Another one of my little guides to the ancient world, this time focusing on Roman Emperors. Now, my courses only take me to the end of the Flavian dynasty with a few specks of religious history after that, and I wouldn’t be able to do justice to anyone ruling after AD 138, so I just won’t cover them. Maybe after my exams when I have more time, I might amend this. This will be a very short and rather biased guide, but I’ll try to fill in some of the big issues about each reign. All history is biased. There’s no such thing in history as “facts” only “widely held opinions” and “well argued theories”. Well, that’s my excuse anyway. Hope you enjoy this one, guys!

Augustus (ruled 27 BC to AD14)

Contrary to popular belief, Julius Caesar was not the first emperor. He was an imperator (in the word’s original sense: a general) and a dictator (a man employed to sort out Rome’s problems in a time of crisis) but was never emperor, that is to say, supreme ruler, since his status as dictator was, in theory, temporary. Trouble was, it ended up not being temporary. Caesar was a brilliant general an politician, but his vanity and refusal to give up power made him unpopular with his peers, who promptly murdered him in 44BC. What followed after his death was an awkward attempt to continue the Republic, with his heir Octavian (previously Octavius and later to be known as Augustus, but we’ll get to that, the guy had a lot of names) sharing power as triumvir with Caesar’s old friend Marc Antony and the thoroughly useless Lepidus. Lepidus didn’t last long, and with him gone, relations between Octavian in the west and Antony in the east (famously hanging out with Cleopatra and largely ignoring his duties, much to senatorial dismay) and civil war broke out… again. Octavian defeated Antony at the battle of Actium in 27BC, after Cleopatra and her impressive navy decided they didn’t like the looks of things and fled.

 

Image via Wikipedia

Now sole ruler of the Empire, Octavian proudly gave back power to the senate… sort of. Throughout his reign, he was always very proud of his Repbulican roots, in his “Res Gestae” (literally “things I have achieved”) he announces that he “restored the Republic”. Instead of temporary dictator, Octavian became princeps or “primary citizen”: a member of the senate still but one with increased power. He was given the name “Augustus” (meaning “the most august” or “the anointed”) by the senate, accepting the compromise between monarchy and republic (I’m simplifying things a bit, this process took a while, with several constitutions worked out, but seriously people have written whole books on these few years, I don’t have that sort of time!). With all this in place, Augustus was constantly stepping a line between being the revered ruler and the humble citizen. He carefully restored a lot of the old temples and festivals, while at the same time installing new cults, including one to his foster-father, the now-deified Julius Caesar. Making Caesar into a god was a bold move, but not an unacceptable one: Julius’ family claimed decent from the goddess Venus (he even set up a temple to “Venus my ancestor”). It might sound bizarre today, but was commonplace in the ancient world: ancient Greek cities proudly displayed links to mythical heroes, for example, and Cleopatra claimed to be a manifestation of Isis. Augustus was using already acceptable customs, but he established particular rules that other emperors followed from then on: the honouring of one’s father (or adopted father) with deification, but the refusal of worship to oneself (Augustus was continually telling provincials not to set up temples to him).

Although Augustus was treading new ground as princeps, he was very successful, continuing to reign into old age. He was careful of conspiracies, treated the senators reasonably well and made sure the plebs were happy with plenty of games and hand outs. He also expanded the empire enormously, if indirectly, since he himself was not that great a general but simply claimed the credit for his step-son, Tiberius’ military efforts. Military success was THE most important thing an emperor could have in the Roman world, if you didn’t lead an army you were no-one. Eventually he decided that continuing expansion would be problematic and announced that the boundaries of the empire had been set (though this didn’t stop future emperors having the odd conquest).

So far, so good, then. Augustus was popular, he was pretty successful, but he needed an heir, and Augustus’ family was made up of some of the nastiest and unsuitable individuals you can imagine. His first heirs, Gaius and Lucius, sons of his daughter Julia, died in their twenties. Augustus was distraught, but turned to his step sons, Tiberius and Nero Claudius Drusus Germanicus (no, not that Nero… or that Claudius, or that Germanicus), the sons of his scheming wife Livia. Tiberius was a good general but moody and gloomy, Augustus didn’t really like him. Drusus was a good general but was rarely in Rome, the Roman people were unlikely to accept him, and besides, he died a good five years before Augustus did.  Drusus’ sons were too young, the only other heir apparent was Postumus Agrippa, but he’d been exiled. Stuck for options, Augustus finally recognised Tiberius as heir, supposedly declaring it on his deathbed, although rumours circulated that Livia withheld his body until Tiberius was in Rome to keep up appearances.

