The Caesars

T >> Thomas de Quincey >> The Caesars

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16

It might seem to throw some doubt, if not upon the fact, yet at least upon
the sincerity, of his _civism_, that undoubtedly Augustus cultivated
his kingly connections with considerable anxiety. It may have been upon
motives merely political that he kept at Rome the children of nearly all
the kings then known as allies or vassals of the Roman power: a curious
fact, and not generally known. In his own palace were reared a number of
youthful princes; and they were educated jointly with his own children. It
is also upon record, that in many instances the fathers of these princes
spontaneously repaired to Rome, and there assuming the Roman dress--as an
expression of reverence to the majesty of the omnipotent State--did
personal 'suit and service' (_more clientum_) to Augustus. It is an
anecdote of not less curiosity, that a whole 'college' of kings subscribed
money for a temple at Athens, to be dedicated in the name of Augustus.
Throughout his life, indeed, this emperor paid a marked attention to all
the royal houses then known to Rome, as occupying the thrones upon the
vast margin of the empire. It is true that in part this attention might be
interpreted as given politically to so many lieutenants, wielding a remote
or inaccessible power for the benefit of Rome. And the children of these
kings might be regarded as hostages, ostensibly entertained for the sake
of education, but really as pledges for their parents' fidelity, and also
with a view to the large reversionary advantages which might be expected
to arise upon the basis of so early and affectionate a connection. But it
is not the less true, that, at one period of his life, Augustus did
certainly meditate some closer personal connection with the royal families
of the earth. He speculated, undoubtedly, on a marriage for himself with
some barbarous princess, and at one time designed his daughter Julia as a
wife for Cotiso, the king of the Getae. Superstition perhaps disturbed the
one scheme, and policy the other. He married, as is well known, for his
final wife, and the partner of his life through its whole triumphant
stage, Livia Drusilla; compelling her husband, Tiberius Nero, to divorce
her, notwithstanding she was then six months advanced in pregnancy. With
this lady, who was distinguished for her beauty, it is certain that he was
deeply in love; and that might be sufficient to account for the marriage.
It is equally certain, however, upon the concurring evidence of
independent writers, that this connection had an oracular sanction--not to
say, suggestion; a circumstance _which was long remembered_, and was
afterwards noticed by the Christian poet Prudentius:

"Idque Deum sortes et Apollinis antra dederunt
Consilium: nunquam melius nam caedere taedas
Responsum est, quam cum praegnans nova nupta jugatur."

His daughter Julia had been promised by turns, and always upon reasons of
state, to a whole muster-roll of suitors; first of all, to a son of Mark
Anthony; secondly, to the barbarous king; thirdly, to her first cousin--
that Marcellus, the son of Octavia, only sister to Augustus, whose early
death, in the midst of great expectations, Virgil has so beautifully
introduced into the vision of Roman grandeurs as yet unborn, which AEneas
beholds in the shades; fourthly, she was promised (and this time the
promise was kept) to the fortunate soldier, Agrippa, whose low birth was
not permitted to obscure his military merits. By him she had a family of
children, upon whom, if upon any in this world, the wrath of Providence
seems to have rested; for, excepting one, and in spite of all the favors
that earth and heaven could unite to shower upon them, all came to an
early, a violent, and an infamous end. Fifthly, upon the death of Agrippa,
and again upon motives of policy, and in atrocious contempt of all the
ties that nature and the human heart and human laws have hallowed, she was
promised, (if that word may be applied to the violent obtrusion upon a
man's bed of one who was doubly a curse--first, for what she brought, and,
secondly, for what she took away,) and given to Tiberius, the future
emperor. Upon the whole, as far as we can at this day make out the
connection of a man's acts and purposes, which, even to his own age, were
never entirely cleared up, it is probable that, so long as the triumvirate
survived, and so long as the condition of Roman power or intrigues, and
the distribution of Roman influence, were such as to leave a possibility
that any new triumvirate should arise--so long Augustus was secretly
meditating a retreat for himself at some barbarous court, against any
sudden reverse of fortune, by means of a domestic connection, which should
give him the claim of a kinsman. Such a court, however unable to make head
against the collective power of Rome, might yet present a front of
resistance to any single partisan who should happen to acquire a brief
ascendancy; or, at the worst, as a merely defensive power, might offer a
retreat, secure in distance, and difficult access; or might be available
as a means of delay for recovering from some else fatal defeat. It is
certain that Augustus viewed Egypt with jealousy as a province, which
might be turned to account in some such way by any aspiring insurgent. And
it must have often struck him as a remarkable circumstance, which by good
luck had turned out entirely to the advantage of his own family, but which
might as readily have had an opposite result, that the three decisive
battles of Pharsalia, of Thapsus, and of Munda, in which the empire of the
world was three times over staked as the prize, had severally brought upon
the defeated leaders a ruin which was total, absolute, and final. One hour
had seen the whole fabric of their aspiring fortunes demolished; and no
resource was left to them but either in suicide, (which, accordingly, even
Caesar had meditated at one stage of the battle of Munda, when it seemed to
be going against him,) or in the mercy of the victor.

