The Caesars

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But, finally, what if, after all, the worst of the Caesars, and those in
particular, were entitled to the benefit of a still shorter and more
conclusive apology? What if, in a true medical sense, they were insane? It
is certain that a vein of madness ran in the family; and anecdotes are
recorded of the three worst, which go far to establish it as a fact, and
others which would imply it as symptoms--preceding or accompanying. As
belonging to the former class, take the following story: At midnight an
elderly gentleman suddenly sends round a message to a select party of
noblemen, rouses them out of bed, and summons them instantly to his
palace. Trembling for their lives from the suddenness of the summons, and
from the unseasonable hour, and scarcely doubting that by some anonymous
_delator_ they have been implicated as parties to a conspiracy, they
hurry to the palace--are received in portentous silence by the ushers and
pages in attendance--are conducted to a saloon, where (as in every where
else) the silence of night prevails, united with the silence of fear and
whispering expectation. All are seated--all look at each other in ominous
anxiety. Which is accuser? Which is the accused? On whom shall their
suspicion settle--on whom their pity? All are silent--almost speechless--
and even the current of their thoughts is frost-bound by fear. Suddenly
the sound of a fiddle or a viol is caught from a distance--it swells upon
the ear--steps approach--and in another moment in rushes the elderly
gentleman, grave and gloomy as his audience, but capering about in a
frenzy of excitement. For half an hour he continues to perform all
possible evolutions of caprioles, pirouettes, and other extravagant feats
of activity, accompanying himself on the fiddle; and, at length, not
having once looked at his guests, the elderly gentleman whirls out of the
room in the same transport of emotion with which he entered it; the panic-
struck visitors are requested by a slave to consider themselves as
dismissed: they retire; resume their couches:--the nocturnal pageant has
"dislimned" and vanished; and on the following morning, were it not for
their concurring testimonies, all would be disposed to take this
interruption of their sleep for one of its most fantastic dreams. The
elderly gentleman, who figured in this delirious _pas seul_--who was
he? He was Tiberius Caesar, king of kings, and lord of the terraqueous
globe. Would a British jury demand better evidence than this of a
disturbed intellect in any formal process _de lunatico inquirendo_?
For Caligula, again, the evidence of symptoms is still plainer. He knew
his own defect; and purposed going through a course of hellebore.
Sleeplessness, one of the commonest indications of lunacy, haunted him in
an excess rarely recorded. [Footnote: No fiction of romance presents so
awful a picture of the ideal tyrant as that of Caligula by Suetonius. His
palace--radiant with purple and gold, but murder every where lurking
beneath flowers; his smiles and echoing laughter--masking (yet hardly
meant to mask) his foul treachery of heart; his hideous and tumultuous
dreams--his baffled sleep--and his sleepless nights--compose the picture
of an AEschylus. What a master's sketch lies in these few lines:
"Incitabatur insomnio maxime; neque enim plus tribus horis nocturnis
quiescebat; ac ne his placida quiete, at pavida miris rerum imaginibus: ut
qui inter ceteras pelagi quondam speciem colloquentem secum videre visus
sit. Ideoque magna parte noctis, vigilse cubandique tsedio, nunc toro
residens, nunc per longissimas porticus vagus, invocare identidem atque
exspectare lucem consueverat:"--i. e., But, above all, he was tormented
with nervous irritation, by sleeplessness; for he enjoyed not more than
three hours of nocturnal repose; nor these even in pure untroubled rest,
but agitated by phantasmata of portentous augury; as, for example, upon
one occasion he fancied that he saw the sea, under some definite
impersonation, conversing with himself. Hence it was, and from this
incapacity of sleeping, and from weariness of lying awake, that he had
fallen into habits of ranging all the night long through the palace,
sometimes throwing himself on a couch, sometimes wandering along the vast
corridors, watching for the earliest dawn, and anxiously invoking its
approach.] The same, or similar facts, might be brought forward on behalf
of Nero. And thus these unfortunate princes, who have so long (and with so
little investigation of their cases) passed for monsters or for demoniac
counterfeits of men, would at length be brought back within the fold of
humanity, as objects rather of pity than of abhorrence, would be
reconciled to our indulgent feelings, and, at the same time, made
intelligible to our understandings.

CHAPTER IV.

The five Caesars who succeeded immediately to the first twelve, were, in as
high a sense as their office allowed, patriots. Hadrian is perhaps the
first of all whom circumstances permitted to show his patriotism without
fear. It illustrates at one and the same moment a trait in this emperor's
character, and in the Roman habits, that he acquired much reputation for
hardiness by walking bareheaded. "Never, on any occasion," says one of his
memorialists (Dio,) "neither in summer heat nor in winter's cold, did he
cover his head; but, as well in the Celtic snows as in Egyptian heats, he
went about bareheaded." This anecdote could not fail to win the especial
admiration of Isaac Casaubon, who lived in an age when men believed a hat
no less indispensable to the head, even within doors, than shoes or
stockings to the feet. His astonishment on the occasion is thus expressed:
"Tantum est _hae aschaesis_:" such and so mighty is the force of habit
and daily use. And then he goes on to ask--"Quis hodie nudum caput radiis
solis, aut omnia perurenti frigori, ausit exponere?" Yet we ourselves, and
our illustrious friend, Christopher North, have walked for twenty years
amongst our British lakes and mountains hatless, and amidst both snow and
rain, such as Romans did not often experience. We were naked, and yet not
ashamed. Nor in this are we altogether singular. But, says Casaubon, the
Romans went farther; for they walked about the streets of Rome [Footnote:
And hence we may the better estimate the trial to a Roman's feelings in
the personal deformity of baldness, connected with the Roman theory of its
cause, for the exposure of it was perpetual.] bareheaded, and never
assumed a hat or a cap, a _petasus_ or a _galerus_, a Macedonian _causia_,
or a _pileus_, whether Thessalian, Arcadian, or Laconic, unless when they
entered upon a journey. Nay, some there were, as Masinissa and Julius
Caesar, who declined even on such an occasion to cover their heads. Perhaps
in imitation of these celebrated leaders, Hadrian adopted the same
practice, but not with the same result; for to him, either from age or
constitution, this very custom proved the original occasion of his last
illness.

Imitation, indeed, was a general principle of action with Hadrian, and the
key to much of his public conduct; and allowably enough, considering the
exemplary lives (in a public sense) of some who had preceded him, and the
singular anxiety with which he distinguished between the lights and
shadows of their examples. He imitated the great Dictator, Julius, in his
vigilance of inspection into the civil, not less than the martial police
of his times, shaping his new regulations to meet abuses as they arose,
and strenuously maintaining the old ones in vigorous operation. As
respected the army, this was matter of peculiar praise, because peculiarly
disinterested; for his foreign policy was pacific; [Footnote:
"Expeditiones sub eo," says Spartian, "graves nullae fuerunt. Bella etiam
silentio pene transacta." But he does not the less add, "A militibus,
propter curam exercitus nimiam, multum amatus est."] he made no new
conquests; and he retired from the old ones of Trajan, where they could
not have been maintained without disproportionate bloodshed, or a jealousy
beyond the value of the stake. In this point of his administration he took
Augustus for his model; as again in his care of the army, in his
occasional bounties, and in his paternal solicitude for their comforts, he
looked rather to the example of Julius. Him also he imitated in his
affability and in his ambitious courtesies; one instance of which, as
blending an artifice of political subtlety and simulation with a
remarkable exertion of memory, it may be well to mention. The custom was,
in canvassing the citizens of Rome, that the candidate should address
every voter by his name; it was a fiction of republican etiquette, that
every man participating in the political privileges of the State must be
personally known to public aspirants. But, as this was supposed to be, in
a literal sense, impossible to all men with the ordinary endowments of
memory, in order to reconcile the pretensions of republican hauteur with
the necessities of human weakness, a custom had grown up of relying upon a
class of men, called _nomenclators_, whose express business and
profession it was to make themselves acquainted with the person and name
of every citizen. One of these people accompanied every candidate, and
quietly whispered into his ear the name of each voter as he came in sight.
Few, indeed, were they who could dispense with the services of such an
assessor; for the office imposed a twofold memory, that of names and of
persons; and to estimate the immensity of the effort, we must recollect
that the number of voters often far exceeded one quarter of a million. The
very same trial of memory he undertook with respect to his own army, in
this instance recalling the well known feat of Mithridates. And throughout
his life he did not once forget the face or name of any veteran soldier
whom he ever had occasion to notice, no matter under what remote climate,
or under what difference of circumstances. Wonderful is the effect upon
soldiers of such enduring and separate remembrance, which operates always
as the most touching kind of personal flattery, and which, in every age of
the world, since the social sensibilities of men have been much developed,
military commanders are found to have played upon as the most effectual
chord in the great system which they modulated; some few, by a rare
endowment of nature; others, as Napoleon Bonaparte, by elaborate mimicries
of pantomimic art. [Footnote: In the true spirit of Parisian mummery,
Bonaparte caused letters to be written from the War-office, in his own
name, to particular soldiers of high military reputation in every brigade,
(whose private history he had previously caused to be investigated,)
alluding circumstantially to the leading facts in their personal or family
career; a furlough accompanied this letter, and they were requested to
repair to Paris, where the emperor anxiously desired to see them. Thus was
the paternal interest expressed, which their leader took in each man's
fortunes; and the effect of every such letter, it was not doubted, would
diffuse itself through ten thousand other men.]

Other modes he had of winning affection from the army; in particular that,
so often practised before and since, of accommodating himself to the
strictest ritual of martial discipline and castrensian life. He slept in
the open air, or, if he used a tent (papilio), it was open at the sides.
He ate the ordinary rations of cheese, bacon, &c.; he used no other drink
than that composition of vinegar and water, known by the name of _posca_,
which formed the sole beverage allowed in the Roman camps. He joined
personally in the periodical exercises of the army--those even which were
trying to the most vigorous youth and health: marching, for example, on
stated occasions, twenty English miles without intermission, in full armor
and completely accoutred. Luxury of every kind he not only interdicted to
the soldier by severe ordinances, himself enforcing their execution, but
discountenanced it (though elsewhere splendid and even gorgeous in his
personal habits) by his own continual example. In dress, for instance, he
sternly banished the purple and gold embroideries, the jewelled arms, and
the floating draperies so little in accordance with the-severe character
of "_war in procinct_" [Footnote: "_War in procinct_"--a phrase of
Milton's in Paradise Regained, which strikingly illustrates his love of
Latin phraseology; for unless to a scholar, previously acquainted with the
Latin phrase of _in procinctu_, it is so absolutely unintelligible as to
interrupt the current of the feeling.] Hardly would he allow himself an
ivory hilt to his sabre. The same severe proscription he extended to every
sort of furniture, or decorations of art, which sheltered even in the
bosom of camps those habits of effeminate luxury--so apt in all great
empires to steal by imperceptible steps from the voluptuous palace to the
soldier's tent--following in the equipage of great leading officers, or of
subalterns highly connected. There was at that time a practice prevailing,
in the great standing camps on the several frontiers and at all the
military stations, of renewing as much as possible the image of distant
Rome by the erection of long colonnades and piazzas--single, double, or
triple; of crypts, or subterranean [Footnote: "_Crypts_"--these, which
Spartian, in his life of Hadrian, denominates simply _cryptae_, are the
same which, in the Roman jurisprudence, and in the architectural works of
the Romans, yet surviving, are termed _hypogaea deambulationes, i. e._
subterranean parades. Vitruvius treats of this luxurious class of
apartments in connection with the Apothecae, and other repositories or
store-rooms, which were also in many cases under ground, for the same
reason as our ice-houses, wine-cellars, &c. He (and from him Pliny and
Apollonaris Sidonius), calls them _crypto-porticus_ (cloistral
colonnades); and Ulpian calls them _refugia_ (sanctuaries, or places of
refuge); St. Ambrose notices them under the name of _hypogaea_ and _umbrosa
penetralia_, as the resorts of voluptuaries: _Luxuriosorum est_, says he,
_hypogaea quaerere--captantium frigus aestivum_; and again he speaks of
_desidiosi qui ignava sub terris agant otia_.] saloons, (and sometimes
subterranean galleries and corridors,) for evading the sultry noontides of
July and August; of verdant cloisters or arcades, with roofs high over-
arched, constructed entirely out of flexile shrubs, box-myrtle, and
others, trained and trimmed in regular forms; besides endless other
applications of the _topiary_ [Footnote: "_The topiary art_"--so called,
as Salmasius thinks, from _ropaeion, a rope_; because the process of
construction was conducted chiefly by means of cords and strings. This art
was much practised in the 17th century; and Casaubon describes one, which
existed in his early days somewhere in the suburbs of Paris, on so
elaborate a scale, that it represented Troy besieged, with the two hosts,
their several leaders, and all other objects in their full proportion.]
art, which in those days (like the needlework of Miss Linwood in ours),
though no more than a mechanic craft, in some measure realized the effects
of a fine art by the perfect skill of its execution. All these modes of
luxury, with a policy that had the more merit as it thwarted his own
private inclinations, did Hadrian peremptorily abolish; perhaps, amongst
other more obvious purposes, seeking to intercept the earliest buddings of
those local attachments which are as injurious to the martial character
and the proper pursuits of men whose vocation obliges them to consider
themselves eternally under marching orders, as they are propitious to all
the best interests of society in connection with the feelings of civic
life.

We dwell upon this prince not without reason in this particular; for,
amongst the Caesars, Hadrian stands forward in high relief as a reformer of
the army. Well and truly might it be said of him--that, _post Caesarem
Octavianum labantem disciplinam, incurid superiorum principum, ipse
retinuit_. Not content with the cleansings and purgations we have
mentioned, he placed upon a new footing the whole tenure, duties, and
pledges, of military offices. [Footnote: Very remarkable it is, and a fact
which speaks volumes as to the democratic constitution of the Roman army,
in the midst of that aristocracy which enveloped its parent state in a
civil sense, that although there was a name for a _common soldier_ (or
_sentinel_, as he was termed by our ancestors)--viz. _miles gregarius_, or
_miles manipularis_--there was none for an _officer_; that is to say, each
several rank of officers had a name; but there was no generalization to
express the idea of an officer abstracted from its several species or
classes.] It cannot much surprise us that this department of the public
service should gradually have gone to ruin or decay. Under the senate and
people, under the auspices of those awful symbols--letters more
significant and ominous than ever before had troubled the eyes of man,
except upon Belshazzar's wall--S.P.Q.R., the officers of the Roman army
had been kept true to their duties, and vigilant by emulation and a
healthy ambition. But, when the ripeness of corruption had by dissolving
the body of the State brought out of its ashes a new mode of life, and had
recast the aristocratic republic, by aid of its democratic elements then
suddenly victorious, into a pure autocracy--whatever might be the
advantages in other respects of this great change, in one point it had
certainly injured the public service, by throwing the higher military
appointments, all in fact which conferred any authority, into the channels
of court favor--and by consequence into a mercenary disposal. Each
successive emperor had been too anxious for his own immediate security, to
find leisure for the remoter interests of the empire: all looked to the
army, as it were, for their own immediate security against competitors,
without venturing to tamper with its constitution, to risk popularity by
reforming abuses, to balance present interest against a remote one, or to
cultivate the public welfare at the hazard of their own: contented with
obtaining _that_, they left the internal arrangements of so formidable a
body in the state to which circumstances had brought it, and to which
naturally the views of all existing beneficiaries had gradually adjusted
themselves. What these might be, and to what further results they might
tend, was a matter of moment doubtless to the empire. But the empire was
strong; if its motive energy was decaying, its _vis inertia_ was for ages
enormous, and could stand up against assaults repeated for many ages:
whilst the emperor was in the beginning of his authority weak, and pledged
by instant interest, no less than by express promises, to the support of
that body whose favor had substantially supported himself. Hadrian was the
first who turned his attention effectually in that direction; whether it
were that he first was struck with the tendency of the abuses, or that he
valued the hazard less which he incurred in correcting them, or that,
having no successor of his own blood, he had a less personal and affecting
interest at stake in setting this hazard at defiance. Hitherto, the
highest regimental rank, that of tribune, had been disposed of in two
ways, either civilly upon popular favor and election, or upon the express
recommendation of the soldiery. This custom had prevailed under the
republic, and the force of habit had availed to propagate that practice
under a new mode of government. But now were introduced new regulations:
the tribune was selected for his military qualities and experience: none
was appointed to this important office, "_nisi barba plena_" The
centurion's truncheon, [Footnote: _Vitis_: and it deserves to be
mentioned, that this staff, or cudgel, which was the official engine and
cognizance of the Centurion's dignity, was meant expressly to be used in
caning or cudgelling the inferior soldiers: "_propterea_ vitis in manum
data," says Salmasius, "_verberando scilicet militi qui deliquisset_." We
are no patrons of corporal chastisement, which, on the contrary, as the
vilest of degradations, we abominate. The soldier, who does not feel
himself dishonored by it, is already dishonored beyond hope or redemption.
But still let this degradation not be imputed to the English army
exclusively.] again, was given to no man, "_nisi robusto et bonae famae_."
The arms and military appointments (_supellectilis_) were revised; the
register of names was duly called over; and none suffered to remain in the
camps who was either above or below the military age. The same vigilance
and jealousy were extended to the great stationary stores and repositories
of biscuit, vinegar, and other equipments for the soldiery. All things
were in constant readiness in the capital and the provinces, in the
garrisons and camps, abroad and at home, to meet the outbreak of a foreign
war or a domestic sedition. Whatever were the service, it could by no
possibility find Hadrian unprepared. And he first, in fact, of all the
Caesars, restored to its ancient republican standard, as reformed and
perfected by Marius, the old martial discipline of the Scipios and the
Paulli--that discipline, to which, more than to any physical superiority
of her soldiery, Rome had been indebted for her conquest of the earth; and
which had inevitably decayed in the long series of wars growing out of
personal ambition. From the days of Marius, every great leader had
sacrificed to the necessities of courting favor from the troops, as much
as was possible of the hardships incident to actual service, and as much
as he dared of the once rigorous discipline. Hadrian first found himself
in circumstances, or was the first who had courage enough to decline a
momentary interest in favor of a greater in reversion; and a personal
object which was transient, in favor of a state one continually revolving.

For a prince, with no children of his own, it is in any case a task of
peculiar delicacy to select a successor. In the Roman empire the
difficulties were much aggravated. The interests of the State were, in the
first place, to be consulted; for a mighty burthen of responsibility
rested upon the emperor in the most personal sense. Duties of every kind
fell to his station, which, from the peculiar constitution of the
government, and from circumstances rooted in the very origin of the
imperatorial office, could not be devolved upon a council. Council there
was none, nor could be recognised as such in the State machinery. The
emperor, himself a sacred and sequestered creature, might be supposed to
enjoy the secret tutelage of the Supreme Deity; but a council, composed of
subordinate and responsible agents, could _not_. Again, the auspices of
the emperor, and his edicts, apart even from any celestial or supernatural
inspiration, simply as emanations of his own divine character, had a value
and a consecration which could never belong to those of a council--or to
those even which had been sullied by the breath of any less august
reviser. The emperor, therefore, or--as with a view to his solitary and
unique character we ought to call him--in the original irrepresentable
term, the imperator, could not delegate his duties, or execute them in any
avowed form by proxies or representatives. He was himself the great
fountain of law--of honor--of preferment--of civil and political
regulations. He was the fountain also of good and evil fame. He was the
great chancellor, or supreme dispenser of equity to all climates, nations,
languages, of his mighty dominions, which connected the turbaned races of
the Orient, and those who sat in the gates of the rising sun, with the
islands of the West, and the unfathomed depths of the mysterious
Scandinavia. He was the universal guardian of the public and private
interests which composed the great edifice of the social system as then
existing amongst his subjects. Above all, and out of his own private
purse, he supported the heraldries of his dominions--the peerage,
senatorial or praetorian, and the great gentry or chivalry of the Equites.
These were classes who would have been dishonored by the censorship of a
less august comptroller. And, for the classes below these,--by how much
they were lower and more remote from his ocular superintendence,--by so
much the more were they linked to him in a connection of absolute
dependence. Caesar it was who provided their daily food, Caesar who provided
their pleasures and relaxations. He chartered the fleets which brought
grain to the Tiber--he bespoke the Sardinian granaries whilst yet
unformed--and the harvests of the Nile whilst yet unsown. Not the
connection between a mother and her unborn infant is more intimate and
vital, than that which subsisted between the mighty populace of the Roman
capital and their paternal emperor. They drew their nutriment from him;
they lived and were happy by sympathy with the motions of his will; to him
also the arts, the knowledge, and the literature of the empire looked for
support. To him the armies looked for their laurels, and the eagles in
every clime turned their aspiring eyes, waiting to bend their flight
according to the signal of his Jovian nod. And all these vast functions
and ministrations arose partly as a natural effect, but partly also they
were a cause of the emperor's own divinity. He was capable of services so
exalted, because he also was held a god, and had his own altars, his own
incense, his own worship and priests. And that was the cause, and that was
the result of his bearing, on his own shoulders, a burthen so mighty and
Atlantean.

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