The Caesars

T >> Thomas de Quincey >> The Caesars

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Yet, if in this view it was needful to have a man of talent, on the other
hand there was reason to dread a man of talents too adventurous, too
aspiring, or too intriguing. His situation, as Caesar, or Crown Prince,
flung into his hands a power of fomenting conspiracies, and of concealing
them until the very moment of explosion, which made him an object of
almost exclusive terror to his principal, the Caesar Augustus. His
situation again, as an heir voluntarily adopted, made him the proper
object of public affection and caresses, which became peculiarly
embarrassing to one who had, perhaps, soon found reasons for suspecting,
fearing, and hating him beyond all other men.

The young nobleman, whom Hadrian adopted by his earliest choice, was
Lucius Aurelius Verus, the son of Cejonius Commodus. These names were
borne also by the son; but, after his adoption into the AElian family, he
was generally known by the appellation of AElius Verus. The scandal of
those times imputed his adoption to the worst motives. "_Adriano_,"
says one author, ("_ut malevoli loquuntur_) _acceptior forma quam
moribus_" And thus much undoubtedly there is to countenance so shocking an
insinuation, that very little is recorded of the young prince but such
anecdotes as illustrate his excessive luxury and effeminate dedication to
pleasure. Still it is our private opinion, that Hadrian's real motives
have been misrepresented; that he sought in the young man's extraordinary
beauty--[for he was, says Spartian, _pulchritudinis regiae_]--a plausible
pretext that should he sufficient to explain and to countenance his
preference, whilst under this provisional adoption he was enabled to
postpone the definitive choice of an imperator elect, until his own more
advanced age might diminish the motives for intriguing against himself. It
was, therefore, a mere _ad interim_ adoption; for it is certain, however
we may choose to explain that fact, that Hadrian foresaw and calculated on
the early death of AElius. This prophetic knowledge may have been grounded
on a private familiarity with some constitutional infirmity affecting his
daily health, or with some habits of life incompatible with longevity, or
with both combined. It is pretended that this distinguished mark of favor
was conferred in fulfilment of a direct contract on the emperor's part, as
the price of favors such as the Latin reader will easily understand from
the strong expression of Spartian above cited. But it is far more probable
that Hadrian relied on this admirable beauty, and allowed it so much
weight, as the readiest and most intelligible justification to the
multitude, of a choice which thus offered to their homage a public
favorite--and to the nobility, of so invidious a preference, which placed
one of their own number far above the level of his natural rivals. The
necessities of the moment were thus satisfied without present or future
danger;--as respected the future, he knew or believed that Verus was
marked out for early death; and would often say, in a strain of compliment
somewhat disproportionate, applying to him the Virgilian lines on the
hopeful and lamented Marcellus,

"Ostendent terris hunc tantum fata, neque ultra
Esse sinent."

