his way to the highest offices and
commands; and he now composedly donned the purple mantle which the
soldiers offered him, and led the legions toward Rome. Carinus marched
out against him, but was assassinated by an officer whose wife he had
appropriated, and a new chapter opened in the annals of Rome. A strong
man and judicious statesman had come to the throne, and he would occupy
it for twenty years.
From our point of view it is disappointing that the wife of Diocletian
does not come to our notice until his reign is nearly over. Her very
name was disputed for ages; even now her personality is only faintly
illumined by the adventures of her later years. Her daughter is a
more commanding figure, and other Imperial ladies stand out in the
chronicle of the times. Some of these, such as the mother and wife of
Constantine, we reserve for the next chapter; and we may compress into
a few lines the story of the twenty years’ reign of Diocletian.
A year after his accession, which took place in the year 285,
Diocletian chose a colleague to share the control of the vast Empire.
This friend and partner, Maximian, was the son of peasants, rough,
ignorant, and unscrupulous, but an effective commander. He was
entrusted with the care of the West, Diocletian passed to the East,
and several years were profitably spent in restoring the crumbling
frontiers. The task proved so formidable that, in 292, they chose two
officers for the inferior dignity of “Cæsars”--a title which implied
that they would probably one day be Augusti, and should meantime wear
the purple, but have no power to make laws or control finance. Of the
two, Galerius again was a child of the soil, while Constantius was the
son of a provincial noble; and they were compelled to dismiss their
humbler wives, and wed the daughters of the Emperors. Four courts
were thus set up within the Empire, while Rome found itself coldly
neglected, its palace deserted, and its Senate impotent.
To the court of Galerius we shall return presently, while we leave the
affairs of Constantius and his wife to the next chapter. The court and
the Empress of Maximian need not detain us. He chose Milan as his seat,
and began to adorn the northern town with the marble edifices that
befitted its new dignity. His wife was a very attractive Syrian woman,
Galeria Valeria Eutropia. Her name has led some to conjecture that
she was related to the father of Constantius, Eutropius, one of the
chief nobles of Dardania, though the connexion is feeble. She seems, in
any case, to have regarded her uncultivated husband with disdain, and
sought more genial company. Her son Maxentius is said by some to have
been the issue of a liaison with a compatriot, while others declare
that he was a boy substituted for the daughter she bore, because
Maximian desired a son. We may leave these disputable scandals and come
to the court of Diocletian.
The son of a Roman slave had created a glittering court at Nicomedia.
His palace, round which the city quickly grew in size and magnificence,
was adorned and served with an Oriental pomp. The successive approaches
to the chamber of the Emperor were guarded by splendid officials,
and when the suppliant or ambassador penetrated at length to the
inner apartment, he found the stately Diocletian in purple and gold
robes, his brow encircled by a glistening diadem, and was compelled
to prostrate himself before the divine majesty. It was not, however,
the vanity or folly of a Caligula, but a calculated policy, that had
prompted Diocletian to clothe himself with this Olympic dignity.
Earlier Emperors, of the same mean extraction, had refused to put
a barrier of royal ceremony between themselves and their subjects
or soldiers, and had invariably fallen by the hand of the assassin.
Diocletian was too shrewd, too much attached to life, and too sensible
of his beneficent use of power, to incur the risk. He had restored
Egypt to obedience, humiliated the Persians, and devoted an even
greater ability to the reform of the administration. Co-operating with
his vigorous colleague in the West, he had brought peace and prosperity
back to the Empire.
In the settled years of his reign we begin again to recognize the
various personalities of the court. The Empress herself is more or
less involved in a piquant obscurity. Until the end of the seventeenth
century her name was unknown, and a great deal of romantic legend
was reproduced in regard to her. Cardinal Baronius found in “Acts of
St. Susanna” that her name was St. Serena, a martyr for the Christian
faith. Other “Acts” of the martyrs furnished a St. Eleuthera and a St.
Alexandra as consorts of Diocletian. He seemed to have been an Imperial
Bluebeard. But in 1679 the manuscript was found of an early Christian
work, “On the Deaths of the Persecutors,” and the earlier writings
were proved, in the words of the learned Franciscan, Father Pagi, to
be fictitious and full of untruths. The many saintly martyrs gave way
to an Empress Prisca, who broke down lamentably at the first test of
her faith. It is very curious that we have no coins whatever of Prisca,
though she must have lived through the whole reign of Diocletian. This,
and the fact that she left him many years before his death, suggest
either that she was not married to him at all or that he had little
regard for her. She was, in any case, a woman of weak and retiring
character, and is mentioned only in association with her daughter.
Valeria was a beautiful, attractive, and spirited young woman, with a
good deal of the strength, and not a little of the ambition, of her
father. She was married to Galerius, the Cæsar whom Diocletian had
chosen, and remained with him by the side of the Emperor. Galerius was,
as I said, of peasant origin, and never laid aside the uncultivated
roughness of his class. Diocletian had, by diligent education, erased
the traces of his own lowly origin, but his peasant colleagues had
gone straight from the soil to the camp, and the work of a soldier had
not given them the least inclination to seek culture. The character of
Galerius has been painted in the most lurid colours on account of his
persecution of the Christians, but it is significant that both Valeria
and Prisca clung to his court when Diocletian retired. His mother,
Romula, and other rustic relatives were attracted to his court. There
was, it is clear, a most incongruous group of personalities about the
court of Diocletian, and in the nineteenth year of his reign they were
shaken by a severe storm. The great and final struggle began between
the old faith and the new, and Prisca and Valeria favoured the latter.
Christianity had not been persecuted for half a century, and had made
great progress. The cult of the old gods was palpably insincere,
and half-a-dozen Asiatic creeds were steadily supplanting it. On
the streets of Nicomedia, as on the streets of Rome or any other
large city, one might meet any day the white-robed shaven priests of
Isis, the painted and effeminate ministers of Cybele, the Persian
representatives of the popular cult of Mithra, and--until they were
expelled by Diocletian--the black-garbed clergy of the Manichæans
and the Christians. The Christians were now advancing. There had
been some slight and irregular repression of them from time to time
since the days of Nero, but more than forty years of toleration, and
the knowledge that their adherents were now occupying high places in
the camp and the court, and that even the wives of the Emperor and
the Cæsar favoured them, gave them strong confidence. One of their
churches occupied a central and commanding position in Nicomedia.
Four influential officers of the court attended it, and it seems that
Valeria and Prisca were, if not Christians, openly disposed to the new
religion. All we know in that regard is that they were “compelled” to
sacrifice when the persecution began.
Persecution on account of religion, as such, was not natural to
the cosmopolitan builders of the Pantheon, and Diocletian was a
broad-minded statesman, so that the origin of the persecution is not
so clear as it was once held to be. The literary remains which we
have to use have to be handled with caution. The “Historia Augusta”
has ended with Carinus, and we shall greatly miss its minute and
gossipy descriptions. Zosimus, a pagan writing in a Christian age, has
an appearance of sullen reticence at times and a perceptible bias.
Aurelius Victor and Eutropius are scanty, and the immediate Christian
writers are used very cautiously by modern historians. Bishop Eusebius
says frankly, in his “Life of Constantine,” that he will write
only what tends to edify, and the little work “On the Deaths of the
Persecutors” is obviously imaginative in many pages and inaccurate in
others. Experts still differ as to whether it comes from the pen of the
brilliant Christian rhetorician Lactantius, but all warn us to take
account of its strong feeling. Our authorities, in a word, now belong
to two antagonistic and bitterly hostile creeds, and, as all subsequent
historians favour one side or the other, we have to proceed with
caution. I have endeavoured, in the remaining chapters, to make my way
between them with more than ordinary care and independence.
A few incautious hints given in Lactantius throw a faint light on
the origin of the great persecution. The writer of the treatise has
himself a very positive theory. The root of the evil was, he says,
Romula, the peasant-mother of the Cæsar. Fanatically attached to the
gods of her native mountains, she inspired her son with a hatred of
Christianity, and Galerius bullied the older Emperor into issuing the
Edict of Persecution. We feel that the policy of Diocletian would
hardly yield to the prejudice of a superstitious woman. There is more
enlightenment in the incidental statements that Romula was stung by
the disdain of Christian officers in the palace, and that Diocletian
was greatly annoyed at seeing Christian soldiers disturb the harmony,
if not the efficacy, of his sacrificial ceremonies by making the sign
of the cross. Galerius may have been moved by the growing reluctance
of Christians to bear arms, and the very pronounced rejection by
some of the arms they bore. There is no need to trust the imaginary
conversation which Lactantius puts in the mouths of Diocletian and
Galerius. They agreed that the zeal of the Christians was impertinent
or dangerous, and, in the month of February (303), a troop of soldiers
was sent to raze to the ground their large and commanding church. On
the following day Diocletian published an Edict forbidding the cult
under grave penalties. When the Imperial decree was torn down by a
zealous Christian, and this act of treason was openly applauded by his
fellows, Diocletian was embittered, and blood began to flow. During the
next fortnight the Emperor’s quarters in the palace were twice found
to be in flames. Diocletian was convinced that the fire was kindled by
Christian officers, and gave a full sanction to the work of repressing
them.
Prisca and Valeria were not among the heroines of the persecution.
Lactantius destroys all the myths of martyred Empresses by telling
us that they consented to burn a few grains of incense in honour
of Jupiter, and impotently witnessed the dark roll of the wave of
persecution through the provinces. He does not even say that they
joined, or rejoined, the Church when the persecution was over, and we
lose sight of them for a few years. Probably they went with Diocletian
to Rome for his triumph in November, and returned with him to Nicomedia
in the summer of 304. He was confined to the palace by a serious
illness during the following winter, and as soon as he recovered he
abdicated the throne. It is untrue that the threats of Galerius forced
him to do this. He had expressed the intention years before.
On a wide plain near Nicomedia the army assembled on May 1st, 305, for
the unexampled ceremony of the abdication of an Emperor. A little hill
in the centre was surmounted by a lofty throne and a statue of Jupiter,
and the ageing Emperor--he was in his fifty-ninth year--surrendered the
power he had wielded so well for more than twenty years. By a previous
arrangement, Maximian was abdicating on the same day at Milan. The two
Cæsars became Augusti, and two new Cæsars were appointed. In their
selection we recognize the partial and unskilful hand of Galerius. He
handed his own Cæsarean dignity to a rustic nephew, Daza--“who had just
left his herds in the forest,” Lactantius scornfully says--and sent a
loyal and undistinguished friend to receive that of Maximian in Italy.
From that selfish act would develop one of the greatest civil wars
since the founding of the Empire. In the ranks of the officers by the
platform was the tall, handsome, gifted, and disappointed young man who
would one day be known as Constantine the Great.
Diocletian retired to Salona, in his native province of Dalmatia, and
built, close to the town, what was for the age a magnificent palace.
Valeria remained in the palace of Galerius, and it seems that Prisca
stayed with her, as we shall presently find her sharing the hard lot of
her daughter. Why the mother, at least, chose to remain in Nicomedia is
left to our imaginations. The religion they had favoured was cruelly
suppressed, and, if we are to believe Lactantius, their virtue must
have been outraged by the unbridled license of the new Emperor. He is
described as an ogre, dragging the noblest women of Nicomedia from
their husbands, feeding his bears on innocent citizens, and “never
taking a meal without a taste of human blood.” Yet Valeria clung to
her husband even through the painful and repulsive illness which ended
his life; and her name was given by him to a part of his Empire. The
picture is evidently overdrawn, yet life in the palace, with Galerius
and his boorish relatives, cannot have been very congenial, and the
temper of Galerius would be soured by the events that followed.
The first mishap was the flight of Constantine. He had been living for
some years at the court of Diocletian, and was deeply disappointed and
rightly indignant at the choice of the new Cæsars. By birth and ability
he had the clearest title to the purple. He was now a tall and manly
young officer, handsome, popular, and successful, and anxious to join
his father Constantius in Gaul. There is little doubt that he fled
during the night, though the romantic story told by Lactantius is now
generally regarded as a clumsy piece of fiction. It describes Galerius
as failing to take the youth’s life by engaging him in dangerous
contests, and at length devising an ingenious scheme. He one night
gives Constantine permission to depart after he has seen him in the
morning, and warns him that he will be put to death if he is still in
Nicomedia at noon. Then the ogre gives orders that he is not to be
awakened before noon on the morrow; but the young hero steals all the
horses in the stables--there were probably hundreds--cripples all other
horses along his route, and flies to his father. The only authentic
point is that Constantine fled. He would wade back through a sea of
blood. Within a few months his father was dead, Constantine was chosen
by the army to succeed him, and Galerius was forced to recognize him as
Cæsar.
Galerius gave the title of Augustus, which Constantius had left vacant
at his death, to his loyal Severus, but he was soon informed that the
troops, the people, and the Senate had chosen another Emperor at Rome.
A brief outline of the stirring events that followed will suffice here.
The new Emperor was Maxentius, son of the retired Maximian. The father
issued from his retreat to join in the fray, and Galerius was bound
to support Severus. Diocletian looked on quietly from his gardens at
Salona. When Maximian urged him to return to power, he said that if
Maximian could see the vegetables he was growing he would not make
such a request. Briefly, Severus was treacherously taken by Maximian,
and induced to ease the complication by taking his life. Maximian,
Galerius, and Diocletian met at Carnuntum, on the Danube, and it was
settled that Galerius and Licinius (one of his officers) should be
recognized as Emperors, and Constantine and Maximin (Daza) as Cæsars.
Maxentius was disregarded, and Maximian was persuaded to retire once
more. How the restless and ambitious old man then clung to Constantine,
and attempted to murder and displace him, we shall see later.
The expedition of Galerius into Italy proved disastrous, as he returned
in bad health and temper to his dominions. He died in 311, of an
unpleasant disease, of which the morbid reader may find a luxurious
description in Lactantius. Valeria remained with him to the end, and
then a new and more romantic chapter opened for her and her mother.
The two Emperors of the East made rival offers of their hospitality;
for Maximin had exacted an equal dignity with Licinius. Valeria was
at that time in her early thirties, and her mourning garments did not
detract from her ripe beauty of face and figure. She is represented
as weighing the respective immoralities of the two Eastern Emperors,
and considering to which of the two it would be the less dangerous to
entrust her virtue. Lactantius does not tell us why she was forced
to choose at all; why she and her mother did not retire to the
luxurious and unsullied palace of Diocletian. The end of his life was
approaching, it is true, but the palace would still shelter them. On
the other hand, Maximin and Licinius are both very thickly tarred
with the brush of Lactantius. We shall see something of the conduct
of Licinius later. As to Maximin, if one half of what Lactantius and
Eusebius say is true, he must have been known over the whole Empire as
an erotic maniac. He may not have been this romantic combination of
Nero, Elagabalus, and Carinus, but we know from other writers that he
was much more vicious than Licinius. When, therefore, we find Valeria
choosing to live in his palace, we cannot repress a suspicion that the
beautiful widow was not quite so unworldly as she is represented to
have been.
She had not been long in her new home when certain officers came to
tell her that Maximin loved her, and was prepared to divorce his wife
and wed her. When she refused, the baffled passion turned to rage,
and mother and daughter were expelled from the palace. When we learn,
from a later passage, that Valeria refused to yield her right to the
property of Galerius, the episode seems more human. A story of adultery
was invented, a Jew--the villain of early Christian literature--was
suborned to give false evidence, and several of Valeria’s friends were
implicated. A number of ladies of high rank were publicly executed,
and the Empresses, spoiled of their goods, were driven from province
to province, until they found themselves lodged in a mean village
on the edge of the Syrian desert. Valeria contrived to acquaint her
father with their situation, but the rough Maximin rejected his
feeble entreaties. They seem to have spent the winter (312–13) in
this miserable exile. The only comfort was that they had with them
Candidian, a natural son of Galerius, whom Valeria had adopted, and
Severian, the son of Severus.
[Illustration: SALONINA
VALERIA
ENLARGED FROM COINS IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM]
In the early spring the little group were inspirited by the news that
the tyrant had fallen in a struggle with Licinius, who was now sole
Emperor in the East. What follows, in the narrative of Lactantius,
is even more obscure, and suggests still more strongly that much is
concealed from us. Candidian went openly to the court of Licinius, and
was cordially received and promoted. The other young man followed.
Licinius was naturally hostile to all who had taken the side of
Maximin, but he could hardly be angry with these poor victims of
Maximin’s rage. Valeria, however, went in disguise to Nicæa, where the
court was, to follow the fortunes of her adopted son.
Suddenly something happened which brought upon them all the sword of
the executioner. What it was we can only conjecture. A writer like
Lactantius is so accustomed to regard a savage outbreak on the part of
one of the last pagan Emperors as a natural event that he disdains to
enlighten us. A part of the story has been concealed, and it would not
be fantastic to suppose that the spirited, young, and ambitious Valeria
meditated an intrigue for the advancement of Candidian to the throne.
It is plain that Licinius suspected this. The royal birth and manly
bearing of the youth might suffice to draw such a suspicion on him, but
do not plausibly explain the treatment of the Empresses. Nor is there
any apparent reason for her disguise. She was willing, Lactantius says,
to cede her rights to Licinius, and the sentence unjustly passed on her
by Maximin would have no weight with him.
Whatever the cause of the trouble was, Valeria learned one day
that Candidian and Severian were arrested, and they were presently
executed. She fled to the remote Syrian village, but she was so plainly
implicated, in some way, that she dare not remain there. Dressing
in the rough robes of the common people, the aged mother and her
brilliant daughter set out on a painful and aimless journey. Either
a sentence of death had been passed on them, or they had ground to
apprehend one; for their flight would certainly elicit it. Lactantius
says that they wandered in this disguise for fifteen months, but it is
difficult to believe that they could so long evade the Imperial troops
who hunted them.[21] At length they were recognized and arrested in
Thessalonica, and the tragedy of their unfortunate and, so far as we
know, innocent lives was brought to a close. Under the eyes of the
assembled citizens the wife and daughter of the great Emperor were
beheaded, and their remains were contemptuously flung into the sea.
CHAPTER XVII
THE FIRST CHRISTIAN EMPRESSES
The fourfold power which Diocletian had prudently set up ensured for
the Empire twenty years of uneventful prosperity. The two Emperors
and their Cæsars guarded and repaired the frontiers, at which the
strong young nations of the hills and the forests were now gathering
in ominous numbers, while the body of the Empire tranquilly pursued
its sluggish and debilitated life. But no sooner had the balanced
mind and the firm hand of Diocletian relinquished their control than
the system revealed its weakness. The multiplication of dignities led
to a multiplication of aspirants; the distribution of power inflamed
the ambition of the stronger and less scrupulous. In one year eight
generals claimed and bore the title of Augustus, and our stage is
crowded with Empresses. Most of them, however, are so poorly outlined
in the records of the time that we may neglect these faint conjugal
shadows of inconspicuous rulers, and select for consideration the three
or four more prominent consorts of the Emperors.
Possibly the most widely known of all the Roman Empresses, more
familiar even than the very different figure of Messalina, is Helena,
the mother of Constantine. The first Christian Empress, the generous
supporter of the early Church, the first royal woman to find a place in
the list of the canonized, we turn to her with eagerness to discover
the contrast with her pagan predecessors. She does not bear the
Imperial title, and does not properly fall within our range, until she
is advanced in years, but we cannot understand her character unless we
glance first at her earlier years.
In one of his more important sermons (“De Obitu Theodosii,” § 42) St.
Ambrose observes that she “is said to have been a maid at an inn,”
and he so clearly accepts the statement that historians, sacred and
profane, have not hesitated to follow him. The claim of another Roman
writer, that Constantine had illumined Britain “by originating there,”
gave rise at one time to a theory that she was British, and our learned
commentators furnished so august a lady with a royal pedigree. The
phrase is, however, generally understood to refer to the beginning of
Constantine’s Imperial career, and the native town of Helena is sought
either in Dacia or in Nicomedia. Since Constantine gave her name to
Drepanum, in Nicomedia, we may presume that her first humble home was
in that town, and that she moved from there to Naissos, in Dacia, where
the birth of Constantine is usually placed.
A _stabulum_ was, in the language of the time, one of the meaner inns
in the towns through which the Roman roads ran. A _stabularia_--the
epithet used by St. Ambrose--was a woman or girl connected with the
inn; and those temporary resting-places for soldiers or merchants on
their journeys were so easy in their ways that the word was sometimes
used in an unpleasant sense. We may follow the early tradition that
Helena was the daughter of a man who kept one of these inns, possibly
a quite respectable establishment, at Drepanum, on the way to the city
of Nicomedia, which Diocletian had made his capital. Here, in or about
the year 273, the young Roman officer Constantius--later, for some
obscure reason, called Constantius the Pale (Chlorus)--saw and fell
in love with Helena. The road that ran through Drepanum was much used
by the troops, and the encounter is placed at the time when Aurelian
was conducting his campaign against Zenobia. Constantius, an excellent
officer and the son of a provincial noble of some distinction, would
then (273) be in his twenty-third year. Helena, who was over eighty at
her death in 328, must have been two or three years older.
Historians have left us a lengthy and learned debate on the question
whether she was the wife or the concubine of Constantius, and the
grouping of the combatants is singular. In the Migne edition of the
works of the Fathers we find a note appended to the passage of St.
Ambrose, which I have quoted, in which the Benedictine commentators
observe that “all the writers on Roman affairs declare that Helena was
the concubine, not the wife, of Constantius,” and they adopt that view.
Yet the critical Gibbon defends “the legality of her marriage” with a
rare and edifying chivalry, and Mr. Firth, in his recent biography of
Constantine, asserts that it is “beyond question.” With such weighty
encouragement ecclesiastical writers have confidently deserted the
Benedictines and followed Gibbon. Let us first hear the authorities,
and we may not find the problem insoluble.
Bishop Eusebius, the chaplain of the Imperial family, as one may
term him, would not mention such a circumstance in his “Life of
Constantine,” even if he knew it to be true; but it is not quite
accurate to say peremptorily that the bishop _never_ mentions it.
In the second book of his “Chronicle” (_ad annum_ 310) we read that
Constantine was “the son of Constantius by his concubine Helena.” We
have no means of determining if these words were written by Eusebius
or added by St. Jerome.[22] Even in the latter case it is a weighty
testimony.
Another Christian historian of Jerome’s time, Orosius--who does not
follow Zosimus, as Gibbon says, but precedes him--makes the same
statement (c. xxv), and it is later repeated in the “Chronicle” of
Cassiodorus. A writer of the generation after Constantine, commonly
known as “Anonymus Valesii,” says (c. ii) that Constantine was “born
of Helena, a very common [_vilissima_] woman, in the town of Naissus.”
Zosimus, a century later, and a pagan critic of Constantine, says (ii.
8) that he was “born of a woman who was not respectable σεμνή and not
legally married to Constantius,” and he later observes that Maxentius
resented the raising to the throne of a man whose mother was “not a
matron.” Finally, the early mediæval monk, Zonaras, says (“Annals,”
xiii. i): “Some say that she was lawfully married to Constantius
and divorced ... others that she was not a legitimate wife but a
paramour.” The grave and weighty Eutropius, writing in the generation
after Constantine, says that he was born of “a somewhat ambiguous
[_obscuriori_] marriage.”
