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He likewise exhibited the secular games, giving out that Augustus had anticipated
the regular period; though he himself says in his history, "That they had been
omitted before the age of Augustus, who had calculated the years with great exactness, and
again brought them to their regular period." The crier was therefore ridiculed,
when he invited people in the usual form, " to games which no person had ever before
seen, nor ever would again; " when many were still living who had already seen them;
and some of the performers who had formerly acted in them, were now again brought upon the
stage. He likewise frequently celebrated the Circensian games in the Vatican, sometimes
exhibiting a hunt of wild beasts, after every five races. He embellished the Circus
Maximus with marble barriers, and gilded goals, which before were of common stone and
wood, and assigned proper places for the senators, who were used to sit promiscuously with
the other spectators. Besides the chariot-races, he exhibited there the Trojan game, and
wild beasts from Africa, which were encountered by a troop of praetorian cavalry, with
their tribunes, and even the prefect at the head of them; besides Thessalian horsemen, who
drive fierce bulls round the circus, leap upon their backs when they have exhausted their
fury, and drag them by the horns to the ground. He gave exhibitions of gladiators in
several places, and of various kinds; one yearly on the anniversary of his accession in
the praetorian camp, but without any hunting, or the usual apparatus; another in the
Saepta as usual; and in the same place, another out of the common way, and of a few days'
continuance only, which he called Sportula; because when he was going to present
it, he informed the people by proclamation, "that he invited them to a late supper,
got up in haste, and without ceremony." Nor did he lend himself to any kind of public
diversion with more freedom and hilarity; insomuch that he would hold out his left hand,
and joined by the common people, count upon his fingers aloud the gold pieces presented to
those who came off conquerors. He would earnestly invite the company to be merry;
sometimes calling them his "masters," with a mixture of insipid, far-fetched
jests. Thus when the people called for Palumbus ["The Dove", a gladiator], he
said, " He would give them one when he could catch it." The following was
well-intended and well-timed; having, amidst great applause, spared a gladiator, on the
intercession of his four sons, he sent a billet immediately round the theatre, to remind
the people, " how much it behooved them to get children, since they had before them
an example how useful they had been in procuring favour and security for a
gladiator." He likewise represented in the Campus Martius, the assault and sacking of
a town, and the surrender of the British kings, presiding in his general's cloak.
Immediately before he drew off the waters from the Fucine lake, he exhibited upon it a
naval fight. But the combatants on board the fleets crying out, " Health attend you,
noble emperor! We, who are about to die, salute you; " and he replying, " Health
attend you too," they all refused to fight, as if by that response he had meant to
excuse them. Upon this, he hesitated for a time, whether he should not destroy them all
with fire and sword. At last, leaping from his seat, and running along the shore of the
lake with tottering steps, the result of his foul excesses, he, partly by fair words, and
partly by threats, persuaded them to engage. This spectacle represented an engagement
between the fleets of Sicily and Rhodes; consisting each of twelve ships of war, of three
banks of oars. The signal for the encounter was given by a silver Triton, raised by
machinery from the middle of the lake.
22. With regard to religious ceremonies, the administration of affairs both civil
and military, and the condition of all orders of the people at home and abroad, some
practices he corrected, others which had been laid aside he revived; and some regulations
he introduced which were entirely new. In appointing new priests for the several colleges,
he made no appointments without their being sworn in. When an earthquake happened in the
city, he never failed to summon the people together by the praetor, and appoint holidays
for sacred rites. And upon the sight of any ominous bird in the City or Capitol, he issued
an order for a supplication, the words of which, by virtue of his office of high-priest,
after an exhortation from the rostra, he recited in the presence of the people, who
repeated them after him; all workmen and slaves being first ordered to withdraw.