Tiberius AD14-37

So the gloomy general found himself emperor. The senate validated his position (unwittingly turning the principiate into a dynastic post) but Tiberius just wasn’t as good at the public role as his predecessor. He refused to take the role of Pater Patriae (father of the people, a role held by Augustus) and didn’t like to wear laurels. He was slow making decisions, he was uncharismatic, often coming across as rude, he just wasn’t cut out for being an emperor. Not only that, but trouble was brewing in the provinces, forcing him to send his nephew Germanicus off to sort out mutinies in Germania. With few men in the family of age, at least Tiberius seemed to have an obvious choice for heir: Germanicus. He was popular, he was a damned good general, he was young, had several children… everybody loved Germanicus. But in AD19, he fell mysteriously ill while on campaign, poisoned, it seems, by a rival, a guy named Piso. Tiberius had Piso tracked down and forced to commit suicide, but things didn’t seem to get any better for him. Eventually, in AD27, he retired to a sumptuous villa on Capri, where he could indulge himself as emperors often did, and left control of Rome to the leader of the Praetorian Guard, Sejanus. Now Sejanus was a really nasty piece of work, even by contemporary standards. He wanted to be married to Tiberius’ niece, Livilla, making him almost heir, but withdrew the request and was kept in check until the death of the ever-watchful Livia in AD29. Her death allowed Sejanus to wiggle further and further into power; killing off Germanicus’ widow and eldest sons in AD30, becoming consul in 31, and involved in an affair with Livilla. However he was discovered, and in AD31, summoned to the senate and condemned.

 

Image via Wikipedia

The discovery of this plot sent Tiberius into a persecutory rage, ordering deaths all over Rome and attacking people from every rank, sex and position, but also sent him even further into seclusion. The sources, Suetonius in particular who was a bit like the Roman equivalent of a tabloid reporter, revel in relating the emperor’s paranoia and sexual excesses. During this period, a certain young lad named Gaius ingratiated himself with the cranky old emperor. Gaius was the only remaining son of Germanicus, better known by his nickname “Caligula” (“little boots”), a name given to him as a child by the soldiers of his father’s camp after the miniature military boots he wore. Caligula was a strange boy with a cruel sense of humour, which Tiberius seemed to enjoy, and Tiberius made him a quaestor. He was one of the few of-age individuals in the family left, the only other being the crippled, stammering Claudius, who was at the time little more than a family joke, so when Tiberius fell ill, Caligula made sure he was at his side. Rumour has it that Caligula had his friend Marco, a Praetorian, smother the emperor. Tacitus (the famous historian, who was slightly obsessed with the reign of Tiberius, it has to be said) says that people actually celebrated when Tiberius died, shouting “to the Tiber with Tiberius” and refusing to allow him to be deified.

Gaius “Caligula” AD37-41

A short-reigning, but fascinating character, Caligula first came to power in a blaze of popularity. As the son of the popular Germanicus and a refreshing change from the unpopular Tiberius, the populace loved him. They called him “our star” and “our little boy”, and Caligula knew just how to work this to his advantage. He showed due devotion to his father, even having the month of September renamed to “Germanicus”. He had his mother’s bones collected and properly buried, put on lavish games, refunded unfair taxes, rewarded the Praetorians, recalled exiles and punished deviants. He was generous, pious and generally nice for the first seven months (or the first two years, depending on who you’re reading) of his reign. But then, something odd happened. He fell very ill in October 37 and the public, awash with sympathy, feared for his life. The historian Philo puts the illness down to excess but Philo was not a fan of Caligula, as we shall see, so this may be incorrect. He recovered but his attitude had changed, accusing two of his advisers of conspiring against him and having them executed. He seems to have become increasingly self-obsessed and vain too. Now this is where the history gets very confused, different sources say different things, but it seems that he continued to rule fairly for a few years, installing public reforms, but becoming increasingly decadent; frittering money and spending rather too much time in other people’s beds. Despite famine and financial crisis, he embarked on some impressive public buildings, keeping the people relatively happy, but the senate were getting fed up with him. They were used to working without an emperor around and disliked the sudden pressure. Caligula’s vanity didn’t help matters, he supposedly liked to have senators wait on him like servants and run along beside his chariot. The sources paint him as becoming increasingly unhinged after his near-death experience: in AD 40 he decided to try to expand the empire, looking to the mysterious island of Britannia, one of the few places Julius Caesar had failed to conquer. Caligula had the army march to the coast but then decided the sea was too rough and ordered the men to collect shells from the beach. Returning to Rome, he scattered the shells across the floor of the senate house and announced “I have conquered the sea! I have conquered Neptune!” Was he mad? Or was this the sign of a rather skewed sense of humour? A lot of his supposedly insane actions pose the same question, he famously suggested that he should make his favourite horse consul, but this might have been a joke, as in “you’re a terrible consul, I should replace you with my horse!”

