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THE EMPRESSES OF ROME
[Illustration: CRISPINA
BUST IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM]
THE EMPRESSES OF ROME
by
JOSEPH McCABE
Author of “The Decay of the Church of Rome”
With Twenty-four Illustrations
[Illustration]
New York
Henry Holt and Company
1911
NOTE
The period embraced by this work extends to the fall of the Western
Empire, or to the middle of the fifth century. It was felt that a more
extensive range would involve either an inconveniently large work or an
inadequate treatment. While, therefore, the Empresses of the East have
been included down to the fall of Rome, it seemed that the collapse of
the Empire in Rome and the West indicated a quite natural term for the
present study. The restriction has enabled the author to tell all that
is known of the Empresses of Rome within that period, to enlarge the
interest of the study by framing the Imperial characters in occasional
sketches of their surroundings, and to weave the threads of biography
into a continuous story.
CONTENTS
PAGE
INTRODUCTION 1
CHAP.
I. THE MAKING OF AN EMPRESS 7
II. THE END OF THE GOLDEN AGE 23
III. THE WIVES OF CALIGULA 46
IV. VALERIA MESSALINA 60
V. THE MOTHER OF NERO 79
VI. THE WIVES OF NERO 105
VII. THE EMPRESSES OF THE TRANSITION 122
VIII. PLOTINA 136
IX. SABINA, THE WIFE OF HADRIAN 149
X. THE WIVES OF THE STOICS 163
XI. THE WIVES OF THE SYBARITES 179
XII. JULIA DOMNA 194
XIII. IN THE DAYS OF ELAGABALUS 210
XIV. ANOTHER SYRIAN EMPRESS 222
XV. ZENOBIA AND VICTORIA 233
XVI. THE WIFE AND DAUGHTER OF DIOCLETIAN 250
XVII. THE FIRST CHRISTIAN EMPRESSES 265
XVIII. THE WIVES OF CONSTANTIUS AND JULIAN 286
XIX. JUSTINA 306
XX. THE ROMANCE OF EUDOXIA AND EUDOCIA 322
XXI. THE LAST EMPRESSES OF THE WEST 340
INDEX 351
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
CRISPINA. Bust in the British Museum _Frontispiece_
From a photograph by W. A. MANSELL & CO.
FACING PAGE
LIVIA AS CERES. Statue in the Louvre 20
JULIA. Bust in the Museum Chiaramonti 28
AGRIPPINA THE ELDER. Bust in the Museum Chiaramonti 46
MESSALINA. Bust in the Uffizi Palace, Florence 70
AGRIPPINA THE YOUNGER. Bust in Museo Nazionale, Florence 82
OCTAVIA. Porphyry Bust in the Louvre 112
POPPÆA. Bust in the Capitoline Museum, Rome 118
From a photograph by ANDERSON.
DOMITIA. Bust in the Uffizi Gallery, Florence 130
PLOTINA. Statue in the Louvre 142
From a photograph by W. A. MANSELL & CO.
SABINA. Bust in the British Museum 154
From a photograph by W. A. MANSELL & CO.
FAUSTINA THE ELDER. Bust in the Louvre 164
From a photograph by A. GIRAUDON.
FAUSTINA THE YOUNGER. Bust (reputed) in the British Museum 172
From a photograph by W. A. MANSELL & CO.
LUCILLA. Bust in the National Museum, Rome 184
From a photograph by ANDERSON.
JULIA DOMNA. Bust in the Vatican Museum 202
From a photograph by ANDERSON.
JULIA MÆSA. Bust in the Capitoline Museum, Rome 214
From a photograph by ANDERSON.
JULIA MAMÆA. Bust in the British Museum 226
From a photograph by W. A. MANSELL & CO.
MARCIA OTACILIA SEVERA 236
From a photograph by W. A. MANSELL & CO.
ZENOBIA 248
Enlarged from coin in the Berlin Museum.
SALONINA AND VALERIA 262
Enlarged from coins in the British Museum.
FAUSTA AND FLAVIA HELENA 280
Enlarged from coins in the British Museum.
ÆLIA FLACCILLA AND HONORIA 316
Enlarged from coins in the British Museum.
EUDOXIA AND PULCHERIA 330
Enlarged from coins in the British Museum.
PLACIDIA AND EUPHEMIA 342
Enlarged from coins in the British Museum.