The Benedictines had an ample authority, both Christian and pagan,
for their view, and only one argument is advanced in disproof of
it by modern writers. Several of the historians tell us that, when
Constantius was made Cæsar, he was compelled by the Emperor to
“divorce” Helena, and, it is said, divorce implies marriage. The
argument is hardly conclusive. When Eusebius (or Jerome) tells us that
the Cæsars were compelled to dismiss their “wives,” he adds, on the
same page, that Helena was not a wife, but a concubine. He means merely
that Constantius was forced to dismiss Helena and wed the daughter
of Maximian, and does not imply that any legal form of divorce was
employed. It is quite open to us to interpret the other authority,
Aurelius Victor, in the same way; and Zonaras, the only other writer
who could be quoted, expressly leaves it open whether Helena was
married or not. In any case, the single authority of Aurelius Victor
cannot outweigh the others, and even his words do not necessarily imply
a legal divorce on the part of both Cæsars.
But there is another aspect of the question, which is usually
overlooked. Could there be a valid marriage between Helena and
Constantius in Roman law? When we regard the subject from this point of
view, we see that Constantius could not possibly have married Helena
before the birth of Constantine, and, unless her legal condition was
subsequently altered by a special enactment, their union could never
become a valid marriage. As I have earlier observed, the strict and
ancient forms of Roman marriage had fallen very generally out of use
under the Emperors. They had had the effect of putting the wife under
the despotic power of the husband, and Roman feeling in regard to the
position of woman had entirely changed. Looser forms of marriage, which
evaded the older tyranny of the husband, were generally employed and
legally recognized. If a man and woman lived together uninterruptedly
for twelve months--without three nights’ interruption--their union
might become a valid marriage. Below this was the legally recognized
concubine. The ease with which Christian writers admitted that Helena
was a concubine is due to the fact that the Church, as well as the
law, permitted a concubine, if a man had no wife. As late as the year
400, the important provincial Council of Toledo decided that such a
man and his concubine were to be admitted to communion. St. Augustine,
we shall see, went even further. Below these, again, were the ordinary
paramours, the mistresses of a month or the playthings of an hour,
which Stoic and Christian equally condemned.
The real question we have to decide is, therefore, whether the long
association of Constantius and Helena could ever be recognized as
a valid marriage in Roman law. That they went through any form of
marriage in 273 could only occur to a writer who knows nothing of
Roman law or practice. A young officer, taking a girl from a tavern
in a small provincial town on his route, would not dream of any such
ceremony; and no ceremony would have been valid in Roman law. Whatever
the legal condition of Constantius was, Helena was, to Roman law, a
barbarian, or _peregrina_, and could not contract a valid marriage.[23]
We need little acquaintance with Roman life to imagine what happened.
Constantius felt for the young woman he found at the country inn a more
tender sentiment than that usually entertained by the young centurion
or tribune on travel, and he took her to live with him. I do not see
how this relation ever could become a valid marriage, nor is there any
clear proof that they were ever _legally_ divorced. At the most, it
remains “a questionable marriage,” as Eutropius calls it, and it began
as a free union.
From Nicomedia Constantius’s troop seems to have passed, possibly after
sharing Aurelian’s triumph at Rome, to Thrace, where Constantine is
said to have been born in the year 274. Helena narrowly missed the
dignity of Empress a few years later, as Carus had some disposition to
leave the purple to Constantius. The mother of Constantius had been
a niece of the Emperor Claudius, and his father was one of the chief
nobles of Dardania. But the accession of Carinus dispelled this hope,
and Helena followed her husband from province to province, and grade to
grade, until, in 292, he was selected for the lofty position of Cæsar
of the West. But with the purple came a command that he must dismiss
his concubine, and marry the stepdaughter of Maximian, Flavia Maximiana
Theodora. From that date until the year of her son’s brilliant triumph
Helena passes into complete obscurity.
Meantime other Empresses occupy the pages of the historian. Theodora,
of whom we have just spoken, is one of those Empresses whose propriety
of conduct and mediocrity of person have not attracted the lamp of
the historian. She was the daughter of Eutropia, the Syrian wife
of Maximian, by a former husband. Three boys and three girls came
of her union with Constantius, and she seems to have been a worthy
consort of that judicious and happy ruler. The full Imperial title
passed to them when Maximian abdicated in 305, and the handsome and
spirited Constantine joined them at Gessoriacum (Boulogne), after his
romantic flight from Nicomedia, in that or the following year. They
crossed to Britain, and suppressed a rebellion that was in progress.
But Constantius died at Eboracum (York) in the summer of 306, and the
unambitious Theodora passes from our sight.
Constantius had, with a last display of prudence, preferred his eldest
son to the legitimate children of his wife, and probably little money
needed to be distributed among the legions to ensure that they should
recognize his superiority. Constantine was then in his early manhood, a
commanding and graceful figure, in the finest phase of his character,
and the troops followed him with alacrity from the cold mists of north
Britain to more genial and more cultivated Gaul. From Gaul the young
Cæsar watched with close interest the quarrels in which his colleagues
prepared to devour each other. In February of 307 he heard that Severus
had opened his veins, and left the purple in the hands of the crafty
Maximian and his son Maxentius. Within a few weeks Maximian was in
Gaul, seeking an alliance with Constantine. He brought with him his
pretty and charming daughter, Fausta, and presently she was married at
Arles, with great pomp, to Constantine, the stepson of her half-sister.
The old man returned to his intrigues in Italy, from which he was
shortly ejected by his son: Galerius expelled him from Illyricum, where
he had taken shelter; and he returned to the court of his son-in-law in
Gaul.
The portrait-bust of Maximian might be confused with that of a modern
pugilist, but he had, in addition to strength and ambition, a restless
disposition to intrigue. To rust in a court full of women--for we
may confidently place in the court of Constantine his wife, mother,
stepmother, mother-in-law, and three young half-sisters, if not also
his concubine--was to him an intolerable experience, and he took the
first opportunity of enlivening his surroundings. An inroad of the
barbarians in the north drew away the young Emperor with much of his
army, and Maximian rebelled. He gave out a report that Constantine
was dead, emptied the treasury into the hands of the soldiers, and
assumed the purple mantle once more. But Constantine returned with the
stride of a giant, and Maximian shut himself in Marseilles, which was
presently surrendered. The aged intriguer returned to the palace, tried
to corrupt the loyalty of his daughter, and brought upon himself the
punishment of his crimes.
It is a peculiarity of the time that, the more remote an historian is
from an event, the more he knows about it. Eutropius and Zosimus merely
know that Fausta revealed her father’s plots to her husband; Zonaras,
of the twelfth century, is able to tell us the whole story. Maximian,
he says, persuaded his daughter to have the guards removed from the
Imperial chamber at night. Then, telling the night-attendants that
he wished to relate to Constantine a remarkable dream he had had, he
entered the chamber and plunged his dagger into the sleeping figure on
the bed. Rushing out to announce the fall of the tyrant, however, he
found himself in face of Constantine, Fausta, and the guards. Fausta
had been true to her husband, and it was “a vile eunuch” that Maximian
had slain in the Emperor’s bed. Whatever truth there may be in this
romance, we may accept the statement that Fausta betrayed his plots,
and Maximian came to the end of his career. Zosimus sends him into
exile, and makes him die a natural death at Tarsus. Lactantius, with a
stronger sense of propriety, tells us that he strangled himself, and it
is the general belief that Constantine did not permit him to leave Gaul
alive.
Galerius died in the following year (311), leaving the Eastern Empire
to Licinius and Maximin, while Maxentius ruled in Italy and Africa.
Four Empresses now lived in the court of Constantine, but before we
seek to penetrate the mystery of their relations to each other, we
must briefly accompany Constantine in his rise to the position of
supreme monarch. Maxentius, who had expelled his father from Italy,
now affected a filial anger against his destroyer, and, after some
exasperated correspondence, sent toward Gaul an army of nearly 200,000
men. Constantine boldly led 40,000 of his soldiers across the Alps,
wore down the strength of his opponent in successive encounters, and,
within a few months, exhibited the grisly head of Maxentius to the
astonished and delighted Romans. He was now master of the Western
Empire. Devoting two months to the settlement of Roman affairs,
he returned to Milan to meet his Eastern colleague Licinius. His
half-sister Constantia was married there to Licinius, who returned to
Asia with his bride, to crush Maximin, and to perpetrate the melancholy
tragedies over which we shuddered in the last chapter. Anastasia, the
second daughter of Constantius, was married to the Senator Bassianus.
Constantine made him Cæsar, but put no troops at his command--he had
just suppressed the Prætorian Guards at Rome--and refused to grant
him the authority that had hitherto been associated with the title of
Cæsar. Bassianus corresponded angrily with Licinius, and before the
end of 315 the Emperors of the East and West were in arms against each
other.
It would be interesting to know what share the daughters of Constantius
had in promoting these disorders. The correspondence of Bassianus
and Licinius suggests a correspondence of their wives, and, when
Bassianus was deposed and disgraced, we may assume that Constantia was
not insensible of the misfortune of her younger sister. The superior
age and ability of Constantine would hardly reconcile the legitimate
children of Constantius to their position of dependence. Constantia is
sometimes represented as a pious peacemaker, but we do not find her
in that character until her husband’s power is irremediably broken,
after the second war with Constantine. She fled in great haste with her
husband after the first defeat, and returned with him to Nicomedia, to
rule his reduced dominions.
The court-life of the West flowed with uneventful smoothness in the
eight years between the first and second war with Licinius. The only
break in the monotony is the birth of three sons and three daughters in
quick succession. Zosimus emphatically asserts that these were not the
children of Fausta, but of a concubine, whom Constantine put to death
on a charge of adultery. We are naturally disposed to regard this as
a piece of reprehensible malice on the part of the pagan writer, but
even the most cautious judgment will find ground for reflection in the
circumstance that Fausta had borne no children whatever for the first
nine years of her marriage, and then children begin to appear with
astonishing rapidity. We know that Constantine had had a concubine,
named Minervina, before he married Fausta. Her son Crispus lived at the
court. It would not be entirely surprising if Minervina had returned
to the court, to rear the Imperial dynasty which Fausta failed to
provide, and was eventually destroyed in one of Constantine’s bursts of
temper.[24]
In the Eastern court the young Empress had, if we trust the
authorities, a more adventurous career. Constantia cannot have been
more than seventeen or eighteen at the time of her marriage, but she
was a woman of spirit and ability, as well as virtue and beauty. It
is said that she, with the whole court, became a Christian after
Constantine’s victory over Maxentius, but the story of the miraculous
sign in the heavens--a story that is not found in any form until thirty
years afterwards--is now rejected, and the conversion of Constantine
is spread over many years. At Nicomedia, however, where Constantia
occupied the magnificent palace built by Diocletian, she met the
accomplished and courtly Eusebius, and induced Licinius to allow him
the position of Bishop of Nicomedia. Two things, it is said, then
transpired in the character of Licinius to excite her disgust. He not
only persecuted the Christians, but made equal war upon virtue. In
brief, he, like all the other persecutors, is depicted by the flowing
pen of Lactantius as an erotic ogre. His eye falls on a Christian
maiden, of dazzling beauty and virtue, in the suite of Constantia,
and he sends an officer to corrupt her. She tells Constantia, who
dresses her as a young military officer, and sends her, with a splendid
equipage, to take an imaginary Imperial commission to a remote region.
In the distant city of Amasia she is embarrassed by her masculine
hosts, and confides in the bishop. Finally, a letter of hers to
Constantia is intercepted, and she escapes by a very timely death from
the embraces or the tortures of Licinius.
Of these wicked ways, and of her husband’s hostility to the Christians,
Constantia is said to have kept her brother well informed, and, when
Licinius committed the greater enormity of refusing to surrender
fugitive offenders to the vengeance of Constantine, the legions were
once more led toward the Bosphorus. Several disastrous battles crippled
the power of Licinius, and he retired sullenly to Nicomedia. Whether
at his request or no, Constantia interceded for him, and Constantine
swore to respect his life. In assigning the blame for the war we may,
perhaps, hesitate between the contradictory charges of the opposing
schools of historians, though modern writers usually follow the neutral
and sober Eutropius, and ascribe it to the ambition of Constantine. But
there is a sharper indictment of Constantine’s conduct after the war.
Licinius, in surrendering, had relied on the oath of the conqueror.
He had been stripped of the purple, and exiled to Thessalonica, but
he was put to death there shortly afterwards. Zosimus and Eutropius
say that this was done “in spite of the oath,” and the statement of
Constantine’s more resolute admirers, that Licinius was discovered
in treasonable intrigue, has not carried much conviction with later
historians.
Constantia passed, with her daughter Helena and her boy Licinius, to
the court of her brother, who was now (324) master of the whole Empire.
The remark of Zosimus, that Constantine degenerated into the most
wilful license after his attainment of supreme power--a remark feebly
supported by the assurance of the cautious Eutropius that “prosperity
somewhat altered his character”--contrasts quaintly with the
circumstance that he now became the Imperial patron of the Christian
religion. Here, again, we hesitate between conflicting accounts, or
rival romances. According to the mediæval Christian writer Zonaras, who
supplies a remarkable amount of detail that was unknown to contemporary
historians, the conversion of Constantine had a picturesque origin.
On his return to Rome, after crushing Licinius, he was afflicted with
a painful eruption, and his pagan physicians prescribed a bath in the
warm blood of children. “At once,” says the lively writer, “children
were collected from the whole Empire,” and dispatched to the palace.
The lamentations of the mothers fell on the ear of Constantine, touched
his heart, and he left paganism in disgust for Christianity.
The pagan Greek, Zosimus, who at least faithfully reproduces the pagan
gossip of his time--as, on this point, we know from Sozomen--gives us
the legend of _his_ school. After committing certain murders, which
will occupy us presently, Constantine applied to the priests of the
temple of Jupiter for purification. The priests sternly replied that
their lustral water had no power to obliterate the trace of such a
crime, and Constantine turned in despair to an Egyptian who was known
to “the women-folk” of the palace. The Christian priest, as he seems to
have been, declared that his religion contained the desired remedy, and
Constantine embraced it.
It will be seen that we now pursue our biographic way amid a forest
of legends. Happily, we may reject both these stories as, at least,
anachronisms. Constantine was already a Christian in 324. He had
abolished the decrees of persecution in the year 313, and had taken
a keen interest in Church matters for some years. The whole court
gradually accepted the new faith. Helena, Eusebius tells us, and Fausta
for some time opposed the change of religion, but Helena at least was
converted. Eutropia appears in the East a few years later as a zealous
opponent of paganism. From their several and ample purses the money
poured into the lean coffers of the Church, and the conversion of the
Empire proceeded rapidly. Villages that embraced Christianity were
raised to the dignity of cities; nobles and officers were encouraged by
promotion; and ordinary citizens were rewarded with a baptismal robe
and a piece of gold.
It is not for us to inquire into the obscure question of Constantine’s
real attitude. Professor Bury and other eminent authorities believe
that his creed was a liberal, or vague, one until his death. Years
afterwards we find him building pagan temples at Constantinople, and
he did not disdain the Imperial title of Sovereign Pontiff of the old
religion. On the other hand, the details collected by Mr. Firth show a
very real interest in the Church. He opened the great Council of Nicæa
in the year 325, and reverently kissed the wounds of those who had
suffered in the persecution. Yet even amid this evidence of orthodoxy
the hesitating student will find trace of his liberality. In the letter
which he sent to the Catholic bishops he complained that the subject of
their vehement quarrel with the Arians was “quite insignificant, and
entirely disproportionate to such a quarrel.” The question at issue was
the divinity of Christ. His experience at the Council would give him a
larger sense of its importance.
From the benedictions of the prelates and the embraces of the martyrs
Constantine returned to Europe, and, within a year, apparently, his
court was rent by a tragedy that has left an irremovable cloud on his
memory. He had gone to Rome, with the court, to celebrate the twentieth
anniversary of his accession. The city exulted in the rare indulgence
of his presence, and the games and festivities warmed it with its old
enthusiasm. The Empire was united and at peace, and the growing brood
of children gave promise of an unending dynasty. Crispus, Constantine’s
eldest son, was now a popular and promising commander, clothed in the
mantle of a Cæsar. Two of the sons of Fausta, or her substitute, were
Cæsars. Then there was the twelve-year-old son of Constantia. Over
these watched the aged Helena and Eutropia, and the mothers and aunts
of the younger children.
In the middle of the festivity Rome was startled to hear that Crispus
had been arrested, by his father’s command, and exiled to Pola, in
Istria. From that remote and solitary region the report at length came
that he had been put to death. Every eye was turned on the palace,
and before long--most of the historians say--the gay figure of the
beautiful young Empress disappeared, and the report spread that she
had been brutally suffocated in the steam of a dense vapour-bath. The
horror was increased, and the prospect of a humane interpretation
lessened, when it was learned that the innocent child of Constantia
also had been put to death. Such is the grave and mysterious tragedy
of Constantine’s mature years. As Fausta has been heavily indicted by
those who have sought to defend her husband, and Helena impeached by
his accusers, we may glance at the evidence on which one’s verdict must
be based.
There are partisan historians who would cast doubt on the whole story;
there are more serious historians, such as Gibbon (who again gallantly
opposes the critics), who say that Fausta, at least, was not slain; and
the rest are divided in opinion as to whether it was a just execution
or a ghastly crime. The first two opinions are now untenable. There
is no serious dispute that Crispus and Licinius were put to death.
That Fausta was killed is now equally established. Gibbon relied
upon a certain anonymous writer to show that Fausta was living long
afterwards, but it has been shown that the writer is not speaking of
Fausta and Constantine. Moreover, Dr. Seeck, in a special study of the
evidence (“Die Verwandtenmorde Constantins des Grossen,” _Zeitschrift
für Wiss. Theol._, Bd. 33), has shown that the coins of Fausta and
Crispus, unlike those of the other members of the Imperial family, end
before the year 330. Dr. Görres, who held Gibbon’s view, consents that
this proof is decisive. The only serious question is that of motive or
justification.
Let us glance at the authorities, in the order of their nearness to the
event. Bishop Eusebius is naturally silent; he professes to give only
the things that edify in the life of Constantine, and is writing almost
in his son’s court. Eutropius, the soundest and most impartial writer
of the next generation, says (x. 6) that the character of Constantine
“was somewhat changed with prosperity,” and that “following the
exigencies of the situation [_necessitudines rerum_], he put to death,
first his excellent son and the son of his sister, a boy of promising
character, then his wife and a number of friends.” St. Jerome, in his
Latin version of the “Chronicle” of Eusebius, writes, at the year 329,
that “Crispus, the son of Constantine, and Licinius the younger, the
son of Constantia, are most cruelly put to death in the ninth year of
his reign,” and three years later we read: “Constantine put to death
his wife Fausta.”[25] Dr. Seeck believes that we have here only an echo
of Eutropius, but Jerome would hardly add “most cruelly” on so cautious
a narrative. Aurelius Victor, a contemporary of Eutropius, says that
Crispus “was put to death by his father for some unknown reason,” and
Orosius, the Christian historian, merely observes that Constantine put
Crispus and Licinius to death.
From these earlier writers we learn only that the deaths were cruel,
and the motive unknown, but later writers have successively built up
a story that has provoked endless discussion. Sidonius Apollinaris,
the most cultivated and liberal Christian writer of the fifth century,
says, with the confidence of a parenthesis (Ep. v), that Crispus was
poisoned, and Fausta killed in a vapour-bath; and that a couplet
was fixed on the palace-gate recalling the crimes of Nero. The
epitomist of Aurelius Victor declares that Crispus was put to death
at the instigation of Fausta, and Fausta was “thereupon” killed in a
vapour-bath, as Helena bitterly reproached Constantine for the death of
Crispus. Zosimus (ii. 29) says: “With no regard for the law of nature
he put to death his son Crispus, on the ground that he was suspected
of intimacy with Fausta,” and, when Helena heavily reproached him,
he, “as if to console her,” suffocated Fausta in an overheated bath.
Philostorgius, a Christian writer of the same (fifth) century, declares
that Fausta was put to death because she was caught in adultery with a
groom. The story culminates in the twelfth-century annalist Zonaras.
After telling his incredible legend about Constantine and the babies,
he represents Fausta in the character of Potiphar’s wife. She conceived
a passion for the handsome Cæsar, was repelled by him, and then
denounced him to Constantine as having offered violence to her. Crispus
was put to death. Then Constantine learned in some way--Helena is left
to the imagination--that he had been deceived, and he angrily killed
Fausta in a vapour-bath.
It is remarkable how many grave writers have favoured this legend of
the mediæval writer,[26] yet, besides its obvious growth through the
centuries, it has the fatal weakness of throwing no light whatever on
the murder of Licinius, the son of Constantine’s most cherished sister.
We are reduced to conjecture in face of this mysterious and terrible
tragedy. That the youths met with some violent death at the hands
of the Emperor, that Helena bitterly remonstrated with him, and that
the savage suffocation of Fausta followed this remonstrance, seems
to be clear. We may further conclude with some confidence, from the
persistent rumour of amorous relations, that this charge was allowed
to reach the outside world in extenuation of the murders. But it is
suspected by many historians, and seems to be suggested by the obscure
language of Eutropius, that the real motive was political.
[Illustration: FAUSTA
FLAVIA HELENA
ENLARGED FROM COINS IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM]
Crispus was in great favour with both the people and the troops,
and had distinguished himself in the war with Licinius. If anything
happened to Constantine, who was in his fifty-second year, Crispus
had a clear prospect of the throne. It would not be unnatural for
Fausta to resent this, and one is tempted to see, either an effect
of her importunity or a proof of Constantine’s jealousy of his son,
in the fact that Constantine took away the province of Gaul from
Crispus, without compensation, in 323, and gave it to the eldest of
his legitimate sons. From that time Crispus was retained in idleness,
and probably discontent, under the eye of his father. He would be
a natural focus for all the dissatisfaction in the Empire, and the
Romans, and pagans generally, regarded Constantine and his family with
anger and disdain on account of their abandonment of the old religion.
By the year 326 Constantine was in a state of extraordinary nervousness
and suspicion. Before going to Rome he issued an edict in which he
revealed his frame of mind to the whole Empire. At Rome he flouted the
most cherished customs of the city, and may well have incurred fresh
murmurs. Something occurred that brought his suspicion of Crispus--who
may not have become a Christian--to an acute stage, and he condemned
him to exile and death. This theory is also the only one to explain,
with any plausibility, the execution of young Licinius. He was the only
other rival of Constantine’s legitimate sons. It is impossible for us
to say whether Crispus had incurred any guilt or no, but the silence
of the earlier writers and panegyrists is a grave circumstance. If
there had been plausible evidence of conspiracy they would not have
remained silent. In any case, the sentence on Crispus was harsh and
unjustifiable, and the execution of a twelve-year-old boy was a piece
of brutality that only the worse Emperors would have perpetrated.