23. The courts of judicature, whose sittings had been formerly divided between
the summer and winter months, he ordered, for the dispatch of business, to sit the whole
year round. The jurisdiction in matters of trust, which used to be granted annually by
special commission to certain magistrates, and in the city only, he made permanent, and
extended to the provincial judges likewise. He altered a clause added by Tiberius to the
Papia-Poppaean law, which inferred that men of sixty years of age were incapable of
begetting children. He ordered that, out of the ordinary course of proceeding, orphans
might have guardians appointed them by the consuls; and that those who were banished from
any province by the chief magistrate, should be debarred from coming into the City, or any
part of Italy. He inflicted on certain persons a new sort of banishment, by forbidding
them to depart further than three miles from Rome. When any affair of importance came
before the senate, he used to sit between the two consuls upon the seats of the tribunes.
He reserved to himself the power of granting license to travel out of Italy, which before
had belonged to the senate.
24. He likewise granted the consular ornaments to his Ducenarian procurators.
From those who declined the senatorial dignity, he took away the equestrian. Although he
had in the beginning of his reign declared, that he would admit no man into the senate who
was not the great-grandson of a Roman citizen, yet he gave the "broad stripe" to
the son of a freedman, on condition that he should be adopted by a Roman knight. Being
afraid, however, of incurring censure by such an act, he informed the public, that his
ancestor Appius Caecus, the censor, had elected the sons of freedmen into the senate; for
he was ignorant, it seems, that in the times of Appius, and a long while afterwards,
persons manumitted were not called freedmen, but only their sons who were free-born.
Instead of the expense which the college of quaestors was obliged to incur in paving the
high-ways, he ordered them to give the people an exhibition of gladiators; and relieving
them of their duties in Ostia and Gaul, he reinstated them in the charge of the treasury,
which, since it was taken from them, had been managed by the praetors, or those who had
formerly filled that office. He gave the triumphal ornaments to Silanus, who was betrothed
to his daughter, though he was still a boy; and in other cases, he bestowed them on so
many, and with so little reserve, that there is extant a letter unanimously addressed to
him by all the legions, begging him " to grant his consular lieutenants the triumphal
ornaments at the time of their appointment to commands, in order to prevent their seeking
occasion to engage in unnecessary wars." He decreed to Aulus Plautius the
honour of an ovation, going to meet him at his entering the city, and walking with him in
the procession to the Capitol, and back, in which he took the left side, giving him the
post of honour. He allowed Gabinius Secundus, upon his conquest of the Chauci, a German
tribe, to assume the cognomen of Chaucius.
25. His military organization of the equestrian order was this. After having the
command of a cohort, they were promoted to a wing of auxiliary horse, and subsequently
received the commission of tribune of a legion. He raised a body of militia, who were
called Supernumeraries, who, though they were a sort of soldiers, and kept in reserve, yet
received pay. He procured an act of the senate to prohibit all soldiers from attending
senators at their houses, in the way of respect and compliment. He confiscated the estates
of all freedmen who presumed to take upon themselves the equestrian rank. Such of them as
were ungrateful to their patrons, and were complained of by them, he reduced to their
former condition of slavery; and declared to their advocates, that he would always give
judgment against the freedmen, in any suit at law which the masters might happen to have
with them. Some persons having exposed their sick slaves, in a languishing condition, on
the island of Aesculapius, because of the tediousness of their cure; he declared all who
were so exposed perfectly free, never more to return, if they should recover, to their
former servitude; and that if any one chose to kill at once, rather than expose, a slave,
he should be liable for murder. He published a proclamation, forbidding all travelers to
pass through the towns of Italy any otherwise than on foot, or in a litter or chair.
He quartered a cohort of soldiers at Puteoli, and another at Ostia, to be in
readiness against any accidents from fire. He prohibited foreigners from adopting Roman
names, especially those which belonged to families. Those who falsely pretended to the
citizenship, he beheaded on the Esquiline. He gave up to the senate the provinces of
Achaia and Macedonia, which Tiberius had transferred to his own administration. He
deprived the Lycians of their liberties, as a punishment for their fatal dissensions; but
restored to the Rhodians their freedom, upon their repenting of their former misdemeanors.