 

But late in AD40, his behaviour became even stranger. He started painting himself gold and posing in temples, pretending to be a statue and surprising passers-by by leaping out of them. He insisted that people address him as a god, and criticised the Jews for not sacrificing to him (the Jews never sacrificed to the Roman gods, but it was expected that they would sacrifice to their own god on behalf of the emperor and the safety of the empire), causing a delegation from Judaea, including the historian Philo, to travel to Rome to plead with him. Whether all this was another manifestation of a cruel sense of humour or pure craziness isn’t certain, but Roman citizens weren’t impressed. Praying to a dead emperor, or to a live emperor’s guardian spirit, was one thing, but a live one? Rumours of sexual scandal also started to circulate, including some wonderfully nasty stories involving his sisters, particularly Drusilla (which have since been made even worse in film and tv, apparently incest works well on film, who knew?)

Whatever the truth, the fact that these sorts of stories were going around shows how public opinion was turning, and in AD41 Caligula was assassinated by his own Praetorian guards when leaving a theatre. The guards may have also been involved in the resulting killing spree, now aggravated by the reaction of the loyal Germanic guard, stricken with grief. With the city in turmoil, angry senators moved for a return to the Republic, but the Praetorians were having none of that; without an emperor, they’d be out of work. They rummaged through palaces and eventually found Caligula’s uncle Claudius, announced him emperor, and quickly spirited him out of harm’s way.

Now, you can probably tell that I’m rather fond of Caligula as a subject. I find the “good emperor/bad emperor” dynamic absolutely fascinating, and it’s with the “bad” ones that we get some really meaty rumours and theories. Personally, I think Caligula was just an odd lad with a nasty sense of humour. He was the sort of guy who’d pull the legs off spiders or laugh at dead baby jokes or dress up as a Nazi for a party. The god-like behaviour following his near-death could easily have been a mockery of the established process of deification after death. Anyway, enough theories, onwards to…

Claudius AD 41-54

Here’s another emperor whose reputation gets in the way of history, poor stammering Claudius. Now, much as I love Robert Graves’ wonderful “I Claudius” and “Claudius the God” and the fabulous BBC adaptation, I have to admit, it’s not accurate, certainly not in the portrayal of Claudius himself (though Mr Graves is excused by the neat trick of presenting the story as a history written by Claudius himself, so it’s bound to be skewed). Claudius was, a bit like Tiberius, never really meant to be emperor, the rest of the family laughed at him and didn’t think he’d amount to anything. In his youth he was permitted to distract himself with scholarly pursuits and the study of history, anything to keep him out of the way. But after his predecessors’ schemes had happily killed off most of the dynasty, Claudius bumbled into power and stayed there for a surprisingly long time. He was never a popular emperor. He was awkward and he was greedy, reportedly putting court cases on hold so he could pop next door and feast with priests after sacrifices, and he loved his women, marrying several times and being manipulated by his wives. Still, that being said, he wasn’t a bad emperor at all. He built aqueducts and attempted to build a better harbour at Ostia, he carried out various religious and public reforms, he even tried to smooth things over with the senate, leading to accusations of sycophancy. But most impressive of all, certainly to the Romans and to anyone in any way connected to the English-speaking world, he conquered Britain, succeeding where Julius Caesar, the most famous and celebrated general in the Roman world, had failed.

