The Successor: Tiberius and the Triumph of the Roman Empire 1481310461, 9781481310468

Citation preview

The

Ti be r i us&t h eTr i umpho ft h eRoma nEmpi r e

Successor

W i llem i j n van Di j k t r a ns l a t e db y Ka t hl e e n Br a ndt Ca r e y

The Successor

Also by Willemijn van Dijk from Baylor University Press Via Roma: The History of Rome in Fifty Streets (2018)

The Successor TIBERIUS and THE TRIUMPH OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE

Willemijn van Dijk Translated by Kathleen Brandt-­Carey

BAYLOR UNIVERSITY PRESS

De opvolger © 2017 by Willemijn van Dijk Originally published by Ambo | Anthos Uitgevers, Amsterdam English translation © 2019 by Baylor University Press, Waco, Texas 76798 All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission in writing of Baylor University Press. Cover design by Savanah N. Landerholm Cover image: Portrait of Roman Emperor Tiberius in Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen Book design by Savanah N. Landerholm The publisher gratefully acknowledges the support of the Dutch Foundation for Literature.

The Library of Congress has cataloged this book under ISBN 978-14813-1046-8. 978-1-4813-1050-5 (WebPDF) This ebook was converted from the original source file. Readers who encounter any issues with formatting, text, linking, or readability are encouraged to notify the publisher at [email protected]. Some font characters may not display on all ereaders. To inquire about permission to use selections from this text, please contact Baylor University Press, One Bear Place, #97363, Waco, Texas 76798. Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper with a minimum of 30 percent post-consumer waste recycled content.

For Livia

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CONTENTS

Preface xi Acknowledgments xiii Prologue xv I

The Longest Breath

1

II

The Succession

III

Out of the Shadows

103

IV

The Fall

159

V

The Last Breath

171

95

Epilogue 175 Afterword 177 Family Tree

186

Notes

189

Bibliography 193 Index

197

vii

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I have done many impious things—­no great ruler can do otherwise. —­Robert Graves, I, Claudius

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PREFACE

The history of the Roman Empire is in a sense a history of the varied manifestations of power. In earliest Rome tyranny was replaced by the “free” republic, but roughly half a millennium later that republic, in its turn, was forced to yield to a new, veiled form of tyranny: the empire. This new system of hereditary absolute rule—­in essence a military dictatorship—­was, like its predecessor, flawed from the start. These flaws would inevitably lead to the fall of the dynasty founded by Augustus as the heir of Julius Caesar, yet the new form of government was destined to outlive Rome’s first imperial family. History books place the birth of the Roman Empire in 27 BCE, when Augustus became Rome’s first emperor. This book is about that birth, but it tells a different story. For it was not until the moment that power was passed from the first emperor to the second, in the year 14 CE, that the new administration triumphed once and for all over the republican system. That is why this book is written from the perspective of the man who in that year, against all expectations, became the successor: Tiberius. Tiberius had spent an entire military career distinguishing himself. He was known to be surly, arrogant, and reticent, but also by far the finest military commander of his time. A bizarre confluence of events molded the fate that called him, at the age of fifty-­five, to the throne. He was born two years after the murder of Caesar, when Rome was still a republic and his parents were political refugees fleeing execution. xi

xii Preface

Everything changed when Livia, Tiberius’ mother, married the future emperor of Rome. The life story of Tiberius, an enigmatic individual described as “one of the most tragic figures in all Roman history,”1 has been set down here as it has been preserved, via age-­long tradition, from antiquity. Numerous ancient Roman historians wrote of him and his era, and countless archeological sources have been preserved. The sources are neither consistent with one another nor uniformly reliable; they never are. This book tells the version of the story that I consider the most probable, based on my research on Tiberius and the Rome of his day. Writing history is a subjective occupation and here and there I have, consciously or unconsciously, freely filled in details. One is forced to make choices when writing a narrative of the past; where necessary I have done that in my own way. For the sake of the story I have also chosen to refer to the characters only by their most familiar names, regardless of the precise moment in history in which those names were given to them. Augustus, for instance, I have consistently called Augustus, even though he did not receive that title until 27 BCE and before that time used his own name, Gaius Octavius, or his adopted name, Gaius Julius Caesar. Foremost for me in writing this book has been my hope that it will transport the readers to another time and place: the Rome of Tiberius.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This book is the result of an interest that began years ago. The early imperial period was often discussed during the countless lectures on ancient Rome I attended as an archeology major at the VU (Vrije Universiteit, or Free University) in Amsterdam. But it was not until I was following a course at the Royal Netherlands Institute in Rome, and became absorbed in one of the city’s extant monuments to Augustus, that I was smitten. It was the Ara Pacis Augustae, the Altar of Augustan Peace, which was moved from its original site during the modern era and reassembled on the Piazza Augusto Imperatore. A text printed on the side of the Museum of the Ara Pacis, the altar’s new home, played an important role in the conception of this book: the Res Gestae, Augustus’ public testament. I am grateful to my fellow students in that course in Rome (some of whom are now my colleagues at Roma Aeterna magazine) for their shared enthusiasm, their inspiration, and how they show the world that being old and stuffy is not a prerequisite to a love of antiquity. A few years after I studied the Res Gestae in Rome, a joyful family event reawakened my interest in Augustus’ legacy, in particular his death and succession: the birth of my niece, Nola, who shares a name with the Italian city in which it all took place. Numerous people with little or no connection to ancient Rome have also contributed to this book, both directly and indirectly. My thanks go in the first place to Vicky Marijnen, xiii

xiv Acknowledgments

who was certain I would write it even before I had decided to myself, and whose unshakeable confidence helped me over the first hurdle. Judith Koelemeijer’s wisdom and experience helped me get my bearings in the world of literary nonfiction. I thank both her and my fellow writers from writers’ group “Het Tuinhuisje” in Amsterdam for discussions held and good suggestions made during the first stage of the writing of this book. I am also indebted to my Dutch publisher, Ambo|Anthos, for their confidence both in me as a writer and in this book in particular. Frederike Doppenberg, my editor, has my gratitude for her countless improvements and suggestions. Her sharp eye and enthusiasm have made this book many times better than I would have managed to make it on my own. My thanks go to Saskia Balmaekers for having put her own work aside to read the manuscript. Any errors that may have remained, despite the scrupulous attention of the many who have poured over the manuscript, are of course my own responsibility. I would like to express my very great appreciation to Kathleen Brandt-Carey, who translated my book in English and did a better job than I could ever have hoped for. My special thanks are extended to my publisher in the US, and I would like to thank the staff of Baylor University Press for their patient guidance, useful critiques and valuable support. Without the unconditional support and love of my husband, Peter-­Paul, I would never have gotten one word on paper. He patiently listened to my endless stories about Tiberius and the succession and encouraged me to keep at it when I became discouraged. But of all those involved in the creation of this book, the most special place belongs to Livia, who grew inside me while I was writing it and was born when it was finished.

PROLOGUE

I’m terribly frightened that “defeated Ajax” will take reprisals for being badly defended. —­Juvenal1

In autumn of the year 31 Rome was ravaged by a reign of terror that Suetonius would later describe as “barbaric.” The city had degenerated into a grim and merciless place. Hardly a day passed without public slayings. The victims were men, women, and children, sometimes as many as twenty per day; people from all walks of life. On those days the Tiber flowed red with blood and the city stank of rotting body parts. The corpses of the condemned—­or whatever was left of them—­all ended up in the river. The site of these barbaric proceedings, the stage upon which the terror in all its ghastliness was played out for the people of Rome, was a flight of steps in the middle of the city center. The Gemonian Stairs descended from the highest point of Rome’s most sacred hill, the Arx of the Capitoline, down to the city’s darkest place, the Mamertine Prison on the outskirts of the Forum Romanum. Here, in these dreaded dungeons, the convicted refuse of Rome waited in oppressive darkness for the executioner. Usually they were strangled, then dragged out and hurled onto the stone steps. It was no wonder that Romans among themselves had dubbed it the “Stairs of Mourning” after the last wails and groans of those poor souls who were still alive when they ended up on the stairs. The bodies sometimes lay there for days and were xv

xvi Prologue

delivered over to the rage of the people—­who, as Roman historians grimly noted, not infrequently tore them eagerly limb from limb. For convicted prisoners looking to escape this horrific fate, there was really only one way out. Publius Vitellius, formerly a respected member of the army high command, was one of numerous prominent public figures to be accused of treason during those dark autumn days, and one of those looking to take the honorable way out and avoid a shameful end in the Tiber. After being indicted, just before being taken away, he said he wanted to write something down and asked for a pen-­sharpener—­which he then used to crudely slit his wrists. Others would follow Vitellius’ example; under the circumstances it represented the only noble alternative. Suicide became the strategy of choice for those desperate souls who had become suspect in the emperor’s eyes—­but it was a strategy that had to be carried out with care. If the authorities got wind of an attempt, they would send the executioner rushing over to the victim’s house to patch him up, if need be, then throw him into prison anyway. Up until October 18 of the year 31, the fateful day on which everything changed, those who would soon fall prey to the emperor’s paranoia were public figures—­t he most eminent men and women of the city. They were all friends, relatives, or confidants of Lucius Aelius Sejanus, the prefect of the Praetorian Guard and the second-­most powerful man in Rome. Sejanus had a taste of limitless power and the addictive adoration of the people. Officially, he ruled jointly with the emperor, but in reality Sejanus was the man in charge of Rome. The actual emperor, Tiberius, was seventy-­t hree and did not have much longer to live. Sejanus was almost certain to succeed him in the near future. But on that 18 of October, when the Senate assembled at daybreak on the Palatine Hill, fate suddenly turned against him. He entered the assembly room as the mightiest man of

Prologue xvii

Rome and exited it a short while later as the greatest traitor the city had ever known. In one day Sejanus discovered just how treacherously unpredictable—­how illusory, in fact—­are power, prestige, and public favor. Sejanus lost his position as the Number Two man of Rome—­of the world—­that October morning, and that evening he lost his life. All through that night, and for days afterward, the people held a macabre festival around his dead body. They were the same people who had cheered him shortly before, when fate had seemed to smile upon him and the future had looked so promising. Autumn slowly turned to winter, and an ever-­blacker veil drew itself over Rome. It had become clear to everyone that Sejanus’ execution was just the beginning. Tiberius had not just turned without warning against his confidant and right-­ hand man: old as he was, he had unleashed within himself a seemingly insatiable hunger for revenge. Next in line to feed that hunger were the members of Sejanus’ immediate family. In November Tiberius’ agents knocked on Strabo’s door. He was Sejanus’ eldest son and therefore the first to be suspected of wanting to avenge his father’s death. Strabo was hunted down and executed with merciless efficiency. No dissent was heard: the general conclusion was that Strabo must have gotten what he deserved. Fate had turned against him and his family, that was all, and the inclination of the masses bent itself willingly to the whims of fate. But somehow the appetite for yelling and dancing around the young man’s corpse, as they had so eagerly and bloodthirstily done around his father’s, seemed to be lacking with most of them. The mood soured. The darkest hour of the vendetta came when Strabo’s younger brother and sister’s turn came. Junilla was barely into her teens; her brother, Capito Aelianus, was a bit older. Unlike his sister, Aelianus was old enough to understand what was in store for them when they were dragged off to the murky dungeons at the foot of the

xviii Prologue

Capitoline Hill. But he was just a teenager himself, and it must have been grim, having to listen to Junilla’s incessant questions all the way there. What was going on? What had they done wrong? Aelianus was silent. Then his sister’s questions gave way to rising panic. What if they promised to always be good from now on? They could punish her with a beating if they wished! The executioner, who had received his instructions from the emperor himself, had nodded in comprehension when told that it was against Roman custom to put a virgin to death. In a few moments he would strangle the two children, now quaking with fear in Rome’s murky dungeon, but first he would rape young Junilla. After their executions Junilla and Aelianus were dragged from the dungeons and flung onto the Stairs of Mourning, where their father and older brother had lain such a short time ago. The people watched, but they were silent. This time the man with the hook had no need to wait for days until the fury of the crowd was spent. He pulled the juvenile corpses from the steps and dragged them to the Tiber. For centuries the river had been Rome’s sewer. Via the same Tiber that had carried the founders of Rome in a basket, the city’s human refuse now made its silent exit: that was what became of convicted criminals here in the most glorious capital in the world. But what, exactly, the crime of these children had been, no one knew. The crowd must have watched in silence as the bodies floated away down the river. But there was one in that mass of anonymous spectators who was not looking at the water: a seemingly inconspicuous woman, who averted her gaze and seemed to stare off into nothingness. It was the unfortunate mother of Strabo, Aelianus, and Junilla. Her name was Apicata, and she had once been married to Sejanus, not realizing the doom that the marriage would call down upon her head. She had recently lost her eldest son; now she had to witness the bodies of her innocent youngest children being

Prologue xix

dragged over the street and unceremoniously dumped in the river. She herself was not on the list of the condemned, at least not for the time being; her marriage to Sejanus had ended in divorce a long time ago. Her children had died a grisly public death, but she was allowed to live. It would be hard to say whose lot was the more bitter one. Apicata, in any case, took matters into her own hands. Before killing herself, Apicata withdrew into her house and sat down to write a letter. In it she recounted, meticulously and in businesslike fashion, an occurrence in the distant past, and in doing so finally revealed the secret she had carried with her for almost a decade. The letter was addressed to Emperor Tiberius. It was not until the messenger had safely left her house with the document that she took her own life. Spring came, then summer, and Tiberius’ reign of terror continued. Rome lost count of the dead. The emperor held his pet snake and fed her a few more tidbits. The creature got more to eat than was good for her, to be sure, but Tiberius doted on his little pet. He loved her almost as much as he did his homegrown cucumbers. Tiberius might have become a lonely old man, but his hobbies kept him amused. The shrieks of fear and horror on the streets did not reach him in his palace. Tiberius was not even in Rome. He had not seen the capital of his empire, this immense realm that fell under his direct personal authority, for eight years. He was enjoying his retirement in the storybook villa he had built on a high rock on the island of Capri, almost two hundred miles south of Rome. He ruled only when absolutely necessary, and then via letters containing specific instructions for the Senate. The terror that Tiberius had deliberately unleashed upon Rome on October 18, 31, was managed from a distance—­from one of the most paradisiacal spots on earth. In the emperor’s

xx Prologue

eyes the executions, including those of Junilla and Aelianus, and the countless others that followed them, were necessary in order to safeguard his own security and that of the Empire. With the emperor so far from the center of government many were left to guess at his wishes. All wanted to avoid falling into disfavor, but none knew for sure if they were safe. Fear ruled Rome. In the winter of that same year an unknown messenger from Rome arrived on Capri carrying a letter for the emperor. Tiberius, taking the letter, recognized a ghost from his past. The sender was a woman whose existence he had almost forgotten, and whose name took him back to a time he had hidden away, far from sight. The letter was from Apicata.

I THE LONGEST BREATH When I hear and read that you are worn out by constant hardships, may the Gods confound me if my own body does not wince in sympathy; and I beseech you to spare yourself, that the news of your illness may not kill your mother and me, and endanger the Roman people in the person of their future ruler. —­Augustus, in a letter to Tiberius1

1 ROME, JUNE 3, 17 BCE The Tiber’s waters flow southwards, now gray, now in tints of reddish-­brown, littered with the city’s garbage. The river meanders past the impressive gravestones and obelisks lining the Via Flaminia. There are no artificially raised riverbanks here yet; both sides of the river bear the scars of flooding. Thick, hazy smoke, heavy with the smell of charred meat, rises from the eastern bank of the bend that encircles the Field of Mars. Heaps of old ashes—­t he remnants of ceremonial sacrifices—­surround a marble altar; extinguished torches lay strewn about the ground. A pregnant sow was sacrificed on this altar in the dead of the previous night. Between here and the city walls, the glittering spectacle of the approaching metropolis gradually begins. First comes Augustus’ stately mausoleum—­t hat family monument to which, in the year 23 BCE, an urn had so suddenly and unexpectedly been committed. Then Agrippa’s Pantheon and bathhouse, and also the Saepta Julia, where eleven days ago an excited and expectant Senate convened to organize the festivities that are now in progress. Between the monuments gurgles the cool water of the Aqua Virgo—­t he aqueduct 1

2

The Successor

which, thanks to Agrippa, first brought water to the city exactly two years earlier. Here and there one sees construction sites and buildings where restorations are being carried out; but on this day the sites are abandoned and the tools silent. The daily life of Rome is at a standstill. After the Theater of Pompey, the largest in all of Rome, follows that of Marcellus. Then Apollo’s temple and Octavia’s portico. The new leading figures of Rome, all from the house and inner circle of Augustus, have already found ways to immortalize themselves in stone. Once inside the city walls we enter the oldest part of the metropolis. There is the Forum Romanum, normally thronged with people, now silent and deserted. All trade and legal business is, like the construction, closed for the duration of the festivities. Even women who a few days ago were clad in black due to the loss of a husband or child have been requested to put off their mourning for the festival. The normal daily life of the community is on hold: Rome has embarked upon three days and three nights of religious ceremonies and festivities in which the entire community takes part. For the first time in a long while, Rome feels united again. The ancient temples dedicated to the great Jupiter and Juno Moneta are no longer the only structures to grace the sacred Capitoline Hill: a number of wooden stages, specially constructed for the festivities, have sprung up around them. Here, too, the ground is littered with smoldering piles of ashes, burned-­out torches, and charred remains: vestiges of the preceding feast day, when two beautifully decked-­out, whitewashed cows were ritually slaughtered for Juno. These ceremonies have been continuing night and day throughout the preceding days. Rome’s inhabitants had taken part in religious celebrations before, but no one had ever experienced anything like this. And, due to the nature of the celebration, no one ever would again. Rome was celebrating the Ludi Saeculares: the Centennial.



The Longest Breath 3

On the other side of the Forum Romanum, on the Palatine Hill, fifty-­four boys and girls from Rome’s most prominent families throng nervously together around Apollo’s temple. They are preparing for the Centennial’s magnificent finale. After some shoving and rearranging, they finally fall into the right formation. The pipers strike up. Gradually, the group calms down. They have been practicing for this for days. The procession moves out. Augustus walks in front, his head, as befits that of a priest in the execution of his duty, covered with the fine, light material of his toga. The emperor—­who prefers to call himself “princeps”—­plays a leading role in the ceremony, just as he has in every ceremony over the course of the preceding days. Now and again, as he walks, the gleam of a burnished steel knife flashes from under his robe. In Augustus’ wake come the consuls, Gaius Furnius and Junius Silanus, in their purple-­embroidered togas. Then the high priests, members of the so-­called College of Fifteen, led by Augustus’ good friend and right-­hand man, Marcus Agrippa. They are followed in turn by the striking, mysterious women called Vestal Virgins, in their veils of fine white wool. The Vestals’ appearance has been stage-­managed with meticulous dedication: across each left shoulder a palla has been artfully draped and is held perfectly in place with a magnificent pin. One hundred and ten women walk behind the Vestal Virgins: the exact number of years that, according to the official count, must pass between each celebration of the Centennial. These are the matrones of the city’s most powerful families, each one a model of virtuous Roman family life. Augustus’ sister, Octavia, and his wife, Livia, lead the women’s procession, impeccably dressed and with their hair drawn up in buns. Julia, Agrippa’s wife and Augustus’ daughter by his first marriage, is too young to accompany her stepmother and aunt, besides which she has just given birth to her second son, Lucius Caesar. She watches the procession, in

4

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which her stepbrothers, Tiberius and Drusus, will walk at the head of Rome’s preeminent young men, from the sidelines. Tiberius, Drusus, and Julia: they are the young people who hold the fate of Augustus’ Rome—­welfare and prosperity for which are being entreated during these feast days—­in their hands. Or, in Julia’s case, in her arms. It will not be long before all three claim their places in the center of world power. Meanwhile Quintus Horatius Flaccus (Horace), the thirty-­seven-­year-­old poet and audiences’ darling who is directing the choir, has given the signal. Twenty-­seven boys and twenty-­seven girls, all in snow-­white tunics, their young heads lavishly crowned with flowers and laurel wreaths, break the silence with song. From its first note their song moves the spectators, filling them with a feeling of community, of oneness—­a feeling they thought had deserted them long ago: O goddess, be pleased to rear our young, and to grant success to the Fathers’ edicts on the yoking together of men and women and on the marriage law for raising a new crop of children, so that the unfailing cycle of ten times eleven years may bring round singing and games that are thronged with people three times by daylight and as often in the pleasant time of night.2

Horace leads his singing choir slowly down from the Palatine Hill and through the Vicus Apollinis to the summa Sacra Via, the top of the Capitoline Hill several hundred yards away. This is the first time his Carmen Saeculare, the hymn he composed specially for the Centennial, has been performed in public. At Augustus’ sign the procession comes to a halt in front of Jupiter’s temple atop the Capitoline. The pipers play softly while the fifty-­four young voices, as clear and pure as the cloudless June sky, sing on tirelessly from the wooden stage, entreating security, welfare, and prosperity for Rome:



The Longest Breath 5 O ye gods, give sound character to a young generation enabling them to learn; give rest to the old ensuring their contentment; and to the people of Romulus as a whole give wealth and children and every blessing.

The audience listens as the pleas rise skyward—­pleas for the mother city and all her progeny; for themselves and their families. This, the culmination of the countless smaller ceremonies of the past few days, is a one-of-a-kind spectacle, and one that has been impatiently awaited by the citizenry of Rome. Their participation over the whole of the Centennial entailed quite a lot of preparation. They had shown up in large numbers on May 26, 27, and 28 at one of the designated distribution points to collect their sulfur and tar for the ritual cleansing that must precede the religious activities; then they had come back for the grain, wheat, and beans that would enable them to take part in the sacrificial ceremonies. Rome has been eagerly laboring over this “party of the century” for days. The procession sets off back in the direction of Apollo’s temple on the Palatine Hill, still accompanied by the choir’s singing and the music of the instruments. The plume of smoke from the sacrificial fire on top of the hill rises steadily into the air. The chorus invokes Apollo: Phoebus the prophet, arrayed with his shining bow, who is dear to the nine Muses, and by his healing art relieves the body’s weary limbs—­he, if he looks with favour, as he does, on the altars of the Palatine, prolongs Rome’s power and Latium’s prosperity for another cycle and another ever improving age.

Here atop the Palatine Hill awaits the final sacrifice, the Centennial’s grand finale. There are no squealing sows and decorated cows this time: for this last ritual Augustus will personally offer twenty-­seven specially baked ceremonial loaves of bread to Apollo and Diana. The air quickly fills with a penetrating mixture of smells: spices and burned cake. Slowly, like the fires, the Centennial dies out.

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The Successor

For three days and three nights Augustus, the princeps, or leader, of the Roman State, led all the Centennial processions and stood with bared knife at all the sacrificial altars. It had gone exactly as he had imagined it, back in February when he, together with Agrippa, had submitted the request to the Senate to organize the festivities. Their aim had been to symbolize a turning point in history—­to bring the entire Roman community together, and with them to gaze backwards and forwards at the same time, like the two-­headed god Janus. Now, after the long years of power struggles, bloodshed, and civil war in Rome, they could finally invite the gods back to a city that, thanks to their own efforts, was safe and peaceful again. It went without saying that Augustus, Agrippa, and the rest of their family would play a prominent part in the ceremonies. But beyond increasing the family’s prestige, the festivities were intended to infuse new vigor into the religious life of the Empire’s capital, which had finally regained her dignity. It was only ten years earlier, in 27 BCE, that Augustus, then using his birth name Octavius, had brought an end to the civil wars that for generations had torn apart the lives and families of Rome. He had avenged himself upon the murderers of his adoptive father, Julius Caesar, who had died, the victim of a conspiracy, in a pool of blood on the Senate floor. Then he had defeated the last enemy of the State, Marc Antony, and Marc Antony’s formidable lover, the Egyptian queen Cleopatra. And so Augustus, as the lawful heir of Julius Caesar, had restored the honor of the Roman republic, and then had deferentially restored to the Senate all the special powers granted to him for the task. He was, after all, no tyrant lusting after absolute power. All Augustus had ever wanted was for the authority in Rome to be restored to the ancient, respected republican institutions such as the Senate and the consuls. All he had ever done, he had done in service of a republic in distress. Or, at least, so he made it appear.



The Longest Breath 7

On the other hand there had never, in fact could never, have been any real question of his standing down. If the republic were to flower once more it would need protection—­t hat much the Senate understood. Despite the blood that Augustus had been forced to shed on his way to the top, most agreed that the State of Rome would be in good hands with him. Singular marks of honor were therefore conferred upon Augustus by the Senate. He would henceforth not only be annually appointed one of Rome’s consuls, but was also given a special title: princeps. Technically a citizen like all others, but the most eminent of all. First among equals. But even as princeps Augustus—­modest as he was, or as he wished to appear—­preferred to be seen as patron rather than monarch. The majority of senators stood behind him, a sharp contrast to how they had felt about his stepfather, Julius Caesar; and in gratitude for the respect he had accorded them as an institution, they rewarded him with an almost divine epithet: Augustus. The exalted one. Whether that respect was genuine or just a façade was no longer an issue. The occupant of many a Senate seat was engrossed by one thought, and one thought only: let us, for the gods’ sake, restore peace and security. Let suspicion and murderous intent depart from Rome for good; let us keep the legions under the authority of this man, who—­in contrast to ambitious opportunists like Pompey, Caesar, and Marc Antony—­has proven that he has at least a modicum of deference for the old institutions of Rome. Rome’s new order allowed for the traditional justice system, but was, as a whole, controlled by Augustus. It was a veiled form of dictatorship, unworthy of the old republic, but most senators preferred it to a life of constant fear. Almost all of them had blood-­curdling recollections of the times when their own names, and those of their fathers or best friends, had appeared on the public list of the condemned. All that was now in the past. No one had to fear for his life anymore. Roman no longer had to fight against

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The Successor

Roman. Rome’s strife-­torn heart was healed and could once again focus its attention on maintaining peace and security throughout the Empire—­which, thanks in part to the leaders of the previous decade’s civil wars, had continued to expand. The Forum Romanum was once again a model of order and uprightness, of old-­fashioned values, and of the rule of law, as well as of renewed religious diligence. Temples had been rebuilt, expanded, or refurbished. In order to teach Rome a lesson, Augustus had even introduced a number of marriage and morality laws; these came into effect shortly before the Centennial and were designed to stimulate marriage and childbearing and to discourage adultery and other frivolities. He had in large measure restored the Empire’s hegemony as well. Any still-­smoldering conflicts and rebellions in the provinces were forcefully dealt with and Rome’s honor was gradually reestablished to the farthest corners of the Empire. Horace managed to capture this fresh, hope-­fi lled spirit in the new hymn that was sung by fifty-­four Roman children on June 3, 17 BCE. Finally, the gods could safely return to a Rome who welcomed them, and whose very streets radiated trustworthiness. Yet this was no time for complacency. Even during the Centennial Augustus, as commander of the Roman legions, was pestered by new threats of border conflicts and rebellious tribes in the provinces. The Golden Age was within reach, as the choir sang, but the gods must not abandon Rome now. Over three days and three nights of continuous religious ceremonies, Rome pleaded with the all-­powerful ones to side with the Romans—­to stand by them, now and in the uncertain future.

2 The Alps formed the natural northern boundary of the Roman Empire following the Centennial. Those same Alps were a symbolic border: a no-­man’s-land separating the civilized world from the unknown. Beyond them lay dark forests



The Longest Breath 9

inhabited by hostile, barbaric tribes: a wilderness filled with wild, robust men with reddish hair and uncouth beards. That this majestic mountain range offered Rome not nearly enough protection against those sinewy barbarians was a lesson from the city’s early history. Almost four hundred years ago brazen tribes from the north had boldly conquered the snow-­topped mountains, only to march on, undaunted, to sow terror in the very streets of Rome. The mountains had also failed to stop doughty Hannibal and his Punic army, which in 218 BCE had given the fledgling Roman Empire the most anxious days it had yet experienced. And peril from the north had come close a third time, towards the end of the second century BCE, when Roman legions at the Empire’s borders found themselves face to face with advancing tribes of Cimbri and Teutones. All these invasions now belonged to the distant past. By 17 BCE Rome had long been undisputed lord and master of the entire Mediterranean. The Empire’s land borders had, several decades earlier, been substantially pushed back by Julius Caesar: all the way to the Rhine. And yet the fear of the unknown and unpredictable nature of what lay beyond those natural borders—­beyond the river, over the mountains—­had always remained. Friend and enemy alike had been impressed when Caesar, forty years earlier, had dared to cross the Rhine with an expedition from Gaul: hardly anyone had dared to set foot in the Germanic forests before. The stay-­at-­homes in Rome had lapped up Caesar’s detailed personal report from Gaul, delivered practically live, like little boys reading an adventure story—­a ll of which had enabled the great general to handily mold public opinion on the entire undertaking. The land where he fought his Gallic Wars was separated from the dreaded Germanic territory in the east by the Rhine River—­t hat was how Caesar had explained it to the home front. The reality, however, was much more complex than Caesar made it appear. Beyond the opposite bank of the

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The Successor

Rhine lay an unseen patchwork quilt of people with widely diverse languages and cultures, but it was easier to label them all “Germans.” In this manner Caesar made the unknown world comprehensible and orderly for his Roman audience, with the newly conquered Gaul on one side of the river and on the other side Germania: a hostile place, inhabited by savages. The crossing that Caesar undertook in the early summer of 55 BCE turned out in the end to be no more than a reconnaissance mission. It afforded Caesar himself a great deal of admiration but yielded Rome no new territory. Northwest of the Alps, the Empire’s new border was still the river with the name that sounded so exotic to Roman ears—­the Rhine.

3 For years the strengthening and guarding of the northern border remained high on the Roman list of priorities. Perhaps—­a lthough no one ever really knew what went on in that quiet, inscrutable young man’s head—­it had been Caesar’s account of the Gallic Wars that filled the thoughts of the well-­read, twenty-­six-­year-­old Tiberius when he set out for the mountainous north of Italy in 15 BCE at the behest of his stepfather, Augustus. There were, after all, few enough eyewitness accounts besides that one to give him an idea of what would be waiting for him beyond the borders. Tiberius’ biological father (whose full name, like his son’s, was Tiberius Claudius Nero) had served under Caesar and been to far-­off places like Egypt and Gaul. But Tiberius had been very young when his father died. His memories of him would include no tales of the world outside Rome; they consisted mainly of a funeral. As a small boy Tiberius had stood in the Forum Romanum and personally recited the funeral oration for his father. He had not written the text; he was far too young for that. The ode to his father’s many successes, particularly his victories at sea, had been



The Longest Breath 11

composed by others. It was, all the same, Tiberius’ first real public appearance. He was barely ten years old. By now Tiberius was in his twenties. He had grown up in Rome’s highest circles and, despite a certain natural shyness, had become accustomed to the inevitable public appearances that were the lot of any young Roman with ambitions. That he did not, in the end, turn out to be a gifted public speaker was in any case not owing to his looks. Tiberius had been blessed with an impressive build that went well with his aristocratic parentage. He combined broad shoulders and an athletic physique with a face that, despite regular outbreaks of pimples, could certainly be called handsome in an aristocratic fashion. Following that first oration in the Forum Romanum, Tiberius had a few public speaking triumphs, especially in the courts. His success owed itself in part to his good looks and education, but more particularly to his stepfather, Augustus, who had handed him opportunities from the moment Tiberius donned his toga virilis, his “toga of manhood.” And so it was Tiberius who—­successfully—­defended Rome’s vassal king Archelaus of Cappadocia in the year 26 BCE; and Tiberius who one year later, once more at Augustus’ request, opposed the Senate in order to come to the aid of the populace of Tralles in Asia Minor, which had been badly hit by an earthquake. The court cases in which Augustus involved his stepson—­t he firstborn son of his second wife, Livia—­were hardly without controversy. When Augustus had restored the republic in 27 BCE he had received in exchange the authority over Gaul, Spain, and Syria for a period of ten years. That in itself was a notable move: these were the provinces housing the most legions. But somehow or other the court cases in which he let Tiberius appear always seemed to involve other areas entirely, located in the eastern part of the Empire. Provinces, in other words, that lay outside Augustus’ official sphere of influence.

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The Successor

It had become a habit. Following that deal he had made in 27  BCE, Augustus continually overstepped his legal bounds. He regularly interfered in areas in which he had no authority, completely bypassing the Senate; he made decisions on his own regarding war and peace. It was personal initiative bordering on tyranny, and tyranny was something most Roman senators were still allergic to. Dissent was only a matter of time.

4 The first public attack upon Augustus’ fledgling imperial rule, which stood as yet on wobbly legs, took the form of a notorious court case near the end of the twenties BCE. The attack was an indirect one: Marcus Primus, the former governor of the province of Macedonia, was accused of declaring war against the friendly kingdom of Odryssa in Thrace without first consulting the Senate. Primus’ defense was a point-­blank accusation of the princeps: he declared that he had acted under orders from Augustus. With that one move Augustus had found himself portrayed to the public as one who flouted the constitution. Primus’ lawyer, the consul Licinius Murena, demonstrated a shrewd grasp of tactics when he called Augustus personally to testify. It was of course highly unlikely that the princeps would present himself to confess that he had given Primus the order, but that was the cleverness of it: the public would read whatever it wanted into Augustus’ nonappearance. Perhaps Augustus saw through Murena’s ploy, and that was the reason he unexpectedly appeared in court when the case came on the docket. He emphatically denied everything, and it was Primus who paid the price, and was condemned. Murena refused to let it go at that. He appealed to a dyed-­in-­t he-­wool republican, Fannius Cepio, and the two between them concocted a conspiracy against Augustus. There was little difficulty in pitting someone like Cepio, who cared deeply about the republic, against this so-­called



The Longest Breath 13

“princeps” who put on a show of restraint but in reality was acting more and more like a dictator each day. The plan failed: the plot was discovered in time and Augustus officially indicted the conspirators. Their flight, most likely after being warned just in time by Murena’s wife (the sister of Maecenas, a good friend of Augustus’), sealed their guilt in the eyes of many. They were tracked down anyway, not long afterwards, and killed. Despite their deaths, the conspirators’ trial was held in the Court of Justice in 23 BCE; the lawyer engaged by Augustus was his not-­yet-­t wenty-­year-­old stepson, Tiberius. There was already little enough glory to be won in prosecuting a case in which the actual perpetrators were dead; that Tiberius was unable to convince his listeners of their guilt only increased the shame. The only defendant still living, a philosopher who had accompanied Murena in his flight, was acquitted. A pattern now began to emerge that would become characteristic for Tiberius. Fate had dictated for him a life filled with public functions, but the background was where he felt comfortable. Not the spotlight.

5 When it came to charisma Tiberius had always been outshone by his four-­year-­younger brother, Drusus, who accompanied him on the campaign to the Alps in 15 BCE. Drusus could wind just about anyone around his little finger—­a characteristic in which he far more resembled his stepfather, Augustus, than his real father. He possessed an innate charm potent enough to make anyone envious—­certainly his naturally reticent older brother, who at times must have scratched his head, wondering how anyone could dance through life with the ease and lightness of his younger brother. Not that he was jealous: Tiberius adored Drusus. Augustus, too, was extremely fond of Drusus and found Tiberius difficult to manage, but despite his partiality he took care that both his stepsons be given equal chances in life.

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The Successor

Tiberius, as the eldest, went on campaign with his stepfather even before that first speech in the Roman Court of Justice. The expedition took him to Cantabria, in northern Spain, and was a mark of distinction, for Augustus had also taken along his promising favorite nephew, Marcellus, the eldest son of his sister, Octavia. Both young men had turned eighteen and it was high time, Augustus must have thought, for them to acquire a taste for the life of the Roman legions—­and a good opportunity for the men of those legions to become acquainted with their future commanders. It was customary, as well, for a young Roman to serve in the army before embarking upon a political career. By taking the two eldest boys of his house along with him to the front, Augustus was sending a clear message: that he would do whatever it took to ensure that the highest military and political posts stayed in his family. It was then 25 BCE. Tiberius and Marcellus had just reached adulthood and had spent most of their time in Rome being educated, not in school but in the comfort of their home. Joining the army high command in Spain afforded them a good first impression of life in the field. Augustus appointed both young men military tribunes for the period of one year: a move which heaved them, at an exceptionally young age, onto the first rung of the cursus honorum, the Roman ladder of honorary public posts. It was soon obvious that Tiberius felt right at home here, surrounded by soldiers, living the disciplined life of an army encampment. The political arena of the capital had never really appealed to him. But Rome was where Tiberius’ future lay. After his year of army service in Cantabria he returned to the capital. Augustus stayed in Spain, but saw to it that Tiberius was appointed quaestor: a maneuver by which the princeps made it even more obvious that, although he might have restored the republic in name, he was actually destroying the foundations upon which it stood. Quaestorship had always been



The Longest Breath 15

by election, not by appointment. The candidate was required to have served ten years in the military and have attained a minimum age—­the age had been reduced to twenty-­five, but Tiberius was not even that old yet. Like the dictators of the first century BCE, including his own adoptive father, Julius Caesar, Augustus brazenly bent the rules of the republican game to his own advantage, and the children growing up in his family circle profited by it. Although it was obvious that Tiberius was being groomed for a stellar career, he was no blood relation of Augustus, like Marcellus was. Augustus had only one biological child, his daughter, Julia, born of his earlier marriage to Scribonia. Julia was a teenager when Tiberius began his Quaestorship in Rome, and the time had arrived for Augustus to find her a suitable husband. He had no interest in establishing an alliance with an external aristocratic family, as was customary in Rome: his primary aim in marrying off his only daughter was to fortify and secure his family’s position of power. Augustus, in hindsight, had set about to found a dynasty. In theory, both Livia’s sons and the son of Augustus’ sister, Octavia, were eligible for Julia’s hand. But Tiberius had been engaged to someone else for years, and aside from that, everyone had always known who the favorite was. While Augustus was still restoring order in Spain, the great honor fell to Marcellus. The boy was sent back to Rome to lead the fourteen-­year-­old Julia to the altar. As Augustus could not be there in person, his dear friend Agrippa supervised the nuptials. How Livia felt about her husband’s choice—­a nd the passing over of her own son—­is anyone’s guess, but it is likely that Tiberius himself had no problem with Marcellus’ making off with the trophy bride: his own engagement to Agrippa’s daughter Vipsania had been arranged years ago and the two were fond of one another. Tiberius waited patiently until the day that Vipsania, too, would be old enough to marry.

