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The Life of Nero by Suetonius

Executive summary

Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus was born Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus in 37 AD. He was the fifth Roman emperor and the final emperor of the Julio-Claudian dynasty, reigning from 54 AD until his suicide in 68, aged just 33.

He was the son of Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus and Agrippina the Younger, one of the daughters of Germanicus and sister to the emperor Gaius (Caligula). After Caligula was assassinated in 41 AD, Germanicus’ brother Claudius – who was Agrippina’s uncle – took the throne. Claudius took his niece as his fourth wife in 49 AD.

A year later Claudius was persuaded by Agrippina to adopt her son, Lucius Domitius, and make him his heir. Nero was 13 when he was adopted. When Claudius died (in October 54) it was widely believed that Agrippina poisoned him to ensure her son succeeded to the throne before Claudius’s biological son by his third wife, Britannicus, came of age and presented a more natural successor. A year later, Nero had Britannicus murdered to secure his position.

Nero was 17 when he came to the throne. In the early years of his reign Nero was advised and guided by his mother Agrippina, his tutor Seneca the Younger, and his praetorian prefect Sextus Afranius Burrus and ruled moderately and well. But he soon sought to rule independently and to rid himself of restraining influences. His power struggle with his mother was eventually resolved when he had her murdered in 59. Both the murder of Britannicus and Agrippina have elements of farcical ineptitude (see below).

Nero was popular with the members of his Praetorian Guard and lower-class commoners in Rome and its provinces. He organised lavish games, he periodically gave money to the people, he carried out modernising building works. But he was deeply resented by the Roman aristocracy.

The historically closest sources we have – Suetonius in his Lives and Tacitus in his Annals – describe Nero as tyrannical, self-indulgent, and debauched. But then, they were all written under the aegis of the dynasty which succeeded the Julio-Claudians – the Flavians – and so, to some extent, represent propaganda for that dynasty with the aim of rubbishing the emperors which came before.

After his increasingly debauched, spendthrift and reckless rule alienated the aristocracy, Nero was declared a public enemy by the Roman Senate, and forced to flee Rome to a country estate where he committed suicide at the age of 33.

Nero’s death led to chaos as three military commanders vied for supremacy, in what came to be called the Year of Four Emperors, AD 69, the rivals being Galba, Otho, Vitellius, and Vespasian.

I’ve reviewed Suetonius’s biographies of the four emperors who preceded Nero, namely Augustus, Tiberius, Gaius (Caligula) and Claudius and along the way given several summaries of Suetonius’s approach. This is to give a brisk overview of his subject’s biography before moving on to look at specific areas of the emperor’s person – his appearance, family history and relationships, personality, quotes, the omens which surrounded his birth and death, and much other gossip and scandal.

Suetonius’s life of Nero is 57 (short) chapters long. It can be divided into five sections or parts:

the first five chapters describe Nero’s male forebears among the Ahenobarbi family
chapters 6 to 19 describe ‘Nero’s less atrocious acts’, many actually deserving praise
then, at chapter 20, Suetonius lets rip and commences a lurid account of Nero’s ‘follies and crimes’
chapters 40 to 49 give a long drawn-out description of his moral collapse following the revolt in Gaul, his abandonment by servants and friends, his flight from Rome and suicide
50 to 57 describe his funeral and the aftermath

Suetonius’s life of Nero

The first five chapters describe Nero’s make forebears from the Ahenobarbi family:

Nero’s great-great-great grandfather, Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus, when tribune of the commons in 104 BC, was enraged at the priests for choosing someone else as pontifex maximus, so he transferred the right of filling vacancies in the priesthoods from the colleges themselves to the people in the Tribal Assembly (the law was subsequently repealed by Sulla). Having defeated the Allobroges and the Arverni in his consulship, he rode through the province on an elephant, attended by a throng of soldiers, in a kind of triumphal procession
His son, Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus (98 to 48 BC), when consul in 54 BC, tried to deprive Caesar of the command of the armies in Gaul. The senate appointed him to succeed Caesar as governor of further Gaul and when Caesar invaded Italy in 49, he was the only one of the aristocratic party who showed any energy or courage, organising the defense of Corfinium. When Corfinium was taken Caesar characteristically granted him clemency but he rejoined the aristocratic party. He was killed at the battle of Pharsalus and is mentioned in one of Cicero’s speeches as a principled example of the old Republic.
He left a son, Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus (died 31 BC) who was beyond all question better than the rest of the family. He was condemned among those involved in Caesar’s assassination and so went to join Brutus and Cassius. Upon their defeat he surrendered the republican fleet to Mark Antony. This Ahenobarbus successively held all the highest offices including consul in 32 BC. When the civil war between Augustus and Anthony broke out, he was appointed one of Antony’s lieutenants, but defected to Octavian just a few days before the decisive battle of Actium. Although Antony was upset by this betrayal, he still sent him all his gear, his friends and his attendants. (This incident is described in Plutarch’s Life of Anthony, chapter 63.) He died just a few days later.
Gnaeus had a son, Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus (49 BC to 25 AD) who was later well known for being named in Augustus’ will as the purchaser of his goods and chattels. He won the insignia of a triumph in the war in Germany. He gave a gladiatorial games so cruel that Augustus admonished him. He married Antonia the Elder (niece of emperor Augustus) and had a son:
This man, Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus (2 BC to 41 AD) was widely hated: while on the staff of Gaius Caesar out East he murdered one of his own freedmen for refusing to drink as much as he ordered. In a village on the Appian Way, suddenly whipping up his team, he purposely ran over and killed a boy. In the Roman Forum he gouged out the eye of a Roman knight for being too outspoken in chiding him. When praetor he defrauded the victors in the chariot races of their prizes. Just before the death of Tiberius he was charged with treason, adultery and incest with his sister Lepida, but escaped owing to the change of rulers. Domitius married his first cousin once removed, Agrippina the Younger, Caligula’s sister, after her thirteenth birthday in 28. He was far older than her at the time. Tiberius arranged the marriage. Nine years later his son by Agrippina, Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus, was born.

6. Nero was born at on 15 December 37, nine months after the death of Tiberius. When shown the baby his father is supposed to have remarked that ‘any child born to him and Agrippina was bound to have a detestable nature and become a public danger’. At the age of three Nero’s father died but his fellow heir Gaius seized all the property.

He had a troubled upbringing in this cursed family. First Gaius banished his mother so that young Domitius was brought up in relative poverty in the house of his aunt Lepida, who assigned him as tutors a dancer and a barber. But when Claudius became emperor, in 41, he restored to Nero his father’s legacy added to it, and recalled his mother from exile.

There is a widely attested legend that Claudius’s third wife, Messalina, came to regard the boy Nero as a rival to her own son, Britannicus, and so sent assassins to murder him, and that they were at the cradle when they were scared away by a snake which suddenly appeared from under his pillow. [A clear copy of the legend of Hercules strangling snakes as a baby.]

[After Claudius had Messalina executed, in 48 AD, for bigamously marrying the senator Gaius Silius and plotting against him, he proceeded to take this same Agrippina as his fourth wife, despite her being his niece, marrying her on New year’s Day 49. At this point Domitius became Claudius’s step-son and Agrippina persuaded Claudius to formally adopted him as his son and heir. This was when the boy was given an entirely new name, Nero Claudius Caesar Drusus Germanicus.]

7. Domitius/Nero was ten years old when he was adopted by Claudius and assigned the senator and writer Annaeus Seneca as tutor. He almost immediately began a campaign to discredit Britannicus and his surviving relatives.

Nero entered public life aged just 14, reviewing march pasts of the army, pleading the cause of towns with cases before Claudius, appearing as a judge. When he turned 16 (in 53), Nero married Claudius’s daughter (i.e. his own step-sister), Claudia Octavia. He gave games and a beast-baiting in the Circus.

8. Nero was just 17 when the death of Claudius was announced. Most commentators think Claudius was poisoned by Agrippina because she was worried Britannicus would soon come of age and Claudius would change his mind and make his biological son heir. Nero was hailed emperor on the steps of the Palace, carried in a litter to the praetorian camp, made a brief address to the soldiers, and proceeded to the Senate House where he was awarded all manner of honours.

9. He started off with displays of filial duty, giving Claudius a magnificent funeral then paying the highest honours to the memory of his father Domitius. He left to his mother the management of all public and private business. He often rode with her through the streets in her litter. He curried favour with the Praetorian Guard, such a key player in Roman politics since it had been consolidated by Sejanus, by establishing a colony for them at Antium and building a harbour there at great expense.

10. Nero proclaimed he would model his rule on Augustus. He was conspicuously generous. He abolished some taxes and lowered others. popularity. He lowered rewards paid to informers. He distributed a largess of 400 sesterces to the commons and granted the poorest senators a salary. Like Augustus he had a good memory and greeted men of all ranks by name. Wise and popular moves.

11. Nero gave many entertainments of different kinds: the Juvenales, chariot races in the Circus, stage-plays and a gladiatorial show. He organised races for chariots drawn by four camels. At the Great Festival (Ludi Maximi) he organised a series of plays devoted to the eternity of the Empire.

12. At the gladiatorial show Nero had no one put to death, not even criminals. But he did compel 400 senators and 600 Roman knights, some of whom were well to do and of unblemished reputation, to fight in the arena. Some were forced to fight with the wild beasts or perform various services in the arena. He arranged a huge naval battle in salt water with sea monsters swimming about in it. And numerous dances which were a kind of ballet based on legendary themes (the life of the Minotaur, Daedalus and Icarus).

He inaugurated the ‘Neronia’, a festival of competitions in music, gymnastics and horsemanship, modelled on the Greek ones. Nero recited his own poetry and was unanimously awarded the prize for oratory. At the gymnastic contest, which he gave in the Saepta he shaved his chin for the first time, to the accompaniment of a great sacrifice of bullocks, and put the wispy hairs in a golden box adorned with pearls of great price, and dedicated it to the Capitoline Jupiter.