That a victor in a hundred fights should in his hundred-and-first,
[Footnote:
"The painful warrior, famoused for fight,
After a thousand victories once foil'd,
Is from the book of honor razed quite,
And all the rest forgot for which he toil'd."
_Shakespeare's Sonnets._]
as in his first, risk the loss of that particular battle, is inseparable
from the condition of man, and the uncertainty of human means; but that
the loss of this one battle should be equally fatal and irrecoverable with
the loss of his first, that it should leave him with means no more
cemented, and resources no better matured for retarding his fall, and
throwing a long succession of hindrances in the way of his conqueror,
argues some essential defect of system. Under our modern policy, military
power--though it may be the growth of one man's life--soon takes root; a
succession of campaigns is required for its extirpation; and it revolves
backwards to its final extinction through all the stages by which
originally it grew. On the Roman system this was mainly impossible from
the solitariness of the Roman power; co-rival nations who might balance
the victorious party, there were absolutely none; and all the underlings
hastened to make their peace, whilst peace was yet open to them, on the
known terms of absolute treachery to their former master, and instant
surrender to the victor of the hour. For this capital defect in the tenure
of Roman power, no matter in whose hands deposited, there was no absolute
remedy. Many a sleepless night, during the perilous game which he played
with Anthony, must have familiarized Octavius with that view of the risk,
which to some extent was inseparable from his position as the leader in
such a struggle carried on in such an empire. In this dilemma, struck with
the extreme necessity of applying some palliation to the case, we have no
doubt that Augustus would devise the scheme of laying some distant king
under such obligations to fidelity as would suffice to stand the first
shock of misfortune. Such a person would have power enough, of a direct
military kind, to face the storm at its outbreak. He would have power of
another kind in his distance. He would be sustained by the courage of
hope, as a kinsman having a contingent interest in a kinsman's prosperity.
And, finally, he would be sustained by the courage of despair, as one who
never could expect to be trusted by the opposite party. In the worst case,
such a prince would always offer a breathing time and a respite to his
friends, were it only by his remoteness, and if not the _means_ of
rallying, yet at least the _time_ for rallying, more especially as
the escape to his frontier would be easy to one who had long forecast it.
We can hardly doubt that Augustus meditated such schemes; that he laid
them aside only as his power began to cement and to knit together after
the battle of Actium; and that the memory and the prudential tradition of
this plan survived in the imperial family so long as itself survived.
Amongst other anecdotes of the same tendency, two are recorded of Nero,
the emperor in whom expired the line of the original Caesars, which
strengthen us in a belief of what is otherwise in itself so probable.
Nero, in his first distractions, upon receiving the fatal tidings of the
revolt in Gaul, when reviewing all possible plans of escape from the
impending danger, thought at intervals of throwing himself on the
protection of the barbarous King Vologesus. And twenty years afterwards,
when the Pseudo-Nero appeared, he found a strenuous champion and protector
in the king of the Parthians. Possibly, had an opportunity offered for
searching the Parthian chancery, some treaty would have been found binding
the kings of Parthia, from the age of Augustus through some generations
downwards, in requital of services there specified, or of treasures
lodged, to secure a perpetual asylum to the prosperity of the Julian
family.