THE EMPRESSES OF ROME
INTRODUCTION
The story of Imperial Rome has been told frequently and impressively in
our literature, and few chapters in the long chronicle of man’s deeds
and failures have a more dramatic quality. Seven centuries before our
era opens, when the greater part of Europe is still hidden under virgin
forests or repellent swamps, and the decaying civilizations of the East
cast, as they die, their seed upon the soil of Greece, we see, in the
grey mist of the legendary period, a meagre people settling on one of
the seven hills by the Tiber. As it grows its enemies are driven back,
and it spreads confidently over the neighbouring hills and down the
connecting valleys. It gradually extends its rule over other Italian
peoples, bracing its arm and improving its art in the long struggle. It
grows conscious of its larger power, and sends its legions eastward,
over the blue sea, to gather the wealth and culture of Egypt, Assyria,
Persia, and Greece; and westward and northward, over the white Alps,
to sow the seed in Germany, Gaul, Britain, and Spain. A hundred years
before the opening of the present era the tiny settlement on the
Palatine has become the mistress of the world. Its eagles cross the
waters of the Danube and the Rhine, and glitter in the sun of Asia and
Africa. But, with the wealth of the dying East, it has inherited the
germs of a deadly malady. Rome, the heart of the giant frame, loses its
vigour. The strong bronze limbs look pale and thin; the clear cold
brain is overcast with the fumes of wine and heated with the thrills
of sense; and Rome passes, decrepit and dishonoured, from the stage on
which it has played so useful and fateful a part.
The fresh aspect of this familiar story which I propose to consider is
the study of the women who moulded or marred the succeeding Emperors
in their failure to arrest, if not their guilt in accelerating, the
progress of Rome’s disease. Woman had her part in the making, as
well as the unmaking, of Rome. In the earlier days, when her work
was confined within the walls of the home, no consul ever guided the
momentous fortune of Rome, no soldier ever bore its eagles to the
bounds of the world, but some woman had taught his lips to frame the
syllables of his national creed. However, long before the commencement
of our era, the thought and the power of the Roman woman went out into
the larger world of public life; and when the Empire is founded, when
the control of the State’s mighty resources is entrusted to the hands
of a single ruler, the wife of the monarch may share his power, and
assuredly shares his interest for us. Even as mere women of Rome, as
single figures and types rising to the luminous height of the throne
out of the dark and indistinguishable crowd, they deserve to be passed
in review.
Some such review we have, no doubt, in the two great works which spread
the panorama of Imperial Rome before the eyes of English readers. In
the graceful and restrained chapters of Merivale we find the earlier
Empresses delineated with no less charm than learning. In the more
genial and voluptuous narrative of Gibbon we may, at intervals, follow
the fortunes and appreciate the character of the later Empresses. But,
no matter how nice a skill in grouping the historian may have, his
stage is too crowded either for us to pick out the single character
with proper distinctness, or for him to appraise it with entire
accuracy. The fleeting glimpses of the Empresses which we catch, as
the splendid panorama passes before us, must be blended in a fuller
and steadier picture. The tramp and shock of armies, the wiles of
statesmen, the social revolutions, which absorb the historian, must
fall into the background, that the single figure may be seen in full
contour. When this is done it will be found that there are many
judgments on the Empresses, both in Merivale and Gibbon, which the
biographer will venture to question.
For the study of the earlier Empresses the English reader will find
much aid in Mr. Baring-Gould’s “Tragedy of the Cæsars” (1892). Here
again, however, though the Empresses are drawn with discriminating
freshness and full knowledge, they are constantly merging in the great
crowd of characters. The aim of the present work is to place them in
the full foreground, and to continue the survey far beyond the limits
of Mr. Baring-Gould’s work. It differs also in this latter respect
from Stahr’s brilliant “Kaiser-Frauen,” which is, in fact, now almost
unobtainable; and especially from V. Silvagni’s recent work, of unhappy
title, “L’Impero e le Donne dei Cesari,” which merely includes slight
and familiar sketches of four Empresses in a general study of the
period.
The work differs in quite another way from the learned and entertaining
book of the old French writer Roergas de Serviez, of which an early
English translation has recently been republished under the title “The
Roman Empresses, or the History of the Lives and Secret Intrigues
of the Wives of the Twelve Cæsars”--an improper title, because the
work is far from confined to the wives of the Cæsars. The work is
an industrious compilation of original references to the Empresses,
interwoven with considerable art, so as to construct harmonious
pictures, and adorned with much charm and piquancy of phrase, if some
hollowness of sentiment. But it is so intent upon entertaining us that
it frequently sacrifices accuracy to that admirable aim. Serviez has
not invented any substantial episode, but he has encircled the facts
with the most charming imaginative haloes, and where the authorities
differ, as they frequently do, he has not hesitated to grant his
verdict to the writer who most picturesquely impeaches the virtue of
one of his Empresses. Roergas de Serviez was a gentleman of Languedoc
in the days of the “grand monarque.” His Empresses and princesses
reflect too faithfully the frail character of the ladies at the Court
of Louis XIV. For him the most reliable writer is the one who betrays
least inclination to seek virtue in courtly ladies.
It need hardly be said that the present writer is indebted to these
authors, to the learned Tillemont, and to others who will be named
in the course of the work. But this study is based on a careful
examination of all the references to the Empresses in the Latin and
Greek authorities, with such further aid as is afforded by coins,
statues, inscriptions, and the incidental research of commentators. We
shall consider, as we proceed, the varying authority of these writers.