13. Suetonius describes the elaborate ceremonial surrounding the entrance of Tiridates, king of Armenia, into Rome and his obeisance before Nero on a sumptuously decorated platform and then again, in the Theatre. After which Nero to great applause closed the doors of the temple of Janus to signify that the whole empire was at peace.

14. Nero held four consulships.

15. Nero was secretive about deciding law cases, insisting on being given full written explanations of both sides of a case and retiring to consider them in private. He began to tamper with the constitution. He refused to admit the sons of freedmen to the senate. He began to appoint consuls for six months instead of the customary 12. He conferred the triumphal regalia even on men of the rank of quaestor, as well as on some of the knights, and sometimes for other than military services. When he sent speeches to be read to the senate he did so via consuls instead of the quaestors, as had been customary.

16. Nero introduced a new style of architecture to Rome, building porches out in front of houses and apartment blocks whose flat roofs allowed fires to be fought. He considered extending the city walls as far as the port of Ostia and to bring the sea from there to Rome by a canal.

During his reign many abuses were put down. Sumptuary laws limited private expenditures. Expensive public banquets were replaced by a distribution of grain. Punishment was inflicted on the Christians, a sect professing a new and mischievous superstition. He ended the licence afforded to chariot drivers, of being able to walk down the street cheating and robbing the people. All pantomime actors and their hangers-on were expelled from the city.

17. Nero made many legal reforms including promulgating protection against forgers, preventing will writers from adding clauses benefiting themselves, and that customers should pay a fixed and reasonable fee for the services of their lawyers.

18. Nero showed no interest in extending the bounds of the empire and considered withdrawing the army from Britain and only changed his mind because it would have diminished the memory of his adoptive father, Claudius. Two minor territorial extensions occurred when the kingdom of Pontus was ceded to Rome by its king, Polemon, and when part of the Alps reverted to Roman control on the death of its king, Cottius.

19. Nero planned two foreign tours but cancelled one to Alexandria after bad omens. He went to Greece where he proposed building a canal through the Isthmus of Corinth, going so far as to breaking ground with a mattock and to carrying off a basketful of earth upon his shoulders before an audience of the Praetorian Guard. He also prepared for an expedition to the Caspian Gates, after enrolling a new legion of raw recruits of Italian birth, each six feet tall, which he grandly called ‘the phalanx of Alexander the Great.’

Chapter 20 marks a dividing point in the biography. Up to this point Suetonius had listed Nero’s respectable and positive achievements, many of which deserved praise. But from this point onwards, Suetonius announces that he will catalogue Nero’s ‘follies and crimes’.

Nero the performer

20. Nero enjoyed music. As soon as he became emperor he sent for Terpnus, the greatest lyre-player of the day, made him perform over successive nights over dinner, and then began to take lessons. And perform the exercises required, namely: lying on his back with a slab of lead on his chest; using enemas and emetics to keep down his weight; refrained from eating apples and other fruits considered damaging to the health (!) Despite all this his voice remained weak and husky.

Nero made his début at Naples, where he did not cease singing until he had finished the number which he had begun, even though the theatre was shaken by a sudden earthquake. He was impressed by the rhythmical clapping of crowds from Alexandria and commissioned some knights and 5,000 commoners to be divided into groups and learn the Alexandrian styles of applause. They were divided into ‘the bees’ (who made a loud humming noise), ‘the roof-tiles’ (who clapped with hollow hands) and ‘the bricks’ (who clapped with flat palms). They were ordered to attend all Nero’s performances and applaud loudly after his performance. You could tell them by their thick hair, splendid dress, and the absence of rings on their left hands. The knights who led them were paid 400 gold pieces for each performance.

21. Nero repeated the Neronian games so he could sing at them. He arranged it so the crowd clamoured to hear him, dropped his name into the urn to take pot luck along with everyone else, but made sure he was called and then came forward, attended by prefects of the Praetorian Guard carrying his lyre, had an ex-consul announce him and then performed the song of Niobe until late in the afternoon.

He toyed with performing opposite professional actors in public shows. He did actually perform in tragedies, taking the parts of mortals and gods, sometimes even goddesses, wearing masks modelled on his own, or women’s masked based on his lover of the moment. He performed in ‘Canace in Childborth’, ‘Orestes the Matricide’, ‘The Blinding of Oedipus’ and the ‘Frenzy of Hercules’. There’s a story that , the last of these plays, a young recruit, seeing the emperor in rags and fetters, dashed forward to his assistance. [Like so many Roman anecdotes, a bit too good to be true.]

22. Nero was obsessed with horse racing from an early age and played with toys of chariots and horses. Once in power, he attended every race day and made no secret of his wish to have the number of races and prizes increased.

He desperately wanted to drive a chariot himself and, after practicing in the privacy of his own grounds, made a public appearance at the Circus Maximus (when one of his freedmen replaced the magistrate who usually took the job of dropping the napkin to start the race).

He went to Greece because all the cities which held musical competitions had swiftly adopted the sycophantic practice of awarding the emperor top prize. He declared that ‘the Greeks were the only ones who had an ear for music and that they alone were worthy of my efforts.’

So he took ship to Greece and immediately on arriving at Cassiope gave his first recital before the altar of Jupiter Cassius, and then went the round of all the contests.

23. During his visit to Greece Nero used his power to make the Greeks hold competitions between the usual intervals and introduced a musical competition into the Olympic Games. When his advisers told him he was needed back at Rome he angrily told them he had to remain performing in Greece until he had proved himself worthy of Nero.

No one was allowed to leave a theatre when Nero was performing. So Suetonius shares comic stories of women giving birth to children there, some secretly dropping down from the back wall, some even feigning death in order to be carried out. He sucked up to his rivals, praising them to their faces but badmouthing them behind their backs. When they were particularly good performers, he bribed them to sing badly. He addressed the judges in deferential terms but was surprisingly nervous before each performance.

24. Nero took the competitions very seriously, scrupulously observing the rules most scrupulously, never daring to clear his throat nor wipe the sweat from his brow with his arm (both actions which lost the competitor points). To obliterate the memory of all other victors in games he had their statues and busts taken down and placed in public lavatories.

Nero drove a chariot in many places. At Olympia he drove a ten-horse team, a novelty. He fell from the chariot, had to be helped back into it and failed to complete the course, but he received the prize just the same. The judges weren’t stupid. On his departure he presented the entire province with freedom and gave the judges Roman citizenship and money. He announced these gifts in in person during the Isthmian Games, standing in the middle of the stadium.

25. Arriving back at Naples, Nero ordered part of the wall to be razed so he could ride white horses through the gap, as was customary with victors in the sacred games. He entered Antium, then Albanum and finally Rome in the same manner. In Rome he rode in the same chariot which Augustus had used in his triumphs and wore a purple robe and a Greek cloak adorned with stars of gold, bearing on his head the Olympic wreath, the Pythian wreath in his right hand. Other wreaths were borne before him with placards describing where he won them, what he sang, who the competition was. He processed through the city to the cheers of the adoring crowd and the accompaniment of lavish sacrifices.

He placed the victor’s wreaths above the couches in his sleeping quarters and set up several statues of himself playing the lyre, and had a coin struck with the same image.

[What an extraordinary travesty and mockery of the military triumphs of the preceding centuries.]

In order to preserve his voice, Nero never addressed the soldiers except by letter or in a speech delivered by others, he never did anything for amusement or in earnest without a voice trainer by his side, to warn him to spare his vocal organs and hold a handkerchief to his mouth. He made friends or enemies according to how enthusiastically they applauded him.

Delinquent behaviour

26. Meanwhile, Nero performed his first acts of wantonness, lust, extravagance, avarice and cruelty in secret. Some might say boys will be boys, but this was the true Nero coming out.

When night fell, he took a cap or wig and went from tavern to tavern, roaming the streets performing pranks, but these weren’t harmless. He used to beat men as they came home from dinner, stabbing any who resisted him and throwing them into the sewers. He broke into shops then sold the loot openly in the market. After he was beaten almost to death by a senator whose wife he had maltreated, he thenceforth had a squad of tribunes follow him at a distance and unobserved.

He attended the theatre in the upper part of the proscenium. When fights broke out on stage (fighting with stones and broken benches) Nero himself threw many missiles at the people and even broke a praetor’s head.

Lavish feasts

27. Slowly Nero’s decadent behaviour became more overt and entrenched. His feasts lasted from noon till midnight with breaks for a swim in a warm bath or, if it was summer, into snow-cooled water. Sometimes he drained the artificial lakes in the Campus Martius or the Circus and held banquets there, including prostitutes and dancing girls as guests.

Whenever he cruised down the Tiber to Ostia, or sailed about the Gulf of Baiae, he had rows of temporary brothels set up along the shore, where married women, pretending to be inn-keepers, solicited him to come ashore. [This is the kind of story which seems superficially colourful but as soon as you think about the practicalities, seems wildly impractical.]

He forced his friends to hold lavish banquets: one friend spent 4 million sesterces on a banquet where everyone wore turbans were distributed, another spent even more on a rose dinner.

Sex

28. Not satisifed with seducing free-born boys and married women, Nero raped the Vestal Virgin, Rubria. Then he tried to marry the freed-woman Acte by bribing some ex-consuls to perjure themselves by swearing that she was of royal birth.

He tried to turn the boy Sporus into a girl by castrating him and then went through a marriage ceremony with him, dowry, bridal veil and all, took him back to the palace attended by a huge crowd and lived with him as man and wife. This gave rise to a joke that the world would have been a better place if Nero’s father had taken that kind of wife.

Nero dressed this Sporus in all the finery of an empress and took him everywhere with him in his litter, kissing him openly in public.