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The Successor

6 Tiberius, Drusus, Julia, and Marcellus had largely grown up together. Octavia, Augustus’ sister, had been widowed twice and had not remarried; she lived a retired life, probably in Augustus and Livia’s house on the Palatine, and devoted herself entirely to her children. It was quite a brood that she had charge of. Her first marriage had produced not only Marcellus, but also two daughters; her second marriage, to Marc Antony, had produced two daughters as well. When Marc Antony and Cleopatra committed suicide together, Octavia took the children her husband had fathered with his Egyptian lover under her wing. The rooms in the house on the Palatine were crowded. Tiberius had been three years old in 38 BCE, when his mother married Augustus and they moved together to the house on the Palatine Hill. His earliest years had been turbulent: his biological parents’ divorce had marked the end of a period of chaos and turmoil. Not one year earlier Livia and her first husband, Tiberius senior, had fled Rome because of Augustus. In that era of internal power struggles and civil wars, Livia and her future husband, Augustus, had initially stood on opposite sides. It had been her first husband’s political choices that had thrust Livia into such a bizarre position. When the two met, Tiberius senior had been a respected public figure. Breeding, accomplishments, excellent contacts: Tiberius senior, a member of the eminent Claudius clan, had them all and had used them to good advantage. He had been politically active since 54 BCE and had prospered, as Claudians always did. As long as there had been Claudians, there had been a reasonable balance of power between the Senate, the consuls, and the popular assembly. But in the Rome of the mid-­fi rst century BCE, the reigning elite had split itself into two irreconcilable camps: the optimates, who stood for traditional values and supported the conservative Senate rule, and the populares, who were eager for reform. It was inevitable that



The Longest Breath 17

Tiberius senior, at some point during his political career, would find himself forced to take sides. Initially, Tiberius senior had seemed firmly in the camp of Julius Caesar, the dictator viewed by all as the personification of the populares. In 48 BCE he had been commodore of Caesar’s fleet, and two years later, in gratitude for his accomplishments, Tiberius senior had been awarded a prestigious priestly office in Rome. He had also been given a grant for involvement in the founding of the dictator’s colonies in Gaul—­often quite a lucrative affair. But with the senatorial conspiracy against Julius Caesar, which ended in the dictator’s bloody death, all cards were reshuffled. That murder on the Ides of March, March 15, 44 BCE, had forced everyone to choose sides all over again. Had Rome been freed from a shameless tyrant, or was this an attack on the State? More precisely: must the murderers, who had openly admitted their deed and had fled, be applauded or punished? Tiberius senior chose the former. He renounced his old patron, Julius Caesar, and publicly declared his opinion that the murderers were deserving of praise. Battle lines were drawn in October of 42 BCE, one month before Tiberius’ birth. Together with his father-­in-­ law, Marcus Livius Drusus Claudianus (Tiberius had married Marcus’ daughter, Livia, a year earlier), Tiberius senior fought side by side with the conspirators, led by Brutus and Cassius, against the men who had sworn to avenge Caesar’s murder: Marc Antony and Augustus. Once the Battle of Philippi had sealed Brutus and Cassius’ defeat, Livia’s father, Marcus Livius Drusus Claudianus, committed suicide. The war appeared to be over. Rome was in effect led by three men, the triumviri Marc Antony, Lepidus, and Augustus. In 43 BCE, in the name of this triumvirate, an infamous phenomenon was revived that had been devised almost half a century earlier by the dictator Sulla: the proscription list, a public document containing the names of condemned enemies of the State. The use of proscription

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The Successor

enabled the triumviri to rid themselves with impunity of any influential political opponents, but it had another advantage as well. Those pitchforked into the role of enemy of the State were members of the elite, and besides being prominent were all wealthy. By confiscating their property after execution, the triumvirate was able to finance costly undertakings such as the war against Brutus and Cassius. With over two thousand names on the list, including those of such well-­k nown and beloved Romans as Cicero, it would prove a cruel but highly effective means of paving the road to power. Augustus had never forgotten how Tiberius senior, shortly after Julius Caesar’s death, had openly argued for rewarding his murderers instead of punishing them. When things began to sour between Augustus and Marc Antony, and Tiberius senior almost as a matter of course chose Marc Antony’s side (he viewed the young Augustus, who ever since his adoption had called himself Gaius Julius Caesar, as the tyrant’s successor), Augustus did not hesitate to add the name of Tiberius senior to the proscription list. Not everyone on the list was executed. Some managed to flee Rome in time and find somewhere to hide out, Tiberius senior among them. Seventeen-­year-­old Livia was heavily pregnant when she accompanied her husband on his flight from Rome. The plan was to reach Perusia (Perugia) and join up with Lucius Antony, Marc Antony’s younger brother, who was trying to prevent Augustus from confiscating land there in order to give it to veterans of the Battle of Philippi. For awhile they even hoped to mount a revolution against Augustus, together with the furious landowners. It was in Perugia, under these precarious conditions, that Livia gave birth to her firstborn son on November 16 of the year 42 BCE. The child, as a matter of course, was given his father’s full name: Tiberius Claudius Nero.



The Longest Breath 19

Livia’s marriage had been arranged by her father, the man who had taken his own life after the Battle of Philippi. The pair were cousins, and their union was intended to seal the alliance between two powerful families: the Claudi Nerones and the Claudi Pulchri (it was after being adopted that Claudius Pulcher, Livia’s father, had taken the name Marcus Livius Drusus Claudianus). Both families could trace their roots back to the great Appius Claudius Caecus, a censor in 312 BCE. The Pulcher branch of the Claudian clan in particular had occupied a prominent place in the Roman republic for almost half a millennium. It was a pleasant surprise when Livia presented her husband with a healthy son just nine months after their wedding—­a prompt and prosperous pregnancy was by no means a given—­but the situation left much to be desired. No doubt the new mother dreamed of a time when their family life would steer itself into calmer waters. Perhaps she even envisioned the day they could return home in safety—­home, to Rome. But the news carried by the messengers who occasionally reached Perugia only grew worse. Augustus was winning. When Lucius Antony’s attempts to stir up a revolt came to nothing, there was no choice left for Tiberius senior and Livia but to flee—­again. This time, with the newborn Tiberius a babe in arms, they headed south, following in the footsteps of many of the other senators and nobles whose names had featured on the proscription list. After an initial stop in Praeneste (Palestrina) in Campania they traveled on, finally reaching Sicily, where Sextus Pompey (the son of Pompey the Great) ruled. He had offered protection to other refugees and appeared to be the last champion of the republic. When Augustus made a pact with Sextus, however, even Sicily became unsafe. The young family decided to flee once more, this time leaving the Italian peninsula behind. The plan was to head east, hoping at least to reach those provinces under the authority of Marc Antony. Livia and her husband

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The Successor

and child finally ended up in Sparta. It was a shrewd choice: from time immemorial the Spartans had had a hospitality pact with the Claudius family. Here they could relax, take a deep breath, and come up with a new strategy. In the end, however, the strategy proved unnecessary. When Augustus and Marc Antony made peace with one another, the name of Tiberius senior was struck off the death list, enabling him, Livia, and the infant Tiberius to safely return to the capital. For awhile it seemed that everything might go back to normal. What happened after their return home, however, was too implausible to have been foreseen by anyone. First-century BCE Rome was an unpredictable place, where a new roll of the dice could at any moment, without warning, make the past null and void. A few months after her family’s return, pregnant with her second son, Livia married the man from whom she had been on the run all that time—­a nd did so right in front of Tiberius senior, whose task it was to officially hand her over. Augustus had met Livia at a banquet in Rome and their mutual attraction had escaped no one. Augustus, it was said, had fallen like a ton of bricks for the lovely Livia. He declared himself willing to bury the past on one condition: that Livia’s marriage to Tiberius senior be annulled, so that he, Augustus, could take her to wife. After those years of living in constant fear it is unlikely that Tiberius’ father dared or was able to offer any objections. In any case, Augustus’ word was law. He married Livia on January 17, 38 BCE, and shortly afterwards she took up residence in the house on the Palatine Hill. Augustus, for his part, was also married when he met Livia. His marriage to Scribonia was a repercussion of yesterday’s political reality: Scribonia was the sister of the stepfather of Sextus Pompey, to whom Augustus had made overtures of friendship after breaking with Marc Antony. Later on



The Longest Breath 21

Sextus, from his base in Sicily, was to turn against Augustus, making an already awkward marriage even more so. Augustus felt no compunction about telling Scribonia, whom he had never liked, about the divorce—­which he did while she lay in bed, having just brought her infant daughter into the world. That was the day she gave birth to Julia, the first and only biological child Augustus would ever have. Although Roman marriages could be as changeable as the political reality of the day, exchanging one pregnant wife for another was unusual, to say the least. It was not long before Augustus and Livia became subjects of gossip and ridicule in the streets of Rome. Even after Drusus had been born and had been given his Claudian name, there was open public speculation as to who, exactly, the biological father was of the infant on the Palatine. Augustus, in an attempt to have done with the gossip and the rumors, sent both boys back to their father. Of course the unexpected marriage had been based on more than just physical attraction. The union with Scribonia had served no further purpose, and by marrying Livia in 38 BCE Augustus entered into a firm alliance with a Roman family which—­considering his ambitions and the long road yet before him on his way to the top—­he was better off having on his side. Livia, for her part, could now banish the memories of her days as a political refugee. Despite all that had happened, the new life she had embarked upon came as a second chance—­in any case, a chance for the child that was growing within her to begin the world with a clean slate. That child, Livia’s second son, was born soon after the move, and was given his grandfather’s name: Drusus. Livia was not yet twenty years old. Not only in terms of her own position, but also for the future of her children, Livia could hardly have made a better match. Augustus became their guardian and provided Tiberius and Drusus with splendid careers, far above anything

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The Successor

Livia had dared to dream. Although the two boys initially stayed with their father, after his death they took up permanent residence in Augustus’ house on the Palatine, where they grew up together with their stepsister, Julia, and Octavia’s children.

7 During his early years on the Palatine Hill Tiberius spent most of his time with Marcellus. The boys were the same age and learned to read and write Greek and Latin together, not in school but from tutors who came to the house. Later on, when they were about eleven, the two studied classical literature with the best-­k nown grammarians of their time, who introduced them to the works of native poets such as Livius Andronicus and Ennius. Tiberius developed a love for Latin literature that would last all his life, but the Greek poets appealed to him as well. When they were halfway through their teens and had assumed the toga of manhood, the boys began lessons in rhetoric; a teacher of philosophy named Nestor, an adherent of the teachings of Plato, was also hired to school them in philosophy. Tiberius’ education was second to none, and his aristocratic birth was cause for pride as well: the Claudian family had been making its mark in Rome for hundreds of years. The young man had practically everything going for him, yet was reported to be stubborn and shy and, if truth be told, a bit ponderous. The charisma needed to find favor with the masses was distinctly lacking. The contrast between his character and that of the adventurous, good-­natured Marcellus became more marked as the years passed. Marcellus, like Tiberius’ younger brother, Drusus, possessed an innate talent for winning people over. Tiberius’ withdrawn and far more complex nature, which was often viewed as arrogant, did not benefit from the comparison. Marcellus’ marriage to Julia in 25 BCE confirmed what everyone had already suspected: he was the favorite, not



The Longest Breath 23

Tiberius. It was not long before rumors circulated to the effect that Marcellus was Augustus’ intended heir. But heir to what, exactly? Despite the republican sentiments that were still very much alive in the capital, most Romans were willing, after those uncertain, risky years of the triumvirate, to accept a new situation in which Augustus ruled virtually alone, but succeeded in maintaining internal peace and prosperity. The implication that Augustus’ heir would, more or less as a matter of course, also be his successor—­t hat the princeps would one day transfer not only his family property, but also his unique position of power, to someone else—­fi rst arose because of Marcellus. It was gradually becoming obvious that the one designated Augustus’ heir would become the de facto successor—­t he hot favorite to become Rome’s second emperor. Matters had not yet reached that stage in 25 BCE, not by any means. Up until the marriage of Marcellus and Julia, Tiberius might have harbored the illusion that his stepfather’s inheritance—­whatever that might entail—­would be left to him, as Livia’s eldest son; but if so, his stepsister’s engagement had effectively extinguished that fantasy. It was a kick in the teeth—­Augustus’ years-­long preference for, and final choice of, his nephew Marcellus—­and Tiberius was not the only one to feel it. Agrippa, too, had had a right to hope for a marriage that would bind him officially to the family he had served faithfully for over a decade, and which he had helped into power. The rumors were largely confirmed by events following swiftly upon Julia and Marcellus’ wedding. During a year in which Tiberius was doing his best to carry out his Quaestorship competently, and thus to properly—­albeit at an exceptionally young age—­climb the Roman corporate ladder rung by rung, the equally young Marcellus was promptly appointed aedile without ever having been quaestor. In the old, time-­honored political traditions such a step would be unheard of. The completion of the full cursus honorum was

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The Successor

the only legitimate path to what had since time immemorial been Rome’s highest elected office: consul. When it came to his own family, Augustus was always happy to make an exception. Posts that had traditionally been the most weighty and significant in Rome’s governing apparatus were transformed through his agency into honorary appointments with no real substance, which he could pass to his inner circle at will. The minimum age for such functions was lowered when necessary. By now there was not a senator left in Rome who dared object to the state of affairs, at least not openly. Any potential protests were strangled at birth anyway, when the newly minted aedile, Marcellus, succeeded in winning over both people and Senate by putting on lavish Games, organized at his uncle’s expense. Whatever holdouts there might have been before the Games, public opinion was solidly in Marcellus’ favor after them. Rumors were now rife in the streets of Rome, and they centered around Marcellus and the possibility of his succession. Was it true that absolute power would be transferred to him when Augustus died? This open, public discussion was a portent: the new form of government, which would go down in history as the Roman Empire, had become so well established as to cause a general expectation of its continuance. That Augustus was different than the many dictators the Romans had seen come and go, or had heard about from their fathers and grandfathers, had gradually become apparent. It was beginning to look as though the imperial reign that Augustus had devised, the principate, was solid enough to survive him. It was beginning to look as though the republic might be gone forever.

8 For the time being, however, it was all just rumors. Augustus made not one single formal arrangement that might have indicated preparation for a political succession and did not initiate an official adoption of Marcellus. He was, after



The Longest Breath 25

all, still busy entrenching his own position. In 23 BCE the Murena case had just been concluded, and that little matter had caused quite an uproar and revealed a troubling level of political instability. Following the court case, Augustus had been compelled to give up one of the privileges accorded to him as part of the settlements in 27 BCE, when he had received the honorary title of Augustus. For the time being, at least, he would no longer annually hold the post of consul. It had been a superficial concession, for Augustus still held that which was most precious to him: the military authority (imperium) over his provinces. And that authority was now referred to officially as maius: a greater imperium than that of all others. From now on he could slide consulships to whomever suited him. Tiberius had also stipulated that he immediately receive the mandate of a tribune of the plebeians (tribunicia potestas), which included, among other things, veto rights on rulings of the Senate. Not that he actually took on the function of a tribune of the people, or had any intention to. The office and the powers that went with it were separate; Augustus was able to enjoy the latter without having to bear the burden of the former. These new negotiations between Augustus and the Senate, which took place in 23 BCE, had in effect been almost as significant, if not even more so, than the far better-­k nown deal Augustus had struck in 27 BCE. The new, post-­23 BCE government did not adhere to any laws—­yet. It adhered chiefly to the person of Augustus, and therefore to a silken thread. It was far from unimaginable that something might happen to Augustus, if only because of the respectable age of forty years he had now reached. And all of Rome knew about the bad health that so often bedeviled him. What, exactly, he suffered from is unclear, but Augustus became gravely ill that same year of 23 BCE. The prospects were dire: for awhile everyone, Augustus himself included, considered him past praying for. A special physician had to

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The Successor

be brought in to turn the tide with a controversial treatment utilizing strange combinations of herbal baths and cold-­water baths. Augustus barely escaped death. Was this ruthless malady the same one that struck young Marcellus? Neither cold plunges nor herbal brews availed Marcellus. In September of the year in which Augustus made his miraculous recovery, Marcellus suddenly died in the flower of his youth. His mother, Octavia, was inconsolable. Julia, his teenaged bride, became a widow before she had a chance to understand what marriage even was. Rome mourned alongside the family during the public funeral. Marcellus was the first to be interred in the brand-new, immense, magnificent family monument that Augustus had built along the Via Flaminia. Augustus had always thought the first urn to be placed inside it would be his own.

9 In Vindonissa, the small army outpost where Tiberius encountered the seasoned troops he was to lead into battle in 15 BCE, Marcellus and Rome seemed farther away than ever. He would lead the men eastwards: along the Rhine, towards the lands inhabited by the Raeti and Vindelici. He and his brother had mapped out the strategy and allocated the tasks together, following instructions provided by their stepfather. Drusus and Tiberius were still young and by now had both completed a term of office as Praetor in Rome. But Drusus—­who, like his brother, was expected to serve as commander in Augustus’ vast army—­was the real virgin on the battlefield. He lacked any military experience whatsoever, whereas Tiberius had come straight from the front. Drusus had succeeded his brother as Praetor in Rome when Tiberius had to leave for Gaul the year before. That had been 16 BCE, and Tiberius had been summoned northwest with Augustus to reinforce the restive borderlands and strengthen the bonds



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with local Gallic leaders. That expedition had not resulted in Tiberius’ endearing himself to the sitting governor of the province, Marcus Lollius. Lollius was summarily dismissed by Augustus because of the turmoil that had been fermented on his watch, and relieved of all his duties. Young as he was, Tiberius had been put in his place. The persistent revolts once crushed, Tiberius had remained in Gaul as governor to prevent any new insurrections from cropping up. Memories of crushing the Gallic rebellions were still fresh in his mind when Tiberius faced his first major military challenge without his stepfather. He and Drusus found themselves at the head of a considerable military force in the Alps. Their mission was one that Augustus himself had begun, over ten years earlier. Augusta Praetoria (Aosta) had been founded then, alongside the already existing colonies of Eporedia (Ivrea) and Augusta Taurinorum (Turin), advancing permanent Roman control ever farther to the north of Italy, colony by colony. But Raetia and Vindelicia, inhabited mainly by Celtic tribes, had not yet been brought to heel. They cooperated with the Romans when convenient, but frequently turned against them. Rome would not be truly safe until the Alps were unconditionally conquered—­even if it were just a case of pushing the Empire’s borders a bit farther to the north, thus keeping the dreaded Germanic tribes a little farther away. Tiberius and Drusus were still young and, like most young upper-­class Roman men, eager to serve the State by proving themselves on the field. They laid siege to city after city. Nothing could daunt Augustus’ determined stepsons: not the occasionally inhospitable terrain, the unknown territory, nor the seemingly endless stretches of the Brigantinus Lake (Lake Constance). They attacked using the strategy devised by their stepfather, winning victory after victory, even crossing the huge lake using boats constructed at the scene. After a prosperous and relatively short campaign, Tiberius and Drusus were able to lay down the structure for the

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permanent Roman province of Raetia, with Augusta Vindelicum (Augsburg) as its capital. In seemingly no time at all the borderlands had been fortified and the majestic Alps had been conquered. Tiberius and Drusus had achieved the victory together, although most of the luster seemed somehow to radiate from the figure of the charismatic younger brother. But the two were equally bursting with pride when they told the detailed story of the conquest to Horace, who had been commissioned by Augustus to compose a hymn for his stepsons. The brothers’ victory set a military seal upon already strong family ties. The future looked bright. Tiberius and Drusus were just at the beginning of their careers. Their characters were almost complete opposites, but it was obvious to all that the proud blood of the Claudians flowed through the veins of both of Livia’s sons. While it was clear that Tiberius and Drusus were the favored stepsons of the emperor, their splendid aristocratic heritage line rendered them, at the same time, the personification of the old Roman Republic. The older they got, in fact, the more uncomfortable they grew with the veiled dictatorship their stepfather had so subtly managed to establish in Rome. But the brothers were ambitious: far too much so to forgo claiming their own roles in that dictatorship. Had Tiberius and Drusus been Augustus’ only potential heirs, they might, on their return to Rome, have been permitted to celebrate their great success of 15 BCE in the Alps with the ultimate of military honors: a “triumph.” Instead it was a silent homecoming. There was no parade; no crowds waited to cheer the brothers in their progress through the streets of Rome. Since Marcellus’ death in 23 BCE, a lot had changed in the capital.

10 In that newly established Roman province, surrounded by their victorious legions, the victory over the Raeti and



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Vindelici had seemed important. But once they got home it became obvious to Tiberius and Drusus that they had effectively been sidelined. All eyes in the capital were now trained on Agrippa, Augustus’ right-­hand man, and his family. Shortly before the brothers’ return from Raetia a fourth child had been born into that favored house: a second daughter, who was given the name Agrippina. In 23 BCE, when Marcellus died, Tiberius and Drusus might each have entertained the notion of one of them being offered Julia’s hand. For once the deep sorrow had passed over the loss of Marcellus, so promising and gone so young, it had quickly become politics as usual. The emperor’s daughter must remarry. Who could be a more suitable candidate than one of Augustus’ amiable and capable stepsons, descendants of the aristocratic Claudius clan, who had grown up more or less as his own sons, in his own house? No doubt Livia, the young men’s mother, had envisioned it all. Tiberius was the eldest and therefore the most obvious candidate; but it was no secret that Drusus was far and away Augustus’ favorite and the one he saw more as his “own” child. In contrast to Tiberius—­who, moreover, bore his biological father’s name—­Drusus had been born after Livia left her first husband and was living with Augustus. But in the end, both brothers were passed over. Augustus habitually discussed both family and political matters with Livia, but it is doubtful he told her of his choice of husband for Julia until that choice was irrevocable. It was, without a doubt, not the one Livia had been hoping for. In the spring of 23 BCE, when Marcellus had married Julia and begun his term as aedile in Rome, Augustus had sent Agrippa to the east—­a course of events that gave rise to avid gossip among the senators. It seemed to them abundantly clear that Augustus, with all this maneuvering, was trying

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to prevent jealousy, or at any rate friction, between Agrippa and Marcellus. Was not Agrippa the emperor’s right-­hand man, almost his equal in political power and one of his best, oldest, and most loyal friends to boot? Had he not more than earned Julia’s hand by now? Perhaps Agrippa would indeed have balked at standing idly by and watching Marcellus officially step into Augustus’s shoes—­if matters had ever come to that. Or was that not it at all? Did Augustus simply wish to spare his old friend the vexation of seeing the uncomfortable reality at close range—­was that why he sent him to Syria as proconsul when Marcellus’ engagement to Julia was announced? Agrippa, in any event, never made it farther than the Greek island of Lesbos. He remained in the neighborhood of Rome, just in case. A wise decision, as events would show.

11 No one had contributed more to Augustus’ success than the former small-­town boy, Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa. In the spring of 44 BCE he had stood by Augustus’ side when they were both teenagers and the news of the murder of Julius Caesar had reached them. In silence they had listened to the announcement of the proviso in Caesar’s will dictating that Augustus, then called Gaius Octavius, would be posthumously adopted. Adoption was primarily a political matter in those days. It was a strategic move, if one lacked male progeny, to nominate an heir. Generally speaking it was done during one’s lifetime, true; but this was not the first time an existing adoption had not been announced until the will was read, or a new one put into effect after the adopter’s death. Augustus’ adoption by Julius Caesar was completely legal, although the Senate’s approval was not given until afterwards. Initially, Augustus still used his family name Octavius, but once all had been signed and sealed he was permitted to call himself Gaius Julius Caesar. It was an illustrious name, so he used it whenever and wherever he could. It would be years,



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however, until the far-­reaching implications of this adoption, by which Augustus took over not only Julius Caesar’s family possessions but also his political legacy, were solidified. While the legal aspects of Augustus’ adoption into the Julian family were fairly straightforward, its political ramifications were hard-­fought. The final battle in that war was not waged until a good ten years after Julius Caesar’s death, and was won by Augustus. Marc Antony and Cleopatra, Augustus’ last and most tenacious adversaries, were defeated in 31 BCE in the Aegean Sea off Actium—­chiefly by virtue of Agrippa’s strategic, and indispensable, military acumen. Despite their long friendship and Augustus’ deep-­rooted confidence in him, Agrippa had initially not been looked upon as a suitor for his only daughter, Julia. Agrippa was a quarter-­century older than she and, what was more, was married: to Augustus’ niece, Marcella, Marcellus’ sister, no less. But when, in 23 BCE, Julia so unexpectedly became Marcellus’ widow, Agrippa’s chances took a sudden turn.

12 Marcellus’ loss was tragic for the whole family, but it was especially hard on his mother, Octavia. In an attempt to cheer the family up, the emperor asked Virgil—­one of his favorite writers, along with Horace—­to recite a few lines for them from the lengthy epic poem he was working on, the Aeneid. Similar requests in the past had always been met with a refusal. Until it had received the finishing touches, Virgil did not consider his poetry good enough to be performed. Marcellus’ death prompted him to put his modesty aside. It even inspired him. The poet added an accolade to the young man to his work and chose precisely that section to recite for the family: “Fate shall only show a vision of him here on earth, but no longer keep him here.” Octavia was overcome with emotion as Virgil presented his ode to her son Marcellus, expertly woven into the epic tale of Aeneas, the Trojan hero and forefather of Rome:

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It was too much for Octavia. The final words had barely left Virgil’s mouth when she fainted right in front of her brother, Augustus, and the rest of the family. For years she would remain in deepest mourning, inconsolable for the loss of her only son.

13 Augustus did not have that luxury. He had to put aside his sorrow and, as soon as the ceremonial customs permitted it, choose a new husband for Julia. Any emotion surrounding the decision was shoved aside. When it came to the survival of the State, Augustus had little use for sentiment—­not even if his decision entailed adding insult to the very real injury suffered by his beloved sister, Octavia. As a result of her brother’s resolve she found herself, soon after the loss of her son, having to help her eldest daughter, Marcella, through a divorce. It was hard, but Augustus had spoken and there was nothing for Octavia, as a virtuous Roman woman, to do but resign herself to her fate—­and that of her daughter. Agrippa had to leave his wife, Marcella, and became Julia’s new husband. The wedding took place in the year 21 BCE. Marcella’s divorce was arranged with lightning speed, as was Agrippa’s return from the east—­t hat decision to dawdle on Lesbos had proven fortuitous. For the second time in her young life Julia entered into matrimony, and for the second time she did so in her father’s absence. Augustus arranged the union



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from the eastern part of his empire—­from Egypt, where he had gone in 22 BCE on a punitive expedition against the Nubians, who had risen up against Roman rule. It probably made little difference to the emperor’s self-­ willed daughter that Augustus would not be there this time, either. To her, the marriage was no more nor less than an inescapable political contract. Shortly after the wedding Julia and Agrippa took up residence in a princely dwelling on the banks of the Tiber, but it was not long before duty called, and Agrippa had to go abroad again. Against all expectation and custom, but completely in keeping with her own enterprising nature, Julia went with him. The couple left Rome during the year following their marriage and went to Gaul, where Agrippa had been appointed governor. The capital would not see their faces again for two years. It was more than obvious that Augustus had strategic intentions for this arranged marriage. Marcellus’ sudden death notwithstanding, the emperor’s daughter must produce offspring, and as quickly as possible. That neither of Livia’s healthy, distinguished, adult sons had qualified as a contender for the succession could mean only one thing: that in Augustus’ eyes, his wife’s aristocratic bloodlines were not good enough to carry on his prestigious legacy, the family of Julius Caesar. Only Augustus’ own flesh and blood would do. The eminent Claudian clan was a nice supplement, but if the gods were willing and Julia were to bear sons, they would take precedence. The gods, apparently, were willing. Shortly after her arrival in Gaul, the emperor’s daughter gave birth to a healthy son who was given the name Gaius Caesar after his grandfather and great-­grandfather. A daughter, Vipsania Julia, followed soon after, and shortly after the couple’s return to Rome a second son, Lucius Caesar, was born. Two new male Caesars had come into the world in a few short years: fortune was smiling on Augustus.

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At this point in history no one could truly have thought that Tiberius would ever be a contender to inherit Augustus’ legacy. He would not be the successor. The emperor had, after all, deemed him unworthy of his daughter’s hand, despite Tiberius’ being much closer to her in age than Agrippa was. But there was another possible interpretation for Augustus’ choice. It was no secret that in terms of character, Tiberius and Julia were miles apart. Modesty, lack of pretension, the old Roman traditions—­t hese were the things that Tiberius personified in every fiber of his being, whereas the bold, progressive Julia breathed the spirit of a new age. Perhaps Augustus had realized that a marriage between the two had little chance of success. Perhaps he had no desire to do that to his daughter—­or to the State. Tiberius married as well, of course, a few years after Julia and according to the original plan. His wife, Vipsania Agrippina, was Agrippa’s daughter from a long-­forgotten marriage. Everyone knew the main intent of the union had been to bind Agrippa’s descendants more closely to the imperial family, but the couple were happy together anyway. Tiberius had been a pawn in his stepfather’s dynastic game, but he saw no reason to complain: it was the way of things. He had been denied Julia’s hand, and therefore could never lay claim to Augustus’ political legacy. But he enjoyed a privileged position, had a brilliant career, and was married to a beautiful, sweet-­tempered woman with whom he lived in harmony and who would, hopefully, give him healthy children. What more could Tiberius wish for?

14 Marcellus’ sudden removal from the stage had been tragic, but it had also given Tiberius the opportunity to develop into Rome’s most promising star on the battlefield. A year after Julia and Agrippa’s wedding, in 20 BCE, Augustus took his eldest stepson along on a prestigious and extremely precarious mission, which sent the two to the eastern reaches



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of the Empire. It was the first time he had shown such reliance on him. The undertaking had to do with unfinished business—­a matter that had been a weight on Rome’s shoulders since 53 BCE. In that year General Crassus had suffered a painful defeat at the hands of the Parthians, and in the process had lost the Roman army’s standards and eagles. Soldiers of the legions had been taken prisoner by the Parthian king and an uneasy—­and to Roman minds, ignoble—­t ruce had been cobbled together between Rome and Parthia (in present-­day Iran). Julius Caesar had planned an expedition to the land of the Parthians to restore Rome’s honor, but was murdered before he could set out. Marc Antony’s mission to the east, years later, had had the same goal but had only resulted in more disgrace. Now it was up to Augustus to restore order once and for all—­not only to salvage Rome’s pride and the legions’ standards, but also to pacify the Empire’s potentially dangerous eastern reaches. Rome’s ever-­expanding dominance was far from popular in those parts, and buffer states always came in handy. This time, the mission was a success—­a triumph of vital importance, in fact. The emperor devoted abundant attention to it thirty-­four years later, when he was old and all but staring death in the face, and was taking stock of his career in his political testament. “I compelled the Parthians,” he wrote, “to give back to me spoils and standards of three Roman armies and humbly to request the friendship of the Roman people. These standards moreover I deposited in the innermost sanctum which is in the temple of Mars the Avenger.”4 Augustus always did know how to put things. The reality of what had happened in the east was far less spectacular than he made it sound. There had been no crushing military victory, just an exceptionally effective diplomatic mission. With his stepson’s help, Augustus had managed to prevent bloodshed and regain the Roman army’s badges of honor

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simply through bargaining. The result was the same as it would have been had they won a battle: an acknowledgment by the Parthians of Roman hegemony. But without dead soldiers. The undertaking’s full significance became apparent when the Senate rewarded Augustus for the favorable outcome with the erection of a magnificent statue. It was a towering bronze likeness of Augustus, clad in a suit of armor and posed as the revered commander of the Roman legions: with his right arm lifted high and his left hand holding a spear. Barefooted, as only heroes of legend and demi­gods were portrayed. The bronze Augustus’ cuirass bore a scene depicted in chased relief figures: a Parthian barbarian returning the army’s standards to Rome, the splendid success that had occasioned this superb gift. The central tableau was encircled by various gods and goddesses, an attestation to the triumph’s symbolic value. Surely peace, prosperity, and the restoration of morale must once again be Rome’s portion, now that that little matter in the land of the Parthians had been set right. From that time on, the new symbol of Rome’s unbounded power—­a kneeling barbarian offering the army’s standards to a Roman—­was also visible on the many coins that passed through Roman hands on a daily basis. The victory itself might not have been spectacular, but its psychological value was great, and was put to ample use by the capital’s publicity machine.

15 Augustus and Tiberius’ collaboration in Parthia, the first undertaken on more or less equal terms, filled Livia’s heart with pride. The statue that bore witness to it was so dear to her that she had a marble copy of it made: archeologists would find it, centuries later, in the house she lived in after her husband’s death. Tiberius’ role in that success, along



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with the victories that he and his brother would achieve in the Alps a few years later, raised Livia’s hopes for her eldest son’s future. Tiberius, stubborn but capable, was now proving himself more and more, and his relationship with his stepfather improved in proportion. But it was during the years following the Parthian victory (after 20 BCE) that Julia gave birth to Gaius and Lucius. Augustus adopted them both: he adored his grandsons from the moment of their births. However painful this might have been for Livia, she had by now grown used to resigning herself—­at least, for public consumption—­to her husband’s will, and accepting his political ways and means. Augustus’ message here was clear: Gaius and Lucius were now his heirs, and the principate would be passed down to them. The only foreseeable problem had to do with the transfer of that reign. Augustus was already in his mid-­forties: he could not rely on staying alive until the boys came of age and could take control. His position of power was so unique, so legally bound to his own person, that he would end up taking it all to the grave with him if he failed to take adequate measures now. And it was for that reason that he did not stop at just adopting his grandsons. Along with the adoptions, he granted Agrippa, the boys’ father, a number of new and extraordinary powers, rendering him, legally speaking, the emperor’s virtual equal. Augustus had no qualms in entrusting his friend with this all-­but-­u nassailable position. Agrippa’s loyalty to the emperor had been abundantly proven, besides which Augustus had every reason to assume that he would be eager to help his own sons into the seat of power. Had it been anyone else, the granting of such broad powers might have been too risky, but not Agrippa. He had no personal ambitions to fill Augustus’ heart with unease—­and for that matter, no proud Claudian lineage to make him a possible contender for the throne in his own right. He was the proud father of the

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young Caesars and thanks to the new arrangements he could, if the need arose, function as a sort of interim emperor until they were old enough to take up their calling. If Augustus were once again struck by a life-­t hreatening illness, he could accept his fate knowing that the succession was secure and the power would remain in the family. For as long as Gaius and Lucius were still too young, Agrippa would be there to keep their inheritance safe. The foundation of Augustus’ dynastic plan had now been laid. The principate that he had created over the years was firmly established, and even the question of succession had been settled. It could hardly be a coincidence that the year 17 BCE had arrived: the year in which Rome celebrated the Centennial, her symbolic and ritual new beginning.

16 Following the death of his cousin Marcellus, Tiberius’ career had soared to unprecedented heights, thanks in part to his triumphant mission to Parthia in 21 BCE and his successful campaign to Raetia in 15 BCE. In 13 BCE Tiberius was awarded a well-­deserved honor: he assumed the office of consul, together with his friend and contemporary, Varus. Livia’s high hopes that Tiberius would be the one chosen as Augustus’ heir would appear to have been perfectly justified—­r ight up until Agrippa had put a spoke in her son’s chariot wheels. And that fertile marriage between Agrippa and the emperor’s daughter seemed to have permanently redealt the cards in Rome. Tiberius, taking up his new duties of consul, stood with justifiable pride on the topmost rung of the Roman career ladder. He and his brother, with a paradoxical mixture of admiration and contempt, perceived how their stepfather had managed to secure his dynastic ambitions through Agrippa and the small Gaius and Lucius. Livia’s dreams of a future reign for her sons appeared, at the beginning of 12 BCE, dead and buried.



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17 In March of that year Rome was shaken up by a completely unexpected occurrence. For the second time, Julia had to bury a husband. Once more she saw the imposing mausoleum on the Via Flaminia rising up before her; once more a dark cloud of mourning hung over Rome’s imperial family. It was different now, with Agrippa, than it had been with Marcellus. Julia would celebrate her twenty-­seventh birthday this year; back then she had been just fifteen, and a newlywed. A strange confluence of events had led to her remarriage with a man who had officiated over her first marriage, and who could have been her father. And in contrast to Marcellus, Agrippa had been her husband for years. They had lived and traveled together and had four children, with a fifth on the way. Julia was six months pregnant when the doors of that enormous tomb once more clanged shut, with solemn finality, in her face. It had been a sudden death, the precise cause of which would never be determined. Julia and Agrippa had just set foot back on Italian soil, after years of travel through the eastern provinces, when death struck. Agrippina, their youngest daughter, had been born on the journey, in Athens. In autumn of the year 13 BCE Agrippa had led one last raid against the Balkans; a few months later they had headed back to Rome. In the middle of March, still on their way home, death had suddenly come knocking. Julia had grown attached to the amiable Agrippa, but her grief was dwarfed by that of Augustus. He had valued Agrippa not only as a great general and strategist, but also as his oldest and best friend. Their friendship had dated from both of their youths. How different the world had looked then—­a nd how different the world would have been for Augustus if Agrippa had not been there beside him. The loss

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was indescribable, the farewell painful. Augustus himself stood on the Field of Mars to recite the eulogy, in which he recounted his friend’s immense accomplishments. Yet the deep mourning on all sides could not suppress the anxiety for the future—­nor the one great question that was going through everyone’s minds. Who would follow in Agrippa’s footsteps? Who was worthy? Augustus’ grandsons, whom he loved dearly and had adopted, were still far too young. And it was far too great a gamble to suppose that he himself would stay alive until they were old enough to take up the torch. Augustus had always been calculating by nature; the matter of his succession, and Rome’s future, was one he would never leave to chance. But for the time being he was incapable of making a decision. For one year he gave free rein to his sorrow and his reflections. With merciless speed death knocked once more. Within a year of Agrippa’s passing the family had to pay their last respects to their beloved Octavia, that exemplary and dutiful wife, mother, and sister. From the beginning she had been one of the primary pawns in the dynastic network Augustus was working so hard to strengthen and consolidate. When she was a new widow, not yet thirty and with three small children, he had forced her to marry Marc Antony. The alliance had been fruitful, producing two daughters, both given the name Antonia; but it had not been strong enough to survive the strange turnings of politics. Octavia had found a way to tolerate the affair between her husband and the Egyptian queen, Cleopatra, with dignity, but humiliatingly enough it had been Marc Antony who filed for divorce. And when, a year later, the lovers were defeated by her brother and committed suicide, Octavia magnanimously took in not only the children that Marc Antony had fathered in his earlier marriage to Fulvia, but also the ones he had with Cleopatra: Alexander Helios, Cleopatra Selene, and Ptolemaeus Philadelphus.



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Practically all the children who grew up under Octavia’s wing would end up being deployed in Augustus’ matrimonial politics. Marcellus, the son of her first marriage, had been married to Julia until his premature death; as the years went by her other children were parceled out to notable spouses. In this manner the royal house on the Palatine grew richer in progeny, increasing the likelihood of Augustus’ dreams for the future. Augustus had always left the task of raising and educating this large brood to Livia, Octavia, and the best teachers he could find, and took little or no interest in them until they reached marriageable age and could be put to use in bolstering the dynasty’s foundation. Perhaps it was inevitable that strong bonds might spring up unbidden between the cousins. But the closeness of the bond that had grown up between Julia and Julus, Marc Antony’s son, during their teens had escaped the emperor’s notice completely.

18 With the passing of the matrone of the house of Octavian, a unifying factor had been lost. Octavia was interred with all due honor in the family mausoleum that a short while ago had opened its doors for Agrippa, and she was placed close to Marcellus. And so in death, more than a decade after his passing, Octavia was reunited with her son. There was by now an abundance of male progeny, and it would have been Augustus’ preference, after Agrippa’s death, to leave his daughter a widow forever—­were it not for the marriage laws he himself had introduced, including one requiring Roman widows to remarry. He could of course make an exception, but that would tarnish his credibility. And then again, Julia was not the easiest person to deal with. Augustus had once let slip that he found the guidance of the State less onerous than that of his intelligent and rebellious only child. Julia had always been aware of her privileged position as the emperor’s daughter, and she made free use of it whenever and wherever possible.