And, at the same time, to countenance the belief that he had been
disappointed, he would affect to sigh, exclaiming--"Ah! that I should thus
fruitlessly have squandered a sum of three [Footnote: In the original
_ter millies_, which is not much above two millions and 150 thousand
pounds sterling; but it must be remembered that one third as much, in
addition to this popular largess, had been given to the army.] millions
sterling!" for so much had been distributed in largesses to the people and
the army on the occasion of his inauguration. Meantime, as respected the
present, the qualities of the young man were amply fitted to sustain a
Roman popularity; for, in addition to his extreme and statuesque beauty of
person, he was (in the report of one who did not wish to color his
character advantageously) "_memor families suce, comptus, decorus, oris
venerandi, eloquentice, celsioris, versufacilis, in republica etiam non
inutilis_." Even as a military officer, he had a respectable [Footnote:--
"nam bene gesti rebus, vel potius feliciter, etsi nori summi--medii tamen
obtinuit ducis famam."] character; as an orator he was more than
respectable; and in other qualifications less interesting to the populace,
he had that happy mediocrity of merit which was best fitted for his
delicate and difficult situation--sufficient to do credit to the emperor's
preference--sufficient to sustain the popular regard, but not brilliant
enough to throw his patron into the shade. For the rest, his vices were of
a nature not greatly or necessarily to interfere with his public duties,
and emphatically such as met with the readiest indulgence from the Roman
laxity of morals. Some few instances, indeed, are noticed of cruelty; but
there is reason to think that it was merely by accident, and as an
indirect result of other purposes, that he ever allowed himself in such
manifestations of irresponsible power--not as gratifying any harsh
impulses of his native character. The most remarkable neglect of humanity
with which he has been taxed, occurred in the treatment of his couriers;
these were the bearers of news and official dispatches, at that time
fulfilling the functions of the modern post; and it must be remembered
that as yet they were not slaves, (as afterwards by the reformation of
Alexander Severus,) but free citizens. They had been already dressed in a
particular livery or uniform, and possibly they might wear some symbolical
badges of their profession; but the new Caesar chose to dress them
altogether in character as winged Cupids, affixing literal wings to their
shoulders, and facetiously distinguishing them by the names of the four
cardinal winds, (Boreas, Aquilo, Notus, &c.) and others as levanters or
hurricanes, (Circius, &c.) Thus far he did no more than indulge a
blameless fancy; but in his anxiety that his runners should emulate their
patron winds, and do credit to the names which he had assigned them, he is
said to have exacted a degree of speed inconsistent with any merciful
regard for their bodily powers.[Footnote: This, however, is a point in
which royal personages claim an old prescriptive right to be unreasonable
in their exactions and some, even amongst the most humane of Christian
princes, have erred as flagrantly as AElius Verus. George IV., we have
understood, was generally escorted from Balkeith to Holyrood at a rate of
twenty-two miles an hour. And of his father, the truly kind and paternal
king, it is recorded by Miss Hawkins, (daughter of Sir J. Hawkins, the
biographer of Johnson, &c.) that families who happened to have a son,
brother, lover, &c. in the particular regiment of cavalry which furnished
the escort for the day, used to suffer as much anxiety for the result as
on the eve of a great battle.] But these were, after all, perhaps, mere
improvements of malice upon some solitary incident. The true stain upon
his memory, and one which is open to no doubt whatever, is excessive and
extravagant luxury--excessive in degree, extravagant and even ludicrous in
its forms. For example, he constructed a sort of bed or sofa--protected
from insects by an awning of network composed of lilies, delicately
fabricated into the proper meshes, &c., and the couches composed wholly of
rose-leaves; and even of these, not without an exquisite preparation; for
the white parts of the leaves, as coarser and harsher to the touch,
(possibly, also, as less odorous,) were scrupulously rejected. Here he lay
indolently stretched amongst favorite ladies,

"And like a naked Indian slept himself away."

He had also tables composed of the same delicate material--prepared and
purified in the same elaborate way--and to these were adapted seats in the
fashion of sofas (_accubationes_,) corresponding in their materials,
and in their mode of preparation. He was also an expert performer, and
even an original inventor, in the art of cookery; and one dish of his
discovery, which, from its four component parts, obtained the name of
_tetrapharmacum_, was so far from owing its celebrity to its royal
birth, that it maintained its place on Hadrian's table to the time of his
death. These, however, were mere fopperies or pardonable extravagancies in
one so young and so exalted; "quae, etsi non decora," as the historian
observes, "non tamen ad perniciem publicam prompta sunt." A graver mode of
licentiousness appeared in his connections with women. He made no secret
of his lawless amours; and to his own wife, on her expostulating with him
on his aberrations in this respect, he replied--that "_wife_" was a
designation of rank and official dignity, not of tenderness and affection,
or implying any claim of love on either side; upon which distinction he
begged that she would mind her own affairs, and leave him to pursue such
as he might himself be involved in by his sensibility to female charms.

However, he and all his errors, his "regal beauty," his princely pomps,
and his authorized hopes, were suddenly swallowed up by the inexorable
grave; and he would have passed away like an exhalation, and leaving no
remembrance of himself more durable than his own beds of rose-leaves, and
his reticulated canopies of lilies, had it not been that Hadrian filled
the world with images of his perfect fawn-like beauty in the shape of
colossal statues, and raised temples even to his memory in various cities.
This Caesar, therefore, dying thus prematurely, never tasted of empire; and
his name would have had but a doubtful title to a place in the
imperatorial roll, had it not been recalled to a second chance for the
sacred honors in the person of his son--whom it was the pleasure of
Hadrian, by way of testifying his affection for the father, to associate
in the order of succession with the philosophic Marcus Aurelius Antoninus.
This fact, and the certainty that to the second Julius Verus he gave his
own daughter in marriage, rather than to his associate Caesar Marcus
Aurelius, make it evident that his regret for the elder Verus was
unaffected and deep; and they overthrow effectually the common report of
historians--that he repented of his earliest choice, as of one that had
been disappointed not by the decrees of fate, but by the violent defect of
merits in its object. On the contrary, he prefaced his inauguration of
this junior Caesar by the following tender words--Let us confound the
rapine of the grave, and let the empire possess amongst her rulers a
second AElius Verus.

