Rome in the Footsteps of an XVIIIth Century Traveller

VII - From Tiberius to Nero

In this page:
The First Dynasty
Tiberius' First Years
Tiberius Emperor of Capri
Caligula
Claudius
Nero (Via Sacra and Via Nova)
Iconography

The First Dynasty

Emperor Augustus and his four successors are collectively known as the Julio-Claudian dynasty; while Augustus was celebrated as a wise man, his successors were associated with less flattering adjectives. According to the accounts of Roman historians Tiberius was cruel, Caligula mad, Claudius weak and Nero, the last emperor of this dynasty, cruel, mad and weak (see some busts of members of this dynasty).
This dreadful portrait of the first emperors is mainly due to the fact that Tacitus and Suetonius, the main historians who wrote about them, did so at the time of emperors Trajan and Hadrian and tended to discredit their predecessors.
Things got even worse for the Julio-Claudian emperors in the following centuries when they were blamed for their (assumed) role in the persecution of the early Christians.
Nero in particular became almost a symbol of evil, an interesting example of what was eventually called damnatio memoriae, literally "damnation of memory", a process for removing the remembrance of a person (abolitio nominis) and of his deeds.

Inscription celebrating Lucius Caesar near Basilica Aemilia

A gigantic inscription near Basilica Aemilia celebrates Lucius Caesar, a son of Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa and of Julia, daughter of Augustus. The old emperor adopted Lucius and his older brother Gaius, thus indicating them as successors. They most likely are portrayed among the children attending a religious procession in a relief at Ara Pacis Augustae. The inscription states that Lucius was made princeps iuventutis ("leader of the youth") and was elected consul designatus (a similar inscription was found at Amiternum). Both Lucius and Gaius died before their grandfather (see a cenotaph dedicated to them at Durocortorum, today's Reims) and Augustus eventually adopted Tiberius, the son of Livia, his third wife, and the youngest son of Agrippa, who was born after the death of his father and thus was known as Agrippa Postumus.

Temporary Exhibition at Sala degli Arazzi in Palazzo dei Conservatori: three marble heads of Agrippa Postumus; (left) from Musei Capitolini; (centre) from a private collection; (right) from the Medici Collection of ancient busts at Galleria degli Uffizi in Florence

In 2 BC Augustus exiled Julia to (Pandataria) (Ventotene), a small island off Mount Circeo, for her intrigues with other men. In 7 AD it was the turn of Agrippa Postumus to be exiled to another small island for his unruly conduct. At approximately the time of the death of Augustus, Agrippa Postumus was killed by the officer in charge of his custody and shortly after also Julia died.

Tiberius' First Years

Tiberius was 56 when Augustus died. He had an excellent military record having successfully led the Roman legions in many expeditions in Pannonia and Germany, but he was hardly popular. His mother Livia, third wife of Augustus, was behind his first decisions aimed at gaining the support of the Senate, to which he attributed the appointment of the magistrates, who were previously elected by assemblies open to all Roman citizens.
He had also to deal with the great popularity of his nephew (and adoptive son), Julius Caesar, known as Germanicus for his successful campaigns in Germany, where he defeated the tribes who had ambushed the Roman legions at Teutoburg. Tiberius allowed his nephew to celebrate in a grand manner his triumph in Rome, but then dispatched him to Syria to sever his links with his legionaries, who had already made an attempt to place Germanicus at the head of the empire.
In 19 Germanicus died in Antioch: the strange circumstances of his death were soon attributed to poisoning. The local Roman proconsul was suspected of having killed him. His ashes were brought home by his wife Agrippina Maior, daughter of Vipsanius Agrippa and Julia; she landed at Brindisi and the funerary procession from there to Rome was accompanied by extraordinary scenes of grief. Tiberius chose not to attend the funeral of Germanicus and his absence was interpreted as a sign that he might have ordered the poisoning of his nephew.