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Octavia’s death at almost sixty was also a reminder to the emperor that his own age was a matter of increasing import. Agrippa was gone, but not the need for some form of regency to span the gap until Gaius and Lucius were old enough to take up their inheritance. Augustus stood empty-handed. Who could he choose to fill that role? Who would pose the least risk? The only satisfactory solution was to seek a new candidate for Julia’s hand—­whether he wanted to or not. As always, the safest option was to choose someone from within his own, close family circle. Someone, in other words, who would not be inclined to seize the principate for his own benefit and that of his family. At that point, the only two to whom this applied were Tiberius and Drusus. The brothers were both happily married and had been blessed with healthy sons. The alliance between Drusus and Antonia, one of Octavia’s daughters, was one within the family and therefore still useful. But under the new circumstances, with Agrippa gone, the one between Tiberius and Vipsania served no further purpose. The choice was easily made. Augustus would have preferred to do things differently: he knew that his daughter and stepson were ill-­matched and that Vipsania was pregnant again. But there was no other way out. Tiberius was ordered to divorce Vipsania, the mother of his son and of his unborn second child, and to marry Julia, the provoking stepsister who had always irritated him. That stepsister, for her part, had always considered Tiberius one of the most insufferable characters she had ever met, and on top of that, she was about to give birth to her third son, who would be named Agrippa Postumus in memory of his father. Never before had Augustus expressed such a clear vote of confidence in Tiberius. Never before had Tiberius been so unhappy. The divorce from Vipsania hurt. Suetonius tells of how Tiberius ran into her by accident on the street, and how the tears came to his eyes. Vipsania walked on quickly, but



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Tiberius followed her almost to her door. It would be the last meeting between the two ex-­lovers. Vipsania had a miscarriage and Augustus forbade Tiberius from ever seeing his ex-­w ife again. The marriage to Julia was postponed: Tiberius was needed on the battlefield, to take up where Agrippa had left off. A conflict was brewing in the restive Balkans and eastern Europe which would go into history as the Pannonian War. Tiberius headed there in 12 BCE and once again led his troops purposefully and with courage. The physical distance from Rome was a blessing: it made it easier to forget Vipsania. Drusus, in the meantime, was on the other side of the Empire coping with more raids and rebellions. And with success. As governor of Gaul he restored peace in the province, as well as driving back German raiders and undertaking daring expeditions which penetrated farther into the wilds on the other side of the Rhine than any Roman had reached before. Once again the brothers proved themselves commanders of the utmost competence and ambition. But in Rome little was heard about Tiberius, whereas Drusus was gradually developing into a national hero of the stature of Julius Caesar. At the head of his Armies of the Rhine he founded one fort after another: at Nijmegen, Xanten, Bonn, and Mainz. Yet none of it gave occasion for rivalry between Tiberius and Drusus. The brothers even kept up a regular correspondence during those war years. The letter that Tiberius received from his younger brother in the summer of the year 10 BCE, however, contained a most unusual request.

19 We must force our father to restore the Republic, Drusus wrote his older brother. Tiberius and Drusus had spoken before of their irritation at their stepfather’s unrepublican tendencies. Now that each was backed by his own loyal army, Drusus felt it was time to take action. He assumed his brother would

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support him unconditionally and wanted the two of them to put pressure on Augustus together. By joining forces, they could take the only right course for two true-­born Claudians to take: to forcefully insist to their stepfather that nothing was above the values of the Republic, and that it was time for the princeps to return his special powers to the Senate. The Senate House must be reinstated. It was, Drusus thought, not too late to do the right thing. Tiberius sympathized with his brother and shared many of his ideas. He also knew that they were not the only ones to realize that Augustus’ position of power sat uneasily with the ideals of a truly free republic. However carefully Augustus had tried to navigate between existing laws and customs, however welcome was the peace he had brought about, many aristocrats were still unsatisfied with the “restoration” of the Republic in 27 BCE and saw it for what it was: a façade shielding an illegitimate autocracy. The dissatisfaction was no longer openly expressed, of course, and had not been for a long time. For the world had changed, and a sensible alternative for Augustus’ absolute rule was not immediately forthcoming. If there had ever been a moment in which the history of the early Roman Empire might possibly have changed course, that moment was the one in which Tiberius read the letter from his brother, Drusus. The great general Agrippa had departed the scene; Augustus’ grandsons were tiny tots. Tiberius and Drusus both headed up substantial military forces, had political experience, and had made names for themselves in Rome. Together they represented Rome’s time-­ honored values and customs—­at any rate, their family name did. Tiberius could have fallen in with Drusus’ plan, and together they could have sought some diplomatic means of setting up a lobby in the Senate. If they had truly set their minds to it they could, at the very least, have driven Augustus into a perilous corner. But Tiberius chose another path.



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No courier was sent with a reply to Drusus. Instead Tiberius secreted the letter among his personal belongings. He gave it to no one else to read. Not until he was about to leave on a long-­planned trip to Gaul—­he would meet Augustus there, at the dedication of an altar in Lugdunum (Lyon)—­d id he take out the letter and put it in his baggage. Tiberius loved his brother. He had named his son, borne to him by his beloved Vipsania, after Drusus. Was this act of betrayal he was about to commit the ultimate attempt to win Augustus’ favor at Drusus’ expense? He had already been given Julia’s hand and the succession seemed finally to be approaching, but Drusus’ enormous popularity may have worried him. Or was it more personal than that? Despite the love he felt for his brother, could Tiberius not abide Drusus’ being worshiped all his life by their stepfather and all of Rome—­Drusus, and not himself? Perhaps, if he did harbor such feelings, Tiberius could not resist the temptation to blot his younger brother’s sparkling clean escutcheon. Or perhaps it was not that at all. Possibly he saw Drusus’ request as innocent but strange and impermissible behavior, and was doing what he conceived to be his duty when he gave the letter in Gaul to his stepfather to read. He had always been stricter, more straightforward, than his younger brother. Drusus was the idealist, Tiberius the pragmatist.

20 The altar was built at the junction of the Tres Galliae, the three Gallic provinces, and had been designed to symbolize and perpetuate the permanent Romanization of the territory. Tiberius and Augustus had traveled specially to Gaul to be present at the dedication in 12 BCE. Drusus, of course, was there as well. It was he who had followed in Julius Caesar’s footsteps and successfully quashed several Gallic rebellions; as the province’s governor he had personally supervised the erection of this altar to “Rome and Augustus.”

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Tiberius promptly brought up the matter of the letter with his stepfather, and Drusus’ bold ideas died a swift and early death. Perhaps the princeps dismissed them as mere harmless, youthful enthusiasm. The entire incident was forgotten as quickly as possible. Tiberius did not linger long in Gaul: he was soon called back to the front, where his military acumen was sorely needed. Augustus stayed behind in Lyon, where Drusus was facing new challenges at the Empire’s borders. Once more Drusus had to lead an expedition into Germania, this time against the tribes of the Chatti and Sugambri, who had joined forces and turned against their Roman oppressors. The year 12 BCE was drawing to a close before either Tiberius or Drusus had brought matters, provisionally at least, under control. Winter had come, and it was high time for all three men to spend some time back in Rome. Augustus, Tiberius, and Drusus traveled to the capital together. We will never know what they spoke of along the way, but that period marked an end to any mutual discord or distrust. The marriage between Tiberius and Julia was solemnized early in 11 BCE, before the battle season broke out again, taking the reluctant bridegroom back to the front. Drusus was appointed Praetor Urbanus in Rome, but he, too, had to leave on campaign a short while later. He was undertaking a third expedition into Germania when his wife, Antonia, who had traveled with him to Gaul, gave birth to their third child in Lugdunum on the second anniversary of the dedication of the altar to Rome and Augustus. Once again the house of Augustus was blessed with the birth of a male child: Antonia gave birth to Claudius, the couple’s second son. The blessing, however, was soon to take on the appearance of a curse. Claudius was different than other children. He was visibly sickly and spastic, and when he became old enough to speak it was found that he stuttered. That there was nothing at all wrong with the boy in terms of intelligence was generally overlooked. Claudius, everyone assumed, would never fill a public post.



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Nothing more would be heard of Drusus’ rebellious ideas. Peace had been restored within the family, but external factors remained as unpredictable as ever. Life in Rome was fragile, and day-­to-­day existence full of uncertainties that could leap out and strike anyone, at any time. Fate made no distinctions of rank or class. More dark days were ahead for Augustus and the imperial family.

21 Ever since the earliest wars of expansion it was what Roman generals had dreamed of during cold nights on campaign in remote, desolate corners of the Empire: riding through the streets of the capital in a gorgeous chariot-­a nd-­four, sumptuously arrayed and surrounded by the spoils of the glorious victory just won in some barren, or exotic, place; being cheered by the people of Rome all the way to the top of the Capitol. This triumphal parade, called a “triumph,” was the ultimate honor accorded by the Senate to a victorious general upon his return home, as well as a feast day for the people of Rome. During the years of the triumvirates and Augustus’ glory days, Romans had been treated regularly to such spectacles, but it had not happened since. There was a reason for that. In this new world, the question of who had or had not the right to be honored with a triumph had become completely unclear to the Senate. Augustus was commander in chief of all the legions: only he possessed the ultimate imperium. All other military commanders operated as his deputies. During Augustus’ early administration, the only one who had received official permission from the Senate for a triumph—­repeatedly, in fact—­was Agrippa. But each time the honor had been offered, Agrippa had refused. Not once had he seized the opportunity to convert the Senate’s overtures into an actual parade. No one was entirely sure of his motives, whether sincere (or insincere) modesty, or his boundless respect for Augustus. But the mere fact of Agrippa’s refusal made it impossible for any

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other victorious general to claim the honor for himself. They all stood in the shadow of Augustus’ great general, Agrippa. And so it had come to appear no more than normal that Tiberius, despite his victories, had never been offered a triumph. Not after his adventure in the Alps, and not when he successfully completed the task that Agrippa had started in the Balkans. But his resolution of the Pannonian conflict in Rome’s favor could not be allowed to pass completely unrewarded—­especially given that Drusus was consul in the year of Tiberius’ return to Rome. A compromise was reached. In 9  BCE Tiberius was awarded a so-­called ovatio, the triumph’s more modest and retiring little sister. In practice this meant that his victory was celebrated, but in much less exuberant fashion than would have been the case for a triumph. For an ovatio the crowds applauded a general sitting on a horse, not a beaming demigod in a richly decorated chariot. And the very performance of the ovatio had another consequence, surely not unintended: it made abundantly clear that no one, not even his own stepson and Julia’s husband, was allowed to overshadow the emperor.

22 Now, in 9 BCE, Tiberius’ and Drusus’ careers were at the height of public prominence. They were both in their thirties, with fertile marriages that had produced three sons over the years: Drusus the Younger by Tiberius’ first marriage, and Germanicus and Claudius by the union between Drusus and Antonia. The only son that Tiberius and Julia had had together had been buried after only a few days, and Julia did not conceive again. But their marriage wove more tightly the bonds of family between the Julians and the Claudians, and therefore fulfilled its purpose. This new generation that had presented itself, along with Julia’s children from her former marriage, would all be available for deployment in the execution of Augustus’



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dynastic master plan. His own union with Livia had remained childless, to his great sorrow; but by playing a long game of prudent planning, strategic adoptions, and cleverly thought-­ out marriages he had still managed to lay the foundation for a long tradition of succession. During the year he was consul in Rome, Drusus returned to the Empire’s northern border to lead a fourth Germanic campaign. It would be a journey to remember. Tiberius and the rest of the family in Rome received the reports from the front with delighted anticipation. Drusus had reached the Elbe River, the first general in Roman history to do so; he had won victory after victory. When the campaign had wound down the family, the entire Senate, and the people of Rome waited impatiently for his triumphal return and the no-­doubt spectacular stories. A warm welcome awaited Drusus in the capital. The festivities were already being planned. The waiting would be in vain. The news—­impossible, inconceivable—­spread slowly through the streets of Rome. Drusus had fallen from his horse. The fall had resulted in a grave illness. The young general was consumed by gangrene; death seemed inevitable. Without a second’s hesitation Tiberius left Rome and galloped, on wings of the wind, the hundreds of miles to his brother at the front. He found him just barely alive. Tiberius was in time, but only to see his brother take his last breath. In a deed of fraternal love and deep mourning, Tiberius escorted his brother’s lifeless body on foot back to Italy. Augustus and Livia left Rome to meet them in the north of Italy, and the sad, silent procession made its way to the capital, where Drusus’ body was laid out in state on the Forum. Public eulogies were spoken by both Augustus and Tiberius. Then Drusus’ body was taken to its last resting place on the Via Flaminia. The cremation took place on the Field of Mars; then the urn containing Drusus’ ashes was interred in a place of honor in Augustus’ mausoleum.

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No matter how painstakingly Augustus tried to ensure his succession, pawns continued to be snatched, with uncompromising exactness, from his playing field. No doubt he still imagined the two young Caesars, Gaius and Lucius, following in his footsteps and the Julian dynasty living on through them. He had no idea of what fate had in store. With Drusus gone, Augustus might have imagined a modest role for Tiberius, as regent. But if anyone had told him that Drusus’ grandson—­and even more incredible, Drusus’ handicapped youngest son, the one who had been born in Gaul—­would both one day claim the Julio-­Claudian throne for themselves, he would never have believed it.

23 After Drusus’ death, as always, life had to go on—­a nd as quickly as possible. Although the boy was only twelve, Augustus took his grandson Gaius with him to Gaul. Tiberius left soon afterwards for Germania to take up where Drusus had left off. After his brother’s death, Tiberius’ star would rise higher than he had ever thought possible. Tiberius’ Germanic war was a huge success. In 7 BCE Tiberius was elected by the Senate to a second term as consul, this time sharing the office with his friend Gnaeus Calpurnius Piso. That same year finally brought the tribute he had so often deserved. On account of his great victories (won, at least in part, thanks to the preparatory work done by his younger brother) Tiberius was awarded his first real triumph. As officiating consul he called the Senate together on the first day of the year—­outside the pomerium, the sacred city boundary, because he was about to enter the city in military triumph and Roman law forbade soldiers from setting foot on the holy ground of the city. He announced to the senators his intention of dedicating part of the Germanic war spoils to the restoration of the already ancient Temple of Concordia. It was an act of love, not only for the city of Rome but for



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his brother as well, for after its restoration Tiberius planned to rededicate the temple in Drusus’ name. The plan was received with enthusiasm, and after a magnificent triumphal pageant Tiberius treated the entire Senate to a lavish banquet on top of the Capitol. Augustus had another reason for finally allowing Tiberius this triumph in 7 BCE. Putting his son-­in-­law forward had gradually come to be in his own best interests. It was for good reason that he bestowed upon Tiberius, one year later, two exceptional powers, which until then none but himself and Agrippa had ever held: the tribunicia potestas, the authority of a tribune of the plebeians, and the so-­called imperium proconsulare maius, the supreme command, over the eastern provinces. These two added spheres of power made Tiberius, legally speaking, almost Augustus’ equal—­just as Agrippa had been years before. Tiberius had in effect become the new Agrippa. Agrippa’s sudden death, followed by that of Drusus, might have temporarily severed the dynastic chain, but the new link between Augustus’ reign and his dreamed-­of succession by Gaius and Lucius had already been forged. Tiberius stood closer to Augustus now than ever before.

24 As the years passed, Tiberius grew increasingly estranged from his second wife, Julia. The marriage had seemed to function reasonably well at first, but after awhile fissures, inescapable between those two, had become apparent. Julia, like a good wife, had taken part along with her stepmother, Livia, in the banquet organized for the senators’ wives when Tiberius had received his ovatio in 9 BCE; but when it came time for his triumph, two years later, she refused to grace any of the festivities with her presence. No one seemed as yet to have noticed that Julia had gradually collected a group of intellectuals about herself with whom she conversed about increasingly radical ideas. All eyes

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were fixed upon the men of Augustus and Livia’s house: not only Tiberius, but also, and especially, Julia’s two eldest sons, the young public darlings Gaius and Lucius Caesar. Rome adored the affable young Caesars. Gaius was the eldest and had as a child made a number of public appearances, often at the side of his stepfather, Tiberius. It was what the people of Rome had clamored for almost since his birth. Once, when he publicly attended the Games as a small boy, the crowd began to roar the moment he showed his face. By Roman law he might still be a child, but everyone foresaw a glorious future for Gaius. Rome took him to her heart before he had even had a chance to prove himself. When Gaius’ fifteenth birthday arrived, the time was ripe: he would now become a man and assume the toga virilis. Augustus himself officiated over the ceremony, which began at home. First in the order of events was the putting off of the amulet, a symbol of his childhood, which the boy had worn on his chest all his life. Home, that normally bustling, busy place, wore an air of solemnity that must have made an impression on the young man at the center of all the attention. The Lares, the household deities, were invoked. Gaius had been well instructed beforehand and knew that he was expected to take the amulet from around his neck and offer it up to the Lares. Then Julia helped him out of his toga praetexta, his child’s toga, after which he was dressed in the long, dazzlingly white toga virilis. Prayers of thanksgiving were raised to the gods. Then the company moved to the triclinium, the formal dining room, where Gaius was allowed to recline at the meal, as a grown man, for the first time. In the afternoon Augustus accompanied his grandson to the tabularium, the city archives, for the next official act of the day: the entering of the now officially of age Gaius into the register of Roman citizens. Gaius had become a man. Conspicuous by his absence at this momentous and festive family occasion was the young man’s stepfather, Tiberius.



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Since Drusus’ death Tiberius had established himself more firmly than ever in Rome’s center of power. His curriculum vitae was impressive by any standard and his future looked rosy. It was safe to assume that he would continue to be closely involved with the emperor’s office and would succeed Augustus when he died, so that he could guide the young crown princes to the principate. But by the year Gaius assumed his toga of manhood, 5 BCE, Tiberius had been gone from Rome for months. Shortly after being invested by Augustus with his extraordinary powers, Tiberius had decided to leave literally everything—­his influential position, his family, his wife, his son—­behind. Tiberius had turned his back on Rome.

25 Few people made the trip to the harbor in Ostia in 6 BCE to see Tiberius off. One who had not known better would have had no indication, either from his company or his attire, that the man standing on the pier was one of the most powerful men in the world. The figure he cut was nothing like that of a future emperor, not even of a respected senator and former consul. He was about to set out upon a journey that was neither political nor military in nature. It was a private matter, and Tiberius was dressed accordingly—­as an ordinary man. The traveling party was equally unostentatious, consisting of no more than a few friends, an insignificant senator whom no one in Rome would miss, and only the most meager contingent of bodyguards, which the law required to accompany the bearer of the tribunicia potestas and the imperium wherever he went. Few bystanders even bothered to look up when the unassuming company rode through the streets of Ostia on their way to the harbor. Tiberius and his companions, for their part, would have found much to draw their attention. The centuries-­ old harbor town of Ostia had been given a facelift over the past few years and had acquired an aqueduct and a couple of

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temples. As they passed the enormous, marble-­clad theater, memories resurfaced of Agrippa, who had built the edifice during the last years of his life. It was inconceivable that it had only been a few years since his death. On the dock, meanwhile, preparations were underway for departure. The wind was favorable, and the harbor was bustling; ships were loaded quickly in order to catch the tide and the fair winds. Tiberius stepped aboard without a backwards glance. He had little baggage to stow. There had been no way to pack for a sojourn of years—­perhaps forever—­away from home. This was no journey into the unknown for Tiberius. He had first set foot on the Greek island of Rhodes fifteen years before, when he was in his early twenties. It had been a mere stopover then: a means of making up for lost time. For whereas most young men of his rank completed their educations with a study tour abroad—­by following a philosophy course in Athens, for instance—­Tiberius had never had that opportunity. In his youth Tiberius had intensely enjoyed the lessons in philosophy, literature, and rhetoric that were part of his home curriculum. He would have liked nothing better, at the completion of his education, than to take such a study tour—­but the realities of political life had caught up with the inquisitive young student. There was no time for a year abroad. When, in his twenties, he had traveled to the east to help settle the Parthian question, he took a group of scholars, including several historians and poets, with him as compensation. The mission was primarily a diplomatic one and left plenty of opportunity between other matters for lessons and scholarly discussions. On the homeward journey from Armenia—­where he had managed, without repercussions, to place a new king, one well-­d isposed to Rome, upon the throne—­Tiberius had traveled via Rhodes. One of his old teachers, Theodorus of Gadara, lived there. Theodorus had been one of Rome’s



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eminent rhetoricians and a great inspiration to the young Tiberius; he had been running a successful school of rhetoric on Rhodes for several years and had continued to amass followers, of which Tiberius was one. When the young soldier and diplomat had discharged his duties, leaving the eastern reaches of the Empire behind in relative security, he had suspended his homeward journey in order to follow a course of study with his old teacher, Theodorus. That first trip to Rhodes had been fifteen years ago, but Tiberius never forgot the island and looked forward to returning. This time, he planned to devote himself to philosophy, a passion he had developed in his younger years with Marcellus. The scholarly life of the Greek intellectuals appealed to Tiberius now more than ever. He was finished with Rome. Not only his wife, Julia, but the entire city and all she stood for had become hateful to him. The prospect of setting foot once more on his beloved island, surrounded by the azure sea, was enough even to banish the thought of Drusus, the son he had left behind in Rome, to the background.

26 No one realized at first how badly Tiberius wanted to escape from Rome. Even Livia and Augustus had not taken his first request to leave, in 6 BCE, seriously. It had taken Tiberius’ utmost efforts to convince them just how in earnest he really was, even resorting to a hunger strike in a desperate effort to underline his words. It finally worked; Augustus realized that his stepson truly did wish to withdraw from public life in Rome. Tiberius, by his own account, needed a rest. The entire affair left Augustus perplexed—­horrified, in fact. All the losses he had suffered—­so many promising young men who had been snatched from his grasp—­a nd now this. It may have been the hardest blow ever dealt to him. It was certainly the most unexpected. Without Tiberius

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he was right back to where he had started. How could he possibly have anticipated this? No doubt Augustus replayed in his mind the recent occurrences in Rome—­t hat year’s consular elections, for instance, which had caused such a stir. Augustus had been reelected for the twelfth time, and a loud cry had gone up throughout Rome to seat Gaius beside him. Gaius had been unanimously elected, but Augustus had refused to recognize the appointment, remembering all too well how he himself had been forced into the office of consul at far too young an age. Gaius, his grandfather felt, must be given time to grow up and gain some experience. He would not allow the boy to be forced into the consulship until he turned twenty. And so an extraordinary and unprecedented statute had been called into being. Gaius, by way of great exception, was elected consul for five years later, the year in which he would celebrate his twentieth birthday. For the time being he was anointed priest and welcomed as a member of the Senate. This would make his role in Rome’s high society more visible and enable the Conscript Fathers to accustom themselves to his presence; but there had been more behind the priesthood and Senate seat than that. So immense was the boy’s popularity that this stopgap appointment had been necessary to appease a populace crying out to see him made consul. The crowning honor was the bestowal of a new, special title: princeps iuventutis. The first among the young. One thing had been made painfully clear: that Tiberius was no more than a necessary evil—­a babysitter. Augustus’ preference was still that his own grandsons directly succeed him. And it was not only Augustus’ preference. All of Rome chanted the name of Gaius Caesar, just as she had once chanted the name of Marcellus. In all the tumult perhaps no one had noticed that throughout the whole circus surrounding the consular elections for the next year, the name of Tiberius had not once been mentioned. No one, that is, except Tiberius himself.



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He was the sitting consul and the celebrated general who had just treated the Romans to a glorious triumphal parade. With his tribunicia potestas and his imperium proconsulare maius he was, on paper, the second-mightiest man in Rome and the emperor’s intended successor—­but only if strictly necessary. In reality he was insignificant and all but invisible. Tiberius might have found this second-­rate position acceptable, at least temporarily, back in the days when he had been overwhelmed by accolades and was living in the glow of his military successes in Germania, but those days were past. No doubt he would have loved to return to a military life, but unfortunately there were no new expeditions on the horizon. Tiberius was more or less doomed to remain in Rome, where he was confronted daily not only with his position in the shadow of Augustus’ grandsons, but also with his own wretched situation at home. Matters between him and Julia had continued to deteriorate. Exactly how bad their marriage had gotten was by now a public secret, as were Julia’s affairs. Perhaps the letter of complaint that Julia wrote her father, in which she annihilated her husband in unabashed rantings, had been the last straw. Augustus took Tiberius for granted; neither the people nor the Senate took him seriously; and his wife exposed him to public ridicule by her promiscuous behavior and unapologetic adultery. Why on earth should he want to stay in Rome? It was to be expected that Tiberius, once the decision had been made, could not count on much support. “Betrayal” was the word Augustus used when forced to officially inform the Senate of his stepson’s request. It had taken a four-­day hunger strike for Augustus to finally take the situation seriously and announce that Tiberius would be taking a leave of absence for an indefinite period to go to Rhodes. For public consumption it was all couched as prettily as possible. Tiberius had been so moved by all the marks of honor bestowed upon him that he needed time to catch his breath and had decided to temporarily resume his studies on one

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of the Greek islands. No early retirement, to be sure, but a temporary leave: “to rest from the unbroken succession of his labours.”5 Augustus had no idea what to think of this unexpected maneuver. Was his stepson disloyal? Had he made a mistake in trusting him? Did he have reason to fear Tiberius—­who would be left as sole ruler, with all power concentrated in his hands, if the emperor were to die right now? Augustus took his stepson to task, and the resulting discussion was an extremely uncomfortable one for Tiberius. He had not foreseen that his request would cause his stepfather to doubt his integrity. That had not been the intention. The tone was set. Tiberius would depart under a cloud, leaving not only Augustus but also his mother, Livia, behind in anger and bewilderment. In a last-­d itch attempt to prove his loyalty Tiberius read his will aloud to his mother and stepfather shortly before departing for the harbor in Ostia. In it Gaius and Lucius were named as principal heirs. His own son, Drusus, came after them. Augustus had nothing to fear from his stepson: that was clearly the message. Tiberius just wanted to get out of Rome, nothing more, nothing less. Was he not, after all, the new Agrippa? And had not Agrippa done exactly the same thing years ago with his departure for Lesbos, when Augustus had pushed Marcellus to the forefront?

27 The ship bearing Tiberius and his traveling companions southwards had departed on a favorable wind. They had just reached the Campanian coast when they were overtaken by a message from Rome. The bad news was brought directly to Tiberius. Augustus, he was told, had suddenly been taken gravely ill. How long did Tiberius hesitate? Should he turn around? And if he were to go rushing back, what would he do then?



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Of course nothing else would have changed in Rome: Gaius would still be consul-­elect and Rome’s beloved princeps iuventutis. Augustus would hardly undo his decrees just because he had gotten ill. Must Tiberius go and sit at the emperor’s sickbed, waiting for the official call to take up his role as Gaius and Lucius’ babysitter? The only way to profit personally from Augustus’ death—­if the emperor were to die from whatever malady had felled him—­was by a violent seizure of power. But the favorable sea breeze showed signs of dying down and Tiberius had little time to think. Ignoring the message from Rome, he gave orders to resume course for the Greek islands—­and as quickly as possible. Tiberius found the rest he sought on his island. He moved into a modest house and lived the unpretentious life he had so longed for in the midst of the madness of Rome. A greater contrast than the one between his actual position—­his tribunicia potestas would not expire for another five years—­and the sobriety of his daily life was hardly imaginable. The only tangible reminders of his power arrived now and then from overseas. These were politicians from Rome, governors on their way to some mission or some overseas province that had been handed to them, who could not resist visiting Tiberius, and showing him all due respect. The visitors were witness to Tiberius’ modest lifestyle and openly praised him for it, but they found much to astonish them. Here was Tiberius, the great general, the stepson of the emperor of Rome, walking about at his leisure and without the benefit of a bodyguard or even a servant—­and what was more, speaking casually to his neighbors, and descending effortlessly to their level. Tiberius clearly felt at home among the Greek island dwellers. No wonder he stayed on Rhodes for seven years. The many stories accumulated by Roman visitors to the island all made their way back to the capital. There was one telling how Tiberius had declared his concern one morning for the island’s sick, and his intention of honoring them all

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with a visit—­whereupon his servants, misunderstanding his intentions, had promptly rustled all the ailing of Rhodes out of bed and lined them up publicly, grouped together by illness. Tiberius had been shocked and upset when he was brought to them and saw that miserable column of weakened bodies. He assured them that this had never been his intention, and later visited each one at home, to offer his personal apologies. But most of Tiberius’ days were spent in classrooms. He regularly attended philosophy schools to enjoy the Greek education he had so longed for in his youth. A heated argument that broke out between two Sophists during a lesson one day was the occasion of his losing his composure for the first time in years. Tiberius had openly taken sides in the altercation and was accused by one of the listeners of abusing his position. Instead of responding to the accusation, he had gotten up and silently gone home, only to return to the classroom shortly afterwards, as quietly as he had left it—­t his time accompanied by his bodyguards. He had his spokesman indict the insolent fellow and take him to prison. It was the only time in his seven years on the island that Tiberius made use of his power. The memory Tiberius would cherish most of his years on Rhodes was that of a man with an extraordinary gift. Thrasyllus of Alexandria was a master of astrology, and his first meeting with Tiberius was the beginning of a friendship that would survive the many turbulent years still to come. Thrasyllus believed that he could see into the future by studying the stars, an art upon which Tiberius would come increasingly to rely. Next to literature, philosophy, and rhetoric, astrology became his new hobby. Thrasyllus’ predictions had often come true, so Tiberius had no reason for doubt in 2 BCE when the astrologer told him, before the ship ever docked, that bad news from Rome was on its way to Rhodes. A messenger arrived bearing news of Augustus and Livia, and alongside their somber letter were



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documents annulling, effective immediately, the marriage between Tiberius and Julia. Somewhere else—­on a small, deserted island much closer to Rome—­Julia received the same set of divorce papers.

28 While Tiberius was away all those years, enjoying his freedom and going to philosophy classes on Rhodes, Augustus, back in Rome, found his worries increasing. The longer his stepson’s silence and absence lasted, the more the emperor’s thoughts went their own ways, and the more menacing those thoughts became. The mere idea of that man, alone on his island, holding all the power in the world in his hands, must have made Augustus shudder. The recollection of the legions on the Rhine and the Danube—­a ll those soldiers who had served so long under Tiberius and would no doubt follow wherever he led—­was fuel to the fire. It must have been a relief to remember that he had recently draped Lucius, Julia’s second son, in his toga virilis. But on August 1 of the year 2 BCE Augustus had other things on his mind besides Tiberius, Rhodes, and that whole wretched situation. He was busy redeeming a promise he had made forty years earlier to Mars, the god of war. Mars had kept up his end of the bargain by helping Augustus avenge Julius Caesar in the Battle of Philippi. Finally, four decades later, Augustus was able to pay his debt by the dedication of the temple he had promised to Mars Ultor (Mars the Avenger) on a brand-new forum in the heart of Rome. It was a festive occasion. All of Rome had come out to witness the dedication and admire the temple, clad with handsome marble from a newly discovered quarry in Luna (Carrara), and encompassed by three galleries with pillars. The city had been putting up with the construction work for decades, but the result was worth it. The new forum, of which the Temple of Mars was the glorious centerpiece, had of course been named after the emperor.

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The Forum of Augustus would be much more than just a forceful symbol of the new world the emperor had created. It would provide housing for judicial business for which, due to the city’s ever-­increasing population, there was no more room in the two existing forums, the Forum Romanum and the Forum of Julius Caesar. The new temple would be where the Senate convened from now on to make decisions about waging war or vote on the awarding of triumphs. Every general who departed Rome for the provinces would be waved off from there, and those returning with captured banners and regimental standards would bring them there directly, to lay them at the war god’s feet. So had Augustus decreed. With the conclusion of the ceremonial portion of the day, the consecration of the temple, the spectacle everyone had been waiting for could begin. The Games of 2 BCE entered into legend almost immediately and would go down in history as one of the most sensational Rome had ever beheld. Gladiator fights alternated with reenactments of naval battles in the improvised stadiums and countless wooden stages that had been erected throughout the city. The festivities lasted for days. But it was not granted to Augustus to enjoy these Games he had financed for very long. His presence was required at his stately house on the Palatine, where a storm had broken out that needed calming as quickly as possible.

29 Perhaps Augustus had always known, or at any rate feared, that his only daughter would someday drive him to the brink of ruin. She had been brazen and untamed all her life: in every way the opposite of her stepmother, Livia. In contrast to Tiberius and Drusus, and even Augustus himself, she had conducted herself from childhood in accordance with her privileged station, and she had done so with abandon. Despite all her parents’ attempts to transform her into a



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dignified Roman female, with a proper air of modesty and reserve, she behaved like an emperor’s daughter who could get away with anything. Julia had caused her father plenty of headaches in the past, but in 2 BCE she overplayed her hand. Augustus had been furious when Marc Antony, all those years ago, had brought public disgrace upon his pious sister, Octavia, by carrying on an affair with Cleopatra. Now it had become common knowledge that his own daughter, Julia, had been cheating on her husband for years. The rumors had been confirmed by multiple sources. Julia’s lifestyle was unrestrained and shameless; she carried on affairs with a number of lovers; she had even been spotted at alcohol-­ soaked nocturnal revels on the Forum Romanum. It was true that her husband was an absentee, but the offenses were still too grave for Augustus to pass over. An innocent extramarital affair was not necessarily an unpardonable offense for a woman in Julia’s situation. Everyone knew that she was trapped in a loveless marriage with an impossible man. But her position as daughter of the emperor and mother of the two crown princes made it impossible for Augustus to rule out dubious intentions on the part of her lovers—­especially when one of those lovers harbored revolutionary tendencies and ambitions of his own. Julus Antony and Julia had grown up in the same circle and had known each other all their lives. Julus was Marc Antony’s son by an early marriage and had been raised by Octavia, who had taken the care of all of Marc Antony’s children, even those he had with his lover Cleopatra, upon herself after his death. Thanks to his stepmother, Julus’ position had been one of privilege. It was true that he grew up in the shadow of Augustus’ closest relatives, but that had not kept him from enjoying all the benefits of a comfortable life and an excellent career. He married his stepsister Marcella, was consul in the year Drusus died (9 BCE), and was proconsul in the province of Asia when Tiberius held his triumphal pageant through the streets of Rome. There had

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been nothing to indicate that he, together with Julia, would bring unpardonable disgrace upon the family. No one bothered to ferret out when, exactly, the affair between Julia and Julus had begun. Far more vital to the national interest was ensuring that it had been nothing more than lust, or even love, that had driven the pair into each other’s arms. And that applied not only to her relationship with Julus. Two other men, aristocrats from Julia’s most intimate circle of friends, were also accused of adultery with the emperor’s daughter. Julia’s alleged lovers—­besides Julus these were Appius Claudius, scion of the Scipio family, and a certain Sempronius Gracchus—­were banished from Rome immediately, regardless of their status as senator or knight. But Julus Antony, who was so closely connected to Augustus’ family that ulterior political motives could not be ruled out, was not let off so easily. Perhaps in his case the offense was more personal for Augustus. How could this boy, to whom he had always shown preference, to whom he had given so much, betray him so callously? In a last-minute act of clemency, Julus was not executed, but was permitted to maintain a scrap of self-­ respect by taking his own life. Julia herself could not go unpunished. In what must have been one of the most difficult decisions of Augustus’ life, she was banished to a deserted island off the coast of Campania, an island so small that one could walk from one side to the other in a couple of minutes. She was joined voluntarily in her exile by her mother, Scribonia, who had petitioned the emperor for permission to accompany her banished daughter. Julia would never see Rome again. It would be hard to say whose punishment was the heavier, Julus’ or Julia’s. His only daughter was, almost literally, wiped off the map. Now that her ship had set sail, all that was left for Augustus to do was annul her marriage. The official divorce papers were sent from the Palatine in Rome to both Julia and Tiberius. All in all it had been a huge family scandal. At the



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beginning of the year 2 BCE Augustus had received from the Senate the singularly honorable title pater patriae, father of the fatherland. As pater familias, however, his authority seemed to be crumbling.

30 Greeting, my dear Gaius, my dearest little donkey, whom, so help me! I constantly miss whenever you are away from me. But especially on such days as to-­day my eyes are eager for my Gaius, and wherever you have been to-­day, I hope you have celebrated my sixty-­fourth birthday in health and happiness. For, as you see, I have passed the climacteric common to all old men, the sixty-­t hird year. And I pray the gods that whatever time is left to me I may pass with you safe and well, with our country in a flourishing condition, while you are playing the man and preparing to succeed to my position.6

On September 23 of the year 1, Augustus celebrated his sixty-­ fourth birthday in comparative loneliness. Tiberius was still in Rhodes, Lucius was on a mission in Gaul, and Gaius was traveling in the east. He did not miss Tiberius—­he had not missed him for a long time—­but Augustus had never been separated from his grandsons for so long before. Gaius was now twenty and, as planned, had become consul. Augustus felt his absence deeply, especially today. Passing the age of sixty-­t hree—­a more than respectable age at which many a well-­k nown Roman man had departed this life—­had gotten the emperor thinking, and the thoughts were somber. He sought comfort, on this symbolic birthday, by writing a letter to Gaius. Tiberius had not been completely forgotten. After all this time old friends, usually influential politicians and veterans of his army, still dropped by on Rhodes when their travels brought them in the neighborhood of the island. It was a blessing, but also a curse. The sporadic visits gave him the

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feeling that he still mattered, at least a little bit, but they annoyed his stepfather. In the emperor’s eyes the visits were an indication that Tiberius’ ambitions had never been entirely quenched. There he was on his island, holding court as if he were a man of power—­so Augustus saw it. His stepson’s frivolous Greek lifestyle could not conceal that in his core he was still a Roman. Whether or not Tiberius’ ambitions had undergone a change, his situation certainly had, and not to his advantage. Five years earlier, when he left Rome, he had held a position of such power as to make him virtually unassailable—­power that had appeared boundless but had not been. The limits of his terms would soon run out, and it was quite clear who would take his place. Gaius was now old enough to assume the tribunicia potestas and the imperium. Tiberius’ troops would soon be given a new general, and Augustus would see to it that the introduction was made as soon as possible. It began to dawn on Tiberius—­gradually at first, but with growing certainty—­that leaving Rome was the greatest error of judgment he had ever made. Especially now, when it had become clear that simply going back was not an option. He sent in request after request, but the longed-­for permission to return to Rome was not granted. The more rejections Tiberius got, the more worried he became. All seemed to be in readiness for the succession, now that Augustus had turned sixty-­four and Gaius had assumed the roles of both consul and general. Tiberius’ only direct link with the ruler-­to-­be was Julia, and she found herself in an even more hopeless situation than he, and on a far more desolate island. Somehow or other, Tiberius had to get himself back home. Back to Rome. He continued to beg his stepfather for permission, and at the same time strategically petitioned him to lift Julia’s banishment. He was doing everything he could to avoid being left to the mercies of Gaius and Lucius. No doubt Augustus, who had never been able to escape the impression



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that the whole situation with his daughter would never have gotten so out of hand if Tiberius had just stayed in Rome, was amused by the irony of fate. Tiberius had turned his back on Rome and his family with the greatest of ease, had he not? Well then, let him forget about them for good. Let him stay on his island forever.

