The Empresses of Rome

by Joseph McCabe

Titus, who succeeded his father in the year 79, and reigned for two years, threatened at one time to give Rome an even more singular and unwelcome type of Empress. He had in early youth married Arricidia Tertulla, who died soon afterwards, and then Marcia Furnilla, a lady of illustrious family. He left his wife in Rome when he took command under his father in Judæa, and became infatuated with a brilliant princess of the Herod family, Berenice. He divorced Furnilla, and brought Berenice to live with him at Rome. But the Romans resented the prospect of a Jewish Empress, and she was forced to return. On his accession to the throne he made no attempt to enforce her on them. He reigned alone for two years, “the love and delight of the human race,” and maintained the sober administration of his father.

With the accession of his younger brother, Domitian, Rome received a new Empress, and, by an unhappy coincidence, saw the imperial palace return to the evil ways of the Cæsars. Those of our time who attach almost the entire importance to stock or birth, and little to circumstances, in the formation of character, will find a peculiar problem in Domitian and his wife. The Emperor was the second son of the “plain Sabine burgher” and sturdy soldier, Vespasian, and of the lowly provincial woman, Flavia Domitilla. The Empress, Domitia Longina, was the daughter of Domitius Corbulo, one of the strongest and ablest generals that Rome produced in the first century. Yet of these sound and vigorous stocks came, in one generation, one of the most morbid of the Emperors and an Empress who, in some respects, rivalled Messalina. Rome knew them both, and had no false hope.

Domitia—as she is usually called—makes her first appearance as a young girl of great beauty and promise, caressed and protected by the wealth and prestige of her distinguished father, who, it is interesting to note, was a brother of Caligula’s masculine wife Cæsonia. She was married to a noble of distinction and character, Lucius Ælius Lamia Æmilianus, and she seems to have been an estimable young matron until her father incurred the anger of Nero and was forced to commit suicide. Procopius and Josephus, indeed, represent her as virtuous to the end, but there seems to be little room for doubt that the nearer and less indulgent authorities are correct. Her young mind opened on the sordid scenes of the closing part of Nero’s reign and the folly of Vitellius. She then met the fascinating and effeminate Domitian, and very speedily capitulated to his assaults.

DOMITIA

BUST IN UFFIZI GALLERY, FLORENCE

Gibbon speaks of him as “the timid and inhuman Domitian,” while Dio opens his biographical sketch of the Emperor with the deliberate epithet, “bold and wrathful.” We shall find a very natural dread of assassination in Domitian’s later years, but he was undoubtedly bold and crafty in the service of Venus, and a stranger to moral sentiment. His elder brother Titus had developed the manly qualities of their father on the battlefields of Judæa, and had proved strong enough to crush his irregular feelings on his accession to the throne. Domitian had remained at Rome, discharging only civic duties, and had become one of the most heartless dandies in the group of degenerate young patricians. During the civil strife of the Vitellianists and Vespasianists on the streets of Rome he had made his escape in the fitting disguise of a priest of Isis. Titus knew his vicious and luxurious ways, and endeavoured to check him by offering him his own charming daughter Julia in marriage; but Domitian was engaged in fascinating the pretty and accomplished wife of Lamia Æmilianus, and refused. Titus, on his accession, associated him in the government, and his first act was to separate his mistress from her husband, and marry her.

Domitia’s triumph was quickly tempered with mortification. Julia married her cousin Sabinus, and, out of pique or devilry, Domitian now discovered her charm and seduced her. To such a pair as these the attainment of supreme power meant an occasion of Imperial license, and sober Romans saw their community rapidly lose the ground that had been won in the previous reigns. It was even rumoured that Domitian had hastened his brother’s death by putting him in a box of snow during his last illness, though this remains no more than an idle rumour. At all events, Domitia soon discovered the despicable character for whom—or for whose prospects—she had abandoned her saner husband. While the affairs of the Empire needed his most strenuous attention, he would spend hours catching flies and spitting them with a bodkin; and from the spitting of flies he presently passed to the larger sport of murdering men. He conducted his little frontier-wars from safe and luxurious quarters, and came home to enjoy a triumph and erect a colossal bronze memorial of his valour. He banished eunuchs from Rome, and kept them in his palace; waged war against vice in all forms, and practised it in all forms. In the general relaxation of Roman manners even the Vestal Virgins had been for some decades permitted an alleviation of their onerous vows. Domitian posed as a moralist, on no other apparent ground than that he was closely acquainted with every shade of immorality, and drastically punished them. He raised fine public buildings, and depleted the public treasury by reckless expenditure and incompetent administration; prosecuted officials for extortion, and put men to death for their wealth; gave brilliant entertainments, and darkened the city and the Empire with his sanguinary brooding.

If we were to accept Josephus’s estimate of the virtue of Domitia, we should conceive her as living in melancholy isolation in the gloomy palace, an outraged spectator of her husband’s relations with Julia. But there is good evidence that she sought relief with something of the freedom of a Messalina. An authentic occurrence in the third year of Domitian’s reign puts her guilt beyond question. He had the actor Paris murdered in the street, and divorced Domitia. The people boldly sympathized with her, and covered with flowers the spot on which Paris had been killed. The Emperor had a number of them executed, but public feeling seems to have been expressed so strongly that he was forced to recall Domitia to the palace, and the sordid comedy ran on amid the jeers of Rome. A poet was put to death for making it the theme of his verse; Domitia’s former husband and others were executed for their freedom of speech. Then the beautiful and captivating Julia perished miserably in an attempt of Domitian’s to destroy the too obvious proof of their incest, and he became more sombre than ever.

This is not the place to tell the long and dreary story of the reign of Domitian, of which, for twelve further years, the Empress remains an inconspicuous, and perhaps a sobered, spectator. For a few years he maintained his singular and obscure mixture of good and evil, but the brighter features of his administration gradually faded, and a horrible gloom settled on the palace and the city. Hosts of spies and informers sprang up; large numbers of nobles, of both sexes, were executed or banished, on the slightest suspicion, and their wealth divided between the informers and the Emperor’s shrinking treasury. So great was his dread of assassination that he lined the portico at the palace, in which he used to walk, with white glazed tiles that would reflect the approach of any person behind him. But an extraordinary incident that Dio relates will suffice to give some idea of the reign of terror under which the Empress and all Rome suffered.