Arco di Costantino: (left) relief portraying a sacrifice to Apollo (age of Emperor Hadrian); (right) relief portraying a "suovetaurilia" the traditional sacrifice of a pig, a ram and a bull together in a military camp (age of Emperor Commodus)

By conquering Egypt and Syria and by expanding their influence on a number of satellite kingdoms such as Armenia and Palestine, the Romans came in contact with countries where religious beliefs had aspects very different from theirs.
The main characteristic of the Roman religion was the strict link it made between deities and specific locations: so there were mountains under the protection of Apollo (e.g. Monte Soratte), islets under that of Aesculapius (e.g. Isola Tiberina) and the same applied to rivers, forests, springs and so on; the Greeks had the same approach and the Romans easily established a link between their deities and the Greek ones. Altars to genius loci (the deity protecting a site) have been found in many parts of the Roman Empire from Britain to Syria. Cosmogony and life after death, two key aspects of religion as we define it today, had little relevance for the Romans. Cosmogony, the theory explaining the origin of the world and of mankind, was just a minor part of the Roman and Greek myth. Life after death was portrayed by Homer and Virgil as an assembly of homesick shadows who assailed with questions and requests for favours the chance visitors of Hades, the underground kingdom of the dead.
The Romans attended religious ceremonies with a very utilitarian purpose: to protect from ill omen their actions. There were strict rules to be complied with before making some decisions and their violation was regarded as a sacrilege; the temples, rather than buildings for prayers, were sites freed from negative influences; so the cell where the statue of the god was placed was small in comparison to the whole building and the ceremonies took place outside the cell. The word templum (temple) meant for the Romans a space formally "inaugurated", sacred. The city of Rome itself was a temple where some actions were forbidden.
In essence we can say that the ancient Romans were superstitious rather than religious (some say this still applies to a lot of people).
In the eastern Mediterranean provinces the Romans found very different religious beliefs and a Hellenized way of living. One aspect of these beliefs, typical of Egypt, was soon adopted by the Roman emperors: it consisted of their own deification. The Roman legionaries located in the eastern provinces were attracted by other local systems of religious worship based on initiation rites, mutual support among the members of the community, some forms of resurrection, a sole deity or at least a very limited number of deities. During the rule of Tiberius and of his successors these new religious practices reached Rome, but only in the early IIIrd century they were openly endorsed by some emperors.

Western side of "Domus Tiberiana"

Augustus chose to live in a relatively small house on the Palatine Tiberius instead felt he needed a visible symbol of his power. He bought a series of properties in the same hill and he erected a palace which had a commanding view over the Forum. Of that palace only the substructures built to create a wide terrace remain. The terrace eventually became part of Orti Farnesiani.
Tiberius completed many of the buildings/public works which Augustus had begun, but he often chose not to be mentioned in celebratory inscriptions, the bridge at Ariminum (Rimini) being one of the exceptions.

Tiberius Emperor of Capri

But after being bereft of both his sons, - Germanicus had died in Syria and Drusus at Rome, - he retired to Campania, and almost everyone firmly believed and openly declared that he would never come back, but would soon die there. And both predictions were all but fulfilled; for he did not return again to Rome, and it chanced a few days later that as he was dining near Tarracina in a villa called the Grotto, many huge rocks fell from the ceiling and crushed a number of the guests and servants, while the emperor himself had a narrow escape.
Suetonius - Life of Tiberius - Loeb Edition
It happened, that in a cavern formed by nature at a villa called Spelunca, (..) Tiberius was enjoying the luxuries of a banquet with a party of his friends, when the stones at the entrance suddenly gave way, and crushed some of the attendants. Sejanus, to protect his master, fell upon his knee, and with his whole force sustained the impending weight. In that attitude he was found by the soldiers, who came to relieve the prince.
Tacitus - Annales IV - Transl. by Richard Colt Hoare
In 22 Tiberius nominated his only son Julius Caesar Drusus as his successor. In the following year however Drusus died and again there were rumours of poisoning.
Tiberius no longer enjoyed living in Rome: he spent long periods in the imperial residences in the environs of Naples. In 27 he eventually chose to permanently live on Capri, a small island off the Gulf of Naples, where winter is extremely mild and a breeze tempers the summer heat (the image used as a background for this page shows the Faraglioni, three famous stacks at Capri). He was no longer keen on following the day to day state affairs; for this he relied heavily on Lucius Elius Seianus, the commander of the imperial guard.