31 Gaius was in his element in his new starring role. His childhood, his teens, in fact his whole life had been leading up to his future reign. He was ready. He was married by now—­to Livilla, the only daughter of Drusus’ widow Antonia. They were practically family and had spent part of their lives living under one roof. The law, instituted by Augustus himself, dictated that a widow in the prime of life was required to remarry, but Antonia had never wanted any part of it. After Drusus’ death she and her three children, Livilla, Germanicus, and Claudius, had moved in with Augustus and Livia, Antonia’s mother-­in-­ law. There Gaius and Livilla had met, two children together in the emperor’s palatial house on the Palatine Hill. Livilla was thirteen when she married Gaius. The marriage had caused barely a ripple in her daily life, for her bridegroom had left Rome soon afterwards. In order to complete his education as ruler of the Empire, Augustus had sent Gaius on a tour of the eastern provinces. A number of men went along as Gaius’ escorts on the journey. These were Marcus Lollius (the man who had been replaced by Tiberius as governor of Gaul almost two decades earlier), Publius Sulpicius Quirinius (who would later be governor of Syria), Velleius Paterculus (a successful soldier who also dabbled in writing), and an ambitious soldier named Sejanus, who would later become Tiberius’ best friend and confidant. It was a varied group, but for the most part well ­chosen, experienced, and capable. In their company Gaius saw exotic

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lands, cities, and faces file past him. It was inevitable that the party would one day come into the neighborhood of Rhodes, and when that day arrived Gaius decided it was high time to pay his stepfather a visit. Lollius, who had never forgotten how an arrogant teenaged Tiberius had shoved him aside in Gaul, was not looking forward to the encounter. But much had changed since Lollius and Tiberius were at each other’s throats in Gaul. Back then Tiberius had enjoyed the emperor’s full and unconditional support; now he was by himself on a Greek island, dying for permission to return to Rome and spending his days in endless conversations with his astrologer. It was a flying visit. Tiberius did his best to convince Gaius that he had nothing to fear from him—­t hat he cherished not a single illusion nor ambition, but simply, for the gods’ sake, wanted to go back to Rome. Perhaps Gaius was touched by the shameless pleading, or perhaps the mere sight of Tiberius had been enough to convince him that he had indeed nothing to fear from this man. Either way, when the company had put the island behind them and Lollius came to him and eagerly offered to kill Tiberius, Gaius rejected the offer with indignation. The brazen proposal on shipboard would doom the already strained relations between Gaius and Lollius. The two clashed with increasing frequency during the remainder of the eastern tour, primarily on account of Lollius’ behavior, which engendered persistent allegations of immorality. Bribes of local monarchs, scandalous extortions: the accusations piled up everywhere the company went. Finally Gaius had had enough and took up the matter with Augustus. Lollius, opting not to wait for his punishment, drained a poisoned cup. Tiberius had become dependent for information on his own spies and agents: it had been quite some time since he had been kept informed of events of State through the official channels. Now he watched nervously for news from



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overseas, longing for word but in excruciating uncertainty as to what that word would be. After his scarcely hopeful meeting with Gaius, it must have been a welcome surprise when, several months later, the ship carrying his deliverance docked on Rhodes.

32 In the year 2 Tiberius, for the second time in his life, set out on a homeward journey from Rhodes across the sea to Rome. The contrast to the first journey could hardly have been greater. Then he had been in his early twenties and had set course for a promising future in the capital. Gaius had been a newborn in those days, and Tiberius and his brother, Drusus, Livia’s sons, had represented the new generation of the house of Augustus. Of course Tiberius was relieved that his pleas had been heard and he was finally allowed to return from exile. His safety, in fact his very future, depended on it. But he had hardly set foot on Italian soil before his new situation was brought painfully home to him. He was no longer the handsome, successful young man who had sailed up the Tiber via the harbor in Ostia all those years ago. That same journey proceeded this time largely in silence. Livia—­if she had gotten over her fury over her son’s departure—­would have been one of the few who was glad to see him again. Otherwise his reception was decidedly cool. Rome had discovered she could do very well without Tiberius. Augustus, for his part, had done his best to make his stepson’s return as humiliating as possible. He emphasized, publicly and privately, that he still did not agree with the decision, but that his grandson had persuaded him to leniency. As far as he was concerned, all of Rome might know that the errant Tiberius owed his homecoming to the clemency of Gaius.

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The house in which Tiberius had lived with Julia, in the stylish Carinae neighborhood right in Rome’s beating heart, was barred to him now. Giants such as Pompey and Marc Antony had lived there, and Augustus refused to permit Tiberius even the slightest association with such icons of past power. In keeping with his new, much lower profile he moved into a just-­built house on the Esquiline Hill, on the former estate of Augustus’ late friend Maecenas, who had died in 8 BCE. Literally and figuratively, Tiberius was living on the outskirts of Rome. Someone else, besides Livia, was no doubt glad Tiberius was home again: his son, Drusus, who in the intervening years had grown into a strapping adolescent. Tiberius arrived just in time to be present at the ceremony of the boy’s donning of his toga virilis. For the time being it was the only public affair Tiberius was allowed to attend. Drusus’ upbringing remained in the hands of his fraternal aunt, Antonia, the widow of his uncle and namesake Drusus, according to an arrangement put into place during the years of Tiberius’ absence and Julia’s banishment. Antonia’s two sons, Germanicus and Claudius, had become more like brothers to Drusus than cousins. And then there was his cousin Livilla, two years younger than he, who had married Gaius at thirteen, and was no doubt like a sister to Drusus as well. Lucius Caesar, Gaius’ younger brother, was nineteen now and had also become engaged: to Aemilia Lepida, an offshoot of an eminent Roman clan that was on good terms with the house of Caesar. Aemilia’s brother, Aemilius Lepidus, would attain the lofty rank of consul in the year 11. The proposed marriage had to be postponed, however. Lucius was away from Rome the year Tiberius returned to it. While Tiberius’ ship had been setting course for the capital, Lucius had been heading to Spain on business of State. They never found out what, exactly, happened. What calamity befell the young man on his way to Spain? Whatever it was, it had been grave. On August 20 of the year 2, Lucius died in Marseille.



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The shock in Rome was almost as great as it had been after the sudden deaths of Marcellus, almost twenty years earlier, and Tiberius’ brother, Drusus, in 9 BCE. There were no answers to the many questions surrounding the young man’s demise, and the grief was profound. Lucius’ grandparents, Livia and Augustus; his foster-­mother, Antonia; his brother Gaius with his wife, Livilla; his older sister, Julia the Younger, and her husband, Lucius Aemilius Paullus; his younger brother, Agrippa Postumus; his bereft fiancée, now in effect widow, Aemilia Lepida; his cousins Germanicus and Claudius and their wives: the entire imperial family gathered to lead the public ceremonies in honor of Lucius Caesar, who had departed this life far too young. Only the young man’s mother, Julia, still an outcast on her island, was unable to attend her son’s funeral—­she and Tiberius, who, though back in Rome, was still in a sense in exile, being excluded from all public functions. No exceptions were made, not even for a death in the family—­a nd Augustus hardly considered Tiberius family anymore. But Tiberius kept up his efforts at a reconciliation. He even wrote a lyrical work entitled A Lamentation upon the Death of Lucius Caesar to express his heartfelt sympathy with the family that had so resolutely cast him off. It was not just Lucius’ premature death that plunged the imperial family, its younger generation especially, into despair. Just when they thought they were entering the final sprint to the succession, fate had intervened, rattling their position at its core. All at once everything depended on Gaius. And, as Lucius’ death had demonstrated afresh, in Rome the life of one man—­and therefore of an entire dynasty—­always hung on a silken thread. Would a last-­minute partner for Gaius, a new crown prince, have to be appointed after all? It did not take much imagination to see Tiberius’s literary attempt at condolences as an unsolicited application for the newly vacant position. Everyone waited in suspense for Augustus’ next move.

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33 Lucius’ untimely death laid bare an awkward truth: that despite her years-­long absence, Julia still enjoyed considerable sympathy, and a sizeable following, in Rome. Far from removing her from sight and mind, as intended, her exile had become a festering open wound and an extreme annoyance to Augustus. The death of her son gave Julia’s supporters a reason to take to the streets, roaring for clemency and their favorite’s return to the capital. The turmoil mounted so high that Augustus found himself compelled to call a public meeting. But during the gathering it quickly became apparent that he had not the slightest intention of pardoning his daughter. He left no doubt whatsoever, even expressing a wish that his listeners might be cursed by the gods with a daughter or wife like Julia—­t hen they might know how he felt. When fire and water became one (apparently an ancient version of airborne pigs and a frozen-­over netherworld), then, and only then, would his daughter be allowed to return to Rome, was the emperor’s wrathful conclusion. But after this fine show of firmness and resolution, Augustus, with an eye towards preventing an escalation of the crisis, made the slightest of bows to public opinion. Julia would be allowed to leave her island. Not to return to Rome, but to live on the mainland, in the provinces. She ended up in Rhegium, in the pointy toe of the Italian boot: a far cry from the capital, but a relief compared to the island of Pandateria, abandoned by both gods and humans. Finally she would be able to mingle with people again, and live out her exile in a decent city, with a modicum of dignity. Julia’s youngest son, Agrippa Postumus, was now fourteen: in another year he would don his toga virilis. It was no more than logical that after Lucius’ death many would view him, the youngest of the Caesar brothers, as the new prospective crown prince next to his older brother Gaius. Agrippa was



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the obvious choice—­not Tiberius. But all the signs pointed in a different direction. When Gaius and Lucius had reached the requisite age for donning the toga of manhood, Augustus had seen to it that he was consul in order to personally officiate over that important rite of passage. But in the year 3, when it was his youngest grandson’s turn, he did not seek reelection. Rumors quickly spread. Agrippa was an unruly child; he possessed not half the good qualities of his brothers. In any case, he was not considered a contender for the succession—­that much was clear. Augustus, it seemed, had been compelled by circumstance to take a small risk: the first he had taken since he began mapping out his succession politics. He would leave matters as they stood, letting everything depend upon Gaius. Better that, than to have to choose between two evils in naming a runner-­up: either Agrippa Postumus, who had never been worthy of the honor to begin with, or Tiberius, who had been a candidate, but had put himself so decidedly out of the running. Had the almost-­seventy-­year-­old Augustus known that he had ten healthy years ahead of him, his choices might have been different. But the emperor felt that his time was running out. If, from this point on, all had gone according to plan, he would quickly have secured a position for Gaius that was in all aspects equal to his own. Gaius would be made joint-­emperor, to make it impossible for the succession to misfire after Augustus’ death. It would soon become clear—­as it had so many times in Augustus’ life—­that all would not go according to plan. But who could ever have predicted the unlikely events of the year 3?

34 This spectacle of the Roman army arrayed on one side, the Parthian on the other, while these two eminent leaders not only of the empires they represented but also of mankind thus met in conference—­t ruly a notable and a memorable sight—­it was my fortunate lot to see early in my career as a soldier, when I held the rank of tribune.7

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Velleius Paterculus was one of those who had accompanied Gaius on his travels through the east—­t he travels that had been abruptly cut short in the year 3 by Lucius’ death. It was Velleius’ habit to write down the company’s experiences. They were lively eyewitness accounts, which years later would be published as part of a hefty volume on the history of Rome from her founding to the author’s own time. After the confrontation with the Parthians, Velleius recounted, the company had traveled farther north, to Armenia, where the safety of the eastern provinces demanded a pro-­Roman king to be set upon the throne. Addon, the leader of the pro-­Parthian faction, had refused—­despite earlier deals made with the Parthian king—­to acknowledge defeat. Gaius, accordingly, had laid siege to Artagira, the region’s capital. The siege was unanticipated and poorly prepared. Addon, seemingly in good faith, proposed a cease-­fi re and negotiations; Gaius accepted the invitation. It was a trap: the young prince and his men found themselves suddenly under attack. Gaius’ bodyguards got him to safety as quickly as possible but were unable to prevent him being hit by the enemy barrage. Once back in camp the wound proved to be serious. While a messenger hastened to Rome with the bad tidings, Gaius’ condition continued to deteriorate. Before long rumors were flying about among the soldiers. Besides being gravely wounded, the princeps iuventutis was said to be mentally “not all there.” The gossip was fed by a startling decision the young leader now made: to step back from public life. He claimed to want to relinquish all his powers and here, in the far east of the Empire, retreat into anonymity. As Velleius commented, Gaius had allowed himself to be unduly influenced by “the companionship of persons who encouraged his defects by flattery.”8 It was late autumn of the year 3 when the boat carrying the messenger from the east docked in the harbor of the Tiber. With lightning speed the news reached Augustus’



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house on the Palatine, and not long afterwards the rest of Rome. Not only was he seriously injured, but Rome’s golden boy, the unquestioned emperor-­elect, had also lost all will to salvage his position. Augustus was no doubt appalled, but got hold of himself and did what was needed: he immediately sent a messenger back to the east. Gaius must on no account be allowed to become a second Tiberius. He must come back to Rome, whatever the cost, before he made any irrevocable decisions about voluntary retirement. Was it the contents of Augustus’ letter that finally convinced Gaius? Or was it, rather, a deeply rooted sense of obligation towards this man who had showered him with affection all his life? Either way, Gaius decided to board the ship, and set course for Rome. The traveling party had reached the coastal province of Lycia when Gaius died of his wounds, almost six months after being hit by an enemy spear. It was February 21 of the year 4, the year in which Augustus—­if the gods were so merciful—­would celebrate his sixty-­seventh birthday. Less than a year and a half after the death of Lucius, Gaius, too, was no more. Rome was empty-­handed.

35 All of Rome had mourned when Lucius died. After Gaius’ death, silence reigned throughout the Empire. In many Roman cities public life was brought to a standstill for the duration of the period of mourning, as it was in the capital. What now? Who could follow in the footsteps of the promising, amiable Gaius? These were the questions Augustus needed to answer. Reluctantly he once more took up his task, the cross he seemed fated to bear until the end of his days: the weaving of a new dynastic web; the finding of new candidates for the succession. Despite the family’s heavy losses over the years, there was still male progeny left in Livia’s and Antonia’s households. Augustus’ ideal plan of succession had always been one that

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favored the Julian bloodline—­or in any case, one in which it took precedence over the Claudian line, which was Livia’s line. That was still his preference—­if it were possible. Antonia’s children were the grandchildren not only of Livia but also of Augustus’ sister, Octavia, and were therefore sure contenders. But Claudius, with his handicaps, his weak constitution, and his stuttering, was far from suitable. Even his own mother had once let a remark slip to the effect that her youngest son was an unfinished product of nature: a freak. Augustus’ own attitude towards the physically weak and socially awkward teenager tended more towards the protective than the scornful, but neither he nor anyone else seriously considered the boy a candidate for emperor. Claudius’ older brother, Germanicus, on the other hand, was virtuous, strong, and handsome—­far more like their father, Drusus, than Claudius was. And Germanicus was going on twenty, and therefore almost of a suitable age. In terms of character and dependability he left Julia’s insolent youngest son, Agrippa, who, as the emperor’s only surviving grandson, had the stronger claim in terms of direct bloodline, behind him in the dust. Drusus, Germanicus’ contemporary and Tiberius’ only son, was wholly ignored. For the time being Augustus made no choice between Germanicus and Agrippa: he saw to it that both young men were pushed forward. But common sense forced him to admit that the two were not quite old enough to succeed him directly as emperor. Once again a link would be needed to safeguard the transferal of power to the chosen one of the next generation. All his life Augustus had acted in the service of Rome; now he demonstrated once more that the interests of State took precedence over everything else. He set aside his personal resentment and chose the path of safety. Tiberius, still Rome’s most experienced and capable general, found his power and mandates restored to him. On June 26, four months after the death of Gaius, the forty-­five-­year-­old Tiberius was officially adopted by



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Augustus. The condition that was stipulated—­a nd which Tiberius satisfied in advance—­was that he adopt Germanicus and give him preference in his will to his own son, Drusus. Augustus, just to be on the safe side, also adopted sixteen-­year-­old Agrippa. The message was clear. Tiberius was a link, a necessary evil, to be employed if necessary in bridging the gap between the present and the future generations of Rome’s rulers. But he was on no account to get any ideas into his head.

36 It had been barely two years since a silent and shamefaced Tiberius had set foot back in Rome after his years-­long absence, his prospects wrecked and his political role, to all appearances, permanently played out. Now Augustus—­however reluctantly his measures had been taken—­had redealt the deck solidly in Tiberius’ favor. The position of the emperor’s stepson was stronger than it had ever been. The twists of fate had been so strikingly favorable to Tiberius’ interests as to give rise to all manner of conspiracy theories. Many of these centered around Livia, who had always kept herself in the background, and who was later suspected of having disposed of first Lucius and then Gaius in order to pave her son’s way to the throne. And the temptation to give a sinister interpretation to the freakish course of history is understandable, especially in light of the criminal intrigues schemed up by the females of the courts of the later emperors. The rumors were juicy, but ultimately far-­fetched. The lengthy ten-­year term of the tribunicia potestas conferred upon Tiberius sent an unmistakable signal: the emperor wanted matters settled, once and for all. He also awarded his stepson command of the legions in Germania, effective immediately, thereby making Tiberius’ role distinctly different—­significantly larger—­t han that of Agrippa, the other young relative he had adopted.

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In so doing the emperor had entered upon a plan of action that only a few years before would have seemed wildly improbable, if not impossible—­a plan forced upon him by that freakish course of history. The transfer of imperial power, Augustus’ legacy and beloved life’s work, would go through a Claudian after all. In choosing this path the emperor, consciously or unconsciously, had conferred the ultimate honor upon one of his few surviving loved ones, the woman who had stood by his side for almost a lifetime, loving and loyal: his wife, Livia.

37 Tiberius, preparing for a massive campaign against Maroboduus, leader of the dauntless Marcomanni, had amassed his legions on the border with Germania. He set up his winter camp on the banks of the Danube and was readying the troops for a few days’ march towards the enemy, when he was forced to abruptly cancel his plans. Shortly after his adoption in the year 4, Tiberius had traveled to the northern borders of the Empire with his nephew and newly adopted son, Germanicus, to join the troops over which he had resumed command. The region was still a wilderness of unpredictability and a constant worry to Augustus. It remained necessary, in order to maintain the psychological advantage and crush any budding thoughts of rebellion among the Germanic tribes, for the legions to parade along the Rhine with a significant show of strength. Complete subjugation of the conquered area, including the founding of colonies and the collecting of taxes, had proven far more troublesome in Germania than in Gaul. Rebels presented a constant danger. Establishing order and scaring off insurgents: these were the primary goals of the campaign Tiberius had undertaken with Germanicus, and which occupied them for two years. Maroboduus was their chief worry. There, on the other side of the border, his kingdom had grown and flourished.



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Maroboduus was strong and fearless, a local noble, the type of barbarian even the Romans found themselves forced to respect. He had kept his tribe, the Marcomanni, out of the clutch of the advancing Romans by leading them to a new area, farther from the border, in approximately present-­day Czech Republic. Here he founded a new kingdom by subjugating the neighboring tribes; he then raised an army which he trained and organized in Roman fashion. Even Augustus had become alarmed. This was the sort of reasonably stable, long-­term authority that the emperor saw as a direct threat. While Tiberius had been settling smaller matters up and down Germania, he had all the while been making preparations for a confrontation with Maroboduus.

38 Maroboduus was not the only one giving Augustus headaches. There was another potential threat, issuing from much closer to home: his own family. During Tiberius’ absence Agrippa had finally been given his toga of manhood—­t wo years later than usual and not, as had been the case with his two late brothers, from Augustus’ own hand. The reasons for the delay quickly became apparent. Agrippa had no sooner reached legal adulthood than he started causing problems. Augustus had adopted him: now he wanted to claim his rightful role on the political stage. Why should he not be given the same far-­reaching powers as his adoptive brother, Tiberius? While Tiberius was in his army tent in the turbulent borderlands, discussing tactics for the attack on Maroboduus’ kingdom, Agrippa, back in Rome, was rapidly developing into a second enemy of the State—­or in any case of that State’s future as it was perceived by Augustus. In his own eyes, Agrippa was Tiberius’ more-­t han-­equal in power and rank. He was the emperor’s biological grandson, and in the opinion of his supporters (a group shrunken in size but ever fierce in sentiment) the only true and rightful heir to the throne. His descent from Julia and Scribonia afforded him

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prestige among a vestige of the populace, as well as with a number of loyal supporters in high places. The physical distance from Julia and her mother, Scribonia, had changed nothing for their followers. If anything, the exile had inflamed their passions even further. And Julia the Younger, Julia’s daughter, and her husband, Paullus, had done their best to keep that spirit of rebellion alive in Rome. Gaius and Lucius had been too loyal to their grandfather to make use of these sentiments, but not Agrippa. He had little love for a grandparent who had treated him all his life as a second-­class grandson. It was winter of the year 6 when the crisis in the capital came to a head. High taxes and the rising price of grain had led to unrest in the streets. To make matters worse there had been several fires, and the Tiber had overflowed its banks again. Bad news from the front made the chaos complete. Although it was never proven, it was believed to be Agrippa, Julia the Younger, and Paullus who had capitalized on the havoc by inciting their followers to a midnight posting of billboards and spreading of incendiary pamphlets. The spirit of revolution was in the air. All it needed was a spark to set it alight.

39 The bad news came from Pannonia and had reached Tiberius first, causing him to abort his plan to attack Maroboduus. En masse and without warning, the subjugated Pannonians had risen up against their Roman oppressors. The rebellion had the support of the Dalmatians and gave every indication of quickly becoming unmanageable. Like Maroboduus, the Pannonians had studied the Romans well and had mastered their military discipline and arts of warfare. Then, in a swift, concerted move, they had taken to arms, slaughtering local veterans and Roman families. Rome shook with fear that—­if something did not happen, and fast—­t he Pannonians would be at the city gates within a few days’ time.



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Tiberius and Germanicus did what they could but were in desperate need of reinforcements, prompting an urgent appeal to Rome for relief forces. The call was answered with a mixture of improvisation and press-­gang tactics. Velleius Paterculus, in Rome to begin his term as quaestor, was given the job of assembling an auxiliary force in record time. He succeeded, rounding up conscripts from the most unlikely corners, whereupon he was promptly relieved of his political duties in Rome and sent to Pannonia at the head of his ragtag army. Meanwhile, emphatic measures had been taken in the matter of Agrippa. The young man was forced by senatorial decree to officially renounce both his family and Augustus’ paternal authority. In a lawful, but uncommon course of events, the newly formalized adoption was reversed. The aim and ultimate effect of the maneuver was of course a forced abdication of the throne, or rather of any pretensions to it. Agrippa’s possessions and his right to any inheritance were stripped from him, as was his name. From one day to the next he was no longer Julius Caesar, but plain Vipsanius Agrippa. And even that was not enough for Augustus. What followed amounted to a phased but permanent banishment. Agrippa would suffer the same fate as his mother, although he was by no means allowed to join her. For the time being he was sent to Sorrento, just south of Naples, where he was rumored to kill time fishing while waiting for judgment to be passed on his permanent place of exile. The official explanation for the rigorous steps Augustus had taken against his only surviving grandson was that the young man had been unruly and unmanageable. Of course Julia the Younger and her husband, Paullus, did not escape punishment either. Whether Paullus was forced to commit suicide or was executed is uncertain. The newly widowed Julia the Younger was allowed to live, but all her ties to current or future power were severed as completely as possible, including a last-minute cancellation

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of the marriage between Claudius and her daughter, Aemilia Lepida. Being a woman, Julia the Younger was not expected to present an actual political threat, but she was well watched. Any man daring to ally himself with her in any way would be by definition suspect. In the spring of 7 Tiberius and Germanicus, despite the still-­problematic situation in Pannonia, were briefly recalled to Rome. It was an indication of how desperate Augustus was to restore peace in the capital. The seas were better navigable in this season and the distribution of grain had gradually been reestablished, but bread alone was not enough. Games were needed to calm the restless populace. The Games were the reason Tiberius and Germanicus had returned to Rome. The name of Drusus, Tiberius’ late brother, had always symbolized harmony, and harmony was what Rome stood so badly in need of. And so that name was invoked when Tiberius inaugurated Games on his brother’s birthday—­Games that, Augustus fervently hoped, would imbue the masses with a spirit of unity and well-­being. The name was invoked again when the newly renovated temple of Castor and Pollux on the Forum Romanum was rededicated with all solemn pomp and ceremony—­in the names of both Tiberius and his brother.

40 Later that year, final judgment was passed on Agrippa. He was to spend the rest of his life on Planasia, a small island off Corsica. A year later, Julia the Younger was sentenced to share her mother and brother’s fate, although exactly how, or even if, she had merited such punishment remains unclear. But it was a third sentence of banishment—­t hat of the frivolous, wildly popular poet Ovid—­t hat really started the commotion in Rome. The allegations against the poet were vague. He had seen something he should not have seen—­or, at least, something he should have reported to the emperor. What exactly



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the “mistake” was that earned Ovid his sad fate has never been determined, but suspicions were soon swirling as to his having been eyewitness to a secret marriage, either proposed or actually performed, between Julia the Younger and a certain Silanus, a new potential threat to the political establishment. The official charge against the poet was that his love poem Ars Amatoria had caused moral decline in the city; but the work had been published almost ten years earlier, and no one doubted for a moment that there was more behind his exile than that. Perhaps he did know of an intended marriage between Julia the Younger and Silanus—­and perhaps that marriage was a vehicle for Julia the Younger’s political plans, for which she had found a willing male pawn in Silanus. Either way it brought her nothing but misery. She ended up in Apulia, in the southernmost tip of Italy, while Ovid was sent to Tomis, in present-­day Romania, on the Black Sea. Silanus, too, was banished from Rome. All potential enemies of the State had now been removed and were sitting out their exiles at safe distances from one another. Agrippa even had round-­t he-­clock guards, due to the all-too-real flight risk he apparently still represented. A sad and strange fate had willed that Augustus’ offspring, the last of the children in whose veins his own blood flowed, had turned out to be the worst traitors to him. He had once revered the notion of a direct bloodline; now he found that reverence melting like snow under a hot spring sun. Sensible, dependable adoption, which could secure a family’s continuation and that of its corresponding political legacy—­this had gone from second choice to best alternative. And so it would remain throughout Rome’s further history. It took a certain hardness to banish one’s own children and grandchildren, but at the same time the measures Augustus put in place against Julia, Agrippa, and Julia the Younger represented the last drop of charity he was able to muster. They had all misbehaved, turned against him, or even taken

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part in conspiracies, yet Augustus had forced none of them to remove themselves permanently from this world. Permanently out of the emperor’s sight was enough. For now.

41 Good news had arrived from Pannonia a few days before, and the Senate was still squabbling over how best to celebrate the triumph, when an unlooked-­for messenger stood at the gates of Rome. His message, once unrolled and read aloud, sent a wave of sickening dismay through the Senate. There would be no further need for a committee to organize a triumph. It was the year 9, and the assembly, including Augustus and Tiberius, listened with heaving stomachs and crawling flesh to the report of what had befallen Governor Varus in Germania. Aided by reinforcements from Rome, Tiberius had managed over the summer campaigns of 7 and 8 to deal out more and more setbacks to the Pannonian rebels and finally, in a few strategic moves, to beat down the uprising. Whatever was going on in Rome, he had always known how to remain cool in battle. Complete surrender might take awhile yet, but a Roman victory was taking shape and was already being drunk to when Tiberius led his armies back to their cold-­weather encampment in the winter of 8. Despite the work still to be done—­t he Dalmatians, in the south of Pannonia, had yet to admit defeat—­Tiberius had returned to Rome. He could leave the rest of the job to the legions, under the capable leadership of Germanicus, with a clear conscience. Tiberius’ reception in Rome had been princely. Senators had gone out of their way to show him respect, and Augustus had kept him right by his side throughout the many public appearances. Finally, after a lifetime of military successes, Tiberius was being lavished with the honor he deserved—­by the Senate and the people, but also, significantly, by the emperor. In the meantime the snows had melted and Germanicus had resumed the campaign against



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the Dalmatians. A tense Tiberius followed his adopted son’s progress as closely as he could. The summer of 9 brought the good news he was so anxiously awaiting: the stubborn Dalmatians had surrendered. The victory was complete; the triumph could be celebrated. Past experience had shown that deserving a triumphal procession did not necessarily equal being awarded one, but matters were different now. Augustus was old and ready to pass on the torch. He had nothing more to lose. Granting Tiberius the highest possible honor now amounted to acting in Augustus’ own best interests. Tiberius was the successor; the continuation of imperial rule would depend in great measure on his popularity with the populace and the Senate. That popularity must therefore be promoted. The triumph was granted. Augustus only vetoed the Senate’s proposal of the honorary titles “Pannonicus” and “Invictus” because, he said, he did not consider them good enough for his adopted son and successor. He had an even higher honor in mind, the very highest possible, in fact. Tiberius would be given the emperor’s own honorary title: Augustus. The exalted one. The triumph never came. The news brought by Varus’ messenger changed the course of Rome.

42 Quinctilius Varus was an aristocrat who had served as consul together with Tiberius in 13 BCE. Several years later he had maneuvered himself even closer to the imperial family by marrying the daughter of Augustus’ niece. At approximately the same time he was offered a prestigious foreign post: the governorship of Germania. The function had only been in existence for a decade and had been necessitated by the establishment of a permanent military presence along the Rhine and Danube rivers. But Germania had yet to become a province like all the others—­a province that could be administered and financially exploited according to the accepted guidelines. Among its

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many other tasks, a governorship here would always include the continual assessment and containment of risks. The ultimate dream—­t he total subjugation of the area and the permanent relocation of the Empire’s border to the banks of the Elbe River—­was not yet a reality but seemed tantalizingly within reach. Tiberius had been on a path to stamping out the last of the German revolts several years ago—­until the unexpected uprising in Pannonia had intervened, preventing him from seeing the war against Maroboduus to its finish. But Tiberius’ campaign had been successful enough, and the main tasks awaiting Varus seemed to be that of enforcing Roman domination and setting up an efficient administrative apparatus to govern the territories. As far as Augustus was concerned, the matter of Germania had devolved into a simple question of organizing the region as the newest among the many Roman provinces. Varus was given the job, and as new governor had set about energetically founding new settlements and introducing tax laws. Conflicts, such as the still-­pending matter of Maroboduus, would have to wait until Tiberius could be sent back to Germania. If there was any last bit of resistance and defiance left in the Germans, this was the time to show it. It was possibly the last opportunity rebel leaders would have to profit from the ever-­present anti-­Roman sentiments—­sentiments that with the advent of Varus, with his rules and his taxation, had gradually begun to snowball. This was their final chance to take a stand against Roman tyranny, before Germania went the way of every other land that had been conquered by the Romans. Many Germans had seen with their own eyes what complete domination meant, for they had served in great numbers in the auxiliary forces of the Roman army. Arminius was one of these. The young, intrepid, and charismatic chieftain of the Cherusci, he had not only served



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in the Roman army but had even acquired Roman citizenship. He surreptitiously appointed himself as a regional leader, persuading several tribes, including the Bructeri and the Chatti, to join him. Then Arminius cleverly channeled local dissatisfaction with the new taxes, system of justice, and other regulations introduced by Varus—­a ll the while serving on the governor’s military staff. The unsuspecting Varus was completely unaware of his young subordinate’s impending betrayal, and even after having been warned by a member of Arminius’ own family, he reportedly did not take the threat seriously. But Varus was not the only one. Far away from the borderlands, in safe, secure Rome, everyone, it seemed, had managed to completely underestimate the Germanic tribes’ pride and their craving for freedom. The painful truth was not brought home to them until the fateful day the message from Varus’ province was read aloud in the Senate.

43 Varus, the messenger began, was returning to the Rhine at the head of three legions when a message was brought to him regarding revolts in the west. Just to be on the safe side, the governor had decided to take a detour through the rebellious territory before heading to the legions’ winter encampment. The detour took the group through a narrow strip of land closed in by the dark Teutoburg Forest on the one hand, and long stretches of impassable swampland on the other. The vast cavalcade trooped unsuspectingly on, but its members began to feel increasingly uneasy, hemmed in as they were between deep forest and swamps, and with their feet and their horses’ hooves deeply mired in mud. The legions were not battle ready and there was no capable, experienced general to lead them if a battle were to break out. The procession was, at that point, no more than a mass of soldiers, officers, and ordinary citizens led by an indecisive governor. More and more they were confronted with their

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own vulnerability. It was the perfect place for an ambush—­if any of them had looked around them, and up at the hills encircling them, it is exactly what they would have thought. Suddenly, the report continued, all hell broke loose. The attack began with a volley of arrows, raining down from above the dense tangle of trees and felling countless Romans at one go. The legions were taken so unawares as to be unable to form battle ranks. Like a herd of trapped cattle, the Romans were slaughtered. The rain of arrows was followed by a charge. Eyes were put out and limbs hacked off. Many fled in panic into the unknown woods, with these ghastly scenes etched in their minds; almost all were met by more bloodthirsty Germans. For Varus all hope had fled when he was first hit by a spear. He drew his sword and took his own life, possibly as much out of shame as in an attempt to escape the frightful tortures he saw around him. The commander departed the scene of battle displaying “more courage to die than to fight,” was Velleius Paterculus’ painfully apt comment.9 By now there was no question of any organized defense: it was every man for himself. Night fell, and the shrill, exultant cries of the celebrating tribesmen harrowed the very souls of the remaining Romans. It was several days before the slaughter came to an end. A small group of Romans had managed to elude the spears and axes and had retreated, ashen-­faced and quaking with terror, to the banks of the Rhine, where Varus had posted a small Roman troop. They left a sea of blood and hacked-­ off limbs behind them. The remains of some twenty thousand Romans lay strewn about the battlefield, unburied and without honor, as food for the vultures and trophies for the jubilant Germans. The enemies had reportedly combed through the gory shambles until they found the body of the hated Varus, only to hack it in pieces and send the head to Maroboduus as a token of the rebels’ victory and their hopes that he would join their cause.



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Three complete legions had been wiped from the face of the earth. The year in which Tiberius was supposed to parade through the streets of Rome, to the greater honor and glory of the emperor he was soon to succeed, was instead the year of one of the greatest and most humiliating defeats in Roman history. The old man that was all that was left of the mighty Augustus never had another sound night’s sleep again after hearing the report. He paced restlessly to and fro in his house, crying out over and over: “Quinctilius Varus, give me back my legions!” too distraught to care or even notice who heard him. The legions did not come back. The remnants that had stayed behind at the Rhine, commanded by Varus’ nephew, Lucius Nonius Asprenas, had reacted swiftly and adequately to the news of the disaster, with Asprenas sending his troops northwards to prevent any further barbarian invasions. Winter arrived, and Arminius took advantage of the lull in fighting to regroup and forge an official Germanic alliance. In Rome, preparations were being made to send Tiberius personally to the disaster area. Punitive expeditions would follow; wounds would be bandaged and revenge would be swift, but nothing could change the consequences of the defeat at the Teutoburg Forest. These were painful and permanent. The Roman dream of an empire stretching all the way to the Elbe was abandoned forever.

44 “When I wrote this I was in my seventy-­sixth year.”10 Augustus had sensed, perhaps even had known, that his death was finally near. In May of the year 14 he executed his long and colorful will, an action both consequential and deceptively simple. He had been meticulously compiling the document for years; the first words had been penned three decades ago. Still, the signing of it must have presented a solemn and even difficult moment. Surely the thought occurred to him, in the silence within, that this was the end: that no new merits

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or accomplishments would ever be added. Perhaps, reading over the long list, he thought it all just as well. In effect, death had been hounding Augustus all his life. The state of his health had more than once been so precarious that those around him had said their goodbyes, and the will he signed on May 13 was full of references to the many perilous moments when, “by land and sea, civil and foreign, across the whole world,”11 he had stared death in the face. Although by 14 there was almost no one left to criticize or cast doubts upon his sole rulership of Rome, it had been only three decades since Augustus had fought to save the Republic in a decisive naval battle he referred to in his will as “the war in which I conquered at Actium.”12 He had succeeded brilliantly in his quest, and yet that victory had signaled the decline of the Republic. All his life thereafter, the real power had remained in his own hands. He could have met death in Actium, although the command during the naval battle had been left in the hands of his dear friend, Agrippa. He could also have met it during one of his many campaigns to quell a rebellion or secure the Empire’s borders, by a blow from an enemy axe or the thrust of an enemy spear. And then there had been the dangers close to home in Rome, possibly the most dangerous place in the world, certainly in her early days. The capital was a place where cunning senators conspired in secret to violently stifle any young generals’ ambitions that in their eyes had outgrown healthy Roman forms. The image of his stepfather, Julius Caesar, in a pool of blood on the Senate floor, riddled with knife wounds and surrounded by traitors, was burned into the collective memory of Augustus and his whole generation. And yet that murder had been Augustus’ beginning. He had been out of Rome when Caesar’s will was made public, which had given him a moment’s breathing space to think things over. All through his teens he had considered himself destined for the solitary, retiring life of a scholar or a writer.



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The role he ended up in, the one entrusted to him by Julius Caesar, would turn out to suit him far better. The public testament Augustus had just signed was far from comprehensive. Peace and prosperity were given pride of place on the list of deeds and accomplishments, while defeats and dark days were suppressed. The catastrophe that Varus—­under Augustus’ supreme command—­had allowed to occur five years earlier at the Teutoburg Forest, and its resulting humiliation for Rome at the hands of the Germanic tribes, unparalleled in Roman history, was not even mentioned. Of course swift measures had been taken. Tiberius had traveled to the Rhine to deal out punishment to the culprits, an undertaking that would cost him all of two battle seasons. But the disgrace, which for Augustus had always been deeply personal, was still tangible. Teutoburg Forest remained an open wound. No wonder he had chosen to leave this jet-­black page in Rome’s history out of his public testament. Signing the will was the final step: the last in the series of detailed measures Augustus had taken over the preceding years to steer his rapidly approaching succession in the right direction. On October 23 of the year 12, the postponed Pannonian triumphal pageant was held—­a n honor of which Tiberius had been unable to avail himself until he had restored relative peace in Germania, and for Augustus an opportunity to parade his stepson through the streets of Rome as emperor-­to-­be. Shortly afterwards, Augustus removed all remaining official limitations on his successor’s imperium, making Tiberius his equal in power and de facto co-­emperor. The two young men—­Germanicus, Tiberius’ adopted son; and Drusus Caesar, as his biological son was now called—­were pushed forward as well. Their careers gained momentum and they were awarded special privileges in the Senate. At the young age of twenty-­six Germanicus found himself a proud consul of Rome. Drusus, too, would be given

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that honor—­after Germanicus, but still, legally speaking, at far too young an age. All papers had now been put in order for the succession. As far as Augustus was concerned, death could come for him.