It was no secret that he lusted after his mother. it was said that only her enemies held him back, fearing that she would gain such control over him that her power would be absolute. So Nero added to his concubines a courtesan who was said to look just like Agrippina. Others said that they had incestuous relations whenever he rode in a litter with his mother; you could tell by the stains when he emerged.

29. Nero ran through every type of obscenity and invented new ones. He devised a game in which he dressed in the skin of wild animals, was let loose from a cage and attacked the private parts of men and women who were bound to stakes. When he had worked himself up to a frenzy he was ‘finished off’ by his freedman Doryphorus.

In fact he got this Doryphorus to marry him, as he had married Sporus, and on their ‘wedding night’ imitated the screams and lamentations of a maiden being deflowered. Like perverts, abusers, wife beaters and misogynists everywhere, he thought all men were secretly just like him, but kept their vices hidden.

Extravagance

30. Nero believed money should be lavished on riotous extravagance. He thought it the mark of a true gentleman to waste and squander. He admired his uncle (his mother Agrippina’s brother, Gaius aka Caligula) because in less than four years he ran through the huge fortune it had taken Tiberius 30 years to amass.

He spent 8,000 gold pieces a day on King Tiridates and on his departure from Rome gave him more than a million. He gave the lyre-player Menecrates and the gladiator Spiculus houses and estates worthy of men who had celebrated triumphs. He was equally generous to the monkey-faced usurer Paneros and later on, had him buried with almost regal splendour.

Nero never wore the same garment twice. He staked 4,000 gold pieces on each throw of the dice. When he went fishing he used a golden net. It was said that he never made a journey with less than a thousand carriages. His mules were shod with silver and their drivers clad in wool from Canusium. He was attended by outriders with jingling bracelets and trappings.

Building works

31. Nero’s wastefulness was most on show in his architectural projects. He built a palace extending all the way from the Palatine to the Esquiline, which at first he called ‘The Passageway’. After it burned down, he had it rebuilt and named it the Golden House.

The entrance hall was large enough to hold a statue of himself 120 feet high. The triple-pillared colonnade ran for a mile. A huge lake was surrounded with buildings designed to represent entire cities and by a landscaped garden containing ploughed fields, vineyards, pastures and woodland, where every type of domestic animal roamed at large.

Parts of the house were inlaid with gold and studded with precious jewels. All the dining rooms had ceilings of fretted ivory. The panels could be drawn back to rain down dried flowers or perfume. The main banqueting hall was circular and its roof revolved day and night in time with the sky.

When this enormous luxury palace was completed he uttered some immortal words which can go down as the motto for every sybarite and decadent ever since: ‘Good. Now at last I can begin to live like a human being!’

He also began a covered bath, surrounded by colonnades, which stretched from Misenum to Lake Avernus. The plan was to divert all the hot springs in the Baiae region to feed it. Another grand project was to build a ship canal from Avernus all the way to Ostia, 160 miles long and wide enough for two quinqueremes to pass. Prisoners from all over the empire were to be brought in to build it.

He was led on to these wild extravagances by the promises of a Roman knight, who declared that the enormous wealth which queen Dido had taken with her in her flight from Tyre was hidden away in huge caves in Africa and could be easily recovered.

32. When this hope, inevitably, proved false, Nero found himself destitute, discovered that he didn’t even have enough money for the soldiers’ pay or veterans benefits. So he found himself forced to resort to false accusations and robbery. He increased taxes and excises. He seized the estates of anyone rich who died without leaving him enough in their will, and fined lawyers who wrote unsatisfactory wills.

Any man whose words or deeds left him exposed to accusation by an informer was accused of treason. He recalled the lavish gifts he had given to the Greek cities. He decoyed marketeers into buying amethystine or Tyrian dyes (both illegal under the sumptuary laws) then closed them all down and seized their goods. Once he spotted an aristocratic lady wearing this illegal colour at one of his recitals and had her dragged off, stripped off her clothes, but also of her estates.

When he appointed magistrates his instructions were simple: ‘You know my needs; let us leave no-one with any possessions.’ In the end he was forced to strip temples of their gifts and melted down the images of gold and silver, among them the household gods of Rome itself. (Galba, soon afterwards, had them all recast and restored).

Murdering Claudius

33. Claudius himself was the first victim of Nero’s murderous career, for even if Nero wasn’t directly involved in his uncle’s poisoning, he knew all about it, as he later admitted. For he used to mockingly praise mushrooms (the dish by which Claudius was poisoned) as ‘the food of the gods’. After the initial phase of filial duty was over, he took to openly insulting Claudius as stupid and cruel. He joked that he hoped Claudius wasn’t still ‘playing the fool’ in heaven. Nero annulled many of Claudius’s edicts on the ground that he was a doddering old idiot.

Murdering Britannicus

Nero attempted to poison Britannicus for two reasons: a) trivially, he was jealous that Britannicus’s voice was better than his b) he worried that, as he grew up, the people would come to prefer the natural son of Claudius to him, the adoptive one. The Suetonius gives what purports to be a detailed account of how Nero commissioned an arch-poisoner named Locusta to kill his half-brother and, when it didn’t work, flogged her with his own hand. He forced her to devise a stronger and stronger poison, which they tried on a goat – it took 5 hours to work, so he had her reduce it further, and try on a pig, which died on the spot.

That night at dinner Nero administered it to Britannicus who dropped dead at the very first taste. Nero assured the horrified guests that Britannicus was having an epileptic fit but the next day had him hastily buried in a pouring rainstorm, without any ceremony. He rewarded Locusta for her services with a large estates in the country, and actually sent her pupils to study the art of poison.

Murdering Agrippina

34. The over-watchful, over-protective eye that his mother, Agrippina the Younger, shone on Nero eventually proved more than he could bear. At first he tried to intimidate her by threatening to retire to Rhodes (as his grandfather Tiberius had done 60 years earlier). He then deprived her of all honours, even of her Roman and German guard. He forbade her to live with him and drove her from the Palace.

He bribed men to annoy her with lawsuits while she remained in the city, and after she had retired to the country, to pass her house by land and sea and break her rest with abuse and mockery. At last, terrified by her violence and threats, he determined to have her life, and after thrice attempting it by poison and finding that she had made herself immune by antidotes, he tampered with the ceiling of her bedroom, contriving a mechanical device for loosening its panels and dropping them upon her while she slept.

When this leaked out through some of those connected with the plot, he devised a collapsible boat, to destroy her by shipwreck or by the falling in of its cabin. Then he pretended a reconciliation and invited her in a most cordial letter to come to Baiae and celebrate the feast of Minerva with him. He then instructed his captains to wreck the galley in which she had come, by running into it as if by accident. So she had to return to Bauli in the craft he offered her. He saw her off in high spirits, then spent the night anxiously waiting for news.

When he learned that the ship had foundered, alright, but Agrippina had escaped by swimming, he had a dagger thrown down beside her freedman who had brought the news, and ordered that he had made an attempt on his life. The freedman was promptly arrested, tortured, admitted being part of a plot to assassinate the emperor, his mother was part of it, and so she too was executed, giving out that she had tried to assassinate him but then committed suicide when she learned the plan had failed. He is said to have travelled to her house and handled her limp limbs, assessing her looks, between swigs of wine.

However, her memory haunted him and gave him bad dreams. He told confidants that he was hounded by his mother’s ghost and by the whips and blazing torches of the Furies. He even had rites performed by Persian magicians, in an effort to summon her shade and entreat it for forgiveness.

Then he murdered his aunt, Domitia Lepida. He visited her when she was confined to her bed with constipation and ordered her doctors to poison her, seizing her property before she was cold, suppressing her will, that nothing might escape him.

Nero’s wives

35. Besides Octavia Nero later took two wives, Poppaea Sabina, daughter of an ex-quaestor and married to a Roman knight, and then Statilia Messalina. To take Statilia he had to murder her husband Atticus Vestinus while he held the office of consul.

He soon grew tired of living with Octavia. He made several attempts to strangle her, then divorced her on the ground of barrenness. This was unpopular, so then he banished her. And finally he had her put to death on a charge of adultery that was so shameless and unfounded, that even when her slaves were tortured they refused to validate it.

Nero dearly loved Poppaea, whom he married twelve days after his divorce from Octavia, yet he caused her death by kicking her when she was pregnant and ill, because she had scolded him for coming home late from the races.

There is no kind of relationship that he did not violate in his career of crime. He put to death Antonia, daughter of Claudius, for refusing to marry him after Poppaea’s death, charging her with an attempt at revolution. He treated in the same way all others who were in any way connected with him by blood or by marriage.

Among these was the young Aulus Plautius, whom he forcibly defiled before his death, saying ‘Let my mother come now and kiss my successor,’ implying that Agrippina had loved Plautius and that this had roused him to hopes of the throne.

Rufrius Crispinus, a mere boy, his stepson and the child of Poppaea, he ordered to be drowned by the child’s own slaves while he was fishing, because it was said that he used to play at being a general and an emperor.

He banished his nurse’s son Tuscus, because when procurator in Egypt, he had bathed in some baths which were built for a visit of Nero’s.

He drove his tutor Seneca to suicide, although when the old man often pleaded to be allowed to retire and offered to give up his estates, Nero had sworn most solemnly that he was wrong to suspect him and that he would rather die than harm him.

He sent poison to Burrus, prefect of the Guard, in place of a throat medicine which he had promised him. The old and wealthy freedmen who had helped him first to his adoption and later to the throne, and aided him by their advice, he killed by poison, administered partly in their food and partly in their drink.