The cruelties of Augustus were perhaps equal in atrocity to any which are
recorded; and the equivocal apology for those acts (one which might as
well be used to aggravate as to palliate the case) is, that they were not
prompted by a ferocious nature, but by calculating policy. He once
actually slaughtered upon an altar, a large body of his prisoners; and
such was the contempt with which he was regarded by some of that number,
that, when led out to death, they saluted their other proscriber, Anthony,
with military honors, acknowledging merit even in an enemy, but Augustus
they passed with scornful silence, or with loud reproaches. Too certainly
no man has ever contended for empire with unsullied conscience, or laid
pure hands upon the ark of so magnificent a prize. Every friend to
Augustus must have wished that the twelve years of his struggle might for
ever be blotted out from human remembrance. During the forty-two years of
his prosperity and his triumph, being above fear, he showed the natural
lenity of his temper.

That prosperity, in a public sense, has been rarely equalled; but far
different was his fate, and memorable was the contrast, within the circuit
of his own family. This lord of the universe groaned as often as the
ladies of his house, his daughter and grand-daughter, were mentioned. The
shame which he felt on their account, led him even to unnatural designs,
and to wishes not less so; for at one time he entertained a plan for
putting the elder Julia to death--and at another, upon hearing that Phoebe
(one of the female slaves in his household) had hanged herself, he
exclaimed audibly,--"Would that I had been the father of Phoebe!" It must,
however, be granted, that in this miserable affair he behaved with very
little of his usual discretion. In the first paroxysms of his rage, on
discovering his daughter's criminal conduct, he made a communication of
the whole to the senate. That body could do nothing in such a matter,
either by act or by suggestion; and in a short time, as every body could
have foreseen, he himself repented of his own want of self-command. Upon
the whole, it cannot be denied, that, according to the remark of Jeremy
Taylor, of all the men signally decorated by history, Augustus Caesar is
that one who exemplifies, in the most emphatic terms, the mixed tenor of
human life, and the equitable distribution, even on this earth, of good
and evil fortune. He made himself master of the world, and against the
most formidable competitors; his power was absolute, from the rising to
the setting sun; and yet in his own house, where the peasant who does the
humblest chares, claims an undisputed authority, he was baffled,
dishonored, and made ridiculous. He was loved by nobody; and if, at the
moment of his death, he desired his friends to dismiss him from this world
by the common expression of scenical applause, (_vos plaudite!_) in
that valedictory injunction he expressed inadvertently the true value of
his own long life, which, in strict candor, may be pronounced one
continued series of histrionic efforts, and of excellent acting, adapted
to selfish ends.

CHAPTER III.

The three next emperors, Caligula, Claudius, and Nero, were the last
princes who had any connection by blood [Footnote: And this was entirely
by the female side. The family descent of the first six Caesars is so
intricate, that it is rarely understood accurately; so that it may be well
to state it briefly. Augustus was grand nephew to Julius Caesar, being the
son of his sister's daughter. He was also, by adoption, the _son_ of
Julius. He himself had one child only, viz. the infamous Julia, who was
brought him by his second wife Scribonia; and through this Julia it was
that the three princes, who succeeded to Tiberius, claimed relationship to
Augustus. On that emperor's last marriage with Livia, he adopted the two
sons whom she had borne to her divorced husband. These two noblemen, who
stood in no degree of consanguinity whatever to Augustus, were Tiberius
and Drusus. Tiberius left no children; but Drusus, the younger of the two
brothers, by his marriage with the younger Antonia, (daughter of Mark
Anthony,) had the celebrated Germanicus, and Claudius, (afterwards
emperor.) Germanicus, though adopted by his uncle Tiberius, and destined
to the empire, died prematurely. But, like Banquo, though he wore no
crown, he left descendants who did. For, by his marriage with Agrippina, a
daughter of Julia's by Agrippa, (and therefore grand-daughter of
Augustus,) he had a large family, of whom one son became the Emperor
Caligula; and one of the daughters, Agrippina the younger, by her marriage
with a Roman nobleman, became the mother of the Emperor Nero. Hence it
appears that Tiberius was uncle to Claudius, Claudius was uncle to
Caligula, Caligula was uncle to Nero. But it is observable, that Nero and
Caligula stood in another degree of consanguinity to each other through
their grandmothers, who were both daughters of Mark Anthony the triumvir;
for the elder Antonia married the grandfather of Nero; the younger Antonia
(as we have stated, above) married Drusus, the grandfather of Caligula;
and again, by these two ladies, they were connected not only with each
other, but also with the Julian house, for the two Antonias were daughters
of Mark Anthony by Octavia, sister to Augustus.] with the Julian house. In
Nero, the sixth emperor, expired the last of the Caesars, who was such in
reality. These three were also the first in that long line of monsters,
who, at different times, under the title of Caesars, dishonored humanity
more memorably, than was possible, except in the cases of those (if any
such can be named) who have abused the same enormous powers in times of
the same civility, and in defiance of the same general illumination. But
for them it is a fact, than some crimes, which now stain the page of
history, would have been accounted fabulous dreams of impure romancers,
taxing their extravagant imaginations to create combinations of wickedness
more hideous than civilized men would tolerate, and more unnatural than
the human heart could conceive. Let us, by way of example, take a short
chapter from the diabolic life of Caligula: In what way did he treat his
nearest and tenderest female connections? His mother had been tortured and
murdered by another tyrant almost as fiendish as himself. She was happily
removed from his cruelty. Disdaining, however, to acknowledge any
connection with the blood of so obscure a man as Agrippa, he publicly gave
out that his mother was indeed the daughter of Julia, but by an incestuous
commerce with her father Augustus. His three sisters he debauched. One
died, and her he canonized; the other two he prostituted to the basest of
his own attendants. Of his wives, it would be hard to say whether they
were first sought and won with more circumstances of injury and outrage,
or dismissed with more insult and levity. The one whom he treated best,
and with most profession of love, and who commonly rode by his side,
equipped with spear and shield, to his military inspections and reviews of
the soldiery, though not particularly beautiful, was exhibited to his
friends at banquets in a state of absolute nudity. His motive for treating
her with so much kindness, was probably that she brought him a daughter;
and her he acknowledged as his own child, from the early brutality with
which she attacked the eyes and cheeks of other infants who were presented
to her as play-fellows. Hence it would appear that he was aware of his own
ferocity, and treated it as a jest. The levity, indeed, which he mingled
with his worst and most inhuman acts, and the slightness of the occasions
upon which he delighted to hang his most memorable atrocities, aggravated
their impression at the time, and must have contributed greatly to sharpen
the sword of vengeance. His palace happened to be contiguous to the
circus. Some seats, it seems, were open indiscriminately to the public;
consequently, the only way in which they could be appropriated, was by
taking possession of them as early as the midnight preceding any great
exhibitions. Once, when it happened that his sleep was disturbed by such
an occasion, he sent in soldiers to eject them; and with orders so
rigorous, as it appeared by the event, that in this singular tumult,
twenty Roman knights, and as many mothers of families, were cudgelled to
death upon the spot, to say nothing of what the reporter calls "innumeram
turbam ceteram."

But this is a trifle to another anecdote reported by the same authority:--
On some occasion it happened that a dearth prevailed, either generally of
cattle, or of such cattle as were used for feeding the wild beasts
reserved for the bloody exhibitions of the amphitheatre. Food could be
had, and perhaps at no very exorbitant price, but on terms somewhat higher
than the ordinary market price. A slight excuse served with Caligula for
acts the most monstrous. Instantly repairing to the public jails, and
causing all the prisoners to pass in review before him (_custodiarum
seriem recognoscens_), he pointed to two bald-headed men, and ordered
that the whole file of intermediate persons should be marched off to the
dens of the wild beasts: "Tell them off," said he, "from the bald man to
the bald man." Yet these were prisoners committed, not for punishment, but
trial. Nor, had it been otherwise, were the charges against them equal,
but running through every gradation of guilt. But the _elogia_ or
records of their commitment, he would not so much as look at. With such
inordinate capacities for cruelty, we cannot wonder that he should in his
common conversation have deplored the tameness and insipidity of his own
times and reign, as likely to be marked by no wide-spreading calamity."
Augustus," said he, "was happy; for in his reign occurred the slaughter of
Varus and his legions. Tiberius was happy; for in his occurred that
glorious fall of the great amphitheatre at Fidenae. But for me--alas!
alas!" And then he would pray earnestly for fire or slaughter--pestilence
or famine. Famine indeed was to some extent in his own power; and
accordingly, as far as his courage would carry him, he did occasionally
try that mode of tragedy upon the people of Rome, by shutting up the
public granaries against them. As he blended his mirth and a truculent
sense of the humorous with his cruelties, we cannot wonder that he should
soon blend his cruelties with his ordinary festivities, and that his daily
banquets would soon become insipid without them. Hence he required a daily
supply of executions in his own halls and banqueting rooms; nor was a
dinner held to be complete without such a dessert. Artists were sought out
who had dexterity and strength enough to do what Lucan somewhere calls
_ensem rotare_, that is, to cut off a human head with one whirl of
the sword. Even this became insipid, as wanting one main element of misery
to the sufferer, and an indispensable condiment to the jaded palate of the
connoisseur, viz., a lingering duration. As a pleasant variety, therefore,
the tormentors were introduced with their various instruments of torture;
and many a dismal tragedy in that mode of human suffering was conducted in
the sacred presence during the emperor's hours of amiable relaxation.

The result of these horrid indulgences was exactly what we might suppose,
that even such scenes ceased to irritate the languid appetite, and yet
that without them life was not endurable. Jaded and exhausted as the sense
of pleasure had become in Caligula, still it could be roused into any
activity by nothing short of these murderous luxuries. Hence, it seems,
that he was continually tampering and dallying with the thought of murder;
and like the old Parisian jeweller Cardillac, in Louis XIV.'s time, who
was stung with a perpetual lust for murdering the possessors of fine
diamonds--not so much for the value of the prize (of which he never hoped
to make any use), as from an unconquerable desire of precipitating himself
into the difficulties and hazards of the murder,--Caligula never failed to
experience (and sometimes even to acknowledge) a secret temptation to any
murder which seemed either more than usually abominable, or more than
usually difficult. Thus, when the two consuls were seated at his table, he
burst out into sudden and profuse laughter; and, upon their courteously
requesting to know what witty and admirable conceit might be the occasion
of the imperial mirth, he frankly owned to them, and doubtless he did not
improve their appetites by this confession, that in fact he was laughing,
and that he could not but laugh, (and then the monster laughed
immoderately again,) at the pleasant thought of seeing them both headless,
and that with so little trouble to himself, (_uno suo nutu_,) he
could have both their throats cut. No doubt he was continually balancing
the arguments for and against such little escapades; nor had any person a
reason for security in the extraordinary obligations, whether of
hospitality or of religious vows, which seemed to lay him under some
peculiar restraints in that case above all others; for such circumstances
of peculiarity, by which the murder would be stamped with unusual
atrocity, were but the more likely to make its fascinations irresistible.
Hence he dallied with the thoughts of murdering her whom he loved best,
and indeed exclusively--his wife Caesonia; and whilst fondling her, and
toying playfully with her polished throat, he was distracted (as he half
insinuated to her) between the desire of caressing it, which might be
often repeated, and that of cutting it, which could be gratified but once.

