TIBERIUS CLAUDIUS DRUSUS CAESAR (“The Life of Claudius”)
1. Livia having married Augustus when she was pregnant was, within three months
afterwards, delivered of Drusus, the father of Claudius Caesar, who had at first the
praenomen of Decimus, but afterwards that of Nero; and it was suspected that he was
begotten in adultery by his step-father [Augustus]. The following verse, however, was
immediately in every one's mouth:—
Nine months for common births
the fates decree;
But, for the great, reduce the term
to three.
This Drusus, during the time of his being quaestor and praetor, commanded in the
Rhaetian and German wars, and was the first of all the Roman generals who navigated the
Northern Ocean. He made likewise some prodigious canals beyond the Rhine, which to this
day are called by his name. He overthrew the enemy in several battles and drove them far
back into the depths of the desert. Nor did he desist from pursuing them, until an
apparition, in the form of a barbarian woman, of more than human size, appeared to him,
and, in the Latin tongue, forbade him to proceed any further. For these achievements he
had the honour of an ovation and the triumphal ornaments. After his praetorship, he
immediately entered on the office of consul, and returning to Germany, died of disease, in
the summer encampment, which thence obtained the name of " The Unlucky Camp."
His corpse was carried to Rome by the principal persons of the several municipalities and
colonies upon the road, being met and received by the recorders of each place, and buried
in the Campus Martius. In honour of his memory, the army erected a monument, round which
the soldiers used, annually, upon a certain day, to march in solemn procession, and
persons deputed from the several cities of Gaul performed religious rites. The senate
likewise, among various other honours, decreed for him a triumphal arch of marble, with
trophies, in the Appian Way, and gave the cognomen of Germanicus to him and his posterity.
In him the civil and military virtues were equally displayed; for, besides his victories,
he gained from the enemy the Spolia Opima, and frequently marked out the German
chiefs in the midst of their army, and encountered them in single combat at the utmost
hazard of his life. He likewise often declared that he would, some time or other, if
possible, restore the ancient government. On this account, I suppose, some have ventured
to affirm that Augustus was jealous of him and recalled him; and because he made no haste
to comply with the order, took him off by poison. This I mention, that I may not be guilty
of any omission, more than because I think it either true or probable, since Augustus
loved him so much when living that he always, in his wills, made him joint-heir with his
sons, as he once declared in the senate; and upon his decease extolled him in a speech to
the people, to that degree, that he prayed the gods “to make his Caesars like him,
and to grant himself as honourable an exit out of this world as they had given him.”
And not satisfied with inscribing upon his tomb an epitaph in verse composed by
himself, he wrote likewise the history of his life in prose. He had by the younger Antonia
several children, but left behind him only three, namely, Germanicus, Livilla and
Claudius.
2. Claudius was born at Lyons, in the consulship of Jullus Antonius and Fabius
Africanus, upon the first of August, the very day upon which an altar was first dedicated
there to Augustus. He was named Tiberius Claudius Drusus, but soon afterwards, upon the
adoption his elder brother into the Julian family, he assumed the cognomen of Germanicus.
He was left an infant by his father, and during almost the whole of his minority, and for
some time after he attained the age of manhood, was afflicted with a variety of obstinate
disorders, insomuch that his mind and body being greatly impaired, he was, even after his
arrival at years of maturity, never thought sufficiently qualified for any public
or private employment. He was, therefore, during a long time, and even after the
expiration of his minority, under the direction of a pedagogue, who, he complains in a
certain memoir, “was a barbarous wretch, and formerly superintendent of the
mule-drivers, who was selected for his governor on purpose to correct him severely on
every trifling occasion." On account of this crazy constitution of body and mind, at
the spectacle of gladiators, which he gave the people, jointly with his brother, in honour
of his father’s memory, he presided, muffled up in a pallium—a new
fashion. When he assumed the toga of manhood, he was carried in a litter, at midnight, to
the Capitol, without the usual ceremony.
3. He applied himself, however, from an early age, with great assiduity to the
study of the liberal sciences, and frequently published specimens of his skill in each of
them. But never, with all his endeavours, could he attain to any public post in the
government, or afford any hope of arriving at distinction thereafter. His mother, Antonia,
frequently called him “an abortion of a man, that had only been begun, but
never finished, by nature.” And when she would upbraid any one with dullness,
she said, " He was a greater fool than her son, Claudius.” His
grandmother, Augusta, always treated him with the utmost contempt, very rarely spoke to
him, and when she did admonish him upon any occasion, it was in writing, very briefly and
severely, or by messengers. His sister, Livilla, upon hearing that he was about to be
created emperor, openly and loudly expressed her indignation that the Roman people should
experience a fate so severe and so much below their grandeur. To exhibit the opinion, both
favourable and otherwise, entertained concerning him by Augustus, his great-uncle, I have
here subjoined some extracts from the letters of that emperor.
4. " I have had some conversation with Tiberius, according to your desire, my dear
Livia, as to what must be done with your grandson, Tiberius, at the games of Mars.
We are both agreed in this, that, once for all, we ought to determine what course to take
with him. For if he be really sound and, so to speak, quite right in his intellects, why
should we hesitate to promote him by the same steps and degrees we did his brother ? But
if we find him below par, and deficient both in body and mind, we must beware of giving
occasion for him and ourselves to be laughed at by the world, which is ready enough to
make such things the subject of mirth and derision. For we shall be never easy, if we are
always to be debating upon every occasion of this kind, without settling, in the first
instance, whether he be really capable of public offices or not. With regard to what you
consult me about at the present moment, I am not against his superintending the feast of
the priests, in the games of Mars, if he will suffer himself to be governed by his
kinsman, Silanus's son, that he may do nothing to make the people stare and laugh at him.
But I do not approve of his witnessing the Circensian games from the Pulvinar. He
will be there exposed to view in the very front of the theatre. Nor do I like that he
should go to the Alban Mount, or be at Rome during the Latin festival. For if he be
capable of attending his brother to the mount, why is he not made prefect of the city ?
Thus, my dear Livia, you have my thoughts upon the matter. In my opinion, we ought to
settle this affair once for all, that we may not be always in suspense between hope and
fear. You may, if you think proper, give your kinsman Antonia this part of my letter to
read." In another letter, he writes as follows: " I shall invite the
youth, Tiberius, every day during your absence, to supper, that he may not sup alone with
his friends Sulpicius and Athenodorus. I wish the poor creature was more cautious and
attentive in the choice of some one, whose manners, air, and gait might be proper for his
imitation:
In things of
consequence he sadly fails.
Where his mind does not run astray, he discovers a noble disposition." In a
third letter, he says, “Let me die, my dear Livia, if I am not astonished, that the
declamation of your grandson, Tiberius, should please me; for how he who talks so ill,
should be able to declaim so clearly and properly, I cannot imagine." There is no
doubt but Augustus, after this, came to a resolution upon the subject, and, accordingly,
left him invested with no other honour than that of the Augural priesthood; naming him
amongst the heirs of the third degree, who were but distantly allied to his family, for a
sixth part of his estate only, with a legacy of no more than eight hundred thousand
sesterces.