36. Two conspiracies against Nero’s life were uncovered. The earlier and more dangerous of these was that of Piso at Rome; the other was set on foot by Vinicius at Beneventum. The conspirators made their defence in fetters, some voluntarily admitting their guilt, some saying they were doing a favour to man so steeped in evil as Nero. The children of those who were condemned were banished or put to death by poison or starvation: a number are known to have been murdered all together at a single meal along with their tutors and attendants.

37. After this Nero showed neither discrimination nor moderation in putting to death whoever he pleased on any pretext whatever. Salvidienus Orfitus was charged with having let to certain states as headquarters three shops which formed part of his house near the Forum; Cassius Longinus, a blind jurist, with retaining in the old family tree of his house the mask of Gaius Cassius, the assassin of Julius Caesar; Paetus Thrasea with having a sullen expression.

To those ordered to die he never granted more than an hour’s respite, and to avoid any delay, he brought physicians who were ordered to ‘attend to’ such as lingered – that was the phrase he used for killing them by opening their veins.

Puffed up by success, Nero boasted that no prince had ever known the power he, Nero, now enjoyed. He broadly hinted that he would not spare the senate, but would one day blot out the whole order from the State and hand over the rule of the provinces and command of the armies to the Roman knights and his freedmen.

He even made vows ‘for himself and the people of Rome’, leaving the senate out of the traditional formula.

The great fire of Rome

38. Displeased with the ugliness of the old buildings and the narrow, crooked streets, he set fire to the city. Some granaries near the Golden House, whose location he desired, were demolished and set on fire. For six days and seven nights destruction raged, while the people were driven for shelter to monuments and tombs.

An immense number of common dwellings, houses of great military leaders along with all their treasures and insignia, along with the temples of the gods, and ancient monuments of historical interest, all went up in flames. Nero watched the fire from the tower of Maecenas, exulting in ‘the beauty of the flames’ and sang the entire ‘Sack of Ilium’ in his regular stage costume.

He set out to profit from the disaster so, while promising the removal of the debris and dead bodies free of cost, he allowed no one to approach the ruins of their own property so he could loot them. And he demanded such exorbitant contributions from the provinces for the rebuilding that he nearly bankrupted them.

39. Disaster was added to disaster. A plague killed 30,000. In Britain two important towns were sacked and great numbers of citizens and allies were butchered. (The towns were Camulodunum [Meldon] and Verulamium [St. Albans]. According to the historian Xiphilinus, 80,000 perished).

A Roman army was defeated in Armenia and Syria was all but lost.

The Gaulish revolt

40. After the world had put up with such a ruler for nearly fourteen years, it at last cast him off, and the first steps began in Gaul. Gaul at that time was governed by Julius Vindex as propraetor who now rose against the emperor, sending him a series of increasingly abusive messages. When he heard of the Gaul rebellion, at first Nero was delighted, thinking this would give him the opportunity to fleece the rebellious provinces. When it escalated, he did his best to ignore it.

41. At last a series of insulting edicts of Vindex prompted him to address the senate (but only by letter) to avenge him and the state. When more urgent despatches reached Antium Nero finally repaired to the capital. But here he didn’t address either the senate (in the House) or the people (in the Forum) but invited some of the leading men to his house where, after a hasty consultation about Gaul, he spent the rest of the day exhibiting a new type of water-organ.

42. But when news arrived that the Roman governor Galba was leading a revolt in Spain, Nero fainted. When he regained consciousness, Nero abandoned hope, tearing his robe, declaring that it was all over with him. But instead of taking active steps to quell the rebellions he continued his luxurious habits and whenever good news arrived from the provinces, he gave lavish feasts and composed comic songs about the leaders of the revolt.

43. At the start of the revolt Nero made wild and characteristically brutal plans. He planned to depose all army commanders and all provincial governors and have them all executed, then massacre all exiles everywhere and kill all the Gauls then present in Rome.

[What this clearly demonstrates is Nero’s inability to manage the subtlety and detail of individual men with individual grievances. Augustus and Tiberius knew their officials, knew their strengths and weaknesses and allegiances, knew how to manage them, play them off against each other, keep their ambition under control. In fact they knew that that’s what being Roman emperor consisted of – unending man management, of army leaders, provincial governors, and the jockeying factions in the Senate. Caligula and Nero didn’t understand this and had no interest in it. If anyone stood in their way they just had them killed. Which explains Nero’s blunt, sweeping and ineffective response to the revolts.]

Maybe Suetonius exaggerates when he said Nero also considered poisoning the entire senate and setting Rome on fire again. You feel the heavy hand of Flavian propaganda in such tales. Or maybe they were popular rumours. But they testify to Nero’s inability to manage specific rebel leaders and situations with anything approaching subtlety or intelligence.

Instead, Nero dismissed the two consuls and appointed himself sole consul. He left a feast leaning on the shoulders of his comrades, and declaring that all he need do was confront the rebellious army and fall to his knees weeping for them to realise they loved him and asking forgiveness. Next day he would be dancing and singing hymns of praise, so he was just off to compose a few in preparation.

44. In preparing for his campaign Nero was mainly concerned with finding enough wagons to carry all his musical instruments, and arranging for all his concubines to have male haircuts and be issued with Amazonian axes and shields.

He issued a general conscription which was largely ignored so compelled every household to contribute a certain number of slaves and part of their incomes. All tenants of private houses and apartments had to pay a year’s rent to the Treasury.

45. This aroused bad feeling against Nero which was compounded when he profited from the high cost of grain. A rumour went round that while the people were starving a ship had arrived from Alexandria, bringing sand for the court wrestlers. Graffiti, slogans and angry jokes at his expense proliferated.

46. Nero was frightened by bad dreams, auspices and omens. He dreamed:

that he was steering a ship in his sleep and that the helm was wrenched from his hands
that he was dragged by his wife Octavia into thickest darkness
that he was covered with a swarm of winged ants
that a Spanish horse he was fond of was changed into an ape
that the doors of the Mausoleum (built to house the dead of the royal family) flew open and a voice called him to enter
on the Kalends of January the city gods toppled over and in front of the assembled people the keys of the Capitol could not be found

In his last public appearance as a singer he performed ‘Oedipus in Exile’ which ends with the line:

Wife, father, mother drive me to my death.

Seeing as how he had murdered his (adoptive) father, Claudius, his own mother (Agrippina the Younger), had his first wife Octavia murdered then kicked to death Poppaea.

47. When word came that the other armies had revolted, Nero tore up the dispatches, pushed over his table, smashing his favourite ‘Homeric’ cups, ordered some poison from the arch-poisoner Locusta, to keep with him, and went into the Servilian gardens, where he tried to induce the tribunes and centurions of the Guard to accompany him in his flight. They refused.

He considered other plans: to go as a suppliant to the Parthians; or to Galba; or to appear to the people on the rostra, dressed in black, and beg for pardon for his past offences. Maybe they would allow him the prefecture of Egypt. Afterwards a speech composed for this purpose was found in his writing desk, but it is thought that he didn’t dare deliver it for fear of being torn to pieces before he could reach the Forum.

Next morning Nero awoke to discover his guard of soldiers had abandoned him. He sent for his friends but no-one replied. He roamed round the palace but doors were bolted, no-one answered his calls. Back at his rooms he found even the caretakers had absconded, taking his bed linen and the box of poison.

He called for the gladiator Spiculus or any other trained executioner to put an end to him, but none came and he ran out as if to throw himself into the Tiber.

48. But Nero abandoned that plan and said he needed to go somewhere quiet to gather his thoughts. His freedman Phaon suggested his villa in the suburbs, just four miles away. So Nero pulled on a faded cloak, covered his head, and set off on horseback accompanied by just four attendants, one of whom was Sporus.

The short journey was eventful, with a mild earthquake and a flash of lightning; then shouting from an army camp in favour of Galba. Then his horse took fright at the smell of a corpse which had been thrown out into the road.

They arrived at Phaon’s villa and made their way through brambles to the back door. Nero scooped water from a pool, quipping that this was ‘Nero’s own special brew.’ Once inside the villa he sank down on a couch with a common mattress, over which an old cloak had been thrown. Though suffering from hunger and renewed thirst, he refused some coarse bread which was offered him, but drank a little lukewarm water.

49. At last, as it became clear his enemies were closing in, Nero bad his servants dig a grave and assemble wood for a pyre. As he watched this being done he wept and said again and again: ‘What an artist the world is losing!’

Then a runner brought a letter from Phaon announcing that he had been declared a public enemy by the senate and that, when caught, he would be punished ‘in the ancient style’. When he asked what that meant, his servants told him it meant the criminal was stripped, fastened by the neck in a fork and then beaten to death with rods.

Terrified, Nero seized two daggers but couldn’t bring himself to use them. He ordered one of his slaves to set an example by killing himself, but none of them would. He reproached himself for his cowardice, lamenting that this sordid end didn’t become the great artist Nero at all.

Then they heard a troop of cavalry approaching up the road to arrest him and, with the help of his private secretary, Epaphroditus, he stabbed himself in the throat. He was all but dead when a centurion rushed in. As this centurion placed a cloak to the wound, Nero gasped: ‘Tool ate! But what loyalty!’ Then he died.

Burial

50. Nero was buried at a cost of 200,000 sesterces and laid out in white robes embroidered with gold, which he had worn on the Kalends of January. His ashes were deposited by his nurses, Egloge and Alexandria, accompanied by his mistress Acte, in the family tomb of the Domitii on the summit of the Hill of Gardens.

51. Nero was about average height, his body was marked with pimples and smelt bad. His hair was light blond, his features regular rather than attractive, his eyes blue and somewhat weak. His neck was thick and squat, his belly prominent and his legs very slender.

His health was good. For all his riotous excess he was only ill three times during the fourteen years of his reign, and even then not enough to give up wine or any of his usual habits.

He was utterly shameless in the care of his person and in his dress, always having his hair arranged in tiers of curls, and during the trip to Greece let it grow long and hang down behind.