45 Augustus was spared the fate that befell his adopted father, Julius Caesar—­t hat of a sudden, violent death. This enabled him to arrange his death as he had his life: by carefully managing each aspect down to the smallest details. Early in his career he had caused comprehensive instructions regarding his estate and funeral to be set down. His public will, intended for all Romans in all corners of the Empire, he ordered to be chiseled word for word onto two bronze pillars. The pillars were to be placed on either side of the entrance to the mausoleum he had built for himself, and into which he had already committed so many beloved members of his family. Copies of the text were to be made and posted throughout the entire Roman Empire. When the documents—­t he will and all the instructions—­had been completed, signed, and sealed, Augustus consigned them to the most vigilant guardians in Rome: the Vestal Virgins on the Forum Romanum. There they would remain until the melancholy day that Augustus breathed his last breath. During the last spring of his life, Augustus made a singular decision. Despite all the far-­reaching measures taken to deal with it, there was a matter that apparently still preyed on his mind. He had not seen his rebellious grandson, Agrippa, since he banished him. Despite the round-­t he-­clock guards, Augustus’ mind was not at rest. Determined to leave not the smallest loose end, the seventy-­six-­year-­old emperor, taking but a small company with him, boarded a ship and gave orders to set sail for Planasia. Besides himself and a few confidants the ship carried a sealed document: a decree



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that must only be opened and carried out when the news of Augustus’ death was made public. It was an emotional reunion. Whatever the true reason was for Augustus’ visit, this was without doubt a goodbye: the last meeting between a man at the end of his life and his only surviving grandson. But after almost eighty years of political ambitions, of victories and defeats and above all of strength of purpose, Augustus, at this critical last minute, would still put Rome’s interests above his personal feelings. No amendments were made to his will after the visit to Planasia. Agrippa was not included after all. The will had been sealed in the early spring of 14, and the seal would remain unbroken until the day of the emperor’s death. The mysterious sealed document he had taken along with him to Planasia remained in the safekeeping of Agrippa’s guard. The time had come for Tiberius to step forward: to renounce his own retiring nature, to put aside any last vestiges of reticence. For over forty years the Roman people had enjoyed the advantages of the peace of Augustus: a peace that had remained relatively stable primarily because of Tiberius, and without him would never have existed. Those same people were about to lose their loving father. Augustus had become an icon in his own time and the task of following in his footsteps must have seemed as intimidating as it was honorable. But despite it all Tiberius, perhaps for the first time in his life, was ready.

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II THE SUCCESSION He died in the same room as his father Octavius, in the consulship of two Sextuses, Pompeius and Appuleius, on the fourteenth day before the Kalends of September at the ninth hour, just thirty-­five days before his seventy-­sixth birthday. —­Suetonius1 Of the misgivings of mankind at this time, the trepidation of the senate, the confusion of the people, the fears of the city, of the narrow margin between safety and ruin on which we then found ourselves, I have no time to tell. —­Velleius Paterculus2

1 NOLA, AUGUST 19, 14 After the signing of his will and the excursion to Planasia, Augustus accepted an invitation to travel south, to the Bay of Naples. “That Bay of Luxury,” as Cicero once described it, seemed worlds away from busy, dirty Rome.3 Its attraction for the Romans—­for this Roman in particular, now entering the last days of his eventful life—­was immense. The sea shimmered there in a thousand tints of blue and green; the coast was ruggedly beautiful, and in the summer the vegetation burst forth into rainbow-­hued flowers and luscious fruits, from tangy bright yellow lemons to velvety dark purple figs. Those Romans who could afford to built 95

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spacious vacation homes for themselves in the area: it was relatively close to Rome and the clean air and dazzling surroundings formed a welcome contrast to the capital. No one was aware then of the seismological dangers lurking in the volcanic area surrounding Mount Vesuvius. Whenever their schedules allowed, the Roman elite escaped from Rome to the Bay of Naples to catch their breaths and relax. Augustus loved the area and owned numerous villas there. Near Nola, in the northern foothills of Vesuvius, was a country house that had been in his family for generations. For Augustus the house was pervaded with memories: memories of childhood, and also of his biological father, Gaius Octavius, who had taken his last breath in that villa. The ambitious paterfamilias of the immensely rich, but undistinguished Octavian family from the small provincial town of Velitrae had been en route back to Rome from Brindisi after completing his term as governor of Macedonia when he contracted an unknown illness. He never made it farther than Nola. There had been one more goal, one higher rung on the ladder for the former governor to climb: the post of consul, the highest position, politically and socially, the Roman world had to offer him. That ambition was destined to remain unfulfilled. Gaius Octavius would never become consul. The bed in which Augustus’ father had died that unlucky year, at far too young an age—­he was in his mid-­forties and little Augustus was four—­still stood in the house in Nola. The son had more than made up for the father’s unfulfilled ambitions. He had not only become consul, but had also singlehandedly restored peace in Rome and throughout the Empire. The civil wars that divided Rome and caused her people to live in fear for almost a century had come to an end thanks to him. Along the way he had accumulated immense power and kept that power firmly in his own hands, ruling for more than forty years over the worldwide empire that Rome had become.



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2 Augustus’ life had already lasted almost twice as long as his father’s. His health was poor, and the sea voyage he undertook with Livia as his traveling companion had not improved it. Despite his dislike of night travel, they had departed from the harbor of Ostia in the cool dusk and headed south. Their first stop was the paradisiacal island of Capri, one of Augustus’ favorite places. Then they journeyed on to the mainland, going ashore at Naples, where they were joined by Tiberius. The future emperor was on his way to the Balkans and had taken the opportunity to travel part of the way in Augustus and Livia’s company. The imperial party continued its journey along the Via Appia to Beneventum, where Tiberius took his leave of his parents and headed east. At the beginning of the journey Augustus displayed only his good side, attending the numerous performances and reclining at the many banquets organized in honor of his coming. Until he could stand the pain no longer. The crippling stomach cramps and attacks of diarrhea, which he had been enduring in silence, had only gotten worse. The emperor had had good reason for bringing his personal physician along on this trip. Now, finally, his weakened frame compelled him to call a halt. Shortly after Tiberius had gone his own way, Augustus and Livia redirected their steps to the family villa in Nola. If at this point Augustus already knew, either by intuition or from something his doctor had told him, that his end was near, perhaps the imperial biographer Suetonius was right when he surmised that Augustus had wanted to complete the “comedy of life” with a theatrical last act, taking place in his own father’s deathbed.4 It was August and the heat must have been oppressive during those sun-­d renched days in Nola. Exactly three months earlier Augustus had signed his will and confided that impressive retelling of his reign’s many achievements, along with detailed instructions regarding his estate and his

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funeral, to the keeping of the Vestal Virgins in Rome. Nine months before that he had even assembled a special succession committee. When the end came, the emperor wanted to be able to depart in peace. Nothing was left to chance. What would all his accomplishments be worth—­his decades-­long rule, the peace he had brought about—­if they perished along with him? What if unrest, dissatisfaction, and civil wars were to return, like those that had plagued the world in which he grew up? What if some power-­hungry tyrant saw his chance and seized it, and another battle broke out, pitting Roman against Roman? What would all his hard-­fought accomplishments be worth then? Only one thing—­the peaceful transition of his position to his chosen successor—­could set the seal on Augustus’ life’s work. Knowing, as he did, that the process would enter its crucial phase only after his death, Augustus did his best to rule from beyond the grave. He could not be certain that his status and power would be enough on their own, without his physical presence to back them up, to guarantee the needed compliance to his wishes, and for that reason he had assembled a committee tailor-­made to remove any last doubts. Surely the names of the committee members, including Tiberius, Germanicus, and Drusus, commanded enough respect to ensure that nothing would stand in the way of the succession as planned. It promised to be a grand first in history, and a problem-­free one. By this time no one disputed, or even seemed to doubt, Tiberius’ right to succeed to the throne. He was as powerful as the emperor himself, and with the exception of that retreat to Rhodes years ago had always shown himself an upright politician and a competent military commander, one who had earned his stripes in the Empire’s turbulent borderlands. And he was the firstborn son of the Empress Livia and the adopted son of the emperor. That Tiberius had not been the



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first—­or even the second or third—­choice of either Augustus or the people no longer mattered. And yet neither history nor Tiberius himself would ever really forget that no less than four others, all public darlings, had had to disappear permanently from the scene before Augustus, out of sheer necessity, had seriously considered him as a candidate. Marcellus, Agrippa, Gaius, Lucius: one by one fate had snatched them from Augustus’ grasp. Despite the ambitions that were the driving force of his life, despite the success that had crowned so many of them, Augustus’ heart—­for he assuredly had one—­must at times in his long life have ached from the death of, or betrayal by, almost all those dear to him—­if not for the personal loss, then for the sake of the increasingly urgent matter of the succession. The founding of a dynasty that would perpetuate the family name of Julius Caesar had been one of the central objects of his life ever since his own adoption at nineteen. But as each of those to whom he had wanted to hand over his position had descended to the underworld, the pressure had mounted. Finding a successor had devolved from a great ideal to a necessary evil: a problem that must be solved. In the end Augustus, by acquiescing to her long-­held wish, had paid the ultimate honor to his faithful wife, Livia. Her eldest son, Tiberius, became his lawful successor. His grandson Agrippa was disowned and banished, and there were no other direct Julian descendants. Golden days were ahead for the Claudian side of the imperial family, which counted within its ranks enough male progeny to supply the throne with emperors for decades to come. And so the succession was settled and the succession committee given detailed instructions on what would be expected of them when the time came. The moment had arrived to take leave of the great and beloved Augustus. Whether or not the committee members were aware of the rather unusual adoption Augustus had included in his will is an open question. Just as he had been posthumously adopted

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by his great-­uncle Julius Caesar, now he, in his turn, posthumously adopted his faithful wife, Livia, as his daughter. His name, given to him by Caesar himself, would echo through the streets of Rome not only through Tiberius, but also through Livia. After her adoption she would go through life as Julia Augusta. It may have been a mere formality, but it was a crafty one. The adoption was Augustus’ way of ensuring that the surname Julius would continue to eclipse the distinguished Roman surname of Claudius.

3 When the news reached him of Augustus’ worsening health, Tiberius turned on his heel and headed back to Italy. The moment had finally come, and he, no doubt, was fully aware of it. In the centuries since his death various stories have arisen regarding Augustus’ final days. Tradition has named Livia as the one who handed her husband the fresh fig, picked from the shady fig tree that graced the inner courtyard of the villa, and carefully smeared with poison. The rumors accused her of deviously taking her husband’s life in order to make way for her son. But after a fifty-­odd-­year marriage characterized by virtue and loyalty it seems a bit far-­fetched that, of all the moments Livia could have chosen for such a crime, she chose the one in which her husband was already gasping out his last breath. A more apt image is that of a death from natural causes—­or, perhaps, that of an imperial couple determined to retain control until the very end. A self-­chosen death, one might call it, even though Augustus had already reached the end of his life and was liable to depart it at any moment. Livia picked the ripe figs from the tree in the courtyard, perhaps together with Augustus. One for him and one for her. Livia might have poisoned one of the two figs, with her husband’s knowledge but out of his sight. Then they ate



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the fruit in the full awareness that it was their last moment together. Augustus went to lie down in his father’s deathbed and waited. Soon afterwards, Livia was in mourning for the death of her husband. It was 6:00 p.m. on August 19 of the year 14. We will never know for sure if Tiberius arrived in Nola in time for one last talk with Augustus. But arrive he did at some point, and was finally able to begin immediate preparations for his new role as emperor of Rome. He was fifty-­five years old. It was now the end of August. The heat had become almost unbearable, so much so that measures had to be taken to preserve Augustus’ body long enough to get it back to Rome in a decent condition. Only by night would the procession travel over the Via Appia, and only from city to city. During the daytime the most prominent men of the provincial cities, who had taken it upon themselves to escort Augustus home with all due honor, would find a cool wayside basilica or temple as refuge from the heat. In a solemn, lugubrious procession in the dead of night, rattling over the cobblestones, with Tiberius bringing up the rear: thus the company made its way back to Rome, to Augustus’ final resting place along the banks of the Tiber. They followed in the footsteps of the messenger who had been sent racing ahead to Rome to inform the Senate and the people of the death of their beloved father. The will was retrieved from the care of the Vestal Virgins, and in due time, according to plan, the seal was broken on the document Augustus had left behind on that far-­off, lonely island of Planasia.

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III OUT OF THE SHADOWS Let them hate me, provided they respect my conduct.1 —­Tiberius

1 The cortège bearing Augustus’ body arrived in Rome on September 4, approximately two weeks after setting out from Nola. Tiberius had followed the honor guard on foot, but as the procession began to approach Rome he hurried on ahead in order to call a special Senate meeting for the day of the arrival. During this meeting the Vestal Virgins would carry Augustus’ will into the Senate with all due ceremony. The will would be opened, and the distribution of the princeps’ estate and the planning of his funeral would be gone over—­t he only two topics allowed for discussion at the gathering, according to detailed instructions contained in the will. Tiberius and Livia were named as heirs, but all talk on matters concerning the future of the State was put off for as long as the thick, black clouds of mourning hung over Rome. Augustus’ death signaled the beginning of a stellar bureaucratic career for one of the State’s most ambitious soldiers. Sejanus was in his mid-­thirties and the son of Strabo, an equestrian, or knight, who had served under Augustus as Praetorian Prefect—­one of the most powerful military positions open to 103

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a member of that class. The Praetorian Guard was a relatively new military unit and had been called into being by Augustus himself. It was an elite corps consisting of nine legions, three of which were stationed at Rome, just outside the city (it was still so that no soldier’s boot was allowed to tread the ground within the pomerium, the sacred city boundary). Technically speaking Rome had neither monarch nor dictator, but she did have an imperial bodyguard. A few months before his death, Augustus had given the soldiers of the Praetorian Guard a hefty raise in pay. He would not have said as much—­at least, not in so many words—­but now, with the transfer of power imminent, the imperial guard’s loyalty had become indispensable. And so, unintentionally, a military unit was born that had it within itself to become mightier than the emperor himself. It would be several decades before matters had come to such a pass that the throne of Rome was sold by the Praetorian Guard to the highest bidder, but the seeds had been sown. In autumn of 14 Tiberius promoted Sejanus to commander of the Praetorians. He was to fill the post in conjunction with his father, Strabo, at least initially. Father and son were not nobles by birth: they were provincial equites, or equestrians, members of the knightly class from the originally Etruscan city of Volsinii. A fortunate family connection had brought Strabo to the attention of Augustus and the imperial family: his mother, Terentia, was the sister-­in-­law of Macenas, a close friend of Augustus. Strabo had lost no time in putting his son forward, resulting in an invitation for Sejanus to accompany Gaius Caesar on his expedition to the east. Sejanus’ years of loyal support for Tiberius would now find their reward. The promotion to commander of the imperial guard was just the beginning. Sejanus was not the only one able to step out of the shadows now that Augustus was no more. The late emperor himself had pushed Livia to the forefront by posthumously adopting her. She would henceforth go through life as Julia



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Augusta and, as widow and lawful heir, keep the memory of her deceased husband, Augustus, fresh and green. The new name was redolent with honor: in life her husband had been considered exalted, and after his death a spot would open up for him among the heavenly gods themselves. But the adoption also had its practical side, making it legally possible for Livia to take possession of her inheritance, including the spacious house on the Palatine. Augustus had even included a wish that she be granted a lictor as attendant—­an extraordinary honor, and one that for centuries had only been awarded to male dignitaries or Vestal Virgins. A number of men, Tiberius prominent among them, found so conspicuous a privilege a bit excessive, but none could deny that Livia’s reputation was beyond reproach—­that she was, in fact, not only a role model for Roman women but also a singular figure in Rome’s history. Her conduct at the ceremonial cremation of her husband would show the world just how conscientious, pious, and exemplary she was: how worthy of the title “Augusta.” In the Senate’s opinion, no one could be more eminently suited to deliver Augustus’ eulogy than Tiberius. There on the Forum Romanum the fledgling emperor, with fitting restraint, delivered a long, laudatory discourse for his stepfather, just as he had once done as a little boy for his real father. A lifetime had passed since that day in his early youth. It had been written in the stars that within his lifetime, and from within his own family, a monarchy would emerge—­an empire the likes of which the world had never seen, and all under the direction of one man. His own political ideals and proud patrician descent notwithstanding, Tiberius was now that man. After the eulogies came the cremation, held a small distance away on the Campus Martius, to which Augustus’ body was borne on the shoulders of senators. It was reported that Julia Augusta, as she had called herself since the opening of the will, kept vigil for days by the smoldering

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embers—­right up until the moment the urn containing the remains of Augustus, Rome’s first emperor, was placed in the mausoleum. Meanwhile an unknown man, a former slave by the name of Clemens, had left Rome for the harbor of Ostia. His appearance was undistinguished, unlikely to attract attention, but his worry and haste were readily apparent. At the harbor Clemens found what he was looking for: a merchant with a cargo ship who was willing to give him passage to Planasia. He must have realized that the news of Augustus’ death would precede him there, but Clemens was nonetheless determined to somehow liberate his former master, Agrippa, from his enforced exile and bring him to the mutinying troops in Germania. Or, at any rate, to try. To make one final attempt in the cause of the descendants and supporters of Julia and Scribonia.

2 During the sea voyage Clemens tried to imagine how, exactly, he would free Agrippa and get him away from the island, back to the troops and his faithful supporters. But the centurion Augustus had left behind on Planasia had already gotten the news from Nola. As instructed, he broke the seal on the document entrusted to him and read his orders. Then he put down the document, walked up to Agrippa, and without hesitation drew his sword and slit his throat. It cost some effort: the youth who had approached him so unsuspectingly might have been unarmed, but he was still a strong young man of barely twenty-­six, and instinctively struggled against death. Reports told of how Julia, Agrippa’s mother, who was still sitting out her exile in the south of Italy, went on a hunger strike when she got the news of the death of her last surviving son, and not long afterwards followed him to the grave. The centurion on Planasia, meanwhile, had hurried to board the first ship he could find to the mainland. The



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ship carrying him on his urgent mission to Rome will have passed that of Clemens, on his desperate quest to Planasia, at some point; where and when is unknown, but the fact remains that when Clemens arrived on the island to save his former master, Julia’s last surviving male descendant and the last hope for starting a revolution, he was too late. While the centurion was entering Rome, where he hastened to present himself to Tiberius to announce, loudly enough to be heard by one and all, that he had discharged his orders and that Agrippa was dead, Clemens, bereft on Planasia, had a revelation. He traveled back to the mainland and retreated to the small town of Cosa, in Etruria, where he could make his preparations in anonymity. In Rome Tiberius denied to the bemused centurion’s face, and in the most emphatic of manners, that he had ever given orders for Agrippa’s execution. But appearances were against him. The new emperor’s reputation was already tainted: the murder of Agrippa would become known to the masses as the “first crime” of the Tiberian regime. The first of many, for countless more would follow. An attempt, only partially successful, was made to cover up Agrippa’s murder. The tenacity of his appeal to his supporters was proven a few months later when the news began to spread that Agrippa had been spotted in Cosa, in Etruria. Clemens had bided his time until his hair and beard were long enough and he could adapt his appearance sufficiently to impersonate Agrippa; then he had set off to the south, accumulating followers as he went. By the final stage of his planned route, from Ostia to Rome, the group had grown to such proportions as to send rumors of Agrippa’s miraculous return echoing far and wide, and cause unrest in more than one quarter. The people had heard stories about Agrippa’s death, but only a small handful had any certainty on the matter. Only Tiberius and a few confidants knew for sure that this so-­called Agrippa everyone was talking about must be an impostor. The new emperor sent a delegation of Praetorians

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to see to the distasteful business—­for to him, knowing what he did, it was nothing more—­a nd they had little trouble apprehending Clemens and bringing him to the Palatine. A short interrogation was sufficient to unmask the former slave’s identity; he was promptly executed. This matter, too, was kept within the palace walls. Clemens would turn out to be the least of Tiberius’ worries. Augustus had thought of everything and had put great care into the planning of the transfer of power, but his adopted son’s unpredictable behavior and difficult character had, to his everlasting annoyance, always lain beyond his power to influence. One last time, from beyond the grave, this proved to be the case. It was the one thing Augustus could not have predicted: that Tiberius might balk at accepting his nomination.

3 “Callipedes”—­that is what they were calling Tiberius in the hallways of the Senate, after the mythical Greek runner who tried and tried but never advanced a foot. A doubter, in other words, who lacked the nerve to make a decision. It was, to those stern Roman eyes, hardly an honorable way to behave. Soon after that initial Senate meeting during which Augustus’ will had been opened, a second was held. The funeral was over; the future must be discussed. The Senate, grown accustomed during Augustus’ long reign to bending itself to the will of the princeps, expectantly fixed its collective eyes upon Tiberius. The new emperor’s speech surprised them all: he declared his unwillingness to accept all the honors proposed for him. The senators could not simply hoist him onto Augustus’ pedestal and carry on calmly in the same old manner. Tiberius wanted to do things differently. The proud aristocrat in him wanted to seize this opportunity to set his stamp upon the government—­in particular to restore to the institution of the Senate some of its former prestige and power. But without disappearing from the scene himself.



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While his actions were interpreted, both popularly at the time and by later historians, as signs of hesitation and weakness, it is far more likely that Tiberius—­in his own inimitable, clumsy way—­was actually attempting to redefine the very nature of the principate, the leadership of Rome’s worldwide empire. He was searching for ways to remold this position he had been condemned to, and in which he felt supremely ill at ease, into something he could live with: something better in keeping with the patrician notions and ideals he was raised with. Being misunderstood was nothing new. That, he was quite prepared to put up with. Tiberius’ seeming uncertainty about accepting his new role was in reality an attempt to make known his wishes: namely that he preferred to return the practical implementation of a number of matters to the Senate. Yes, he would accept the principate, but only on the condition that the Senate be restored its dignity. Not a man on the Senate floor understood what he meant. Was he proposing to abandon Rome to her fate? Who would make the decisions now? Which duties would the emperor still fulfill, and which would he give away? How was this all supposed to work? Augustus had ascended to divine status, and Tiberius was divus filius—­the son of a god. Uncomfortable or not, reluctantly received or not, numerous powers had fallen irrevocably to his lot—­powers that he found impossible to reconcile with his background and his personal convictions. To the world he might be the new emperor of Rome, but in his heart he remained the proud Claudian who felt more at home in the senatorial republic than in the Empire. As if in a frantic attempt to jolt the Senate out of sleep, and convince them that he did, truly, wish nothing more than to at least share executive power with them, Tiberius made a radical proposal: to take voting rights away from the people and award them to the Senate. It was to be his first major policy enactment. The voting booths on the Campus

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Martius, to which Romans had flocked on election days since time immemorial, fell into disuse. That part of the city, in which the comitia centuriata, the voting assembly of the citizenry, had convened less and less frequently over the past decades anyway, had been thoroughly renovated by Marcus Agrippa, and the new marble square was gradually given over to other public business. Although the right to hold elections had become considerably more symbolic since Augustus took power—­the emperor’s word, after all, was law, and little went on without his approval—­it was nonetheless daring of Tiberius to simply decree that from now on the Senate alone would have the right to vote, and that those elections would take place within the seclusion of the curia. If the senators would not take it upon themselves willingly, Tiberius seemed to be saying, he would find a roundabout way to see that authority was restored to their house. Or perhaps his intentions were less radical. Perhaps with this new law Tiberius was simply following the precedent set by Augustus over the past few years, when the hearing of court cases had been removed from the public sphere and was relegated to the Senate. It had been one of the paradoxes of the early years of the Roman Empire, this gradual increase of executive powers to senators who had just become accustomed to kowtowing to the emperor. Whatever the case, Tiberius’ intentions were not so deeply felt as to make him willing to risk his reputation for their sake. The court cases arising from the executions of both Agrippa and Clemens were not brought before the Senate—­a telling omission—­but were hushed up. And it was not just the cover-­ups. Some of the court cases that came up shortly after Augustus’ death were mere shams—­as the family of the politician Libo could no doubt testify. Libo—­h is full name was Marcus Scribonius Libo Drusus—­was related to Scribonia and therefore persona non grata in a Rome ruled by Tiberius. Since Julia’s self-­chosen



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death by starvation no one had known for certain if Scribonia was still alive, and if so, where she was. But Tiberius was far from underestimating the potential danger residing in her name and her followers. An elaborate trap was staged for Scribonius Libo. First, one of Tiberius’ senators put him up to certain acts of eastern fortune-­telling, which were considered reprehensible in Rome. Once Libo had opened himself up to imputation, all Tiberius had to do was keep a close watch on him and see to it that his spies coaxed enough dubious statements from the man’s mouth to comprise an accusation of treason. Libo’s subsequent suicide did not stop the court case from coming up in the Senate, nor his possessions from being divided among the plaintiffs. A decree was passed declaring that no Scribonius might ever again bear the name Drusus. The tone was set in the Senate. Now that court cases were settled among themselves, behind the closed doors of the curia, the Senate had become a breeding ground for rivalries within its ranks. It was becoming increasingly unclear if the senator next to you could be trusted—­or if he could trust you.

4 Soon after Augustus’ death Tiberius found himself facing issues even more pressing than those already arising from his difficult relationship with the Senate and his awkward, bungling public appearances. The transfer of power had spawned unrest at the Empire’s borders, and that unrest had degenerated into mutiny among both the Germanic and the Pannonian legions. Yet Tiberius, now fifty-­six and still without question Rome’s most experienced military commander, did not go there himself. It might have been wise if he had, but at this point he saw no need to show his face and compel the rebellious troops to kneel before their new emperor. What he did do was follow the course of his adoptive father, Augustus, who had barely left Rome during his final

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years. Tiberius sent his son, Drusus, to the Danube and his adoptive son, Germanicus, to the Rhine. Whether he knew it or not at this point is unclear, but after Augustus’ death Tiberius would never again set foot beyond the Italian border. He had served in Augustus’ armies for thirty years: it was enough. To later historians this was fresh proof of the pathetic dithering that characterized Tiberius “Callipedes” in everything he did. But Tiberius, as he had in essence done all his life, shrugged off public opinion in order to concentrate on the issues that truly mattered. Fortunately, he had the members of the dynasty at his disposal. They stood a chance of succeeding to the throne themselves, and therefore could be put in command of armies without undue risk. Drusus, however, was relatively inexperienced. When the young man set off for Pannonia Tiberius found it necessary to send along two Praetorian cohorts led by the newly minted commander Sejanus: a man of whom the new emperor was extremely fond, and to whom he entrusted the safety of his only son with all confidence. Together they would end the mutiny and successfully conclude their mission, but there on those restive northeastern borders the seeds of a rivalry were sown between Drusus and Sejanus—­to whose boundless ambitions Tiberius would long remain blind—­t hat would prove fatal to both. The friction between the two would continue to intensify right under Tiberius’ nose, without him noticing. He was more concerned about another family member—­one who was rapidly shaping into a distinctly unstable factor and must be curbed. A woman, of all things. It was not Germanicus, heading up the Legions of the Rhine, who was making Tiberius’ blood boil: it was his wife, Agrippina.

5 “I want my sheep shorn, not shaven,” Tiberius once said to Aemilius Rectus, then Prefect of Egypt. The post of Praefectus Aegypti was—­a long with the equally influential post of



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Praetorian Prefect—­t he highest attainable military function and one which, due to the enormous power it entailed, was open only to equestrians, not the higher-­born patricians who might take it into their heads to stage a coup d’état. Egypt, as Rome’s vast granary, had always held a special status among the provinces. Control over Egypt meant control over Rome’s food supply, and therefore, ultimately, over the peace of mind of the populace. Excessive as it might have appeared to the uninitiated, there was very good reason why senators were prohibited by law from setting foot in the province of Egypt without express permission from the princeps. Tiberius viewed the various provinces that comprised the Empire as flocks of sheep in the service of Rome. The object was to exploit them as efficiently as possible, and to that end a judicious clipping was more effective than a shave so close it left the skin raw. It was not that the new princeps concerned himself with his image: if he cared little for his popularity in the capital, he was even less interested in what the provincials thought of him. But he did concern himself with the proper functioning of the administration of the Empire, and with the uninterrupted supply of bread to the stomachs of Rome. That the manner in which he set about achieving those ends gave rise to incessant complaints about the princeps’ arrogance—­complaints issuing from the mouths of those who profited most—­reflected one undeniable fact: that the canny knack for public relations that had served Augustus so well was completely lacking in his successor. Augustus was gone now, but after the year 14 Germanicus provided the same stark contrast. He and his wife, Agrippina, had always utilized their public appearances to radiate warmth and friendliness, and took visible pleasure in exploiting their resulting popularity. Tiberius had little liking for his daughter-­in-­law, but he trusted Germanicus implicitly—­in fact one of his first decisions as emperor had been to request the Senate to grant his adopted son the proconsular imperium. Germanicus departed

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for the Rhine and was, like his stepbrother, Drusus, soon successful in crushing the insurrections within the Roman legions. But before peace could truly be restored, there was an account that must be settled on the other side of the river. Germanicus was sent on a mission to avenge, once and for all, the stinging defeat Varus had suffered several years earlier. First prize was the head of the rebel leader, Arminius, who was still on the loose, defiant and undefeated. Punitive expeditions followed. On one such mission to the Bructeri, Germanicus and his troops retrieved the standard that the Nineteenth Legion under Varus’ command had lost in the battle. Killing and plundering, Germanicus progressed through the region on his quest to restore the honor of Rome and put the Germans firmly in their place. It was inevitable that at some point their trek would take them past the scene of the disaster: the battlefield at the Teutoburg Forest. Every Roman soldier had heard the lurid stories, but what they found exceeded even the grisliest imagination. Those few who had been eyewitnesses to the slaughter and could still, when they closed their eyes, see the carnage and hear the screams in the night, felt cold shivers run down their spines. First they came to the Roman army encampment, or what was left of it after all that time. It had become a desolate and eerie place, a silent witness to those who had left so unsuspectingly, never to return again. As they moved on and the remnants of human bones began to turn up to the right and left, Germanicus and his men suspected they might be approaching the battlefield. Any doubt was soon removed. Broken pieces of weapons, detached spearheads, and half-­ rotted harnesses lay scattered among the skeletons. The slaughtered Romans had been left behind without respect or honor, their corpses abandoned to the elements and the appetites of the beasts of the forest. Skulls had been nailed to trees as trophies; frayed ropes that had served as nooses hung forlornly from branches. Silently, the men began to



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gather up the bleached bones. With one accord they piled them into a mammoth burial mound, and as they did so their dread, grief, and fury gradually made way for a feeling of unity—­a sense of determination. And so it was that there, in the barren northern reaches of the Empire, beyond the Rhine, the last honors were finally paid to the fallen Romans of the Battle of Teutoburg Forest.

6 The trip to the battlefield, the memorial for the fallen: these were but short interludes in Germanicus’ busy schedule of expeditions. The unusual thing was the constant presence of his wife in the army camp, and above all her active involvement with the soldiers. Agrippina stood ready to greet them when they returned from battle; she personally handed out food and bandages to the weary and wounded. She found just the right words to cheer them up—­even as a little girl she had been praised by Augustus for her talent as an orator. There were even reports that she was not averse to meddling with battle strategy. Women who took it into their heads to act like men had always been viewed with disapproval in Rome’s powerful patrician circles, but here at the front, Germanicus and his heroic wife were not just tolerated, but embraced. Germanicus lived for the legions, and his men had become accustomed to not only the general’s wife but also his children traveling with him. One child in particular—­little Gaius, who had been born in the year 12 and grown under their gaze into a sturdy toddler—­swiftly stole the men’s hearts. They had even had a miniature pair of soldier’s sandals made for him in the camp, and the child, stomping proudly about in them between the tents, was given the affectionate nickname caligula, “little soldier’s boot.” Like it or not, it would be under this nickname, bestowed upon him by his father’s troops, that Gaius would go down in history when he became emperor of Rome.

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In the meantime Agrippina was pregnant again. It was her fourth child, and a girl this time, after three sons. Julia Agrippina, named for her proud mother and her recently deceased grandmother, was born in November of the year 15 in Oppidum Obiorum (Cologne). Five more pregnancies would follow, but it was that innocent little baby Agrippina who—­along with her brother Gaius “Caligula”—­was to play a leading role in the turbulent years in store for Rome’s first imperial family. But that was still far in the future. The reports of the quelling of the rebellion and the birth of a new grandchild must have done Tiberius good when they arrived back in Rome. The marriage of his own son Drusus had in the meanwhile produced only one child, a daughter. Drusus’ wife, Livilla, was far more famed for her beauty than Agrippina was, yet still had good cause for jealousy of her glib sister-­in-­law—­a sister-­in-­law who, though slightly younger than she, had managed to produce three sons and endear herself to the public. Their rivalry was of a hidden sort, behind the scenes, in the world occupied by women. Germanicus and Drusus, in contrast, got along quite well. Tiberius did his part by giving the brothers equal chances for advancement and treating them as far as possible as equals. Perhaps the memory of his own brother, Drusus, with whom he had always lived in harmony and affection, played a part. And yet the relationship between Germanicus and Drusus slowly grew awry due to the increasing popularity and marked successes of Germanicus and his wife. Tiberius might treat the young men as equals in public, but he must have given some thought in private to which of the two would be appointed first successor to the throne. Or did he imagine a scenario in which Germanicus and Drusus would share power by becoming each other’s co-­emperor? Knowing, as he did, of the rivalry that had grown up between their wives, he might have doubted the wisdom of such a course. Would the harmony remain, even when he himself was gone? If both



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his sons were still alive when the moment arrived for the succession, those questions would need definitive answers. For the time being Livilla, despite her own husband’s successes and the strength of his bond with Germanicus, observed the marriage of her brother and Agrippina with envy tinged by fear. That she herself had once been married to Rome’s most popular and promising young general made everything worse. But that was long ago; Augustus’ grandson had been dead for years. Now Agrippina was filling the shoes Livilla had once seemed born to wear—­and doing so with far more verve.

7 When Germanicus, after his successful mission in Germania, boarded a ship in Brindisi that would carry him to the east, he did so with conflicted emotions. With his magnificent triumphal pageant through the streets of Rome fresh in his memory, and the imperium maius in his pocket, his authority reached further than ever before; yet in subtle ways, behind the scenes, it had become painfully clear that a wedge had been driven between him and his adoptive father. Looking back, Germanicus had to conclude that the triumph had been a dubious honor—­even a portent. His last and greatest German campaign was not yet over, and he himself had wanted to persist. His new tactic—­building a fleet and attacking through the Netherlands and over the North Sea—­had started to yield results, but Arminius was still very much alive, as was the self-­confidence of a number of Germanic tribes. But Tiberius, in calling him back to Rome for his triumph, had forced Germanicus to shelve his plans. As far as Tiberius was concerned, three years of punitive expeditions was sufficient redress for the Romans. The new emperor still had Augustus’ counsels ringing in his ears and preferred safety to sorrow. But Germanicus was by no means satisfied. He could not escape the impression that his father

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had only rewarded him with a triumph because he thought it high time he was separated from his troops. Letting Germanicus parade through the streets of Rome and be cheered by the people was less dangerous than allowing him to be hailed as a caesar by the legions of the Rhine any longer than absolutely necessary. An even better plan would be to send him in a completely different direction, to somewhere no soldier knew him—­to the east. The more time Germanicus had to think it over, the clearer it became to him that it had all been pretense, these accolades Tiberius had showered upon him. In truth, it had been closer to a motion of no confidence. And once Germanicus heard the news about his good friend Silanus, currently governor of the province of Syria and one of his few pleasant prospects in the east, his suspicions were confirmed. Tiberius had removed Silanus from his post in all haste and arranged for a replacement, Cnaeus Calpurnius Piso. Piso, unsurprisingly, was a faithful satellite of Tiberius’: the two had known one another almost all their lives and their shared consulship in Rome had proven that they got on well both personally and politically. From Tiberius’ perspective it was a shrewd choice. He had found himself compelled to grant his son an unlimited imperium of five years’ duration for this journey to the legions in the east, but in appointing Piso to the governorship he assured himself of eyes and ears on the spot: a way of maintaining, from far-­off Rome, his grip on the situation. The journey through the Balkans and Greece and from thence, finally, to the east, gave Germanicus a chance to think things over. His ire over the appointment of Piso, with whom he was on abysmal terms, abated somewhat and made room for rebelliousness of a more calculating nature. Agrippina, who had not hesitated a second in boarding the ship with her children, felt no compunctions about fanning the flame. She was as involved as ever in Germanicus’ “men’s business,” notwithstanding the discomforts of this sea voyage during the



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final trimester of yet another pregnancy. She had given birth to a second daughter, Julia Drusilla, a year ago. With her retinue of small children, a babe in arms and an already bulging belly she had been a notable sight during her husband’s triumph. Perhaps it was Agrippina who insisted they stop in Athens. It was the city of her birth and the perfect place to remind one and all of her own regal descent from Marcus Agrippa and Julia, and that of her husband—­t he grandson, on his mother’s side, of Marc Antony, once so wildly popular in the east. Germanicus, in any case, would not have needed much persuasion. He was a man of the legions but was well-­ versed culturally and intellectually as well; Athens, with its art and philosophy, its rich history, appealed to him just as it did to countless Romans. The royal couple’s welcome by the Athenians was hearty and replete with fitting marks of honor, which Germanicus and Agrippina submitted to with very good grace. The knowledge that Tiberius censured their behavior made it all the more attractive. After a short and very agreeable stay in Athens they traveled on, only to make a forced stop on Lesbos. Agrippina, like her mother before her, would give birth while traveling through Greece: her daughter Julia Livilla was born on the island.

8 In Germanicus and Agrippina’s wake came Piso, who had accepted his appointment to the east with pleasure. As governor of Syria he would reign over those decadent easterners, whose effeminate lifestyle made him, as a true-­born Roman aristocrat, fume, with an iron fist: he would teach them some real manners. Like Tiberius, Piso was disinclined to make concessions when it came to the traditional, centuries-­old Roman values he revered. Also like Tiberius, he was known for his pride and arrogance. In age-­old Antioch, the Hellenistic metropolis on the banks of the Orontes that by then had come to wear the typical patina of a Roman provincial capital, the rumors about the new governor arrived before Piso himself did.

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Despite the contempt many Roman aristocrats felt for the east, none could deny that Antioch had a certain grandeur—­a grandeur to which both its Hellenistic and its more recent Roman past had made important contributions. Augustus himself had been responsible for making the Colonia Caesarea Antiocheia the principal city of the eastern half of the Empire. He considered the metropolis, with its central location at an important intersection of trading routes, far better suited as eastern capital than the relatively isolated Alexandria in Egypt. His re­founding of the colony in 25 BCE had given Antioch a fresh impulse. Various public building projects had been embarked upon, giving it the air of a respectable, substantial Roman city; its inhabitants could even enjoy chariot races in a hippodrome worthy of comparison with the Circus Maximus in Rome. By the time of Piso’s arrival those same inhabitants had all but forgotten the days when the royal Seleucid dynasty had ruled over Antioch. They lived their daily life on the forum, constructed according to Roman template; they gossiped, Roman-style, in the public baths just outside the city. The construction of those baths had been financed by Tiberius—­one example among many of how in Antioch, as elsewhere, the new emperor showed himself a successor eager to follow in his predecessor’s footsteps. His accession had not passed unnoticed in Antioch: besides the bathing complex there were numerous other building projects scattered throughout the city. The people’s gratitude—­again, in Roman style—­had been immortalized in bronze: a statue of Tiberius watched over the city from its lofty perch on a column in a public square. The extent to which the mighty Antioch of yesteryear had been transformed into a plaything of Rome became apparent in the year 17, when two men of stature arrived there—­one to assume the role of political leader and the other to lead the legions quartered in the neighborhood. Germanicus’ reputation had preceded him as well, and to



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far more flattering effect than Piso’s. The young general’s charisma had been praised wherever he went, and the presence of Agrippina and their young family had only added to the effect. Germanicus’ having been invested with the imperium maius for his mission meant that his authority over provincial administrators in the east was comparable to that of the emperor himself. It also meant, indirectly, that he was fully capable of undermining the authority of Piso—­who, without the emperor’s son looking over his shoulder, would have been more or less free to govern as he pleased. But Piso was not the man to be stifled by a provocative public favorite, and a novice at that. The relationship between the shrewd and seasoned politician and the charismatic general was doomed to turn sour long before the two ever shook hands in the palace at Antioch. And that Agrippina and Plancina, Piso’s wife, were each other’s complete opposites and detested one another, boded equally ill.