"_Diis aliter visum est:_" the blood of the AElian family was not
privileged to ascend or aspire: it gravitated violently to extinction; and
this junior Verus is supposed to have been as much indebted to his
assessor on the throne for shielding his obscure vices, and drawing over
his defects the ample draperies of the imperatorial robe, as he was to
Hadrian, his grandfather by fiction of law, for his adoption into the
reigning family, and his consecration as one of the Caesars. He, says one
historian, shed no ray of light or illustration upon the imperial house,
except by one solitary quality. This bears a harsh sound; but it has the
effect of a sudden redemption for his memory, when we learn--that this
solitary quality, in virtue of which he claimed a natural affinity to the
sacred house, and challenged a natural interest in the purple, was the
very princely one of--a merciful disposition.

The two Antonines fix an era in the imperial history; for they were both
eminent models of wise and good rulers; and some would say, that they
fixed a crisis; for with their successor commenced, in the popular belief,
the decline of the empire. That at least is the doctrine of Gibbon; but
perhaps it would not be found altogether able to sustain itself against a
closer and philosophic examination of the true elements involved in the
idea of declension as applied to political bodies. Be that as it may,
however, and waiving any interest which might happen to invest the
Antonines as the last princes who kept up the empire to its original
level, both of them had enough of merit to challenge a separate notice in
their personal characters, and apart from the accidents of their position.

The elder of the two, who is usually distinguished by the title of _Pius_,
is thus described by one of his biographers:--"He was externally of
remarkable beauty; eminent for his moral character, full of benign
dispositions, noble, with a countenance of a most gentle expression,
intellectually of singular endowments, possessing an elegant style of
eloquence, distinguished for his literature, generally temperate, an
earnest lover of agricultural pursuits, mild in his deportment, bountiful
in the use of his own, but a stern respecter of the rights of others; and,
finally, he was all this without ostentation, and with a constant regard
to the proportions of cases, and to the demands of time and place." His
bounty displayed itself in a way, which may be worth mentioning, as at
once illustrating the age, and the prudence with which he controlled the
most generous of his impulses:--"_Finus trientarium_," says the historian,
"_hoc est minimis usuris exercuit, ut patrimonio suo plurimos adjuvaret_."
The meaning of which is this:--in Rome, the customary interest for money
was what was called _centesimae usurae_; that is, the hundredth part, or one
per cent. But, as this expressed not the annual, but the _monthly_
interest, the true rate was, in fact, twelve per cent.; and that is the
meaning of _centesimae usurae_. Nor could money be obtained any where on
better terms than these; and, moreover, this one per cent, was exacted
rigorously as the monthly day came round, no arrears being suffered to lie
over. Under these circumstances, it was a prodigious service to lend money
at a diminished rate, and one which furnished many men with the means of
saving themselves from ruin. Pius then, by way of extending his aid as far
as possible, reduced the monthly rate of his loans to one-third per cent.,
which made the annual interest the very moderate one of four per cent. The
channels, which public spirit had as yet opened to the beneficence of the
opulent, were few indeed: charity and munificence languished, or they were
abused, or they were inefficiently directed, simply through defects in the
structure of society. Social organization, for its large development,
demanded the agency of newspapers, (together with many other forms of
assistance from the press,) of banks, of public carriages on an extensive
scale, besides infinite other inventions or establishments not yet
created--which support and powerfully react upon that same progress of
society which originally gave birth to themselves. All things considered,
in the Rome of that day, where all munificence confined itself to the
direct largesses of a few leading necessaries of life,--a great step was
taken, and the best step, in this lending of money at a low interest,
towards a more refined and beneficial mode of charity.

In his public character, he was perhaps the most patriotic of Roman
emperors, and the purest from all taint of corrupt or indirect ends.
Peculation, embezzlement, or misapplication of the public funds, were
universally corrected: provincial oppressors were exposed and defeated:
the taxes and tributes were diminished; and the public expenses were
thrown as much as possible upon the public estates, and in some instances
upon his own private estates. So far, indeed, did Pius stretch his
sympathy with the poorer classes of his subjects, that on this account
chiefly he resided permanently in the capital--alleging in excuse, partly
that he thus stationed himself in the very centre of his mighty empire, to
which all couriers could come by the shortest radii, but chiefly that he
thus spared the provincialists those burthens which must else have
alighted upon them; "for," said he, "even the slenderest retinue of a
Roman emperor is burthensome to the whole line of its progress." His
tenderness and consideration, indeed, were extended to all classes, and
all relations, of his subjects; even to those who stood in the shadow of
his public displeasure as State delinquents, or as the most atrocious
criminals. To the children of great treasury defaulters, he returned the
confiscated estates of their fathers, deducting only what might repair the
public loss. And so resolutely did he refuse to shed the blood of any in
the senatorial order, to whom he conceived himself more especially bound
in paternal ties, that even a parricide, whom the laws would not suffer to
live, was simply exposed upon a desert island.