He often gave audiences in an unbelted silk dressing gown and slippers.

52. When a boy he studied the usual liberal arts except philosophy which his mother Agrippina told him was no subject for a future ruler.

His tutor Seneca kept him from reading the early orators in order to make himself appear better to the boy, so Nero turned to poetry. He wrote poetry easily, with great facility. Some people claimed that he passed off other writer’s work as his own but “notebooks and papers have come into my possession which contain some of Nero’s best-known poems in his own handwriting. Many erasures and cancellations as well as words substituted above the lines, prove that he was neither copying nor dictating but are written just as people write when they are thinking and composing.”

[a) what an extraordinary thought, that Suetonius had before him on the table the actual notebooks of Nero; b) Have any of Nero’s poems survived?]

Nero also took more than an amateur’s interest in painting and sculpture.

53. But Nero’s dominant characteristic was his thirst for popularity and his jealousy of anyone who caught the public eye for any achievement whatsoever. Not content with singing, playing the lyre and chariot racing, he studied and practised wrestling constantly, watching contests from right next to the ring.

It is said that he planned to emulate the exploits of Hercules and had had a lion specially trained so he could safely face it naked in the amphitheatre and, in front of the whole population of Rome, kill it with a club or even strangle it with his bare hands.

54. Towards the end of his reign Nero publicly vowed that if he retained his power, he would celebrate his victory by giving a performance on the water-organ, the flute, and the bagpipes, and that on the last day he would appear as an actor and dance ‘Vergil’s Turnus’. Some claim he had the actor Paris put to death because he saw him as a dangerous rival.

55. Nero’s obsession with immortality and undying fame made him name many places and things after himself: he renamed the month of April Neroneus and was tempted to rename Rome Neropolis.

56. Nero despised all cults except that of the Syrian goddess Atagarsis but he eventually changed his mind even about her and urinated on her image. He came instead to have a superstitious belief which he kept to the end: for an unknown commoner sent him the gift of a little image of a girl as a protection against plots. As it happened a plot was revealed immediately afterwards so Nero took to worshipping this little image as if she were a powerful goddess and sacrificed to her three times a day.

57. Nero died at the age of 31, on the anniversary of the murder of Octavia. Such was the public rejoicing that the public ran through the streets wearing liberty caps and cheering. Yet for a long time afterwards, some secret admirers garlanded his tomb with spring and summer flowers and had statues made of him which they placed on the rostra wearing his characteristic fringed toga.

Vologaesus, king of the Parthians, when he sent envoys to the senate to renew his alliance, asked that honour be paid to the memory of Nero. In fact, Suetonius tells us that 20 years later, when he was a young man, a person of obscure origin appeared in Parthia claiming to be Nero and such was the power of his name to Parthian ears that they supported him vigorously and surrendered him to the Romans only with great reluctance.

Credit

Robert Graves’s translation of The Twelve Caesars by Suetonius was published by Penguin in 1957. A revised translation by Classicist Michael Grant, more faithful to the Latin original, was published in 1979. A further revised edition was published in 1989 with an updated bibliography.

Suetonius’s Lives of the Twelve Caesars

Roman reviews

Complete list of my Roman reviews

The Life of Caligula by Suetonius

‘I am rearing a viper for the Roman people.’
(Tiberius talking about young Caligula, in Suetonius’s Life of Caligula, section 11)

Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus Germanicus, better known by his nickname Caligula (meaning ‘little boots’), was the third Roman emperor.

Born in 12 AD, Caligula ruled from 37 until his assassination in 41, four brief, chaotic years. He was the son of the popular Roman general Germanicus Julius Caesar and Augustus’s grand-daughter, Agrippina the Elder.

Family tree of the Julio-Claudian emperors

Coming from a small nuclear family I find extended family trees confusing at the best of times. The family tree of the early Roman emperors is especially confusing because:

the emperors and everyone else in their families married multiple times
many of the emperors, and people in their families, had the same names or combinations of the same names, such as Drusus, Germanicus, Nero and Tiberius
they regularly changed their names, exemplified by Octavian who went through half a dozen name changes – but most of all because:
all the key men adopted nephews or grandchildren as sons, thus radically confusing the traditional notion of ‘sons’ being the blood relative of at least one of their ‘parents’ – not in Imperial Rome, they weren’t

Which goes to explain why none of the Julio-Claudian emperors was a blood descendant of his immediate predecessor.

Maybe the family tree below helps. It is very much simplified. What I like about it, compared to the many similar trees on the internet, is the use of dotted lines to indicate adoption, which makes it clear how Julius Caesar adopted Octavian, Octavian – renamed Augustus – adopted Tiberius, Tiberius adopted Germanicus (who predeceased him) and then Gaius (Caligula) and Claudius adopted Nero.

Family tree of the Julio-Claudian emperors.

From it you can see that Caius Julius Caesar adopted his great-nephew Octavianus as son and heir. Caesar was assassinated in 44 BC. Thirteen years later (31 BC), after two further civil wars, Octavianus had become the sole power in Rome. Awarded the honorific ‘Augustus’ in 27 BC, he adopted a number of male members of his extended family but these died before him, so he ended up adopting his step-son, Tiberius Claudius Nero, as his son and heir.

Augustus had forced Tiberius to a) marry his daughter, Julia and b) to adopt Julia’s son, Germanicus, as his own son, sitting alongside his actual biological son, Drusus. According to Suetonius, Tiberius hated both these ‘sons’. He was happy when his adopted son, the popular charismatic Germanicus, died in 19 AD, and when his biological son, Drusus, died in 23 AD (possibly had him poisoned).

Suetonius’s life of Caligula

Roman texts were divided into short sections, sometimes called ‘chapters’ though most are less than a page long. Suetonius’s biography of the emperor Caligula is 60 sections long.

Suetonius himself divides his Life of Caligula into two halves: sections 1 to 21 deal with The Emperor; then the last 40 sections deal with The Monster.

Part One: The Emperor

1. Germanicus Julius Caesar was son of Drusus and the younger Antonia. A charming, immensely popular figure, successful general, popular with the crowd, stylish and elegant, he was adopted as ‘son’ by his paternal uncle Tiberius. He processed through the posts of quaestorship and consul before the legal age.

When Augustus died Germanicus was sent to the army in Germany. The legions there didn’t want to accept Tiberius as emperor but Germanicus made them. He defeated the Germans in various battles and was a warded a triumph back in Rome.

Chosen consul for a second time, he was sent to restore order in the Orient, and after vanquishing the king of Armenia and reducing Cappadocia to a province, died of a lingering illness at Antioch, aged just 33.

It was widely believed that Tiberius had him poisoned by the governor of Syria, Gnaeus Piso, governor of Syria. In consequence Piso narrowly escaped being torn to pieces by the people on his return to Rome, and was condemned to death by the senate.

3. Suetonius delivers a paean to Germanicus: he was a paragon of a man: handsome, brave: in battle he fought the enemy hand to hand; a great orator; adept at the best learning of Greece and Rome, among other fruits of his studies he left some Greek comedies. He was kind, with a remarkable capacity for winning men’s affection.

In Germany Germanicus planned to bury all the dead of Varus’s three lost legions (massacred in the Teutoburger Forest in 9 AD) and took the lead in collecting and assembling them by hand.

4. Germanicus was so popular with the masses that he was greeted by cheering crowds wherever he went. When he returned from Germany after quelling the rebellion, the entire population poured out of Rome as far as the twentieth milestone.

5. Popular sadness at Germanicus’s death was immense. The temples were stoned and the altars of the gods thrown down, some flung their household gods into the street. Even barbarian peoples unanimously consented to a truce as if all the world shared in the tragedy. It is said that some princes cut off their beards and had their wives’ heads shaved.

6. False rumours that he had recovered led to widespread rejoicing, only to be cast down when the final confirmation of his death came through. Public grief knew no limits and continued even during the festal days of the month of December.

Germanicus’s fame and regret for his loss were increased by the horror of the times which followed since it was widely believed that Tiberius’s cruelty had been held in check through his respect for Germanicus and was now given free rein.

7. Germanicus had married Agrippina, daughter of Marcus Agrippa and Julia, who bore him nine children. Two died in infancy, one in boyhood. Of the surviving six, three girls – Agrippina, Julia Drusilla and Livilla, born in successive years – and three boys – Nero, Drusus and Gaius Caesar, the future emperor. Nero and Drusus were accused of being public enemies by the senate on the accusation of Tiberius.

8. Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus Germanicus was born in 12 AD when his father was 27. Suetonius spends several sections weighing the evidence about where Gaius was born.

9. Gaius’s surname, ‘Caligula’, was a jokey nickname awarded by the soldiers he grew up among. [Caliga was the name of a type of military boot. His father liked dressing his little son in a child’s version of a soldier’s outfit, including miniature versions of these boots. Latin formed diminutives of words by adding ‘-ula’ to the end of them. So ‘caligula’ literally meant ‘little boots’ and the nickname stuck.]

10. As a boy Caligula accompanied his father on his expedition to Syria. After Germanicus’s death, his widow, Caligula’s mother, Agrippina, returned with her six children to Rome, where she became entangled in a bitter feud with Tiberius, which led to her banishment. Caligula went to live with his great-grandmother Livia and when Livia died (in 29 AD), he lived with his grand-mother Antonia. The emperor Tiberius had retreated to Capri in 26. In 31, as he reached the age of manhood (18), Caligula was summoned to join him.

In Capri Caligula proved resilient to the ill-will of the emperor and his flatterers. He ignored the bad treatment of his mother and brothers, and was so obsequious to his grandfather that it was said of him that no one had ever been a better slave or a worse master.

11. Here in Capri his natural cruelty and viciousness were allowed to flourish. He developed a taste for witnessing torture and execution and by night revelled in gluttony and adultery. He liked wearing a wig and practicing the arts of dancing and singing. It was observing his cruelty and immorality blossoming which led Tiberius to (allegedly) say that Caligula’s advent marked the ruin of him (Tiberius) and the world; that he was rearing a viper for the Roman people and a Phaethon for the world. [In the Greek myth Phaethon tricked his father, Apollo, into letting him drive the chariot of the son which, not being strong enough, he let plunge down towards the earth, drying up rivers, causing earthquakes and destroying entire cities.]

12. Gaius took to wife Junia Claudilla, daughter of Marcus Silanus, a man of noble rank. He was appointed augur then advanced to the role of pontifex maximus. After the fall of Sejanus, Tiberius’s henchman, in 31, Tiberius encouraged Caligula to think of himself as the heir to the throne.

After Junia died in childbirth, Caligula seduced Ennia Naevia, wife of Macro, who at that time commanded the praetorian guard, promising to marry her when he became emperor. Difficult for us to understand that, according to Suetonius, he did this in order to worm himself into Macro’s favour.

Suetonius then, with astonishing casualness, claims that Caligula poisoned Tiberius. He ordered his signet ring of power to be taken from him and when it was discovered that Tiberius was still breathing, himself placed a pillow over his face. Others claim he strangled the old man (Tiberius was 78 when he died) with his own hand, immediately ordering the crucifixion of a freedman who cried out at the awful deed.

Later, Caligula put it about that he was avenging Tiberius’s execution of his mother and two brothers.

13. Caligula was popular with the general population because of his youth, his popularity with the soldiers, who he’d grown up among, and the aura from his legendary father, Germanicus. And Tiberius had led a reign of terror for over a decade. So his accession was greeted with rejoicing. His journey from Capri to Rome accompanying the body of Tiberius was greeted by cheering crowds at each town.

14. When he entered Rome, full and absolute power was at once put into his hands by the unanimous consent of the senate and of the mob, contrary to Tiberius’s will which had named his other grandson as joint heir with Caligula.

Foreign rulers sent messages of congratulation, including king Artabanus of Parthia who had been outspoken in his contempt for Tiberius.

15. At the beginning of his reign Caligula carefully courted popularity. He delivered a tearful eulogy at Tiberius’s funeral, then send to the islands where his mother and brothers had been banished, to fetch back their ashes to give a decent burial as well as games in the Circus in honour of his mother, providing a carriage to carry her image in the procession.

In memory of his father he renamed the month of September Germanicus. He lavished on his grandmother Antonia all the honours Livia Augusta had ever enjoyed. He took his uncle Claudius as his colleague in the consulship (37 AD). He adopted his brother Tiberius on the day that he assumed the gown of manhood and gave him the title of Chief of the Youth. He caused the names of his sisters to be included in all oaths.

He recalled those who had been condemned to banishment, had all documents relating to the cases of his mother and brothers carried to the Forum and burned, declared the era of anonymous informers over.

In other words, he dazzled everyone by displays of filial duty and respect.

16. Caligula banished from Rome the sexual perverts called spintriae who Tiberius had patronised.

He published the accounts of the empire, which had regularly been made public by Augustus, a practice discontinued by Tiberius. He allowed the magistrates unrestricted jurisdiction, without appeal to himself. He revised the lists of the Roman knights strictly and scrupulously. He tried also to restore the suffrage to the people by reviving the custom of elections. He paid faithfully and without dispute the legacies named in the will of Tiberius as well as in that of Julia Augusta, which Tiberius had suppressed.

He remitted the tax of a two-hundredth on auction sales in Italy, made good to many their losses from fires, and whenever he restored kings to their thrones, he allowed them all the arrears of their taxes and their revenue for the meantime.

This was all wildly popular and a golden shield was voted him, which was to be borne every year to the Capitol on an appointed day by the colleges of priests, escorted by the senate, while boys and girls of noble birth sang the praises of his virtues in a choral ode. It was decreed that the day on which he began to reign should be called the Parilia (the festival celebrating the founding of Rome) indicating that, after the long cruel years of Tiberius, Rome had been founded a second time.

17. Caligula twice gave the people a gift of 300 sesterces each, and twice a lavish banquet to the senate and the equestrian order, together with their wives and children. To make a permanent addition to public gaiety he added a day to the Saturnalia and called it Juvenalis.

18. Caligula gave several gladiatorial shows. He exhibited stage-plays continually, of various kinds and in many different places, sometimes even by night, lighting up the whole city. He also gave many games in the Circus, lasting from early morning until evening, introducing the manoeuvres of the game called Troy.

19. Caligula bridged the gap between Baiae and the mole at Puteoli, a distance of about 3,600 paces, by bringing together merchant ships from all sides and anchoring them in a double line, afterwards a mound of earth was heaped upon them and fashioned in the manner of the Appian Way. Over this bridge he rode back and forth for two successive days, the first day on a caparisoned horse, resplendent in a crown of oak leaves, a buckler, a sword, and a cloak of cloth of gold.

[Interestingly, Suetonius makes mention, here, of his own family, telling us that his grandfather told him the reason for the work was that Thrasyllus the astrologer had declared to Tiberius, when he was worried about his successor and inclined towards his natural grandson, that Gaius had no more chance of becoming emperor than of riding about over the gulf of Baiae with horses.]

20. Caligula gave shows in foreign lands, Athenian games at Syracuse in Sicily, and miscellaneous games at Lugdunum in Gaul.

21. Caligula completed the public works which had been half finished under Tiberius, namely the temple of Augustus and the theatre of Pompey. He likewise began an aqueduct in the region near Tibur and an amphitheatre beside the Saepta (the former finished by his successor Claudius, while the latter was abandoned). He planned to have a canal run through the Isthmus of Corinth in Greece and sent a chief centurion to survey the work.

Part Two: The Monster

22. So much for Caligula as emperor; Suetonius tells us that the rest of his biography will now tell of the monster.

Caligula claimed to be a god. He ordered all the best statues in Greece brought to Rome, decapitated and topped with copies of his own head.

Caligula converted the temple of Castor and Pollux into the vestibule of a hugely expanded Imperial palace and often took his place between the divine brethren to be worshipped by citizens.

He set up a temple to his own godhead, with priests and with victims of the choicest kind. He placed in it a life-sized statue of himself made from gold, which was dressed each day in the same clothes he was wearing.

During the day he would talk confidentially with Jupiter Capitolinus, now whispering in his ear, then turning his ear to the god’s mouth. Sometimes they had angry arguments if Jupiter disobeyed Caligula’s orders.

23. Caligula hated to be thought of as the grandson of Agrippa, a mere commoner, so spread the rumour that his mother was the product of an incestuous passion between Augustus and his daughter, Julia. He insulted the memory of Livia, and drove his grandmother Antonia to an early death with insults (although some think that he also gave her poison)

He had his brother, Tiberius, put to death without warning, suddenly sending a tribune of the soldiers to do the deed. He drove his father-in‑law Silanus to end his life by cutting his throat with a razor.

He spared his uncle, Claudius, as a laughing-stock.

24. Caligula lived in habitual incest with all his sisters. He is believed to have violated Drusilla when he was still a minor, and even to have been caught lying with her by his grandmother, Antonia. Afterwards, she married Lucius Cassius Longinus, an ex-consul, but Caligula took her from him and openly treated her as his lawful wife

After Drusilla died Caligula was beside himself with grief, not cutting his hair or shaving his beard. He never afterwards took an oath about matters of the highest moment except by the godhead of Drusilla. The rest of his sisters he slept with sometimes, or prostituted them to his favourites.

25. Suetonius says it is hard to decide whether he behave more appallingly in contracting his marriages, annulling them, or as a ‘husband’.

At the marriage of Livia Orestilla to Gaius Piso he gave orders that the bride be taken to his own house, where he ravished her for two days before ‘divorcing’ her. Two years later he banished her on the suspicion that she’d gone back to her former husband.

When he heard the rumour that the grandmother of Lollia Paulina, who was married to Gaius Memmius, had once been a remarkably beautiful woman, he recalled her from the province where he husband was serving suddenly called Lollia from the province, separated her from her husband, and married her; then in a short time had her put away, with the command never to have intercourse with anyone.

Though Caesonia was neither beautiful nor young, and was already mother of three daughters by another, Caligula loved her passionately, often exhibiting her to the soldiers riding by his side, decked with cloak, helmet and shield, and to his friends even in a state of nudity. Only when she bore him a daughter did he formally declare her his wife (in 39 AD). He named the child Julia Drusilla.

Ptolemy, son of king Juba, his cousin, Macro and Ennia, who helped him to the throne, he had put to death.

He forced senators to run alongside his chariot and to wait on him at table. Some he had put to death. When the consuls forgot to proclaim his birthday, he deposed them and left the state for three days without its highest magistrates.

His sleep was disturbed by the noise made by people who’d come in the middle of the night to get the free seats in the Circus, so he had them driven out with cudgels and in the melee more than twenty Roman knights were crushed to death, with as many matrons and a countless number of others.

He liked to scatter free tickets at the theatre in order to sow confusion.

At gladiatorial shows he ordered the awnings pulled back when the sun was hottest and give orders that no one be allowed to leave, leaving the audience to burn.

27. When cattle to feed the wild beasts which he had provided for a gladiatorial show were expensive, Caligula ordered them to be fed with criminals. He had prisoners lined up and selected on a whim those to be executed and fed to the animals.

He had many men of noble rank branded with hot irons then condemned to the mines, to work at building roads, or to be thrown to the wild beasts, or he had them up in cages on all fours, or sawn in half.

These punishments were not for serious offences, but having maybe having criticised one of his shows or not having sworn by his Genius.

