The Twelve Caesars (49 page)

In place of military glory, a daredevil escapade. Titus had accompanied his father to Judaea in 67; two years later it was Domitian’s turn to experience human nature red
in tooth and claw. In his case, the occasion was provided by the re-eruption of civil war in Rome, that bloody contest of Vitellians and Flavians which soon transformed Domitian’s world. The
subjection of the Jews by Vespasian and Titus followed a dogged progression: Domitian’s ‘glory’ emerged in an anarchic free-for-all of fire and fear in which his own role was
essentially passive (appropriately, given that his was a nature described as ‘incapable of exertion’: he would later go to war in a litter).

The events of the night in question permit varying interpretations: a ‘true’ account may be beyond recall. Aside from broader Flavian propaganda determined to gloss the butchery of
the dynasty’s seizure of power, Domitian himself afterwards appropriated the incident (and a version of his own part in it) as the basis of a narrative of personal heroism. He exploited it,
like Vespasian’s long and distinguished military career and Titus’ conquest of Jerusalem, as grounds of proof of his own fitness to rule.

Clearly Domitian was fortunate to escape with his life. The night Vitellian troops sacked the Capitol, burning the temple
to the ground, they were in no mood to behave
with kindliness towards the younger son of their enemy. In Suetonius’ account, Domitian is hiding in the Capitol before the Vitellians make their entry. With him is his uncle, Sabinus,
reinstated as city prefect by Otho, and a number of the troops at Sabinus’ disposal. Despite Vitellian advances, Domitian successfully hides all night in the house of a temple attendant close
by the temple precincts. He escapes the following morning, disguised as a follower of Isis, that Egyptian cult associated with Cleopatra, which Augustus had been at such pains to curb. His
destination is a house on the further side of the Tiber belonging to the mother of a schoolfriend. Tacitus also has Domitian escaping in the linen robes of a devotee of Isis (in this case
improvised for him by a dexterous freedman). His destination in Tacitus’ recounting is the house of one of Vespasian’s clients, where he was able to hide in safety. Either way, it was a
hair-raising escapade. Sabinus’ grizzly end reinforced Domitian’s consciousness of the miraculous nature of his escape. Captured in the burning temple, Vespasian’s elder brother
was taken in chains to Vitellius and decapitated. His headless body was hurled into the Tiber.

Relief inspired braggadocio. Domitian again turned to poetry, that pastime Tacitus dismisses as a deliberate feint ‘to throw a veil over his character’.
¹⁰
The subject of his poem on
this occasion was his own survival. He also, as we have seen, built a shrine to Jupiter Custos on the site of the temple attendant’s house. Later that shrine became a fully fledged temple, at
its centre a statue of himself seated in the god’s lap.
¹¹
It was a heavy-handed gesture of gratitude and self-assertion on Rome’s most sacred hill. By then, Domitian had succeeded his
father and brother as
princeps.
In his own words
dominus et deus
(‘master and god’) of the Roman world, he found it increasingly
easy to align his
existence with that of the firmament. This assumption of divinity may have been politically motivated. Like Gaius’ posturing with wig and caduceus, it was a means of elevating his own
position above that of the senate, a riposte to senatorial dismay at his lack of experience, prestige or noble birth. First seeds of this dangerous self-aggrandizement were sown on that night of
Turneresque conflagration on the Capitol.

In Suetonius’
Life
, Domitian’s damnation is a matter of personal choice, the reason for its particular viciousness. Unlike earlier ‘bad’ emperors,
he possesses few of the characteristics of a victim. Inconsistent, inclined to contradictions, Gaius had been forced to vice by mental illness; Nero, by contrast, had failed to transcend ambiguous
genetics. He ‘degenerated from the good qualities of his ancestors… [and] reproduced the vices of each of them, as if transmitted to him by natural inheritance’. Iniquitous and
inexcusable, in neither case are their failings wholly deliberate. Suetonius’ Domitian claims no such exoneration. The historical record is voluble in praise of Vespasian and Titus. Suetonius
takes pains to dismiss rumours that Vespasian’s grandfather Titus Flavius Petro, an associate of Pompey’s, turned tail at Pharsalus, or that his great-grandfather was a
labour-contractor from Reate; the honesty of earlier Flavians is matter for comment. Although Domitian shared with Gaius, Claudius and Nero inheritance of the throne through family descent, his
humbler background offered no default mode of perniciousness. Instead, the bloody impulse arose alongside tyranny, after Domitian had abandoned those ‘strong proofs not merely of integrity
but
even of liberality’ which the author discerned in the first years of his reign: a preference for savage self-fulfilment above service to the state. Afraid for his
life once misbehaviour made him a target for assassins, Suetonius’ Domitian succumbed to cruelty; his greed increased in line with his spending, confiscations from Rome’s propertied
classes inspired not by malice but by need. Attempting tentative neutrality, Suetonius treats Domitian with a degree of deliberate evenhandedness, balancing later venalities with earlier promise.
But he omits to remind us of the long duration of Domitian’s reign, itself proof that this blackguard emperor’s savagery cannot have been as far-reaching as we might assume – nor
the man himself as ‘universally odious’ as Eutropius insists.
¹²
Dio, Pliny and Tacitus eschew equivocation. Dio’s Domitian is ‘not only bold and quick to anger but also
treacherous and secretive’, characterized by impulsiveness and craftiness.
¹³
It is a combination from which no good can be expected.