Little indeed did Pius want of being a perfect Christian, in heart and in
practice. Yet all this display of goodness and merciful indulgence, nay,
all his munificence, would have availed him little with the people at
large, had he neglected to furnish shows and exhibitions in the arena of
suitable magnificence. Luckily for his reputation, he exceeded the general
standard of imperial splendor not less as the patron of the amphitheatre
than in his more important functions. It is recorded of him--that in one
_missio_ he sent forward on the arena a hundred lions. Nor was he less
distinguished by the rarity of the wild animals which he exhibited than by
their number. There were elephants, there were crocodiles, there were
hippopotami at one time upon the stage: there was also the rhinoceros, and
the still rarer _crocuta_ or _corocotta_, with a few _strepsikerotes_.
Some of these were matched in duels, some in general battles with tigers;
in fact, there was no species of wild animal throughout the deserts and
sandy Zaarras of Africa, the infinite _steppes_ of Asia, or the lawny
recesses and dim forests of then sylvan Europe, [Footnote: And not
impossibly of America; for it must be remembered that, when we speak of
this quarter of the earth as yet undiscovered, we mean--to ourselves of
the western climates; since as respects the eastern quarters of Asia,
doubtless America was known there familiarly enough; and the high bounties
of imperial Rome on rare animals, would sometimes perhaps propagate their
influence even to those regions.] no species known to natural history,
(and some even of which naturalists have lost sight,) which the Emperor
Pius did not produce to his Roman subjects on his ceremonious pomps. And
in another point he carried his splendors to a point which set the seal to
his liberality. In the phrase of modern auctioneers, he gave up the wild
beasts to slaughter "without reserve." It was the custom, in ordinary
cases, so far to consider the enormous cost of these far-fetched rarities
as to preserve for future occasions those which escaped the arrows of the
populace, or survived the bloody combats in which they were engaged. Thus,
out of the overflowings of one great exhibition, would be found materials
for another. But Pius would not allow of these reservations. All were
given up unreservedly to the savage purposes of the spectators; land and
sea were ransacked; the sanctuaries of the torrid zone were violated;
columns of the army were put in motion--and all for the transient effect
of crowning an extra hour with hecatombs of forest blood, each separate
minute of which had cost a king's ransom.

Yet these displays were alien to the nature of Pius; and, even through the
tyranny of custom, he had been so little changed, that to the last he
continued to turn aside, as often as the public ritual of his duty allowed
him, from these fierce spectacles to the gentler amusements of fishing and
hunting. His taste and his affections naturally carried him to all
domestic pleasures of a quiet nature. A walk in a shrubbery or along a
piazza, enlivened with the conversation of a friend or two, pleased him
better than all the court festivals; and among festivals, or anniversary
celebrations, he preferred those which, like the harvest-home or feast of
the vintagers, whilst they sanctioned a total carelessness and dismissal
of public anxieties, were at the same time colored by the innocent gaiety
which belongs to rural and to primitive manners. In person this emperor
was tall and dignified (_statura elevata decorus;_) but latterly he
stooped; to remedy which defect, that he might discharge his public part
with the more decorum, he wore stays. [Footnote: In default of whalebone,
one is curious to know of what they were made:--thin tablets of the
linden-tree, it appears, were the best materials which the Augustus of
that day could command.] Of his other personal habits little is recorded,
except that, early in the morning, and just before receiving the
compliments of his friends and dependents, (_salutatores_,) or what in
modern phrase would be called his _levee_, he took a little plain bread,
(_panem siccum comedit_,) that is, bread without condiments or
accompaniments of any kind, by way of breakfast. In no meal has luxury
advanced more upon the model of the ancients than in this: the dinners
(_caenae_) of the Romans were even more luxurious, and a thousand times more
costly, than our own; but their breakfasts were scandalously meagre; and,
with many men, breakfast was no professed meal at all. Galen tells us that
a little bread, and at most a little seasoning of oil, honey, or dried
fruits, was the utmost breakfast which men generally allowed themselves:
some indeed drank wine after it, but this was far from being a common
practice. [Footnote: There is, however, a good deal of delusion prevalent
on such subjects. In some English cavalry regiments, the custom is for the
privates to take only one meal a day, which of course is dinner; and by
some curious experiments it has appeared that such a mode of life is the
healthiest. But at the same time, we have ascertained that the quantity of
porter or substantial ale drunk in these regiments does virtually allow
many meals, by comparison with the washy tea breakfasts of most
Englishmen.]