British Museum: Ist century BC wellhead most likely from Capri (Charles Townley's Collection)

While Tiberius lived on Capri, Seianus worked at his plans for becoming the next emperor.
In a matter of a few years several members of the imperial family, including Agrippina Maior, and many senators were indicted by Seianus for plotting against the emperor, who endorsed the accusations without moving from Capri, where he chose to remain even when his mother passed away at the age of 86, after having played an important role in state affairs through her husband Augustus and her son.
In 31 however Tiberius, at the insistence of his sister-in-law Antonia Minor, the mother of Germanicus (see her assumed portrait as Juno/Hera), agreed to look into the behaviour of Seianus with a critical eye and realized he could be the next target of Seianus' plan. The old emperor had not lost his ability to manage difficult situations and make swift decisions. He let Seianus believe that an envoy he had sent to Rome was bringing his appointment as the next emperor. The announcement was expected to occur in the Senate where according to the Roman tradition Seianus could not go with his guards. Seianus went to the meeting feeling he was close to his final goal, but he was arrested in the presence of the flabbergasted senators, charged with plotting against the emperor, brought to Carcere Mamertino, sentenced to death and that same day strangled.
Tiberius continued to live on Capri; in 37 he decided to return to Rome, but he preferred to spend some time in the other imperial residences on the road. He fell ill and was brought to a villa near Cape Misenus, a base of the Roman fleet, where he passed away.

Castra Praetoria: (left) ruins of the barracks; (right) one of the gates

In each Roman legion a group of selected soldiers was placed under the direct orders of the legion commander; they were called Praetorians and Augustus gave this name to a small army of 9,000 troops who were lodged in Rome and its environs. They were intended to be the bodyguard of the emperor. As a matter of fact during the three centuries of their existence (they were dissolved by Emperor Constantine in 312) the praetorians were for most of the emperors a cause of concern, rather than a source of security.
Seianus managed to gain Tiberius' approval to build a large barracks for the praetorians immediately outside the pomerium, the boundary of the city of Rome which identified the area inside which it was forbidden to carry weapons. The Castra Praetoria design followed the pattern of the traditional Roman camp: it had a rectangular shape and it was divided into four quarters by two perpendicular streets. A wall surrounded the barracks and the vast area where the praetorians trained. When in 275 Emperor Aurelian built the new walls of Rome those of Castra Praetoria became part of them. The side towards Rome was pulled down while the other three were strengthened and their gates were closed. Recent excavations found out that the barracks were made up of rather small rooms rather than by large dormitories, similar to what can be observed at Isca Augusta (Caerleon) in Wales.

Caligula

In 35 Tiberius had appointed as his successors his grandson Tiberius Gemellus and Gaius Caesar, son of his nephew Germanicus and of Agrippina Maior. The army however did not respect the will of Tiberius; Germanicus had been a great commander and the legionaries wanted his son to be the sole ruler of the empire.
Gaius Caesar was so popular among the soldiers that he was usually called Caligula, after caligae, the military boots he used to wear when he was a child and accompanied his father on his military campaigns. He arranged for the bones of his mother to be placed in the family mausoleum.
Caligula, to make sure his power would not be challenged, ordered the killing of Tiberius Gemellus. To please the army he engaged in an unsuccessful campaign in Germany and to please the lower classes of Rome he made distributions of subsidies and commodities. According to the historian Tacitus he became mad and his behaviour became so unpredictable that just four years after his accession to the imperial throne, the praetorians got sick of him and their commander killed him in his palace on the Palatine. Suetonius adds that he held himself as a living god and so he built a bridge between the imperial palace and the temples on the Capitoline hill and that he ordered the killing of Ptolemy, King of Mauretania, whom he had invited to Rome, out of envy for his dress.

