Ambitionem scriptoris facile auerseris, obtrectatio et liuor pronis auribus accipiuntur quippe adulationi fœdum crimen seruitutis, malignitati falsa species libertatis inest.—Tacitus.
N these words, pregnant and terse as ever, Tacitus gives us a key to the true reading of imperial Roman history. “It is easy,” he says, “to discount the self-interest of the historian and to reject his eulogies, but his malicious criticisms are greedily swallowed. For flattery bears the odious stamp of servility, while malignity wears the false disguise of independence.” Thus out of his own mouth the foremost historian of the early Empire gives us the right to read the literary sources in a spirit favourable to the emperors. So when the historians describe Tiberius as a bloodthirsty tyrant who hid himself away in the island of Capri, and there (at the age of seventy!) began to devote himself to disgusting orgies of lust and cruelty, we shall prefer to reject that story as absurd, and to regard Tiberius as a proud and reserved aristocrat who found it impossible to tolerate the mixture of adulation and spite with which he was treated by the other nobles of Rome, and withdrew from the capital in order to escape it. When Gaius (Caligula) is represented as a lunatic, we merely understand that he was unpopular; when we are told that he made his horse a consul, we recognise a satirist’s humorous exaggeration of his neglect of some noble family’s claims to that office; when we read that he set his army to collect oyster shells on the coast of Normandy, we only conclude that his surrender of the projected invasion of Britain was a subject of ridicule in Rome. Claudius is described as a stupid and clumsy pedant, deformed and inarticulate: in reality he seems to have been a scholar with a leaning towards antiquarian and republican traditions. Even in the case of Nero, the savage ferocity with which he is charged is chiefly due to the fact that his hand lay heavy on the senators. He was undoubtedly popular with the commons, and his real offence was to possess more refinement and culture than was considered proper in a Roman noble, to be too fond of Greeks and art and music. Nevertheless it is impossible to write history in whitewash, and the only safe method of dealing with a period like this is to ignore the personalities on the throne of the Cæsars, and to attempt a broad treatment of the general tendency of these times.
But by neglecting the gossip and the personalities we do, I fear, run the risk of missing much of the interest of the period, and perhaps we lose an important part of the truth. We must not allow ourselves to be wholly deprived of that impression of purple and splendour which hangs about the Golden House of Nero, nor to forget the taint of crime which clings to the palaces of the Cæsars. The latter in particular is an essential part of imperial history. As we have seen, this Empire founded on compromise was and remained illegitimate. The succession was always open to question; there was no law of heredity. This fact was emphasised by the barrenness of the Roman aristocracy. For a hundred years no prince had a son to succeed him, so that the palace was always full of intrigue. Finally, the wickedness of the women is one of the most sinister features of the time. Though it was, indeed, no innovation of the Empire, it now gains a terrible significance in the dynastic conflicts which surrounded the throne. Every one of the early reigns is stained with murders and fearful crimes in the palace. No doubt much of this history is false and malicious. For example, it is by no means likely that Germanicus was poisoned. There were always scandal-mongers to hint at poison when any member of the ruling house died of disease. But even with the most liberal discount for exaggeration, the record is a black one. Let us select two typical stories, in order to suggest the kind of satanic halo which surrounds the imperial houses, as the ancient historians depict them.
Plate LXX. TWO VIEWS OF THE AQUEDUCT OF CLAUDIUS
Claudius, the conqueror of Britain, was in reality the ablest and best of the Claudian Cæsars who succeeded Augustus, but his wife Messalina, thirty-four years his junior, was a creature of shameless lust and remorseless cruelty. Valerius Asiaticus, a Gaul by birth but now the richest noble of his day, was in possession of the far-famed gardens of Lucullus. Messalina coveted the park and accused him to her husband, with the inevitable result. Asiaticus died like a gentleman. He took his usual exercise, he bathed and dined quite cheerfully, and then he opened his veins, “but not until he had inspected his funeral pyre and ordered its removal to another place, for fear that the smoke should injure the thick foliage of the trees.” So died this lover of gardens. Messalina’s sins grew more open, until at last she went through a public pantomime of marriage with one of her paramours, Silius, a consul-elect. The ceremony was performed before a number of witnesses duly invited. Claudius was at that time guided by the counsels of three Greek secretaries, and one of them determined to reveal the shameful truth to the emperor. Tacitus tells the story of her ruin in graphic language. She was celebrating the vintage feast in the gardens she had wickedly gained for herself. The presses were being trodden, the vats were overflowing, women girt with skins were dancing, as Bacchanals dance in their worship or their frenzy. Messalina with flowing hair shook the thyrsus, and Silius, at her side, crowned with ivy and wearing the buskin, moved his head in time with some lascivious chorus. One of the guests had climbed a tree in sport and reported a “hurricane from Ostia.” It was truer than he knew, for just then messengers began to arrive with news that Claudius was on his way from Ostia, coming with vengeance. The revels ceased, the revellers fled in all directions, and Messalina, left deserted, mounted a garden cart to proceed along the road to meet her husband. Her appeal failed, though Claudius would undoubtedly have relented but for the interference of the freedman Narcissus. After dinner, warmed with the wine, he bade some one go and tell “that poor creature” to come before him on the morrow to plead her cause. But Narcissus had already sent soldiers to her, and she was driven to suicide. “Claudius was still at the banquet when they told him that Messalina was dead, without mentioning whether it was by her own or another’s hand. Nor did he ask the question, but called for his cup and finished the repast as usual.”
Nero, too, in the pages of Suetonius appears so incredible in his wickedness that the exaggeration is obvious. Of his splendid new palace the Golden House we read: “The portico was so high that it could contain a colossal statue of himself a hundred and twenty feet in height; and the space it included was so vast that it had a triple colonnade, a mile in length, and a lake like a sea, surrounded with buildings that looked like a city. It had a park with cornfields, vineyards, pastures, and woods containing a vast number of animals of all kinds, wild and tame. Parts of it were entirely overlaid with gold, and incrusted with jewels and pearl. The supper-rooms were vaulted and the compartments of the ceilings, which were inlaid with ivory, were made to revolve and scatter flowers. They also contained pipes to shed scents upon the guests. The chief banqueting-room was circular and revolved perpetually day and night, according to the motion of the celestial bodies. The baths were supplied with water from the sea and the Albula.” At the dedication of this magnificent building, all that he said in praise of it was: “Now at last I have begun to live like a gentleman.” They charged Nero with the murder of all his relatives, and there is a grim sort of humour in the story of his frequent attempts upon his mother’s life. His grievance against her was that she was too strict. First, he deprived her of her bodyguard, and suborned people to harass her with lawsuits which drove her out of the city. In her retirement he set others to follow her about by land and sea with abuse and scurrilous language. Three times he attempted her life by poison, but finding she had previously rendered herself immune by the use of antidotes, he next designed machinery to make the floor above her bed-chamber collapse while she was asleep. When this failed he constructed a special coffin-ship, which could be made to fall in pieces, and then sent her a loving invitation to visit him at Baiæ, the Brighton of the Romans. The ships of her escort were likewise instructed to ram her by accident on the way home. He attended her to the vessel in a very cheerful spirit and kissed her bosom at parting with her. After which he sat up late at night waiting with great anxiety for the joyful news of her decease. But news arrived that the accident had miscarried, the dowager empress was swimming to shore. When her freedman came joyfully to narrate her escape, Nero pretended that the man had come to assassinate him and ordered her to be put to death. Suetonius adds “on good authority” that he went to view her corpse and criticised her blemishes to his followers, and then called for drink. After this he was haunted by her ghost.