We shall find in them defects which impose a heavy responsibility
on the writer whose aim it is to restore those faded and delicate
portraits of the Empresses, over which later artists have spread their
sharper and more crudely coloured figures. One may, however, say at
once that it is not contemplated to urge any very revolutionary change
in the current estimate of the character of most of them. If a few
romantic adventures must be honestly discarded, we shall find Messalina
still flaunting her vices in the palace, Agrippina still pursuing her
more masculine ambition, Poppæa still representing the gaily-decked
puppet of that luxurious world, and Zenobia, in glittering helmet,
still giving resonant commands to her troops.
But it will be well, before we introduce the first, and one of the best
and greatest of the Empresses, to glance at the development of Roman
life which prepared the way for woman to so exalted a dignity. The
condition of woman in early Rome has often been restored. We see the
female infant, her fate trembling in the hand of man from the moment
when her eyes open to the light, brought before the despotic father
for the decision of her fate. With a glance at the little white frame
he will say whether she shall be cast out, to be gathered by the
merchants in human flesh, or suffered to breed the next generation of
citizens. We follow her through her guarded girlhood, as she learns
to spin and weave, and see her passing from the tyranny of father to
the tyranny of husband at an age when the modern girl has hardly begun
to glance nervously at marriage as a remote and mystic experience. We
then find her, not indeed so narrowly confined as her Greek sister,
yet little more than the servant of her husband. Public feeling,
it is true, mitigated the harsher features, and forbade the graver
consequences, of this ancient tradition. For many centuries divorce was
unknown at Rome. Yet woman’s horizon was limited to her home, while
her husband boasted of his share in controlling the Commonwealth’s
increasing life.
In the second century before Christ we find symptoms of revolt. The
wealthier women of Rome resent the curtailing of their finery by the
Oppian Law, now that the war is over (195 B.C.). Old-fashioned Senators
are dismayed to find them holding a public meeting, besetting all the
approaches to the Senate, demanding their votes, and even invading the
houses of the Tribunes and coercing them to withdraw their opposition.
The truth is that Rome has changed, and the women feel the pervading
change. The passage of the victorious Roman through the cities of the
East had corrupted the patriarchal virtues. Roman officers could not
gaze unmoved on the surviving memorials of the culture of Athens, or
make festival in the drowsy chambers of Corinthian courtesans or the
licentious groves of Daphne, without altering their ideal of life. The
splendour of Eastern wisdom and vice made pale the old standard of
Roman _virtus_. The vast wealth extorted from the subdued provinces
swelled the pride of patrician families until they disdainfully burst
the narrow walls of their fathers’ homes. The hills of Rome began to
shine with marble mansions, framed in shady and spacious gardens, from
which contemptuous patrician eyes looked down on the sordid and idle
crowds in the valleys of the Subura and the Velabrum. Rome aspired to
have its art and its letters.
Roman women were not content to be secluded from the new culture, and
could not escape the stimulation of their new world. The Roman husband
must be kept away from the accomplished courtesans of Greece and the
voluptuous sirens of Asia by finding no lesser attractions in his wife.
So the near horizon of woman’s mind rolled outward. An inscription
found at Lanuvium, where the Empress Livia had a villa, shows that the
little provincial town had a _curia mulierum_, a women’s debating club.
The walls of Pompeii, when the shroud of lava had been removed from its
scorched face, bore election-addresses signed by women. The world was
mirrored in Rome, and few minds could retain their primitive simplicity
as they contemplated that seductive picture.
By the beginning of the first century of the older era the women of
Rome had ample opportunity for culture and for political influence.
In the great conflicts of the time their names are chronicled as the
inspirers of many of the chief actors. They rise and fall with the
cause of the Senate or the cause of the People. They unite culture
with character, public interest with beauty and motherhood. At last
the conflicting parties disappear one by one, and a young commander,
Octavian, the great-nephew of Julius Cæsar, gathers up the power they
relinquish. A youth of delicate and singularly graceful features, of
refined and thoughtful, rather than assertive, appearance, he hears
that Cæsar has made him heir to his wealth and his opportunities; he
goes boldly to Rome, adroitly uses its forces to destroy those who had
slain Cæsar, forces Mark Antony to share the rule of the world with him
and Lepidus, and then destroys Lepidus and Mark Antony. It is at this
point, when he returns to Rome from his last victories, when the whole
world wonders whether he will keep the power he has gathered or meekly
place it in the hands of the Senate, that the story opens.
CHAPTER I
THE MAKING OF AN EMPRESS
On an August morning of the year 29 B.C. the million citizens of Rome
lined the route which was taken by triumphal processions, to greet
the man who brought them the unfamiliar blessing of peace. From the
Triumphal Gate to the Capitol, past the Great Circus and through
the dense quarter of the Velabrum, with its narrow streets and high
tenements, the chattering crowd was drawn out in two restless lines, on
either side of the road, ready to fling back the resonant “Io Triumphe”
of the bronzed soldiers, bubbling with discussion of the war-blackened
stretch of the past and the more pleasant prospect of the future. The
hedges of spectators were thicker, and the debate was livelier, under
the cliff of the Palatine Hill and in the Forum, through which ran the
Sacred Way to the white Temple of Jupiter, towering above them and
crowning the Capitol at the end of the Forum. There the conqueror would
offer sacrifice, before he sank back into the common rank of citizens
of the Republic. Would the young Octavian really lay down his power,
and become a citizen among many, now that he was master of the Roman
world?