He exonerated for ever the people of Troy from the payment of taxes, as being the founders
of the Roman race; reciting upon the occasion a letter in Greek, from the senate and
people of Rome to king Seleucus, in which they promised him their friendship and alliance,
provided that he would grant their kinsmen the Trojans immunity from all burdens.
He banished from Rome all the Jews, who were continually
making disturbances at the instigation of one Chrestus. He allowed the ambassadors
of the Germans to sit at the public spectacles in the seats assigned to the senators,
being induced to grant them favours by their frank and honourable conduct. For, having
been seated in the rows of benches which were common to the people, on observing the
Parthian and Armenian ambassadors sitting among the senators, they took upon themselves to
cross over into the same seats, as being, they said, no way inferior to the others, in
point either of merit or rank. The religious rites of the Druids, solemnized with such
horrid cruelties, which had only been forbidden the citizens of Rome during the reign of
Augustus, he utterly abolished among the Gauls. On the other hand, he
attempted to transfer the Eleusinian mysteries from Attica to Rome. He likewise ordered
the temple of Venus Erycina in Sicily, which was old and in a ruinous condition, to be
repaired at the expense of the Roman people. He concluded treaties with foreign princes in
the forum, with the sacrifice of a sow, and the form of words used by the heralds
in former times. But in these and other things, and indeed the greater part of his
administration, he was directed not so much by his own judgment, as by the influence of
his wives and freedmen; for the most part acting in conformity to what their interests or
fancies dictated.
26. He was twice married at a very early age, first to Aemilia Lepida, the
grand-daughter of Augustus, and afterwards to Livia Medullina, who had the cognomen of
Camilla, and was descended from the old dictator Camillus. The former he divorced while
still a virgin, because her parents had incurred the displeasure of Augustus, and he lost
the latter by sickness on the day fixed for their nuptials. He next married Plautia
Urgulanilla, whose father had enjoyed the honour of a triumph; and soon afterwards,
Aelia Paetina, the daughter of a man of consular rank. But he divorced them both;
Paetina, upon some trifling cause of disgust; and Urgulanilla, for scandalous lewdness,
and the suspicion of murder. After them he took in marriage Valeria Messalina, the
daughter of Barbatus Messala, his cousin. But finding that, besides her other shameful
debaucheries, she had even gone so far as to marry in his own absence Gaius Silius, the
settlement of her dowry being formally signed, in the presence of the augurs, he put her
to death. When summoning his praetorians to his presence, he made to them this
declaration: "As I have been so unhappy in my unions, I am resolved to continue in
future unmarried; and if I should not, I give you leave to stab me." He was,
however, unable to persist in this resolution; for he began immediately to think of
another wife; and even of taking back Paetina whom he had formerly divorced: he
thought also of Lollia Paulina, who had been married to Gaius Caesar. But being
ensnared by the arts of Agrippina, the daughter of his brother Germanicus, who took
advantage of the kisses and endearments which their near relationship admitted, to inflame
his desires, he got some one to propose at the next meeting of the senate, that they
should oblige the emperor to marry Agrippina, as a measure highly conducive to the public
interest; and that in future liberty should be given for such marriages, which until that
time had been considered incestuous. In less than twenty-four hours after this, he married
her. No person was found, however, to follow the example, excepting one freedman,
and a centurion of the first rank, at the solemnization of whose nuptials both he and
Agrippina attended.
