69 AD: The Year of Four Emperors Read online

  So the real problem lay in the city of Rome itself and, more particularly, in its form of government. Augustus started his career at the age of 19 as the warlord Octavian, and it took him 15 years of civil wars to win the empire. Fortunately for him, the last of these wars—against Antony and Cleopatra—could be represented as a foreign war against an “evil empire” in the east. Just as fortunately, the empire’s population as a whole, perhaps 50 million people, was prepared to settle for what was close to one-man rule, if only that put an end to wars, civil or foreign, that had been fought inside the frontiers on and off for half a century. In this sense the principate was every bit as much a military monarchy when Augustus created it as it was in 68, when Galba took over from the last of his descendants. But since Augustus had neither the wish to share the fate of his adoptive father, Julius Caesar, nor the strength singlehandedly to run the empire he had won, he had to come to terms with the two small segments in Roman society that constituted its upper classes.

  First, there were the senators, the members of the old governing class lucky or skillful enough to have survived these wars. They had not run the government as senators. In the republic the senate had been by design an advisory body, and though it was influential and prestigious, we talk of senators doing this or that for convenience. The executive was made of a series of annual magistracies, to which aspirants were elected by the people. The lowest, the quaestorship, gave its holder membership in the senate after he had laid down his office. The highest, the consulship, was the ultimate distinction. As consul, a man could run the government. And since only 2 consuls were elected a year, there could be only 60 in a generation, with the result that about 10 percent of late republican senators exercised disproportionate influence as ex-consuls and, supposedly, elder statesmen. To placate all these men, Augustus tried consistently to preserve as much as possible of the appearance and, once in a while, of the substance of the republic he had overthrown. This would persuade them that he was sharing civil and military power with them. In fact, it was the work, not the power, that fell to the senate. Although the magistracies retained their prestige, they became much less important, and there could be 12 or more consuls in a year. In effect, the consulship became a diploma in government, and men held it in their thirties instead of their forties.1 With this requirement out of the way, these men could be sent out to govern Rome’s provinces. But it was the emperor who picked the ex-consuls to govern the provinces in which armies were stationed, the senate only the men who were to govern provinces without troops.

  The emperor was backed up in Rome itself by the praetorian guard, a force originally of 9 cohorts, probably of 500 men apiece, who served mainly as his honor guard. To this he was entitled as commander in chief of Rome’s legions, but Augustus and his successors took care not to offend senatorial sensibilities. No guardsmen was allowed within the city’s limits except in civilian dress. No doubt they carried concealed weapons, but the weapons were concealed. No legions were stationed in Italy in normal circumstances (the situation in 68/69 differed markedly). And the senate could lay claim to a guard of its own, the (originally 3) urban cohorts, also of 500 men apiece, who were commanded by one of their own, the prefect of the city (praefectus urbi), chosen by the emperor and senate in consultation. And as a senator, the prefect of the city outranked the prefect or prefects of the praetorian guard, who were merely knights.

  This brings us to the other, much larger segment of the upper classes that Augustus had to consider, the equestrian order, equites or knights. The basic requirement for membership was a total worth of 400,000 sesterces (many had fortunes in the millions), but though they counted as an upper class for this reason, they were never regarded as senators’ equals. When Suetonius reports that an emperor had such ancestors, it is because they were thought blots on the escutcheon. The knights were also much more heterogeneous. Some were entrepreneurs in the private or the public sphere, men whose interest lay in making money (they it was who gave the order a bad name). Then there were the men forming the governing class of any Roman city except Rome. The equivalent of senators in their hometowns and likewise landed aristocrats, they shared the attitudes of senators, but they could not be categorized as such because they had not held magistracies in Rome itself. Men of this kind might serve for a time as junior officers in the new standing armies, for example, as military tribunes of individual cohorts in a legion. (This is how Suetonius’ father became a tribune of legion XIII Gemina in 69.) Then they could return to their homes, with enhanced prestige and boring tales of their exploits, or they might continue on and join the handful of men who took posts in the minuscule civil service Augustus created. The emperor’s appointees, this group included procurators (his financial agents in senatorial provinces and actual governors in unimportant districts like Judaea) and, at the summit, four or five prefects. These were, in ascending order of importance, the prefect of the watch (the fire service in Rome), the prefect of the grain supply for the city, the prefect of Egypt, and the one or two prefects of the praetorian guard.2

  Augustus had virtually no trouble getting the knights—of whatever category—to accept his new settlement at face value. Unless they developed ambitions to enter the senatorial order, as did Tacitus himself, they were usually happy to pursue their own interests, oblivious to or even welcoming changing conditions in the world in which they lived. With the senators, on the other hand, Augustus had to strive constantly to paper over the gaps between appearances and realities, and above all, between the illusion that they were his peers and the fact that he meant to establish a dynasty. As it happened, Augustus was able to persuade many senators to see things his way. Partly, this was due to his own prestige. He had ended the civil wars that threatened to destroy them, and he brought peace to an empire that not only prospered but continued to grow under his guidance. Partly, it was skill. Augustus was by far the smartest politician of his day (his wife Livia was smarter still, but never in public). Partly, it was self-control. Augustus never flaunted his powers in Rome, preferring to play the simple citizen there. And partly it was luck. When Augustus died in 14 at the age of 78, there were few still alive who could remember the old republic.