The murder of Fausta is even more perplexing. Even if the late and
negligible stories of Philostorgius and Zonaras were true, she was
not executed, but brutally murdered. The only firm point in the
conflicting evidence is the persistent association of her death with
the anger of Helena. We have no evidence of any value in regard to
her relation to Crispus; but the words of Zosimus, which are not
inconsistent with the earlier writers, enable us to extend the above
theory to her. Constantine, on this view, put Crispus and Licinius to
death because they were possible nuclei of the conspiracy which he
believed to pervade the Empire. Adopting a familiar device, however,
he concealed his motive under a charge of amorous irregularity, or too
great a familiarity with the Empress. Helena, who was greatly attached
to Crispus, seems to have insisted that, if there was any guilt, both
were guilty, and Constantine savagely completed his work by murdering
his wife. The Christian historians describe Fausta as opposing
Constantine’s progress in his new faith, and, as we have no evidence
that Crispus had embraced it, one may not implausibly wonder whether
the two did not attract the favour of the pagan Romans, to the extreme
anger of the Emperor. No charge against Fausta was made public. During
the lifetime of Constantine’s eldest son, Julian described her, in one
of his orations, as not only one of the most beautiful, but one of the
most virtuous and noble ladies of her time. Even if we make allowance
for the licensed flattery of a panegyrist, the description would be too
glaringly inconsistent with any Imperial theory of her infidelity. She
was probably in her thirty-fourth or thirty-fifth year at the time when
she met her appalling death.
Constantine hastened to remove the gloomy, stricken court from the
disdainful eyes of Rome. The pagans pointed with fierce scorn to these
fruits of the new religion, as they expressed it. One day it was found
that some one had fastened a Latin couplet--written, the pagans of
a later day boasted, by the hand of the Emperor’s chief counsellor,
Ablabius--on the gate of the palace:
Say ye the Golden Age of Saturn breaks again?
Of Nero’s bloody hue these jewels are.
Either at once, or in the course of the next year, the court broke
up. Constantine went to direct the building of the new capital of
the West, which was to bear his name. Later pagans said that he fled
from the theatre of his crimes and the scorn of Rome, but the ample
lines of Constantinople had been traced long before, and the site had
been chosen for its strategical importance. Helena sought the land in
which Christ had lived and died, and her pious munificence won for her
the halo of sanctity. The legend of her finding the cross does not
appear until seventy years afterwards, and Eusebius tells us that it
was Constantine, not she, who found the sepulchre and built a church
over it. But Helena, who had now great wealth, covered the land with
churches, and returned with a great repute for piety. She died soon
after her return--in 328, Tillemont thinks--having passed her eightieth
year.
Europia also went on a pilgrimage to Palestine, and seems to have
settled in the East. We find her a few years later urging Constantine
to scatter the pagans who are defiling some sacred spot with their
impure ceremonies. Theodora seems to have died, at some unknown date,
before the year of the murders. Constantia died in, or about, the year
329. Her Arian friend Eusebius had been banished, at the triumph of the
Athanasians, but she obtained his recall, and adhered to his Unitarian
creed. In her last hours she succeeded in recommending an Arian priest
to Constantine, and prolonged the religious struggle. We pass to a new
generation of Empresses, and may dismiss briefly the ten years which
remain of Constantine’s rule and introduce us to the events of the next
chapter.
In the month of May of the year 330, the new city of Constantinople
was solemnly dedicated. The curious reader will find in Gibbon a
splendid restoration of its princely proportions, its stores of art
gathered from all parts of the Empire, its superb palace, its great
hippodrome, its churches and temples, its spacious fora, and its lofty
column of porphyry, surmounted by a gigantic statue, in which the head
of Constantine replaced that of Apollo, and the various attributes
of the god he still admired were hesitatingly redeemed by emblems of
the jealous God of his new faith. The enormous sums absorbed in the
building of the new city were regarded by the pagans as one of the
causes of the decay of the Empire, and the bitter strife of Arians and
Athanasians, which distracted it, irritated their resentment. But their
day was closing. The arguments with which they clung to a Jupiter and
a Venus in whom they no longer believed were hollow; the rewards of
conversion were great. The grey gods saw their crowds of worshippers
becoming thinner and less joyous. The Empire lifted the humble cross
into the sunlight from Persia to Britain.
The last decade of Constantine’s life was inglorious. We might distrust
the partial and severe accusations of Zosimus, but the substance of
his charge is found in the other authorities. His vast and hurried
enterprise in building forced him to lay heavy burdens on his enfeebled
Empire, and we have the authority of Ammianus Marcellinus that he
“encouraged those about him to open devouring jaws” in a lamentable
degree. Conversion was the first right to favour and wealth. The later
Emperor Julian, we are not surprised to find, pours acrid satire on
him. In the treatise (“Cæsares”) in which he introduces the Emperors
of Rome to the Olympic court, he makes Constantine turn to the
goddess Luxury, as the one congenial deity, and she introduces him
only to her sister Prodigality. He ridicules Constantine’s womanly
finery in dress and jewels, his elaborate crown of false hair, his
complete lapse into effeminate ways. Aurelius Victor gives us the
proverbial judgment of the next generation on Constantine: in his first
decade he was admirable, in his second decade thievish, in his third
decade a squanderer. He made the final blunder of--without naming a
successor--dividing the Empire among his sons and nephews, of gravely
unequal character, and died in 337, leaving them and their supporters
to engage in a murderous struggle for supremacy.
CHAPTER XVIII
THE WIVES OF CONSTANTIUS AND JULIAN
When the announcement of Constantine’s death had been borne by swift
couriers to the distant provinces, and the body, in its golden coffin,
had been transferred to Constantinople, there was a nervous rush of
aspiring Emperors and Empresses to the capital. The unification of the
Empire under Constantine had cost the State some hundred and fifty
thousand of its finest soldiers, who perished in civil warfare while
powerful nations pressed against its yielding frontiers. In his later
years he had so distributed these provinces, whose unity had been so
dearly purchased, among his sons and nephews, worthy and unworthy,
that dismemberment was certain to follow his death. His eldest son,
Constantine, now in his twenty-first year, ruled Gaul and Britain;
Constantius, the second son, a youth of twenty, was the Cæsar of the
East; the third son, Constans, aged seventeen, held sway over Italy
and Africa. His nephew Delmatius, also entitled Cæsar, controlled
Thrace, Macedonia, and Greece, and the younger nephew Hannibalian bore
the ornate title of King of Kings in Pontus and Cappadocia. The two
brothers of Constantine, and the husbands of his two sisters, were not
left without a share of the Imperial provision.
The race to Constantinople after the death of the Emperor may be
imagined, but the suddenness and horror of the consequent tragedy must
have sobered even the most frivolous. Constantius, the second son, was
the first to arrive, and to him the conduct of the impressive funeral
was entrusted. The members of the family gathered round the marble
palace from all quarters of the Empire, and the shade of Constantine
continued for some months to rule the State, until their conflicting
claims should be adjusted. Julius Constantius and Delmatius, the
legitimate heirs of Constantius Chlorus, who had been thrust aside
thirty years before by the vigorous son of Minervina, were now men
in the prime of life. The younger son of the latter, Hannibalian,
the “King of Kings,” strutted in a scarlet and gold mantle, and had
married the fiery and ambitious young daughter of the late Emperor,
Constantina. Anastasia, Constantine’s sister, brought her husband, the
“Patrician” Optatus. The partition of power seemed a formidable task.
But in the weeks that succeeded Constantine’s death a new and sinister
power arose, and its secret designs prepared a ghastly simplification
of the problem.
Constantius became insensibly the central figure of the drama. A
callous youth, with little strength of character, he was selected
by the eunuchs and corrupt officers of Constantine’s court as a
likely instrument of their plans. It was agreed that the interests of
these officers and of the sons of Constantine would be best served
by a removal of all the other competitors, and a diabolical plot
was devised. The details are given at length only by the Christian
historian Philostorgius, of the next century, and are regarded with
reserve; but an Arian writer would hardly inculpate an Arian bishop
and an Arian monarch without some just ground. His story is that
Constantine left a will in which he declared that he had been poisoned
by his two half-brothers. The will was given to Bishop Eusebius. When
the brothers were eager to see the will of Constantine, Eusebius is
said to have discovered a fine piece of casuistry. He put the will
in the hands of the dead Emperor, and covered it with his robes, so
that he might, without injury to his delicate conscience, assure the
brothers that Constantine had indeed shown him a will, but he had
returned it into his hands. The will--or a will--was now produced, and
the people and army were assured by their dead ruler that he had been
poisoned by his family.
The story is regarded with suspicion by most historians. For the reason
I have given, and because it is the only plausible explanation of what
followed, it seems probable that such a will was produced and published
by Constantius. It was probably forged by the palace officials. Whether
they and the sons of Constantine used this device or no, they somehow
directed the tempestuous anger of the troops upon the older princes and
their families, and extinguished their claims in a brutal massacre.
Julian casts the blame on Constantius, admitting that he acted under
compulsion, and the other fourth-century writers do not differ.
Constantius “permitted,” rather than “commanded.” The corrupt power
behind the throne directed the murders, and the sons of Constantine
purchased a larger dominion by the blood of their uncles and cousins.
The two uncles, seven cousins, and other distinguished men, were
included in the bloody list. Then the three Imperial youths divided the
Empire between them, and departed to their provinces.
The wives of the eldest and the youngest of the brothers are unknown
to us, and the first wife of Constantius is so little known that we
may pass rapidly over a number of years. The Imperial sisters of
Constantine--except Constantia, whom we have considered--enter little
in the history of the time. Anastasia disappears after the murder of
her husband. Eutropia will presently mingle her blood with that of
her insurgent son on the soil of Italy. Constantina, the daughter of
Constantine who had married Hannibalian, and who already bore the title
of Augusta, retired into a long widowhood, from which we shall find her
emerging later in a monstrous character.
Constantius had been married to his cousin Galla in 336. She seems to
have been the daughter of Julius Constantius, since Julian says that
her father and brother were included in the massacre. Her personality
is never outlined for us in the historical writings of the time, and we
are left to imagine her shuddering or languishing in the arms that were
stained with the blood of her family. She died some time before 350, as
Magnentius offered his daughter to Constantius in that year. We have,
therefore, no Empress who can engage our attention until 353, and may
be content with a slight summary of the events which lead on to the
appearance of Eusebia and the reappearance of the repulsive Constantina.
Three years after the partition of the Empire Constantine and Constans
quarrelled about their territory. The elder brother led his troops into
the dominion of Constans, and was slain; and his provinces were added
to those of Constans. The character of the youngest son of Constantine
was gross and intolerable. He revived the lowest vice of his pagan
predecessors, and his open parade of the handsome barbarian youths
whom he bought, or attracted to his frivolous court, disgusted his
officers. In the beginning of the year 350 they rebelled against him. A
banquet was given at Augustodunum (Autun) to the notables of the town
and the officers of the camp, and at a late hour, when the abundant
wine had warmed the hearts and obscured the judgment of the diners,
the commander of two of the chief legions, Magnentius, was brought
before them in a purple robe. Constans awoke from his vices to find
that he had lost the throne and the army, and fled toward Spain. He was
overtaken and slain. Some blood-curse seemed to hang over the house of
Constantine. Constantius, who had been long occupied in resisting the
Persians, now wheeled round his troops, and faced the usurper.
In the long struggle that followed there were two incidents of interest
for us. Constantina, the Imperial widow, was living in restless
impotence at the time. Between the rebellious provinces of the West and
the loyal provinces of the East was the intermediate district between
the Danube and the Greek sea. Constantina, it is said, instigated the
commander of the troops in these regions, Vetranio, to assume the
purple. What we shall see of her character presently will dispose us
to believe that she meditated a return to power through Vetranio,
but Constantius astutely disarmed and exiled him, and accepted her
explanation that she had acted with the pure aim of resisting the
advance of the Western usurper. Constantine’s sister Eutropia also
appears in the struggle. Her son Nepotian assumed the purple at Rome,
and led out a motley army to attack Magnentius. They were quickly
annihilated, and mother and son--two of the few remaining members of
Constantine’s family--were slain.
The interest of the student of the time is divided between the clash
of armies and the not wholly bloodless conflicts of theologies. We are
concerned with neither, and need only observe that Constantius defeated
Magnentius, after a long and costly struggle--in one battle 54,000
Roman soldiers perished in civil warfare--and reunited the Empire under
his sole dominion. The young Empress of the defeated Magnentius retired
into widowhood, and will be restored to us in the next chapter. In
the meantime Constantina has returned to the field, and her Imperial
adventures call for our notice.
Two children, the sons of Julius Constantius, had survived the massacre
at Constantinople. Gallus was in his twelfth year, Julian in his sixth.
They were hidden until the fury of the soldiers had abated, and then
their tender age induced the murderers to overlook them. The jealous
eye of Constantius fell on them when they approached manhood, and they
were confined in a fortress, or ancient palace, in Cappadocia. In the
solitude of Macellum no company was offered them but that of slaves and
soldiers. Julian, in whose mind the seeds of an elevated philosophy had
taken root, resisted the pressing temptations, and devoted the long
days to culture; but Gallus, a sensual and ill-balanced youth, adopted
the coarse distractions of his spacious jail. After six years (in
351) they were not only set at liberty, but Gallus was amazed to find
himself clothed with the dignity of Cæsar and married to the Emperor’s
sister Constantina. Constantius was compelled to leave the East in
order to face Magnentius, and he needed a Cæsar to rule in his name.
The three years’ rule of Gallus and Constantina was an Imperial
scandal. Unscrupulous and unbridled, the daughter of Constantine lives
in the literature of the time as a monstrous perversion of womanhood.
With her begins the historical work (as we have it) of Ammianus
Marcellinus, a retired general, one of the most scrupulous and ample
chroniclers of his time. He bursts at once into a vivid denunciation
of her vices. She was “a mortal Megæra,” an ogre, swollen with pride
and thirsting for human blood. It is unfortunate that Ammianus gives
us no personal description of the women of his time. His work contains
charming vignettes of the Emperors and princes, but he seems never to
have looked on the face or figure of their wives. Gallus, he tells us,
was a superb youth in figure and stature, his handsome features crowned
with soft golden hair, and bearing a look of dignity and authority,
in spite of his vices. The strain of cruelty and coarseness in him
was provoked to excesses by his wife. When his savage conduct had
exasperated his subjects he used to send his spies, in the disguise
of beggars, to gather the secret whispers of discontent; and he even
stooped to the practice of wandering himself, in disguise, from tavern
to tavern on the well-lit streets of Antioch to discover his critics.
Antioch had been noted for centuries for its freedom of speech, and the
prisons and torture-chambers of Gallus were busy.
Constantina not only encouraged this criminal conduct, but enlarged on
it. A woman of vicious character came one day to disclose some plot,
or pretended plot, to her. She rewarded her heavily, and sent the
harlot out into the city in the royal chariot, to encourage others.
An Alexandrian noble distinguished himself by resisting the guilty
passion of his mother-in-law. The woman presented Constantina with a
pearl necklace, and the noble was put to death. We need not prolong
the disgusting narrative. Flavia Julia Constantina, a beautiful and
able woman, who can scarcely have passed her thirtieth year, was one of
the worst Empresses in the Imperial gallery. One can but suggest, in
some attenuation of her guilt, that the murder of her husband by her
brother when she was a young girl in her early teens, and the fourteen
years of young widowhood that followed, had provoked the worst elements
of her nature.
As long as Constantius was occupied with the struggle against
Magnentius, he overlooked the excesses of his Cæsar and his sister in
the East. His opponent, Magnentius, was not so compliant, though he
wasted no legions in an effort to dethrone him. He sent a soldier to
assassinate Gallus and seduce the troops. As the man resided, however,
in a tavern near Antioch, he became less cautious over his cups, and
boasted to his associates of his mission. The old woman who kept the
tavern seemed too far removed from politics to be taken into account,
but she promptly denounced her guest at the palace, and he was put to
death. Then Magnentius fell, and committed suicide, and Constantius
turned to consider the scandalous conduct of his viceroy and his sister.
Constantius proceeded, as he usually did whenever it was possible,
by craft instead of force. The Prefect of the East had been slain by
the people of Antioch, with the guilty connivance of Gallus, and a
new Prefect, named Domitian, was sent to Antioch, together with the
Prefect of the Palace, Montius. Domitian had orders to secure, by the
most tactful and seductive means, that Gallus should visit Italy, and
walk into the pit dug for him. He was, however, a sturdy officer, more
sensible of the just substance than the form of his instructions.
Gallus and Constantina were at once insulted because, on the day of
his arrival, he drove insolently past the gate of the palace, and
went straight to his villa. They then condescended to invite him to
the palace. In the presence of the hated rulers he laid aside all
pretence of diplomacy, and roughly ordered the Cæsar to proceed at once
to Italy, or incur the just resentment of the Emperor. Gallus, stung
by his insolence, at once gave the Prefect into the custody of the
soldiers. Montius, who was present, and who also had lost all feeling
for diplomacy in the passionate encounter, remonstrated with Gallus,
adding the taunt that a man who had no power to dismiss one of his
magistrates had no right to imprison a Prefect of the East. We are
assured by Philostorgius that Constantina flew at the official, dragged
him from the tribunal, and pushed him into the hands of the guard.
We may prefer the more sober version of Ammianus. Gallus impetuously
called upon the troops and the people of Antioch to defend their ruler,
and they responded with surprising alacrity. The distinguished officers
of Constantius were bound hand and foot, dragged through the streets
until the last spark of life was extinct, and then flung into the river.
Still Constantius hesitated to enter upon a civil war with the East,
and the unscrupulous cunning which dictated his policy discovered an
alternative procedure. First, the commander of the cavalry in the East
was summoned to Milan, that the danger of a rising might be lessened.
Then, a series of letters, couched in the most friendly and mendacious
terms, were sent to the Cæsar. Constantius was eager to see his beloved
sister once more, and to confer with his Cæsar. For some time they
resisted the invitation, but at length Constantina, less apprehensive
of personal injury, set out for Italy. She died on the journey, at
Cœnum in Bithynia, of fever, and her remains were buried at Rome. She
was still in her early thirties at the time of her death. The single
deed that is recorded in praise of her is that she and Gallus planted
a Christian church in the dissolute grove of Daphne, and drew the
austerity of the new faith upon that region of sensuous superstition
and sensual license. Her share in that act of piety may be put in the
scale against her avarice, cruelty, selfishness, and unbridled temper.
The fate of her husband may be briefly recorded. Lured at length by the
deceitful professions of Constantius, he set out for Milan with his
princely retinue. As soon as he reached Europe, the retinue was brushed
aside, and he discovered himself a captive. When the little party
arrived in Pannonia, he was stripped of the purple, and conducted to
the remote prison at Pola, where Crispus had been executed. There he
was “tried” by a eunuch of Constantius’s court, and within a few days
a breathless courtier--he had ridden several horses to death--rushed
into the presence of Constantius with the shoes of the slain Cæsar.
The Empire was reunited under Constantius, at a cost of the deaths
of twenty princes and princesses of his house and their dependents,
and fifty thousand soldiers; and the eunuchs and courtiers filled the
palace at Milan with the incense they offered to the young conqueror.
Constantius had, meantime, married again, and a more worthy and
commanding Empress engages our attention. Toward the close of his
struggle with Magnentius, in the year 352 or the beginning of 353,
the Emperor married a Macedonian lady, Aurelia Eusebia, of remarkable
beauty, no little ability, and dignified personality. Her father and
brothers had had consular rank in their province; her mother had been
distinguished for the propriety of her conduct and the careful rearing
of her children after the death of her husband. The language in which
the Emperor Julian describes her is enhanced by gratitude, and enjoys
the license of a panegyric; some would say that it is warmed by a more
tender sentiment. But Ammianus, who also knew her, pronounces that the
beauty of her character was not less splendid than that of her form,
and, beyond a peevish complaint of a later writer that she did not
confine herself to the proper and restricted sphere of a woman, she
maintains her high repute among the conflicting writers of the time.
The one grave imputation, which Ammianus seems to find quite consistent
with his superlative praise of her, we will consider later.
We find Eusebia established in the court at Milan at the time when the
heads of the last of Constantius’s rivals are falling. When Gallus has
disappeared, he proudly takes the title of “Lord of the World,” and
endeavours to live up to it, amid his company of eunuchs and fawning
attendants. In the hands of those astute and concordant schemers the
weak and vain monarch was easily persuaded to arrive at decisions
which he attributed to his own judgment, and it is, perhaps, the most
indulgent plea that we can make for him that he was governed by a power
so subtle and insinuating that he never perceived it. The high merit
of a scrupulous chastity is claimed for him; but the monastic writer
Zonaras somewhat detracts from this by affirming that his coldness
deprived him of a dynasty and forced his beautiful and accomplished
wife into a fatal decline. His piety, at least, might be praised; but
it rested on a basis of Arian creed and is exposed to the scorn of the
orthodox, who called him Antichrist.
We may concur in the strictures of Zonaras so far as to admit that
Eusebia cannot have been happy in his court. The eunuch Eusebius, who
had tried and executed Gallus, was the most powerful man in the Empire.
Ammianus observes, with heavy irony, that Constantius was believed to
be not without influence with his emasculated chamberlain. A hierarchy
of lesser, but hardly less corrupt, officials led up to this favoured
minister, and Ammianus, from personal acquaintance with the court,
assures us that their rapacity and unscrupulousness grew with the power
of Constantius. A Persian officer, Mercurius, had the nickname of “The
Count of Dreams,” from the skill with which he could make the most
innocent fancies of the night bear a treasonable complexion, and bring
destruction and spoliation on the dreamer. Paulus, who had risen from
the lowly position of table-steward, was called “The Chain,” because
of the art with which he could involve a man in a charge of plotting.
Torture and confiscation became common experiences once more, and men
began to shrink from even the most innocent conversation.
This unpleasant tenor of the Imperial life at Milan was relieved by
the great controversy of the Arians and Athanasians, which was brought
to Italy for decision. How Constantius and his officers induced the
Latin bishops to condemn Athanasius, in 355, by “stroking their bellies
instead of laying the rod on their backs,” to use the vigorous phrase
of St. Hilary, does not concern us, but it is interesting to see how
Eusebia came in contact with the prelates. When the Roman bishop,
Liberius, bravely--for a time--incurred exile rather than condemn
Athanasius, Eusebia sent him a sum of money. He returned it with the
suggestion that her husband might find it useful for his troops or his
Arian bishops. A new power, besides that of eunuchs, was rising. Suidas
preserves a story that may be given here, though it may or may not
refer to this Council. As the bishops, he says, came to the town where
the court was, for the purpose of holding a Council, they called to
salute the Empress. Leontius, Bishop of Tripoli, refused to visit her,
and she sent word that, if he would call, she would give him the funds
to build a large church. The saintly prelate replied that he would
condescend to visit her if he were assured that she would receive him
with fitting respect--if, he explained, she would rise from her throne
at his entrance, bend for his benediction, and remain standing, while
he sat, until he permitted her to resume her seat.
In the same year (355), however, a more pleasant diversion alleviated
the weariness of Eusebia, and another Empress is introduced to our
notice. We have already said that the unhappy Gallus had for companion
in his Cappadocian jail a young half-brother of the name of Julian.
Imbibing his early culture at the alternate hands of Bishop Eusebius
and the philosophical eunuch Mardonius, Julian had come to prefer the
Greek culture of the latter to the theological lore of the prelate. He
had come out untainted from the lonely fortress at Macellum, and had
passed to Constantinople and then to Nicomedia. There the distinguished
pagan Libanius attracted his allegiance, and from the three years in
which he studied at Nicomedia his mind was wholly given to the older
culture, however much he might be compelled to dissemble his aversion
for the new religion. After the execution of Gallus he was brought
to Milan. With growing apprehension he awaited the decision of “the
eunuch, chamberlain, and cook” who, he says, directed the bloody
counsels of Constantius. But he found an unexpected and powerful friend
in the Empress.