 

Of course the conquest of Britain wasn’t easy and Claudius himself had minimal involvement. If we’re to believe Tacitus, it was the general Agricola who did most of the legwork, but hey, Augustus took credit for Tiberius’ battles, so why can’t Claudius? Britain was a troublesome province for quite some time, prone to revolts from fierce and famous tribes like the Iceni, lead by the famous Boudicca. But after a time, we Brits decided that public bathing, on-tap water and a good road system was worth the occasional taxation and the military presence.

Claudius stands as an example of how ancient historians worked. Their work is based mostly on biography, assessing the character of a person above their works, so the greedy emperor with an appetite for cruel spectacle (he really loved his gladiatorial shows) gets a bad reputation despite his reasonably good reign. Graves’ version of Claudius is a little too saintly, but the ancient sources are too mean. The real Claudius was probably a reasonably intelligent man who came across badly due to his speech impediment, a good administrator and a generally generous man but with a troublesome temper. His loyalty to his wives was his undoing, however, as most sources blame Agrippina the Younger, his fourth wife, for poisoning him.

Nero AD54-68

If prizes were given for bad reputations, Nero wouldn’t be able to move underneath them. Claudius’ stepson, he was pushed into power by his conniving mother Agrippina, he was yet another example of a man truly unsuited to rule. Now, there’s no way to argue that Nero was a good man, because he wasn’t. Good men don’t kill their mothers, their wives, or anyone who just looked at them funny. But, and this is a big but, he was never quite the villain that he’s become in popular culture. But anyway, history first: Nero’s early years, rather like Caligula’s, were pretty good. Under the watchful eye of the Stoic philosopher Seneca and the praetorian Burrus, things were going well, a potentially critical revolt in Parthia soon after his accession was neatly put down by AD63, as were revolts in Britain. The only problem was Agrippina. She was pushy and domineering, insisting on being with the emperor whether he went, even trying to sit next to him while receiving envoys. She had allies implanted into the senate and was even suspected of murdering Nero’s competition to the throne, Claudius’ son Britannicus. One of her allies, Pallas, was caught conspiring to bring another to the throne along with Nero’s adviser Burrus. They were only saved when Seneca was tried for embezzlement and managed to acquit the three of them, but their roles were severely reduced.

 

Free from their influence, Nero’s only problem was still his mother. When in 58 he started an affair with Poppaea Sabina, wife of his friend and future emperor Otho, Agrippina was the only thing in the way of their union. Nero devised an ingenious collapsing boat in order to kill her in what looked like an accident, but unfortunately for him Agrippina was a strong swimmer and made it ashore, forcing Nero to have her assassinated far more obviously. Burrus died a few years later and with Seneca again on trial for embezzlement, the two were neatly out of the way. He divorced his wife Octavia and sent her into exile, allowing him to marry Poppaea, but public protest forced him to bring Octavia back… and promptly execute her. Now married to Poppaea, Nero was free to do what he liked… and doing what he liked was what Nero did best, especially in the latter years of his reign.

Nero wasn’t decadent in the same way that Tiberius, Caligula or even Claudius had been, at least not until late in his reign. Instead, Nero was something of an eccentric. He was obsessed with performance: he loved to sing, to drive chariots, and to act. He didn’t care for military prowess or oratory or the usual trappings of the Roman world, he liked all things Greek: he had performers and art works shipped into Rome, he wore Greek style clothes, he introduced gymnasia to Rome, he tried to dig a canal across the Isthmus of Corinth to boost Greek trade, and even tried to get senators involved in theatrical productions. These were seen as gross excesses by his contemporaries, but what these really were rather ham-handed attempts to re-educate people. They might have worked were Nero more patient, but this was an impulsive, rather obsessive man. He was also incurably vain and would exile people for not being duly impressed by his performances, the future emperor Vespasian being one of these. In attempts to win public favour, he completely rearranged the taxation system, put on lavish shows and would wander the streets of Rome in disguise to see what people thought of him. Now, we don’t know for sure what the plebs thought of him (we’ll look at some intriguing issues a little later) but the elite were not impressed. This was not behaviour befitting an emperor, and no amount of promises of restoration of power to the senate would change that!