All the ancient authors provide instances of Domitian’s treachery, the smiling face that masked a blackened heart, a delight in wrong-footing friend and foe alike, ‘the preliminary
declaration of clemency that… came to be [a] certain indication of a cruel death’, that pretence of amity towards the person whom he wished dead above all others. Dio’s portrait
is a template of wickedness scarcely differentiated from the villains of pantomime and fairytale. It is the author’s ultimate revenge: to rob his subject even of individualism.

With hindsight we see that Domitian did not choose villainy unprovoked. The senate too made choices. In greeting Domitian’s accession with renewed nostalgia for the vanished Republic none
had experienced, a vocal minority of its members – their motivation self-interest as often as disinterest – opposed a system of which Domitian was the embodiment but not the
architect. Insecure and lacking the easy bonhomie of his father and brother, a truculent emperor responded on the back foot with mulish self-assertion. Was he mindful of the deaths of
Nero, Galba, Otho and Vitellius? If so, he understood the perils and precariousness of the purple. Increasingly he forswore futile attempts to win patrician favour. Perhaps his mind had been made
up long ago, observing Vespasian’s and Titus’ careful handling of that critical and envious body of men; or informed by his reading of the memoirs of Tiberius, ominously his only
literary diversion. From the moment of his accession, Domitian placed his trust in the army. He raised their pay for the first time since Augustus, a significant strain on an imperial purse soon to
be depleted by the demands of an extensive building programme. In the main, the troops responded to Domitian’s attentiveness with loyalty (the behaviour of legions in Upper Germany during
Saturninus’ revolt of 89 came as a jolt). Still, in the long term it was not enough. Domitian was murdered in Rome, out of sight of the legions he had cultivated. The hand that dealt the blow
belonged to a freedman – a conspiracy with the appearance of a palace coup. Members of the Praetorian Guard and senators too were prepared for the events of that September morning. Distant
legions, admiring the Flavian
gens
and indebted to Domitian, were too far away, too late.

When it came, Domitian’s death was expected. The emperor himself, still just forty-five, was alert to it, attentive to the instinct for survival, only put off his guard by
a slave who lied to him about the time of day and led him into the arms of his assassin. All had been foretold by Ascletarion, an astrologer with a track record for accuracy. It was a quick,
agonizing
struggle – again an intimate-turned-avenger; an orgy of stabbing including, as always, blows to the emperor’s groin; panic and confusion within palace
precincts; burial of the mangled remains by a superannuated nursemaid, Phyllis in this instance, the last who loved. Afterwards the senate greeted the news with euphoria, ‘assailing the dead
emperor with the most insulting and stinging kind of outcries’, according to Suetonius. Reprieve unleashed volubility of a sort that only hours previously would have been treasonable. The
vote of
damnatio memoriae
passed swiftly; the gleeful task of destroying Domitian’s images began at once. ‘It was a delight to smash those arrogant faces to pieces in the
dust,’ wrote Pliny the Younger, quaestor and praetor under Domitian, ‘to threaten them with the sword, and savagely attack them with axes, as if blood and pain would follow every single
blow.’
¹⁴
The elation of aggrieved senators was not shared by Rome’s legions, which, with equal alacrity, called for the emperor’s deification. Nor did the people respond with
revelry; Suetonius indicates indifference. The senate’s wishes prevailed. Domitian’s reign had unnerved and frightened them too thoroughly to forswear vengeance. Once, in dealing with
magistrates, the emperor had quoted from the
Iliad
: ‘I dislike a number of rulers.’ It was not idle posturing. Few would-be rulers survived. Too many senators had died.

Domitian’s policy of overt disdain was at odds with that of Vespasian or Titus. It differed too from that of the majority of his predecessors. Pragmatic or guileful, they had recognized
that the smooth running of the principate demanded a degree of hoodwinking. Possibly no one believed in the Augustan diarchy, that fiction of the founder which contextualized the
princeps
within an enduring Republican power structure. But the effort of lip-service on the part of the current incumbent flattered and reassured a senate house greedy for lost privileges. Like Gaius
before him, Domitian discarded deceits he deplored. It was an approach revealed fitfully over time.

To start, affability and generosity. A considered liberality – as we know, the Flavian way. Integrity. Concern for the institutions of state and the welfare of the people, essential
components of paternalism. ‘He constantly gave grand and costly entertainments,’ Suetonius writes, extravaganzas which filled to capacity the still-new Colosseum. The very building
proclaimed his fitness to rule, this monument to Flavian populism and fatherly love. An emperor of bread and circuses, Domitian instituted a five-yearly festival of music, equestrianism and
gymnastics and, following in the footsteps of Augustus and Claudius, celebrated spectacular Secular Games in which spectators were treated to a hundred races a day. On three occasions he gave the
people donations of 300 sesterces each, as well as lavish civic banquets which replaced the earlier grain dole. ‘All this naturally gave pleasure to the populace,’ Dio comments. Swiftly
he twists the blade: