A war against the Sarmatians, who had cut to pieces a Roman legion, is placed by the chronologists in the year 93. Domitian conducted it in person, after his usual manner; but instead of triumphing, he contented himself with suspending a laurel crown in the Capitol. This is the last foreign transaction of his reign.[e]
Domitian’s principal faults were an immoderate pride, boundless prodigality, and a childish desire to distinguish himself. His appearance, his voice, and, in short, his whole bearing betrayed a proud and despotic nature. By his unrestrained prodigalities he was drawn into avarice and rapacity, and his fear of intrigues made him cruel. Spoilt by indulgences in early youth, as emperor he gave way to an unbridled taste for public amusements, cruel sports, gladiatorial games, chariot races, and a foolish passion for building. These extravagances entailed a continual lack of money, which drove him to oppression and cruelty. At the last, he hated and avoided mankind as Tiberius had done and became insane like Caligula. He was not wanting in intellectual abilities; as a young man he had made very good verses, had composed a poem on the conquest of Jerusalem, and had written a better translation of the poem of Aratus on the stars, than Cicero and Germanicus. As soon as he succeeded to the throne, he considered it beneath his dignity to occupy himself with intellectual things; from thenceforth he only studied the records and journals of Tiberius, and left the composition of his letters, ordinances, and speeches almost entirely to others.
The first part of his reign was better than might have been expected from his character. In its early years he showed no avarice, but was inclined to be generous and magnanimous. He issued some excellent ordinances, checked the malpractices of complainants and calumniators, as well as the publication of lampoons, punished partisan judges with great severity, and kept the officials in order with such energy, that none of them dared to neglect their duties either in Rome or the provinces; and as the historian Suetonius puts it, somewhat too strongly, the magistrates were never more just or incorruptible than in his reign. For this reason, Domitian was from the beginning hated by the senate, which was composed for the most part of high public officials, especially as he showed himself in every respect far less favourably disposed towards the aristocracy than Vespasian and Titus.
When Domitian observed how few friends he had in the senate and upper classes, he tried to win the populace by rich donations, public entertainments, and brilliant revels, and granted the soldiers such a considerable rise in their pay, that he himself soon saw the impossibility of meeting the great expense so incurred. He increased the pay by one-fourth, and, since the finances of the state could not suffice for such an expenditure, he tried to have recourse to a diminution of the number of the troops; but had to give up the idea, for fear of disturbances, mutinies in the army, and the exposure of the frontier to the attacks of the barbarians. Domitian had not much to fear from the hatred of the senate; for though Vespasian had cast out its unworthy members and replaced them by men from the most distinguished families of the whole empire, it was no better under Domitian than it had been before.[24]
The great corruption of the Roman Empire of that time is manifest from the fact that the changes instituted in the highest government departments by the best among the emperors, were only of service so long as a good and powerful ruler was at the head of the government. The very senate, which Vespasian had tried to purify, submitted under Domitian to every whim of the tyrant. It is impossible to say which was the greater, the effrontery of the emperor or the baseness of the highest court of the empire. Under two worthy successors of Domitian, the same senators again proved themselves reasonable and dignified, not because the spirit of the times had changed or that they themselves had become better, but because the man who was at the head of the state powerfully influenced the senate by his character, and so infused a better spirit into it.
It would be as wearisome for the historian as for the reader to enumerate the prodigalities, eccentricities, and cruelties to which Domitian abandoned himself more completely the longer he reigned. In his vanity he declared himself a god like Caligula, caused sacrifices to be offered to him, and introduced the custom of being styled “Our lord and god” in all public ordinances and documents. He squandered immense sums on building, instituted the most magnificent public games, and, like Tiberius and Nero, was slave to all sorts of excesses. In order to obtain the money he required, he caused many rich people to be robbed of their goods or executed on every kind of pretext. Not avarice alone, but suspicion and fear drove him to acts of despotism and cruelty.[d] Little by little he gained, it was alleged, an actual taste for tormenting his victims. It was said that he took delight in being present at the torture and execution of prisoners, and that by a refinement of cruelty, he often showed himself most friendly towards those persons whose death he contemplated. But allowance must be made in all this for the exaggeration of scandal-mongers. That he was severe in stamping out all opposition, however, is not to be questioned.[a] His hatred of the senators was inflamed by the discovery that many of them shared in the conspiracy of Saturninus, a rebellious governor of northern Germany. From that time to the end of his reign he was a terror to the nobility, as well as to the stoics, whose teachings glorified conspiracy and “tyrannicide.”[m]
The citizens being defenceless, the senate without authority, the soldiers as partial to Domitian as they had once been to Nero, and no one except his confidants and servants daring to approach him, the tyrant would probably never have been overthrown had he not, like Caligula, made those around him fearful for their lives. His own wife, Domitia, conspired with some of those persons who had to write down or execute his cruel orders to destroy him. Chance once placed in the hands of Domitia a list of the condemned on which the suspicious tyrant had written her name. On the same list were the names of the two prefects of the guard, Norbanus and Petronius, and of Parthenius, Domitian’s most trusted chamberlain, and it was therefore easy for Domitia to bring about a conspiracy against her husband. To carry it out was more difficult, for Domitian possessed great bodily strength, and in his suspicion had taken all sorts of precautions against such attempts. The tyrant was surprised in his sleeping apartment, and slain after a desperate resistance. The guards were so enraged at the murder of Domitian that his successor, Nerva, could not protect the conspirators from their anger, and they were cut to pieces by the soldiers after their execution had been in vain demanded of the new emperor.
After Domitian’s death the senate gave full vent to its hatred of the tyrant. The statue of the murdered emperor was immediately destroyed by its orders, his triumphal arches overthrown, and his name effaced from all public monuments. The government was handed over to the old senator Cocceius Nerva, whom the conspirators had immediately proclaimed emperor on Domitian’s death. It is most characteristic of those times that Nerva was said to be raised to the throne, not so much on account of his services to the state, but because, under Domitian, some astrologers had said that the horoscope of this man pointed to his becoming emperor at some future time.[25] It was universally believed that a celebrated philosopher, Apollonius of Tyana, to whom supernatural powers were ascribed, witnessed the murder of Domitian in the spirit at Ephesus at the same time that it took place, and publicly announced it to the people.[d]
Other superstitions concerning the death of Domitian, together with an account of the personal characteristics and habits of living of the emperor, and of the manner of his taking off, are given by Suetonius; this biography being the concluding one in the famous work we have so frequently quoted.[a]