He forced parents to attend the executions of their sons, sending a litter for one man who pleaded ill health, and inviting another to dinner immediately after witnessing the death of his son and baiting him trying to with jokes and gaiety.

He had the manager of his gladiatorial shows and beast-baitings beaten with chains in his presence for several successive days until the stench of his putrefied brain prompted him to finish him off in disgust.

He burned a writer of Atellan farces alive in the middle of the arena of the amphitheatre, because of a humorous line of double meaning.

When a Roman knight on being thrown to the wild beasts loudly protested his innocence, he took him out, cut off his tongue, and threw him back again.

28. Caligula conceived the notion that exiles were conspiring against him and so sent emissaries from island to island to butcher them all.

He had one of the senators stabbed with quills then turned over to the mob. He wasn’t satisfied till he saw the man’s limbs, members and bowels dragged through the streets and piled up before him.

29. Caligula’s speech was full of threats. When his grandmother Antonia gave him some advice he replied: ‘Remember that I have the right to do anything to anybody.’

After banishing his sisters, he made the threat that he not only had islands, but swords as well.

An ex-praetor who had retired to Anticyra for his health, sent frequent requests for an extension of his leave, so Caligula had him put to death, joking that anyone who had not been helped by a long course of hellebore needed to be bled.

When he signed the list of prisoners who were to be put to death, he said that he was ‘clearing his accounts’.

30. Caligula seldom had anyone put to death except by numerous slight wounds, his constant order, which soon became well-known, being: ‘Strike so that he may feel that he is dying.’ He often uttered the familiar line of the tragic poet Accius:

‘Let them hate me, so they but fear me.’

He regularly castigated the senators for having informed against his mother (who Tiberius had exiled then killed on trumped-up charges).

He constantly tongue-lashed the equestrian order as devotees of the stage and the arena.

Angered at the rabble for applauding a faction which he opposed, he cried: ‘I wish the Roman people had but a single neck.’

31. Caligula lamented that there had been no great disaster during his rule, saying the reign of Augustus had been made famous by the Varus massacre, and that of Tiberius by the collapse of the amphitheatre at Fidenae, while his own was threatened with oblivion because of its prosperity. So he was heard wishing for famine, pestilence, fires or a great earthquake.

32. Even while feasting or at amusements, he was cruel, having people tortured in front of him as he ate, and employing a soldier who was adept at decapitation to cut off the heads of people brought from prison.

At the dedication of a bridge he’d had constructed at Puteoli, he invited members of the crowd to join him on the bridge, then ordered them all to be thrown into the water.

At a public banquet a slave was caught stealing a strip of silver from a couch so he ordered his hands to be cut off and hung round his neck and that he then be led about among the guests, preceded by a placard giving the reason for his punishment.

When he was training with a murmillo from the gladiatorial school who was using a wooden sword and fell out of deference to the emperor, Caligula stabbed him with a real dagger.

At a particularly sumptuous banquet he suddenly burst into a fit of laughter and when the consuls politely inquired why, he replied: ‘I was just thinking that at a single nod of mine both of you could have your throats cut on the spot.’

33. Caligula stood next to a statue of Jupiter and asked the tragic actor Apelles which of the two seemed to him the greater and, when he hesitated, had him flayed with whips.

Whenever he kissed the neck of his wife or sweetheart he would say: ‘And this beautiful throat can be cut whenever I please.’

He loved Caesonia but he sometimes playfully threatened to torture her to find out why he loved her so passionately.

34. Caligula made malicious attacks on men from every era. Augustus had moved some statues of famous men from the court of the Capitol to the Campus Martius. Caligula had them all destroyed, and thereafter forbade the erection of the statue of any living man anywhere, without his knowledge and consent.

He even considered destroying the poems of Homer, asking why he should not have the same privilege as Plato, who excluded Homer from his ideal commonwealth.

He came close to More than that, removing the writings and the busts of Vergil and Livy from all the libraries, calling Virgil talentless and Livy wordy and inaccurate.

He considered abolishing the legal profession altogether in order to prevent any opinions being given which contradicted his wish.

35. Caligula deprived the noblest families in Rome of their traditional emblems.

He invited King Ptolemy to Rome, entertained him lavishly and then had him put to death merely because, when giving a gladiatorial show, he noticed that Ptolemy on entering the theatre attracted general attention by the splendour of his purple cloak.

Whenever he ran across handsome men with fine heads of hair he ordered the backs of their heads shaved.

There was no one of such low condition or such abject fortune that he did not envy him whatever advantages he possessed.

36. Caligula had no respect for his own chastity or anyone else’s.

He is said to have had unnatural relations with Marcus Lepidus, the pantomime actor Mnester, and certain hostages.

Valerius Catullus, a young man of a consular family, publicly proclaimed that he had buggered the emperor and worn himself out in the process.

Beside incest with his three sisters and his passion for the concubine Pyrallis, there was scarcely any woman of rank whom he did not proposition.

He invited them to dinner with their husbands and, as they passed by the foot of his couch, inspected them critically as if buying slaves. Then he would leave the room, sending for the one who pleased him best, returning soon afterwards with evident signs of what had occurred, after which he would openly commend or criticise the woman, commenting on her body and performance.

37. Caligula’s extravagance was unparalleled. He invented new sort of baths and unnatural varieties of food. He bathed in hot or cold perfumed oils, drank pearls of great price dissolved in vinegar, and set before his guests loaves and meats of gold, declaring that a man ought either to be frugal or Caesar.

He scattered large sums of money among the commons from the roof of the basilica Julia for several days in succession.

He built galleys with ten banks of oars, with sterns set with gems, multi-coloured sails, spacious baths, colonnades and banquet-halls, and even a variety of vines and fruit trees. Then he would recline at table as they cruised up and down along the coast of Campania amid songs and choruses.

He built villas and country houses with utter disregard of expense.

He deliberately set out to achieve the impossible: he built moles out into the deep and stormy sea, tunnelled rocks of hardest flint, built up plains to the height of mountains and razed mountains to the level of the plain.

In sum, he squandered vast sums of money, including the 2.7 billion sesterces which Tiberius had amassed, in less than a year.

38. When he ran low on funds he devised a complicated system of false accusations, auction sales, and taxes. For example he demanded proof of Roman citizenship or payment.

He disallowed all returns of property from emperor to owner, if the owner had subsequently made any additions or improvements.

If any chief centurions since the beginning of Tiberius’ reign had not named that emperor or himself among their heirs, he set aside their wills on the ground of ingratitude.

With the result that hosts of people included Caligula as beneficiaries of their wills. But if he learned of this and the will-maker hadn’t died, he accused them of toying with him and sent them poisoned food.

He conducted trials of people like this himself, assigning fines at random, naming in advance the amount he intended to fleece them by.

At one sitting he condemned in a single sentence more than forty prisoners who were accused on different counts, boasting to Caesonia, when she woke after a nap, of the great amount of business he had done while she was taking her siesta.

He attended auctions and deliberately drove the bids as high as possible, forcing people to pay ridiculous sums, bankrupting bidders, forcing some of them to commit suicide.

39. When Caligula was in Gaul he had arranged to be sold for huge amounts the jewels, furniture, slaves, and even the freedmen of his sisters who had been condemned to death. He found this so profitable that he sent to Rome for all the paraphernalia of the old palace, seizing for its transportation public carriages and animals from the bakeries with the result that bread became scarce at Rome.

40. He levied new and unheard of taxes. There was no class of commodities or men on which he did not impose some form of tariff. On all eatables sold in any part of Rome he levied a fixed charge. On lawsuits and legal processes he demanded a fortieth part of the sum involved, on the daily wages of porters, an eighth, on the earnings of prostitutes, as much as each received for one trick.

41. He opened a brothel in his palace, setting aside a number of rooms where matrons and freeborn youths should stand exposed. Then he sent his pages about the fora and basilicas to invite young men and old to come and enjoy themselves, lending money on interest to those who attended and having clerks openly take down their names, as contributors to Caesar’s revenues.

42. When Caligula’s daughter was born he complained that, in addition to the burden of a ruler he now had to bear that of a father and asked for contributions for the girl’s maintenance and dowry.

He declared he would accept New Year gifts and on 1 January took his place in the entrance to the Palace, to receive the coins which a throng of people of all classes showered on him.

Finally, seized by with a mania for money, he would pour out huge piles of gold pieces, walk over them barefooted or wallow in them for a long time.

43. On a whim Caligula announced an expedition to Germany. It was a farce. He assembled legions and auxiliaries from all quarters, collecting provisions of every kind on an unheard of scale. Then he made a forced march for the border, while he himself was carried in a litter by eight bearers. He required the inhabitants of the towns through which he passed to sweep the roads for him and sprinkle them to lay the dust.

44. On reaching his camp, to overawe everyone, Caligula dismissed in disgrace the generals who were late in bringing in the auxiliaries. In reviewing his troops he deprived many of the chief centurions who were well on in years of their rank, in some cases only a few days before they would have served their time.

All that he accomplished was to receive the surrender of Adminius, son of Cunobelinus king of the Britons, who had been banished by his father and had deserted to the Romans with a small force. But he sent a letter back to Rome boasting as if he’d conquered the whole island.

45. Finding no one to fight with, he had a few Germans of his body-guard taken across the river and hidden and then word brought to him after lunch that the enemy were close at hand. This allowed him to rush out with his friends and flatterers, where they ‘captured’ these Germans and brought them back to the camp where he berated everyone else for their cowardice.

Another time he had hostages sent ahead and, again, suddenly left a banquet with some of the cavalry, galloped off and overtook these entirely quiescent friends, leading them back to the camp in fetters like a great hero.

Meanwhile, he rebuked the senate and people back in Rome for living the life of luxury while he exposed himself to untold dangers.

