The Empresses of Rome

by Joseph McCabe

Sejanus, whose action we may confidently see in the ruin of Agrippina, now stood near the steps of the throne, waiting impatiently for the passing of the despised Emperor. He was betrothed to Livilla, the widow of Tiberius’s only son Drusus, whom he had poisoned, with Livilla’s assistance. With a consort of Cæsarean blood he felt that he could easily fill the place of Tiberius. And in the height of his corrupt power and criminal hope the vengeance of the fates fell on him like a stroke of lightning. It is said that the wife he proposed to divorce disclosed to Tiberius that Sejanus was the murderer of his only son. Within a few hours he was impeached, condemned, and put to death. All who had gathered about him in the hope of his coming power were scattered or destroyed by the frantic anger of Tiberius. Livilla was urged by her mother to bury her shame in the grave. She refused, and was banished. We shall meet her again in the chronicle of vice and violence.

After this terrible ordeal Tiberius withdrew to Capreæ, where he had built a palace. Wandering, some years ago, among the ruins of what is believed to have been the palace of Tiberius, I found that the echoes still lingered there of the dark stories which men told in Rome of his later years. Men said that he had shut himself in that sea-girt palace only to indulge, unseen, in the grossest perversions of a sensual nature, and that a new profession of ministers to lust, of which a description may be found in Tacitus, had grown out of his weariness even of unnatural vice. One does not readily admit such orgies in a man between his seventy-second and seventy-eighth year, and it seems to me that one may offer an explanation of the myth, which will also serve to introduce the third Emperor of Rome and his wives.

Suetonius describes Tiberius as surrounded by learned men and absorbed in obscure problems of astrology, mythology, and letters. The most resolute adherent of the more romantic story must have some difficulty in reconciling this band of prosy pedants with the sensual orgies which popular rumour located in the lonely palace. When, however, we learn that two young princes of the least intellectual and most immoral character formed part of the household, we see that there may have been two entirely distinct lives sheltered by the palace at Capreæ. If we suppose that these young men and their sycophantic attendants freely indulged in the vices which were then common to Roman youths, while their elders were intent on the glorious planets of a Neapolitan sky, we have a satisfactory explanation of the legend. The horror of Rome at the Emperor’s bloody avenging of the murder of his son would not dispose people to discriminate conscientiously.

One of these princes was Herod Agrippa, son of the King of Judæa, whom Octavian had brought to Rome for security. The other, a year younger, was “Caligula,” as the soldiers had nicknamed the surviving son of Agrippina and Germanicus. Caius Cæsar—to give him his real name—was in his nineteenth year when his mother was banished. Tiberius a few years later took him to Capreæ, where he would prove an apt pupil to Herod in Oriental ways. The vein of moral perversity, if not insanity, which we trace in all the descendants of Julia, is most clearly exhibited in Caligula, and the tragedy of the Cæsars deepens when, in the year 37, Tiberius dies, and Caligula is called to the throne.[8]

He had been married in 33 to Junia Claudilla, daughter of Junius Silanus, a proconsul of eminent services and distinguished family. She was happily spared the fate of sharing the throne with Caligula by dying in childbirth. What her life in Capreæ must have been is not obscurely suggested by her early death. No prospect in Europe is more pleasant than that which unfolds its superb and far-lying beauty to the spectator on the green summits of Capri, from which the eye may wander over the broad blue bay, with its silver fringe of surf, or round the crescent of evergreen land that begins with Sorrento, and sweeps majestically, past the foot of Vesuvius, to the distant haze in which Baiæ once lived. Yet to a refined and sensitive young woman this splendid palace must have been a deathly jail. Repelled alike by the purblind scholars and the licentious princes, the heavy monotony of learning and vice unrelieved by visits to Rome, she sank under her burden in three years—just missing by one year the title of second Empress of Rome. Her father, a grave and illustrious Senator, endeavoured to check Caligula’s extravagance in the first year of his reign. The brutal Emperor bade him “take his greeting to the spirit of the dead.” With a last sad glance at the future of his country, Junius Silanus obeyed.