5. Upon his requesting some office in the state, his uncle Tiberius granted him
the honorary appendages of the consulship, and when he pressed for a legitimate
appointment, the emperor wrote word back, that "he sent him forty gold pieces for his
expenses, during the festivals of the Saturnalia and Sigillaria." Upon this,
laying aside all hope of advancement, he resigned himself entirely to an indolent life;
living in great privacy, one while in his gardens, or a villa which he had near the city;
another while in Campania, where he passed his time in the lowest society; by which means,
besides his former character of a dull, heavy fellow, he acquired that of a drunkard and
gamester.
6. Notwithstanding this sort of life, much respect was shown him both in public
and private. The equestrian order twice made choice of him to intercede on their
behalf; once to obtain from the consuls the favour of bearing on their shoulders the
corpse of Augustus to Rome, and a second time to congratulate him upon the death of
Sejanus. When he entered the theatre, they used to rise, and put off their cloaks. The
senate likewise decreed, that he should be added to the number of the Augustal college of
priests, who were chosen by lot; and soon afterwards, when his house was burnt down, that
it should be rebuilt at the public charge; and that he should have the privilege of giving
his vote amongst the men of consular rank. This decree was, however, repealed; Tiberius
insisting to have him excused on account of his imbecility, and promising to make good his
loss at his own expense. But at his death, he named him in his will, amongst his third
heirs, for a third part of his estate; leaving him besides a legacy of two millions of
sesterces, and expressly recommending him to the armies, the senate and people of Rome,
amongst his other relations.
7. At last Gaius [Caligula], his brother's son, upon his advancement to the empire,
endeavouring to gain the affections of the public by all the arts of popularity, Claudius
also was admitted to public offices, and held the consulship jointly with his nephew for
two months. As he was entering the Forum for the first time with the fasces, an eagle
which was flying that way, alighted upon his right shoulder. A second consulship was also
allotted him, to commence at the expiration of the fourth year. He sometimes presided at
the public spectacles, as the representative of Caius; being always, on those occasions,
complimented with the acclamations of the people, wishing him all happiness, sometimes
under the title of the emperor's uncle, and sometimes under that of Germanicus's brother.
8. Still he was subjected to many slights. If at any time he came in late to
supper, he was obliged to walk round the room some time before he could get a place at
table. When he indulged himself with sleep after eating, which was a common practice with
him, the company used to throw olive-stones and dates at him. And the buffoons who
attended would wake him, as if it were only in jest, with a cane or a whip. Sometimes they
would put slippers upon his hands, as he lay snoring, that he might, upon awaking, rub his
face with them.
9. He was not only exposed to contempt, but sometimes likewise to considerable
danger: first, in his consulship; for, having been too remiss in providing and erecting
the statues of Gaius's brothers, Nero and Drusus, he was very near being deprived of his
office; and afterwards he was continually harassed with informations against him by one or
other, sometimes even by his own domestics. When the conspiracy of Lepidus and Gaetulicus
was discovered, being sent with some other deputies into Germany, to congratulate the
emperor upon the occasion, he was in danger of his life; Gaius being greatly enraged, and
loudly complaining, that his uncle was sent to him, as if he was a boy who wanted a
governor. Some even say, that he was thrown into a river, in his traveling dress. From
this period, he voted in the senate always the last of the members of consular rank; being
called upon after the rest, on purpose to disgrace him. A charge for the forgery of a will
was also allowed to be prosecuted, though he had only signed it as a witness. At last,
being obliged to pay eight millions of sesterces on entering upon a new office of
priesthood, he was reduced to such straits in his private affairs, that in order to
discharge his bond to the treasury, he was under the necessity of exposing to sale his
whole estate, by an order of the prefects.
10. Having spent the greater part of his life under these and the like
circumstances, he came at last to the empire in the fiftieth year of his age, by a very
surprising turn of fortune. Being, as well as the rest, prevented from approaching Gaius
by the conspirators, who dispersed the crowd, under the pretext of his desiring to be
private, he retired into an apartment called the Hermaeum ; and soon afterwards, terrified
by the report of Gaius being slain, he crept into an adjoining balcony, where he hid
himself behind the hangings of the door. A common soldier, who happened to pass that way,
spying his feet, and desirous to discover who he was, pulled him out; when immediately
recognizing him, he threw himself in a great fright at his feet, and saluted him by the
title of emperor. He then conducted him to his fellow-soldiers, who were all in a great
rage, and irresolute what they should do. They put him into a litter, and as the slaves of
the palace had all fled, took their turns in carrying him on their shoulders, and brought
him into the camp, sad and trembling; the people who met him lamenting his situation, as
if the poor innocent was being carried to execution. Being received within the ramparts,
he continued all night with the sentries on guard, recovered somewhat from his fright, but
in no great hopes of the succession. For the consuls, with the senate and civic troops,
had possessed themselves of the Forum and Capitol, with the determination to assert the
public liberty; and he being sent for likewise, by a tribune of the people, to the
senate-house, to give his advice upon the present juncture of affairs, returned answer,
" I am under constraint, and cannot possibly come." The day afterwards,
the senate being dilatory in their proceedings, and worn out by divisions amongst
themselves, while the people who surrounded the senate-house shouted that they would have
one master, naming Claudius, he suffered the soldiers assembled under arms to swear
allegiance to him, promising them fifteen thousand sesterces a man; he being the first of
the Caesars who purchased the submission of the soldiers with money.
11. Having thus established himself in power, his first object was to abolish all
remembrance of the two preceding days, in which a revolution in the state had been
canvassed. Accordingly, he passed an act of perpetual oblivion and pardon for everything
said or done caring that time; and this he faithfully observed, with the exception only of
putting to death a few tribunes and centurions concerned in the conspiracy against Caius,
both as an example, and because he understood that they had also planned his own death. He
now turned his thoughts towards paying respect to the memory of his relations. His most
solemn and usual oath was, “By Augustus." He prevailed upon the senate to decree
divine honours to his grandmother Livia, with a chariot in the Circensian procession drawn
by elephants, as had been appointed for Augustus, and public offerings to the shades of
his parents. Besides which, he instituted Circensian games for his father, to be
celebrated every year, upon his birth day, and, for his mother, a chariot to be drawn
through the circus; with the title of Augusta, which had been refused by his grandmother.
To the memory of his brother, to which, upon all occasions, he showed a great regard, he
gave a Greek comedy, to be exhibited in the public diversions at Naples, and awarded the
crown for it, according to the sentence of the judges in that solemnity. Nor did he omit
to make honourable and grateful mention of Mark Antony; declaring by a proclamation,
“That he the more earnestly insisted upon the observation of his father Drusus's
birth-day, because it was like wise that of his grandfather Antony." He completed the
marble arch near Pompey's theatre, which had formerly been decreed by the senate in honour
of Tiberius, but which had been neglected. And though he canceled all the acts of Gaius,
yet he forbade the day of his assassination, notwithstanding it was that of his own
accession to the empire, to be reckoned amongst the festivals.