Possibly one woman, who looked out on the seething Forum and the
glistening temple of Jupiter from a modest mansion on the Palatine
Hill, knew the answer to the eager question. Possibly it was unknown
to Octavian himself, her husband. She heard the blasts of the leading
trumpeters, and saw the sleek white oxen, with their gilded horns
and their green garlands, advance along the Sacred Way and mount the
Capitol. She saw the people rock and quiver with excitement as painted
scenes of the remote Dalmatian forests, where her husband’s latest
victories had been won, and the gold and silver of despoiled Egypt,
and the very children of the witch Cleopatra, were driven before the
conqueror. She saw the red-robed lictors slowly pass, their fasces
wreathed in laurel; she saw the band of dancers and musicians tossing
joyful music in his path; and she saw at last the four white horses
drawing a triumphal chariot, in which her husband and her two children
received the frenzied ovation of the people.
Octavian was then in his thirty-fourth year. Fifteen years of struggle
had drawn a manly gravity over the handsome boyish face, though the
curly golden hair still seemed a strange bed for the chaplet of laurel
that crowned it. His full impassive lips, steady watchful eyes, and
broad smooth forehead gave a singular impression of detachment--as if
he were a disinterested spectator of the day’s events and the whole
national drama, instead of being the central figure. The busts which
portray him about this period seem to me, in profile, to recall David’s
Napoleon, without the slumbering fire and the hard egoism. Men would
remind each other how, when he was a mere boy, fifteen years before, he
had found his way through a maze of intrigue with remarkable dexterity.
Now, Mark Antony was dead, Brutus and Cassius were dead, Lepidus was
dead, and the followers of Pompey were scattered. It was natural to
assume that dreams of further power were hidden behind that mask of
strong repose.
Behind Octavian went the body of Senators, with purple-striped togas,
and silver crescents on their sandals. The lines of spectators broke
into gossiping groups when the tail of the procession had passed on.
The white oxen fell before the altar of Jupiter. Octavian gave the
customary address to the Senate, and joined Livia in the small mansion
on the Palatine. But for many a day afterward Rome bubbled in praise
of him. Not for years had such combats reddened the sands of the
amphitheatre, such clowns and conjurors and actors filled the stage
of the theatre, such sports fired the 300,000 citizens at the circus.
Never before had the uncouth form of the rhinoceros or hippopotamus
been seen at Rome. Not since the beginning of the civil wars had so
much money flowed through the shops of the Velabrum and the taverns
of the Subura. Such wealth had been added to the public store by
the despoiling of Egypt that the bankers had to reduce the rate of
interest. To a people grown parasitic the temptation to make a king
was overpowering; and it was easy to point out, to those who clung to
the strict democratic forms, that Octavian was extraordinarily modest
for a man who had reached so brilliant and resourceful a position. So
within a few months Octavian was Imperator, and Livia became, in modern
phrase, the Empress of Rome.[1]
Livia, unhappily for Rome, gave Octavian no direct heir to the purple,
and we may therefore speak briefly of her extraction. She came of the
Claudii, one of the oldest and proudest families of the Republic,
one that numbered twenty-eight consuls and five dictators in its
line. A strong, haughty race, more useful than brilliant, religiously
devoted to the old Republic, they had helped much to make Rome the
mistress of the world. Livia’s father, Livius Drusus Claudianus, had
taken arms against Octavian and Antony, and had killed himself, with
Roman dignity, when Brutus and Cassius fell, and he saw the shadow of
despotism coming over the city.
Livia was then in her sixteenth year,[2] and had early experience of
the storms of Roman political life. Her husband, Tiberius Claudius
Nero, had been promoted more than once by Julius Cæsar, but, after the
assassination of Cæsar, he had passed into what he regarded as the
more favourable current. He seems to have steered his course with some
skill until the year 41 B.C., when, like many other small schemers,
he came under the influence of Mark Antony’s wife, Fulvia. Antony was
caught at the time in the silken net with which Cleopatra prevented
him from carrying out the ambition of Rome at the expense of her
country. Fulvia, a virile and passionate woman, tried to draw Antony
from her arms by provoking a revolt against Octavian. She induced
her brother-in-law and other nobles to rebel, and Nero, who was then
prefect of a small town in Campania, joined the movement.