9 The exotic lands of the Orient, formerly the realm of Alexander the Great, initially kept Germanicus out of Piso’s way. He had five long years ahead of him and opted to begin them with an introductory tour of the regions under his command. Along the way his mind no doubt strayed to the great Alexander—­and also to his own grandfather, the illustrious Marc Antony. During those now-­famous days of the triumvirate Marc Antony and his lover, Cleopatra, fawned upon and worshiped as a semi-­d ivine royal couple, had traveled through the east just as he and Agrippina were now doing. Their fame had seemed to reach to the heavens, and no doubt Agrippina imagined her husband and herself well on their way to the same status. And why, indeed, should they not immediately travel on to Egypt, where the memory of Marc Antony burned perhaps brighter than anywhere else? There was of course the tiny obstacle of the law, which forbade all magistrates from

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setting foot within the rich Nile province without imperial permission; but Agrippina and Germanicus no doubt considered that petty little statute as being applicable to others, not members of the imperial family. Tiberius might have forgiven them the unscheduled trip to Egypt, but the manner in which Germanicus and Agrippina behaved while there embarrassed him all the way back in Rome. Just like his grandfather, Germanicus arrayed himself in Greek attire—­a shameful spectacle for any respected Roman magistrate, let alone the emperor’s son, to make of himself. Wearing Greek sandals instead of Roman army boots, and without guards, he had walked the streets of Alexandria and shown himself the soul of generosity to the local populace. Perhaps now, for the first time, Tiberius understood how he had disgraced Augustus by his own similar behavior on Rhodes—­a lthough he, in stark contrast to Germanicus, had not been trying to curry favor with anyone. It took Germanicus and Agrippina no time at all to win the affections of the Egyptians. Hearts and minds were, after all, their specialty. Back in Rome questioning voices were being raised in the Senate, asking what, exactly, the pair was doing in Egypt. Tiberius had no reply. News traveled fast by mail in the early Roman Empire, and gossip even faster. When Piso got wind that Germanicus was acting like some kind of Alexander the Great along the banks of the Nile, his annoyance turned to rage. Who did this boy think he was? Piso proceeded to countermand all orders the absent Germanicus had issued in the province, both in the cities and to the legions. Germanicus did not find out until he returned from Egypt. Then an opportunity arose for Germanicus to show Piso who, exactly, was boss in the east. Piso had given shelter and protection in Syria to Vonones, a Parthian who had grown up in Rome, become king of Parthia, and then been deposed and banished by his own people. When Germanicus received a letter from the sitting king of Parthia requesting him to settle



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scores with Vonones—­according to his successor, a troublemaker who still posed a danger to his reign—­Germanicus took immediate action. In doing so he prevented a spat with the Parthians, but most of all played a nasty trick on Piso, who had to hear from a messenger how his protégé had been run through by a Roman sword—­on Germanicus’ orders. Matters came to a boiling point during a banquet. Germanicus and Agrippina and Piso and Plancina had all been invited to a dinner by the king of the Nabataeans, an ancient race of Arabian desert dwellers who had founded a kingdom on the southern border of the province of Syria, with Petra as its trade center, and was on cordial terms with Rome. Following eastern custom the hosts, in order to demonstrate their hospitality and good will, adorned the heads of their eminent Roman guests with golden crowns. The gesture alone was outrageous enough in Piso’s eyes; when he saw Germanicus and Agrippina undergoing the spectacle with good grace—­even with enjoyment—­something snapped. He threw the crown he had been given—­humiliatingly enough, a lighter version of the one presented to Germanicus—­into a corner and loudly, almost shouting, let the assembled company know that a Roman ruler should never be put on the same level as an eastern king. Upset and deeply offended, Piso and his wife stormed out of the banquet hall, and the discord between them and the imperial couple became the gossip of the day.

10 Proud and stubborn as he was, Piso recognized that the situation had become intolerable and that it was he, not Germanicus, who was at a disadvantage. He had just begun preparations for a surreptitious retreat from Syria when a courier knocked on his door with an unexpected and urgent message. Germanicus had suddenly been taken ill. The malady appeared both serious and suspicious—­r umor had it that the crown prince might have been poisoned. Piso

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opted to stay where he was and keep himself apprised of the situation from a distance. Germanicus’ condition seemed to fluctuate with the day. When the news spread that the general was recovering, the populace openly showed their joy and thankfulness—­a nd Piso, in their eyes already the chief suspect, and by now past all self-­control, ordered the celebrations broken up by brute force. With the rumors of his involvement in the poisoning persisting, he took the precaution of falling back to Seleucia, Antioch’s port city at the mouth of the Orontes. From there he and Plancina, if need be, could beat a hasty retreat. In the meantime Agrippina had been doing more than just watching at her husband’s bedside and praying for his recovery. She had never trusted Piso and that arrogant wife of his, and she dispatched several of her most confidential servants to their private quarters to search for evidence of poisoning. They found what they were looking for. The rumors told of suspicious substances and implements that could only mean black magic and the mixing of poison; of ashes mixed with blood, and mysterious texts that appeared to be spells. Germanicus, or rather Agrippina in his name, now wrote a letter openly distancing himself from Piso, relieving him of his function on charges of treason, and banishing him from Syria. It was too late for Germanicus. On his deathbed he made his closest friends swear to honor his memory, not by a lavish show of mourning but by respecting his last wishes: that they go back to the capital and reveal to one and all the full facts of the death of Rome’s greatest general. That they denounce Piso and Plancina openly, and officially accuse them of murder by poisoning. There must be no doubt in anyone’s mind that he, the great Germanicus, had met his untimely death through the treachery of a deceitful Roman and his vile wife. After the promise had been given, Germanicus’ last words were for his wife. He urged Agrippina to remember, once she got back to Rome, to be continually on her guard.



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When the news of Germanicus’ death reached them on Kos, Piso and Plancina gave themselves over to unabashed glee. They decked themselves in festive array and opened all the temples to celebrate the glad tidings. Was this perhaps the perfect opportunity to return to Syria? Piso decided to call a meeting of his advisors. Several centurions counseled him enthusiastically to take this chance to go back to Antioch and demand his rightful place, but Piso’s son Marcus made a fervent, anxious plea for a more cautious course. His advice was the opposite of the centurions’: that his father return to Rome, where he was still counted a personal friend of the emperor, as quickly as possible. Did he not see that that was his last chance to salvage his reputation? As of yet he had done nothing wrong. The rumors about his involvement in Germanicus’ death were no more than that: rumors. But if Piso were to return to Syria, where local politicians had already put forward a new governor, his move might be interpreted in the capital as a declaration of war. Marcus’ affectionate pleading did manage to sow some doubt in his father’s mind. But any wavering on Piso’s part ended when one of his counselors wondered out loud if it would really be such a good idea for him to arrive at the same time as Germanicus’ remains in Rome—­where a mournful, agitated mob would be abroad in the streets, and all too ready to point an accusing finger in his direction. Piso stayed where he was.

11 In Rome death, like life, was primarily a public affair. It offered free rein for the expression of sorrow at the loss of a loved one, but also provided a platform for the furtherance of the bereaved’s social and political goals. Tiberius had shown himself adept at the art of public mourning when he lost his beloved brother, Drusus, and accompanied his body back to Rome. But the role of grieving survivor suited Agrippina,

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with her unbridled self-­confidence and her subtle talent for playing to the gallery, even better. Much better, in fact. Innumerable words of praise had been spoken on the forum in Antioch, where Germanicus had lain in state in full regalia. After the cremation Agrippina took her children and, with the urn containing her husband’s ashes under one arm, set off for the harbor of Brindisi on the journey to take her husband to his final resting place. The warm, comforting embrace of the Roman people, who mourned passionately along with her, would, she knew, be waiting for her in Rome. From Brindisi all the way north along the Via Appia the people wailed and lamented as the funeral procession traveled past. The most prominent men of the cities along the way came to pay their respects. Great was the incomprehension when it became apparent that neither the emperor nor the imperial mother, Livia, had come to meet the procession before its final entrance into Rome. Even Germanicus’ own mother, Antonia, did not show herself in public. It was the deceased’s crippled brother, Claudius, together with Tiberius’ son Drusus and the children who had been left behind in Rome, who were sent ahead to welcome the ashes and the grieving widow. Rome was abuzz with rumors. Why had that arrogant emperor not publicly shown his respect? To many the omission was more than inappropriate—­it was downright suspicious. Germanicus’ close friends had honored his dying wish by repeating his final words high and low: that he had been betrayed; that Piso had poisoned him. And everyone knew what close friends Piso and Tiberius were. The emperor was no stranger to cold-­bloodedness, but could he really have had a personal hand in the death of his adopted son? Whether out of loyalty to an old friend; whether owing to his ingrained disdain for displays of emotion on the part of the unwashed masses; or whether out of fear of a revival of the “Caesarian” camp: whatever his reasons, Tiberius, as ever, disregarded public opinion. Never before



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had a personal choice contributed so much to his own unpopularity—­a n unpopularity that would, after this fiasco, prove beyond any power to remedy. Behind closed palace doors the emperor must have been at his wit’s end when a certain letter had reached him from the east—­a letter from his friend and ally, Piso. Even Tiberius had to admit that the message was provocative. Piso accused Germanicus of behaving in the east like some sort of Marc Antony. He himself, as the officially appointed governor, was the only one who could rightfully lay claim to either civil or military authority in the province, Piso stressed; and for that reason he had demonstrated his never-­ending loyalty to the emperor by returning to Syria. It was a final attempt to save his hide, but a conflict was nonetheless brewing and Tiberius knew that Piso, though seeming to appeal to Roman law, had in effect taken up arms. It made his position even more difficult than before. It was the very devil of a dilemma—­whether to let his friend, and incidentally the member of a prominent Roman family, take the blame for the death of a popular hero, or to spare his friend and in so doing irreparably bring down suspicion, by friend and foe alike, upon his own head. The latter course would be viewed as nothing less than a public confession. The course Tiberius chose was understandable, and the only one he could have chosen, but it turned out even worse than he could have imagined. Piso arrived in Rome soon afterwards, still evincing the same self-­confidence he had demonstrated in his letter. A thorny court case followed, over which Tiberius refused to preside, although he did put in an appearance in the Senate the day the case was called up. The prosecutors, all legates under Germanicus and, like Piso, just returned from Antioch, were combative and attacked on various fronts—­not only alluding to the clear traces of poisoning they claimed to have found on Germanicus’ body, but also blaming Piso for what they held to be his violent reconquest of Syria with hastily

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conscripted soldiers. Despite Tiberius’ plea that the case be handled as impartially as possible, things looked black for Piso. During the recess Livia was already helping her good friend Plancina with the preparations for her flight from Rome. Her husband, it had been made clear to Plancina, would not be making the trip with her. Piso’s conviction and death were inevitable; all Tiberius could hope for now was to shake suspicion off himself. He would not succeed. Distrust of the emperor remained, and in fact only increased. Rumors circulated through Rome about the cold, pitiless glance Tiberius had cast Piso across the floor of the Senate, as though the sight of his old friend being thrown to the lions left him completely unmoved. The seeming ease with which he turned his back on his ally was taken as confirmation of the already widespread belief in the emperor’s cold-­bloodedness. The web of gossip, distrust, and insinuation had been weaving itself almost since Tiberius’ earliest childhood in Rome, and there was no escaping it now. He would only become more hopelessly entangled. During the following meeting of the Senate Tiberius read aloud a document that had been entrusted to him by Piso: a last, desperate attempt by his old friend to plead for a kind fate for his sons, despite the doom called down upon himself. Tiberius read the text, in which his friend not only attacked the prosecutors but also himself personally, aloud to the senators without emotion. Piso’s sons and his wife, Plancina, were eventually spared, thanks in part to lobbying by Livia. For Agrippina, who up until then had followed the proceedings with satisfaction, it was a disappointing end to the affair—­not least because now, back in Rome, she had had to face up to several unpleasant facts. Her house was without husband and father, while twin boys had been born into that of her sister-­in-­law, Livilla. The arrival of little Tiberius Gemellus and Germanicus Gemellus was a rare point of light on Tiberius’ dark horizon. Elated, he had gone on and on in



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the Senate, almost making the matter into an official item on the agenda, about the marvelousness of the birth and how unusual it was for such highly-­born male twins to come into the world. A special coin was minted to celebrate the occasion. Agrippina’s life was now darkened by fear as well as mourning. What would become of her and her children now that Germanicus was gone? Her relationship with the family was worse than ever. She despised Tiberius, and her feelings for that meddlesome Livia—­who had interfered in matters of State in coming to Plancina’s rescue, and thus had taken away Agrippina’s chance for revenge, and moreover had shunned her, Agrippina, as if she were the plague personified—­were no warmer. But in the midst of her bitterness she must have taken thought for the future, which looked so different now than she could ever have imagined. Protecting her children—­t hat, for the time being, must be her first priority. Another ten years, at least, would pass before Agrippina finally and irrevocably fell out of the emperor’s good graces. But even then the Romans had not forgotten their national hero. To them, Tiberius’ abandonment of Agrippina and her children was the confirmation of all their conspiracy theories. They had been right all along: it had been Emperor Tiberius who was responsible for Germanicus’ death.

12 When Drusus fell ill in the autumn of 23, Tiberius’ primary concern was for his son’s health. The young man’s condition deteriorated rapidly and no doctor seemed to have a remedy. Drusus would never have the chance to share his growing concerns about Sejanus with his father. During the early years of Tiberius’ principate, and under Sejanus’ leadership—­h is sole leadership, no longer shared with his father—­t he influence of the Praetorian Guard had vastly increased. No longer limited to guarding the emperor and his retinue, they now operated as a police guard throughout the city. When a large fire raged in Pompey’s Theater in

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22, it was the Praetorians who put it out. After the theater was repaired, a bronze statue of their captain, Sejanus, was erected in gratitude. Not a man of the Senate had protested this manner of honoring the prefect—­except the historian and politician Cremutius Cordus, who declared his objections outspokenly and publicly. To no avail: Cordus was alone in his criticism. It was an incident Sejanus would not forget. With an eye to increasing the guard’s visibility, Sejanus gradually built up a more or less permanent army camp just outside the city gates. Slowly but surely rose high walls, towers, and permanent barracks. The Castra Pretoria had been born. Much had already been whispered about the Praetorian Guard’s power; now that power was on display to all of Rome. Relatively unpretentious knight from Volsinii as he was, Sejanus was able to instill fear into the hearts of the grand gentlemen in the Senate. What, they wondered, were the ambitions of this man, who had maneuvered himself into the emperor’s intimate circle and commanded an army permanently stationed before the gates of Rome? But hand ­in ­hand with any suspicions regarding Sejanus and his ambitions must have gone the realization of how scarce the possibilities were for him to actually insert himself into the dynastic chain of succession. The Julio-­Claudian house was still amply supplied with sons: the family reign was in no danger. Following Germanicus’ death and the birth of the twins, Drusus had naturally come more to the forefront. He was now in his mid-­thirties and had made a strong showing both politically and militarily, although he had never approached the popularity of his stepbrother, Germanicus. He had been consul twice, had been given the tribunicia potestas by his father, and had seen one of his military victories crowned by an ovatio in Rome. In contrast to his father, he enjoyed appearing in public at theater performances or gladiator fights, which went down well with the Roman people. But he was also becoming increasingly notorious for his temper and his drinking—­a combination that, unsurprisingly, led to incidents.



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During the course of the year 14 Drusus and Sejanus went together to Pannonia to restore peace in the region. The two were close in age and often moved in the same circles, but in terms of personality were miles apart. Whereas Sejanus, as Praetorian Prefect, tried to keep order in the city, Drusus would carouse happily along with the crowd after a theater performance when he had a mind to it. Sejanus was clever enough to exploit the situation and became the agent by which various rumors regarding the emperor’s son entered the world. Sejanus’ influence over the emperor had continued to increase—­so much so that by the year 20 Tiberius had informed the Senate that he anticipated making the prefect his partner in power one day. For the time being he asked permission to invest his confidant with the ornamenta praetoria, the badge of a praetor. The honor was empty in the sense that it resulted in no added authority, but symbolic in that it had never before been bestowed upon someone with only the rank of knight. The business was even crowned by a marriage: the privilege of being engaged to one of Claudius’ sons fell to Sejanus’ daughter. Despite the fact that Claudius, due to his physical defects—­and against his own express wishes—­was still kept carefully out of public life and the political arena, the engagement was a favorable one for Sejanus, as any grandchildren the marriage produced would be able to utilize their imperial descent to advantage. Drusus was hardly stupid and was becoming increasingly irritated at this man who gave every impression of gearing up to take his own place as successor. Nor did Drusus like the way Sejanus was spending more and more time with Claudius and had spoken up for him in the Senate, as had several of Claudius’ other friends. It bordered on the shameless, Sejanus’ transparent attempts to discredit the unquestioned successor to the throne. The conflict got so out of hand one evening at a dinner at Sejanus’ house that Drusus struck the

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prefect—­which may have made Drusus feel better, but did his reputation as a hothead no favors. His marriage to Livilla, to top it off, was reported to be in a crisis right about then. The following year was marked by an ominous occurrence: a certain Clutorius Priscus recited a peculiar poem, written by himself, one evening in the home of a prominent Roman. Within days that poem’s remarkable subject had become the talk of the city. It was a lamentation on the death of Drusus, and at the same time lauded that death for having opened the way for Germanicus’ sons. Drusus was still very much alive, making the poem inappropriate in more ways than one. The hard-­to-­ignore fact that it had been recited in the home of sympathizers of Claudius’ heightened the unrest among Drusus and his followers. The matter was dealt with swiftly and ruthlessly—­Priscus was condemned and executed—­but the damage was done. It is doubtful that Drusus’ worries about Sejanus, and indirectly Claudius, usurping his position were well founded. All indications pointed to Tiberius’ own son as the one he still viewed as his successor and the mentor of the next generation of crown princes. Sejanus, realizing that his attempts at intrigue had failed to yield the desired result, proceeded to more drastic measures. He carefully chose a poison that would do its work slowly—­so slowly that no one would suspect the resulting death was not a natural one. He had Drusus’ favored servant and eunuch, Lygdus, bribed. Lygdus, as Drusus’ cupbearer, had abundant opportunity to administer the poison, unnoticed, in the correct dosage. Drusus died on September 14; the doctors termed it natural causes. The loss struck Tiberius in a heart still bleeding from the wounds of the previous years. Soon after the death of his good friend Piso, he had gotten the news of the death of Vipsania, his first wife and the only woman he had ever truly loved. Another close childhood friend passed away



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soon afterwards, and now his son had been taken from him. Then one of the twin grandsons he was so fond of died suddenly. Perhaps Tiberius thought then of Augustus, and finally understood how difficult it must have been for him to be confronted by the deaths, one after the other, of so many loved ones and possible successors. For aside from the emperor’s personal grief there was also the burning question of the succession. The entire sequence of the dynastic chain seemed to be collapsing like a house of cards, just as it had in Augustus’ day. Shortly after Drusus’ death Tiberius presented Germanicus’ sons Nero Julius Caesar and Drusus Julius Caesar (Caligula’s older brothers) to the senators. The gesture was to go down in history as the desperate attempt of a broken man, an emperor who had no desire to even be in Rome at all. Tiberius had spent most of the previous year at his villa in Sperlonga in Campania. Now, during an uncomfortable, almost painful address to the Senate, he brought the two boys into the chamber and begged several senators to become their mentor—­to take over his role, now that cruel fate had snatched away both Germanicus and Drusus. The speech was greeted with amazement and skepticism in the Senate. No one saw how in earnest Tiberius was. The emperor of Rome had become an old man. He no longer dared take a chance on his own life; all he wanted was to hand off responsibility for the succession to the Senate, then get away from the city. Not a single senator granted his request. With no help forthcoming from the Senate, Tiberius was forced to look elsewhere. Seeing as he had to look outside his family anyway, who could be better suited for the task than his faithful friend Sejanus? It is not inconceivable that Sejanus himself helped propel the emperor’s thoughts in that direction. Tiberius still had no idea of the true cause of his son’s death.

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13 In thought, Tiberius had spent the entire time in Sperlonga. How much rather would he have been in his dream villa by the sea, surrounded by beautiful sculptures of mythical figures, than in Rome, where not only the streets and sewers, but also corrupt senators and unreliable family members emitted a stench he found unbearable? Tiberius was past sixty-­five and could barely muster the energy to deal with Rome’s daily stresses and strains. He longed for the sea, as he had done in his younger years. For a life freed from political obligations. For the arts. Tiberius’ love of Greek sculpture was known throughout Rome. Once, the story went, he had even had the statue of a young Greek athlete placed in his own sleeping quarters. Tiberius was said to have fallen in love with the statue—­a copy of a famous work by the sculptor Lysippus—­the moment he saw it standing in the Baths of Agrippa, and to have given immediate orders for it to be brought to his palace and placed in his bedroom. Rome was not amused: the to-­do had been so great that the emperor found himself compelled to return the statue to the public. But in Sperlonga, a little over sixty miles south of the capital, those horrid Romans had no power to bother him. His country home on the coast was a sumptuous paradise overlooking the same seas once sailed by the legendary hero Odysseus. The villa’s theatrical highlight was the dining room, built into a natural cave giving on to the sea and including an artificial pool with direct access to the open water so that saltwater fishes (which not infrequently ended up on the menu during the banquets) could swim in it. The cavern also housed an array of magnificent sculptures of mythological figures, arranged in a theatrical representation of the adventures of Odysseus. In one corner a huge cyclops, the one-­eyed giant, lay exhausted and defeated on its back; not too far away the sea monster Scylla was just rising to the surface of the waves. The sculpture of Odysseus himself



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depicted the Greek hero at the climax of his battle with the monster. The drama and the fine craftsmanship could be palpably felt in each work of art displayed in Tiberius’ dining room.

14 But for the moment there would be no more enjoying haute cuisine by the side of the murmuring, azure-­blue water. Tiberius was back in Rome, attempting to avert a dynastic catastrophe. Despite the deaths of Drusus and Germanicus the imperial family still had male progeny, but they were all just boys. A reliable mentor, someone who could watch over those boys until they were ready to succeed to the throne, was needed and would not be forthcoming from within the Senate. For the time being, Tiberius would have to remain at the helm. This was the moment Sejanus, that faithful friend, had been waiting for for years. A gap had appeared in the dynastic chain, and he stood ready to force himself into it. The problem was that he was no relation of the emperor’s—­and, of course, that he had no intention of limiting his involvement to a mentorship of the next generation. But that was beside the point. Slowly, systematically, Sejanus went about implementing his plans and realizing his ambitions. It went almost without saying that his first arrows were aimed at the family and supporters Germanicus had left behind: Agrippina, her children, and her friends. After her husband’s death Agrippina had begun to worry, not only about her own fate but also that of her six children: Nero, Drusus, Caligula, Agrippina the Younger, Julia Drusilla, and Julia Livilla. And with good reason. Between her constant provocations during her time in the east, and the added friction her husband’s mysterious death had caused within the family, Agrippina had been a thorn in

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the emperor’s side for years. Now she, and her children with her, were delivered over to his tender mercies. But Tiberius seemed to bear no malice. Shortly after his father’s death Agrippina’s eldest son, Nero Julius Caesar, donned the toga virilis and was permitted to take a seat in the Senate. The young man’s future looked bright: five years before the legally permitted age Tiberius promised him a Quaestorship, just as he himself had received one from Augustus. It was, for Tiberius, an extraordinary honor to bestow. He had always disliked making exceptions to the rules for family members. Later that year Nero Julius Caesar wed Julia Drusi Caesaris, the only daughter of Drusus and Livilla, a further mark of Tiberius’ confidence in the eldest of Agrippina’s brood. But Tiberius’ and Agrippina’s characters continued to clash, and Sejanus was clever enough to see that his best chance lay in their mutual distrust. His trump card was fanning a smoldering suspicion of the lady’s ambitions in her father-­in-­law’s mind, and he played it skillfully. Sejanus knew the emperor’s weak spots all too well. At the beginning of the year 24 Rome’s priests made their annual appeal to the gods for the emperor’s well-­ being. The ritual was always performed in exactly the same manner, but suddenly this year other names popped up in the prayers—­t hose of the eldest sons of Agrippina. Who had put the priests up to this? Tiberius was furious, not only because someone had obviously gone behind his back, but also because the whole thing went against his principles. He thought it ridiculous, and simply wrong, to lavish young men with honors and attention. Naturally Sejanus stood at the ready to drop dark hints of Agrippina’s personal involvement in the disgraceful display. The priests were interrogated and denied having acted on Agrippina’s orders, but Tiberius believed Sejanus, and began to eye his daughter-­in-­law with increasing distrust.



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Sejanus was just getting started. The wedge was in place; all he had to do was to keep driving it deeper. The Senate floor became his battlefield. Sejanus’ methods were refined, certainly for a—­formerly—­simple knight from rural, provincial Volsinii. When he set about taking out his opponents, meaning Agrippina’s followers and her family, Sejanus did so with a great deal more finesse than Brutus and Cassius had displayed when they dispatched their own opponent, Julius Caesar, with knives during a meeting of the Senate. Sejanus did things differently, taking full and crafty advantage of a new justice system recently introduced by Tiberius himself. Senators now heard cases, and not infrequently decided one another’s fates, behind closed doors. This meant that without warning anyone could become subject to suspicion and mistrust from within his own circle. Sejanus exploited this weakness in the system by subtly casting suspicion on each of Agrippina and her late husband’s friends. The result was a series of notorious court cases in which the charge, in almost every case, was maiestas: treason. During the late twenties maiestas had the entire Senate in its stranglehold, for any senator who did not fall in line and denounce the accused traitors was all too apt to find himself under suspicion as well. Conviction after conviction was delivered, and Germanicus’ former friends were picked off one by one, either banished from Rome or meeting with untimely ends, some forced and some self-­inflicted. Sejanus’ reign of judicial terror was so successful that he even permitted himself to settle a personal score via the Senate. Three years after Cremutius Cordus had raised a lone voice in protest against the erection of that statue in the Theater of Pompey, the Praetorian Prefect went after him. Cremutius was a respected historian whose works made no secret of his firm republican inclinations. He was known among his fellow senators for his glorification of the past and his loud—­perhaps too loud—­manner of declaring his

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opinions. No one had been surprised when he had been the one to object in that matter of the Theater of Pompey: Sejanus, after all, was a simple country knight and it was unusual for such a one to be honored with a statue. But no one saw anything more in Cremutius than an inveterate republican with uncompromising opinions and a rebellious tongue. That was more than enough for Sejanus. He had Cremutius’ work combed through and quickly found all the proof he needed. Cremutius’ chronicles betrayed an unconcealed republican character and therefore a dangerously anti-­ imperial attitude, he declared. Furthermore, the man had dared to praise Brutus and Cassius, the murderers of Julius Caesar, as “the last of the Romans.” The unlucky Cremutius was brought before Satrius Secundus and Penarius Natta, public prosecutors and representatives of Sejanus. He was given one last chance to use that bold tongue of his, this time in an attempt to save his own hide. It was hopeless from the start, and Cremutius knew it, but he went down fighting. He held a flaming discourse in the Senate during which he expounded on his right to say and write what he wished, and derided the charges against him as being low, contemptible, and frankly ridiculous. Had not every self-­respecting historian praised the illustrious figures from Rome’s republican past at one time or other? What was Rome worth anymore, if such preposterous imputations were to be taken seriously? Cremutius—­in what may well have been a last-­minute attempt to go down in history himself as “the last of the Romans”—­d id not wait to hear the verdict, but took his own life instead. An order went out to burn his books, but his daughter Marcia kept a hidden copy of his chronicles, which was later published. A respected senator had been removed from the scene, ruthlessly and with impunity. The atmosphere of the Senate changed: it became visibly more brutal, more vicious. Was it still safe to say anything to a friendly colleague, or must



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one be on one’s guard during each and every banquet, each and every walk on the forum? No one wanted to end up on the witness stand, fighting for his life. Sejanus, in the absent emperor’s name, held the entire Senate in his grasp.

15 It must have been one of those rare moments when even Sejanus was shaking in his boots. He was ready to put the second part of his plan into execution and was on his way to ask Emperor Tiberius for the hand of Livilla, Drusus’ widow. Bit by bit, Sejanus had come to feel invincible. With the Praetorian Guard under his command and stationed at the gates of the city; with his foot in the palace door, and the Senate in the grips of the fear and discord he had sown—­now, finally, he had created a basis of power firm enough to justify embarking on the next, crucial step in his plan: maneuvering himself directly into the imperial family and getting custody of Drusus’ last heir, Tiberius Gemellus, the surviving twin. Sejanus had divorced his first wife, Apicata, long ago. He fully expected the emperor to grant him Livilla’s hand. But even now, approaching the respectable age of seventy, Tiberius had the capacity to surprise. Diplomatic but resolute, he denied Sejanus’ request. Marrying Livilla was not an option. There was nothing for Sejanus to do but accept defeat and continue doing what he was already so successful at: undermining the position of Agrippina and all those associated with her. If he could manage to discredit that entire branch of the family, Tiberius would soon find himself out of other options. If Sejanus could not obtain Livilla’s hand willingly, he would just have to obtain it unwillingly. Agrippina, for her part, had never been able to get around her dislike of her uncle and father-­in-­law. The widow was just as fiercely loyal to her husband as the wife had been and refused to overlook the fact that it had been Tiberius—­as she saw it—­who had driven Germanicus to his death. Tiberius’ steadily growing friendship with Sejanus, that monster who

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opposed her at every turn, only made things worse. There seemed to be no end to Sejanus’ barrage of accusations and legal actions against her friends, and there was no end to Agrippina’s suffering. In 26 the turn came of her good friend and second cousin Claudia Pulchra, the widow of Varus, who had presided over that crushing defeat in the forests of Germania. The prosecutor was Domitius Afer, a widely respected speaker and former praetor. Pulchra never stood a chance. Adultery, treason, conspiracy: she was found guilty on all counts. Seeming to enjoy himself, Afer then proceeded to dig a grave for Pulchra’s family. Her son, named Quinctilius Varus after his father, was next. Perhaps it was not his mother that made him a potential danger, but his fiancée, for the young man was engaged to Agrippina’s daughter Julia Livilla. If any proof was needed of just how deranged the relations in the Senate had become, it was given when Dolabella, Quinctilius’ own cousin, turned out to be one of the prosecutors. In the end Quinctilius, too, was condemned. The name of Agrippina was never mentioned, but by now she could practically feel the ring of fire that encircled her, and was fast closing in. Finally it was all too much for Agrippina. She attended a sacrificial ceremony in honor of the now-­divine Augustus—­her grandfather—­and saw Tiberius standing in the role of pious priest next to the late emperor’s statue. Something snapped. How could he be so hypocritical? To honor Augustus as a god while the audience was watching, but in the meanwhile to neglect and slight his descendants—­it was too much. All the emperor need do was look at her to see that she, and none other, had Augustus’ features. On and on she ranted until Tiberius approached her with an icy stare, firmly grasped her arm, and said: “Do you feel wronged, my child, because you do not rule?”2



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Sejanus had been closely following the hostilities and knew that this was the moment, while Agrippina’s anger was hot, to send in his spies. Had she heard the rumor, they asked Agrippina? Was she aware that Tiberius was secretly planning to poison her, just as he had poisoned her husband? From that moment on Agrippina treaded with care. All her slaves, even her closest servants, suddenly became suspect. The next time she reclined at a dinner in the imperial palace, she refused to even touch the food served to her. Tiberius was keenly insulted. How dare that insolent woman accuse him, and openly, of so vile a crime? He was silent, then looked at his mother, Livia, and drily remarked that she must not be too surprised when he took measures against a person who mistrusted the emperor in such a manner. The chain of events that was to lead inexorably to Agrippina’s fall was almost complete.

16 In the year 26 Tiberius traveled to his beloved villa in Sperlonga. He wanted to dine once more in his fabulous cave by the sea, surrounded by his own mythical fairy-tale world, before proceeding to his final destination: Capri. The emperor had left Rome on horseback with a small retinue. Sejanus, as personal bodyguard, would accompany him as far as Sperlonga. That evening the company reclined at the banquet table in the fabled cavern, tired from the journey but delighted by the splendid surroundings and the restful sound of the ocean. Then, suddenly, the peaceful scene was disrupted. The earth began to shake, gently at first but then forcefully. The dishes danced from the trays and the company braced themselves, not knowing how long the earthquake would last. Then stones, boulders, entire pieces of the cave walls began to rain down. The guests fled in all directions, but the elderly Tiberius was not fast enough.

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While the rest of the imperial guard made a run for it, Sejanus leapt without hesitation at Tiberius and threw himself on top of him as protection. When the quake had ceased and the Praetorians hurried back into the cave, they were able to dig out their prefect and the emperor, alive, from under the rubble. Sejanus had saved Tiberius’ life, using his own body as a human shield. Tiberius was taken aback. He realized now that Sejanus’ loyalty extended to the death. He could not have appointed a better replacement for himself in Rome than this brave man. Sejanus was relieved as well. In order to safeguard his own position he needed the emperor, for the time being at least, alive. Tiberius went into retirement. He was seventy-­six years old and weary of Rome’s frictions and irritations and frustrations. Now, even more than when he went to Rhodes over thirty years ago, he felt justified in withdrawing from public life. He had not been able to appoint an official co-­emperor, but with his loyal, capable friend Sejanus on the spot, he felt no qualms about leaving for Capri. The ancient historians speculated endlessly about Tiberius’ motives for abandoning Rome. There were some who attributed everything to the machinations of Sejanus, the one person who profited most from the emperor’s continuing absence. Others pointed to Tiberius’ difficult relationship with his aged mother, Livia, to whom he had been a huge disappointment ever since he left for Rhodes. They claimed that he had grown so incredibly tired of the two widows in his palace, Livia and Agrippina, that he decamped one day, after an out-­of-­control fight with his mother, and never went back. Still other sources saw Tiberius’ depraved character as the reason for his departure. Now, they contended, at the end of his life, the emperor wished only to surrender to his true nature and sought the peace and quiet of Campania in order to pursue all manner of perverse pleasures, and unleash cruelties upon whomever he wished, in freedom.



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The off icial explanation Tiberius gave for his departure—­t hat he had to travel south to dedicate some temples—­was taken seriously by no one. Those who predicted that the emperor would never return to the capital would be proven right. The chance is excellent that Tiberius was aware of that inevitable fact as well. But he did not look back. In his mind he was already on that paradisiacal island in the Bay of Naples, where his stepfather had also gone at the end of his life, Capri. Tiberius was the same age Augustus had been when he died, and perhaps was hoping for the same kind of peaceful, natural death in the lush setting of Campania. If death did not come quickly, he would at least be spending the end of his life in peace, and in his own way. Exactly how long death would keep him waiting, he could at that point never have imagined.

17 After the events at Sperlonga Sejanus returned to the capital. The Praetorian Prefect exuded self-­confidence. While Tiberius completed the journey to his villa on Capri, Sejanus was determinedly continuing along the course he had set for himself in Rome—­w ith as its main priority the campaign against Agrippina, her children, and their followers. The crusade’s next victim was Titius Sabinus, an eminent knight and an old friend of Germanicus’ who had never made a secret of his abiding support for the family. An assembly of four—­t he respected senators Latinius Latiaris, Porcius Cato, Petilius Rufus, and Marcus Opsius, all of whom had reason for wanting to get in Sejanus’ good graces—­conspired to entrap him. First Latiaris approached the unsuspecting Sabinus and won his confidence. Once Sabinus felt comfortable enough in their friendship to speak freely, Latiaris, in a seemingly private conversation at his house, elicited incriminating remarks from him about Tiberius and Sejanus. The walls, however, literally had ears. Cato, Rufus, and Opsius had secreted themselves in the house shortly before and thus

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were able to testify to Sabinus’ pernicious comments. And the testimonies of no less than four prominent senators—­who did not hesitate to embroider, accusing Sabinus of planning an attempt on the emperor’s life—­were of course doubted by no one. Tiberius, on Capri, received the news of Sabinus’ arrest—­and especially its cause—­with avid interest. He wrote back immediately, saying that some of his freed slaves had been bribed and that he knew an attempt on his life was being planned. He was grateful to the Senate for exposing this conspiracy, and of course approved Sabinus’ immediate execution. He ended with a dark hint that his life was still not secure, as long as there were enemies at large. Whom he meant by that word “enemies” was plain to all. It was a barely veiled stab at the family Sabinus had so openly supported: Germanicus’ heirs and their mother, Agrippina. Whether or not they were directly involved in Sabinus’ nefarious plans, their ambitions were quite clear. This imperial letter would herald the final, permanent breach between Tiberius and Agrippina. It was the year 28, and Sejanus had even managed to drive a wedge between Agrippina’s children. Drusus Julius Caesar, the middle boy, was so jealous of the position of his brother Nero Julius Caesar—­who as eldest was automatically first in line for the succession, and enjoyed flaunting the same—­t hat Sejanus had been able to get him on his side. Caligula, the boy who had once been given miniature soldier’s boots by his father’s adoring troops, saw through Sejanus’ games and deliberately kept himself in the background. With her eldest sons turned against one another, the thought that had been coming upon Agrippina gradually for some time—­t he thought that it might, finally, be all over with her—­became unavoidable. Caligula foresaw his mother’s doom and opted to make the best of a bad bargain. He deliberately distanced himself from his brothers, who had sunk up to their knees in Sejanus’



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swamp, and made an appeal to his great-­grandmother, Livia. The elderly empress mother had disappeared so far into the background that Sejanus had left her completely alone, despite the potential threat inherent in her authority—­a n authority rooted in her position in the imperial family, and which, even at her age, she wore with pride. Livia took her great-­grandchild in and lovingly offered him shelter and protection. When he heard that his mother had been taken away and put under temporary house arrest somewhere to the south of Rome, Caligula did not lift a finger.

18 When his mother passed away after a short illness, almost fifteen years after Augustus had died in Nola, the seventy-­one-­year-­old Tiberius refused to attend her funeral. That Livia had reached a venerable old age by Roman standards left Tiberius cold. He saw no reason to have to put on some magnanimous act and go pay his last respects to his mother. A permanent chill had descended upon their relationship all those years ago when Tiberius had neglected State business in order to leave for Rhodes. Even after he ascended the throne, things had never come right between mother and son. Julia Augusta, formerly Livia, the matrone of matrones, who during the course of her almost ninety years had seen Rome transformed from a republic in the midst of war and crisis to a young monarchy led by her own family, died a comparatively lonely death, surrounded only by her most loyal slaves and freedmen and one family member: her seventeen-­year-­old great-­grandson, Caligula. Livia had been both eyewitness and key player in what would come to be called the birth of an empire. She was the wife of the first emperor and mother of the second. For decades the dynasty would remain in the hands of her direct descendants: she was the great-­grandmother of the

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third emperor, the grandmother of the fourth, and the great-­great-­grandmother of the fifth and last emperor of the Julio-­Claudian dynasty. During her lifetime her reputation had remained practically without blemish; it was the later Roman historians who assigned her a domineering role as wicked and dangerous stepmother. When the news of his mother’s death reached him in his seclusion on Capri, Tiberius did not consider it sufficient reason to interrupt his voluntary retirement. He had become an elderly orphan waiting for his own death. It all meant very little to him. Perhaps it was then that Tiberius’ nickname “the most gloomy of men” (tristissimus hominum) originated.3 His absence at the funeral had certainly not gone unnoticed by the Senate and the people of Rome, and the Roman rumor mill could always be depended upon to do its work with efficiency. And no one could deny—­or had any wish to—­that Tiberius was indeed a somber man. His pride was cut to the quick, and his soul was clouded by grief and resentment. The truth, which his mother’s death brought into harsh relief, must have been painful for a once-­so-­successful army commander to accept. His parents were dead and he had been in power for almost two decades, but he had never managed to step out from behind their shadows. That had in fact already become impossible by the time he became the successor. Emperor Augustus and Empress Livia had simply lived too long to allow Tiberius his own place in history. A couple of paragraphs in a letter to the Senate was all the attention Tiberius devoted to the death of his mother. In them he made his intentions quite clear. Permission was given for his mother’s ashes to be interred in the family monument on the banks of the Tiber, but the ceremony must be a modest one, and he would not be honoring the proceedings with his presence. There was more: the emperor ordered his mother’s will to be declared invalid effective immediately, and emphatically refused permission for her



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deification. His mother hated vanity and would have been against the idea herself, he claimed. Resentment was all the mightiest man in the world could muster at the end of his life for this woman who had brought him into the world while still in her teens. Rome’s feelings were different. The Senate and the people mourned unrelentingly for Livia, who had behind the scenes accumulated more power and prestige than any Roman woman before her, and her great-­grandson Caligula honored her with a glowing eulogy on the forum. Years later, Livia was deified after all. The impression she had made upon Rome had been more enduring than Tiberius could ever have guessed, and lived on in spite of him.

19 Tiberius proceeded to the order of the day as though his mother’s death were a matter like any other. There were new charges that must be investigated, his letter went on. Or were the rumors true, and was it Sejanus, not the emperor at all, who had penned this letter to the Senate? For not only were close friends and protégés of Livia’s on the list of the accused, but also, right in plain sight, the names Nero Julius Caesar and Agrippina. Tiberius could not accuse them of outright conspiracy: he had not a shred of evidence for that. Taking his cue from Augustus’ handling of his daughter, Julia, and his grandson Agrippa Postumus, the charges he brought against Nero Julius Caesar and Agrippina were framed in moral terms. Agrippina was made out to be a loose woman, and her eldest son openly homosexual. It seemed as though Tiberius had been just waiting until his mother died, and now, finally, was able to unleash his dogs upon whomever he wished. The empress mother’s prestige, the esteem in which she was held by the public, would seem to have been a charm powerful enough to keep her family and friends safe—­right up until her death.

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Now that Livia was gone, Sejanus could openly commence hostilities on the family she had guarded until the end. Agrippina and Nero Julius Caesar must be punished for their moral misdeeds—­their crimes, according to Sejanus. The whispered words “death penalty” were heard in the hallways of the Senate. In the end, Tiberius chose the path Augustus had taken decades earlier. His daughter-­in-­law Agrippina was banished to Pandateria and Nero Julius Caesar to Pontia (Ponza). The idea was to separate them and let each languish on his or her own little island. The poignancy of such a fate had recently been on display when the news reached Rome of the death in exile, unnoticed and anonymous, of Julia the Younger, Augustus’ unfortunate granddaughter. No one in Rome had imagined that Julia was still alive after all those years—­she had simply been forgotten. For the time being Agrippina’s other children had managed to stay out of Sejanus’ and Tiberius’ clutches. Agrippina the Younger had even been married off at Tiberius’ behest—­to Domitius Ahenobarbus, a prominent aristocrat and great-­nephew of Augustus through his sister, Octavia. Drusus Julius Caesar, who had defected to Sejanus’ camp and been partially responsible for his brother’s fall from grace, was also married—­to Aemilia Lepida, who became a valuable instrument of Sejanus. With her help, the Praetorian Prefect was able to cast suspicion on her husband, the second in the line of succession. Drusus Julius Caesar, like his brother, Nero Julius Caesar, before him, was speedily declared an official enemy of the State and was banished—­t his time not to a far-­off island, but to a murky dungeon in Rome. In that other imperial household, that of Drusus’ widow, Livilla, one son still remained: the little boy who, since the death of his twin brother, had gone through life simply by the nickname Gemellus. Gemellus and his mother were still very much in Sejanus’ sights. Having enjoyed such success at wiping out possible successors, Sejanus’ logical



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next step was to become the link between Tiberius and this almost-­ten-­year-­old grandson. He would win Livilla’s hand in the end: he was convinced of it. It was the year 30, and Rome only had Caligula and Gemellus left (and Claudius, but he didn’t count). One of those two boys could grow up to be the new emperor, but for the time being both were still young and inexperienced. And all the while Tiberius, there on charming, picturesque Capri, kept getting older. The time had come for Sejanus to step forward.

20 Sejanus’ election to consul took place not on the Field of Mars, but in the Senate, as had become customary in Rome. He had already entered the Senate and served a term as consul, but those had been just the first steps of his final sprint to the top. In the year 31 Sejanus became consul once more, sharing the honor this time with no one less than Tiberius. The acceptance of the consulship by the emperor had become symbolic: a means of honoring his co-­consul, who would also, by definition, be the unquestioned successor to the throne. This knight from a country family, whose descent should actually have doomed him to perpetual exclusion from the highest ranks, was now the direct associate of the emperor of Rome and had been invested with a proconsular imperium over a Roman province. He was in the very heart of power, with the prospect of climbing even higher. In governmental matters Tiberius often followed the example of his predecessor Augustus, giving Sejanus the not-­unreasonable expectation that this special consulship would be crowned by awarding him the tribunicia potestas. It was just a matter of time, and there was no one left alive to disrupt the events as they unfolded. Any senators who might secretly disagree with the course those events had taken had been muzzled by years of terror. When the news of Livilla and Sejanus’

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impending engagement became known, there seemed to be no further obstacle in Sejanus’ path. Although he was feared by most of the Senate, Sejanus had done his best throughout the years to assure himself of the goodwill of the rest of Rome. The acceptance of the masses felt pleasant to someone who had conducted himself above his station for almost his entire life. He quickly latched on to a precedent: he would be the new Marcus Agrippa. An old friend and confidant of the emperor who had distinguished himself by years of loyal service to the State and the emperor, and who had earned his spurs—­it was an image that suited Sejanus perfectly. He might not be a blood relation of Agrippa’s, but in other aspects—­namely the political—­he was most certainly his direct successor. That his great hero and role model had been the father of Agrippina, the woman upon whose family he had wreaked such havoc, did not bother him. Festivities followed upon the official election of Sejanus to the consulship. He proceeded to the Aventine, the hill renowned for its association with the plebs, in a parade reminiscent of the days of the republican elections on the Field of Mars, which Tiberius had abolished shortly after his succession. Sejanus was presenting himself as the people’s hero—­t he people who, since the deaths of Scribonia, Julia the Elder, and Germanicus, and the departures from the scene of Agrippina and her sons, had had no one left to cheer for. He was determined to fill that void, but he knew that his rabble-­rousing would have to be subtly done in order to avoid incurring Tiberius’ mistrust. The cheering that accompanied Sejanus’ procession to the Aventine was flattering but must on some level have rung hollow. For years he had sown fear; now he was reaping homage. He had to wonder about the sincerity of it all.

21 During the final years of his life Tiberius began work on his autobiography. Within those pages he would do his utmost



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to twist the events of 31 so as to completely exonerate himself. He would accuse Sejanus of having, on his own initiative, given free rein to his hatred of Germanicus’ children. He would claim that Sejanus had been misleading him all along, and that he, Tiberius, had mistakenly placed implicit faith in him. He would say that he had not seen the lies Sejanus had been so actively spreading about members of his family and had never grasped his true intentions—­in short, that his best friend and confidant had betrayed him and left him no other choice. His own life, and that of Caligula, had been in danger. It would be sufficient explanation for the public. But to see the actual chain of events that led to the fall of Sejanus we have to go to Capri, to which Caligula had been summoned shortly after his eighteenth birthday. Sejanus’ worries began the moment the news reached him of Caligula’s departure. It was the end of August of the year 31. In May of that year Sejanus’ consulship abruptly expired. From that moment on he was no longer unassailable. Roman law decreed that a sitting consul could not be charged with a crime, and whatever else one might say about Tiberius, he had always shown respect for the law. As long as he was consul, Sejanus had been assured of his position and his security, but now he found himself in an unpleasant vacuum. Sejanus had his own network of agents and spies by now, not only in Rome but also at court in Capri, and unsettling rumors had reached him—­hints that the emperor had finally figured out that Sejanus, behind his back, had been diligently working to further his own ambitions. But Sejanus had no certainty. If he so much as breathed a word and it turned out to have all been hearsay, he would have betrayed himself. He was stuck; all he could do was wait it out. He must have thought back to his last meeting with the emperor, on Capri. There had certainly not been the faintest gleam of mistrust then. Their farewell had been emotional,

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with the hearty embrace of true friends. Since that time Sejanus had done the honors in Rome. He had been appointed consul together with the emperor, an honor reserved for the unquestioned successor to the throne. Tiberius’ side of the consulship was purely symbolic, and certainly no reason for him to return to Rome: he had been appointed in absentia. During that last stay on Capri Sejanus had also learned the true reason behind Tiberius’ obstinate refusal to return to the capital: Thrasyllus, the astrologist who had been with him ever since his days in Rhodes, had predicted that he would never see Rome alive again. It had been enough to keep Tiberius on his island. Since that time Sejanus had imagined himself all the more as sole ruler of Rome. Various statues had been erected in his honor. He felt untouchable. In May—­by way of exception in the middle of the month—­t he consulship of Sejanus and Tiberius came to an end. Tiberius had stepped down, forcing Sejanus to do the same. Sejanus had by then already heard the rumors about the emperor’s suspicions of him, but had in the intervening months seen no concrete reasons for concern. The emperor had awarded him a prestigious office as priest, as well as the promise of a proconsular imperium over one of the provinces, the traditional reward for a former consul. Meanwhile he continued to advance his plots, albeit with a bit more caution. He was so close. Of Agrippina’s family only her son Caligula; her crippled brother-­in-­law, Claudius; and her daughters were still alive or at liberty, but the Senate still numbered a few of her committed followers, including one of Sejanus’ oldest enemies, Arruntius. Two senators friendly to Sejanus, Aruseius and Sanquinius, opened at his behest the attack on Arruntius. Arruntius’ son was just then preparing for the next year’s consular elections. To charge a senator with a crime at such a time was unprecedented, and accordingly the case never came up—­perhaps it was Tiberius himself, from Capri, who gave



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the order for it to be dropped. Arruntius, in any event, saw his chance and brought an action against Aruseius and Sanquinius for false accusations. Even on the Senate floor, where his reign of terror had held sway for years, Sejanus was slowly losing ground. Sejanus had been wise enough to leave Caligula and Gemellus more or less alone. Yet Caligula had not felt safe in Rome, and had poured out his troubles to his grandmother Antonia, with whom he had gone to live after Livia’s death. Sejanus’ agents were after him like wild dogs, he declared in a wail. It would not be long before they got him—­he was not safe in the capital, of that he was certain. Was Caligula telling the truth, or was this him commencing a counterattack on Sejanus? There could be no denying that from his corner, Sejanus dead would be infinitely preferable to Sejanus still alive when the emperor died and the succession came into play. And who could say what might happen if he were to act now, instead of patiently waiting around to see how things worked out? Timely action might just open up a direct path to the throne. After hearing her grandson’s tale, and convincing herself of the seriousness of the situation, Antonia sat down and wrote a letter to Tiberius. Sejanus, the man Tiberius would mistakenly trust with his own life, was a deceiver and always had been, Antonia wrote. Almost everyone whom Tiberius had allowed to be tried for lèse-majesté or treason had been falsely accused and had been caught in traps plotted by Sejanus and his bloodthirsty agents. And Tiberius had swallowed the whole thing. Not even his own family had escaped the dirty war of imputations. Nero Julius Caesar had died on his miserable island; Agrippina and Drusus still languished in captivity. Sejanus had never planned to just step politely aside after the emperor’s death: his one and only goal had been to insert himself, and his children after him, into the line of succession.

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All this and more the aged Antonia wrote down. Then she handed the missive to her most faithful servant, Pallas, whose job it would be to find a way to deliver it to the emperor on Capri.

22 In the summer of 31 Pallas undertook the first sea voyage of his life. Despite the favorable wind, all the awful stories he had heard about the discomforts of traveling by ship turned out to be true. Not that he, as a slave—­one “without ancestors,” in Roman eyes—­had ever had much conversation with world travelers. But Pallas had had the good fortune to serve in the house of one of the most eminent ladies of Rome, where visits by illustrious guests had been a commonplace, and those illustrious guests had been apt to brag about their adventures on and beyond the seas. Antonia, Pallas’ mistress, was the daughter of Marc Antony and Octavia, the sister of the late emperor, Augustus. Her parents and uncle were dead now, but Antonia remembered them, and the starring roles they had played in history, all quite well. She was almost seventy, and still benefited from the prestige accruing to the sister-in-law of the sitting emperor of Rome. It was to her brother-in-law Tiberius that the document Pallas carried with him on board, and which was the entire reason for his journey, was addressed. It was odd, really, that a slave should have to board a ship in order to deliver a message to the court of the Roman emperor. No one really knew what had motivated Tiberius to withdraw to his villa on Capri: he had gone there five years ago and was there still. Wealthy Romans, the emperor included, liked to vacation in Campania, about 180 miles south of the capital, but no one stayed there permanently. The entire city had cried shame for awhile, but that had been all. Rome, after all, had seen a great deal worse. As long as the people could live in relative peace and prosperity, and



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had bread in their bellies and could go to the Games now and then, they were satisfied. The contents of the letter he carried were probably unknown to Pallas, but no doubt he had understood that the message, whatever it was, was a matter of life and death. Pallas was past thirty now, and Antonia had promised him his freedom and a piece of land if he brought this assignment to a successful conclusion. Pallas, quite literally, carried his own freedom in his hands. His future depended on this voyage. Other lives depended on the letter Pallas bore to Capri as well. The future of Rome and the safety of Antonia’s family hung in the balance. But despite his loyalty to the family, Pallas’ own future was no doubt uppermost in his thoughts. Marc Antony Pallas—­t hat, by Roman law, would become his full name if Antonia kept her word and gave him his freedom. He would be able to build a worthwhile life for himself, and more than that, would enjoy the permanent protection inherent in Antonia’s family name. Who knew what might be possible, what glorious career might be in store for him? He was bursting with ambition and knew in his bones that he possessed talents and capabilities that could be put to far better use than they had been up until now, as a simple slave.

23 Pallas hurried to Tiberius’ court the moment he set foot on land. There was little time for him to take it all in, although he had no doubt looked forward to seeing for himself if the stories told in Rome about the flamboyant emperor and his opulent island palace were true. Tiberius himself must have been a disappointment. He was much older and worn-­out-­ looking than Pallas could have imagined: balding and practically toothless, his skin wrinkled and pockmarked. Those eternal pimples and his bitter, somber character had both left their marks on Tiberius’ seventy-­t hree-­year-­old face. The palace hallways were soon abuzz with rumors. Tiberius was in danger of his life: that much, at least, the imperial

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household had understood. His letter delivered, Pallas’ task was not yet completed: he would leave Capri again as soon as the emperor had finished preparing his response. Thrasyllus, the astrologist, after all these years still constantly by Tiberius’ side, must have seen Pallas’ trustworthiness in the stars, for the emperor entrusted him with his message, just as Antonia had done. Pallas had served the imperial family all his life and had always been treated well by Antonia. Now he made haste to render his final act of service to the family. Caligula must be brought to safety and had been summoned to Capri: thus wrote the emperor.

24 Despite the shock of the news Pallas had brought, the emperor’s response was swift and effective. Caligula got himself to safety in time, and before long had joined the emperor on Capri. It was September now. The longer Caligula stayed on Capri, the more agitated Sejanus became. The only way to reassure himself was to stay rational. Tiberius still viewed Caligula and Gemellus as the next generation in the line of succession: that he would summon the eldest of the two need not portend anything serious. After all, the boy had still not donned his toga virilis and was as inexperienced as could be. Sejanus’ own role in the succession, as regent and mentor of the crown princes, was more or less fixed—­wasn’t it? Perhaps there had been an innocent reason for Caligula’s summons to Capri. Perhaps it was just a matter of discussing the ceremony of the donning of the toga of manhood. Caligula should actually have undergone this rite of passage much earlier, in 26—­but 26 had been the year Tiberius left Rome. The boy’s eighteenth birthday, on August 30, must surely have provided the impetus for the emperor to send for him, to have the ritual performed on Capri.



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Sejanus’ spies at court were quickly able to reassure him on that head. The ceremony had indeed been performed soon after Caligula’s arrival on Capri. It was, admittedly, all a bit strange. A ceremony of this importance would normally be performed in the capital, with a public conclusion on the Forum Romanum—­certainly not on an island almost two hundred miles away. Be that as it may, during the course of the ceremony Caligula was deluged with praise. The officiating priest praised Caligula’s outstanding character and sense of duty. He even hinted at a future imperial reign. Yet all in all it was a rather strange affair, far less stately and lavish than the celebrations held at the time for the young man’s older brothers. A bit rushed—­t hat was the impression made on the witnesses. Especially when, right after Caligula had donned the toga virilis, his beard was shaved off. Normally speaking that would not occur until awhile after this ceremony; it was a ritual in its own right. Apparently, Tiberius felt he had no time to lose. Once again a letter was sent to Rome, this time to the Senate. It contained a detailed report of this important occurrence in the life of the crown prince. Rome could hardly contain her enthusiasm: Germanicus’ popularity still radiated from his descendants, of whom Caligula was the last. Sejanus kept himself somewhat in the background, waiting anxiously to see what would develop. He had been in suspense for five months, but before long would be out of his misery. Finally, he would find out whether or not his worries had been justified.

25 In the middle of October, Naevius Macro left Capri for Rome. His departure was cloaked in secrecy. Macro was prefectus vigilum, head of the Roman city guard, and was married to Ennia Thrasylla, the granddaughter of court astrologer Thrasyllus, giving him direct access to the emperor. It had been Thrasyllus, upon whose judgment Tiberius had always

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relied with confidence, who had given his word that Macro could be trusted with this life-­and-­death mission. Tiberius, by way of hedging his bets, had also promised the prefectus vigilum a glorious future: a promotion to Praetorian Prefect would be his upon the successful completion of his mission. Macro arrived in Rome during the night of October 17. He bore a sealed letter from the emperor to Memmius Regulus, one of the two sitting consuls, and two lists of instructions: one for Regulus, and the other for Graecinius Laco, the man who would succeed Macro as prefect of the vigiles after his promotion. Regulus had only recently, on October 1, assumed the post of consul alongside co-­consul Fulcinius Trio, and Tiberius had been waiting for his installation. Trio was a friend of Sejanus’ and could not be trusted, but with Regulus’ help, his plan would work. Day slowly broke in Rome. The sun had just risen when Macro and Sejanus met one another on the Palatine. Almost two hundred miles to the south stood Tiberius, on one of the terraces of his lofty, cliff-­top villa, basking in the glow of that same rising sun. The sea’s thousand tints of blue and green reflected in his eyes. Perhaps he caught a glimpse of the ship that was being readied in the harbor. If it all went wrong, that ship would carry him away from his beloved island to the troops in Syria. But with all the precautions he had taken, what could go amiss? For ages he kept watch, his eyes fixed upon Rome, patiently waiting for news from the capital. He was old. He was reviled by friend and foe alike. But he cared about none of it. Rome’s future was still in his hands.

IV THE FALL Let’s get a move on and trample on Caesar’s enemy [Sejanus] while he’s lying on the riverbank. —­Juvenal1

1 Lucius Aelius Sejanus’ emotions must have alternated between excitement and fear as he climbed the Palatine early that morning and approached the Temple of Apollo, where, by way of exception, that day’s special Senate meeting was to take place. He had received no personal message from the emperor, but a letter had come from Tiberius’ island retreat to the consuls, making known the emperor’s wish that the Senate convene that day for the reading of an important imperial decree. Sejanus had of course heard the promising rumors: that the purpose of this special meeting was to award him the tribunicia potestas, the official bestowal of the authority of a tribune of the people, which was the only honor still lacking to him. Even without this authority he was already, thanks to Tiberius’ years-­long absence, in effect the most important and powerful man in Rome. But this final endowment was nonetheless significant. Sejanus had already shared the consulship with the emperor; the tribunicia potestas was the final step to a position that only a few years ago had seemed a dream, far out of reach. 159

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And yet the secrecy with which the gathering was cloaked was worrisome to Sejanus—­so much so that his nerves had taken the upper hand by the time he drew near to the imposing Temple of Apollo. He was so lost in thoughts of what fate might have in store that he failed to hear Naevius Macro approaching and was startled by his hand on his shoulder. When Macro, arrived only hours ago in secrecy from Capri, saw the latent fear in Sejanus’ eyes, he spoke soothing words. Be at peace, Sejanus, I bring you good news from Capri. You did not hear this from me, but I can tell you that the rumors are true: Tiberius grants you the tribunicia potestas and therefore has called this meeting of the Senate. He regrets his absence but sends you warm greetings from the island. Enter with an easy heart and await the praise you deserve. Had Sejanus not continued so blindly on his way just then, striding expectantly towards his ill-­starred future—­had he for just one moment looked over his shoulder—­he might have seen with his own eyes his doom approaching in the distance. Instead he sent away the Praetorians who had escorted him and hastened, elated, to the council chamber inside the temple. Perhaps he was taking a moment to calm himself, reminding himself not to let on that he knew what was coming—­or thought he did—­while the temple was being noiselessly surrounded by the troops of the vigiles, the Roman city garrison, under the command of Graecinius Laco. Macro had already informed the garrison commander privately of the emperor’s true intentions. Memmius Regulus, one of the two sitting consuls—­t he one furthest from Sejanus—­had been told as well. Before Sejanus’ bodyguards had left the Palatine, Macro called them to a halt and spoke to the men. They might return to the Praetorian Guard’s camp just outside the city gates, he told them, but not before hearing a message from the emperor, which they were to spread among their comrades: namely that he, Naevius Sertorius Macro, had



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in deepest secrecy been appointed their new commander, effective immediately. Macro showed them the decree. From Sejanus, who by now had disappeared into the temple, they were not to follow a single order from that time forward. The bodyguards, accustomed to taking orders from whomever they were told to take them, marched down the Palatine, confused, but with their usual swift tread. Macro entered the temple with the vigiles, but as soon as he had handed Tiberius’ sealed letter to Consul Regulus he left the chamber and hurried to down the Praetorian camp outside the city gates. A spontaneous rebellion or show of support for Sejanus on the part of the Praetorians could not be entirely ruled out, and for that precise reason Macro would be informing them personally that his first act as their new prefect was to give each and every one of them a generous cash present: a gift to celebrate his appointment. No one could label Tiberius an elderly and befuddled despot on an exotic island now. The entire operation had been planned with military precision. The emperor had thought of everything. Consul Regulus had been reading aloud to the Senate for ten minutes without alluding to anything more remarkable than ordinary matters of State. The council chamber was abuzz with whispering. Had they been summoned to climb up to Apollo’s shrine for this? The letter was just long enough to give Macro time to get himself down to, and secure, the Castra Pretoria, but only one or two people knew that. The buzzing ceased abruptly when Regulus, without preamble, uttered the name Sejanus for the first time. A few senators, those sitting next to him, gave Sejanus an appreciative pat on the back or shoulder. And therefore I hereby open an official investigation into the conduct of Lucius Aelius Sejanus and relieve him effective immediately of his responsibilities as prefectus praetorio, the consul read. His duties have been taken over by Naevius Sertorius Macro. The room had gone silent. Another lengthy passage followed,

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dedicated to unimportant matters of State. It was as though Tiberius had sensed in advance how it all would go, and wanted to give the listeners the opportunity to take in the accusations and prepare themselves for more. All eyes were upon Sejanus, who, through the tumult in his brain, was just beginning to realize the trap he had walked into.

2 Returning to the matter of Sejanus, Regulus calmly read on, jolting the stunned senators back into awareness, let the following be known. All those present were acquainted with Tiberius’ fickle nature, some rather more personally than they might have wished, but no one could have predicted what came next. Sejanus, who since the death of Tiberius’ beloved son, Drusus, and in exchange for his own unconditional loyalty, had acquired more and more power in Rome while Tiberius had retired from sight to devote himself to his own notorious life on Capri, stood accused of treason. In a dire, sinister finale to the paranoia of the preceding years, Emperor Tiberius turned his back on his best friend and confidant. Meticulously, in short, sharp sentences and a dry, business­like tone, the letter told how Sejanus, the traitor from the inferior ranks of the knights, had planned a coup; how the timely disclosure of that plan had barely averted an attempt on the lives of Tiberius and Caligula; and how, accordingly, the traitor’s plot to unlawfully and dishonorably seize power with the help of his Praetorian troops had been exposed. Those senators who had seated themselves as close as possible to Sejanus at the beginning of the session, when the mood had been jubilant, now slowly edged themselves away from him—­as if, through something so elementary as physical distance, they could deny all association with the man in whose success they had been eager to share only half an hour ago. Some even stood up and moved slowly to the exit.



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There were, the letter stated, sufficient witnesses to attest to all charges brought. And yet Tiberius stopped short of giving an immediate order for execution. The omission was strategic. Although he was fairly sure that his Roman power base was still solid enough to ensure that the accusations, along with measures he had previously taken, would be enough to shatter Sejanus’ authority, Tiberius was still wary of opposition. Instead Consul Regulus, following detailed instructions in the letter, directed Sejanus to come forward and stand next to him. The final judgment swiftly followed. The last sentence of Tiberius’ letter ordered Aruseius and Sanquinius to face immediate punishment for their involvement in the conspiracy, and Sejanus himself to be placed under guard. Words of condemnation, jeers, even threats rang out from all corners of the chamber. Now that it was clear to all which side to choose in order to save their own careers, in fact their own hides, all restraint was discarded. A number of Praetorians, who had returned to the Palatine under Macro’s command, silently but determinedly forced their way into the council chamber and surrounded Sejanus, making escape impossible. It was only then that he realized that he had lost his only real chance of escape by not immediately making a run for it the moment he heard the first, relatively insignificant, accusation against himself—­which indeed he might have done, if the succeeding developments had not caught him so completely off guard. The letter included no instructions on how to proceed, so Regulus asked for, and received, the Senate’s approval for Sejanus’ imprisonment. Within minutes Sejanus, guarded by the vigiles and their commander, Laco, was escorted out of the temple and taken to the Mamertine Prison. Later that day, which was colored by a strange atmosphere in the streets and disrupted by minor demonstrations against Sejanus, the Senate reconvened. The venue this time was the Temple of Concord—­t he temple that Opsimius had

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once built to the goddess of harmony and that Tiberius had had renewed and restored. It was a renowned, symbolic place, for on that very spot, in 63 BCE, Catiline’s infamous conspiracy had been exposed by Cicero. Sejanus was being portrayed as the new Catiline. In the dead of night a sinister figure stood in the opening of Sejanus’ dungeon. The prisoner knew what awaited him: he was all too familiar with the gruesome fate reserved for criminals in Rome. Perhaps, at that last minute, a wan smile twisted his lips—­t he smile of a man who tastes defeat, and to whom the irony of the situation, in fact of his entire life, has just become vividly apparent. Sejanus had thought to become ruler of the world. But all his attempts to become to Tiberius what Marcus Agrippa had been to Augustus had led only to this place and this moment. To this dark dungeon, the sewer of Rome, and in a few moments to the Gemonian Stairs, down which he himself had seen many a corpse roll—­and upon which his own strangled body was about to be thrown, to be torn in pieces by the furious mob and then end up in the river that, ever since Rome had been Rome, had silently carried off her slaves, her nameless, her unworthy citizens.

3 Tiberius, at home in his palace on Capri, was contentedly feeding his pet snake when a messenger was announced. The unknown man entered with grave face and outstretched hand. The hand held a letter. Tiberius must have been startled when he introduced himself as the servant of Apicata. Apicata—­he had almost forgotten about her. Until eight years before, the year in which Tiberius lost his son, Apicata had been the wife of Sejanus. When her husband’s ambitions had expanded to such a degree as to make her superfluous, even in the way, she had been pushed aside. Sejanus was playing a higher game and had sought the hand of Livilla, which he eventually obtained. Apicata had



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remained behind, alone and bitter. What could this ghost from the past possibly have to say to the emperor? The words must have taken a moment to register as a bewildered Tiberius read the letter the messenger had brought. What Apicata was saying about her ex-­husband was dreadful enough to eclipse all Sejanus’ other crimes. Sejanus, Apicata wrote, had been responsible for the death of Drusus eight years before. He was the one who had caused the poison to be mixed and administered; he was the one who had given the order to murder the emperor’s son in the flower of his youth. And he had had an accomplice: Livilla, Drusus’ own wife. The two had carried on a sickening adulterous affair, Sejanus’ widow wrote, and between them the depraved lovers had cooked up a plan to rid themselves of Drusus. Tiberius could hardly believe it. Was he to take this insane accusation seriously? Or was it no more than the final revenge of a scorned woman who had been cast aside like so much garbage? On the other hand, it had become painfully obvious by now that Sejanus had been capable of a good many horrendous acts without Tiberius being aware of any of them. Could he have Drusus’ death on his conscience as well? Tiberius took no chances. He had Caligula brought to Capri immediately and gave direct orders for a complete investigation into Drusus’ death. Eunuchs and servant girls from Drusus and Livilla’s household were interrogated, as were the doctors who had attended Drusus during his final illness. Torture was applied. The resulting declarations all confirmed Apicata’s story. The emperor, already duped and outraged, broke down once more. Why had he not seen through this earlier? A dark veil must have drawn itself over his eyes. Perhaps he swore to himself that no one would ever con him like that again—­and that no one need ever look for compassion from him again. What did he care if Rome and all her inhabitants were wiped

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off the face of the earth? He would never go back there. Tiberius would stay on Capri until he drew his last breath.

4 What would have happened if it had all gone wrong on October 18? What turn would capricious history have taken? What would have become of Rome? We will never know, because Tiberius’ carefully orchestrated plan was carried out to perfection. It was one of the last feats upon which the emperor could look back with pride. When he was standing on that terrace on that high cliff, gazing warily in the direction of Rome, his biggest concern might well have been the Praetorians, some of whom had served under Sejanus all their lives. They formed potentially the weakest link in his scheme. But not a knight among them had proven immune to the temptations of wealth. Their greed extended even further than Tiberius had dared to predict. Macro told later how—­once the monetary reward had been announced—­t he men had accepted his authority like a herd of docile sheep, only to thereafter grow overconfident and set their sights on Sejanus’ estate. They had a right to that too, they said. Tiberius’ emphatic ideas about the world, in which honor was a prerogative of the Roman aristocracy, were only confirmed by the mercenary attitude of the Praetorian Guard. While the spectators at the banks of the Tiber were watching Sejanus’ dismembered, lifeless body drift past, a messenger was boarding a ship for Capri to deliver the good news to Tiberius. The emperor’s contingency plan, that ship lying ready in the harbor of Capri to whisk him away to his faithful troops in Syria, would not be needed after all. Even after he learned the truth about Drusus, Tiberius did not return to Rome. Why should he? He had managed to make abundantly clear to everyone who the only true Caesar, the emperor of Rome, was, all from right there on Capri. And with Sejanus removed from the scene, there need



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be no more uncertainty as to what would happen after his death. The dynasty would continue. The adopted son of his choice would be the next emperor, and his son after him. Only a few decades ago no one had thought Tiberius would ever be emperor. Now his authority was unquestioned: he need not even be in the capital to make it felt. At some point during his final years Tiberius decided to write down the story of his life. After all those hours of uncertainty on Capri, and the good news that had put an end to them, all his fears about his own future and his family’s must have slipped away from him. The intrigues and machinations were over. It would be smoother sailing from now on, and everyone who got in his way, or exhibited even the slightest tendency towards suspicious behavior, would be disposed of. Of all the enemies that had come and gone, the last posed the least threat to Tiberius. After this life that had seemed to drag on forever, death was no doubt more welcomed than feared. Perhaps it was that acceptance of his approaching end that had awakened the desire in Tiberius to write: to set down a record of what, in his eyes, his life had been worth. Or perhaps he wanted to have the last word, a retort to those who had called him distant, arrogant, and heartless. For most of his life he had stayed in line. As a general he had even distinguished himself, and admirably. It was true that as emperor he had condoned Sejanus’ reign of terror, and perhaps he had been a bit paranoid; but it had been Sejanus’ betrayal that had brought out the monster in Tiberius. And the vindictiveness that faithless friend had engendered was not stilled by his execution. When Tiberius learned the painful truth about Drusus’ death, a dark mist went up. As soon as Tiberius had gotten confirmation of Apicata’s story, Livilla was placed under house arrest in Antonia’s house. The news of her death followed shortly afterwards. How, precisely, she met her end was unclear, but suicide is highly likely. Officially, she was charged with being an

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accessory to Sejanus in his conspiracy against Germanicus’ sons, but by now everyone had heard of her alleged involvement in Drusus’ death. No one was surprised when a damnatio memoriae was pronounced on Livilla: all reminders of her, from marble busts to her image on coins, were to be destroyed. As far as Tiberius was concerned, his daughter-­in-­ law had never existed. And so the imperial family was purged and the dynastic friction within the Julio-­Claudian house, for the time being at least, was soothed. Sejanus had not managed to subvert the entire plan of succession as Augustus had planned it, but he had come close: Tiberius had only been just in time in preventing him. And so, at almost the very last minute, Sejanus’ plan to place himself, his children, and his grandchildren on the throne of Rome had met with failure. Sejanus’ death may have given a spark of hope to Germanicus’ widow, still a captive on her island. But Agrippina had conspired against him as well, Tiberius declared. She should be grateful he had allowed her to live. Tiberius had never liked Agrippina. He continued to openly distrust her and her son Drusus Julius Caesar, who, along with his late brother Nero Julius Caesar, had shown himself so susceptible to Sejanus’ schemes. Of the three, Drusus Julius Caesar was the only one still in Rome: his mother and brother had both been exiled, and his brother had died on his island. But Drusus Julius Caesar had not seen daylight for years. In the frenzy that had taken possession of him, Tiberius decreed that the time had come to let the young man perish in Rome’s murky dungeons—­from starvation, no less. He was to be given no more sustenance. The unfortunate Drusus Julius Caesar, a young man in the prime of life, lasted nine long days without food and water. It was said that he ate the straw from his mattress to stay alive. To no avail; Drusus died, cursing Tiberius, in his cell. His mother, Agrippina, followed soon afterwards, presumably after going on a hunger strike.



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The contrast with Agrippina’s youngest son, Caligula, could not have been greater. While Drusus Julius Caesar was rotting away in an underground prison, Caligula accepted the Quaestorship and was welcomed as a new member of the Senate. Over the last four years of Tiberius’ life the dark clouds slowly lifted from Rome. The terror the emperor had visited upon the capital, conveyed by hand-­delivered letters and decrees from Capri, gradually wore itself out. The last few conspirators were arrested. Tiberius devoted himself to his hobbies in peace under the radiant southern Italian sun. All his life he had retained a love of literature, and he still took a roguish pleasure in using some new nugget gleaned from one of his books to disconcert the resident scholars at his court. Hosting the occasional dinner was the only social activity he undertook with any regularity. The emperor was in every aspect a lonely man, but he made the best of things. When necessary, Tiberius still made decisions from a distance over basic matters of State such as the grain supply and standard foreign policy questions. But the important thing now was the succession. It would soon take place and must be settled once and for all. Like Augustus before him, Tiberius must rule from beyond the grave. It was time to set down in writing what, exactly, was to happen after his death. How did he envision the succession and the continuation of the dynasty? Who would be allowed to play a role? Certainly not Claudius, Caligula’s stuttering uncle. Tiberius shared his love of books, but in no way considered Claudius a contender for the succession. If it were up to him, in fact, Claudius would be kept in his library and shown to the outside world as little as possible. There was of course Caligula, who had sworn faith to Tiberius and was loved by the troops and the people. But the warmest spot in Tiberius’ heart was reserved for his grandson, Gemellus. Gemellus was a teenager by now, but his shoulders were not

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yet strong enough to bear the heavy yoke of power all on his own. Tiberius therefore named both him and Caligula as his heirs in his will. The emperor envisioned a future in which his adopted son and his only grandson, when they were old enough, would become partners in world dominion. Tiberius made Caligula swear to take good care of Gemellus after he was gone. It was a beautiful image, the young man making that solemn promise to his aging emperor and adoptive father, but too good to be true.