It seems clear that Eusebia first espoused his cause in a pure feeling
of humanity. The officials had impeached the innocent youth of
twenty-three or twenty-four, chiefly on the ground of having visited
Gallus, and his life was gravely threatened. Eusebia threw all her
influence in the scale against the malignant officials, and, though
they prevented Constantius from hearing him, she saved his life. He was
housed in the suburbs of Milan, and was taken one day to see Eusebia.
“I seemed to see, as in a temple, the image of the goddess of wisdom,”
he afterwards wrote in his “Letter to the Athenians.” The splendid
figure of the beautiful Empress can easily be imagined to have made a
remarkable impression on the bookish youth. Eusebia was differently,
but favourably, impressed. Julian was a well-made youth, of moderate
stature and broad shoulders. He had the soft curly hair of his brother,
a straight nose, large mouth, and brilliant eyes. The humane feeling of
the Empress assumed a more tender and personal complexion, and she set
to work to make Julian’s fortune.
He was sent for a time to Como, and, as her influence prevailed,
recalled to Milan, and permitted to reply to his accusers before the
Emperor. He was then permitted to retire to his mother’s small estate
in Bithynia, but Eusebia induced Constantius to impose on him the
pleasant sentence of an exile to Athens. From the beloved schools of
Athens he was, after a few months, recalled to Milan, to hear the
astounding news that he was to receive the purple robe of Cæsar and
the hand of the Emperor’s sister Helena. He shrank in tears from the
political world that opened to him, but Eusebia tactfully overcame his
opposition and guided his conduct. Her eunuchs ran continually between
the palace and his lodging. The beard and cloak of the philosopher
were laid aside, and Julian blushed to find himself accoutred in the
splendid trappings of a commander. The jeers and intrigues of the
court were at length silenced, and, on November 6th, 355, he stood on
a lofty platform before the troops while Constantius invested him with
the purple and exhorted him to sustain the honour of Rome. The marriage
with Helena followed, and in December Julian and his bride, with a
valuable collection of books as the gift of Eusebia, set out for Gaul.
Julian never saw Eusebia again, and cannot have had the least
correspondence with her. Even in Milan he had, on reflection, torn
up a letter in which he modestly wished his patroness the reward
of a succession of children. On his side there was nothing but a
pure feeling of gratitude and reverence. She was, says Zosimus, “a
woman of erudition and prudence above her sex”; a shining example
of spiritual and bodily beauty, according to Ammianus. She had most
probably saved his life, and most certainly made his fortune. But it
is believed by many writers that Eusebia’s feeling for Julian was
of a less ethereal nature. Gaetano Negri, whose life of Julian is
one of the most distinguished biographies of a Roman Emperor, justly
repudiates the suggestion of improper feeling on her part, and it
is a superfluous inference. But one may, without casting the least
reflection on her virtue, hesitate to think that the only link between
them was a sympathy of culture. Such sympathy we may well assume
between a cultivated Greek lady and an ardent Hellenist, but so cold
and spiritual a relation may very naturally and pardonably have been
strengthened by a warmer feeling. Julian had no sensuous attractiveness
for a beautiful woman. But his manly person and character, his vast
superiority to the crowd of ignoble parasites she daily encountered,
and to her weak and mediocre husband, must have excited an admiration
less purely intellectual than an appreciation of his learning.
The person of Flavia Julia Helena remains faint and elusive in the
ample chronicle of the time. She was much older than Julian, who was
in his twenty-fifth year, while Helena cannot have been less than
thirty.[27] She had not been previously married, Ammianus says, and the
long maidenhood would not tend to make her attractive. The marriage
was arranged by Eusebia in the political interest of Julian, and it
probably retained the chill that a _mariage de convenance_, with such
disparity of age, would naturally bear. In Julian’s abundant, and
largely autobiographical, writings she is barely mentioned. It was
the marriage of an old maid--for the Roman world--with an austere, if
conscientious, philosopher. The gradual discovery of Julian’s secret
loyalty to the old gods would not make their relations more cordial.
We may, therefore, regret that the single line of inquiry which we
pursue will compel us to leave almost unnoticed the brilliant episode
of the reign of Julian. The more liberal taste of our time has removed
the violent and conflicting colours which the partisan writers of
the fourth century laid upon the portrait of Julian. To Gregory of
Nazianzum he was a faint impersonation of Antichrist; to the pagan
writers a modest incorporation of Apollo. In modern history he is
a most conscientious thinker, a humane and unselfish ruler, a very
capable commander, a conceited and unattractive personality. His
character, in spite of the shade that clings to it as a trace of the
enforced dissimulation of his early years, is great: his ability and
achievements are just entitled to be called brilliant.
Helena and Eusebia appear little in the years that follow, and we
must narrate the necessary events very briefly. The frame of mind in
which Constantius sent Julian to Gaul as Cæsar is not at all clear.
The frontier was obliterated; the barbarians overrunning the country
in formidable strength; the military force inadequate, except with
fine control. Some writers are disposed to think that Constantius was
sending his cousin to death. At all events, the faith of Eusebia, that
her young and shrinking scholar would surmount these difficulties, was
great; and it was rewarded. Julian at once discovered a bravery that
none had suspected. He cut his way through a region occupied by the
barbarians, surveyed the devastated frontier, and passed the first year
of his inexperience with only one small disaster. The difficulty of his
task seemed greater when, in the winter, he was besieged in Sens, and
the commander of the troops in the neighbourhood refused to go to his
relief. In the trouble that followed Eusebia obtained for him the full
command of the troops, which had been withheld from him, and from that
moment he entered on a career of victory.
It is probable that Helena did not share his peril in this winter
(356–7). We find her at Rome in April, with Eusebia and Constantius,
and a curious story of their relations is put before us. Constantius in
that month bestowed his first and only visit upon the ancient capital
of the Empire. Sitting in a chariot that glittered with gold and gems,
preceded by officers whose spears bore silken dragons, so fashioned as
to hiss in the breeze, on their golden and bejewelled tips, followed by
his legions in battle-array, their breastplates and shields gleaming
in the sun, the Emperor passed with affected indifference between the
dense lines of spectators and the great monuments of Rome; though both
the vast crowds and the ancient structures, shining with a beauty that
his decaying Empire could no longer produce, wrung from him in private
an expression of astonishment. Eusebia had invited Helena to join them
in this visit to Rome.
At a later point in his narrative Ammianus makes a reference to this
visit that has perplexed every thoughtful reader. When he comes to
record the death of Helena, he says that it was due to a poisonous
drug administered to her by Eusebia, during the visit to Rome, to
prevent her from having children, and that in the previous year, when
she was pregnant, Eusebia sent a midwife to destroy the child under
pretence of attending her. It does not seem to occur to Gibbon and
other historians, who adopt this story, that it suggests in Eusebia a
character in complete contradiction to that ascribed to her by Ammianus
himself and every other Roman writer. A jealousy of Helena, whether on
account of her own childlessness or on account of Julian, that could
force her to such a malignant course, is utterly inconsistent with the
description we have quoted of her. The story is peremptorily rejected
by Miss Gardner and Signor Negri, and its discord with all that we know
of Eusebia is noticed by most writers.
One is tempted to inquire if it may not be an interpolation, but the
text of Ammianus lends no support whatever to the idea. We can only
suppose that Ammianus incorporated a piece of idle gossip, and was
inattentive to its inconsistency with his high moral praise of Eusebia.
Many legends, we shall see, sprang up after the death of Helena.
Some of them assail Julian, and are easily traced to their source.
It is possible that the courtiers who opposed Eusebia, and doubtless
misrepresented her zeal for Julian, started the rumour, and Ammianus
heard it in Italy years afterwards. It is a mere feather in the scale
against the authorities for the high character of the Empress.
From Rome Constantius was summoned to repel fresh invasions in the
East, and Helena returned to Gaul. She remains unnoticed until the
spring of the year 360, and we will not follow Julian through the
brilliant campaigns in which he reduced the most powerful tribes of the
barbarians, and restored peace and prosperity to his stricken province.
But while Julian succeeded in the West, the campaign of the troops of
Constantius in the East won for the Emperor few laurels, and entailed
grave disasters. The intriguers now doubled their charges against
Julian, and plausibly suggested that he would be prompted to claim a
higher title than that of Cæsar. It was decided to reduce his power by
removing a number of his finest legions to the East.
Julian was in winter quarters at Paris--as Lutetia was beginning to be
called--when the grave summons reached him. The island on the Seine,
which now bears the Cathedral, had from early times offered a secure
settlement, and, as the province became more settled, the adjoining
slope, where the Latin Quarter of a later age began, was occupied with
a palace, an amphitheatre, and a few of the customary institutions of
a Roman town. Julian loved the little settlement on the broad silvery
river, surrounded by dense forests, and he was spending the winter
there, attending with equal judgment and humanity to the civil welfare
of his province, when the officers of Constantius arrived. He has
described at length the painful perplexity into which he was thrown.
Not only would the sacrifice of four of his best legions seriously
impair his strength, but they were local troops and had enlisted
only for local service. He decided to obey, and ordered the troops
to prepare for departure. An angry murmur arose from the camps, as
the men reflected on the fate that might befall their families in the
ill-protected country. Julian provided that their wives and children
should accompany them, and they gathered at Paris for the dismissal.
In affecting language the Cæsar conveyed to them his thanks and his
admonitions, entertained their officers at a banquet, and retired to
his palace.
The sincerity of Julian has been made the theme of an acrid discussion
between his violent critics and his resolute admirers. But we may,
without serious reflection on his character, doubt whether he entirely
wished the troops to go. Such an order, from such a source, would
plausibly relieve a Cæsar from obedience. Only excessive virtue or
uncertain prospect of the issue would counsel a man to obey it. Both
feelings were at work in Julian’s mind, and there is not ground to
accuse his later account of hypocrisy. But we may surmise that, at the
time, his decision was accompanied by unsanctioned hopes and dreams of
a more satisfactory issue. In those days of anxious deliberation his
imagination, however he might curb it, must have depicted for him the
revival of culture, the arrest of superstition, the purification of the
court and Empire, that would follow his elevation to the throne.
He retired to his palace, where, as he incidentally observes somewhere,
Helena lived with him. But shortly after midnight a great tumult arose
from the direction of the camp, and from the windows one could see the
troops, the light of their torches gleaming on their drawn swords,
coming toward the palace. The doors were at once closed, and Julian
refused to show himself, but the cry of “Imperator” easily penetrated
to his ears. On the following morning they broke into the palace, and
forcibly conducted Julian to the camp. He resisted, threatened, and
supplicated, but the troops were consulting their own interest, now
gravely threatened by their revolt, and there was no other course
possible but to consent. He was raised up on a shield, and the legions
broke into a frenzy of delight at their escape from exile. A diadem
only was needed to complete his new dignity, and Helena, who was
present, seems to have offered a pearl necklace of hers. Julian refused
to wear the feminine adornment, and an officer provided a rich golden
collar, studded with gems, for the coronation.
With the struggle that followed, and the dramatic chapter that opened
in the annals of Rome, we have no concern. Both our Empresses die
before a decisive stage is reached. The date of the death of Eusebia is
not known. It was some time between the beginning of 359 and the middle
of 360, as Constantius married again toward the end of 360. She is
said to have died of an inflammation of the womb, brought on by taking
drugs for procuring fertility. That such drugs were familiar at the
time, and that the Empress would naturally try their effect, we readily
admit, but we need not entirely overlook the statement of Zonaras that
the conduct of her husband and the unhappiness of her circumstances
brought the beautiful Greek into a decline. Had she shared the throne
with Julian, and adopted his views, the story of Europe might have run
differently.[28]
That Helena was won to the views of Julian is improbable. She would,
no doubt, discover soon after her marriage that he secretly cherished
the cult of the old gods. From his first month in Gaul he had, with one
assistant, set up a private shrine to them. There are coins that bear
the names of Julian and Helena and the figures of Isis and Serapis, but
they yield no inference. Nor can we learn the attitude of Helena in the
struggle between her husband and her brother. The complete silence of
Julian suggests that she remained moodily silent or hostile. Several
months were spent in negotiation with Constantius. In December Julian
celebrated, at Vienne, the fifth anniversary of his promotion, and
wore the splendid diadem of an Emperor as he presided at the games and
exercises. In the midst of the festivities Helena died. Zonaras, who
also gives a ridiculous rumour that she had been divorced by Julian,
says that she died in childbirth. We are tempted to think that the
painful development of her unprosperous marriage weighed heavily on
her, and her pregnancy had a premature and fatal delivery. Her remains
were conveyed to Rome, and laid by those of her sister Constantina. We
need not notice the charge of one of Constantius’s officers that Julian
had poisoned her, and paid the guilty physician with his mother’s
jewels. Julian, honestly, professes no grief at her death, and he never
married again.
A third Empress makes a brief appearance at the time when Helena passes
away. Passing from his long campaign on the Danube to the stricken
regions of the East, Constantius had, toward the close of 360, married
for the third time, at Antioch. Maxima Faustina, his third Empress, had
little time to make an impression on history, if she were capable of
it. As Constantius at length set out from Antioch, in the autumn of
361, to crush the mutiny in the West, as he affected to regard it, he
contracted a fever, and died before he reached the European frontier.
Faustina was left with the unborn wife of the future Emperor Gratian,
and will come to our notice again. The Roman Empire was once more
united under a strong, upright, and accomplished ruler. But Julian was
now wedded to his ideals, and, as no woman shared his ascetic life and
arduous labours, we must pass over the reforms, the campaigns, and the
religious struggles of the next two years.
CHAPTER XIX
JUSTINA
The splendour of Julian’s reign was soon overcast. In the summer of
363, as he was skilfully extricating his troops from a dangerous
position in Persia, he was pierced with a javelin, and he expired,
with dignity and serenity, amongst his saddened supporters. Amid the
noisy intrigue for the succession that followed, the name of Jovian, a
popular and handsome officer of no distinction, obtained the loudest
support, and the mantle of the brilliant young Emperor was conferred
on him. How he secured the retreat of his troops by humiliating
concessions to the Persians, and the Roman soldiers and Roman settlers
sadly evacuated the provinces on which the blood of their fathers had
been freely spent, and the emblem of the cross was borne again at the
head of the legions, need not be told here. Not only is the wife of
Jovian, Charito, no more than a name to us, but Jovian himself died
before he reached the luxury of the capital. His brief enjoyment of
power had been adorned by neither courage nor temperance. Charito sank
back into obscurity, with her infant son, and was years afterwards laid
by the side of her husband in the Church of the Apostles at Byzantium.
The next reign will introduce us to the stronger and more prominent
personality of the Empress Justina and other Empresses of some
interest. The hum of intrigue had arisen again in the camp, and the
struggle of Christian and pagan was resumed. The choice of the army
at length fell once more on an officer whose chief distinction was
that he had a large and handsome person, and had had an energetic
father. Valentinian had been an officer in Julian’s guards, and had one
day, as he attended the Emperor at sacrifice, cuffed the priest for
dropping some of the lustral water on his coat. Julian banished him
for this violent desecration of his cult, but, though the more lively
writers of the time promptly dispatch him to remote and contradictory
regions, even Tillemont doubts if the sentence was carried out. It is
probable that Julian had merely dismissed him from the body-guard, as
we find him in the army at the time of Julian’s death. With two other
officers he was sent by Jovian to secure the allegiance of the troops
in the West. One legion, devoted to the memory of Julian, rebelled,
and Valentinian had to fly for his life. He returned to the East, and
resumed his post in the army, as it trailed some miles in the rear of
the retreating Emperor. And in the middle of February (364) he was
amazed to learn that Jovian had died, after a too liberal supper, and
he himself was called to the throne. He was compelled by the troops
to share the power with his brother Valens, and, leaving the shorn
Eastern provinces under the care of Valens, he went on to Milan to take
possession of the Western throne.
Valeria Severa,[29] the first wife of Valentinian, is one of those
shadowy Empresses whose form can hardly be discerned in the records of
the time. She had borne him a son, the future Emperor Gratian, five
years before, but she does not seem to have secured his affection, and
we shall find her retiring in disgrace as soon as the beautiful Justina
appears at court. Albia Dominica, the wife of Valens, is not more
interesting, but an Empress whom we have dismissed in a former chapter
at once reappears at Constantinople in opposition to her.
Before they separated Valens and Valentinian had fallen ill together,
and, under the pretence that Julian’s friends had attempted to poison
them, they turned with some vindictiveness upon the pagan officials.
The aged and respected Sallust firmly controlled the inquiry, and
no blood was shed; but large numbers of Julian’s officials were
displaced--in many cases quite rightly, as Julian’s zeal for paganism
had had the same evil effect in encouraging hypocrisy as the zeal of
other Emperors for Christianity--and driven into sullen discontent.
Further, Dominica’s father, Petronius, a deformed and repulsive person,
had risen to power with his daughter, and was grinding the faces of the
citizens of the East with the most extortionate demands. A spark soon
fell on this inflammable world. Procopius, a relative of Julian’s, had
published a very hazy claim to the Empire after Julian’s death. He had
hastily withdrawn and disowned it, but Valens sent men to apprehend
him. Ingeniously escaping the soldiers, he fled to Constantinople,
and seems there to have fallen into the hands of abler intriguers.
Two legions were bought for him, and they made him Emperor. There
was no purple mantle to be obtained, so they clothed him in a stagy
tunic bespangled with gold, put purple shoes on his feet and a piece
of purple cloth in his hand, and conducted him, amid the amazed and
derisive spectators, to the Senate and the Palace.
His force grew so quickly that the weak and nervous Emperor of the East
was disposed to yield him the throne, but his older officers urged him
to resist. In the short struggle that followed we meet again the third
wife, and widow, of Constantius. Faustina had been _enceinte_ at the
death of her husband, and she was living at Constantinople, with her
four-year-old daughter, when Procopius made his romantic attempt on the
throne. With some shrewdness he withdrew her from her retirement, and
associated her with him in his claim. The legitimate dynasty seemed to
be wresting the throne from usurpers when the widow and daughter of
the son of Constantine appeared at the head of the troops. Even when
they marched out to meet the forces of Valens, Faustina, in a litter,
accompanied them. But the new hope of Faustina died away as quickly
as it had been born. The soldiers were persuaded to return to their
allegiance, and the power of Procopius swiftly melted away. Faustina
sank again into obscurity, and the adventurous career of Constantia was
postponed for some years.
Dominica returned to her position in the enervated and luxurious court,
and the rest of her life offers little interest. The ecclesiastical
historians describe her as egging her husband to persecute the
Trinitarians, but we must read the charge with discretion. There is
little positive trace of persecution. One day eighty Trinitarian
priests came to plead their cause at the court, and Valens is said
to have ordered them back to their ship. At some distance from port
the vessel was found to be aflame, and the priests were burnt to
death. The orthodox writers declare that the vessel was purposely
fired, at the command of Valens, but it is impossible to adjust the
conflicting statements of the rival schools of theology. Valens was
an ardent Arian, but he upheld the principle of religious toleration,
and confined theologians to the use of theological weapons. The
only occasion on which he is known to have ordered or countenanced
violent persecution was in the suppression of magic. In some obscure
chamber of the capital a group of men resorted to this dark means of
discovering who would be the successor of Valens. Some say that a ring
dangling from a mystic tripod spelt out the name on painted letters;
some that grains of corn were placed on letters of the alphabet,
and, when a cock was admitted to peck them, the order of the letters
which it first attacked was noticed. In either case, the result was
to give the letters Th E O D. It would be a remarkable forecast,
if the story did not belong to a generation after the accession of
Theodosius. However, the attempt became known, and a searching inquiry
and savage persecution followed. The despicable trade of the informer
was encouraged, whole libraries of valuable books were destroyed,
and numbers of innocent philosophers and matrons were included in the
bloody lists of the condemned.
The name of Dominica occurs only in one authentic connexion during the
reign of Valens. The Emperor passed the winter of 372–3 at Cæsarea
in Cappadocia, where he encountered the stern and uncompromising
champion of orthodoxy, St. Basil. Strong no less in his personal
haughtiness--St. Jerome calls it pride--than in his glowing zeal for
his Church, Basil emphatically refused to obey him, and was threatened
with banishment. At once Dominica and her boy fell ill. Besides two
daughters, she had had a son in 366, and this boy fell into a dangerous
illness. It is said that Dominica learned in a dream that the illness
was a divine punishment, but it is not impossible that her waking
intelligence could arrive at that conclusion. Basil was summoned to the
palace once more. Theodoret would have it that the bishop courteously
breathed on the boy, and declared that he would recover if he received
Trinitarian baptism. The earlier ecclesiastical writers, however,
ascribe to him a firmer attitude. He asked Valens if the boy would
receive orthodox baptism, and was told that he would not. “Let him meet
whatever fate God wills then,” said the bishop, quitting the palace.
The boy was baptized by the Arians, and died during the following
night. A power even greater than that of eunuchs, and more imperious
than that of Emperors, was rapidly growing. When, some days later, one
of the favourites of Valens, who had risen from the kitchen, attempted
to intervene in a discussion between the bishop and the Emperor, Basil
curtly told him to confine himself to sauces and not interfere in
Church matters.
Five or six years later Valens perished in the war with the Goths,
and Dominica passed to the fitting obscurity of private life. The
one indication of spirit that is recorded of her is that, when the
victorious Goths pressed on to Constantinople and invested it, she paid
the citizens out of the public treasury to arm themselves against the
barbarians. We turn from her vague and retiring personality to the
more interesting figure of Justina, who had some years before begun to
share the throne of Valentinian.
Valentinian was as fierce and choleric as his brother was timid. A
tall and powerful man, with stern blue eyes, a brilliant complexion,
and light hair, he enlisted and encouraged his native cruelty in the
service of what he regarded as the interest of the State. The pagans
he refused to persecute, and he did much to promote the higher culture
of Rome, which was so closely connected with the pagan beliefs. But,
like his brother, he fell with truculence upon all who could be brought
under a comprehensive charge of magic and divination, and the blood
of Italy flowed very freely. His hard, covetous, and brutal officers
enriched themselves in the work of torture, spoliation, and execution,
and--though the statement recalls rather the savagery of Nero or
Domitian--we are assured by the contemporary Ammianus that he kept
two monstrous bears in cages near his chamber, and fed them on human
victims. The slightest offence might incur sentence of death. “You
had better change his head,” he is said to have ordered, in brutal
playfulness, when some official desired to change to another province.
It is, perhaps, a circumstance of credit to Severa that she failed
to retain the affection of Valentinian, though a less flattering
reason is assigned by some of the authorities. The truth is that,
since Valentinian is described as most chaste and most Christian,
the accession of Justina to his palace has caused the ecclesiastical
historians no little perplexity. The Church was peremptorily opposed
to divorce, and regarded as adultery a second marriage contracted
while the first wife lived. Baronius conveniently removes Severa by
death, but Ammianus informs us that Severa was living long afterwards
at the court of her son,[30] and the Alexandrian Chronicle expressly
says that Gratian recalled his mother to court. Tillemont acknowledges
this, and can only blush for the guilty connivance of the clergy of the
period.