Nero (for as to Claudius, he came too late to the throne to indulge any
propensities of this nature with so little discretion) was but a variety
of the same species. He also was an amateur, and an enthusiastic amateur
of murder. But as this taste, in the most ingenious hands, is limited and
monotonous in its modes of manifestation, it would be tedious to run
through the long Suetonian roll-call of his peccadilloes in this way. One
only we shall cite, to illustrate the amorous delight with which he
pursued any murder which happened to be seasoned highly to his taste by
enormous atrocity, and by almost unconquerable difficulty. It would really
be pleasant, were it not for the revolting consideration of the persons
concerned, and their relation to each other, to watch the tortuous pursuit
of the hunter, and the doubles of the game, in this obstinate chase. For
certain reasons of state, as Nero attempted to persuade himself, but in
reality because no other crime had the same attractions of unnatural
horror about it, he resolved to murder his mother Agrippina. This being
settled, the next thing was to arrange the mode and the tools. Naturally
enough, according to the custom then prevalent in Rome, he first attempted
the thing by poison. The poison failed: for Agrippina, anticipating tricks
of this kind, had armed her constitution against them, like Mithridates;
and daily took potent antidotes and prophylactics. Or else (which is more
probable) the emperor's agent in such purposes, fearing his sudden
repentance and remorse on first hearing of his mother's death, or possibly
even witnessing her agonies, had composed a poison of inferior strength.
This had certainly occurred in the case of Britannicus, who had thrown off
with ease the first dose administered to him by Nero. Upon which he had
summoned to his presence the woman employed in the affair, and compelling
her by threats to mingle a more powerful potion in his own presence, had
tried it successively upon different animals, until he was satisfied with
its effects; after which, immediately inviting Britannicus to a banquet,
he had finally dispatched him. On Agrippina, however, no changes in the
poison, whether of kind or strength, had any effect; so that, after
various trials, this mode of murder was abandoned, and the emperor
addressed himself to other plans. The first of these was some curious
mechanical device, by which a false ceiling was to have been suspended by
bolts above her bed; and in the middle of the night, the bolt being
suddenly drawn, a vast weight would have descended with a ruinous
destruction to all below. This scheme, however, taking air from the
indiscretion of some amongst the accomplices, reached the ears of
Agrippina; upon which the old lady looked about her too sharply to leave
much hope in that scheme: so _that_ also was abandoned. Next, he
conceived the idea of an artificial ship, which, at the touch of a few
springs, might fall to pieces in deep water. Such a ship was prepared, and
stationed at a suitable point. But the main difficulty remained, which was
to persuade the old lady to go on board. Not that she knew in this case
_who_ had been the ship-builder, for that would have ruined all; but
it seems that she took it ill to be hunted in this murderous spirit, and
was out of humor with her son; besides, that any proposal coming from him,
though previously indifferent to her, would have instantly become
suspected. To meet this difficulty, a sort of reconciliation was proposed,
and a very affectionate message sent, which had the effect of throwing
Agrippina off her guard, and seduced her to Baiae for the purpose of
joining the emperor's party at a great banquet held in commemoration of a
solemn festival. She came by water in a sort of light frigate, and was to
return in the same way. Meantime Nero tampered with the commander of her
vessel, and prevailed upon him to wreck it. What was to be done? The great
lady was anxious to return to Rome, and no proper conveyance was at hand.
Suddenly it was suggested, as if by chance, that a ship of the emperor's,
new and properly equipped, was moored at a neighboring station. This was
readily accepted by Agrippina: the emperor accompanied her to the place of
embarkation, took a most tender leave of her, and saw her set sail. It was
necessary that the vessel should get into deep water before the experiment
could be made; and with the utmost agitation this pious son awaited news
of the result. Suddenly a messenger rushed breathless into his presence,
and horrified him by the joyful information that his august mother had met
with an alarming accident; but, by the blessing of Heaven, had escaped
safe and sound, and was now on her road to mingle congratulations with her
affectionate son. The ship, it seems, had done its office; the mechanism
had played admirably; but who can provide for every thing? The old lady,
it turned out, could swim like a duck; and the whole result had been to
refresh her with a little sea-bathing. Here was worshipful intelligence.
Could any man's temper be expected to stand such continued sieges? Money,
and trouble, and infinite contrivance, wasted upon one old woman, who
absolutely would not, upon any terms, be murdered! Provoking it certainly
was; and of a man like Nero it could not be expected that he should any
longer dissemble his disgust, or put up with such repeated affronts. He
rushed upon his simple congratulating friend, swore that he had come to
murder him, and as nobody could have suborned him but Agrippina, he
ordered her off to instant execution. And, unquestionably, if people will
not be murdered quietly and in a civil way, they must expect that such
forbearance is not to continue for ever; and obviously have themselves
only to blame for any harshness or violence which they may have rendered
necessary.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16