Octavian swung his legions southward, and scattered the thin ranks of
the insurgents. With her infant--the future Emperor Tiberius--in her
arms the girl-wife fled to the coast with her husband, and endured all
the horrors of civil warfare. So close were the soldiers of Octavian
on their heels that at one point the cry of the baby nearly destroyed
them. Octavian had little mercy on rebellious nobles before he married
Livia. At last they reached the coast, where the galleys of Sextus
Pompeius hovered to receive fugitives, and sailed for Sicily. They were
cordially received there by the Pompeians, but went on to Greece, and
were again hunted by the troops. Long afterwards in Rome they used to
tell how the delicate girl, the descendant of all the Claudii, fled
through a burning forest by night before Roman soldiers, and singed her
hair and garments as she rushed onward with her baby in her arms. The
troubled history of Rome for a hundred years was stamped on her mind by
a personal experience that she could never forget. With worn feet and
aching heart, she and her husband at last found shelter, until the feud
between Antony and Octavian had been composed.
From the straits of exile they returned to their pretty home on the
Palatine Hill, and the story of her adventures ran, and gathered
substance, in Roman society. If the experts be right in assigning to
Livia a small mansion which has been uncovered on the hill, we find
that she was, in the year 38 B.C., living only a short distance from
the house of Octavian. Among the palatial buildings which now whitened
the slopes of the Roman hills, Nero’s house--later, Livia’s house--was
poor, but its mural paintings are amongst the most delicate that have
been discovered under the overlying centuries of mediæval rubbish. A
small portico gave shelter from the summer sun, and the small, cool
atrium (hall) led only to some half dozen modest rooms. But Livia was
happy in her husband, and sober in her tastes. She was then in her
nineteenth year, a young woman of regular and pleasing, though scarcely
beautiful, features and rounded form, one of those who happily united
the old matronly virtue to the new love of society and gaiety. All
Rome discussed her adventures, and the generous feeling which her
romance engendered made people give her an exceptional beauty and
wit--qualities which neither her marble image nor her recorded career
permits us to accept in any large measure. There was no whisper of
slander against her until the days of her power. From this peaceful and
happy little world she was now to be suddenly removed.
Octavian, who mingled very freely with his fellows, and often supped
with the literary men who were now multiplying at Rome, heard the
gossip about the youthful Livia, and sought her. He was already
married, and a word may be said about the _impératrices manquées_
before we unite him to Livia.
In early youth he had been affianced to the girlish daughter of Publius
Servilius Isauricus, but a mere betrothal had little strength at a time
when even the marriage bond was so frail. When he came to face Mark
Antony, with many grim legions at his command, and a fresh civil war
was threatened, peacemakers suggested that the storm might be turned
from the fields of Italy by a matrimonial alliance. The soldiers, weary
of slaying each other, acclaimed the proposal. Servilia was sacrificed,
and Octavian was married to the young and hardly marriageable daughter
of Fulvia. As we saw, there was a fresh rupture with Antony in the
year 41, and Octavian sent back the maiden, as he described her, to
her infuriated mother. Some of our authorities declare that Fulvia had
tried to draw Antony from the arms of Cleopatra by making love to his
handsome rival, but one can only suppose that Antony would smile if he
were told that his unpleasant spouse--the woman who is said to have
gloated over the bloody head of Cicero, and thrust her hair-pin through
his tongue--was offering her heart to Octavian. We cannot, therefore,
accept the rumour that, when Octavian sent back her daughter to Fulvia,
he maliciously explained that he was anxious to spare Fulvia the
mortification of thinking that he had preferred the pretty insipidity
of Clodia to her own more assertive qualities.
The marriage with Clodia had been frankly political, and it naturally
broke down in the new political dissolution. The second marriage had
the same origin, and the same welcome termination. He had married
Scribonia, a woman older than himself, during the rupture with Antony,
because her brother was one of the chief members of the Pompeian
faction. The leader of this party, Sextus Pompeius, held Sicily, and
not only welcomed fugitives from Octavian’s anger, but commanded the
sea-route to Rome. Through his devoted friend Mæcenas, the famous
patron of letters, Octavian proposed a marriage with Scribonia. It
would not be unnatural for a woman in her thirties, who had already
outlived two husbands, eagerly to espouse, and probably love, so
graceful, ambitious, and advancing a youth as Octavian; but to him the
alliance was only one more move in the great game he was playing. He
could bear the strain of a diplomatic marriage with ease, since there
is no reason to reject the statement of Dio and Suetonius that he found
affection among the wives of his nobler friends.
It has been commonly held that Octavian masked a tense and
unwavering ambition with an affectation of simple joviality, and his
irregularities have been excused on the ground that he used them as
means to detect political whispers in Roman society. But this view of
Octavian’s character may be confidently questioned. His tastes, we
shall see, remained extremely simple when he might safely have indulged
any feeling for luxury, when every rival had been removed. That he was
ambitious it would be foolish to question; but his ambition must not
be measured by his success. There are few other cases in history in
which fortune so wantonly smoothed the path and drew onward an easy and
vacillating ambition. Octavian could well believe the assurances of the
Chaldæan astrologers that he was born to power.