Ruins of Circus Maximus and of "Domus Severiana" to the left

Caligula shared with most of the Romans a passion for horse-racing. His family owned most of the land where S. Pietro now stands and Caligula built there a private hippodrome, which is usually known as Circo Vaticano o di Nerone. He embellished this circus by placing at its centre an obelisk. Notwithstanding his private circus, he spent a lot of time at Circus Maximus watching the races and in order to have a better access to it he enlarged the imperial palace by acquiring a property in the slope of the Palatine hill. He was so fond of Incitatus, the horse on the left side of the chariot, that no expense was spared although we do not know whether the horse was actually happy to be living in a marble stable or to be eating from an ivory manger. Incitatus was covered with fine cloths with red borders and from this detail historians claim that Caligula appointed his horse to the position of senator. This anecdote is quoted every time a ruler appoints a person who does not have the proper requirements for holding that position and is chosen only for his personal relationship with the ruler.

Claudius

Tiberius Claudius Drusus, aged 51, became the new emperor: nephew of Tiberius, brother of Germanicus and uncle of Caligula he had never been highly considered by his powerful relatives and maybe for this reason the praetorians acclaimed him emperor and the Senate willingly ratified the appointment.
He was a very rich man, with little political or military background, but with a cultural one. He had entrusted the management of his assets to some liberti, (freedmen, former slaves who usually maintained in their names a reference to their previous master and continued to work for him) and he continued to do so with the state affairs. Overall his administration was well structured and both Rome and the provinces gained from a more careful handling of the trade, financial and military issues the Empire was faced with.
He even led the Roman legions in a successful campaign in Britain at the end of which England became a Roman province. By peaceful means he acquired the remaining independent territories south of the Danube; he consolidated the Roman expansion in today's Morocco by establishing two new provinces; he ensured the loyalty of Gaul and other provinces by facilitating the access to Roman citizenship; he founded new Roman colonies near critical mountain passes, e.g. Claudiopolis (Mut) in the Taurus Mountains or along the shores of the Atlantic Ocean to promote the fishing industry, e.g. Baelo Claudia; he granted immunity from taxation to Kos, because the island was sacred to Aesculapius; he is credited with the construction of imposing aqueducts, e.g. Pont du Gard and of a canal to prevent Lake Fucino from flooding the land of the Marsi.

"Tower of Claudius", actually a temple with a dedication to Emperor Claudius at Qalaat Faqra in the mountains of Northern Lebanon

All these achievements made him very popular in the provinces, but in Rome they were obscured by the fact that he was regarded as a puppet in the hand of his wives. Messalina, the first one, married Claudius when she was 15 and he was 50; she is portrayed by the Roman historians as lust-prone and there are several accounts describing how she satisfied her desires. As a matter of fact, profiting by a temporary absence of her husband, in 48 she and her lover made a failed attempt to dethrone Claudius. They both were executed.
Unfortunately for him, Claudius did not learn the lesson and in 49 he married another woman much younger than him, his niece Agrippina Minor, daughter of his brother Germanicus and sister of Caligula. Agrippina Minor was already on her third marriage and she had a boy, Lucius Domitius Nero, whom she convinced Claudius to appoint as his successor.
According to the traditional account in 54 Agrippina, after having ensured the support of the praetorians to her son, served to her husband a dish he liked very much: mushrooms. Whether he died of poisoning or of indigestion we do not know with certainty. Agrippina, perhaps out of remorse, promoted the construction of a large temple dedicated to her husband.

(left) Triumphal arches of Aqua Claudia and Anio Novus which later on became Porta Maggiore seen from Rome; (right) detail of a semi-column: its design is typical of the age of Claudius

Claudius did his best to improve the living conditions of the Romans. He was aware that Rome needed a well organized logistic structure to bring and distribute in an orderly manner the vast amount of commodities required by its population. During a supply shortage he had personally experienced the fury of a hungry crowd. He therefore gave subsidies to the merchants who shipped grain and oil to Rome during the winter season, when the risk of shipwreck was high. He provided Rome with a second harbour at Porto and he built Porticus Minuciae, a sort of central office which handled the administration and distribution of wheat to the lower classes.
Claudius was also worried that the Romans would run out of drinking water so he built two aqueducts which brought additional water to Rome from the mountains near Subiaco. He celebrated their completion by erecting monumental arches where the (joined) aqueducts crossed Via Prenestina and Via Labicana (today Casilina).