[If we compare this behaviour to the eight hard years fighting of Julius Caesar in Gaul, it really feels like history repeats itself, first as genuine struggle, then as pantomime.]

46. Caligula drew up his army on the coast (presumably the Channel coast) and then ordered them to…gather seashells and fill their helmets and the folds of their gowns with them.

As a monument of his victory he erected a lofty tower, from which lights were to shine at night to guide the course of ships, as from the Pharos.

47. Caligula then stage managed a triumph back in Rome in which he ordered various friendly Gauls to dye their hair red and pose as captured German chieftains.

He had the triremes in which he had sailed on the Channel carried overland to Rome. Imagine the effort of just this one act!

48. Before leaving Gaul Caligula conceived the insane idea of massacring all the legions there because, 20 years earlier they had, upon hearing of the death of Augustus, besieged the headquarters of his father Germanicus.

He was only just restrained from this order but insisted on decimating them i.e. killing every tenth one, so had them assembled without their weapons, but when he saw some sneaking off to get their swords, he panicked, and fled, travelling back to Rome and taking his fury out on the Senate.

49. Caligula entered Rome to an ovation (one step down from a formal triumph), meditating further crimes and atrocities, but four months later he was dead.

It is said that he intended to massacre all the best men of both orders (presumably senate and knights) and then move the capital of the empire to Antium or maybe to Alexandria. Two lists were found of the men to be executed.

50. Caligula’s physique He was very tall and extremely pale, with an unshapely body, but very thin neck and legs. His eyes and temples were hollow, his forehead broad and grim, his hair thin and entirely gone on the top of his head, though his body was hairy. Because of this to look upon him from a higher place as he passed by, or for any reason whatever to mention a goat, was treated as a capital offence.

While his face was naturally forbidding and ugly, he purposely made it even more savage, practising all kinds of terrible and fearsome expressions before a mirror.

He was sound neither of body nor mind. As a boy he was troubled with epilepsy and it recurred in manhood. During attacks he was hardly able to walk, to stand up, to collect his thoughts, or to hold up his head.

Some say his wife Caesonia gave him an aphrodisiac which had the effect of driving him mad.

He suffered from insomnia, never getting more than three hours sleep a night. He had bad nightmares and premonitions.

51. Caligula combined two mental faults: extreme assurance and excessive timorousness. He claimed to despise the gods but was terrified of lightning and thunder.

Panicked by rumour of a German attack, he deserted his troops, rode quickly back to the bridges, which were packed with troops, and so had himself passed from hand to hand over the men’s heads.

Hearing of an uprising in Germany he made preparations to flee Rome. His assassins played on this well-known fear when they claimed to the soldiery, after they’d murdered him, that he committed suicide after hearing of a defeat.

52. Caligula wore outlandish clothes. Instead of a plain toga, he often appeared in public in embroidered cloaks covered with precious stones, with a long-sleeved tunic and bracelets, sometimes in silk and in a woman’s robe, now in slippers or buskins, again in boots, such as the emperor’s bodyguard wear, and at times in the low shoes which are worn by women.

He frequently wore the uniform of a triumphing general, even before his campaign, and sometimes the breastplate of Alexander the Great, which he had had taken from Alexander’s tomb at Alexandria.

53. Caligula wasn’t very interested in literature but paid attention to oratory and very eloquent. When he was angry he let forth an abundant flow of words and thoughts, he paced up and down, and his delivery was such that he was clearly heard at a distance.

The Stoic philosopher, statesman and dramatist Lucius Annaeus Seneca the Younger (4 BC to 65 AD) was popular during his reign but Caligula accused him of writing ‘mere school exercises’ and of being ‘sand without lime’.

He liked to compose speeches for and against those he had brought to trial and often forced the senate and knights to listen to both addresses, before making a decision on a whim.

54. Caligula was very active. He appeared in the Circus as a Thracian gladiator, fighting with the weapons of actual warfare; as a charioteer; and even as a singer and dancer.

He fancied his talents so much that even at public performances he couldn’t refrain from singing with the tragic actor as he delivered his lines, or from openly imitating his gestures by way of praise or correction.

On the day he was assassinated he seems to have ordered an all-night vigil for the sole purpose of taking advantage of the licence of the occasion to make his first appearance on the stage.

On one occasion he summoned three senators of consular rank to the palace and when they arrived in fear of their lives, he seated them on a stage and then suddenly burst onto it amid a great din of flutes and clogs, dressed in a cloak and a tunic reaching to his heels, performed a song and dance and disappeared again.

Yet he could not swim.

55. Those Caligula loved he loved with a mad intensity. He used to kiss Mnester, the pantomime actor, even in the theatre, and if anyone made the slightest sound while his favourite was dancing, he had him dragged from his seat and scourged him with his own hand.

On the day before the games, in order to prevent his horse, Incitatus, from being disturbed, he sent his soldiers to enforce silence in the whole neighbourhood.

Besides a stall of marble, a manger of ivory, purple blankets and a collar of precious stones, he gave this horse a house, a troop of slaves and furniture, for the elegant entertainment of the guests invited in his name. It said that he planned to make his horse consul.

56. There were many conspiracies, until two men succeeded in killing Caligula with the co-operation of his most influential freedmen and the officers of the praetorian guard.

They decided to kill him at noon as he left the Palatine games. The principal part was claimed by Cassius Chaerea, tribune of a cohort of the praetorian guard. Caligula used to taunt him, a man already well on in years, with voluptuousness and effeminacy and every form of insult. Whenever he asked for the watchword Gaius would give him ‘Priapus’ or ‘Venus’ and when Chaerea had occasion to thank him for anything, Caligula would hold out his hand to kiss, forming and moving it in an obscene fashion.

57. Caligula’s approaching murder was foretold by many prodigies:

the statue of Jupiter at Olympia, which he had ordered to be taken to pieces and moved to Rome, suddenly uttered such a peal of laughter that the scaffoldings collapsed and the workmen took to their heels
a man called Cassius turned up, who declared that he had been bidden in a dream to sacrifice a bull to Jupiter
the Capitol at Capua was struck by lightning on the Ides of March, and also the room of the doorkeeper of the Palace at Rome
he soothsayer Sulla, when Gaius consulted him about his horoscope, declared that inevitable death was close at hand
the lots of Fortune at Antium warned him to beware of Cassius, and he accordingly ordered the death of Cassius Longinus, who was at the time proconsul of Asia, forgetting that the family name of Chaerea was Cassius
the day before he was killed he dreamt that he stood in heaven beside the throne of Jupiter and that the god struck him with the toe of his right foot and hurled him to earth
the day before his death, as he was sacrificing, he was sprinkled with the blood of a flamingo,
the pantomimic actor Mnester danced a tragedy which the tragedian Neoptolemus had acted years before during the games at which Philip king of the Macedonians was assassinated
in a farce called ‘Laureolus’, in which the chief actor falls as he is making his escape and vomits blood, several understudies so vied with one another in giving evidence of their proficiency that the stage swam in blood

58. On the ninth day before the Kalends of February, at about the seventh hour, he hesitated whether or not to get up for luncheon, since his stomach was still disordered from excess of food on the day before, but at length he came out at the persuasion of his friends.

In the covered passage through which he had to pass, some boys of good birth, who had been summoned from Asia to appear on the stage, were rehearsing their parts, and he stopped to watch and to encourage them and had not the leader of the troop complained that he had a chill, he would have returned and had the performance given at once.

From this point there are two versions of the story: some say that as he was talking with the boys, Chaerea came up behind, cried ‘Take this!’ and gave him a deep sword wound in the neck, and that then the tribune Cornelius Sabinus, who was the other conspirator and faced Caligula, stabbed him in the breast.

Others say that Sabinus, after getting rid of the crowd through centurions who were in the plot, asked for the watchword, as soldiers do, and that when Caligula gave him ‘Jupiter’, he cried ‘So be it’ and, as Caligula looked around, he split his jawbone with a blow of his sword.

As he lay writhing on the ground crying ‘I am still alive’ the other conspirators dispatched him with 30 wounds as the cry went around, ‘Strike again.’ Some even thrust their swords through his privates. At the beginning of the disturbance his bearers ran to his aid with their poles and then some of the Germans of his body-guard, who killed several of his assassins, as well as some innocent senators who happened to be nearby.

59. Caligula lived 29 years and ruled 3 years, 10 months and 8 days. His body was conveyed secretly to the gardens of the Lamian family, where it was partly consumed on a hastily erected pyre and buried beneath a light covering of turf. Later his sisters on their return from exile dug it up, cremated it, and consigned it to the family tomb.

Before this was done, it is well known that the caretakers of the gardens were disturbed by ghosts, and that, in the house where he was murdered, not a night passed without some fearsome apparition until at last the house itself was destroyed by fire.

With Caligula died his wife Caesonia, stabbed with a sword by a centurion, while his daughter’s brains were dashed out against a wall.

60. The atmosphere of fear and paranoia continued after his death. Not even after the murder was made known was it believed that Caligula was dead. People suspected that Caligula himself had staged his own death and would return to punish anyone who was celebrating.

The confusion was exacerbated because the conspirators had not agreed on a successor. The senate was unanimously in favour of re-establishing the republic and so called the first meeting, not in the senate house, because it bore the by-now hated name Julian Building, but in the Capitol.

Some wanted all memory of the Caesars obliterated and all their temples destroyed. Men commented that all the Caesars whose forename was Gaius had perished by the sword, beginning with the one who was slain in the times of Cinna. [Although Michael Grant tells us in a footnote that this is not factually correct, it indicates the terrible reputation the family had acquired.]

[Once Claudius was securely in power he had Caligula’s assassins, including Cassius Chaerea and Julius Lupus, the murderer of Caligula’s wife and daughter, put to death – to ensure Claudius’s own safety and to act as a deterrent against conspirators during his reign.]

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