With all his simplicity, however, Octavian had some sense of luxury
in love-matters, and his imagination wandered. Scribonia’s solid
virtue was unrelieved by any of the graces of the new womanhood of
Rome, her sparing charms had already faded under the pitiless sun of
Italy, and she had a sharp tongue. Moreover, his marriage with her
had proved a superfluous sacrifice. Fulvia’s stormy career had come
to a close shortly after the return of her daughter, and Antony and
Octavian had divided the Roman world between them. Antony married his
colleague’s sister, but the pale virtue of Octavia had no avail against
the burning caresses, if not the calculated patriotism, of Cleopatra.
At the second rupture between Antony and Octavian she was driven from
Antony’s palace at Rome, where she was patiently enduring his distant
infidelity, and sent back to her brother. In the meantime Octavian had
discovered a pleasanter way of obtaining peace with the Pompeians than
by the endurance of Scribonia’s jarring laments of his infidelity. He
found, or alleged, that Sextus Pompeius did not curb the pirates of
the Mediterranean as he ought, and he determined to wrest from him the
rich appointments that he held. He was in this mood when, in the year
38 B.C., the young Livia came to Rome, and the exaggerated story of her
adventures and her beauty began to circulate among the mansions of the
Palatine.
Some of the authorities describe Octavian as hovering about her for
some time, and say that the splendour with which he celebrated his
_barbatoria_, or first shave of the beard, was due to the generosity
of his new passion. It is more probable that he at once informed Nero
of his resolution to marry Livia. Tacitus expressly says that it is
unknown whether Livia consented or not to the change of husband. Great
as was the liberty then enjoyed by Roman women, they were rarely
consulted on such matters. Scribonia received a letter of divorce, in
which it was suggested that the perversity of her character made her
an unsuitable spouse for so roving a husband. She had given birth to
a daughter a few days before, and we shall find the later chapters of
this chronicle lit up more than once by the lurid hatred which was
begotten of this despotic dismissal. For the moment I need only point
out that later Roman writers borrowed their estimate of the character
of Livia from Scribonia’s great-grandchild, the Empress Agrippina,
and we must be wary in accepting their statements. Scribonia herself,
who came so near to being an Empress, we must now dismiss, save that
we shall catch one more glimpse of her when she follows her dissolute
daughter into exile.
Roman law imposed a fitting delay on the divorced wife before she
could marry again, but Octavian was impatient. He consulted the sacred
augurs, and, if the legend is correct, the diviners gave admirable
proof of their art. They gravely reported that the omens were
auspicious for an immediate marriage _if_ the petitioner had ground
to believe that it would be fruitful. The verdict entertained Rome,
because Livia was well known to be far advanced in pregnancy, and
Octavian was widely regarded as the father. Whether that be true or no,
Octavian intimated to Nero that he must divorce Livia, and we cannot
think that she felt much pain at being invited to share the mansion in
the Palatine to which all Roman eyes were now directed. An anecdote
of the time lightly illustrates the ease with which such matrimonial
transfers were accomplished at Rome. Dio says that, during the festive
meal, one of those bejewelled boys who then formed part of a Roman
noble’s household, and whose vicious services were rewarded with an
extraordinary license, said to Livia, as she reclined at table with
Octavian: “What do you here, mistress? Your husband is yonder.” The
pert youngster pointed to Nero at another table. He had given away the
bride, and was cheerfully taking part in the banquet.
Livia’s second son, Drusus Nero, was born three months after her
marriage, and was sent by Octavian to Nero’s house. Nero died soon
afterwards, and made Octavian the guardian of his sons, so that they
returned to the care of their mother. The extreme fondness of Octavian
for the younger boy lends no colour to the rumour that Drusus was
his own son. The probability is that Octavian, in his impetuous way,
married Livia as soon as his fancy rested on her. The accepted busts
of Drusus do not give any support to the calumny that Octavian was
his father. He loved both the boys, and assisted in educating them,
in their early youth. It is only when his daughter Julia brings her
handsome children into the household that we detect a beginning of an
estrangement between him and his successor, Tiberius.
The household in which these first seeds of tragedy slowly germinated
was, in the year 38 B.C., one of great simplicity and sobriety. They
lived in the comparatively small house in which Octavian had been
born, and Livia adopted his plain ways with ease and dignity. In that
age of deadly luxury, when the veins of Rome were swollen with the
first flush of parasitic wealth, Octavian and Livia were content with
a prudent adaptation of the old Roman ideal to the new age. The noble
guests whom Octavian brought to his table found that his simple taste
shrank, not only from the peacocks’ brains and nightingales’ tongues
which were served in their own more sumptuous banquets, but even from
the pheasant, the boar, and the other ordinary luxuries of a patrician
dinner. Rough bread, cream cheese, fish, and common fruit composed his
customary meal. Often was he seen, as he came home in his litter from
some fatiguing public business, such as the administration of justice,
to munch a little bread and fruit, like some humble countryman. Of wine
he drank little, and he never adopted the enervating nightly carousal
which was draining away the strength of Rome. While wealthy senators
and knights prolonged the hours of entertainment after the evening
meal, and hired sinuous Syrian dancing girls and nude bejewelled boys
and salacious mimes to fire the dull eyes of their guests, as they
lay back, sated, on the couches of silk and roses, under fine showers
of perfume from the roof, sipping choice wine cooled with the snow of
the Atlas or the Alps, Octavian withdrew to his study, after a frugal
supper, to write his diary, dictate his generous correspondence, and
enjoy the poets who were inaugurating the golden age of Latin letters.