  It proved more difficult to conceal the gaps between rhetoric and reality after he died. His four successors, known collectively as the Julio-Claudian dynasty, lacked his prestige, his abilities, and above all, his self-control. So, under Tiberius (14–37), Caligula (37–41), Claudius (41–54), and Nero (54–68), the situation was bound to deteriorate. It did this not so much steadily as in fits and starts. To give himself room to maneuver, Augustus had spelled out a minimum of rules and regulations (this was not to change significantly till the “law on Vespasian’s powers” was passed). So the workings of his unsystematic system depended heavily on the character and caprices of the ruler. Each of his four successors undertook on his accession to fulfill the hopes of the senators that a new princeps would bring with him a new beginning. Each in turn failed sooner or later to live up to these promises, to the sorrow and—more often than not—the suffering of the senators. The only variables were how long it took for disenchantment to set in, how widely it spread, and how deeply it penetrated.3

  This disenchantment made senators much touchier about their rights and privileges, and steadily more insistent on their social distinction as they watched their political power fade. It seldom led to conspiracies against the emperor, however, and when it did, they were small. There were few active participants, because senators spent more time jockeying for position among themselves than they did complaining about or plotting against the emperor (this nursery-level behavior pattern dominated every level of the society). Again, these conspiracies were usually attempts to assassinate the emperor and replace him with a senator more congenial to the plotters and—in theory—to the rest of the governing class. Only on two occasions were legions involved. There was a conspiracy against Caligula in 39, which included among its members Gnaeus Lentulus Gaetulicus, com
mander of the troops stationed in Upper Germany, and that ended the moment Caligula appeared on the scene and ordered Gaetulicus’ execution. And in 42 there was an uprising against Claudius by Furius Camillus Scribonianus, governor of Dalmatia. That collapsed within five days, because the troops had second thoughts. Suetonius avers that they believed the omens unfavorable, Dio that they were unimpressed by their general’s announced intention of restoring the republic. These explanations are not mutually exclusive, but the latter highlights a more basic reason for the troops’ refusal in both cases to follow a rebellious general against an established emperor. From Tiberius’ time on, the armed forces renewed their oath of allegiance to the emperor on 1 January each year. Taking the sanctity of this oath seriously, they remained true to him whether others thought him mad, incompetent, or vicious. The praetorian guard were equally loyal. A detachment murdered Caligula in January 41. Yet while the senate debated who should succeed him, the guard as a whole applied the rules of dynastic succession and proclaimed the late emperor’s uncle, Claudius, their ruler. A guardsman had found Claudius hiding behind a curtain in the palace and had carted him off to the praetorian camp. From any point of view, this was not kingmaking as it is commonly understood.

  Even so, senators probably imagined that the situation looked rosier than usual at the start of Nero’s reign. Whereas his three predecessors had been adults when they took power, Nero was only 16 in 54. Suetonius catalogues the iniquities of his ancestors, since Romans believed that in diseased stock evil would out. But those who put their faith in education could believe that there was a chance of schooling Nero to run the state in something like the manner required by the ideology of the principate. And the first five years of the reign were relatively tranquil, thanks largely to the fact that control lay in the hands of the two men appointed as Nero’s tutors by his mother, the Younger Agrippina. One was the senator and supposed philosopher Seneca, the other Lucius Afranius Burrus, prefect of the praetorian guard. Unfortunately for his tutors, however, and for the senators, Nero used this period to indulge a temperament as sadistic as it was artistic. His passions were for acting, singing, and chariot racing, not for learning the duties of an emperor. Much could be forgiven an adolescent, since Romans also believed that boys would be boys—until they reached the age of 25 or so. But once Nero became master of the world, he saw no reason for self-control. And because he would brook no challenge even in his early years, they too were marked by murder, of his stepbrother Britannicus in 55, and of his mother Agrippina in 59.

  The killing of Britannicus, innocent though he was of anything but being Claudius’ son by his first wife Messallina, was seemingly regarded as the price to be paid by somebody whose claim to the throne was as strong as that of the incumbent—and it could be blamed on the domineering Agrippina anyway. Agrippina’s murder was probably greeted with sighs of relief by most, though it became fashionable later to dwell on the horrors of matricide, and even to allege that this cast a shadow over the emperor’s mind. Still, the situation continued to deteriorate as the years went by, and in 62 Nero engineered the exile of his wife Octavia (Britannicus’ sister) on a charge of adultery, to clear the way for marriage to his mistress, Poppaea Sabina. Since Octavia was palpably innocent of any wrongdoing, the common people demonstrated noisily, as prone then as they have been recently to fits of unwarrantable sentimentality. The senators bore Octavia’s exile, and her death a year later, with equanimity. Whatever they thought of Nero’s actions, little was to be gained by quarreling with an emperor intent on destroying his own immediate family.