Worse was yet to come. In AD64, Rome famously burned. Some blame Nero for the fire, and popular culture would have him playing the lyre and singing of the fall of Troy to the crackle of the flames, but really, that’s about as likely as him being abducted by Martians. He may not even have been in Rome at the time. There is a chance he organised the fire, but I don’t think so. What he did do for certain was to use the fire to his own advantage. To dispel the rumours of his involvement, he turned to a widely hated group of religious extremists who’d be bothering the provinces for a while, the Christians. Romans really didn’t get Christianity, Christians were weird offshoots of Judaism and Jews were weird enough for Roman liking. Christians, in short, were strange enough to be possible arsonists. Nero had them used for gladiatorial shows and, in a particularly nasty story, tied to posts and used as torches. With blame out of the way, he started a truly incredible project: the rebuilding of Rome and the creation of the Domus Aurea, the Golden House. The Golden House wasn’t really what Rome needed, but it was an incredible structure. Sources tell of immense gardens filled with exotic beasts, a dining hall with a revolving ceiling designed to look like the sky which would shower rose petals on guests, huge lakes, and a colossal statue over 100 feet tall. The complex was enormous, covering half of Rome, causing many a joke among the literary elite. The project obsessed Nero. He had temples ransacked and destroyed to raise money and make way for it, an act that absolutely appalled his advisers. When money fell short again, he demanded tributes from the provinces. In AD65, furious senators lead by Gaius Piso conspired to kill him and restore the Republic, but were caught, resulting in the deaths of numerous members of the elite including Seneca.

For someone like Nero, a man who needed to be liked, a conspiracy must have been devastating. The straw that broke the proverbial camel’s back came soon afterwards when, in a fit of rage, Nero kicked his pregnant wife Poppaea to death. Now, it seems that Popppaea really was the love of Nero’s life and her loss, especially loss at his own hand, practically destroyed him. Some suggest he went mad, as usual we’re not sure, but he certainly completely lost interest in Roman affairs and withdrew into the Golden House, making it the setting of the sort of debauchery that the sources just love to elaborate upon. One of the most infamous of these was his decision to “marry” a male slave named Pythagoras, supposedly because he resembled Poppaea. Now, knowing Nero’s love of spectacle and shock, this sounds to me like a novel performance for his party guests, neatly mocking conventions as well as mocking the rites of mystery cults.

Heavy taxation in the provinces was causing unrest, particularly in Judaea, and the army were fed up with putting down rebellions. In Gaul, the governor Vidnex rebelled against him, joined by Galba, the future emperor and a governor in what is now Spain. Nero retained controlled for a while, but support for Galba was strong and eventually the emperor fled Rome. He made several failed attempts at suicide and assisted suicide before news reached him that the senate planned to beat him to death and as the sound of the horsemen nearing him, quoting epic poetry and crying “what an artist dies with me!”, he killed himself.

Of course, that’s the story that survives, who actually reported these dying words and actions is a little sketchy. His death brought civil war. The Julio-Claudian line was no more and Rome could no longer look for an emperor from one dynasty. But the story of Nero does not end there. Though Tacitus insists that only the foolish would mourn such a tyrant’s death, other sources report a widespread belief that Nero was still alive, resulting in several “false Neros” making claims for the throne. If Nero was so hated, why would people support someone claiming to be him? The belief was so widespread that it even appears in the Book of Revelations: many scholars interpret the “Great Beast” as Nero’s return, suggesting that even Christians believed that Nero would soon come back and bring with him Judgement Day. Similar stories appear in the Sibylline Oracles and the Ascension of Isaiah. It’s possible that he only became popular as people looked back on the spectacles he put on or compared his reign with the period of unrest, but… well… these beliefs turn up pretty quickly, the first pseudo-Nero turns up in AD69, and lasted a long time, Revelations was probably written in the mid 90s. It just goes to show how biased our sources can be.

Galba AD68-69

With the empire in turmoil, we are about to enter into what was known as the “year of four emperors”. The first of these four was the last emperor from an old Republican family to rule in the history of Rome. Having rebelled against Nero, he battled his way to the throne with the aid of several legions. He didn’t last long, and after six months he was assassinated by another name from Nero’s reign, Otho.

