The Twelve Caesars (51 page)

As in his father’s reign, senatorial opposition to Domitian arose on philosophical grounds. It was both abstract – a theoretical
objection to the
principate’s vesting of far-reaching formal powers in the hands of an individual – and concrete, focusing on Domitian himself and the nature of his government. Domitian, however, was
not Vespasian. Chaffed by Demetrius, harried by Helvidius Priscus, Vespasian had shown equanimity in the face of his friends’ candour and patience with philosophers whose behaviour Suetonius
characterizes as impudent. The response of Vespasian’s son was less indulgent, as we should expect. Where Vespasian’s claim to power was flawed, Domitian’s was non-existent. He had
not, like his father, brought to a close a period of unbridled political and civil unrest in the life of Rome; nor, thanks to the efforts of Vespasian and Titus, was the condition of the Empire
such that it demanded radical approaches (a puritanical young man of gentle countenance, patchy experience and stubborn self-importance). Despite Domitian’s best efforts, the deification of
his predecessors did not, like the effulgence of Augustus’ glory, bathe him in inviolability. Even the unique award to Domitia of the title ‘Mother of the Divine Caesar’,
following the death of the couple’s only child, a boy who was subsequently deified, fell short of the grandeur of Rome’s previous dynasty.

In the doldrum years 69 to 81, Domitian had devoted himself to archery and adulterous sex. His skill at the former was such that, when hunting at his Alban villa, he regularly killed in excess
of a hundred wild animals. Sometimes he deliberately shot a beast twice: the two arrows created the appearance of horns. He varied the pace by aiming instead at slaves. A slave stood at a distance
and extended his right hand, with the fingers spread. Unerring, Domitian placed his arrows between the slave’s fingers.

As with toxophily, so with philosophy. Like Vespasian, Domitian did not rush his aim. Careful to curry popular favour
in a lavish programme of public games, he advanced
against the senate gradually. It was not until 93 that he embarked on the sequence of senatorial executions which has since been likened to a reign of terror. That year he targeted a clutch of
high-profile senators whose offences included ridicule of the emperor and praise of his enemies. Helvidius Priscus the Younger, son of Vespasian’s old sparring partner, and Arulenus Rusticus
were both former consuls; other ‘philosopher’ victims included Herennius Senecio, biographer of the elder Priscus, Junius Rusticus, Priscus’ eulogist, the historian Hermogenes of
Tarsus and a bona fide philosopher called Maternus. (The works of Arulenus Rusticus and Herennius Senecio were burned in the Forum by triumvirs especially appointed for the task.) Their downfall
probably had a symbolic dimension, as Tacitus claimed, indicating Domitian’s intolerance of senatorial independence, which by then was an open secret anyway:
²³
‘in that fire they thought
to consume the voice of the Roman people, the freedom of the senate, and the conscious emotions of all mankind.’
²⁴
The result fell little short of panic within senatorial ranks. Other victims
of Domitian’s zero-tolerance policy included the governor of Britain, Sallustius Lucullus, who had loaned his name to a new design for lances; Salvius Cocceianus for observing the birthday of
the emperor Otho, his paternal uncle; Mettius Pompusianus, on the strength of reports that his horoscope marked him out as a future emperor; Acilius Glabrio for impiety and Titus Flavius Clemens,
father of Domitian’s heirs Titus Flavius Vespasianus and Titus Flavius Domitianus, probably on a suspicion of conversion to Judaism. So flexible an interpretation of subversion on
Domitian’s part was indicative of that escalating fear, loathing and a kind of madness by which he evidently felt impelled to root out each ort and shard of opposition, real or imaginary.
Informers did
their worst, adding to the frenzied insecurity on the Palatine: Domitian’s victims embraced intimates as well as strangers. ‘What could be more
capricious than a tyrant’s ear, when the fate of his so-called friends and advisers hung on his word?’ Juvenal asked with an air of deserved asperity.
²⁵
Those whose treasonable actions or
words were considered to be of a lower order escaped with confiscation of their estates. For greed alone could rival Domitian’s appetite for cruelty.

While the senate quaked in fear, the emperor was tormented by paranoia. In the magnificent new palace he had built on the Palatine, he lined corridors with polished obsidian and moonstone. The
glossy surface of the stone fulfilled a mirrorlike purpose. It revealed to Domitian the approach of all comers. But mirrors reflect phantoms, too, shifting patterns of light and shadow, a
tremulous, insubstantial imagery of nothing. It was not granted to Domitian to be all-seeing, and the effort of constant watchfulness proved exhausting. It was inevitable that eventually his
vigilance would falter. That weakness proved fatal.

Impossible that the end should come unheralded by portents. In this case dreams. Minerva appeared to Domitian to tell him that she could no longer protect him; she cast aside
her weapons, and riding in a chariot drawn by black horses, plunged into an abyss. It was a traumatic revelation on the part of that goddess whom the motherless emperor had chosen as his tutelary
deity, amounting almost to a second bereavement. In another vision, Domitian saw a golden hump emerging from his back. We are asked to believe that he interpreted this alarming development as a
sign that ‘the condition of the empire would be happier and
more prosperous after his time’. This latter, wholly improbable scenario differs from those auguries
of impending doom with which we have seen Suetonius endow Domitian’s predecessors. It is a narrative device of the historian’s and clearly self-seeking, a sop to succeeding emperors, an
over-neat sycophancy at the expense of Domitian’s final hours. It fails to convince and not simply on account of its unlikelihood, the utter impossibility of the Domitian of the sources
arriving at such a conclusion even
in extremis
. For Domitian’s attacks on the occupants of the senate house imperilled neither the condition of the Empire nor its prosperity, as he
surely understood. Those policies he had pursued outside the senate house constituted their own legacy for good, like the new Via Domitiana from Sinuessa to Puteoli, opened the year before
Domitian’s death and acclaimed by the poet Statius as the benefaction of a mature and knowledgeable ruler.
²⁶
Palatine politics alone weakened Domitian. As the first century drew to its close,
Rome’s upper classes remained unprepared for that king-like absolutism which was always Domitian’s aim and which, in successive generations, would stamp the principate. Unable to
comprehend the possibility of its own redundancy, the senate exulted in the twelfth Caesar’s downfall. But though they destroyed his statue in the Temple of Jupiter Custos, smashed the votive
shields emblazoned with his image which adorned the senate house, and erased his name from the inscriptions attesting to the Sacred Games of 88, they obliterated neither the memory of Domitian nor
that impulse to tyranny which they claimed as his principal flaw. In time they would discover that the will to power always increased with eminence, the simplest of the lessons of these twelve
Caesars.

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