12. But with regard to his own aggrandizement, he was sparing and modest, declining
the name of emperor, and refusing all excessive honours. He celebrated the marriage of his
daughter and the birth-day of a grandson with great privacy, at home. He recalled none of
those who had been banished, without a decree of the senate: and requested of them
permission for the prefect and the military tribunes of the praetorian guards to attend
him in the senate-house; and also that they would be pleased to bestow upon his
procurators judicial authority in the provinces. He asked of the consuls likewise
the privilege of holding fairs upon his private estate. He frequently assisted the
magistrates in the trial of causes, as one of their assessors. And when they gave
public spectacles, he would rise up with the rest of the spectators, and salute them both
by words and gestures. When the tribunes of the people came to him while he was on the
tribunal, he excused himself, because, on account of the crowd, he could not hear them
unless they stood. In a short time, by this conduct, he wrought himself so much into the
favour and affection of the public, that when, upon his going to Ostia, a report was
spread in the city that he had been waylaid and slain, the people never ceased cursing the
soldiers for traitors, and the senate as parricides, until one or two persons, and
presently after several others, were brought by the magistrates upon the rostra, who
assured them that he was alive, and not far from the city, on his way home.
13. Conspiracies, however, were formed against him, not only by individuals
separately, but by a faction; and at last his government was disturbed with a civil war. A
low fellow was found with a poniard about him, near his chamber, at midnight. Two men of
the equestrian order were discovered waiting for him in the streets, armed with a pike and
a huntsman's dagger; one of them intending to attack him as he came out of the theatre,
and the other as he was sacrificing in the temple of Mars. Gallus Asinius and Statilius
Corvinus, grandsons of the two orators, Pollio and Messala, formed a conspiracy against
him, in which they engaged many of his freedmen and slaves. Furius Camillus Scribonianus,
his legate in Dalmatia, broke into rebellion, but was reduced in the space of five days;
the legions which he had seduced from their oath of fidelity relinquishing their purpose,
upon an alarm occasioned by ill omens. For when orders were given them to march, to meet
their new emperor, the eagles could not be decorated, nor the standards pulled out of the
ground, whether it was by accident, or a divine interposition.
14. Besides his former consulship, he held the office afterwards four times; the
first two successively, but the following, after an interval of four years each; the
last for six months, the others for two; and the third, upon his being chosen in the room
of a consul who died; which had never been done by any of the emperors before him. Whether
he was consul or out of office, he constantly attended the courts for the administration
of justice, even upon such days as were solemnly observed as days of rejoicing in his
family, or by his friends; and sometimes upon the public festivals of ancient institution.
Nor did he always adhere strictly to the letter of the laws, but overruled the
rigour or lenity of many of their enactments, according to his sentiments of justice and
equity. For where persons lost their suits by insisting upon more than appeared to be
their due, before the judges of private causes, he granted them the indulgence of a second
trial. And with regard to such as were convicted of any great delinquency, he even
exceeded the punishment appointed by law, and condemned them to be exposed to wild beasts.
15. But in hearing and determining causes, he exhibited a strange inconsistency
of temper, being at one time circumspect and sagacious, at another inconsiderate and rash,
and sometimes frivolous and like one out of his mind. In correcting the roll of judges, he
struck off the name of one who, concealing the privilege his children gave him to be
excused from serving, had answered to his name, as too eager for the office. Another who
was summoned before him in a cause of his own, but alleged that the affair did not
properly come under the emperor's cognizance, but that of the ordinary judges, he ordered
to plead the cause himself immediately before him, and show in a case of his own, how
equitable a judge he would prove in that of other persons. A woman refusing to acknowledge
her own son, and there being no clear proof on either side, he obliged her to confess the
truth, by ordering her to marry the young man. He was much inclined to determine
causes in favour of the parties who appeared, against those who did not, without inquiring
whether their absence was occasioned by their own fault or by real necessity. On
proclamation of a man's being convicted of forgery, and that he ought to have his hand cut
off, he insisted that an executioner should be immediately sent for, with a Spanish sword
and a block. A person being prosecuted for falsely assuming the citizenship, and a
frivolous dispute arising between the advocates in the cause, whether he ought to make his
appearance in the Roman or Grecian dress, to show his impartiality, he commanded him to
change his clothes several times according to the character he assumed in the accusation
or defense. An anecdote is related of him, and believed to be true, that, in a particular
cause he delivered his sentence in writing thus: " I am in favour of those who have
spoken the truth." By this he so much forfeited the good opinion of the world, that
he was everywhere and openly despised. A person making an excuse for the non-appearance of
a witness whom he had sent for from the provinces, declared it was impossible for him to
appear, concealing the reason for some time: at last, after several interrogatories were
put to him on the subject, he answered, "The man is dead;" to which Claudius
replied, " I think that is a sufficient excuse." Another thanking him for
suffering a person who was prosecuted to make his defense by counsel, added, " And
yet it is no more than what is usual." I have likewise heard some old men say, that
the advocates used to abuse his patience so grossly, that they would not only call him
back, as he was quitting the tribunal, but would seize him by the hem of his toga, and
sometimes catch him by the heels, to make him stay. That such behaviour, however strange,
is not incredible, will appear from this anecdote. Some obscure Greek, who was a
litigant, had an altercation with him, in which he called out, " You are an old
fool." It is certain that a Roman knight, who was prosecuted by unscrupulous
enemies on a false charge of obscenity with women, observing that common strumpets were
summoned against him and allowed to give evidence, upbraided Claudius in very harsh and
severe terms with his folly and cruelty, and threw his style, and some books which he had
in his hands, in his face, with such violence as to wound him severely in the cheek.
16. He likewise assumed the censorship, which had been discontinued since the
time that Paulus and Plancus had jointly held it. But this also he administered very
unequally, and with a strange variety of humour and conduct. In his review of the knights,
he passed over, without any mark of disgrace, a profligate young man, only because his
father spoke of him in the highest terms; “for," said he, " his
father is his proper censor.” Another, who was infamous for debauching youths
and for adultery, he only admonished "to indulge his youthful inclinations more
sparingly, or at least more cautiously ;'' adding, "why must I know what mistress you
keep?" When, at the request of his friends, he had taken off a mark of infamy which
he had set upon one knight's name he said, “Let the blot, however, remain." He
not only struck out of the list of judges, but likewise deprived of Roman citizenship, an
illustrious man of the highest provincial rank in Greece, because he was ignorant of
the Latin language. Nor in this review did he suffer any one to give an account of his
conduct by an advocate, but obliged each man to speak for himself in the best way he
could. He disgraced many, and some that little expected it, and for a reason entirely new,
namely, for going out of Italy without his license; and one likewise, for having in his
province, been the familiar companion of a king; observing, that, in former times,
Rabirius Postumus had been prosecuted for treason, although he only went after Ptolemy to
Alexandria for the purpose of securing payment of a debt. Having tried to brand with
disgrace several others, he, to his own greater shame, found them generally innocent,
through the negligence of the persons employed to inquire into their characters; those
whom he charged with living in celibacy, with want of children, or estate, proving
themselves to be husbands, parents, and in affluent circumstances. One of the
knights who was charged with stabbing himself, laid his bosom bare, to show that there was
not the least mark of violence upon his body. The following incidents were remarkable in
his censorship. He ordered a chariot, plated with silver, and of very sumptuous
workmanship, which was exposed for sale in the Sigillaria, to be purchased, and broken in
pieces before his eyes. He published twenty proclamations in one day, in one of which he
advised the people, "Since the vintage was very plentiful, to have their casks well
secured at the bung with pitch :" and in another, he told them, “that nothing
would sooner cure the bite of a viper, than the sap of the yew-tree."
17. He undertook only one expedition, and that was of short duration. The
triumphal ornaments decreed him by the senate, he considered as beneath the imperial
dignity, and was therefore resolved to have the honour of a real triumph. For this
purpose, he selected Britain, which had never been attempted by any one since Julius
Caesar, and was then chafing with rage, because the Romans would not give up some
deserters. Accordingly, he set sail from Ostia, but was twice very near being wrecked by
the furious north-wester, upon the coast of Liguria, and near the islands called
Stoechades. Having marched by land from Marseilles to Boulogne, he thence passed over to
Britain, and part of the island submitting to him, within a few days after his arrival,
without battle or bloodshed, he returned to Rome in less than six months from the time of
his departure, and triumphed in the most solemn manner; to witness which, he not only gave
leave to governors of provinces to come to Rome, but even to some of the exiles.
Among the spoils taken from the enemy, he fixed upon the pediment of his house on the
Palatine, a naval crown, in token of his having passed, and, as it were, conquered the
Ocean, and had it suspended near the civic crown which was there before. Messalina,
his wife, followed his chariot in a covered litter. Those who had attained the honour of
triumphal ornaments in the same war, rode behind; the rest followed on foot, wearing the
robe with the broad stripes. Crassus Frugi was mounted upon a horse richly caparisoned, in
a robe embroidered with palm leaves, because this was the second time of his obtaining
that honour.
18. He paid particular attention to the care of the city, and to have it well supplied
with provisions. A dreadful fire happening in the Aemiliana, which lasted some time,
he passed two nights in the Diribitorium, and the soldiers and gladiators not being in
sufficient numbers to extinguish it, he caused the magistrates to summon the people out of
all the streets in the city, to their assistance. Placing bags of money before him, he
encouraged them to do their utmost, declaring, that he would reward every one on the spot,
according to their exertions. During a scarcity of provisions, occasioned by bad crops for
several successive years, he was stopped in the middle of the forum by the mob, who so
abused him, at the same time pelting him with fragments of bread that he had some
difficulty in escaping into the palace by a back door. He therefore used all possible
means to bring provisions to the city, even in winter. He proposed to the merchants a sure
profit, by indemnifying them against any loss that might befall them by storms at sea; and
granted great privileges to those who built ships for that traffic.
19. To a citizen of Rome he gave an exemptions from the penalty of
the Papia-Poppaean law to one who had only the Latin rights of citizenship, and to women
the rights which by law belonged to those who had four children: which enactments are in
force to this day.
20. He completed some important public works which, though, not
numerous, were very useful. The principal were an aqueduct, which had been begun by
Gaius; an outlet for the discharge of the waters of the Fucine lake, and the harbour of
Ostia; although he knew that Augustus had refused to comply with the repeated application
of the Marsians for one of these, and that the other had been several times intended by
Julius Caesar, but as often abandoned on account of the difficulty of its execution. He
brought to the city the cool and plentiful springs of the Claudian water, one of which is
called Caeruleus, and the other Curtius and Albudignus, as likewise the river of the New
Anio, in a stone canal; and distributed them into many magnificent reservoirs. The canal
from the Fucine lake was undertaken as much for the sake of profit, as for the honour of
the enterprise; for there were parties who offered to drain it at their own expense, on
condition of their having a grant of the land laid dry. With great difficulty he completed
a canal three miles in length, partly by cutting through, and partly by tunneling, a
mountain; thirty thousand men being constantly employed in the work for eleven years.
He formed the harbour at Ostia, by carrying out circular piers on the right and on
the left, with a mole protecting, in deep water, the entrance of the port. To secure
the foundation of this mole, he sunk the vessel in which the great obelisk had been
brought from Egypt; and built upon piles a very lofty tower, in imitation of the
Pharos at Alexandria, on which lights were burnt to direct mariners in the night.
21. He often distributed largesses of corn and money among the people, and
entertained them with a great variety of magnificent spectacles, not only such as
were usual, and in the accustomed places, but some of new invention, and others revived
from ancient models and exhibited in places where nothing of the kind had been ever before
attempted. In the games which he presented at the dedication of Pompey's theatre, which
had been burnt down, and was rebuilt by him, he presided upon a tribunal erected for him
in the orchestra; having first paid his devotions, in the temple above, and then coming
down through the tiers of seats, while all the people kept their seats in profound
silence. He likewise exhibited the secular games, giving out that Augustus had anticipated
the regular period; though he himself says in his history, "That they had been
omitted before the age of Augustus, who had calculated the years with great exactness, and
again brought them to their regular period." The crier was therefore ridiculed,
when he invited people in the usual form, " to games which no person had ever before
seen, nor ever would again; " when many were still living who had already seen them;
and some of the performers who had formerly acted in them, were now again brought upon the
stage. He likewise frequently celebrated the Circensian games in the Vatican, sometimes
exhibiting a hunt of wild beasts, after every five races. He embellished the Circus
Maximus with marble barriers, and gilded goals, which before were of common stone and
wood, and assigned proper places for the senators, who were used to sit promiscuously with
the other spectators. Besides the chariot-races, he exhibited there the Trojan game, and
wild beasts from Africa, which were encountered by a troop of praetorian cavalry, with
their tribunes, and even the prefect at the head of them; besides Thessalian horsemen, who
drive fierce bulls round the circus, leap upon their backs when they have exhausted their
fury, and drag them by the horns to the ground. He gave exhibitions of gladiators in
several places, and of various kinds; one yearly on the anniversary of his accession in
the praetorian camp, but without any hunting, or the usual apparatus; another in the
Saepta as usual; and in the same place, another out of the common way, and of a few days'
continuance only, which he called Sportula; because when he was going to present
it, he informed the people by proclamation, "that he invited them to a late supper,
got up in haste, and without ceremony." Nor did he lend himself to any kind of public
diversion with more freedom and hilarity; insomuch that he would hold out his left hand,
and joined by the common people, count upon his fingers aloud the gold pieces presented to
those who came off conquerors. He would earnestly invite the company to be merry;
sometimes calling them his "masters," with a mixture of insipid, far-fetched
jests. Thus when the people called for Palumbus ["The Dove", a gladiator], he
said, " He would give them one when he could catch it." The following was
well-intended and well-timed; having, amidst great applause, spared a gladiator, on the
intercession of his four sons, he sent a billet immediately round the theatre, to remind
the people, " how much it behooved them to get children, since they had before them
an example how useful they had been in procuring favour and security for a
gladiator." He likewise represented in the Campus Martius, the assault and sacking of
a town, and the surrender of the British kings, presiding in his general's cloak.
Immediately before he drew off the waters from the Fucine lake, he exhibited upon it a
naval fight. But the combatants on board the fleets crying out, " Health attend you,
noble emperor! We, who are about to die, salute you; " and he replying, " Health
attend you too," they all refused to fight, as if by that response he had meant to
excuse them. Upon this, he hesitated for a time, whether he should not destroy them all
with fire and sword. At last, leaping from his seat, and running along the shore of the
lake with tottering steps, the result of his foul excesses, he, partly by fair words, and
partly by threats, persuaded them to engage. This spectacle represented an engagement
between the fleets of Sicily and Rhodes; consisting each of twelve ships of war, of three
banks of oars. The signal for the encounter was given by a silver Triton, raised by
machinery from the middle of the lake.
22. With regard to religious ceremonies, the administration of affairs both civil
and military, and the condition of all orders of the people at home and abroad, some
practices he corrected, others which had been laid aside he revived; and some regulations
he introduced which were entirely new. In appointing new priests for the several colleges,
he made no appointments without their being sworn in. When an earthquake happened in the
city, he never failed to summon the people together by the praetor, and appoint holidays
for sacred rites. And upon the sight of any ominous bird in the City or Capitol, he issued
an order for a supplication, the words of which, by virtue of his office of high-priest,
after an exhortation from the rostra, he recited in the presence of the people, who
repeated them after him; all workmen and slaves being first ordered to withdraw.
23. The courts of judicature, whose sittings had been formerly divided between
the summer and winter months, he ordered, for the dispatch of business, to sit the whole
year round. The jurisdiction in matters of trust, which used to be granted annually by
special commission to certain magistrates, and in the city only, he made permanent, and
extended to the provincial judges likewise. He altered a clause added by Tiberius to the
Papia-Poppaean law, which inferred that men of sixty years of age were incapable of
begetting children. He ordered that, out of the ordinary course of proceeding, orphans
might have guardians appointed them by the consuls; and that those who were banished from
any province by the chief magistrate, should be debarred from coming into the City, or any
part of Italy. He inflicted on certain persons a new sort of banishment, by forbidding
them to depart further than three miles from Rome. When any affair of importance came
before the senate, he used to sit between the two consuls upon the seats of the tribunes.
He reserved to himself the power of granting license to travel out of Italy, which before
had belonged to the senate.
24. He likewise granted the consular ornaments to his Ducenarian procurators.
From those who declined the senatorial dignity, he took away the equestrian. Although he
had in the beginning of his reign declared, that he would admit no man into the senate who
was not the great-grandson of a Roman citizen, yet he gave the "broad stripe" to
the son of a freedman, on condition that he should be adopted by a Roman knight. Being
afraid, however, of incurring censure by such an act, he informed the public, that his
ancestor Appius Caecus, the censor, had elected the sons of freedmen into the senate; for
he was ignorant, it seems, that in the times of Appius, and a long while afterwards,
persons manumitted were not called freedmen, but only their sons who were free-born.
Instead of the expense which the college of quaestors was obliged to incur in paving the
high-ways, he ordered them to give the people an exhibition of gladiators; and relieving
them of their duties in Ostia and Gaul, he reinstated them in the charge of the treasury,
which, since it was taken from them, had been managed by the praetors, or those who had
formerly filled that office. He gave the triumphal ornaments to Silanus, who was betrothed
to his daughter, though he was still a boy; and in other cases, he bestowed them on so
many, and with so little reserve, that there is extant a letter unanimously addressed to
him by all the legions, begging him " to grant his consular lieutenants the triumphal
ornaments at the time of their appointment to commands, in order to prevent their seeking
occasion to engage in unnecessary wars." He decreed to Aulus Plautius the
honour of an ovation, going to meet him at his entering the city, and walking with him in
the procession to the Capitol, and back, in which he took the left side, giving him the
post of honour. He allowed Gabinius Secundus, upon his conquest of the Chauci, a German
tribe, to assume the cognomen of Chaucius.
25. His military organization of the equestrian order was this. After having the
command of a cohort, they were promoted to a wing of auxiliary horse, and subsequently
received the commission of tribune of a legion. He raised a body of militia, who were
called Supernumeraries, who, though they were a sort of soldiers, and kept in reserve, yet
received pay. He procured an act of the senate to prohibit all soldiers from attending
senators at their houses, in the way of respect and compliment. He confiscated the estates
of all freedmen who presumed to take upon themselves the equestrian rank. Such of them as
were ungrateful to their patrons, and were complained of by them, he reduced to their
former condition of slavery; and declared to their advocates, that he would always give
judgment against the freedmen, in any suit at law which the masters might happen to have
with them. Some persons having exposed their sick slaves, in a languishing condition, on
the island of Aesculapius, because of the tediousness of their cure; he declared all who
were so exposed perfectly free, never more to return, if they should recover, to their
former servitude; and that if any one chose to kill at once, rather than expose, a slave,
he should be liable for murder. He published a proclamation, forbidding all travelers to
pass through the towns of Italy any otherwise than on foot, or in a litter or chair.
He quartered a cohort of soldiers at Puteoli, and another at Ostia, to be in
readiness against any accidents from fire. He prohibited foreigners from adopting Roman
names, especially those which belonged to families. Those who falsely pretended to the
citizenship, he beheaded on the Esquiline. He gave up to the senate the provinces of
Achaia and Macedonia, which Tiberius had transferred to his own administration. He
deprived the Lycians of their liberties, as a punishment for their fatal dissensions; but
restored to the Rhodians their freedom, upon their repenting of their former misdemeanors.
He exonerated for ever the people of Troy from the payment of taxes, as being the founders
of the Roman race; reciting upon the occasion a letter in Greek, from the senate and
people of Rome to king Seleucus, in which they promised him their friendship and alliance,
provided that he would grant their kinsmen the Trojans immunity from all burdens.