If we could believe the ecclesiastical historian Socrates, Valentinian
avoided the sin of divorce and adultery by promulgating a decree
to the effect that it was lawful to have two wives, and promptly
marrying Justina in addition to Severa. Of such a law, however, we
have no trace, and most writers follow the alternative theory of the
authorities.
Aviana Justina was the widow of the usurper Magnentius, who had so
dramatically stolen the throne of the worthless Constans, and had
been crushed by Constantius in the year 353. She was a woman of great
beauty, the daughter of a high provincial official, a spirited and
ambitious young woman. She would be in her later twenties, at least,
in 368, when she entered the suite of Severa in some capacity. She
was soon associated so intimately with the Empress that they bathed
together, and Severa made the fatal mistake of describing what Socrates
curiously calls her “virginal beauty” to the sensual Valentinian.
Before long it was announced that Severa was divorced, and Justina
occupied her bed. A late authority throws a thin mantle over the action
of Valentinian. Severa, he says, used her Imperial position to compel
a lady of Milan to sell her an estate at a most inadequate price, and
Valentinian was unable to endure her avarice. The vague description we
have of Justina’s dazzling beauty will, perhaps, suffice.
This remarkable conduct on the part of Valentinian and Justina is
put in the year 368.[31] The succeeding years of war and religious
controversy throw no light on the character of Justina, and we need
not describe them. Valentinian died in 375. Some delegates of the
barbarians had come, with deep humility, to implore his clemency for
their invasion of his dominions, and Valentinian burst into one of
his appalling storms of rage. So violent was his fury in addressing
them that he burst a blood-vessel, and left the Western Empire to his
son Gratian. Gratian had married in the previous year. His Empress
was the daughter of Faustina, who had been borne in her mother’s arms
at the head of the troops of Procopius. In crossing the provinces to
meet Gratian, Constantia had had a singular adventure. While she was
dining at an inn, some twenty-six miles from Sirmium, the tribes broke
across the Danube and occupied the village. There was just time for the
Governor of Illyrium to snatch up the thirteen-year-old princess and
make a dash for Sirmium. She married Gratian in 374, and became Empress
of the West in the following year. But Flavia Maxima Constantia has
left only the faint impress of her early adventures on the chronicles
of the time, and the few years of her Imperial life have no interest
for us. The next mention of her is that she died some time before her
husband, who was assassinated in 383. He had married again, but his
widow, Læta, is a mere name in history. Theodosius gave a comfortable
income to Læta and her mother Pissamena, and they were distinguished
for their charity in the later misfortunes of Rome.
When Valentinian had died in a fit of rage at Bregetio, Justina and
her four-year-old boy, Valentinian the younger, were in the town of
Murocincta, a hundred miles away. Justina hastened to the camp, and
it was presently announced that the army had decided to associate the
boy with Gratian in the rule of the West. Gratian, the most temperate
and promising of the Emperors of the period, published his consent. A
refusal to acknowledge the boy, and an attempt to punish the intrigue
by which Justina retained her power, would have involved a civil war,
and the whole of his forces were now needed to stem the flood of
barbarism that surged against the northern frontier of the Empire. The
last days of Rome were fast approaching. From the remote deserts of
Asia a fierce and numerous people, the Huns, had entered Europe, and
were sweeping the Goths and other Teutonic tribes southward. Gratian
appointed an Emperor of the East, whom we shall meet presently, in the
place of Valens, and spent his strength in heroic efforts to defend the
threatened frontier.
Justina returned with the boy-Emperor to Milan. As long as Gratian
lived, Justina was restricted to the life of the palace, but in 383 the
throne was usurped by Maximus, and Gratian was murdered by one of his
emissaries. Gibbon generously traces the general dissatisfaction out
of which this revolt emerged to a deterioration of the character of
Gratian. This deterioration cannot be questioned, but one particular
outcome of it, the active persecution of the pagans, was probably his
most fatal error. Milan was now dominated by the imperious and zealous
St. Ambrose, and the two young Emperors were expressly under his
control. At the suggestion of Ambrose, Gratian abandoned Valentinian’s
policy of toleration. He rejected the title of Pontifex Maximus,
ordered the removal of the statue of Victory from the Roman Senate, and
confiscated the estates of the temples. He even admitted the abusive
epithet “pagans” (or “villagers”), which the more forward Christians
were beginning to use, in his official decrees.[32] This must have
inflamed the general discontent, and the army of Maximus marched
peacefully over Gaul, and occupied the Empire as far as the Alps. The
Emperor of the East, Theodosius, consented that Britain, Gaul, and
Spain should remain under the rule of Maximus, and Justina continued to
rule the curtailed dominions of her son.
It was now discovered that Justina was an Arian. Whether she had
concealed her beliefs during the life of Valentinian, or had been
recently won to the sect, it is impossible to say; but Ambrose now
found that he had a stubborn opponent of his religious ambition. The
trouble culminated in 385, when scenes were witnessed that effectively
impress on us the change that had come over the Roman Empire. Justina
ordered that one of the Christian churches of the city should be put
at the disposal of the Arian clergy. Ambrose sternly refused, and,
when he was summoned to the palace, and a sentence of banishment
was apprehended, the people flocked to the palace and intimidated
the Empress and her counsellors. A little later, the Gothic (Arian)
soldiers were sent to occupy the church, and orders were given that
it should be prepared for the Empress’s devotions. A renewal of the
riot, and the showering of the vilest epithets upon the person of the
Empress, forced her to retire once more. In the following year, 386,
she passed sentence of exile on the bishop, and her spirit was expended
in a final struggle. For the first time in the history of Rome--a true
index of its profound demoralization--the troops were prevented by
the people from carrying out an Imperial decree. Ambrose was guarded
day and night by thousands of his followers. The chief church and the
episcopal house were fortified as if for a siege, and the troops of
“Jezebel” had to stand inactive before a mob of citizens. On the advice
of Theodosius, Justina refrained from any further attempt. Indeed, her
attention was soon violently withdrawn to a very different danger.
The ambition of Maximus had once more outrun its bounds, and he coveted
the remaining provinces of Valentinian. Justina’s conduct betrays
that her ability was inferior to her spirit. Duped by the treacherous
diplomacy of Maximus, she was suddenly informed that the hostile forces
of Maximus were close to Milan, and she fled hastily to the coast.
At Aquileia she and her son took ship for the East. The soldiers of
Maximus followed them on swift galleys, but they rounded the south of
Greece in safety, and landed at Thessalonica. Her task now was to
induce Theodosius to espouse their cause, and it proved to be one of
nearer proportion to her talent.
Her pressing appeals to Theodosius for aid were parried or unheeded
for some time. If we may believe Theodoret, the only reply which she
received was a painful assurance that the heresy she entertained, and
in which she was educating her son, was a sufficient cause of all the
evils that had come upon them. She was directed to await a visit from
Theodosius at Thessalonica, and the visit was much delayed. Historians
usually depict the Emperor as held in suspense by a painful dilemma.
Not only would it be a serious thing for the Empire, surrounded as it
was with peril, to engage the forces of the East and the West in an
exhausting civil war, but Theodosius would, in such a war, be attacking
an orthodox Catholic in the interest of a fanatical Arian and enemy
of the Church; and Theodosius was a most zealous Trinitarian. The
difficulty must have occurred to him, and it would not be fantastical
to assume that there had been some correspondence between the prelates
of the East and the prelates of the West, to ensure that the point did
not escape him.
The pagan Zosimus has a different theory of the delay of Theodosius.
The character of that Emperor was, he says, a singular union of
contradictions. He could blaze with the fury of a Valentinian, or bend
his head meekly for the blessing of a bishop; he could lead the troops
through a campaign with the most signal dexterity, energy, and success,
and then relax into the most ignoble indolence; he could embrace the
rigour of a soldier’s life without the least effort to soften it, and
then resign himself to the most voluptuous day-dreams in his Imperial
palace. Justina, Zosimus says, was so unfortunate as to need his aid
during one of his periods of luxury and “insane pursuit of pleasure.”
He resented the effort to awaken him from it. His deep indebtedness
to Gratian, however, who had conferred the Empire on him, at length
forced him to cross the Greek sea, and visit Justina at Thessalonica.
From the time of that visit his pulse was quickened, and he began
a vigorous preparation for war with Maximus. Justina had with her at
Thessalonica, not only the insipid boy Valentinian, but a pretty young
daughter, Galla, and Theodosius had fallen in love with her. Justina
promptly perceived, and artfully used, her opportunity, and it was
arranged that the pretty princess should be his reward for restoring
the Western Empire to Valentinian and his mother.
[Illustration: AELIA FLACCILLA
HONORIA
ENLARGED FROM COINS IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM]
Theodosius, who is incomparably the leading ruler of the fourth
century, had come from the same part of Spain as Trajan, to whom some
of the writers of the time compare him--with no little flattery.
His father, Count Theodosius, had been an able commander and a just
administrator, but had been unjustly disgraced and executed owing
to some obscure jealousy. Later writers, thinking of the magical Th
E O D of Antioch, believed that his name led to his undoing. The
younger Theodosius, a cultivated and skilful officer, retired to his
estates in Spain, from which he was drawn by Gratian, and presently
clothed with the purple. He had, in 376 or 377, married a Spanish
lady, Ælia Flaccilla, who is believed, on slender grounds, to have
been the daughter of the consul Antonius. Their son Arcadius, the
future Emperor, was born during the retirement in Spain. A daughter,
Pulcheria, was born in Spain, while Theodosius was on campaign. Then
Flaccilla found herself transferred from the quiet Spanish estate to
the pomp of Constantinople, and the second son, Honorius, was born in
the purple.
Although Flaccilla is canonized in the Greek Church, it does not
appear that she had a marked individuality. She is one of the crowd
of fourth-century Empresses who live in the chronicles only as
generous benefactors of the Church. Theodosius was the first Emperor
to persecute his pagan subjects on the ground of religion, and his
successive decrees quickly changed the religious aspect of the
East. His modern biographers, Ifland and Güldenpenning (“Der Kaiser
Theodosius”), lay much of the blame for these violent measures on
Flaccilla, but they point out that the coercive legislation begins just
after Theodosius came under the influence of Bishop Acholius during
a severe illness, and that his efforts to crush paganism by violence
relaxed with his advance in age and experience. All that we learn of
Flaccilla is that she was generous to the Church and the poor, and that
she occasionally curbed the fiery and vindictive temper of Theodosius.
She seems to have died in the year 385, and the Greek ritual celebrates
her memory on September 14th.
Theodosius was, therefore, a middle-aged widower--his biographers
put his birth in 346--when, in the autumn of 387, Justina presented
her daughter Galla to him. Dr. Ifland admits that the young girl
probably turned the hesitating scale of his judgment. He returned
to Constantinople, and made energetic preparations for war. A two
months’ campaign in the following summer (388) completely destroyed
the forces of Maximus, and the full Empire of the West was restored to
Valentinian. But Justina had little personal profit by the victory.
Zosimus tells us that she “supplied the deficiencies of her son as
well as a woman can” after the return to Milan, while Sozomen declared
that she died before the return. The point is obscure, but the
evidence suggests, on the whole, that she returned to Milan. It was,
however, to a different Milan from that she had quitted. Theodosius
accompanied them, and the strong, earnest character of Ambrose made a
deep impression on him. Valentinian was “converted” to the true creed,
and the policy of persecution was introduced into the Western world.
Justina must have remained a powerless and embittered spectator of
the ascendancy of Ambrose. So great did it become that the coldest
decisions of the Emperor were reversed by him, and his transgressions
were ignominiously punished. The news came to Milan that the monks and
populace of a small town in Persia had burned the synagogue of the
Jews, and that the prefect had ordered them to rebuild the synagogue
and restore its property. Theodosius confirmed the just sentence, but
Ambrose assailed him so strongly, in letter and sermon, that he was
obliged to give complete immunity to the offenders; and the wave of
violence--the burning of temples and synagogues, and the despoiling
and slaying of unbelievers and heretics of all shades--continued
to roll destructively over the East. The more impressive incident
of Theodosius, the greatest ruler of his time, standing in the
humble attitude of a penitent in the church at Milan is well known.
The people of Thessalonica, stung by the heavy taxation which the
extravagant rule of Theodosius imposed on the East, and the quartering
of barbaric troops on them, took some occasion to riot, and slew the
representatives of the Emperor. In a fit of passion Theodosius turned
his troops upon the defenceless people, whom he had treacherously
invited to the Circus, and a horrible and unexampled massacre was
perpetrated. Ambrose nobly insisted that the Emperor must expiate his
crime like the humblest member of his flock. The world was entering
upon a new era.
How much of these proceedings Justina lived to see it is impossible to
determine. She died some time between 388 and 391; the obscurity of her
death is a sufficient proof of her powerlessness in her last years.
Valentinian, whose weakness was hardly compensated by the propriety
of his conduct and his docility to St. Ambrose, was instructed in the
elements of government by the older Emperor, who remained three years
in Italy, to the lasting grief of its pagan citizens. He visited Rome,
where the majority of the leading citizens still clung to an idealized
version of the old cult, and appealed to the Senate to abandon the
dying gods. No answer was made to his appeal, and he resorted to
the growing practice of coercive legislation. In 391 he returned to
Constantinople.
Galla had married Theodosius soon after the destruction of Maximus.
The Chronicle of Marcellinus puts the marriage in 386; Zosimus, more
plausibly, implies that it took place in 387 or 388. From a curious
statement in the Chronicle of Marcellinus it seems that she was sent
to live in the palace at Constantinople while Theodosius remained in
Italy. The statement is that the elder son of the Emperor, Arcadius, a
boy of thirteen years, drove her out of the palace. Commentators are
loath to believe that so young a prince could do this, but it is not in
the least impossible, and the authority is respectable. We shall see
that Arcadius was a peevish and worthless prince, indolently guided by
eunuchs and servants, and capable of very cruel decisions. Theodosius
had departed from the finer Imperial tradition of appointing a grave
and distinguished scholar as the tutor of his sons, and had committed
them to the care of a Roman deacon, Arsenius, who had a repute for
piety. We can hardly regard the authority of a late Greek writer
(Metaphrastes) as weighty enough to commend the statement that Arcadius
set his servants to take the life of Arsenius for whipping him, but the
unhappy events of the next chapter will show that the only result of
this kind of education was to leave the character unformed, and throw
the stress on external observances.
In 391 Theodosius returned to Constantinople, and Galla entered upon
her brief Imperial career. Whether or no we accept the biased picture
which Zosimus offers us of the Eastern court, it is clear that it
sustained a soft and excessive luxury at the cost of the enfeebled
Empire. Large numbers of eunuchs found employment, and, with the genius
of their class, intrigued for favour in the sleeping quarters, and
in the service of the Empress and the Imperial children. The kitchen
employed a regiment of ministers to the heavy and voluptuous table;
the circus and theatre supported vast numbers of mimes, dancers, and
charioteers. Besides this large army of ministers to the Imperial
pleasure, a second army of idle and avaricious place-seekers beset
the palace, and extorted a generous revenue from the offices which
were created for them in the army and the administration. It is even
said that such offices were openly sold in the public places and in
the palace of Constantinople. Strenuous as Theodosius was in the
field, he was not strong enough to sustain the burden of peace, and he
unconsciously prepared the Empire for the avalanche that was soon to be
cast upon it.
But the drowsy indulgence of Theodosius was soon startled once more
by a call to arms from the West. In the spring of 392 Valentinian was
slain, or in despair slew himself, and a Frankish commander had put
his purple robe upon the shoulders of a Roman rhetorician. The young
Emperor had been so overshadowed by the power of his general that he
had attempted to dismiss him, and had then been found dead with a cord
round his neck. Theodosius again hesitated to exchange the softness
of his palace for the rigours of a campaign. Galla “filled the palace
with her lamentations,” but Theodosius sent away the ambassadors of the
usurper with pleasant words and presents, and continued for nearly two
years to resist the appeals of his young Empress. It was not until the
summer of 394 that he led out his legions for the punishment of the
murderer, as Argobastes was believed to be. Galla did not live to see
her brother avenged. She died in childbirth just as the army was about
to start, and Theodosius is said to have mourned for her one day and
then started for Italy.
The issue does not now concern us. We pass on to a fresh generation,
a new and more interesting group of Empresses and princesses. Suffice
it to say that, partly by valour, partly by accident and treachery,
the forces of Argobastes were destroyed, and the empurpled rhetorician
was slain. The younger son of the Emperor, Honorius, was summoned from
the East, and placed upon the throne of the West. Arcadius remained in
feeble charge of the throne of Constantinople. And within a few months
the powerful Emperor sank into the grave, and the Empire entered upon
the unhappy reigns of Arcadius and Honorius.
CHAPTER XX
THE ROMANCE OF EUDOXIA AND EUDOCIA
With the Imperial ladies of the courts of Arcadius and Honorius we
enter upon the final act in the tragedy of the fall of Rome. The sun is
sinking rapidly to the Western horizon; the long shadows trail across
the record of events; the chill of evening contracts the life of the
historic Empire. The only aspect of that tragedy that concerns us is a
consideration of the part that women played in the gradual enfeeblement
of the Roman Empire. While taking full account of the various causes
assigned by historians, it may be said that the fall of Rome was due to
a coincidence. The invasion of Europe by the fierce Huns had pressed
the Germanic tribes against the Roman frontier just at the time when
the Empire was particularly feeble. That it was inwardly outworn and
doomed--that the organization of a State has an appointed term of
decay, like the frame of an individual--may be confidently challenged.
Egypt maintained its vigour for close on 8,000 years; Babylon for
nearly 6,000.
The only question we may touch here is whether the personality of the
later Empresses counted for anything, either for good or evil, in this
enfeeblement of the Empire; and the answer is clear that, with one or
two exceptions, they counted for neither. They had no deep or large
influence on the life of the Empire, even through their husbands. The
Roman ideal of womanhood was changing once more. As in the early days,
they were diverted from interest in public affairs, except in so far
as the cause of the Church called for their interference. We must not
conceive them as powerless witnesses of the gradual dissolution of
the Empire. No one, man or woman, saw that the Empire was dissolving,
or dreamed of its fall, until it lay in ruins under the feet of the
northern tribes. None reflected that, since Constantine had assumed
the purple, thirteen Emperors out of twenty had been either executed
or murdered; that the blood of able officers or servants had generally
been mingled with that of the fallen ruler; and that hundreds of
thousands of soldiers had been wasted in civil war. None reflected
that, while they were distracted with religious quarrels, a formidable
avalanche was gathering on the hills; or that, while the courts
absorbed enormous sums in Oriental display, the fiscal machinery of
the State was running down. In any case, it was no longer the place of
women to notice these things. Their duties were to rear the Imperial
family, wear pretty robes of cloth of gold, and build churches. The age
of Livia, Agrippina, or Plotina, was over.
These reflections will be enforced by the lives of the interesting
Empresses whom we have next to consider. The new Emperors were
unmarried youths at the time when their father died. Arcadius, a
little, dark, unpleasant-looking youth, whose laziness appeared in his
dull, lustre-less eyes, was in his eighteenth year. Honorius was a boy
of eleven, and as, during a reign of twenty-eight years, he never rose
above the character or intelligence of a boy, and his two Empresses
were timid young girls, we must dismiss them in a page; though that
page must contain an event that sent a thrill of excitement through
civilization--the fall of the city of Rome. So little had our Imperial
characters to do with it that a later age amused itself by saying that,
when Honorius was told that “Rome was taken,” he wept for the supposed
loss of his favourite fowl, which bore that name.
The real master of the Western world, over which young Honorius had
nominal sway, was a powerful and gifted commander, Stilicho, of Vandal
extraction. He had married Serena, the beautiful niece of Theodosius,
and he led the armies and governed the Western Empire until his death.
In 398, in his thirteenth year, Honorius was directed to wed Maria, the
elder daughter of Stilicho. It was said that Theodosius had desired the
union. Serena, at all events, desired it, and, although her daughter
was yet immature, the wedding took place at Milan in 398. All that
we have to say of her is that she died some time within the next ten
years--probably, as Tillemont calculates, in the year 404. Her body
was embalmed and buried in a Christian church at Rome, where the poor
crumbling frame, laden with gold, was discovered in 1544.
In the year 408 Honorius married his deceased wife’s sister,
Thermantia. Tillemont very properly laments that he finds no record of
any protest on the part of the Bishop of Rome--who probably celebrated
it--against this irregular marriage, but the modern reader will be more
seriously concerned to hear the argument with which Serena urged it
upon her reluctant husband. Maria, she said, had died a virgin. Before
entrusting her immature child to the bed of Honorius, she had had some
obscure operation performed on her, which would guard her virginity.
Certainly, Maria had had no children. Thermantia was equally unprepared
for marriage, Zosimus says, and the operation was repeated. It was
a superfluous sacrifice to the ambition of Serena, because Stilicho
fell, in a palace intrigue, a few months later, and the little maid was
restored to her mother.
Such was the short and melancholy story of the Empresses Maria and
Æmilia Materna Thermantia, as an inscription calls the younger. Their
monument was terrible. Within a few months the avalanche of the Gothic
army descended from the Alps and devastated Italy; and Serena was, with
the consent of her cousin Placidia, the Emperor’s sister, strangled by
the Senate on the light, and probably false, charge of communicating
with the enemy. Zosimus, at least, says that she was innocent; but
he is not surprised at her fate, as she had one day appropriated a
jewelled ornament from the statue of one of his goddesses. Within two
years Rome was sacked by the Goths, and Placidia was carried off by
them.
We turn to the East, to follow the less tragic, but hardly less
interesting, fortunes of Eudoxia and Eudocia. In the East, as in the
West, Theodosius had left a powerful minister to guide the hands of his
young and unpromising son. But the eastern minister, Rufinus, had not
the manly qualities of Stilicho. He had entered the palace by craft,
not by military exploits, and had easily dissembled his vices from the
too indulgent eye of Theodosius. When that Emperor died, he cast aside
the cloak, and pursued his native avarice, and exercised his cruelty,
without restraint. By fines, taxes, despoilments, and the unscrupulous
ruin of his opponents, the hated Gaul amassed wealth and power, and
ruled like an autocrat. He had a daughter of marriageable age, and
Arcadius seemed to listen in compliant mood when he proposed that she
should become his Empress. The task of destroying an opponent took him
for a time to Antioch, and he returned to hear that the Emperor was
preparing for marriage. He awaited the appointed day with eagerness. At
length the hymeneal procession set out from the palace, and the people
gathered to witness its passage to the house of Rufinus, a superb villa
in one of the suburbs. To the intense surprise of all, it stopped at
a house in the city, and the blushing and beautiful daughter of a
Frankish chief was announced to be the choice of the Emperor.
While Rufinus was pursuing his vengeance at Antioch, the eunuchs of the
palace had conspired to defeat his plan and undermine his power. The
chief of them was Eutropius, a slave by birth, castrated immediately
after birth that he might bring a bigger price, and rising in time from
the occupation of hair-dresser to the daughter of General Arintheus to
the position of high chamberlain at the palace. Such were the rulers
of Emperors in the fourth century. Eutropius knew that Arcadius had no
attraction to the daughter of Rufinus, and chafed under the authority
of her burly father. He cast about for a prettier companion, and soon
had the affection of Arcadius safely engaged. The temporary absence
of Rufinus gave them an opportunity, and Constantinople was enlivened
by the rare spectacle of an Imperial marriage, and the still rarer
spectacle of the defeat of Rufinus.
