The Julio-Claudians

1. The Julio-Claudians From Tiberius to Nero, 14 - 68

2. The Augustan legacy • Augustus had created a complex lineage of Roman emperors that was also surprisingly long. His next four successors would have some relation to both his own Julian family and his wife Livia’s Claudian family. • At the same time he fostered a number of rivalries, jealousies, and thus conspiracies that plagued, wrecked, and warped the principate. • Tiberius eased into the position of princeps in 14, but Nero, the last Julio-Claudian was harassed from office.

3. HAPPY BIRTHDAY, TIBERIUS! NOVEMBER 16, bc.

4. Tiberius Claudius Nero, 14-37 • Tiberius was 55 when he succeeded Augustus, who didn’t like him. • He was a sour, introverted, parsimonious man who originally agreed to become next in line if he retained the right to step down once a suitable replacement was found. • Tiberius cut off the funds that supported his ex-wife, Julia, in exile and she died of starvation. • Tiberius adopted his more popular nephew Germanicus as heir. Germanicus died in16, suspected by some of being poisoned through a conspiracy led by Tiberius. Germanicus’ wife was Augustus’ granddaughter Agrippina the Elder, and she remained a formidable challenge to the dour Tiberius for years. • Another challenge was the toady Aelius Seianus Sejanus, the head of the Praetorian guard, and something akin to head of a secret police that uncovers plots against the emperor. Like an ancient Grima Wormtongue he persuades Tiberius to retire from Rome for Capri. • Tiberius eventually lays a trap for him and all Rome rejoices at Sejanus’ execution.

5. Tiberius the Administrator • Tiberius tried to make the senate his partner, and encouraged freedom of speech to an extent. • Tiberius was best at administration and avoiding overextension: he wisely kept Rome out of war by limiting military goals in Germany and avoided war with the Parthians. • He kept a strict budget: avoided spectacles and ambitious building projects, kept tribute and taxes at a minimum, built a large surplus that he handed on to his successor. • He reduced corruption by increasing administrators salaries and lengthening terms of service. • He improved the efficiency and consistency of collecting taxes. • He delegated so well that he was able to spend his last ten years away from Rome on the Isle of Capri, where he was surrounded by scholars and artists. • He preferred that his grandson Gemellus succeed him, but he was only sixteen when Tiberius had to make a decision, so he temporarily chose Germanicus’ son (Tiberius’ grandnephew), Gaius instead. He is better known as Caligula.

7. Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus Germanicus (Caligula) 37-41 • 24-year old Caligula seemed like a breath of fresh air after the no-frills Tiberius. • He started by distributing the legacies of Tiberius and Livia, reducing and abolishing taxes, and providing public spectacles. • He abolished treason trials, called back exiles, and announced preparation for conquest of Germany and Britain. • All seemed well until he suffered a serious illness, which ancient writers thought affected his brain. • After the illness he forgot his earlier consideration, insisted on being worshipped as a god, the New Sun god, and began to show a sadistic pleasure in impulsive acts of cruelty. • He had a temple built to himself, was known to force senators to put on slave dress and wait upon him at table, and would sit for hours conversing with gods of the pantheon, of which he now was a member. • He dressed up like Alexander the Great and rode around the city on his favorite horse, Incitatus, which he maintained was Bucephalus reincarnated. He appointed the horse to the senate and made him a high priest of the Caligula cult.

8. Accomplishments? • Caligula soon squandered away most of the surplus that Tiberius had built up. • He became desperate for funds and revived the old draconian ways of extracting money including treason confiscations, and invented new ones including taxes on prostitution and food. • He began to even single out family members for confiscation, and he engineered a pogrom against Jews in Alexandria, forcing them to erect statues of him in their synagogues. He was going to desecrate the Jerusalem Temple similarly, but died before he could. • His megalomania inspired a number of conspiracies, including a revolt of troops in the Rhine valley. • Finally, he was assassinated on January 24, 41 by a tribune of the Praetorian guard named Cassius Chaerea. His effort had the support of the senate.

9. Claudius – the old story was that the Praetorian guard found Claudius hiding in the Palace, dragged him out and proclaimed him imperator.

10. Tiberius Claudius Nero Germanicus 41-54 • He was Caligula’s uncle, and he won loyalty of the praetorian guardsmen by promising each of them 15,000 sesterces, setting a dangerous precedent. But he also had the support of urbanites, provincials, and the upper class. • He had either a birth defect or childhood illness that left him with a grotesque appearance and a speech impediment, but he was no fool. Augustus had understood this and obtained the best tutors. • He became an historian, philologist, and Roman legal expert. He was the leading ancient authority on Etruscan and Carthaginian history. It bred in him a respect for the past. • He made himself censor, which meant he could purge the senate of troublesome old members and appoint new ones. Some of the new senators were prominent Gallic chieftains. • In his love for the law, he set up a court in his own house and this created resentment on the part of senators. He battled the senate constantly.