He banished from Rome all the Jews, who were continually
making disturbances at the instigation of one Chrestus. He allowed the ambassadors
of the Germans to sit at the public spectacles in the seats assigned to the senators,
being induced to grant them favours by their frank and honourable conduct. For, having
been seated in the rows of benches which were common to the people, on observing the
Parthian and Armenian ambassadors sitting among the senators, they took upon themselves to
cross over into the same seats, as being, they said, no way inferior to the others, in
point either of merit or rank. The religious rites of the Druids, solemnized with such
horrid cruelties, which had only been forbidden the citizens of Rome during the reign of
Augustus, he utterly abolished among the Gauls. On the other hand, he
attempted to transfer the Eleusinian mysteries from Attica to Rome. He likewise ordered
the temple of Venus Erycina in Sicily, which was old and in a ruinous condition, to be
repaired at the expense of the Roman people. He concluded treaties with foreign princes in
the forum, with the sacrifice of a sow, and the form of words used by the heralds
in former times. But in these and other things, and indeed the greater part of his
administration, he was directed not so much by his own judgment, as by the influence of
his wives and freedmen; for the most part acting in conformity to what their interests or
fancies dictated.
26. He was twice married at a very early age, first to Aemilia Lepida, the
grand-daughter of Augustus, and afterwards to Livia Medullina, who had the cognomen of
Camilla, and was descended from the old dictator Camillus. The former he divorced while
still a virgin, because her parents had incurred the displeasure of Augustus, and he lost
the latter by sickness on the day fixed for their nuptials. He next married Plautia
Urgulanilla, whose father had enjoyed the honour of a triumph; and soon afterwards,
Aelia Paetina, the daughter of a man of consular rank. But he divorced them both;
Paetina, upon some trifling cause of disgust; and Urgulanilla, for scandalous lewdness,
and the suspicion of murder. After them he took in marriage Valeria Messalina, the
daughter of Barbatus Messala, his cousin. But finding that, besides her other shameful
debaucheries, she had even gone so far as to marry in his own absence Gaius Silius, the
settlement of her dowry being formally signed, in the presence of the augurs, he put her
to death. When summoning his praetorians to his presence, he made to them this
declaration: "As I have been so unhappy in my unions, I am resolved to continue in
future unmarried; and if I should not, I give you leave to stab me." He was,
however, unable to persist in this resolution; for he began immediately to think of
another wife; and even of taking back Paetina whom he had formerly divorced: he
thought also of Lollia Paulina, who had been married to Gaius Caesar. But being
ensnared by the arts of Agrippina, the daughter of his brother Germanicus, who took
advantage of the kisses and endearments which their near relationship admitted, to inflame
his desires, he got some one to propose at the next meeting of the senate, that they
should oblige the emperor to marry Agrippina, as a measure highly conducive to the public
interest; and that in future liberty should be given for such marriages, which until that
time had been considered incestuous. In less than twenty-four hours after this, he married
her. No person was found, however, to follow the example, excepting one freedman,
and a centurion of the first rank, at the solemnization of whose nuptials both he and
Agrippina attended.
27. He had children by three of his wives; by Urgulanilla, Drusus and Claudia; by
Paetina, Antonia; and by Messalina, Octavia, and also a son, whom at first he called
Germanicus, but afterwards Britannicus. He lost Drusus at Pompeii, when he was very young;
he being choked with a pear, which in his play he tossed into the air, and caught in his
mouth. Only a few days before, he had betrothed him to one of Sejanus's daughters; and I
am therefore surprised that some authors should say that he lost his life by the treachery
of Sejanus. Claudia, who was, in truth, the daughter of Boter his freedman, though
she was born five months before his divorce, he ordered to be thrown naked at her mother's
door. He married Antonia to Gnaeus Pompey the Great, and afterwards to Faustus Sulla, both
youths of very noble parentage; Octavia to his step-son Nero, after she had been
contracted to Silanus. Britannicus was born upon the twentieth day of his reign, and in
his second consulship. He often earnestly commended him to the soldiers, holding him in
his arms before their ranks; and would likewise show him to the people in the theatre,
setting him upon his lap, or holding him out whilst he was still very young; and was sure
to receive their acclamations, and good wishes on his behalf. Of his sons-in-law, he
adopted Nero. He not only dismissed from his favour both Pompey and Silanus, but put them
to death.
28. Amongst his freedmen, the greatest favourite was the eunuch Posides, whom, in his
British triumph he presented with the headless spear, classing him among the military men.
Next to him, if not equal, in favor was Felix, whom he not only preferred to
commands both of cohorts and troops, but to the government of the province of Judea; and
he became, in consequence of his elevation, the husband of three queens. Another
favourite was Harpocras, to whom he granted the privilege of being carried in a litter
within the city, and of holding public spectacles for the entertainment of the people.
In this class was likewise Polybius, who assisted him in his studies, and had often
the honour of walking between the two consuls. But above all others, Narcissus, his
secretary, and Pallas, the treasurer, were in high favour with him. He not only allowed
them to receive, by decree of the senate, immense presents, but also to be decorated with
the quaestorian and
praetorian ensigns of honour. So much did he indulge them in amassing wealth, and
plundering the public, that, upon his complaining, once, of the lowness of his exchequer,
some one said, with great reason, that " It would be full enough, if those two
freedmen of his would but take him into partnership with them."
29. Being entirely governed by these freedmen, and, as I have already said, by
his wives, he was a tool to others, rather than a prince. He distributed offices, or the
command of armies, pardoned or punished, according as it suited their interests, their
passions, or their caprice; and for the most part, without knowing, or being sensible of
what he did. Not to enter into minute details relative to the revocation of grants, the
reversal of judicial decisions, obtaining his signature to fictitious appointments, or the
bare-faced alteration of them after signing; he put to death Appius Silanus the father of
his son-in-law, and the two Julias, the daughters of Drusus and Germanicus, without any
positive proof of the crimes with which they were charged, or so much as permitting them
to make any defense. He also killed Gnaeus Pompey, the husband of his eldest daughter; and
Lucius Silanus, who was betrothed to the younger. Pompey was stabbed in the embrace
of a favored youth. Silanus was obliged to quit the office of praetor upon the fourth of
the calends of January [28th Dec.], and to kill himself on New Year's day following, the
very same on which Claudius and Agrippina were married. He condemned to death five and
thirty senators, and above three hundred Roman knights, with so little attention to what
he did, that when a centurion brought him word of the execution of a man of consular rank,
who was one of the number, and told him that he had executed his order, he declared,
" he had ordered no such thing, but that he approved of it"; because his
freedmen, it seems, had said, that the soldiers did nothing more than their duty, in
dispatching the emperor's enemies without waiting for a warrant. But it is beyond all
belief, that he himself, at the marriage of Messalina with the adulterous Silius, should
actually sign the writings relative to her dowry; induced, as it is pretended, by the
design of diverting from himself and transferring upon another the danger which some omens
seemed to threaten him.
30. Either standing or sitting, but especially when he lay asleep, he had a majestic
and graceful appearance; for he was tall, but not slender. His gray locks became him well,
and he had a full neck. But his knees were feeble, and failed him in walking, so that his
gait was ungainly, both when he assumed state, and when he was taking diversion. He was
outrageous in his laughter, and still more so in his wrath, for then he foamed at the
mouth, and discharged from his nostrils. He also stammered in his speech, and had a
tremulous motion of the head at all times, but particularly when he was engaged in any
business, however trifling.