 

Otho AD69

Otho didn’t last long either, ruling for only three months. Defeated in battle by Vitellus, Otho took the “honourable” way out and committed suicide.

 

Vitellus AD69

With an even shorter reign, two months, Vitellus tried to make a big difference to Rome, desperate to escape from the shadows of his predecessors, he even took the name “Germanicus” instead of “Caesar”, not wanting to be associated with the Julio-Claudians. He made a couple of significant changes, banning centurions from selling duty exemptions and allowing men of wider social standing into the civil service. However, with Vespasian baring down on him, he resigned, but was dragged out of hiding and beheaded.

Vespasian AD 69-79

Vespasian, as you may have gathered from previous entries, had been around for quite a while. A formidable general, he ingratiated himself with both Caligula and Claudius, heavily involved in the conquest of Britain, and was doing reasonably well for himself under Nero until he forgot to praise the vain emperor enough at a lyre recital and fell out of favour. He regain his brownie points during the Great Jewish Revolt in AD66, crushing anyone in his way with brutal, ruthless force. Vespasian clearly didn’t like the Jews, in 68, he took a group of captives and threw them into the Dead Sea to test whether or not the water was as buoyant as legend told. After Nero’s death he started to work his way back towards Rome, stopping in Egypt for a while where he supposedly received visions and the ability to perform miracles. While his son Titus continued to quash the revolt in Judaea, Vespasian quashed Vitellus and was declared emperor while he was still in Egypt.

 

Vespasian was a shrewd man of simple tastes, used to tough military life. He lived simply and shocked Rome when he finally arrived in AD70 by even taking his own boots off! He managed to rebuild much of the economy, ravaged by civil war and Neronian excess, and was known for finding ways to get taxes out of everything, even public toilets. He also knew how to make an impression, carefully designing his coinage, paying ancient writers to put in a good word for him, and embarking on a phenomenal public building program, covering up much of Nero’s Golden House in the process. The most famous of these public buildings was the Flavian Amphitheatre, finished by Titus… but you might know it as the Colosseum, so named after Nero’s colossus which stood nearby. We don’t know an awful lot about the rest of his reign, Suetonius mentions conspiracies, Tacitus talks about his general, Agricola, serving in Britain, but it’s all a bit vague. The ancients seemed to have liked him, though, perhaps just glad for a bit of stability, who knows? He died of natural causes (apparently some sort of really bad stomach upset) in AD79, snarkily commenting “alas! I think I am becoming a god!” on his death bed. He was right too, Titus deified him shortly afterwards.

Titus AD79-81

Titus, like his father, was a strong military man with a thick frame and a good head for strategy. By the time he became emperor, he had fought in Britain, Judaea and Egypt. He had a reputation for being a bit… well, a bit of a Nero, but this reputation was relatively short lived, he was a relatively generous man and was popular with the senate for banning treason trials. His short reign was plagued with troubles: the eruption of Vesuvius in AD79, a three day long fire in Rome, rebellions from false Neros and further troubles in Britain. Still despite all this, he found time to further his father’s building work and add a few more projects of his own, including a huge bath complex, putting on lavish games and restoring the Imperial Cult (which I shall talk about in a later guide, because it’s very, very interesting).

 

Unfortunately, shortly after dedicating his baths and temples, he fell ill with a fever and died.

Domitian AD81-96

Domitian was Titus’ brother, and seems to have lived most of his life in his brother’s shadow. He was an odd man, with a strange sense of humour, suspicious and paranoid and desperately self-conscious of his increasing baldness, apparently wearing rather bad wigs. He saw himself as kind despot wielding absolute power, an unpopular idea with the senate, but was a pretty good emperor. His bureaucracy ran with stunning efficiency, allowing him to revalue coinage and sort out the last of Rome’s troubled finances. He was successful in battle; there are numerous wars on the frontiers in his reign, as well as yet more securing of Britain (I told you we were trouble). He was also an exceptionally pious man, not only honouring his brother with deification but also a posthumous triumphal arch, as well as doing a lot to restore traditional religion. Strange foreign cults bothered him, he saw them as a threat to tradition and to the status quo (religion in Rome was less about what one believed and more about proving loyalty and honouring one’s past) and did much to try to limit them if they got in the way of the traditional cults, making him unpopular with later Christian writers.

