The Twelve Caesars (56 page)

1
. Despite a cultivated abstemiousness in his private life, Caesar spent hugely on elections, invariably other people’s money,
with predictable results. Suetonius suggests, for example, that such were his debts by the end of 62 that he was forced to leave Rome under cover of darkness to escape his creditors.

2
. Ahenobarbus had first attempted to initiate an inquiry into Caesar’s conduct as consul as long ago as the end of 59, in
company with his fellow praetor Gaius Memmius: as we see, neither the implication nor the impulse behind that motion had disappeared.

3
. Given persistent pockets of disaffection among the now largely disenfranchised senate, Caesar would have recourse to these powers in
order to advance his wide-ranging, essentially benevolent legislative programme. He increased senate membership from 600 to 900, including non-patricians and provincial representatives sympathetic
to his cause.

4
. This latter may not have been as great a sacrifice as we suspect. Dio describes Tiberius’ son Drusus as ‘most licentious
and cruel, so cruel in fact that the sharpest words were called Drusian after him’.
⁶

5
. Five years later, West returned to the plight of Agrippina and her children in the more overtly sentimental
Agrippina and her
Children Mourning over the Ashes of Germanicus
. In this image it is the liveliness and cherubic good health of the couple’s younger children, who again occupy the painting’s central
space, which highlight the suffering of their drooping, milk-skinned mother.

6
. Britannicus did suffer from epilepsy: in the event that Nero had killed him with poison, the taunt is spiteful given the recent
association of epilepsy with those destined to rule – the Divine Julius and Gaius.

7
. Although it was true that in ten years of marriage Octavia had failed to conceive a child, the obvious explanation was not her
infertility. The poisonous Anicetus again came to Nero’s rescue in substantiating fictitious claims of adultery.

8
. Galba did not forget Rufus’ tergiversation. Replaced by the ineffectual Hordeonius Flaccus, he was among a number of
provincial governors to lose their posts during the new reign. Flaccus’ weakness in turn passed the baton of revolt to Lower Germany, which Galba entrusted to the future emperor Vitellius. In
an echo of the mistakes made by Nero in Galba’s own case and that of another future emperor, Vespasian, Galba chose Vitellius for his apparent harmlessness, persuaded by his reputation for
gluttony and his galloping bankruptcy.

9
. Funds for this extravagant act of homage may have been raised by confiscating the fortune so rapidly acquired by Vinius. Those
ill-gotten gains were described by Otho on the day of his coup as evidence of greater rapacity and lawlessness than Vinius would have dared even had he been emperor.
⁸

10
. This also served to confirm belief in Otho’s love for Poppaea and that version of earlier events in which Nero’s
appropriation of his wife, far from being planned by Otho, arose unforeseen and unwelcome. Such an explanation had the added benefit of appearing to justify Otho’s anger against his former
friend and lessen the culpability of his revenge.

11
. His rejection extended to titles only and did not compromise his power. Indeed, almost in the same breath, this bloated gourmand
conferred upon himself perpetual consulship. Neither ‘Augustus’ nor ‘Caesar’, he accepted no less a settlement than Augustus had devised.

12
. Pollio’s thanks for these youthful embraces was to preserve a letter of assignation written by Domitian and afterwards to
display it to prurient gazes; Nerva pursued a dignified course of silence.

13
. Last laugh in the saga of Domitian’s marital discord probably went to Domitia, who survived her husband by three decades.
Her revenge – possibly no more than a suggestion and appropriately served cold – waited thirteen years until she joined the conspirators in her husband’s overthrow.

14
. In time Domitian would fall prey to similar unease. In 84 or 85, he recalled to Rome the distinguished British commander
Agricola. Agricola remained loyal. The revenge of his implacable son-in-law Tacitus continues to this day.

15
. As it happened, the Dacian problem was not wholly resolved until 106, when fearsome retaliatory action under the emperor Trajan
forced Decebalus’ suicide and a sullen truce. It is the Dacian campaign which supplied those highly wrought vignettes that even now encircle Trajan’s Column.