31. Though his health was very infirm during the former part of his life, yet after he
became emperor, he enjoyed a good state of health, except only that he was subject to a
pain of the stomach. In a fit of this complaint, he said he had thoughts of killing
himself.
32. He gave entertainments as frequent as they were splendid, and generally when
there was such ample room, that very often six hundred guests sat down together. At a
feast he gave on the banks of the canal for draining the Fucine Lake, he narrowly escaped
being drowned, the water at its discharge rushing out with such violence, that it
overflowed the conduit. At supper he had always his own children, with those of several of
the nobility, who, according to an ancient custom, sat at the feet of the couches. One of
his guests having been suspected of purloining a golden cup, he invited him again the next
day, but served him with a porcelain jug. It is said, too, that he intended to publish an
edict, " allowing to all people the liberty of giving vent at table to any distention
occasioned by flatulence," upon hearing of a person whose modesty, when under
restraint, had nearly cost him his life.
33. He was always ready to eat and drink at any time or in any place. One day, as
he was hearing causes in the forum of Augustus, he smelt the dinner which was preparing
for the Salii in the temple of Mars adjoining, whereupon he quitted the tribunal, and went
to partake of the feast with the priests. He scarcely ever left the table until he had
thoroughly crammed himself and drank to intoxication; and then he would immediately fall
asleep, lying upon his back with his mouth open. While in this condition, a feather was
put down his throat, to make him throw up the contents of his stomach. Upon composing
himself to rest, his sleep was short, and he usually awoke before midnight; but he would
sometimes sleep in the daytime, and that, even, when he was upon the tribunal; so that the
advocates often found it difficult to wake him, though they raised their voices for that
purpose. He set no bounds to his libidinous intercourse with women, but never betrayed any
unnatural desires for the other sex. He was fond of gaming, and published a book upon the
subject. He even used to play as he rode in his chariot, having the tables so fitted, that
the game was not disturbed by the motion of the carriage.
34. His cruel and sanguinary disposition was exhibited upon great as well as
trifling occasions When any person was to be put to the torture, or criminal punished for
parricide, he was impatient for the execution, and would have it performed in his own
presence. When he was at Tibur, being desirous of seeing an example of the old way of
putting malefactors to death, some were immediately bound to a stake for the purpose; but
there being no executioner to be had at the place, he sent for one from Rome, and waited
for his coming until night. In any exhibition of gladiators, presented either by himself
or others, if any of the combatants chanced to fall, he ordered them to be butchered,
especially the Retiarii, that he might see their faces in the agonies of death. Two
gladiators happening to kill each other, he immediately ordered some little knives to be
made of their swords for his own use. He took great pleasure in seeing men engage with
wild beasts, and the combatants who appeared on the stage at noon. He would therefore come
to the theatre by break of day, and at noon, dismissing the people to dinner, continued
sitting himself; and besides those who were devoted to that sanguinary fate, he would
match others with the beasts, upon slight or sudden occasions; as, for instance, the
carpenters and their assistants, and people of that sort, if a machine, or any piece of
work in which they had been employed about the theatre did not answer the purpose for
which it had been intended. To this desperate kind of encounter he forced one of his
nomenclators, even encumbered as he was by wearing the toga.
35. But the characteristics most predominant in him were fear and distrust. In
the beginning of his reign, though he much affected a modest and humble appearance, as has
been already observed, yet he durst not venture himself at an entertainment without being
attended by a guard of spearmen, and made soldiers wait upon him at table instead of
servants. He never visited a sick person, until the chamber had been first searched, and
the bed and bedding thoroughly examined. At other times, all persons who came to pay their
court to him were strictly searched by officers appointed for that purpose; nor was it
until after a long time, and with much difficulty, that he was prevailed upon to excuse
women, boys, and girls from such rude handling, or suffer their attendants or
writing-masters to retain their cases for pens and styles. When Camillus formed his plot
against him, not doubting but his timidity might be worked upon without a war, he wrote to
him a scurrilous, petulant, and threatening letter, desiring him to resign the government,
and betake himself to a life of privacy. Upon receiving this requisition, he had
some thoughts of complying with it, and summoned together the principal men of the city,
to consult with them on the subject.
36. Having heard some loose reports of conspiracies formed against him, he was so
much alarmed that he thought of immediately abdicating the government. And when, as I have
before related, a man armed with a dagger was discovered near him while he was
sacrificing, he instantly ordered the heralds to convoke the senate, and with tears and
dismal exclamations, lamented that such was his condition, that he was safe nowhere; and
for a long time afterwards he abstained from appearing in public. He smothered his
ardent love for Messalina, not so much on account of her infamous conduct, as from
apprehension of danger; believing that she aspired to share with Silius, her partner in
adultery, the imperial dignity. Upon this occasion he ran in a great fright, and a very
shameful manner, to the camp, asking all the way he went, ''if the empire were indeed
safely his."
37. No suspicion was too trifling, no person on whom it rested too contemptible,
to throw him into a panic, and induce him to take precautions for his safety, and meditate
revenge. A man engaged in a litigation before his tribunal, having saluted him, drew him
aside, and told him he had dreamt that he saw him murdered; and shortly afterwards, when
his adversary came to deliver his plea to the emperor, the plaintiff, pretending to have
discovered the murderer, pointed to him as the man he had seen in his dream; whereupon, as
if he had been taken in the act, he was hurried away to execution. We are informed, that
Appius Silanus was got rid of in the same manner, by a contrivance betwixt Messalina and
Narcissus, in which they had their several parts assigned them. Narcissus therefore burst
into his lord's chamber before daylight, apparently in great fright, and told him that he
had dreamt that Appius Silanus had murdered him. The empress, upon this, affecting great
surprise, declared she had the like dream for several nights successively. Presently
afterwards, word was brought, as it had been agreed on, that Appius was come, he having,
indeed, received orders the preceding day to be there at that time; and, as if the truth
of the dream was sufficiently confirmed by his appearance at that juncture, he was
immediately ordered to be prosecuted and put to death. The day following, Claudius related
the whole affair to the senate, and acknowledged his great obligation to his freedmen for
watching over him even in his sleep.
38. Sensible of his being subject to passion and resentment, he excused himself in both
instances by a proclamation, assuring the public that " the former should be short
and harmless, and the latter never without good cause." After severely reprimanding
the people of Ostia for not sending some boats to meet him upon his entering the mouth of
the Tiber, in terms which might expose them to the public resentment, he wrote to Rome
that he had been treated as a private person; yet immediately afterwards he pardoned them,
and that in a way which had the appearance of making them satisfaction, or begging pardon
for some injury he had done them. Some people who addressed him unseasonably in public, he
pushed away with his own hand. He likewise banished a person who had been secretary to a
quaestor, and even a senator who had filled the office of praetor, without a hearing, and
although they were innocent; the former only because he had treated him with rudeness
while he was in a private station, and the other, because in his aedileship he had fined
some tenants of his, for selling some cooked victuals contrary to law, and ordered his
steward, who interfered, to be whipped. On this account, likewise, he took from the
aediles the jurisdiction they had over cook-shops. He did not scruple to speak of
his own absurdities, and declared in some short speeches which he published, that he had
only feigned imbecility in the reign of Gaius, because otherwise it would have been
impossible for him to have escaped and arrived at the station he had then attained. He
could not, however, gain credit for this assertion; for a short time afterwards, a book
was published under the title of "The Resurrection of Fools," the design of
which was to show "that nobody ever counterfeited folly."