 

Tradition and the status quo were one of his prime concerns not only in religion but in everyday life too. He was suspicious of satire and pantomime, afraid that sarcastic writers would try to undermine him. Loose morals worried him too, he reinstated certain ghastly punishments for unchaste Vestal Virgins, for example. Like his brother he came up against problem after problem: wars in Dacia and the provinces, arguments with the senate, and a plot against him in 89. His unpopularity with the senate added to his paranoia, Suetonius says that he had the columns of his villa polished to a mirror-like shine so h could always watch behind him. We can tell just how much the senate hated him from the cruel descriptions of his reign, no matter what he did he was damned as a “bad emperor”. Later conservative and Christian writers continued this tradition, which is sad really. He wasn’t a bad emperor by any means, just a very scared one, ordering the deaths of those he thought were against him and leading Tacitus to describe his reign as one of terror. Looking back, one can’t really blame Domitian for being nervous, early and unnatural deaths were the fates of most of his predecessors. Eventually, his fears turned out to be justified, he was assassinated by members of his court.

Nerva AD96-98

Having served under every emperor from Nero onwards, Nerva knew what was expected from one. On the same day that Domitian was killed, Nerva was declared emperor by the senate. He was of senatorial stock himself, and knew that the senate wanted its power back, thank you very much. He promised that the days of Domitian’s autocracy was over and did much to restore the senate’s role, which made him popular, but he wasn’t really emperor material. He wasn’t very good with money and was rather uncharismatic, the army never really paid any attention to him and the praetorian guard even pressured him into picking an heir against his will. Nerva was just too nice to be emperor, he was modest, quiet, almost shy. He liked to have the opinion of the entire senate before doing anything and was a little slow to act, not as slow as Tiberius, but still pretty slow. Already in his sixties when he became emperor, he died after having a stroke and was promptly deified.

Trajan AD96-117

Like Vespasian and Titus, Trajan was a battle-hardened former soldier in his forties and when his adoptive father Nerva suddenly died, Trajan was declared emperor. Here, at last, was a man fit to rule the empire, remembered by Romans as the very best: they called him “Optimus”, “the very greatest” and in later years would greet a new emperor saying “may he be luckier than Augustus and better than Trajan”. Even the later Christians seemed to like him. But what made him so great?

 

Well, he was already popular when he came to power, having fought long and hard in the provinces. In his early years of rule he gave back a lot of the property seized by Domitian and freed a fair number of prisoners, adding to his popularity. But trouble was brewing to the North and in 101, he lead his armies into the troublesome kingdom of Dacia, an area that had been causing problems for the empire for years. By the end of 102, the Dacians were subdued, and Trajan returned to Rome triumphant, bringing with him enormous wealth. It was pretty much the norm for a triumphant general to use spoils for public building, but Trajan took this tradition one step further. He built an enormous forum complex with an adjoining market and temple, which was later dedicated to him after his death. In the centre of the forum was a huge column, decorated with a continuing spiral frieze showing his exploits in Dacia, topped with a statue of Trajan himself and later marking his burial place (an unusual honour, very few people were allowed to be buried within the city). Other building works included bridges, aqueducts (and aqueduct bridges), roads and temples, he was certainly prolific.

Under Trajan, the empire reached its largest size ever, but conquests of Dacia and the Near East were followed by peace, a rare thing in the Roman world. All in all, he was damned successful. Even our sources have little bad to say about him, Dio mentions him being a heavy drinker and a little too keen on young boys, but that’s all. Really, that’s all. Considering how mean they usually are, even picking holes in the reign of Augustus, this is remarkable. What were they up to? Well, Tacitus and Pliny were writing under Trajan and his successor, Hadrian, so they were less likely to criticise their employers. It has been suggested that some of the criticisms of earlier emperors were in fact not-so-subtle hints to their contemporaries. But what about Suetonius, Dio and the Christians? Well, Suetonius and Dio were probably using people like Tacitus and Pliny as sources, so no change there. The weirdest thing, to me, is how kind Christian sources are to Trajan. Might not sound that strange, after all Trajan was a fairly nice bloke, but during Pliny’s period as governor of Bithynia Pontus, he corresponded with Trajan on the subject of those pesky Christians: he’d been receiving a lot of accusations, partly from people after the accused people’s property, partly through religious further. Pliny didn’t know what to do, but had been trying those accused and using their unwillingness to perform sacrifice (the Christians were one of the only groups who wouldn’t, all the more reason for the Romans to think them strange) as proof and having them executed. Trajan replied saying that sounded like a good idea, but not to try those who were accused anonymously to stop people making accusations out of spite. Trajan’s reply is the first piece we have from an emperor on the subject: Nero had just had a few random people arrested, Domitian had tried to make people sacrifice more, but never had anyone offered an actual policy on them, sure it’s not official, but it was published after Pliny’s death and seems to have been fairly well known.