Nero

The new emperor was a young man of seventeen and in his first years of rule he sought the advice of Lucius Anneus Seneca, a philosopher who had presided over his education. Seneca recommended Nero to follow the ideal rex iustus (fair king) government pattern he had described in his works.
Agrippina tried to exert on her young son the influence she had on her old husband, but Nero over the years became less inclined to accept her interference in state affairs. In 59 he ordered the killing of Agrippina, whom he suspected of plotting against him.
In 62 Ofonius Tigellinus gained the trust of Nero and as commander of the praetorians became his main advisor ousting Seneca from this role. Nero's behaviour became more and more that of an absolute monarch: this, coupled with his decisions in fiscal matters, led to a growing dissatisfaction in some sections of the Roman society and in the western provinces of the Empire, which resented the favours and exemptions Nero granted to the eastern provinces.
In 65 a major fire destroyed a large part of Rome; Nero was at his villa near Anzio; he immediately returned to Rome to cope with the effects of the disaster; the many public buildings of Campo Marzio which had not been affected by the fire were used to temporarily shelter the homeless and overall the decisions Nero took during this emergency were effective; he also issued new regulations to establish minimum distances between buildings and to limit the use of timber as construction material. The traditional accounts that the fire was ordered by him, that he watched its spreading from a high point on the Esquilino, that he sang while Rome was burning and that he ordered a persecution of the Christians whom he charged with having caused the fire are most likely a defamatory legend.
In that same year Nero, having discovered a plot against him, sentenced to death a large number of those who had advised and assisted him in his first years in power, including Seneca, who committed suicide by severing his veins (and placed his feet in a basin of hot water to speed his death - see a statue supposed to portray his death).

Römisch-Germanischen Museum at Cologne: Dedicatory inscription to Emperor Nero who is referred to with family links going back to Augustus. It is dated 66 AD and it was found at Cologne, a Roman colony which was named after Agrippina (Colonia Claudia Ara Agrippinensium) who was born there

In 66 Nero left Rome for a long journey in the eastern provinces; he spent a full year in Greece; at Corinth he granted fiscal exemptions and political rights to this province. On his return to Rome he had to increase taxation on the western provinces; the legions in Spain and Gaul rebelled at the orders respectively of Julius Vindice and Servius Sulpicius Galba; overall the army remained loyal to the emperor and Vindice was defeated, but Nero was convinced by one of his closest advisor to quit his imperial residence; his advisor then announced that Nero had fled the city and the Senate profiting by the uncertainty among the emperor's supporters, declared Galba the new emperor and Nero hostis (enemy) of Rome, a statement by which every loyal citizen was given the authority to kill Nero. But the emperor did not wait to be caught and asked a trusted libertus to kill him: Qualis artifex pereo! (what an artist dies in me!) were his last words according to Suetonius. For centuries a funerary tomb along Via Cassia was known as Sepolcro di Nerone.

Roman Forum: the broad curved staircase which gave access to the platform of the "Rostra"