39. Amongst other things, people admired in him his indifference and unconcern;
or, to
express it in Greek, his meteoria and ablepsia . Placing himself at table a
little after Messalina's execution, he enquired, " Why the empress did not come
?" Many of those whom he had condemned to death, he ordered the day after to be
invited to his table, and to game with him, and sent to reprimand them as sluggish fellows
for not making greater haste. When he was meditating his incestuous marriage with
Agrippina, he was perpetually calling her, " My daughter, my nursling, born and
brought up upon my lap." And when he was going to adopt Nero, as if there was little
cause for censure in his adopting a son-in-law, when he had a son of his own arrived at
years of maturity; he continually gave out in public, " that no one had ever been
admitted by adoption into the Claudian family.”
40. He frequently appeared so careless in what he said, and so inattentive to
circumstances, that it was believed he never reflected who he himself was, or amongst
whom, or at what time, or in what place, he spoke. In the debate in the senate relative to
the butchers and vintners, he cried out, " I ask you, who can live without a
snack" And mentioned the great plenty of old taverns, from which he himself used
formerly to have his wine. Among other reasons for his supporting a certain person who was
candidate for the quaestorship, he gave this: " His father," said he, "once
gave me, at just the right time, a draught of cold water when I was sick." Upon his
bringing a woman as a witness in some cause before the senate, he said, " This woman
was my mother's freedwoman and dresser, but she always considered me as her master; and
this I say, because there are some still in my family that do not look upon me as
such." The people of Ostia addressing him in open court with a petition, he flew into
a rage at them, and said, " There is no reason why I should oblige you: if any one
else is free to act as he pleases, surely I am." The following expressions he had in
his mouth every day, and at all hours and seasons: " What , do you take me for a
Telegenius ?" And in Greek, “Speak, but do not touch me;” besides
many other familiar sentences, below the dignity of a private person, much more of an
emperor, who was not deficient either in eloquence or learning, as having applied himself
very closely to the liberal sciences.
41. By the encouragement of Titus Livius, and with the assistance of Sulpicius Flavus,
he attempted at an early age the composition of a history; and having called together a
numerous auditory, to hear and give their judgment upon it, he read it over with much
difficulty, and, frequently interrupting himself. For after he had begun a great laugh was
raised amongst the company, by the breaking of several benches from the weight of a very
fat man; and even when order was restored, he could not forbear bursting out into violent
fits of laughter, at the remembrance of the accident. After he became emperor, likewise,
he wrote several things which he was careful to have recited to his friends by a reader.
He commenced his history from the death of the dictator Caesar; but afterwards he took a
later period, and began at the conclusion of the civil wars; because he found he could not
speak with freedom, and a due regard to truth, concerning the former period, having been
often taken to task both by his mother and grandmother. Of the earlier history he left
only two books, but of the latter, one and forty. He compiled likewise the "
History of his Own Life," in eight books, full of absurdities, but in no bad style;
also, "A Defense of Cicero against the Books of Asinius Gallus," which exhibited
a considerable degree of learning. He besides invented three new letters, and added them
to the former alphabet, as highly necessary. He published a book to recommend them while
he was yet only a private person; but on his elevation to imperial power he had little
difficulty in introducing them into common use; and these letters are still extant in a
variety of books, registers, and inscriptions upon buildings.
42. He applied himself with no less attention to the study of Greek literature,
asserting upon all occasions his love of that language, and its surpassing excellency. A
stranger once holding a discourse both in Greek and Latin, he addressed him thus: "
Since you are skilled in both our tongues." And recommending Achaia to the favour of
the senate, he said, " I have a particular attachment to that province, on account of
our common studies." In the senate he often made long replies to ambassadors in that
language. On the tribunal he frequently quoted the verses of Homer. When at any time
he had taken vengeance on an enemy or a conspirator, he scarcely ever gave to the tribune
on guard, who, according to custom, came for the word, any other than this:—
Tis time to
strike when wrong demands the blow.
[Homer's Iliad]
To conclude, he wrote some histories likewise in Greek,
namely, twenty books on Tuscan affairs, and eight on the Carthaginian; in consequence of
which another museum was founded at Alexandria, in addition to the old one, and called
after his name; and it was ordered, that, upon certain days in every year, his Tuscan
history should be read over in one of these, and his Carthaginian in the other, as in a
school; each history being read through by persons who took it in turn.
43. Towards the close of his life, he gave some manifest indications that he repented
of his marriage with Agrippina, and his adoption of Nero. For some of his freedmen
noticing with approbation his having condemned, the day before, a woman accused of
adultery, he remarked, " It has been my misfortune to have wives who have been
unfaithful to my bed; but they did not escape punishment." Often, when he happened to
meet Britannicus, he would embrace him tenderly, and express a desire " that he might
grow apace, and receive from him an account of all his actions:" using the Greek
phrase, “He who has wounded will also heal." And intending to give him the
manly habit, while he was under age and a tender youth, because his stature would allow of
it, he added, " I do so, that the Roman people may at last have a real Caesar."
44. Soon afterwards he made his will, and had it signed by all the magistrates as
witnesses. But he was prevented from proceeding further by Agrippina, accused by her own
guilty conscience, as well as by informers, of a variety of crimes. It is agreed that he
was taken off by poison; but where, and by whom administered, remains in uncertainty. Some
authors say that it was given him as he was feasting with the priests in the Capitol, by
the eunuch Halotus, his taster. Others say by Agrippina, at his own table, in mushrooms, a
dish of which he was very fond. The accounts of what followed likewise differ. Some
relate that he instantly became speechless, was racked with pain through the night, and
died about daybreak; others, that at first he fell into a sound sleep, —and
afterwards, his food rising, he threw up the whole; but had another dose given him;
whether in water-gruel, under presence of refreshment after his exhaustion, or in a
clyster, as if designed to relieve his bowels, is likewise uncertain.
45. His death was kept secret until everything was settled relative to his successor.
Accordingly, vows were made for his recovery, and comedians were called to amuse him, as
it was pretended, by his own desire. He died upon the third of the ides of October [I3th
October], in the consulship of Asinius Marcellus and Acilius Aviola, in the sixty-fourth
year of his age, and the fourteenth of his reign. His funeral was celebrated with
the customary imperial pomp, and he was ranked amongst the gods. This honour was taken
from him by Nero, but restored by Vespasian.