Eudoxia--such is the Greek name under which the new Empress is
presented to us--was the beautiful daughter of Bauto, chief of
the Franks. Historians, politely accepting the assurance of some
of the writers of the time, say that she was being “educated” at
Constantinople, her father having died in the service of the Eastern
army. It is, perhaps, a pity to disturb the plausible phrase, but the
duty of a biographer is stern. The house in the city from which she
was taken to wed the Emperor was occupied by two young men of wealth.
They were the sons of the commander Promotus, who had been one of the
first victims of Rufinus. One of these young men, Zosimus says, “had
a beautiful maid” in the house. We will not inquire too closely. The
stern ideals of the Germanic tribes had relaxed as they came into
closer contact with civilization, and it became common for them to lend
or sell their daughters to the Romans. We remember the adventure of
Pipera a century before. Eutropius submitted an adequate picture of the
girl to Arcadius, whose pulse was quickened, and the son of Promotus
easily parted with his tender pupil when he learned that it was for the
purpose of discomfiting the destroyer of his father.
Eudoxia had no less spirit than beauty of person, and she would watch
with interest the duel between the wily eunuch and the powerful Gaul.
Arcadius, “whose feeble and stupid goodness,” says Tillemont candidly,
“brought frightful evils on Church and State,” was a pawn in the game.
But the big, wealthy, powerful Gaul now found a sterner opponent in
Stilicho, of the Western Empire, and within a year his head was
separated from his body, and his wife and daughter were permitted to
remain alive at Jerusalem. Eutropius and Eudoxia now “led Arcadius like
a dumb beast,” in the words of Zosimus, and sucked the resources of the
Empire. The people of Constantinople gained nothing by the revolution.
They had carried in triumph the grisly, extortionate hand of Rufinus
through the streets of the city, but the supple hand of the eunuch
proved as formidable. He surrounded himself with spies and informers,
filled the prisons with men whose property he desired for himself or
his friends, scattered statues of himself through the city, and assumed
every title of honour short of that of Augustus. He would press his
deformed person and painted face into the armour of a man, to review
the troops, and would harangue the Senate with a feeble imitation of
the authority of a statesman. While his exactions and the luxury of the
court enfeebled the Empire of the East, he alienated the power of the
West, and had Stilicho branded as a public enemy. And the Goths and
Huns crept nearer.
Arcadius, lazily riding in his gold-plated chariot, studded with large
gems, in robes of silk embroidered with golden dragons, or playing the
monarch on a throne of solid gold, with a crowd of adoring eunuchs
before him, had no more appreciation than a peasant of a Cappadocian
village of the true situation of the Empire. Eudoxia, beautiful,
haughty, spoiled, revelling in the luxury of the palace, generous to
the Church and the poor, floated soothingly with the stream. She lived
the languid life of an Oriental princess, within the confines of the
palace, and was rarely seen even by the greater part of the palace
servants. The only occasion when the populace saw her quit the marble
city, which the palace of Constantine had become, was when, in 398, she
walked humbly, with downcast eyes, but clothed in purple silk, with a
glittering diadem on her head, by the side of St. Chrysostom, as he
transferred certain relics of the saints. Chrysostom would find her in
a different temper in a few years.
The arrogance of Eutropius at last passed all bounds, and he ventured
in the year 400 to threaten to expel Eudoxia from the palace. Whether
she knew it or no, the time was ripe for the destruction of the
repulsive minister. The people groaned under his terrible exactions,
his infamous legislation, and his bloody tyranny; the leaders of the
troops were prepared to sacrifice him. Eudoxia took her baby girls,
Pulcheria and Arcadia, in her arms, and fled in tears to the Emperor.
Arcadius, “becoming an Emperor for a moment,” says Philostorgius,
signed the sentence of his favourite, and the eunuch soon found people
and soldiers pressing, like wolves, for his destruction. He took refuge
in a church, where Chrysostom protected him from the fiery crowd, but
quitted it after a time, apparently on the oath of either Eudoxia or
Arcadius that his life would be spared. He was exiled, recalled, tried,
and--oath or no oath--put to death by the public executioner.
Eudoxia’s title of _nobilissima_ (“most noble”) had been elevated to
that of _Augusta_ at the beginning of the year 400, and her second
daughter was born in April of the same year.[33] She was now complete
mistress of Arcadius and the Empire, and she published her dignity
with such extravagance that the Western court sent an angry protest
that, in causing her statues to be borne through the provinces, she had
exceeded the privileges of her sex. In the following year she completed
her ascendancy by giving birth to a boy, Theodosius II, and seemed to
have a prospect of a long and luxurious, if useless, reign. But she
had meantime quarrelled with Chrysostom, and she was to pass through a
period of humiliation to a premature grave.
In 398 Eutropius had transferred the austere and eloquent Chrysostom
from his presbytery in Antioch to the archiepiscopal palace at
Constantinople. The stern monk--as John of the Golden Mouth always
remained at heart--was horrified from the first at the vice and luxury
of the Christians of the Imperial city, and even of their clergy, but
he allowed two years to elapse before he began his fiery campaign
against the sins of the laity.[34] He applied himself first to the
reform of the priests and the control of the monks. With that we have
no concern.[35] It is enough to say that the clergy bitterly resented
his reforms, and were ready to co-operate with Eudoxia in an effort to
get rid of him. In 400 he began to attack the easy ways of the laity
more sternly, and it is probable that some feeling was created between
him and the Empress over the massacre of the Gothic Arian soldiers,
which took place in that year. Their commander Gainas had rebelled, and
Arcadius had virtually surrendered to him. He marched his troops to the
city, obtained the use of a church for them, and allowed them to roam
about, to the irritation of the people; until at last the people rose
and slew seven thousand of the heretics.
It seems that Eudoxia was alienated from Chrysostom, who had resented
the grant of a church, from that time. When, in the following year,
St. Porphyry of Gaza came to the capital to obtain an Imperial order
to destroy the pagan temples of his town, Chrysostom declined to
introduce him at court, and referred him to the eunuch Amantius. The
sequel is not without interest in a study of the Empress. The holy man
was presented to Eudoxia, and promised that she should bear a boy if
she would secure the destruction of paganism in Gaza. She promised to
do so, but Arcadius, who seems to have resented religious wrangles,
refused to grant permission. Then the boy was born, and Eudoxia felt an
obligation to secure Porphyry’s request. She instructed him to draw up
a formal petition, and present it to the baby-Cæsar as he was carried
from the baptismal font. The noble who carried the baby was then
instructed how he was to behave, and a little comedy was arranged.
Porphyry presented his paper to the infant Cæsar. The noble read a
little of it to the baby in a low voice, so that Arcadius should not
hear, and then bobbed the child’s head as a sign of assent. Arcadius
wearily overlooked the trick, eight beautiful temples were burned
at Gaza, and Eudoxia supplied the funds for building a large church
on their ruins. Tillemont, whose admiring course through the fourth
century is much tempered by groans, complains that “this kind of piety
favours only the demons.”
Chrysostom then went on to denounce, in unmeasured language, the
vicious and luxurious ways of the wealthy women, especially widows, of
his church. He had diverted the coins of the laity from the army of
monks, deprived the clergy of their mistresses, and declared that the
great majority of the bishops of his province were hopelessly corrupt.
With the aid of his rival, the Bishop of Alexandria, they conspired
against him, and they reached the ear of the Empress through the
courtly and comfortable bishop, Severian. The other ear of the Empress
was now assailed by the wealthy widows who smarted under the preacher’s
fierce lash. Such fine ladies as Marsa and Castricia would not be
likely to sit under the Socialistic oratory of the archbishop, but
shorthand (_notatio_) was as commonly used in those days as in our own,
and he could thus irritate the eye of the rich as well as gladden the
ear of the poor. They brooded darkly over his impersonal strictures,
and no doubt detected occasional references to the luxurious Empress in
them. In fine, Archbishop Theophilus was summoned from Alexandria; the
bishops of the province eagerly drew up and passed a lengthy indictment
of their superior; and, before the orthodox population could gather
what was happening, their orator was on the way to exile.
[Illustration: EUDOXIA
PULCHERIA
ENLARGED FROM COINS IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM]
But the triumph of Eudoxia was as brief as that of Justina. The
people rose in fury, and, after the slaughter of seven thousand
trained soldiers, made a light matter of the monks and sailors of
Theophilus. When, in addition, an earthquake shook the province,
Eudoxia prudently yielded to the human pressure, under the decent
pretext of obeying the divine will. Chrysostom returned to his church,
and the sight of the gay fleet that set out to meet him, the flaring
illumination of the shores, the frenzied rejoicing of the returning
procession, must have filled the palace on the heights with bitterness.
Such a truce could be observed with cold discretion by neither party,
and it was not long before the struggle was renewed.
In honour of the birth of the third daughter of the Empress, Marina,
a silver statue of her was erected, on a column of porphyry, at the
door of the Senate. The Prefect of the city commemorated the event
with games or other rejoicings in the square before the statue, and
they were naturally accompanied by profane, if not licentious, gaiety.
Straight opposite, across the square, was the door of Chrysostom’s
church, and the devout regarded this demonstration as an outrage on
religion. Chrysostom’s sermons become more explicit. In a later age
a sermon was published under his name, in which the people--or the
readers--were reminded of the infamous Herodias clamouring for the head
of John. The sermon is generally regarded as spurious, but we have the
weighty authority of Socrates for the fact that the extempore preacher
did utter the fatal name of Herodias. The conflict ended with the exile
of the archbishop (June 404), but on the following night his church was
found to be in flames, and the fire spread to, and almost destroyed,
the Senate-house, a building adorned with the most exquisite marbles
and works of art.
The condition of Constantinople, the anxiety of Eudoxia, during the
following months, may be imagined. It is enough to know that Eudoxia
met a painful death, through miscarriage, in the month of September
of the same year (404). I will not reproduce the horrible details
that a more orthodox age discovered in connexion with her death.[36]
If Chrysostom spoke from “a bitter disillusion,” as Dr. Puech holds,
Eudoxia had not less cause to be embittered. Even her religious zeal
had led her into the most painful experiences. For the State, in which
she had high power, she did nothing. The vultures gathered on the
hills, while the court absorbed its little soul in voluptuous pomp, and
the people fought each other over creeds. We may dissent from the hard
verdict of Gibbon, that Eudoxia indulged her passions while the Empire
decayed, and we must regard as too frivolous for consideration the
suspicion of unchastity which he reproduces; but we must grant that,
where Eudoxia’s action was not selfish, it was generally useless, and
frequently mischievous.
We have carried the slender story of the Empresses in the West as far
as the year 410, and we shall find no other Empress there until 421.
We may, therefore, continue the record of the East, and consider the
romantic story of Eudocia, before we proceed to the last scene in the
Empire of the West.
After an ignoble reign of thirteen years the elder son of Theodosius
died in his bed in the year 408. His only son, Theodosius II, was
clothed with the purple, in his sixth year, and a prudent and
experienced minister controlled the State for the next seven years. In
415 Pulcheria, the elder sister of Theodosius, was named Augusta, and
gradually assumed the guardianship of her brother and the control of
the State. She was as yet only in her sixteenth year, and Theodosius
was only two years younger, but her cold, decisive temper compensated
in some measure for the strength which Theodosius wholly lacked, and
she held the reins of the Empire. Deeply religious, she took herself,
and induced her younger sisters to take, a vow of chastity, which was
written in gold and diamonds on the wall of the public church. The
palace offered the singular spectacle of a nunnery within a luxurious
court. Only pious eunuchs and women were allowed to approach the
Imperial virgins, in whose sober apartments no music was ever heard
save that of the psalm and sacred song; while the weakly youth was
educated in the pomp that befits a king, as well as the propriety that
adorns a Christian. He learned both lessons with success; but we cannot
avoid a suspicion that less earnest and assiduous efforts were made to
fit him for the task of taking in his own hands the levers of the heavy
machinery of the State. It is proper to add, however, that, partly from
circumstances, partly from the prudence and care of Pulcheria, that
machinery ran with unaccustomed ease, and the Empire enjoyed a span of
peace and prosperity.
At length the anxious question of the Imperial marriage arose, and the
virginal Pulcheria confronted it with her usual coolness and decision.
The task was simplified, in a sense, by Theodosius. He declared that
he would marry only a young lady of exceptional bodily charm, and
would pay no attention to wealth or dignity. It may have occurred to
Pulcheria that an Empress thus elevated would be less likely to dispute
her power than some woman who had been born into the world of large
action. She began her search, with the aid of Paulinus, a youth who had
been educated with Theodosius and was his intimate friend.
One day, at this period, a young Athenian girl was brought into her
presence with a petition. She was of the fairest Athenian type; a
supple and graceful young woman, with skin of a snowy complexion,
large intelligent eyes, and a beautiful head of golden hair. Further,
she pleaded her cause, in perfect Greek, with a surprising restraint,
eloquence, and art. She was Athenais, the daughter of an Athenian
teacher. He had cultivated her mind and her beauty with all the
resources of his art, and had, at his death, left her only a hundred
pieces of gold, on the pretext that she was wealthy enough in her
advantages. She begged her brothers to share the inheritance more
justly, but they refused. She had therefore come with a relative to the
house of an aunt at Constantinople, and asked for a just distribution
of her father’s money. Pulcheria’s interest was, not in the case, but
in the girl. She took the aunt aside, and prudently inquired if the
girl was a maid and a Christian. Athenais was declared to be a virgin,
though a pagan; but the defect was one that could easily be removed.
Pulcheria joyfully told her brother that she had found the beauty
he desired, and described her. They arranged a second visit, during
which Theodosius and Paulinus should inspect the maiden from behind
a curtain. In a short time Athenais had changed her name into Ælia
Eudocia, changed her religion into that of Christ, and changed her
condition into that of wife of the Emperor. She was married on June
7th, 421, in, it is believed, the twentieth year of her age. There was
consternation in the home she had quitted at Athens, and her brothers
hid themselves in the provinces. Eudocia had them sought and conducted
to Constantinople. There they learned to their surprise that she
thought herself indebted to their conduct for her fortune, and they
were richly rewarded.
From these pleasant girlish traits we pass to the inevitable struggle
with Pulcheria. Theodosius remained an Imperial nonentity. He could
hunt, paint, and carve, but public business so bored him that he signed
documents without reading them. One day Pulcheria put a parchment
before him, and he, as usual, blindly appended his name. Shortly
afterwards he summoned Eudocia, and was told that she was now the
slave of Pulcheria, and awaited _her_ orders. The document he had
signed was a deed of sale of his wife, but it does not appear that the
little stratagem made much impression on him. Pulcheria still held the
reins. Eudocia had her first child at the end of 422, and was, in the
following January, entitled Augusta. The court had a visit, too, from
the Empress of the West, Galla Placidia, and her daughter, and large
matters were discussed. In 433 we may, perhaps, trace some influence
of Eudocia on legislation. An edict imposing the death-sentence on the
remaining pagans may be confidently ascribed to Pulcheria; but an edict
reforming and enlarging the higher schools of Constantinople seems
rather to remind us of the Athenian scholar’s daughter. She occupied
much of her leisure in writing historical and religious poetry, and the
little that survives of it has been recently edited by Ludwich. It is
correct in form and devoid of inspiration.
The years passed tranquilly until 437, when we begin to suspect that
there is friction with Pulcheria. Few things had happened, beyond the
echo of the stormy movements of the West, and the disquieting advance
of the Huns, to disturb the life of the court. One year (434) had,
indeed, brought a strange thrill into the Imperial nunnery. A princess
of the Western Empire, Honoria, came to Constantinople, _enceinte_
by her own steward. But the hard lot of Honoria, and the romantic
devices by which she sought to enliven it, will occupy us later.
Pulcheria promptly enclosed the fiery young princess in a convent, and
the scandal would be mentioned only in whispers. Three years later
(437) the Western Emperor, Valentinian III, came to Constantinople,
and led away Eudocia’s beautiful daughter, Licinia Eudoxia, to share
his trembling throne. The next detail is that, in 439, Eudocia made a
lengthy pilgrimage to Palestine, and there can be little doubt that her
absence from the palace for a year--which is unconvincingly connected
by Gibbon with the marriage of her daughter, two years before--was
due, in part or entirely, to some quarrel with either Theodosius or
Pulcheria, most probably the latter.
At Antioch, on the journey, Eudocia enjoyed the prestige of her
solitary and independent dignity. From a golden throne she delivered a
studied oration to the Senate, and the tumultuous applause and voting
of statues to her must have greatly increased her self-consciousness.
The shower of gold she rained upon the churches and monasteries
of Palestine, and indeed all along her route, elicited a no less
stimulating demonstration. She returned to Constantinople, apparently
about the end of 439, with a larger sense of her importance, and with
such priceless relics as the arm of St. Stephen and the authentic
picture of Mary which Luke the Physician had painted. It is only at a
much later date that Greek writers add to her luggage a phial of the
Virgin’s milk, some underclothing of the infant Christ, and similar
treasures.
The pilgrimage was the turning-point in the career of Eudocia. So
far her life had been one of splendid and powerless prestige; it
now rapidly darkens with intrigue, is overshadowed by tragedy and
suspicion, and soon ends in a virtual exile. We are sufficiently
acquainted with the writers of the time to expect that they will throw
very little light on this fresh Imperial tragedy, but, using the later
and less weighty Greek writers with discretion, we may obtain a fairly
confident idea of its main features. Two facts are related by writers
of the time, and are beyond question. In the year following Eudocia’s
return, her friend, and the intimate friend of the Emperor, the
charming and accomplished Paulinus, was exiled and put to death without
public trial. The second fact is that, a few years later, Eudocia left
the palace for ever, to spend the remainder of her life at Jerusalem.
The later Byzantine writers give a rounded story of these events, and,
on the whole, one is disposed to think that in this case they are
revealing the suppressed truth. Theophanes (in his “Chronographia”)
says that a eunuch named Chrysaphius rose into favour, and urged
Eudocia to secure the dismissal of Pulcheria. They persuade Theodosius
that, since Pulcheria has taken a vow of virginity, her proper place
is among the deaconesses of the Church, and Archbishop Flavian is
instructed to take her away. Flavian, however, prefers to have her in
the palace, and he directs her simply to live apart for a time and
wait. Then, in 440, occurs the execution--one may almost say murder--of
Paulinus. These later Greek writers all give a romantic story in
connexion with it. As Theodosius and Eudocia go to church on Epiphany
morning, a peasant presents the Emperor with a remarkably large apple.
He gives it to Eudocia, who privately sends it to Paulinus. Unluckily,
Paulinus in turn presents it to the Emperor, who sternly asks Eudocia
what she has done with it. She declares, and repeats with a most
solemn oath, that she has eaten it. Paulinus is at once sent away, and
decapitated. A much nearer and more weighty authority, John Malala,
confirms, in substance, this story of the apple, and says that Paulinus
was suspected of intimacy with the Empress. There is no serious reason
to doubt it, nor is any other reason suggested for the murder of
Paulinus; but whether Eudocia was guilty, or the suspicion was inspired
by the servants of Pulcheria, we are unable to determine.
The eunuch then, says Theophanes, presses Eudocia to attack Flavian and
Pulcheria. He reminds her of “all the bitter things she had endured
from Pulcheria,” and covers the human motive with a pretence of
religious zeal. We know, at least, that Eudocia embraced the Eutychian
heresy, which Chrysaphius had adopted, and that a Church-council was
summoned in 441 that put an end to Flavian. The intrigue, however,
runs on in obscurity until Eudocia suddenly asks permission to retire
to Jerusalem. Theodosius could not divorce her, but we can easily
believe that, as these writers say, he treated her with such severity,
repeatedly reminding her of Paulinus, that she was driven into exile.
Pulcheria returned to the palace, and resumed her control of the
Emperor and the Empire.
Gibbon scouts these “Greek fictions,” but, not only has he not taken
sufficient account of John Malala, whose authority he recognizes,
but a detail he adds from the still more authoritative Chronicle
of Marcellinus (which is almost contemporary) gives a very serious
confirmation. In the suite of Eudocia, when she set out for Palestine,
were a priest named Severus and a deacon named John, favourites of
hers. They had not long left Constantinople when an officer named
Saturninus, of the faction opposed to Eudocia, came upon them with
an order to put Severus and John to death. It appears that they too
were executed for supposed intimacy with the Empress. Eudocia lost her
self-control at this brutal outrage, and bade her servants make an
end of Saturninus. When Theodosius heard, he stripped Eudocia of her
Imperial prerogatives, and left her in the position of an ordinary
citizen. These authentic statements of Marcellinus strongly confirm the
story, and it is clear that the Byzantine court was stained by a sordid
quarrel and several brutal murders.
The romance of Eudocia’s career was not yet over. Marcellinus sends her
to Jerusalem in 444: the later writers in 442. However that may be, in
the year 445 we find her again embarking on an unhappy adventure. The
monks of Palestine were infected with the Eutychian heresy, and they
welcomed so powerful a patroness. With the aid of her servants they
ousted the orthodox bishop of Jerusalem, and a vigorous monk was put
in his place. The monk-bishop, with his militant army of ten thousand
monkish followers, held Jerusalem for twenty months, in spite of the
Imperial troops, drove all the orthodox bishops out of Palestine,
and slew and cast to the dogs a number of their followers. In this
quaint company the delicate Greek Empress continued to build churches
and monasteries for three years, but when she hears at length of the
misfortunes of her daughter, which the Bishop of Rome, as well as the
courts of Ravenna and Constantinople, ascribe to her heresy, she sends
to consult the famous hermit of the pillar, Simeon Stylites. Simeon
recommends her to confer with a certain saintly monk of the desert.
The monk will neither leave his desert for her, nor permit a woman to
enter it. She therefore builds a tower on the hill some miles away, and
in that safe and public elevation the monk enlightens her out of her
heresy.
Eudocia brought her adventurous career to a close in 460, protesting
with her last breath that she was innocent of the charge of unchastity.
Pulcheria continued to rule the Eastern Empire in the name of
Theodosius until he died, in the year 450, inglorious and unhonoured.
It was now seen that the prosperity of the Empire in her earlier years
was a hollow truce of circumstances. When the fierce and rapacious
Huns approached it, in 446 and 447, the Eastern Empire tremblingly
purchased peace by the most ignominious concessions. When Theodosius
died, she assumed sole control of the Empire, and the head of the
eunuch Chrysaphius was at once removed from his shoulders. But the
pressure of her people forced her to marry, and an aged Senator,
Marcian, engaged to share her throne without sharing her virginal
bed. To his more vigorous hands the affairs of State now passed, and
Pulcheria maintained her virtue and piety to the end. But we must now
leave the Oriental pomp, the emasculated frame, and the splendid piety
of the Byzantine court, to conclude our story in the West.