The Emperor Pius died in his seventieth year. The immediate occasion of
his death was--not breakfast nor _caena_, but something of the kind.
He had received a present of Alpine cheese, and he ordered some for
supper. The trap for his life was baited with toasted cheese. There is no
reason to think that he ate immoderately; but that night he was seized
with indigestion. Delirium followed; during which it is singular that his
mind teemed with a class of imagery and of passions the most remote (as it
might have been thought) from the voluntary occupations of his thoughts.
He raved about the State, and about those kings with whom he was
displeased; nor were his thoughts one moment removed from the public
service. Yet he was the least ambitious of princes, and his reign was
emphatically said to be bloodless. Finding his fever increase, he became
sensible that he was dying; and he ordered the golden statue of
Prosperity, a household symbol of empire, to be transferred from his own
bedroom to that of his successor. Once again, however, for the last time,
he gave the word to the officer of the guard; and, soon after, turning
away his face to the wall against which his bed was placed, he passed out
of life in the very gentlest sleep, "_quasi dormiret, spiritum reddidit_;"
or, as a Greek author expresses it, _kat iso hypno to malakotato_. He was
one of those few Roman emperors whom posterity truly honored with the
title of _anaimatos_ (or bloodless;) _solusque omnium prope principum
prorsus sine civili sanguine et hostili vixit_. In the whole tenor of his
life and character he was thought to resemble Numa. And Pausanias, after
remarking on his title of _Eusebaes_ (or Pius), upon the meaning and origin
of which there are several different hypotheses, closes with this
memorable tribute to his paternal qualities--_doxae de emae, kai to onoma
to te Kyros pheroito an tos presbyteros, Pater anthropon kalemenos_: _but,
in my opinion, he should also bear the name of Cyrus the elder--being
hailed as Father of the Human Race_.

A thoughtful Roman would have been apt to exclaim, _This is too good to
last_, upon finding so admirable a ruler succeeded by one still more
admirable in the person of Marcus Aurelius. From the first dawn of his
infancy this prince indicated, by his grave deportment, the philosophic
character of his mind; and at eleven years of age he professed himself a
formal devotee of philosophy in its strictest form,--assuming the garb,
and submitting to its most ascetic ordinances. In particular, he slept
upon the ground, and in other respects he practised a style of living the
most simple and remote from the habits of rich men [or, in his own words,
_tho lithon chatha taen diaitan, chai porro taes pleousiachaes hagogaes_];
though it is true that he himself ascribes this simplicity of life to the
influence of his mother, and not to the premature assumption of the
stoical character. He pushed his austerities indeed to excess; for Dio
mentions that in his boyish days he was reduced to great weakness by
exercises too severe, and a diet of too little nutriment. In fact, his
whole heart was set upon philosophic attainments, and perhaps upon
philosophic glory. All the great philosophers of his own time, whether
Stoic or Peripatetic, and amongst them Sextus of Cheronaea, a nephew of
Plutarch, were retained as his instructors. There was none whom he did not
enrich; and as many as were fitted by birth and manners to fill important
situations, he raised to the highest offices in the State. Philosophy,
however, did not so much absorb his affections, but that he found time to
cultivate the fine arts, (painting he both studied and practised,) and
such gymnastic exercises as he held consistent with his public dignity.
Wrestling, hunting, fowling, playing at cricket (_pila_), he admired and
patronized by personal participation. He tried his powers even as a
runner. But with these tasks, and entering so critically, both as a
connoisseur and as a practising amateur, into such trials of skill, so
little did he relish the very same spectacles, when connected with the
cruel exhibitions of the circus and amphitheatre, that it was not without
some friendly violence on the part of those who could venture on such a
liberty, nor even thus, perhaps, without the necessities of his official
station, that he would be persuaded to visit either one or the
other.[Footnote: So much improvement had Christianity already accomplished
in the feelings of men since the time of Augustus. That prince, in whose
reign the founder of this ennobling religion was born, had delighted so
much and indulged so freely in the spectacles of the amphitheatre, that
Maecenas summoned him reproachfully to leave them, saying, "Surge tandem,
carnifex."

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