When there were guests, he provided fitting dishes and music for them,
but often retired to his study when the meal was over. After seven
hours’ sleep in the most modest of chambers he was ready to resume his
daily round.
Since Octavian retained these sober habits to the end of his life,
years after they could have had any diplomatic aim, it is remarkable
that so many writers have regarded them as an artful screen of his
ambition. Nor can we think differently of Livia. If Octavian presents
a healthy contrast to the sordid sensuality of some of his successors,
his wife contrasts no less luminously with later Empresses, and is no
less unjustly accused of cunning. How far she developed ambition in
later years we shall consider later. In the fullness of his manhood, at
least, she was content to be the wife of Octavian. With her own hands
she helped to spin, weave, and sew his everyday garments. She carefully
reared her two boys, tended the somewhat delicate health of Octavian,
and cultivated that nice degree of affability which kept her husband
affectionate and the husbands of other noble dames respectful. Dio
would have us believe that her most useful quality was her willingness
to overlook the genial irregularities of Octavian; but Dio betrays an
excessive eagerness to detect frailties in his heroes and heroines. We
have no serious evidence that Octavian continued the loose ways of his
youth after he married Livia. The plainest and soundest reading of the
chronicle is that they lived happily, and retained a great affection
for each other, even when fate began to rain its blows on their
ill-starred house.
But before we reach those tragic days, we have to consider briefly the
years in which Octavian established his power. His first step after his
marriage with Livia was to destroy the power of the Pompeians. Livia
followed the struggle anxiously from her country villa a few miles
from Rome. Sextus Pompeius was experienced in naval warfare, and, as
repeated messages came of blunder and defeat on the part of Octavian’s
forces, she trembled with alarm. Her confidence was restored by one of
the abundant miracles of the time. An eagle one day swooped down on a
chicken which had just picked up a sprig of laurel in the farm-yard.
The eagle clumsily dropped the chicken, with the laurel, near Livia,
and so plain an omen could not be misinterpreted. Rumour soon had it
that the eagle had laid the laurel-bearing chick gently at Livia’s
feet. As in all such cases, the sceptic of a later generation was
silenced with material proof. The chicken became the mother of a brood
which for many years spread the repute of the village through southern
Italy; the sprig of laurel became a tree, and in time furnished the
auspicious twigs of which the crowns of triumphing generals were woven.
Whether it was by the will of Jupiter, or by the reinforcement of a
hundred and fifty ships which he received from Antony, Octavian did
eventually win, and, to the delight of Rome, cleared the route by which
the corn-ships came from Africa. Only two men now remained between
Octavian and supreme power--the two who formed with him the Triumvirate
which ruled the Republic. The first, Lepidus, was soon convicted of
maladministration in his African province, and was transferred to the
innocent duties of the pontificate, under Octavian’s eyes, at Rome.
Octavian added the province of Africa to his half of the Roman world,
and found himself in command of forty-five legions and six hundred
vessels. Fresh honours were awarded him by the Senate, in which his
devoted friend Mæcenas, who foresaw the advantage to Rome of his rule,
was working for him.
Then Octavian entered on his final conflict with Mark Antony. I
have already protested against the plausible view that Octavian was
pursuing a definite ambition under all his appearance of simplicity.
Circumstances conspired first to give him power, and then to give him
the appearance of a thirst for it. He really did not destroy Antony,
however: Antony destroyed himself. The apology that has been made for
Cleopatra in recent times only enhances Antony’s guilt. It is said that
she used all that elusive fascination of her person, of which ancient
writers find it difficult to convey an impression, all her wealth and
her wit, only to benumb the hand that Rome stretched out to seize her
beloved land. The theory is not in the least inconsistent with the
facts, and it is more pleasant to believe that the last representative
of the great free womanhood of ancient Egypt sacrificed her person
and her wealth on the altar of patriotism than that her dalliance
with Antony was but a languorous and selfish indulgence in an hour of
national peril. But if it be true that Cleopatra was the last Egyptian
patriot, Antony was all the more clearly a traitor to Rome. The quarrel
does not concern us. Octavian induced the Senate to make war on Egypt;
and we can well believe that when, in a herald’s garb, he read the
declaration of war at the door of the temple of Bellona, the thought of
his despised sister added warmth to his phrases. The pale, patient face
and outraged virtue of Octavia daily branded Antony afresh in the eyes
of Rome.