CHAPTER XXI
THE LAST EMPRESSES OF THE WEST
The course of our inquiry has led us through five centuries of
change. We have passed from the sober and virile integrity of the
first Imperial pair, the golden age of Roman life and letters, to
the successive depths of the Cæsars. We have then seen the decrepit
and corrupt city refreshed with an inflow of sound provincial blood,
the enervated patrician families replaced on the throne by vigorous
soldiers, and a new period of sobriety and prosperity open under the
Stoics, to sink again under the burden of vice and luxury. Diocletian
restores its strength, and then a singular and momentous change comes
over the face of the Empire. The white homes of the gods perish or
decay, the gay processions no longer enliven the streets, the cross
of Christ heads the legions and towers austerely above the public
buildings and monuments. The ante-chambers of the Emperors are filled
with Christian bishops, and the rulers of the world bend meekly before
the ragged figures of monks and tremble at the threats of lowly priests.
We return to the Western world to find another and a greater change.
Rome has fallen, the frontiers are obliterated, the provinces, even
to Africa, are cowering under the armies of the barbarians. Poverty,
misery, and violence are scattered over the Empire, as if the departing
gods had sown its fields with salt or with dragons’ teeth as they
retired to Olympus. Civilization, law, culture, art, seem to be
doomed, and the end of the world is confidently expected. But amid
the crumbling frame of the vast Empire a few shades of Emperors and
Empresses linger for a generation, and we may glance briefly at their
sobered features and adventurous experiences.
The chief figure of interest is Ælia Galla Placidia, the sister of
Honorius, whom we found visiting Constantinople in 423. Her adventures
began when the Goths invested Rome in 408. She is then mentioned as
concurring with the Senate in the pitiful execution of her cousin, the
widow of Stilicho. Placidia was then in her eighteenth year. Bearing
a heavy ransom, the Gothic army went away to harass her useless and
trembling brother at Ravenna, and Placidia thought fit to remain at
Rome. It still contained wealth enough to capitulate to barbarians on
fair terms. But the Goths returned in 410. Rome was awakened in the
dead of night by the blare of their trumpets, and looked out to find
palaces in flames, the streets filled with the terrible Goths, and the
work of looting already begun. After six days of pillage they retreated
northward, taking Placidia with them. We cannot follow her closely in
that extraordinary march. She was treated as a princess, however, and
two years later was sought in marriage by the new king of the Goths,
Ataulph. Ataulph was a barbarian only in name; a large, handsome man,
princely, intelligent, and amiable. He aspired to be a Roman Emperor.
Honorius weakly resented the proposal, and demanded that he should
prove the friendship he offered to Rome by returning Placidia. For two
years she had wandered over Italy in the Gothic army.
It appears that Placidia was attracted to the graceful and courtly
Goth, and they were married at Narbonne--the Goths having now returned
to Gaul--in 414. When she reflected on the splendour of the wedding
gifts, she may have thought that even an alliance with a Roman prince
could not be more magnificent. Fifty beautiful youths, clothed in silk,
brought to her one hundred dishes laden with the gold and jewels which
the Goths had brought from Rome. But Ataulph was assassinated in the
following year, and Placidia sank again to the position of captive. She
had to walk twelve miles on foot, amid a crowd of captives, before the
victorious barbarian who had slain her husband. Within another year her
persecutor was slain, and his more humane successor restored her--or
sold her--to the court at Ravenna.
The Roman commander Constantius, into whose hands she was committed,
at once claimed her in marriage. Honorius had promised that he should
marry her if, by whatever means, he recovered her from the Goths.
Placidia shrank resentfully from his embraces, and found his coarse,
large, surly person a poor exchange for her handsome Gothic husband.
The wedding took place, however, in 417, and Placidia settled down
to the prosy duties of a matron, giving birth, in succession, to the
princess Honoria and the future Emperor Valentinian III. In 421 her
husband compelled the weak-minded Honorius to clothe him with the
purple. Placidia received the title of Augusta, and a better prospect
seemed to open before her. But Constantius died within a few months,
and it was not long before she fell into a violent quarrel with
Honorius. The cause of the quarrel is, as usual, obscure. Some of the
later writers suggest that Honorius became enamoured of his sister in
her young widowhood. We know only that the palace at Ravenna was filled
with bitter recriminations, its courts were stained with the blood of
their followers, and Placidia fled to Constantinople with her children.
[Illustration: PLACIDIA
ENPHEMIA
ENLARGED FROM COINS IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM]
Honorius died a few months later (August 423), and Placidia, confirmed
in her title of Augusta by Theodosius, was sent in the following year
to claim the throne for Theodosius, at the head of a considerable
force. A secretary had usurped the vacant throne during her absence. It
was the spring of 425 before they set out from Thessalonica for Italy;
Placidia was with the cavalry, which reached and took Aquileia
with great speed. There, after a short time, she received the captive
usurper. His hand was cut off in the public Circus, he was placed on an
ass and conducted round the town, amid the jeers of the crowd and the
actors of the Circus, and was finally beheaded. They then proceeded to
Ravenna. Valentinian, a boy of six years, was created Emperor of the
West, and Placidia settled down to a long period of government in his
name.
As the legislation which followed, bearing the name of Valentinian
but breathing the spirit of Placidia, was mainly of an ecclesiastical
character, we will not linger over it. She fell ruthlessly upon Pagans,
Jews, Pelagians, Manichæans, and every other class who were obnoxious
to her clergy. As in the case of most of the later Empresses, her piety
so impressed the writers of the time that her personality is almost
entirely hidden from us. Apart from her decrees of religious coercion,
we know her only as experiencing, not doing, things. Procopius, not
a biased historian, severely complains that she reared her son in a
luxurious softness that led inevitably to his later vices and his
violent death; and it is frequently suspected that she had no eagerness
to see him fitly educated in the duties of a prince. Cassiodorus
pronounces that she conducted the affairs of the State with wavering
and incompetent counsel, just at the time when Rome most urgently
needed a firm and enlightened ruler. Tillemont, after praising her
piety, admits sadly that she brought great evils upon her afflicted
Empire.
Though Rome had been looted by the Goths at their leisure, and barbaric
armies commanded every province, the cause of the Empire was not yet
lost. A judicious policy might have utilized the mutual hatreds of the
various tribes, and have put the able commanders, who were still in the
service of Rome, at the head of formidable armies. But the weakness and
obtuseness of Placidia led, on the contrary, to the loss of her finest
general, her last free province, and a large proportion of her troops.
Listening injudiciously to the malignant persuasions of one general,
Ætius, she commanded the other, Count Boniface, to relinquish his post
in Africa, under the impression that he meditated treachery. Ætius at
the same time warned Boniface that the recall was due to suspicion,
and the gallant officer was driven into rebellion. He invited the
Vandals to Africa, and soon twenty thousand of the tall, fair-haired
northerners, with a vast crowd of dependents and followers, spread over
the province. Placidia discovered too late the deceit of Ætius. She was
induced to send a friendly ambassador to Boniface, and the fraud was
at once detected. But the Vandals could not be dislodged. Boniface was
slain (432) in his struggle with them, Ætius was driven to the camp of
the Huns, and Africa, the granary of Rome, was irretrievably lost.
The next blow that threatened the distracted Empire was an invasion
of the Huns. Placidia cannot be held responsible for the subsequent
calamities, for Ætius, strong in his alliance with the Huns, had forced
his way back into power, and was the real governor of the Empire.
But the formidable task he undertook was made more difficult by a
romantic and unhappy occurrence within Placidia’s domestic circle. We
have already spoken of her daughter Honoria, who came in disgrace to
Constantinople in 434. The great distinction of the Constantinopolitan
court, the possession of three royal virgins, seems to have excited the
pious jealousy of Placidia, and she apparently designed that her court
should not lack its Vestal Virgin. We are not told that any vow was
imposed on the young Honoria, but she was reared with the discipline of
a conventual novice, and given to understand that the exalted state of
virginity was assigned to her. In 433 the title of Augusta was bestowed
on her, in some compensation of her sacrifice. But the daughter of
Constantius had thicker blood in her veins than the daughters of
Arcadius, and the claustral regime--the restriction of attendance to
eunuchs and women--does not seem to have been rigorously enforced at
Ravenna. In 434 the seventeen-year-old princess was discovered to
be in a painful condition, and was dispatched to Constantinople, and
incarcerated in a nunnery by the indignant Pulcheria.
But the young girl had a spirit beyond her years. She had heard of the
formidable nation of the Huns, which awaited, in the neighbourhood of
the Danube and the Volga, its turn to fill the Imperial stage; she had
heard that the young and powerful Attila had recently acceded to the
throne of that nation. In some way she secured a messenger who took
from her a letter and a ring to Attila, offering him her heart and her
dowry if he would release her. The girlish freak was destined to have
terrible consequences for the Empire. The lady herself we may dismiss
in a word. She seems to have been kept in close confinement in the East
until about 450, sending fruitless messages, from time to time, to her
romantic lover. Attila had sufficient occupation during those fifteen
years, and was content to put her name on the lengthy list of his
wives. When, in 450, he formally demanded her person, he was assured
that she was married. It is not impossible that she was released on
condition that she accepted a husband chosen for her. But her end is
obscure, and one is disposed to doubt if she would ever have resumed
her liberty without joining the victorious Hun.
Placidia died in the year 450, leaving the astute Ætius to avert the
oncoming disaster by an alliance with the Ostrogoths against the
Huns. For a quarter of a century she had had supreme power over the
Western Empire. It is, perhaps, only an indication of mediocrity on
her part that she could not avert the blows that fell upon it during
that period, but it was a calamity for Rome. Her memory survived, in
a singular way, for more than a thousand years. The pagan habit of
cremating the bodies of Emperors and Empresses had been replaced by
the Egyptian process of embalming, and Placidia had built a chapel
at Ravenna for the reception of her body. There it sat, in a chair
of cedar-wood, until the year 1577, when some children, thrusting a
lighted taper into the tomb to see it better, set it aflame and reduced
it to ashes.
Meantime, another Empress of the West had appeared. In 437 Valentinian
had married Licinia Eudoxia, the fourteen-year-old daughter of Eudocia,
at Constantinople, and brought her to Italy. He had parted with a large
slice of his Empire to Pulcheria and Theodosius for the honour, and is
said to have held it lightly. The sequel will dispose us to believe his
irregularities. A youth of eighteen at the time, frivolous, luxurious,
and light-headed, he was content to enjoy the palace, and leave his
mother, and then Ætius, to discharge his duties. Eudoxia could but
idly follow the momentous movements of the nations, and appreciate the
defeat of the Huns in the terrible battle of Chalons in 451; or shudder
when, in the following year, Attila marched to the gates of Rome,
demanding half the Empire as the dowry of his distant bride, Honoria;
or when, in 453, the profligate Valentinian plunged his sword in the
breast of his great minister Ætius. A grave personal tragedy was upon
her.
The court resided generally at Rome, where Valentinian enjoyed the
larger and faster amusements of a metropolis. Here, in the year 455,
he was stabbed by his soldiers, and a romantic story is told in
connexion with his death. The story is rejected by a recent historical
writer, Mr. Hodgkin (“Italy and her Invaders”), but Professor Bury has
shown that it is probably true in substance. The full story, to which
fictitious details may have been added before it reached Procopius,
is that Valentinian, gambling heavily with the distinguished Senator
Petronius Maximus, obtained his ring as a security for the money he had
won. Maximus had a beautiful wife whom the Emperor desired, and he sent
the ring to her with a summons to the palace. The unsuspecting lady was
conducted to Valentinian’s apartments, and outraged by him. For this
crime, and in virtue of the general discontent, Maximus had him slain
and occupied his throne.
Maximus was a wealthy Roman, of illustrious family, and peaceful
and luxurious ways, so that we have little reason to doubt that an
outrage on his wife inspired him with the thought of assassination.
The further course of events adds authority to the narrative. His wife
died very closely after the death of Valentinian, and he invited or
compelled Eudoxia to marry him. In the obscurity and uncertainty of the
records we are unable to understand the consent of Eudoxia, even under
pressure. Some of the later Greeks affirm that he violated her. It is
certain, at least, that she married him within a month or two of her
husband’s tragic death, and almost immediately afterwards sought to
destroy him. Our authorities, late and uncertain as they are, do not
lack plausibility when they affirm that he one day confessed that, out
of love for her, he had directed the assassination of her husband. Rome
had returned to evil days, and tragedy was brooding over its very ruins.
In a fit of repulsion Eudoxia secretly invited the Vandals to cross
the Mediterranean and avenge her. Historians too lightly admit, in
extenuation of her criminal act, that she had no hope of help from
the East. The aged and upright Marcian was, it is true, intent upon
the internal prosperity of his Empire, but it is extremely doubtful,
as the sequel will show, whether the deposition of Maximus would have
offered much difficulty, and Eudoxia was the niece of Pulcheria. Her
vindictive act hastened the end of the Empire. Genseric speedily landed
his fierce troops on Italian soil, and the Romans at once slew the
sullen or remorseful Maximus and cast his mangled body in the Tiber.
The further adventures of Eudoxia, interesting as they must have
been, are compressed in a few lines. After fourteen days’ pillage,
the Vandals retreated once more from the stricken city of Octavian,
laden with gold, silver, women, and all kinds of valuables. Genseric
compelled Eudoxia and her two young daughters to accompany him. They
were detained at Carthage for seven years. The Eastern court repeatedly
asked for their release, but it was refused until, in 462, the elder
daughter, Eudocia, was married to Genseric’s son. Eudoxia and the
second daughter, Placidia, were then sent to Constantinople. Years
afterwards--in one of the legends--we catch a last glimpse of Eudoxia,
the last prominent Empress of the West. She is standing before the
column of Simeon Stylites, asking him to come and live somewhere on her
ample estate. Eudocia lived for sixteen years at Carthage, then escaped
to the East, and ended her life in Palestine. Placidia we shall meet
again for a moment.
We turn back to the shrinking Empire of the West, to dismiss the last
four Imperial shadows that flit about its ruins. The vacant throne was
occupied by the commander of the Roman forces in Gaul, Avitus. He had
married, since we know that Sidonius Apollinaris was married to his
daughter Papianilla, but his wife was dead, and we need only say that,
after he had enjoyed the Imperial banquets for a few months, he was
degraded to the rank of a bishopric by the commander of the barbaric
troops, with the consent of the disgusted Romans, and he died soon
afterwards. He was followed by a worthy and able officer, whose rule
might have illumined a more propitious age; but we find no Empress in
association with him, and must pass over the four years of his earnest
effort to redeem the Empire. After his death Libius Severus had a
nominal and obscure reign of four years (461–5), and again we find no
Empress in the scanty records.
The throne remained vacant for nearly two years, during which the
Vandals harassed the miserable remnant of the great Empire. At length
the chief commander in Italy, Ricimer, sought the aid of the Eastern
Empire, and the alliance was sealed by the Eastern court sending one of
its wealthiest and, by birth, most illustrious nobles, Anthemius, to
occupy the throne. His Empress was Euphemia, daughter of the Emperor
Marcian by his first wife. But her name, and the names of her father
and her children, are all that we find recorded concerning her, and we
need not dwell on the failures and quarrels, or the last faint flicker
of Roman paganism, which characterized his inauspicious reign. Within
four years he quarrelled with Ricimer, and his life was trodden out on
the streets of Rome.
For a few months Placidia, the daughter of Eudoxia, then occupies the
throne. At Constantinople, to which she went with her mother from her
Vandal captivity, she married the wealthy noble Olybrius. He had fled
from Rome when it was looted by the Vandals, and had little mind to
exchange the safe luxury of Constantinople for its uneasy throne when
Ricimer offered it to him. It is said that Placidia impelled him. It
was a fatal adventure. They entered Rome in the train of Ricimer’s
troops, but Olybrius succumbed to that atmosphere of death in a few
months, and we have not time to discern the features of Eudoxia’s
daughter before she sinks into the large category of obscure Imperial
widows. His successor, Glycerius, a puppet of the chief commander,
seems to have had no wife. A competitor appeared immediately, and he
exchanged the uncertain sceptre of the Western Empire for the solid
crozier of a bishop.
One faint and shadowy Empress crosses the scene before the curtain
falls. Once more the Eastern court had provided Italy--which was now
the Western Roman Empire--with a ruler. Julius Nepos set up his court
at Ravenna, and had for Empress a niece of Verina, the Empress of the
East. But the barbarian leaders of the barbarian army--the only army
that remained in the service of Rome--resented the Eastern intruder,
and marched on Ravenna. Nepos fled ignominiously; and one reads with
interest, though not without reserve, that he was put to death by his
predecessor, Bishop Glycerius. The fate of his wife is unknown, and the
last Empress of the Western provinces entirely escapes our search.
The tattered purple was offered to the commander Orestes. He refused
it, and allowed them to place it on the shoulders of his young son
(476). The name of this pretty and innocuous boy united, as if in
mockery, the names of Romulus and Augustus. To later times his
pathetic figure is known as Augustulus. His father was slain by the
troops immediately afterwards, because he refused to distribute
one-third of the soil of Italy between them. The Empire was now a
mere phrase; Rome a plaything of the barbarians whom it had cowed for
five or six hundred years. Odoacer, the latest leader of the troops,
bade the child put off his purple mantle and begone, and some time
afterwards--so low had Rome fallen that the year of this impressive
consummation cannot accurately be determined--forced the Senate to
abolish the Imperial succession in the West. Italy became the kingdom
of a barbarian. Britain, Gaul, Germany, and Spain were turned into
the battle-grounds of those fierce tribes who, after the violence and
darkness of the Middle Ages, would in their turn scatter the seed of
civilization over the earth. The gallery of Western Empresses was
closed by the irrevocable hand of fate, and the long, quaint gallery of
the Byzantine Empresses was thrown open.
FOOTNOTES
[1] The title “Empress” was unknown to the Romans. “Imperator” was
a name of military command. The special use of it in connexion with
Octavian and his successors was that it was given for life. The
more novel title “Augustus” was extended to Livia, who later became
“Augusta.”
[2] Pliny places her birth in the year 54 B.C., but Dio says 57 B.C.,
and this date is confirmed by Tacitus.
[3] Improperly, because it is not a distinctive name, but common to the
emperors. Livia and Octavia received the title of “Augusta” a few years
later, yet even Livia is rarely known by it.
[4] “Non nisi plena nave tollo vectorem.”
[5] Writers often convey the impression that Julia indulged even her
most vicious inclinations in the Rostra, but Dio merely speaks of
“revelling” and “carousing”: ὥστε καὶ ἐν τῇ ἀγορᾷ καὶ ἐπ’ αὐτοῦ γε
τοῦ βήματος κωμάζειν νύκτως καὶ συμπίνειν. The emptying of a cup of
Falernian wine in the Rostra, on some occasion of especial devilry or
intoxication, may be all that is meant.
[6] Vol. V, p. 353.
[7] “Annals,” v. 3.
[8] An apology should be made for retaining the nickname of the third
Emperor, but it seems to be ineradicably fixed in history.
[9] Tacitus, who is followed by Merivale and other historians, makes
Claudius also retire to Sinuessa. This is probably an error, as the
Emperor fell ill and died at Rome.
[10] “The Life and Principate of the Emperor Nero,” 1903.
[11] καὶ οὕτω γε ἑαυτὴν διὰ πάσης τῆς ἀρχῆς διήγαγεν ὥστε μηδεμίαν
ἐπηγορίαν σχεῖν: lxviii, 5.
[12] Duruy quotes Aurelius Victor (“Epitome,” xiv) as saying: “It is
impossible to say how much Plotina enhanced the glory of Trajan.” The
passage is really found in c. xxxix of the “Epitome.”
[13] Gregorovius points out that the incident may have occurred at
Rome, and that we have no positive proof that Sabina accompanied him on
this journey. But the narrative of Spartianus seems to imply that she
was in Britain, and we shall see that she accompanied him on his longer
journey to the East. Duruy and other writers hold that the officers
were dismissed for lack, not excess, of respect for Sabina, but the
word “familiarius,” coupled with a threat of divorce, seems to demand
the interpretation I have put on it.
[14] See Dr. Bassani’s little work, “Commodo e Marcia.”
[15] The references on coins and inscriptions to Julia Domna have been
industriously collected by Mary Gilmore Wilkins, _American Journal of
Archæology_, 2nd series, vol. vi. They do not add materially to our
knowledge of her, but are so abundant that they show her to have been
an Empress of exceptional prominence and influence. She became Augusta
in the first year.
[16] I conclude that they had already come to Rome because Elagabalus,
the son of Soæmias, was given serious consideration in his later claim
that he was the son of Bassianus. He was born in 204, and, unless his
mother had been in the palace before that date, the claim could not
have been made.
[17] It is difficult to imagine Elagabalus beginning his appalling
career at such an age, and Gibbon, calculating from the age given to
Alexander Severus in the “Historia Augusta” at the time of his death,
changes the age to seventeen. But the “Historia Augusta” is very
commonly wrong in the ages it ascribes to Emperors at their death.
Professor Bury admits that Gibbon is probably wrong, and we may follow
Herodian.
[18] Ammianus Marcellinus tells us the one fact, Zosimus the other.
Neither mentions her name, but we learn it from coins.
[19] Some writers have conjectured, from the fact that the legend “In
Pace” occurs on the coins of Salonina after her death, that she became
a Christian. The phrase is not found otherwise except on Christian
monuments. Duruy does not admit the inference, and points out that she
built a temple to the goddess of the seasons.
[20] Her name is variously given as Vitruvia, Victoria, or Victorina.
Since it appears as Vitruvia where the “Augustan History” copies from
the Acts of the Senate, and no Roman would corrupt Victoria into
Vitruvia, I take it that it was originally Vitruvia, and was Latinized,
or changed by her when she became Empress, into Victoria.
[21] It has been suggested that the fifteen months of Lactantius may
date from their expulsion from the court of Maximin. This is hardly
possible. Galerius died in May, 311, and Valeria was still in mourning
for him, and pleaded his recent death, when Maximin sought to wed her.
Maximin died in April, 313, so that the deaths of Prisca and Valeria
cannot have been earlier than the summer of that year.
[22] The Greek original of the “Chronicle” is lost, and Jerome informs
us that he has added many details in the Latin version which we now
have.
[23] One of the most authoritative works on Roman institutions,
Marquardt and Mommsen’s “Handbuch,” says this emphatically: “Ehen,
bei welchen der eine Theil der Römischen Bürgerschaft, der Andere den
Latinern jüngeren Rechtes oder den Peregrinen angehörte, sind nach
Römischen Recht nicht gültig” (vii. 29). Göteke, in a special study of
the subject (“Constantinum honeste et ex legitimo matrimonio natum”),
says that special edicts made it impossible for an officer to marry in
the province in which he served. He believes that the effect of these
would not be permanent, but he fails to consider Helena’s disability as
a _peregrina_.
[24] The question may be raised whether St. Augustine had not the case
of Constantine in mind when, in his moral treatise “De Bono Conjugali,”
he refuses to condemn a man who, having a barren wife, takes a
concubine in addition, to provide a family. It is clear, at least,
that early Christian opinion was not fixed. Gibbon again improves upon
Christian writers by holding that Minervina was an earlier wife, not
a concubine, of Constantine; but, as Professor Bury points out, the
document on which he relies does not apply to that Emperor.
[25] It is from the confusion of dates that I ascribe the words
confidently to Jerome, and not Eusebius The words “ninth year” can
only refer to the ninth year of the Cæsarate of Crispus, or 326. The
interval of three years has no significance in view of the confusion of
dates.