11. Nobody’s Fool • He enlarged his privy council and used talented freedmen who were loyal and honest. This turned aristocratic ancient historians against him. • He halted extending credit and loans to teenagers, built an artificial harbor at Ostia, which grew to about 100,000, and abolished sales taxes on food. • He was aggressive in foreign policy: annexed Judea, crushed a rebellion in Mauretania, and completed the conquest of Britain. • His armies crushed those of Caratacus, a champion of druidism, and he personally received the submission of eleven British kings. The senate voted him a triumph, and gave him the title, “Britannicus.” • He presided over a rapid system of colonization and urbanization with a detailed remembrance of local cutural and political issues. • He married Agrippina the Younger, sister of Caligula, as his second wife (he executed the first one) and adopted her son from her first marriage, Nero Claudius Caesar in the year 50, when he was 58. • Claudius died, probably choking on his food, or eating poisoned mushrooms given by his fourth wife-niece Agrippina, in 54.

12. Agrippina’s son by the sadistic Ahenobarbus.

13. Nero Claudius Caesar 54-68 • Nero’s first five years were exemplary: good government, prosperity, relative peace. His mother, Agrippina, was quite overbearing, but he had great advisers in poet Seneca the Younger (4-65) and Burrus, chief of the Praetorian guard. • He was distressed by her manuverings and intrigue, and finally plotted—and plotted—to kill her. The plot to drown her failed when she showed she could swim, so he had assassins finish her off in 59. • After Agrippina’s death, Seneca and Burrus increasingly lost control of Nero. He gave the masses panem et circenses—bread and circuses. • He divorced Octavia, daughter of Claudius, and exiled her. He married his mistress Poppaea, and executed Octavia when she proved popular. • He now began to emulate Caligula in lavish spectacle, foolish spending, and unjust prosecution for treason, to name a few. • He appointed Gaius Ofonius Tigellinus as prefect of the praetorians, and he became something like head of the secret police, uncovering plots and breaking heads.

14. The Fire • It was a hot night in July 64. A fire broke out in the slums on the east side of the Circus Maximus, probably in an olive oil factory. A strong wind from the SE fanned the flames that eventually burned over half of Rome in nine days. • Nero’s own palace burned, and he had been at Antium, 35 miles south of Rome. He rushed back to Rome to direct the relief efforts. A rumor circulated that he started the fires. • He threw himself into the rebuilding projects. He saw himself as an artist, but his enthusiasm increased suspicions against him. • Now Nero looked for scapegoats, and decided to blame the fires on the Christians. He forced some confessions and had them torn apart by dogs, crucified, or burned alive. • Probably both St. Paul and St. Peter were killed in this scapegoating: Paul by beheading as a Roman citizen, and Peter being crucified upside down. • The Roman government went bankrupt and this resulted in a devaluation of currency.

15. Nero’s Farewell Concert Tour • In 66, Nero decided to pursue a musical career and went on a grand concert tour of Greece. • He sang and played various parts of plays and as a one-man show. The Greeks were less than honest about his performances: they gave a combined 1808 prizes and trophies for his performances. • In return, Nero freed Greece, making it a virtually autonomous land. Later, wiser rulers would reverse this impetuosity. • Nero was ignoring problems in Britain, where Queen Boadicea avenged her own torture and the rape of her daughters at the hands of the Romans by capturing a Roman colony, and massacring 70,000 Roman colonists and soldiers before General Paulinus defeated her. Boadicea killed herself. • In Judea, the Jews revolted after the Romans failed to protect them against their Greek neighbors. Vespasian was appointed to deal with the situation.

16. End of a dynasty? • Nero had displayed a steady decline toward absolute despotism. Both senatorial and equestrian classes hated him. The troops began to hate him when he couldn’t pay them, and lacked respect for an imperator they never saw. • Servius Sulpicius Galba bribed the Praetorian guard with promise of 80,000 sesterces. The senate declared Nero an enemy of the state. • Despondent, Nero persuaded a servant to plunge a sword into his throat and died. His last words: “O what an artist dies in me!” • Thus died the last of the Julio-Claudians, but the roller coaster ride was not over for Rome. • The lessons were clear: one must curry the favor of the legions and avoid ostentatious displays of absolute power.