We are credibly told that Caligula then made love to Ennia, wife of the Prefect of the Guard. Sejanus had persuaded Tiberius to form a corps of “Prætorian Guards,” an Imperial body-guard which was destined to have a disastrous influence on the future of Rome. The actual prefect or commander of this regiment, Macro, was the most powerful person in the suite of Tiberius. With or without his connivance, his wife yielded to Caligula, on the condition that he should marry her when he became Emperor. Macro and Ennia accompanied Caligula when he bore the will and the ashes of Tiberius to Rome. A gloom had settled over Italy during the later years of Tiberius’s reign, and men hailed the young Caligula as the sun and the blue sky are hailed after days of dark tempest at sea. Standing by their flower-girt altars, coming out with torches at night, people greeted him with frantic epithets of affection. He was their “star,” their “chicken,” their “dear child,” as he had been to the soldiers in Germany years before. Not that he was a handsome youth. His frame was thin and lanky, and his movements awkward. He was prematurely bald, and his sunken eyes looked out with a scowl from his pallid face. But he was the son of Germanicus, the grandson of Julia. All the follies which the family had perpetrated were forgotten.

For a month or two he fulfilled the hope of his people. The reign of terror was ended at once. He recalled his sisters from exile, and brought to Rome, with great respect, the ashes of his mother and brothers. The circus and the amphitheatre rang once more with the cheers of the populace. The golden age of Octavian had been restored, men said. But the emasculated system and feeble mind of Caligula were unequal to the nervous strain. Early in his reign Ennia reminded him of his written promise to marry her, and Macro had an air of patronage in advising him. In a sudden blaze of ferocity he ordered Ennia and her children to be executed, and graciously permitted Macro to end his own life. He had found a wife—his sister Drusilla.

His incestuous relation with Drusilla was soon the topic of Rome. It had probably begun before she was banished, and when he recalled her to his palace, a young and beautiful girl of about twenty summers, he conceived a violent passion for her, divorced her from her husband, and announced that he intended to marry her. The Emperor was above all laws, he said. Rome laughed the laughter of fools. He was providing it with stupendous entertainment. The games of the circus ran for twelve hours, day after day, and the night was turned into fresh day with illuminations, banquets, and such pleasures as they could get with the money he freely distributed. In the midst of it all he fell ill; not improbably he was paying with epilepsy the price of his wild excesses. There was such sorrow in Rome as had rarely been felt at the illness of its greatest citizens. Men vowed their lives for the life of the beloved Emperor; and Caligula, when he recovered, saw that they kept their vows. He was ill for many weeks, and, when his strength returned, he had lost the little sanity and sobriety that nature had ever put in his ill-compacted frame. The rest of his reign was a nightmare.

Drusilla died during his illness, or soon after his recovery. Some writers suggest that her malady was a feeling of deep shame, but the description which Dio gives of her does not support this view, nor does the single virtue of remorse seem to be known among the descendants of Julia. The grief of Caligula was no less insane than his passion had been. No illustrious Roman was ever honoured with such pomp of funeral as this woman, whose incestuous life he cried over the world. A Senator saw her soul mount to heaven from the burning pile, and was rewarded with a million sesterces. The degraded Senate declared her a goddess, and it was decreed that henceforward women should swear by the divinity of Drusilla. Earth and heaven resounded with his demented moans; and even before Drusilla was put among the gods he had married again.

Livia Orestilla, the second Empress of Rome, is one of those ladies who are known to us only in the familiar phrase, that she was a young woman of great beauty and illustrious family. In her case we need no ampler portrait, as she was Empress only for a few days. Before the end of the first year of his reign (37), and in the midst of his lamentation over Drusilla, Caligula was invited to the wedding of Calpurnius Piso, a noble of rank and wealth. Caligula fancied the bride, and at once made her his Empress. With equal license he divorced her a few days afterwards, and she learned what it was to fall from the height of a throne. He forbade her to have any commerce with the husband of whom he had robbed her, and then, alleging that his order had been disregarded, banished both of them to remote and distinct parts of the Empire.