I don’t have any answer on this, frankly. The Christians were probably not a major priority to Trajan, but his reply probably put scores to death. Who knows, early Christians were an odd bunch.

Trajan, like his adoptive father, died after a stroke. He was deified and, as already mentioned, was given some unprecedented honours. Everybody really did love Trajan.

Hadrian AD117-138

Hadrian was Trajan’s adoptive son, a hardworking man from the provinces, with heavy interests in Greek literature and philosophy. Hadrian was an unusual emperor: he wore a beard, the first emperor to do so (imagine if Obama turned up one day with a lip piercing or if Gordon Brown decided to sport a Mohawk, that’s how shocking Hadrian’s appearance would have been), and he liked to travel, visiting his provinces regularly, from cold, warlike Britain to the steamy luxury of Egypt. Although he had been a fine military man in his early years, his reign was blessedly free of conflict, he even managed to negotiate away from a war in Parthia, allowing him to fortify the provinces (Hadrian’s Wall, anyone?) and travel. He liked to know the concerns of his people and would seek to rectify any problems, rebuilding many a temple or aging aqueduct. Like Nero, Hadrian loved Greece but unlike Nero, Hadrian knew how to integrate his interests with his work, taking himself to Greece more often than bringing Greek things to him and offering honours to Greek cities, such as semi-autonomous rule and citizenship, rather than just stealing all their art. For times when he couldn’t travel, he built a magnificent villa at Tivoli incorporating his favourite aspects of the places he had visited: there was a long lake representing the Nile, Greek sculpture, even a cave representing the underworld! There he could entertain guests, read the latest philosophical works or shut himself off to work in private rooms separated from the rest of the villa by a moat.

 

Hadrian, like Trajan, fares remarkably well in the sources, even his famous affair with Antinous, a handsome young lad from Bithynia, isn’t attacked, which is unusual since the Romans generally frowned upon homosexuality, though some sources suggest their affair was platonic. How Antinous and Hadrian met isn’t entirely certain, but the boy stayed in the emperor’s entourage until his untimely death; drowning, we’re told, in the Nile, although the circumstances aren’t certain. Antinous’ death greatly marked Hadrian. He deified him, named a city after him, had countless idealised statues made of him, he even had a constellation named after him, and interrupted his touring schedule to mourn. Withdrawing to his villa, the emperor had a monumental tomb come temple built for his lost love. As he drew into his sixties, his health began to fail and died at another of his villas, in Baiae, having sorted out one of the messiest successions in the history of Rome. He was succeeded by his adoptive son Antinonius Pius (try saying that after a few drinks) and was deified, as usual. He was also honoured with an absolutely huge statue of him driving his chariot, Cassius Dio says  that it was so large a man could walk through the eye of one of the horses.

And… that’s the end of my course, unless we count settlement patterns and religion, but this article’s long enough as it is. If you want to learn more about the emperors I talked about, there’s plenty of material out there. Tacitus, Pliny and Suetonius are your obvious starting points, full of gossip, scandal and pessimism. If you like your scandal a little more dynamic, Robert Graves’ aforementioned Claudius novels are great fun, historically accurate for the most part, just a little wonky on the theoretical side. Also heartily recommended is Edward Champlin’s “Nero”, a non-fictional work that combines archaeology, written sources and religious prophecy into a fascinating study of the most notorious man in history. I don’t agree with all of his conclusions, but this is one of the most interesting books on my college reading list!

If you enjoyed this article, you might like

The bluffer’s guide to Ancient Clothing