V THE LAST BREATH And so my prayer . . . to my fellow-­men, that, whenever I shall depart, their praise and kindly thoughts may still attend my deeds and the memories attached to my name. —­Tiberius1

1 Tiberius did not see his power decline until his physical strength began to diminish as well. Towards the end of his life he began to realize that Macro, the captain of his bodyguard, had lost interest in maintaining himself in his good graces, while doing his utmost to get into Caligula’s. Tiberius, now old and sick, was resigned. “You do well, indeed, to abandon the setting and hasten to the rising sun,”2 was his comment to the Praetorian Prefect. In the spring of 37 Tiberius fell ill while traveling in Campania. The party made a forced stop in Cerceii where, to everyone’s surprise, the emperor seemed to rally. He attended a military parade and intentionally showed himself a few times in public. But the recovery proved fleeting. A stabbing pain in his side forced him to retire with what developed into a steadily worsening flu. The party made a detour to one of the emperor’s villas in Misenum. Once there Tiberius, oddly enough, continued to act as though nothing were wrong. He wished all his daily routines to be maintained. No matter how sick he felt, he refused to lie down in bed. He so badly wanted to go back to Capri—­t hat 171

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was where he wanted to take his last breath. He even tried to fool his doctors by pretending to be better than he actually was. He was doing all in his feeble power to be able to take this one last trip, but the doctors had long since realized that the emperor’s end was near. Defeated, Tiberius finally took to his bed. The men who were with him at the end told of how the emperor ceremoniously removed his signet ring. All waited in suspense to see to whom he would symbolically hand it, but after awhile Tiberius coolly put it back on his own finger. He then fell asleep, and the watchers left the room again. It was March 16 of the year 37. Tiberius Julius Caesar Augustus, born Tiberius Claudius Nero, died alone in his bed. So it was that the dead body of the second emperor of Rome made its final journey from Campania back home, just like that of his predecessor had done. To some extent this funeral procession even followed the exact route as that taken by Augustus’ all those years ago. The circumstances, however, were radically different this time. Tiberius’ reign had been long and for the most part stable, but he had never been popular. No leading citizens from the provincial towns turned up to carry the casket, as they had done for Augustus. Once more the procession was led by soldiers, but their emotions came closer to delight at the imminent accession of the new emperor than mournfulness for the old one whose body they were escorting back to Rome. On Macro’s orders they had already hailed Caligula in Misenum as the new emperor. All that was needed now was for the senators in Rome to do the same. Caligula had his reasons for walking ceremoniously at the head of the funeral procession, making a show of accepting the tributes and offerings of the soldiers along the way. After a journey of ten days the procession reached Bovillae, where Caligula decided to travel on ahead to Rome. The emperor’s body reached the capital that same night. It was



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just as Thrasyllus had predicted: Tiberius never saw Rome alive again. The Senate convened the following morning. Macro, with some reluctance but in accordance with law, read Tiberius’ will aloud. The senators, to whom it was evident that they were expected to embrace Caligula as their new leader, listened politely to the document in which the late emperor named both Caligula and Gemellus as his heirs. Then something remarkable happened: Roman citizens stormed the Senate chamber to declare their support for Caligula. Was the whole thing staged? Had the supporters been given their orders, perhaps even been paid, by Caligula? Gemellus was just a little boy and had no right whatsoever to claim anything at all, was the people’s cry. The embattled Senate issued a special statement declaring that all of Tiberius’ possessions were transferred to Caligula. Gemellus got nothing. It was not long before Caligula, in a calculated effort to buy popularity and satisfy as many people as possible, had gone through that entire inheritance. Citizens, soldiers, senators—­a ll profited from the generosity of Rome’s new emperor. Caligula even saw to it that the other heirs mentioned in Tiberius’ will got what had been bequeathed to them. He also had Livia’s will, declared invalid by Tiberius years ago, unearthed and her wishes finally respected. Tiberius’ state cremation took place a few days after that tumultuous Senate meeting. Caligula spoke favorably of his adoptive father but was careful to also pay homage to his more illustrious forefathers, Augustus and Germanicus. The people had cheered when the news of Tiberius’ death reached Rome, and in seemingly no time the wildest suggestions were circulating as to what they might do with the body. There were cries in the streets of “Tiberius to the Tiber!” Suetonius reported.3 Of course the emperor would not end up in the river: the imperial family would

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never allow such a thing. Tiberius’ ashes were interred in Augustus’ stately monument, alongside those of so many of his family members. And so, in silence, he disappeared from the world stage. As promised, Caligula adopted Tiberius’ beloved Gemellus. He imbued the boy with false hope by granting him the title princeps iuventutis, only to have him executed soon afterwards. And so, to end with the now-­familiar words of Tacitus, Caligula’s reign began with a crime—­t he first of many.

EPILOGUE

After Tiberius’ death Caligula, the son of Germanicus and Agrippina, became the third emperor of Rome. Upon ascending the throne he immediately took office as consul as well, and to everyone’s surprise named as co-­consul his forty-­six-­year-­old, stuttering uncle, Claudius. And so Claudius, no longer as young as he once was, entered the Senate and public life after all. He became Rome’s fourth emperor in 41 and reigned until 54. He appointed Pallas, Antonia’s former slave who had delivered that momentous letter to Capri and in so doing had won his freedom, as one of his highest-­ranking government officials. Caligula’s sister, Agrippina the Younger, married Claudius and later had him killed in order to put her son, Nero, on the throne. Nero remained in power until 68 and appointed no successor. The last emperor of the Julio-­Claudian dynasty, Nero went into history as a cruel sovereign—­a monster who reportedly even had his own mother eliminated. In fact, none of Augustus’ successors would achieve very good reputations. Tiberius got off easier in that respect than might have been expected from his popularity at his death in 37, not owing to any of his own accomplishments, but in contrast to his successor. For whereas Tiberius had been unpredictable, arrogant, and ruthless, Caligula would prove downright insane.

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AFTERWORD

What does power consist of? Who is worthy of being entrusted with rulership over others? The birth of the Roman Empire was Europe’s first introduction to absolute power on an immense scale. Nowadays we live in an era of implicit faith in democracy as the only right form of government. Autocracy, also known as dictatorship, is viewed with suspicion—­and with good reason. History has shown that absolute rulers tend to become unhinged and that their subjects inevitably pay the price. This partially accounts for the popular obsession with passing moral judgments on the emperors and kings who have played starring roles in the world’s history—­and, in the case of the Roman era, for the perennial interest in the “mad, bad, and dangerous” among the emperors. Interestingly enough the Romans themselves, from time immemorial, nurtured a great distrust of absolute rulers, whom they referred to as “tyrants” or “kings.” They knew of what they spoke, for Rome had begun as a kingdom. We have all heard of Romulus, the first king of Rome, who founded the city on the banks of the Tiber after a huge argument with his twin brother Remus—­or so legend has it. What followed was an era now referred to as the “Roman Kingdom” or Rome’s “regal period,” lasting from approximately the eighth to the sixth century BCE. Under the leadership of the kings Rome managed to transform herself from a motley collection of clay huts into an influential city. Tradition tells of Rome’s seven kings, who 177

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between them (some contributing more than others) organized the city and put in place the first municipal agencies. The earliest public spaces were constructed during their time, and a start was made at civil administration. But all the kingdom’s achievements were overshadowed by the outrages committed by the last king, Tarquinius Superbus, and his son, Sextus. Tarquinius Superbus had come to power unlawfully, by means of a coup, and was universally hated. But it was his lecherous, profligate son, Sextus, who finally went too far with the rape of Lucretia, the chaste wife of Lucius Tarquinius Collatinus. The laws of honor decreed that Lucretia, now that she had been violated, must take her own life; and when she had done so a relative, Lucius Junius Brutus, took it upon himself to avenge her death. With Lucretia’s corpse on its bier as his rallying point he gathered a crowd and ultimately hatched a rebellion. Tarquinius was deposed and driven from the city. So repulsive had his rule been that the Romans vowed never again to bow the knee to a king—­a tyrant. It was 509 BCE, and the republic had been born. To us that word represents a form of government with one elected president, but the Romans had devised their own, highly specific, means of dividing executive power. Heading up the State were two men, the consuls, who were answerable to one another, and under them two praetorians. These four posts alternated annually and could only be filled by election, a second safety measure to guard the city against sole rulership. It was also decreed that the already existing council of elders, the Senate, would henceforth be the highest executive body. The Roman Republic was to face its share of challenges, but the foundation had been laid for a form of government that would endure for centuries and be admired even up until the present day. It was during this republican era that Rome developed into a world­w ide empire. Julius Caesar set in motion the Roman Republic’s fall when he decided to cross the Rubicon with his troops in 49 BCE, almost half a millennium after that republic had

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been founded. He marched his loyal soldiers to Rome and attempted to establish a military dictatorship there. Despite Caesar’s many supporters in Rome, the majority of senators naturally had little interest in cooperating in the destruction of the very system to which they owed their influence. It was not long before accusations were circulating: Caesar was said to have royal ambitions. On March 15, 44 BCE those ambitions proved fatal when he was stabbed twenty-­t hree times with knives by conspiring senators. Caesar had been a brilliant and charismatic general, but his most consequential act, in terms of its impact on the course of history, was the posthumous adoption of his great-­ nephew, Gaius Octavius, who became known to the world as Augustus. Caesar had made the attempt, but it was Augustus who accomplished that which had been the goal of both men: the founding of a hereditary monarchy. 27 BCE is traditionally held to be the birth-­year of the Roman Empire. That was the year in which Augustus deferentially returned his special powers to the Senate in Rome, only to be honored with more or less permanent power and the title “Augustus,” usually translated as “the exalted one.” But the accompanying assumption that the Roman people suddenly changed their form of government from a republic to a monarchy in that year, and were aware of doing so, is completely without foundation. There was no question at all of a new, stable form of government in 27 BCE. Augustus had defeated Marc Antony and Cleopatra in 31 BCE and had emerged from those tumultuous days virtually unrivaled as the most powerful man in Rome; but there were difficult times ahead. His situation was precarious, and remained so during those early years. The struggle to solidify his position engaged all his efforts. It was during this transitional phase that Tiberius began to play a role in history, because Augustus’ succession politics, with its clearly expressed goal of founding a dynasty, had a defining influence on finding stable contours for his new government.

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Augustus’ provisions prevented an internal power struggle or new civil war from breaking out when he died. And it was really not until then—­when Augustus took his last breath on August 19 of the year 14—­that the Julio-­Claudian dynasty was established. There could be no empire without the hereditary transfer of power, and there could be no dynasty without a successor. And yet that successor’s fame has always paled in comparison to that of his illustrious forebears. Despite his unique position in the history of the Roman Empire, despite the turbulent era through which he lived, Tiberius has never stood at the center of posterity’s interest, but on the sidelines. Nowadays most people know Tiberius as the uncongenial character from the 1980s hit series I, Claudius. Little is generally known of his life, especially the years before he ascended the throne. That can be ascribed in part to his having remained a secondary figure for so long, but primarily to the way his excesses and exorbitant behavior in the latter part of his life have appealed to the modern imagination. Tiberius is the emperor who “sits on the narrow rock of Capri with his herd of Chaldaeans [astrologers],”1 as Juvenal so evocatively put it. A luxurious seaside villa in Sperlonga, where Tiberius dined with friends in a waterfront cave ornamented with statues; a second exorbitant palace on exotic Capri, where, according to the Roman historians Suetonius, Tacitus, and Cassius Dio, he indulged in the greatest depravity: the image of Tiberius as a sort of ancient Berlusconi forces itself unavoidably upon the modern reader’s mind. Tarver, one modern historian who has tackled Tiberius’ life and times, writes in his Tiberius the Tyrant: “Tacitus has so skillfully distorted the historical portrait of Tiberius that the man, who is called by the great German historian, Mommsen, ‘the ablest of the Roman emperors,’ should have become the recognized type of all that is most evil in a

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leader and left a name which is seldom mentioned without an expression of detestation.”2 It has in fact primarily been Tacitus, the historian who from the vantage point of the Rome of the Flavian emperors (69–­96) looked back with longing to the republic, who has determined how Tiberius’ era is viewed. And it is certainly so that the works of the ancient historians, Tacitus included, can be significantly biased by their personal opinions. In writing this book I have nonetheless made grateful and abundant use of the works of Suetonius, Tacitus, and Cassius Dio. Leaving aside the spectacular cruelties and peculiarities, they wrote of Tiberius often enough in more neutral terms. All three authors lived in a time in which Tiberius was already part of the past, in fact the distant past. But they cannot be held completely responsible for Tiberius’ unfavorable image: by the time of his death in 37 the second emperor’s popularity had already reached rock bottom. The only contemporary source available on Tiberius’ era is Velleius Paterculus. Velleius served in Tiberius’ army and must have seen him in person. His work has long been dismissed as “suspect” due to its outspoken approval of Tiberius—­it almost reads as an ode to the emperor—­but despite this partiality I found the book, which covers the history of Rome from her mud hut beginnings to Velleius’ own time, a useful source as well. It is the only true eyewitness account that has come down to us from Tiberius’ day. The popular perception of Tiberius has varied over time. Suetonius wrote positively about the first years of his reign, even comparing them to Augustus’ final years. Not until the time of Emperor Domitian (81–­96) did emphasis come to be laid on the years of irrational persecutions and the endless charges of treason and lèse-majesté. It was then, too, that the story that Tiberius became emperor out of necessity, that Augustus only appointed him because he was the only candidate left, became popular.

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Many suspect that the dissemination and no doubt dramatization of these stories was helped along by Agrippina the Younger. The book she wrote about herself and her family was initially banned but survived nonetheless and was published. This book was extant and in fact well known by the time the Flavians came to power—­far better known than the autobiography that Tiberius was reported to have written. It was in this era, and this atmosphere, that Tacitus wrote his work. He was a senator himself and no doubt had access to a wealth of sources, including original documents, from the early days of the principate. He could even speak personally to the fathers and grandfathers of his fellow senators, who had been alive in Tiberius’ day. In the end all influential historians, except Velleius, portray Tiberius as a man little deserving of sympathy—­and such has been the prevailing image of the second Roman emperor throughout the ages. It was not until the end of the nineteenth century that he underwent a modicum of rehabilitation, be that only in academic circles, and the tendency continued into the twentieth century. Barbara Levick’s scholarly Tiberius the Politician, in particular, has made a significant contribution to a more nuanced knowledge of Tiberius and his administration. I have made grateful use of her detailed research in this book. History has judged Tiberius harshly. But at the same time there is much that cannot be denied: the man was exceptionally self-­willed and incurred much anger and dislike accordingly. He was the most successful Roman general of his time, yet opted for a life on remote islands. Power did not initially seem to interest him much. At the zenith of his military career, when the opportunity arose to set himself up as Augustus’ successor, he left for Rhodes instead. Once he had become the most powerful man in the world, he again chose a life in seclusion. Yet at the same time he was an eminently capable leader, not only as a general in Augustus’

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service but also in his own right, as an emperor tasked with leading a worldwide empire. The fall of Sejanus is often viewed as a turning point in Tiberius’ life and career. But in his biography, it is Tiberius’ departure for Capri to which Suetonius points as the watershed. After that time the emperor finally saw his way clear to give “free rein at once to all the vices which he had for a long time ill concealed,” the historian claims.3 It is at this point that the entire tone of Suetonius’ narrative alters. Suddenly Tiberius is no longer thrifty and modest but greedy and a fake—­a dissembler who had pretended to be moderate but in reality never was. As a civic planner, a creator of buildings and squares and temples, he had never amounted to much, and he never organized public theater performances or gladiator games either. Tacitus, too, saw Tiberius as essentially bad—­a man who had long managed to suppress his depraved nature, but whose inner monstrosity came to the fore towards the end of his reign. As sole ruler, Tiberius was finally able to drop his mask and give in to all the perverse propensities he had repressed up until then—­t hat was how Tacitus viewed it. And thus, despite the evidence of his relatively long and stable reign, Tiberius has come to be bracketed together with infamous names from the Julio-­Claudian dynasty: Caligula and Nero, emperors who went down in history as being completely incompetent, if not thoroughgoing idiots. Tiberius ruled over Rome for twenty-­t hree years, from 14 to 37. He succeeded Augustus in a relatively problem-free, hereditary transition and thus became the first man in history to have the consolidated, unbridled power over the Roman Empire, stretching from northern Africa to the southern Netherlands and from Spain to Syria, handed to him on a silver platter. He was stubborn, introverted, miserly, smug, somber, arrogant, and reticent, but also intelligent and loyal. An enigmatic man with a complex personality, Tiberius

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became emperor reluctantly—­one might almost say, against his better judgment. Only much later in history would the length of Tiberius’ reign be rivaled, and then by those of emperors traditionally labeled “good” such as Hadrian, Antoninus Pius, and Marcus Aurelius. But although this book’s aim is to bring Tiberius out of history’s shadow, it is not to pronounce a new moral judgment. Such a thing is all but impossible in any case, today’s standards being so radically different than those of his time. And anyone taking a clear-­eyed look at history is forced to wonder if all such judgments are not hopelessly arbitrary anyway, for each and every one of the emperors we label as “good” were guilty of crimes we would now find appalling. Augustus, too, dirtied his hands more than once on his way to the top. Yet both he and Tiberius—­who has been labeled a cruel emperor, perhaps correctly so—­a lways took care to see that Rome was supplied with grain and that its infrastructure remained in good working order, two instances of Tiberius’ all-­embracing emulation of his adoptive father. The biggest difference between the two was not that Tiberius was “bad” and Augustus “good,” but that Tiberius disregarded public opinion. Was Tiberius a good emperor, a cruel emperor, or a “mad, bad, and dangerous” emperor? Even on the basis of the sources, which are predominantly hostile to him, an argument can be made for all three. Far more interesting is his position as the second emperor of Rome, the successor and first heir to the Empire. The moment in which absolute power was successfully transferred to him may, in hindsight, have been one of the most crucial moments in the history of the Roman Empire.

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FAMILY TREE OF THE JULIO-­CLAUDIAN DYNASTY *Family Tree of the Julio-Claudian Dynasty C. Julius Caesar x Aurelia Cotta

C. Julius Caesar

Scribonia x Augustus (C. Octavius) x Livia Drusilla x Tiberius Senior

Vipsania x Tiberius Marcus Agrippa x Julia

Gaius Caesar

Lucius Caesar

Agrippa Postumus

Agrippina x Germanicus

Julia the Younger Drusus x Livilla

Julia Drusi Caesaris Tiberius Gemellus Nero Julius Caesar

Drusus Julius Caesar

Caligula (C. Julius Caesar)

Drusilla

*This is an abridged outline of those born or married into the Julio-Claudian family, principally ones who play important roles in the narrative.

186

Julia Livilla

M. Atius Balbus x Julia Caesaris minor C. Octavius x Atia Balba

Marcus Antonius x Octavia x C. Claudius Marcellus

Drusus x Antonia (2)

Claudia Marcella (I)

Claudia Marcella (2)

Marcellus

Claudius Antonia (I) x L. Domitius Ahenobarbus

Domitia (I)

Domitia (2)

Germanicus Gemellus Agrippina x Gn. Domitius Ahenobarbus Nero (L. Domitius Ahenobarbus)

187

bold = emperor of Rome = intended successor of Rome x = married to = child of

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NOTES

PREFACE 1

Mierow, “Two Roman Emperors,” 269–­70.

PROLOGUE 1 Juvenal, Satire 10.84–­85, from Juvenal and Persius (ed. and trans. Braund).

I. THE LONGEST BREATH 1 Suetonius, Tiberius 21.6, from Lives of the Caesars, Volume 1 (trans. Rolfe). 2 Horace, Carmen Saeculare (Hymn for a New Age) 60–­6 4 from Odes and Epodes (ed. and trans. Rudd). 3 Virgil, Aeneid 6.869–­885, from Eclogues. Georgics. Aeneid: Books 1–­6 (trans. Fairclough). 4 Augustus, Res Gestae 29.2, from Res gestae divi Augusti (trans. Cooley). 5 Velleius Paterculus, History of Rome 2.99.2, from Compendium of Roman History. Res Gestae Divi Augusti (trans. Shipley). 6 Gellius, Attic Nights 15.7.3 (trans. Rolfe).

189

190 Notes

7 Velleius Paterculus, History of Rome 2.101.1–­2, from Compendium of Roman History. Res Gestae Divi Augusti (trans. Shipley). 8 Velleius Paterculus, History of Rome 2.102.3, from Compendium of Roman History. Res Gestae Divi Augusti (trans. Shipley). 9 Velleius Paterculus, History of Rome 2.119.3, from Compendium of Roman History. Res Gestae Divi Augusti (trans. Shipley). 10 Augustus, Res Gestae 35.2, from Augustus, Res gestae divi Augusti (trans. Cooley). 11 Augustus, Res Gestae 3.1, from Augustus, Res gestae divi Augusti (trans. Cooley). 12 Augustus, Res Gestae 25, from Augustus, Res gestae divi Augusti (trans. Cooley).

II. THE SUCCESSION 1 Suetonius, The Deified Augustus, 100.1, from Lives of the Caesars, Volume 1 (trans. Rolfe). 2

Velleius Paterculus, History of Rome 2.124.1, from Compendium of Roman History. Res Gestae Divi Augusti (trans. Shipley).

3 Cicero, Epistulae ad Atticum 2.8.2, from Letters to Atticus, Volume 1 (trans. Shackleton Bailey). 4 Suetonius, The Deified Augustus 99.1, from Lives of the Caesars, Volume 1 (trans. Rolfe).

III. OUT OF THE SHADOWS 1 Suetonius, Tiberius 59.2, from Lives of the Caesars, Volume 1 (trans. Rolfe). 2 Translation from Levick, Tiberius the Politician, 131. Cf. Tacitus, Annals 4.52.3ff.; Suetonius, Tiberius 53.1.

Notes 191

3

Pliny the Elder, Naturalis Historia 28.5.23, from Natural History, Volume VIII: Books 28–32 (trans. Jones).

IV. THE FALL 1 Juvenal, Satire 10.85–­86, from Juvenal and Persius (ed. and trans. Braund).

V. THE LAST BREATH 1 Tacitus, Annals 4.38.3, from Annals: Books 4–­6, 11–­12 (trans. Jackson). 2

Dio Cassius, Roman History 58.28.4, from Roman History, Volume VII: Books 56–­60 (trans. Cary and Foster).

3 Suetonius, Tiberius 75.1, from Lives of the Caesars, Volume 1 (trans. Rolfe).

AFTERWORD 1 Juvenal, Satire 10.92–­94, from Juvenal and Persius (ed. and trans. Braund). 2 Tarver, Tiberius the Tyrant, 84. 3 Suetonius, Tiberius 42.1, from Lives of the Caesars, Volume I (trans. Rolfe).

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SELECT BIBLIOGR APHY

CLASSICAL SOURCES Augustus. Res gestae divi Augusti: Text, Translation, and Commentary. Trans. A. E. Cooley. New York 2009. Cicero. Letters to Atticus, Volume I. Ed. and trans. by D. R. Shackleton Bailey. Loeb Classical Library 7. Cambridge, Mass., 1999. Dio Cassius. Roman History, Volume VII: Books 56–­60. Trans. E. Cary and H. B. Foster. Loeb Classical Library 175. Cambridge, Mass., 1924. Gellius. Attic Nights, Volume III: Books 14–­20. Trans. J. C. Rolfe. Loeb Classical Library 212. Cambridge, Mass., 1927. Horace. Odes and Epodes. Ed. and trans. N. Rudd. Loeb Classical Library 33. Cambridge, Mass., 2004. Juvenal,  Persius.  Juvenal and Persius.  Ed. and trans.  S.  M. Braund. Loeb Classical Library 91. Cambridge, Mass., 2004. Pliny. Natural History, Volume VIII: Books 28–32. Trans. by W. H. S. Jones. Loeb Classical Library 418. Cambridge, Mass., 1963. Suetonius. Lives of the Caesars, Volume I. Julius. Augustus. Tiberius. Gaius. Caligula. Trans. J.  C. Rolfe. Intro. K. R. Bradley. Loeb Classical Library 31. Cambridge, Mass., 1914. Tacitus. Annals: Books 4–­6, 11–­12. Trans. J. Jackson. Loeb Classical Library 312. Cambridge, Mass., 1937. 193

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Select Bibliography

Velleius Paterculus. Compendium of Roman History. Res Gestae Divi Augusti. Trans. F. W. Shipley. Loeb Classical Library 152. Cambridge, Mass., 1924. Virgil. Eclogues. Georgics. Aeneid: Books 1–­6. Trans. H. Rushton Fairclough. Rev. G. P. Goold. Loeb Classical Library 63. Cambridge, Mass., 1916.

MODERN SOURCES Baker, G. P. Tiberius Caesar. New York 1928. Bellemore, J. “The Wife of Sejanus.” Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 109 (1995): 255–­66. Bert Lott, J. Death and Dynasty in Early Imperial Rome: Key Sources with Text, Translation and Commentary. New York 2012. Birch, R. A. “The Settlement of 26 June, A.D. 4 and Its Aftermath.” Classical Quarterly 31, no. 2 (1981): 443–­56. Bird, H. W. L. “Aelius Sejanus and His Political Significance.” Latomus 28, no. 1 (1969): 61–­98. Bowersock, G. “Augustus and the East: The Problem of the Succession.” In Caesar Augustus: Seven Aspects, edited by F. Millar and E. Segal, 169–­88. Oxford 1984. Braund, D. Augustus to Nero: A Sourcebook on Roman History, 31 BC–­A D 68. London 1985. Caratini, R. Tibère, ou La Mélancolie d’être. Neuilly-­sur-­ Seine 2002. Champlin, E. “Tiberius the Wise.” Historia: Zeitschrift für Alte Geschichte, Bd. 57/4 (2008): 408–­25. Eck, W., A. Caballos, and F. Fernandez. Das Senatus Consultum des Cn. Pisone Patre. Munich 1996. Ehrenberg, V., and A. H. M. Jones, eds. Documents Illustrating the Reigns of Augustus and Tiberius. Oxford 1970. Goldsworthy, A. Augustus: First Emperor of Rome. New Haven 2015. Grant, M. Aspects of the Principate of Tiberius. New York 1950.



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Krappe, A. H. “Tiberius and Thrasyllus.” The American Journal of Philology 48, no. 4 (1927): 359–­66. Levick, B. M. “Tiberius’ Retirement to Rhodes in 6 B.C.” Latomus 31, no. 3 (1972): 779–­813. Levick, B. Tiberius the Politician. London 1999. Marsh, F. B. The Reign of Tiberius. Oxford 1931. Mierow, C. C. “Two Roman Emperors.” The Classical Journal 36, no. 5 (1941): 259–­74. Ober, J. “Tiberius and the Political Testament of Augustus.” Historia: Zeitschrift für Alte Geschichte, Bd. 31/3 (1982): 306–­28. Oost, S. I. “The Career of M. Antonius Pallas.” The American Journal of Philology 79, no. 2 (1958): 113–­39. Rapke, I. T. “Tiberius, Piso and Germanicus.” Acta Classica 25 (1982): 61–­69. Rogers, R. S. Studies in the Reign of Tiberius. Baltimore 1943. Seager, R. Tiberius. London 1972. Shotter, D. C. A. Tiberius Caesar. London 1992. Smith, C. E. Tiberius and the Roman Empire. Oxford 1942. Syme, R. “Sejanus on the Aventine.” Hermes 84, no. 3 (1956): 257–­66. Syme, R. The Augustan Aristocracy. Oxford 1989. Tarver, J. C. Tiberius the Tyrant. Westminster 1902. Thiel, J. H. “Kaiser Tiberius. Ein Beitrag zum Verständnis seiner Persönlichkeit.” Mnemosyne 3, no. 3 (1936): 177–­218. Toynbee, J.  M. C. Death and Burial in the Roman World. Baltimore 1996. Weller, J. A. “Tacitus and Tiberius’ Rhodian Exile.” Phoenix 12, no. 1 (1958): 31–­35. Yavetz, Z. Tiberius, der traurige Kaiser. Eine Biographie. Trans. D. Ajchenrand. Munich 1999.

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INDEX Actium, 31, 90 Addon, 74 aedile, 23–­24, 29 Aemilia Lepida, 70–­71, 82, 148 Aemilius Lepidus, 70 Aeneas, 31 Aeneid, 31 Agrippa (Marcus Vipsanius), 1–­3, 6, 15, 23, 29–­34, 37–­4 4, 47–­48, 51, 54, 58, 90, 110, 119, 134, 150, 164 Agrippa Postumus, 42, 71–­73, 76–­77, 79–­83, 92–­93, 99, 106–­7, 110, 147 Agrippina (the Elder), 29, 39, 112–­13, 115–­19, 121–­26, 128–­29, 135–­37, 139–­ 44, 147–­48, 150, 152–­53, 168–­69, 175 Alexander Helios, 40 Antioch, 119–­21, 124–­27 Antonia, 40, 42, 46, 48, 67, 70–­71, 75–­76, 126, 153–­ 56, 167, 175 Apicata, 139, 164–­65, 167 Appius Claudius Caecus, 19 Aqua Virgo, 1 Archelaus of Cappadocia, 11 Armenia, 54, 74 Arminius, 86–­87, 89, 114, 117 Arruntius, 152, 153 Ars Amatoria, 83 Artagira, 74

Aruseius, 152–­53, 163 Asia Minor, 11 Athens, 39, 54, 119 Augusta Praetoria (Aosta), 27 Augusta Taurinorum (Turin), 27 Augusta Vindelicum (Augsburg), 28 Augustus, 1–­8, 10–­53, 55–­79, 81–­86, 89–­93, 95–­101, 103–­6, 108–­13, 115, 117, 120, 122, 133, 136, 140, 143, 145–­49, 154, 164, 168–­69, 172–­75 Baths of Agrippa, 134 Battle of Philippi, 17–­19, 61 Bay of Naples, 95–­96, 143 Beneventum, 97 Bonn, 43 Brigantinus Lake (Lake Constance), 27 Brindisi, 96, 117, 126 Bructeri, 87, 114 Brutus, 17–­18, 137–­38 Caligula (Gaius), 115–­16, 133, 135, 144–­45, 147, 149, 151–­53, 156–­57, 162, 165, 169–­75 Callipedes, 108, 112 Campania, 19, 58, 64, 133, 142–­43, 154, 171–­72 Campus Martius, 105 197

198 Index Cantabria, 14 Capitoline Hill, 2, 4 Capri, 97, 141–­4 4, 146, 149, 151–­52, 154–­57, 160, 162, 164–­67, 169, 171, 175 Carmen Saeculare, 4 Cassius, 17–­18, 137–­38 Castra Pretoria, 130, 161 Catiline, 164 Centennial, 2–­6, 8, 38 Chatti, 46, 87 Cherusci, 86 Cicero, 18, 95, 164 Cimbri, 9 Claudia Pulchra, 140 Claudianus (Marcus Livius Drusus), 17, 19 Claudius (the later emperor), 46, 48, 67, 70–­71, 76, 82, 126, 131–­32, 149, 152, 169, 175 Claudius Pulcher (Livia’s father), 19 Clemens, 106–­8, 110 Cleopatra Selene, 40 Cleopatra, 6, 16, 31, 40, 63, 121 College of Fifteen, 3 comitia centuriata, 110 Cremutius Cordus, 130–­37 curriculum vitae, 53 cursus honorum, 14–­23 damnatio memoriae, 168 Danube, 61, 78, 85, 112 divus filius, 109 Dolabella, 140 Domitius Afer, 140 Domitius Ahenobarbus, 148 Drusus (Tiberius’ brother), 4, 13, 16, 21–­22, 26–­29, 42–­51, 53, 62–­63, 67, 69–­71, 76, 82, 125 Drusus Julius Caesar (Caligula’s

brother), 133, 135, 144, 148, 153, 168–­69 Drusus the Younger (Tiberius’ son), 45, 48, 55, 58, 70, 76–­77, 91, 98, 112, 114, 116, 126, 129–­33, 135–­36, 139, 148, 162, 165–­68 Egypt, 10, 33, 112–­13, 120–­22 Elbe, 49, 86, 89 Ennius, 22 Eporedia (Ivrea), 27 equites, 104 Esquiline Hill, 70 Fannius Cepio, 12 Field of Mars, 1, 40, 49, 149–­50 Forum of Augustus, 62 Forum of Julius Caesar, 62 Forum Romanum, 2–­3, 8, 10–­11, 62–­63, 82, 92, 105, 157 Fulvia, 40 Gaius Caesar (Julia the Elder’s son), 33, 37–­38, 42, 50–­53, 56, 58–­59, 65–­77, 80, 99, 104 Gaius Furnius, 3 Gaius Octavius (Augustus’ father), 95–­96 Gallic Wars, 9–­10 Gaul, 9–­11, 17, 26–­27, 33, 43, 45–­46, 50, 65, 67–­68, 78 Gemonian Stairs, 164 Germania, 10, 46, 50, 57, 77–­79, 84–­86, 91, 106, 117, 140 Germanic War, 50 Germanicus Gemellus, 128 Germanicus, 48, 67, 70–­71, 76–­78, 81–­82, 84, 91–­92, 98, 112–­30, 132–­33, 135,

Index 199 137, 139, 143–­4 4, 150–­51, 157, 168, 173, 175 Golden Age, 8 Graecinius Laco, 158, 160 Hannibal, 9 Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus), 4, 8, 28, 31 Ides of March, 17 imperium (proconsulare maius), 25, 47, 53, 57, 66, 91, 113, 117–­18, 121, 149, 152 Julia Agrippina (Agrippina’s daughter, Agrippina the Younger), 116 Julia Augusta (Livia), 100, 105, 145 Julia Drusi Caesaris (Daughter of Drusus and Livilla), 136 Julia Drusilla (Agrippina’s daughter), 119, 135 Julia Livilla (Agrippina’s daughter), 119, 135, 140 Julia the Elder (Augustus’ daughter), 3–­4, 15–­16, 21–­23, 26, 29–­34, 37, 39, 41–­43, 45–­46, 48, 51–­52, 55, 57, 61, 63–­6 4, 66, 70–­72, 76, 79–­80, 83, 106–­ 7, 110, 119, 147, 150 Julia the Younger (Augustus’ granddaughter), 33, 71, 80–­83, 148 Julius Caesar (Gaius), 6–­7, 9, 15, 17–­18, 30–­31, 33, 35, 43, 45, 61, 90–­92, 99–­100, 137–­38 Julus Antony, 63–­6 4 Junius Silanus, 3, 83, 118 Lares, 52 Lepidus, 17, 70 Lesbos, 30, 32, 58, 119

Libo (Marcus Scribonius Libo Drusus), 110–­11 Licinius Murena, 12–­13, 25 Livia, 3, 11, 15–­23, 28–­29, 33, 36–­38, 41, 49, 51–­52, 55, 58, 60, 62, 67, 69–­71, 75–­78, 97–­101, 103–­5, 126, 128–­29, 141–­42, 145–­ 48, 153, 173 Livilla (Antonia’s daughter), 67, 70–­71, 116–­17, 128, 132, 136, 139, 148–­49, 164–­65, 167–­68 Livius Andronicus, 22 Lucius Aemilius Paullus, 71, 80–­81 Lucius Antony, 18–­19 Lucius Caesar (Julia the Elders’ son), 3, 33, 37–­38, 42, 50–­52, 58–­59, 61, 65–­66, 70–­75, 77, 80, 99 Lucius Nonius Asprenas, 89 Ludi Saeculares, 2 Lugdunum, 45–­46 Luna (Carrara), 61 Lycia, 75 Macedonia, 12, 96 Macro, Naevius Sertorius, 157–­58, 160–­61, 163, 166, 171–­73 Maecenas, 13, 70 maiestas, 137 Mainz, 43 Marc Antony, 6–­7, 16–­20, 31, 35, 40–­41, 63, 70, 119, 121, 127, 154–­55 Marcella, 31–­32, 63 Marcellus, 2, 14–­16, 22–­24, 26, 28–­34, 38–­39, 41, 55–­56, 58, 71, 99 Marcomanni, 78–­79 Marcus Lollius, 27, 67

200 Index Marcus Primus, 12 Maroboduus, 78–­80, 86, 88 matrone, 3, 41, 145 Memmius Regulus, 158, 160–­63 Misenum, 171–­72 Naples, 81, 95–­97, 143 Nero Julius Caesar (Caligula’s brother), 133, 136, 144, 147–­48, 153, 168 Nijmegen, 43 Nola, 95–­97, 101, 103, 106, 145 Octavia, 2–­3, 14–­16, 22, 26, 31–­32, 40–­42, 63, 76, 96, 148, 154 Octavius (the later emperor Augustus), 6, 30 Odryssa, 12 Odysseus, 134 Oppidum Obiorum, 116 optimates, 16 Orontes, 119, 124 Ostia, 53, 58, 69, 97, 106–­7 ovatio, 48, 51, 130 Ovid, 21, 26, 62, 82–­83, 103, 113, 125, 156 Palatine (Hill), 3–­5, 16, 20–­22, 41, 62, 64, 67, 75, 105, 108, 158–­61, 163 palla, 3 Pallas, 154–­56, 175 Pandateria, 72, 148 Pannonia, 80–­82, 84, 86, 91, 112, 131 Pannonian War, 43 Parthia, 35–­36, 38, 122 Perusia (Perugia), 18 Piso (Gnaeus Calpurnius), 50, 118–­28, 132 Planasia, 82, 92–­93, 95, 101, 106–­7

Plancina, 121, 123–­25, 128–­29 plebs, 150 pomerium, 50, 104 Pompey (the Great), 2, 7, 19, 70, 129 Pontia (Ponza), 148 populares, 16–­17 Praefectus Aegypti, 112 Praeneste (Palestrina), 19 Praetor Urbanus, 46 Praetorian Guard, 104, 129–­30, 139, 160, 166 Praetorian Prefect, 103, 113, 131, 137, 143, 148, 158, 171 prefectus vigilum, 157–­58 princeps iuventutis, 56, 59, 74, 174 princeps, 3, 6–­7, 12–­14, 23, 44, 46, 103, 108, 113 proscription list, 17–­19 Ptolemaeus Philadelphus, 40 Publius Sulpicius Quirinius, 67 quaestor, 14, 23, 81 Raetia, 27–­29, 38 Rhine, 9–­10, 26, 43, 61, 78, 85, 87–­89, 91, 112, 114–­15, 118 Rhodes, 54–­55, 57, 59–­61, 65, 68–­69, 98, 122, 142, 145, 152 Romanization, 45 Romulus, 5, 32 Sacra Via, 4 Saepta Julia, 1 Sanquinius, 152–­153, 163 Scribonia, 15, 20–­21, 64, 79–­80, 106, 110–­11, 150 Sejanus (Lucius Aelius), 67, 103–­4, 112, 129–­33, 135–­ 45, 147–­53, 156–­68 Seleucia, 124 Sextus Pompey, 19–­20 Sicily, 19, 21

Index 201 Spain, 11, 14–­15, 70 Sperlonga, 133, 134, 141, 143 Strabo, 103–­4 Suetonius, 42, 95, 97, 173 Sugambri, 46 Syria, 11, 30, 67, 118–­19, 122–­ 25, 127, 158, 166

tribunicia potestas, 25, 51, 53, 57, 59, 66, 77, 130, 149, 159–­60 triclinium, 52 tristissimus hominum, 146 triumvirate, 17–­18, 23, 47, 121 triumviri, 17–­18

tabularium, 52 Tacitus, 174 Temple of Apollo, 2–­3, 5, 159–­60 Temple of Concordia, 50, 163 Temple of Mars (Ultor), 35, 61 Teutoburg Forest, 87, 89, 91, 114–­15 Teutones, 9 Theater of Pompey, 2, 137–­38 Theodorus of Gadara, 54–­55 Thrace, 12 Thrasyllus of Alexandria, 60, 152, 156–­57, 173 Tiberius (Claudius Nero, the later emperor Tiberius Julius Caesar Augustus), 1, 4, 10–­11, 13–­23, 25–­29, 34, 36–­38, 42–­46, 48–­71, 73, 75–­82, 84–­86, 89, 91, 93, 97–­100, 103–­5, 107–­ 13, 116–­20, 122, 125–­29, 131–­37, 139–­75 Tiberius Gemellus, 128, 139, 148–­49, 153, 156, 169–­70, 173–­74 Tiberius senior (Tiberius Claudius Nero), 10, 16–­20 Titius Sabinus, 143 toga praetexta, 52 toga virilis (toga of manhood), 11, 22, 52–­53, 61, 70, 72–­73, 79, 136, 156–­57 Tomis, 83 Tralles, 11 Tres Galliae, 45

Varus (Quinctilius), 38, 84–­89, 91, 114, 140 Velleius Paterculus, 67, 74, 81, 88, 95 Vestal Virgins, 3, 92, 98, 101, 103, 105 Via Appia, 97, 101, 126 Via Flaminia, 1, 26, 39, 49 Vicus Apollinis, 4 vigiles, 158, 160–­61, 163 Vindelicia, 27 Vindonissa, 26 Vipsania Agrippina (Tiberius’ first wife), 15, 34, 42–­43, 45, 132 Virgil, 31–­32 Vonones, 122–­23 Xanten, 43