During the reign of Nero, the rule of Rome in Britain was consolidated by quelling a rebellion led by Boudicca, Queen of the Iceni, a tribe living in East Anglia.
The main military developments however occurred at the other end of the empire, where the Roman legions were at war with the Parthians for the control of Armenia, an independent kingdom which often changed sides. In 66 after many years of conflict a political compromise was reached; it established that Tiridates, brother of the Parthian king, was to be appointed king of Armenia, but he should receive the crown from the Roman emperor. Tiridates and his large retinue of archers and servants moved from the mountains of Armenia across Asia Minor (today's Turkey), Thracia (today's Bulgaria) and Illyria (Serbia and Croatia) to reach the Adriatic Sea. They crossed the sea and landed at Ancona where Tiridates was met by Nero; the two started a triumphal procession which ended in Rome.
At the rising of the sun Nero appeared in the Forum, clad in the garb of triumph, accompanied by senators and praetorians. He took his place on the Rostra, in a curule chair. Then between the soldiers, who were drawn up along both sides, Tiridates with his suite was led to the Rostra, where he paid homage to the emperor. (..) Then Tiridates mounted a staircase, came to the emperor, kneeled before him, and received the crown from his hand: a scene which aroused the loud applause of the Romans. Nero for the occasion sang and played his lyre: in the following days banquets, games and other ceremonies completed the event, the cost of which, including Tiridates' travel expenses, was borne by the Romans.
Christian Hülsen - The Roman Forum - Its History and Its Monuments - 1906
The memory of this display of oriental costumes and luxury reverberated on the iconography of the Magi, the kings from the east of the Christian tradition, and it was revived by the depiction of the retinue of a Byzantine emperor (it opens in another window) who attended the Council of Florence in 1439.

(above) Via Sacra between Tempio di Antonino e Faustina and Arco di Settimio Severo seen from "Domus Tiberiana"; (below) Via Nova with the trees of Orti Farnesiani to the left and a distant view of Campidoglio

Nero had grand plans for rebuilding Rome and he even considered renaming the city Neropolis. While he is mainly remembered for his Domus Aurea, Nero also redesigned the Forum by straightening Via Sacra and by opening Via Nova, a new street parallel to Via Sacra.
The XIXth century archaeologists who excavated the Forum preferred the Rome of Augustus to that of his successors; the result of this choice is that today's Via Sacra is at a lower level than most of the surviving monuments which flank it and which were aligned with Nero's street. Via Nova gives an idea of how the streets of Rome were designed in compliance with the new regulations issued by Nero.

IInd century AD shops along Via Nova

The parallelogram between the Sacra and the Nova Via, the Arch of Titus and the House of the Vestals, remained a "terra incognita" to the topographer until the excavations of 1878-79. (..) It was found to contain a portico supported by ten or eleven rows of stone pilasters (..) i.e. Porticus Margaritaria, viz., a portico occupied by jewellers and goldsmiths. (..) Originally they must have exhibited their precious merchandise in booths and screens and desks under the shelter of the portico; later on, the portico was cut up into regular shops by means of brick walls raised between each pair of stone pilasters. (..) The space was cut up also vertically by means of wooden floors, so as to secure an office or a bedroom above the shop. (..) The portico is gone, except a few blocks which remain in situ here and there, especially on the side of the Nova Via.
Rodolfo Lanciani - The ruins and excavations of ancient Rome - 1897
See the tombstone of a jeweller who had his shop at Porticus Margaritaria.

Iconography

The following links show works of art portraying characters and events mentioned in this page (they open in another window):
Totò (an Italian comedian) as Tiberius.
Caligula's horse by Salvador Dalì (1983).
Bust of Nero at Galleria degli Uffizi in Florence and head at Römisch-Germanischen Museum in Cologne.
Messalina by Gustave Moreau (1826-98).
Sir Peter Ustinov as Nero.
The Death of Seneca by Peter Paul Rubens (1615).

Constantin Cavafy wrote a poem about Nero:

NERO'S DEADLINE

Nero wasn't worried at all when he heard
the utterance of the Delphic Oracle:
"Beware the age of seventy-three."
Plenty of time to enjoy himself still.
He's thirty. The deadline
the god has given him is quite enough
to cope with future dangers.

Now, a little tired, he'll return to Rome -
but wonderfully tired from that journey
devoted entirely to pleasure:
theatres, garden-parties, stadiums...
evenings in the cities of Achaias ...
They ought to be singing his praises
and, above all, the sensual delight of naked bodies..

So much for Nero. And in Spain Galba
secretly musters and drills his army -
Galba, the old man in his seventy-third year.

Translation by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard.

Next page:
VIII - The Flavian Dynasty

Previous pages:
I - The Foundation and the Early Days of Rome
II - The Early Republican Period
III - The Romans Meet the Elephants
IV - Expansion in the Eastern Mediterranean Sea
V - Pompey and Caesar
VI - Augustus