27. He had children by three of his wives; by Urgulanilla, Drusus and Claudia; by
Paetina, Antonia; and by Messalina, Octavia, and also a son, whom at first he called
Germanicus, but afterwards Britannicus. He lost Drusus at Pompeii, when he was very young;
he being choked with a pear, which in his play he tossed into the air, and caught in his
mouth. Only a few days before, he had betrothed him to one of Sejanus's daughters; and I
am therefore surprised that some authors should say that he lost his life by the treachery
of Sejanus. Claudia, who was, in truth, the daughter of Boter his freedman, though
she was born five months before his divorce, he ordered to be thrown naked at her mother's
door. He married Antonia to Gnaeus Pompey the Great, and afterwards to Faustus Sulla, both
youths of very noble parentage; Octavia to his step-son Nero, after she had been
contracted to Silanus. Britannicus was born upon the twentieth day of his reign, and in
his second consulship. He often earnestly commended him to the soldiers, holding him in
his arms before their ranks; and would likewise show him to the people in the theatre,
setting him upon his lap, or holding him out whilst he was still very young; and was sure
to receive their acclamations, and good wishes on his behalf. Of his sons-in-law, he
adopted Nero. He not only dismissed from his favour both Pompey and Silanus, but put them
to death.
28. Amongst his freedmen, the greatest favourite was the eunuch Posides,
whom, in his British triumph he presented with the headless spear, classing him among the
military men. Next to him, if not equal, in favor was Felix, whom he not only
preferred to commands both of cohorts and troops, but to the government of the province of
Judea; and he became, in consequence of his elevation, the husband of three queens.
Another favourite was Harpocras, to whom he granted the privilege of being carried in a
litter within the city, and of holding public spectacles for the entertainment of the
people. In this class was likewise Polybius, who assisted him in his studies, and
had often the honour of walking between the two consuls. But above all others,
Narcissus, his secretary, and Pallas, the treasurer, were in high favour with him. He not
only allowed them to receive, by decree of the senate, immense presents, but also to be
decorated with the quaestorian and
praetorian ensigns of honour. So much did he indulge them in amassing wealth, and
plundering the public, that, upon his complaining, once, of the lowness of his exchequer,
some one said, with great reason, that " It would be full enough, if those two
freedmen of his would but take him into partnership with them."
29. Being entirely governed by these freedmen, and, as I have
already said, by his wives, he was a tool to others, rather than a prince. He distributed
offices, or the command of armies, pardoned or punished, according as it suited their
interests, their passions, or their caprice; and for the most part, without knowing, or
being sensible of what he did. Not to enter into minute details relative to the revocation
of grants, the reversal of judicial decisions, obtaining his signature to fictitious
appointments, or the bare-faced alteration of them after signing; he put to death Appius
Silanus the father of his son-in-law, and the two Julias, the daughters of Drusus and
Germanicus, without any positive proof of the crimes with which they were charged, or so
much as permitting them to make any defense. He also killed Gnaeus Pompey, the husband of
his eldest daughter; and Lucius Silanus, who was betrothed to the younger. Pompey
was stabbed in the embrace of a favored youth. Silanus was obliged to quit the office of
praetor upon the fourth of the calends of January [28th Dec.], and to kill himself on New
Year's day following, the very same on which Claudius and Agrippina were married. He
condemned to death five and thirty senators, and above three hundred Roman knights, with
so little attention to what he did, that when a centurion brought him word of the
execution of a man of consular rank, who was one of the number, and told him that he
had executed his order, he declared, " he had ordered no such thing, but that he
approved of it"; because his freedmen, it seems, had said, that the soldiers did
nothing more than their duty, in dispatching the emperor's enemies without waiting for a
warrant. But it is beyond all belief, that he himself, at the marriage of Messalina with
the adulterous Silius, should actually sign the writings relative to her dowry; induced,
as it is pretended, by the design of diverting from himself and transferring upon another
the danger which some omens seemed to threaten him.
30. Either standing or sitting, but especially when he lay asleep, he had
a majestic and graceful appearance; for he was tall, but not slender. His gray locks
became him well, and he had a full neck. But his knees were feeble, and failed him in
walking, so that his gait was ungainly, both when he assumed state, and when he was taking
diversion. He was outrageous in his laughter, and still more so in his wrath, for then he
foamed at the mouth, and discharged from his nostrils. He also stammered in his speech,
and had a tremulous motion of the head at all times, but particularly when he was engaged
in any business, however trifling.
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