[26] Gibbon, Professor Bury, and Mr. Firth make Zosimus coincide with
Zonaras. The reader will see from my literal translation of his words
that he differs very materially. He does not suggest that Fausta
accused Crispus, or that she was really guilty of any misconduct; but
he pointedly accuses Helena.
[27] Miss Gardner observes, in her life of Julian, that we do not know
if Helena was older than Julian, But, while Julian is known to have
been born in 331 or 332, since he was in his sixth year at the time of
the massacre of 337, and died at thirty-two, Helena’s mother had been
murdered in 326.
[28] Philostorgius says that, as she lay ill with her malady,
Constantius recalled Bishop Theophilus from exile, and he cured her.
But Zonaras makes her die of this very malady, scouting the Arian
miracle.
[29] The Alexandrian Chronicle repeatedly calls her Marina, and we have
no coins to determine the full and accurate name. Cohen, at least,
gives no coins, though Tillemont refers to them.
[30] Lib. xxviii. 1: He says that Gratian put a certain man to death
“on the advice of his mother.” Zonaras says that Severa still lived at
the time of the second marriage.
[31] Gratian, the youthful son of Severa, had been clothed with
the purple by Valentinian, “at the instigation of his wife and
father-in-law,” says the epitomist of Aurelius Victor, in the autumn of
367. On the other hand, Justina’s brother was killed, in the service of
Valentinian, in 369, The second marriage falls most naturally in 368.
[32] Yet St. Augustine, who was in Rome the year after the death of
Gratian, says in his “Confessions” (viii. 2) that “nearly the whole
nobility of Rome” still clung to the old religion.
[33] Hence Tillemont and others, who give these dates, must be wrong in
placing the quarrel with Eutropius in 399. Philostorgius expressly says
that she had two daughters in her arms when she appealed to Arcadius.
[34] See Professor Puech’s “Saint Jean Chrysostome,” 1891.
[35] The curious reader will find Chrysostom’s surprising strictures of
the clergy more than confirmed in the letters of Jerome, and his fierce
denunciation of the monks borne out in Augustine’s treatise on them.
[36] Gibbon makes her survive Chrysostom, and die in 408. But Tillemont
has pointed out that the “Life of Chrysostom” by George of Alexandria,
on which he seems to have relied, forges letters, and is quite
unreliable. The earlier writers put the death of Eudoxia in 404.
INDEX
Ablabius, 283
Acerronia Pollia, 102
Acholius, 318
Acte, 95, 105, 121
Actium, 19
Adultery at Rome, 26, 200
Ælia Capitolina, 160
-- Pætina, 62, 80
Æmilianus, L. A. L., 130, 131
Ætius, 344, 345, 346
Afer, 253
Agrippa, M. V., 25, 26, 27
-- son of Julia, 33, 35–6
Agrippina, the elder, 33, 37, 41, 42, 46
-- the younger, 54, 65, 67, 80, 81, 82–104
-- memoirs of, 14, 44, 64, 73, 80
Ahenobarbus, C. D., 81
Albinus, 196, 197, 198
Alexander Severus, 212, 219–21, 222–31
Alexandra, St., 256
Alexandria, 159, 207
Alexandrian Chronicle, the, 307, 311
Alexianus. _See_ Alexander
Ambrose, St., 266, 314, 315, 318, 319
Anastasia, 288
Anicetus, 100, 102, 103, 111
Annius Verus, 164
“Anonymus Valesii,” 267
Antinous, 157, 159
Antioch, 27, 145, 171
Antonia, 81
Antoninus Pius, 162, 163, 165–8, 169
Apollodorus, 153
Appian, 202
Appius Silanus, 68
Appuleia Varilia, 42
Arcadia, 328
Arcadius, 320, 321, 323, 325, 326–32
Argentocoxus, 203
Argobastes, 321
Arintheus, 325
Arsenius, 320
Asiaticus, Valerius, 71–2
Astrology at Rome, 85
Ataulph, 341, 342
Athanasius, 295, 296
Athenais, 333, 334
Athens, 158
Attalus, 239
Attianus, 142, 147, 149, 153
Attila, 345, 346
Auctions of Caligula, the, 54, 57
Augustans, the, 119, 120
Augustine, St., 274, 314
Augustulus, 350
Augustus, title of, 19
Aurelian, 241, 245–51
Avitus, 348
Bacchanalia, the, 74
Baiæ, 53, 101
Balbinus, 235, 236
_Barbatoria_, 14
Baring-Gould, Mr., 3, 90, 91, 100, 103, 118
Baronius, 256, 311
Basil, St., 310
Bassani, 186
Bassianus, the elder, 195
-- the younger. _See_ Caracalla
Bassianus, Senator, 273
-- V. A. _See_ Elagabalus
Bassus, Pomponius, 217
Bauto, 326
Berenice, 130
Boissier, M., 136
Boniface, Count, 344
Britannicus, 65, 76, 83, 86, 92, 96
Bruttius Præsens, 182
Burrus, 85, 92, 95, 103, 107, 108
Bury, Prof., 211, 273, 277, 280, 346
Cænis, 128–9
Cæsar, Julius, 6, 10
Cæsonia, Milonia, 55, 56, 59, 130
Caius Cæsar = Caligula
Caius, son of Julia, 32–3
Caledonians, the, 203
Caligula, 37, 49–59
Callistus, 80
Calpurnia, 75, 79, 84
Calpurnius Piso, 52
Candidian, 263
Capitolinus, Julius, 166, 172, 173
Capreæ, 34, 48
Caracalla, 196, 199, 202, 203, 204–9
Caractacus, 84
Carinus, 252–4
Carnuntum, 261
Carus, 251
Cassianus Postumus, 242
Cassiodorus, 267
Cassius, Avidius, 175, 177
Castricia, 330
Ceionia, 170
Celsa, Nonia, 210, 213
Celsus, 153
Centumcellæ, 182
Charito, 306
Christians, persecution of the, 257–9
Chrysaphius, 336, 337
Chrysostom, John, 327, 328, 329, 330–2
Cinna, 20
Circus, the, 7
-- factions of the, 56, 109, 124
Claudii, the, 9
Claudius, 60, 61, 62, 64–76, 79–82, 141
-- II, 244
Cleander, 187
Cleopatra, 8, 10, 13, 18, 19
-- servant of Claudius, 73, 79
Clodia, 12
Cohen, 238, 253, 307
Cologne, 84, 138
Commodus, L. C., 157, 162
-- L. V., 169, 170, 172, 175, 180
-- son of Marcus, 172, 181, 182–9
Constans, 286, 289
Constantia, 273, 275, 276, 283
-- wife of Gratian, 313
Constantina, F. J., 288, 289, 290–3
Constantine, 260, 271–85
-- the younger, 286, 287
Constantinople, founding of, 283, 284
Constantius, 254, 260, 266–71
-- the younger, 286, 287, 289, 290, 292–304
-- General, 342
_Contubernium_, 129
Corbulo, Domitius, 130
Cornificia, 205
Corruption at Rome, 21, 34, 136–7
Crepereius Gallus, 102
Crinitus, Ulpius, 250
Crispilla, Quintia, 236
Crispina, 183, 184
Crispus, 274, 278–82
-- Passienus, 67
_Curia mulierum_, 6, 202
Daza, 259
“Deaths of the Persecutors,” 256, 258
Decius, 237
Delmatius, 286, 287
Dexippus, 225
Diadumenianus, 210
Didia Clara, 192, 193
Dill, Dr. S., 136
Dio, 9, 15, 16, 26, 29, 43, 45, 51, 64, 73, 84, 95, 99, 114, 129, 131,
133, 142, 146, 169, 176, 188, 200, 202, 207, 228
Diocletian, 253–60, 261, 262
Divination at Rome, 85
Dominica, Albia, 307, 308, 310
Domitia Lepida, 68, 89
-- Longina, 130, 131–5
Domitian, 130–4
Domitian, Prefect, 292
Domitilla, Flavia, 128, 130
Domna, Julia, 194, 195, 196–209
Domus Vectiliana, 190
Drepanum, 266
Drusilla, daughter of Agrippina, 51
-- daughter of Cæsonia, 55, 59
Drusus Nero, 15
-- son of Agrippina, 47
-- son of Livia, 24, 31, 37, 41, 61
Duruy, 148, 156, 161, 172, 239
Eboracum, 155, 203
Eclectus, 188, 193
Elagabal, 195, 215
Elagabalus, 200, 211–21
Eleuthera, St., 256
Emesa, 195, 209, 212
Empress, the title, 9
Ennia, 50–1
Ephesus, 158
Epicureanism, 164
Etruscilla, Herennia, 237
Eucer, 110
Eudocia, 334–8
Eudoxia, 325, 326, 327–31
-- Licinia, 335, 346, 347
Euphemia, 348
Eusebia, Aurelia, 294, 296–301, 303
Eusebius, Bishop, 249, 257, 262, 267, 275, 279, 287, 296
-- eunuch, 295
Eutropia, Galeria Valeria, 254, 270, 283
Eutropius, 325, 326, 327, 328
-- historian, 200, 206, 257, 268, 272, 275, 279
Fabia, 180, 181
Fadilla, 187
-- Julia, 158
-- Junia, 230
Falco, 190
Fausta, 271, 272, 277, 278–82
Faustina, the elder, 163, 164–8
-- the younger, 169, 170–8
-- Maxima, 304, 308
-- Rupilia, 164
Faustinopolis, 177
Felix, 112
Firth, Mr., 267, 277, 280
Flaccilla, Ælia, 317, 318
Flaminian Circus, 30
Flavian, Archbishop, 336, 337
Forum, the, 7, 19
-- of Trajan, the, 143
Freedmen at Rome, 62, 63, 68
Fronto, 166, 172
Fucine Lake, 87
Fulvia, 10, 12, 13
Fundana, Galeria, 123, 124, 125, 126–8
Furnilla, Marcia, 129, 130
Gainas, 329
Galba, Sulpicius, 67, 120, 123
Galerius, 254, 256, 258, 260, 261
Galla, 317, 318, 319, 320, 321
Gallienus, 238, 239, 242, 244
Gallus, 237, 290–4
Gannys, 212
Gardner, A., 299
Genseric, 347
Germanicus, 37–8
Geta, 196, 201, 202, 204, 205
Gibbon, 2, 45, 131, 136, 141, 169, 211, 224, 225, 228, 239, 245, 247,
248, 267, 274, 278, 301, 331, 337
Glycerius, 349
Golden House of Nero, 115, 129
Gordianus, 234
-- the younger, 236
Görres, Dr., 279
Göteke, 270
Gratian, 307, 312, 313, 314
Greece, Nero in, 119
Gregorovius, 151, 156, 161
Güldenpenning, 317
Hadrian, 139, 141, 142, 145, 147, 149–63, 169
Hannibalian, 286, 287, 288
Helena, 265, 266–70, 277, 278, 282–3
-- wife of Julian, 297, 298, 299–304
Henderson, Mr., 90, 109
Herennianus, 241
Herod, 27
-- Agrippa, 49, 59
Herodes, 241
Herodian, 200, 201, 206, 225
“Historia Augusta,” the, 45, 142, 146, 150, 152, 166, 172, 175, 188,
205, 206, 211, 217, 249, 257
Hodgkin, Mr., 346
Honoria, 335, 342, 344, 345
Honorius, 317, 321, 323, 324, 341, 342
Hortensius, 19
Hostilianus, 237
Huns, the, 344
Ifland, Dr., 317
Imperator, the title, 9
Jerome, St., 267, 279
Jerusalem, 159, 160
Josephus, 112, 130, 132
Jovian, 306, 307
Julia, daughter of Octavian, 23–30
-- the younger, 33–4
-- daughter of Drusus, 66–7
-- daughter of Titus, 131
-- Livilla, 65
Julian, the Emperor, 140, 166, 172, 227, 282, 284, 288, 290, 296–305
Julianus, Didius, 192, 193
Julius, son of Julia, 32–3
Junia Claudilla, 49
-- Silana, 98
Junius Silanus, 49, 50
Justina, Aviana, 311, 312–17, 318, 319
Juvenal, 137
Kornemann, Professor, 45
Lactantius, 258, 261, 272
Læta, 313
Lætus, 188, 190, 193
Lake Agrippa, 114
Lampridius, 200, 203, 224, 225
Leontius, 296
Lepida, Domitia, 68, 89
-- wife of Galba, 123
Lepidus, 54
-- the Triumvir, 6, 8, 17
Libanius, 296
Liberius, 296
Licinius, 262, 263, 273–5
-- the younger, 276, 278
Livia, 6, 8, 9, 10, 15–17, 19–21, 24–44
-- Medullina Camilla, 61
-- Orestilla, 52
Liviada, 20
Livilla, 41, 47, 54
Livius Drusus Claudianus, 9
Locusta, 90, 96
Lollia Paulina, 52, 55, 80, 83–4
Lollius, 32
Londinium, 155
Lucilla, 175, 179, 183, 184
Lucius Domitius = Nero
Lucullan Gardens, the, 71, 72, 75
Lugdunum, 54
Lutetia, 154
Luxury at Rome, 16, 34, 54
Lycisca, 69
Macellum, 290
Macrinus, Opilius, 208, 209–12
-- Sallustius, 225
Macro, 50–1
Macrobius, 27
Mæcenas, 12, 18
Mæonius, 241, 242
Mæsa, Julia, 200, 202, 211–19
Magnentius, 289, 290, 292
Malala, John, 337
Mamæa, Julia, 211, 219, 222–31
Marcella, 24, 25, 26
Marcellinus, Ammianus, 234, 284, 291, 294, 299, 300, 311
-- Chronicle of, 319, 337
Marcellus, 24, 25
Marcia, 185–9, 193
Marcian, 339, 347
Marciana, 139, 140, 144
-- Paccia, 196
Marcus Aurelius, 162, 164, 167, 169–78
Mardonius, 296
Maria, 324
Marina, 307
-- daughter of Eudoxia, 331
Mariniana, 238
Marius, 243
-- Maximus, 173, 175, 176
Mark Antony, 6, 8, 10, 12, 13, 18, 19
Marriage, Roman, 268–9
Marsa, 330
Matidia, the elder, 139, 144, 148
-- the younger, 139
Maxentius, 261, 273
Maximian, 254, 261, 271–2
Maximin, 261, 262, 263
Maximinus, 229, 230, 232–5
Maximus, 314, 315, 316, 318
-- Petronius, 346–7
-- Pupienus, 235, 236
Memnia, 226
Mercurius, 295
Merivale, 2, 32, 37, 41, 43, 73, 90, 141, 147, 172
Messalina, Statilia, 118, 119, 121, 123
-- Valeria, 60, 61, 62, 63–78, 141
Metaphrastes, 320
Milvian Bridge, 29
Minervina, 274
Mnester, 70, 76
Montius, 292
Naissos, 266
Narcissus, 63, 68, 75, 76, 79, 87, 92
Negri, Gaetano, 298
Nepos, Julius, 349
Nepotian, 290
Nero, son of Agrippina the elder, 47
-- the Emperor, 80, 81, 85, 86, 89, 93, 95, 96–121
Nerva, M. C., 135
Nicæa, Council of, 277
Nicomedia, palace of, 255
Niger, 196, 197
Nigrinus, 153
Nîmes, mausoleum at, 148
Numerianus, 252, 253
Octavia, 13, 18, 24, 26, 33
-- daughter of Messalina, 65, 76, 80, 86, 95, 96, 97, 99, 105, 108–11
Octavian, 6, 7, 8, 9, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17–21, 24–36
Odenathus, 240–2
Odoacer, 350
Olybrius, 349
Oppian Law, the, 5
Orbiana, Sallustia Barbia, 225
Orestes, 349
Orosius, 267, 279
Orphanages, 144, 168, 177
Ostia, 74
Otho, Salvius, 101, 106, 108, 110, 123
Paganism, insincerity of, 216
Pagans, origin of name, 314
Pagi, 256
Palatine Hill, the, 7, 10, 19
Palladium, the, 216
Pallas, 63, 80, 83, 85, 96
Palma, 153
Palmyra, 240, 241, 246
Pandateria, 30, 47, 111
Papianilla, 348
Paris in the fourth century, 302
Paris, the actor, 98, 132
Paula, Julia Cornelia, 216
Paulina, 234
Paulinus, 333, 334, 336
Paulus, 295
Perennis, 185
Pertinax, 189–91
Petronia, 124
Petronius, 307
Philanthropy in the Roman world, 144, 168, 177
Philip, the Emperor, 236, 237
Philostorgius, 280, 287, 293
Philostratus, 202
Pipara, 239
Piso, C. C., 38, 39
Pissamena, 313
Placidia, Ælia Galla, 324, 334, 341, 342–5
-- the younger, 349
Planasia, 35
Plancina, 38, 39
Plautia Urgulanilla, 61
Plautianus, 199–201
Plautilla, 199, 201
Pliny, 9, 42, 139
Plotina, 138–48
Polemo, 166, 167
Pollio, Trebellius, 240, 247
Polybius, 63
Pompeianus, Claudius, 181, 184, 205
Pompeius Planta, 138
Pompey, 8
Poppæa, 99, 107, 108, 110–17
-- Sabina, 72, 107
Poppæus Sabinus, 107
Porphyry of Gaza, 329
Prætorian Guards, the, 50, 58, 61, 119, 227
Prisca, 256, 257, 259, 260, 261–4
Probus, 251
Procopius, 308–9
Puech, Professor, 329, 332
Puellæ Faustinianæ, 168, 177
Pulcheria, 317, 328, 332–9
Puteoli, 53
Pyrallis, 55
Pythagoras, 114
Quadratus, 184, 185
Quietus, Lusius, 152, 153
Quintilius, 245
Religion at Rome, 216
Renan, 136, 172
Ricimer, 348, 349
Rome, burning of, 114
Romula, 256, 258
Rostra, the, 29
Rubellius Plautus, 98
Rufinus, 325, 326, 327
Rufus Crispinus, 108
Sabina, 139, 144, 148, 149–61, 202
Sabinus, 131
Sacred Way, the, 8
Sallustius, 307
Salona, 260
Salonina, Cornelia, 239, 244
Saloninus, 242
Sapor, 240, 247
Saturninus, 337
Scantilla, Manlia, 192, 193
Schultz, O., 45
Scotland, 203
Scribonia, 12, 13, 14, 22
Seeck, Dr., 279
Sejanus, 41, 42, 47
Selinus, 146
Senaculum, 214
Senate, the Roman, 43, 93, 103, 111, 119, 153
Seneca, 31, 66, 77, 85, 93, 95, 96, 97, 107, 108, 110, 115
Serena, 324
-- St., 256
Servianus, Ursus, 149, 162
Serviez, Roergas de, 3, 4, 32, 33, 67, 87, 90, 112, 146, 153, 166, 207
Servilia, 11
Severa, Julia Aquilia, 216
-- Marcia Otacilia, 237
-- Valeria, 307, 311, 312
Severian, 263
-- Bishop, 330
Severina, Ulpia, 250
Severus, 261
-- deacon, 337
-- Livius, 348
-- Septimus, 193, 194–204
Sextilia, 124, 125, 126, 127
Sextus Pompeius, 10, 12, 17
Sidonius Apollinaris, 280, 348
Silanus, Junius, 95
-- Lucius, 95
Silius, Caius, 72, 73, 74, 76
Silvagni, V., 3
Simeon Stylites, 338, 348
Sinuessa, 90
Smyrna, 158
Soæmias, Julia, 200, 203, 211, 212, 213, 214–21
Socrates, the historian, 312
Sosibius, 71, 72
Sozomen, 276
Spartianus, 146, 155, 157, 160
Sporus, 118, 121
Stahr, A., 3
Stilicho, 324, 325
Stoicism, 66, 135, 144, 162, 164, 168
Subura, 6, 9, 21, 29
Suetonius, 31, 40, 42, 45, 48, 53, 55, 64, 88, 90, 134, 155
Suidas, 296
Suillius, 71
Sulpicianus, 192
Sura, 142, 150
Syria and Rome, 222
Tacitus, 9, 14, 31, 41, 43, 44, 45, 46, 64, 72, 79, 80, 83, 90, 95,
99, 111, 125
-- the Emperor, 251
Tarvey, Mr., 32
Tertulla, Arricidia, 129
Tertullus, 171
Tetricus, 243, 249
Theatre, the Roman, 58, 109
Thebes, 159, 160
Theoclea, 230
Theodora, Flavia Maximiana, 270, 283
Theodoret, 310, 316
Theodosius, 313, 314, 316, 317–21
-- II, 328, 332–8
Theophanes, 336, 337
Theophilus, 304, 330
Thermantia, A. M., 324
Thessalonica, massacre of, 319
Thirty Tyrants, the, 239
Tiberius Claudius Germanicus, 65
-- -- Nero, 10, 11, 14, 15, 40
-- the Emperor, 10, 24, 25, 28, 31, 32, 34, 35, 36–42, 46–9
Tigellinus, 110, 116
Tillemont, 307, 312, 324, 326, 330, 331
Timesitheus, 236
Timolaus, 241
Titiana, Flavia, 190, 191
Titus, 129, 131
-- Ollius, 107
Tivoli, 156, 160
Toledo, Council of, 269
Trajan, 135, 138, 139–46
Tranquillina, Furia Sabina, 236
Triaria, 127
Triumphal procession, 7
Ulpianus, Domitius, 227, 228
Urbica, Magnia, 253
Urgulania, 40, 61
Vaballath, 241, 242
Valens, 307, 308, 309, 310
Valentinian, 307, 311–13
-- II, 313, 318, 319, 321
-- III, 335, 342, 343, 346
Valeria, 256, 257, 259, 260, 261–4
Valerianus, 238
Valerius Messala Barbatus, 62
Vandals, the, 344, 347
Velabrum, 6, 7, 9
Verina, 349
Vespasian, 127, 128–9, 138
Vestal Virgins, 132
Vestinus, Atticus, 118
Vetranio, 289
Vettius Valens, 74, 76
Vibidia, 75
Vice in the Roman Empire, 136–7, 144
Victor, Aurelius, 161, 165, 200, 207, 257, 268, 279, 284
-- -- “Epitome,” 148, 206, 280, 312
Victoria, 242–4
Victorinus, 243
Vindex, 120
Vipsania, 28
Vitellius, the elder, 56, 71, 75, 80, 82, 124
-- the Emperor, 124–8
Volusianus, 237
Vopiscus, 245, 247
Wilkins, M. G., 197, 207
Woman, position of, at Rome, 4–6
Xenophon, 91
Zabda, 246
Zenobia, 240, 241, 242, 244–50
Zonaras, 268, 272, 276, 303
Zosimus, 234, 245, 248, 249, 257, 267, 272, 276, 280, 284, 298, 316,
320
PRINTED BY
HAZELL, WATSON AND VINEY, LD.,
LONDON AND AYLESBURY.
* * * * * *
Transcriber’s note:
Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a
predominant preference was found in the original book; otherwise they
were not changed.
Simple typographical errors were corrected; unpaired quotation
marks were remedied when the change was obvious, and otherwise left
unpaired.
Footnotes, originally at the bottoms of pages, have been collected and
moved to precede the Index.
The index was not checked for proper alphabetization or correct page
references.
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