  The year of Octavia’s exile, however, also saw the revival of the trials for treason that had been the most objectionable feature of the reigns of Nero’s predecessors. Designed to counter any perceived threat to the emperor, these were subject to abuse because, without an official mechanism like a prosecutor’s office, they relied heavily on informers among whose motives were usually self-advancement and malice. So whether the charges were dismissed (as often by Tiberius), or led to a full-dress trial, conviction, and enormous rewards for the informer who had brought the charges, senators were able to persuade themselves that each victim was an innocent member of their order, who had fallen foul of the emperor for no good reason. Nor, incidentally, did this viewpoint change from reign to reign, even when these trials steadily wiped out the older aristocratic families and injected equestrian “upstarts” into the order. New senators—like Tacitus, when his turn came—proved their worth by embracing fervently the thought and behavior patterns of the men whose misfortunes had created the vacancies they were filling.

  The revival of these trials in Nero’s reign did not indicate that he was taking a more active interest in the running of the state. It was due to the intrigues of the two people who had secured—and meant to keep—the greatest influence at court, by playing on the emperor’s fears. One was Ofonius Tigellinus, who became one of the prefects of the praetorian guard when Burrus in 62 seems—remarkably—to have died a natural death. Although Tigellinus had already served as prefect of the watch, he owed his promotion and his grip on Nero largely to his having been a breeder of race horses. The other was Poppaea, now the emperor’s wife. The most beautiful, or at any rate the most seductive, woman of her day, she was also one of the most power hungry in the brief span left to her (Nero killed her in 65, allegedly kicking her in the stomach in a rage, although she was pregnant at the time). Encouraged by these two, Nero turned his attentions to the senatorial aristocracy, all the more so because he needed to raise money for the rebuilding of Rome in an appropriately grandiose fashion after the Great Fire of 64.

  The result was a series of conspiracies against him between 65 and 67. These were invariably as unsuccessful as they were small. But the repercussions were widespread, or so the sources assert, echoing the claim that birth, wealth, and ability were criminal charges in Nero’s eyes, and fatal to their possessors. At the start of 68, nevertheless, there was little to suggest that he would be overthrown. In Rome the senators may have been depressed by the thought that the pattern had been set for a long and eventful reign, but they were too cowed to do anything about it. The important posts in the provinces, the military posts above all, were held by men appointed specifically for their mediocrity, governors and military commanders who would never dream of challenging their emperor, as they proved in the winter of 67/68. And the troops on the frontiers remained as steadfastly loyal to Nero as did the praetorians in Rome, because he was their emperor. The fact he was young and (in their view) good-looking, as well as lazy and vicious, may have lent him additional charm in their eyes. But it was by no means the entire explanation, even if favored by the ancient sources and by moderns equally disposed to draw moral lessons from history.

  The man responsible for bringing down this house of cards was Gaius Julius Vindex, a romanized Gaul in charge, probably, of the unarmed province of Gallia Lugdunensis (central France). His rallying cry was “Freedom from the Tyrant,” enough to prove his wish to rid the world of Nero, but not enough to establish what he had in mind by way of replacement. This vagueness may have owed something to his need to rally support first among the Gallic tribes, since they had no reason to look beyond the confines of their province or to care about conditions elsewhere in the empire. But the speech or speeches that Dio puts in Vindex’s mouth denounced neither the principate as an institution nor Roman imperialism, only Nero’s inadequacies as emperor and the abuses of government to which his personal vices had led. So Vindex almost certainly planned to set up a new emperor, a step that would establish his own reputation and satisfy what Dio terms his vast ambition.

  According to Plutarch, Vindex’s first move, during the winter of 67/68, was to send letters to neighboring governors and military commanders, to win their support for an uprising. In these too he avoided naming a candidate to be set in Nero’s place. Perhaps he thought that for him, only a first-generation senator, to nominate somebody would be considered presumptuous by the m
en he contacted. It is more likely, however, that he wanted to avoid alienating them by suggesting a specific person. No matter how unhappy they were with Nero, they could not be expected to give up jockeying for position among themselves, or unanimously to accept one man unconnected with the dynasty in his place. But just as we are not told explicitly why Vindex omitted to name names, so we are not informed what responses he received. There should have been some, but if so, they look to have been equivocal or misleading. Apparently the respondents were willing to sit on their hands while Vindex went ahead with his rebellion. What we are told is that these governors and commanders turned the letters over to the authorities forthwith. There was only one exception, Servius Sulpicius Galba, governor of Hispania Tarraconensis (the largest of the three provinces into which Spain was divided, it comprised the northern, eastern, and much of the central parts of the peninsula). He did nothing, neither replying to Vindex nor reporting the matter to Rome.