Livia and Antonia followed the swift course of the last struggle
from Rome. They heard of the meeting of the fleets off Actium, the
victorious swoop of Octavian, the flight of Antony and Cleopatra. What
followed would hardly be known to Livia. It is said that Cleopatra
offered to betray Antony to Octavian, and such an offer is in entire
harmony with the patriotic theory of her conduct. While his able but
ill-regulated rival, deserted by his forces, drew near the edge of
the abyss, Octavian visited Cleopatra in her palace. Her seductive
form was displayed on a silken couch, and from the slit-like eyes the
dangerous fire caressed the young conqueror. Cleopatra probably relied
on Octavian’s weakness, but his sensuous impulses were held in check by
a harder thought. He felt that he must have this glorious creature to
adorn his triumph at Rome. Cleopatra saw that she had failed, and she
went sadly, with a last dignity, before the throne of Osiris. Octavian
returned to Rome with the immense treasures of Egypt, to enjoy the
triumph I have already described and to await the purple.
The domestic life of Livia and Octavian lost none of its plainness
after the attainment of supreme power. Some time after the Senate had
(27 B.C.) strengthened his position by inventing for him the title of
“Augustus”--a title by which he is generally, but improperly, described
in history after that date[3]--he removed from the small house which
his father had left him to a larger mansion, built by the orator
Hortensius, on the Palatine. This was burned down in the year 6 B.C.,
and the citizens built a new palace for Livia and Octavian by public
subscription. At the Emperor’s command the contribution of each was
limited to one _denarius_. If we may trust the archæologists, it was
modest in size, but of admirable taste, especially in the marble lining
of its interior. On one side it looked down, over the steep slope of
the hill, on the colonnaded space, the Forum, in which the life of
Rome centred. On the other side it faced a group of public buildings,
raised by Octavian, which impressed the citizens with his liberality
in the public service. The splendid temple of Apollo, the public
library and other buildings, adorned with the most exquisite works of
art that his provincial expeditions had brought to Rome, stood in fine
contrast to his own plain mansion, of which the proudest decoration
was the faded wreath over the door--the Victoria Cross of the Roman
world--which bore witness that he had saved the life of a citizen.
In this modest palace Livia reared her two children in the finer
traditions of the old Republic, while Octavian made the long journeys
into the provinces which filled many years after his attainment of
power. Livia was no narrow conservative. She took her full share in the
decent distractions of patrician life, and, like many other noble women
of the period, she built temples and other edifices of more obvious
usefulness to the public. A provincial town took the name Liviada
in her honour. We have many proofs that she was consulted on public
affairs by Octavian, and exercised a discreet and beneficent influence
on him. One of the anecdotes collected by later writers tells that she
one day met a group of naked men on the road. It is likely that they
were innocent workers or soldiers in the heat, and not the “band of
lascivious nobles” which prurient writers have made them out to be.
However, Octavian impetuously demanded their heads when she told him,
and Livia saved them with the remark that, “in the eyes of a decent
woman they were no more offensive than a group of statues.” On another
occasion she dissuaded Octavian from executing a young noble for
conspiracy. At her suggestion the noble was brought to the Emperor’s
private room. When, instead of the merited sentence of death, Cinna
received only a kindly admonition, an offer of Octavian’s friendship,
and further promotion, he was completely disarmed and won. We shall see
further proof that the wise and humane counsels of Livia contributed
not a little to the peace and prosperity which Rome enjoyed in its
golden age.
[Illustration: LIVIA AS CERES
STATUE IN THE LOUVRE]
For it was in truth an age of gold in comparison with the previous
hundred years and the centuries to come. The flames of civil war had
scorched the Republic time after time. The best soldiers of Rome were
dying out; the best leaders were perishing in an ignoble contest
of ambitions. Corruption spread, like a cancerous growth, through
all ranks of the citizens of Rome, and far into the provinces. The
white-robed (_candidati_) seekers of office in the city now relied on
the purchase of votes by expert and recognized agents. Hundreds of
thousands of the citizens lived parasitically on the State, or on the
wealthy men to whom they sold their votes, and from whom they had free
food and free entertainments. The loathsome spectacle was seen of vast
crowds of strong idle men, boasting of their dignity as citizens of
Rome, pressing to the appointed steps for their daily doles of corn.
Large numbers of them could hardly earn an occasional coin to buy a
cup of wine, a game of dice, or a visit to the _lupanaria_ in the
Subura. By means of other agents the wealthy refilled their coffers by
extortion in the provinces, and paraded at Rome a luxury that was often
as puerile as it was criminal. Rome, once so sober and virile, now
shone on the face of the earth like some parasitic flower, of deadly
beauty, on the face of a forest.
No man, perhaps, could have saved Rome from destruction, but Octavian
did much to clear its veins of the poison, and its chronicle would have
run very differently if he had not been succeeded by a Caligula, a
Claudius, and a Nero. He chastised injustice in the provinces, purified
the administration of justice at Rome, fought against the growing
practices of artificial sterility and artificial vice, and genially
pressed on the senators his own ideal of sober public service. From
his mansion on the Palatine he looked down without remorse on the idle
chatterers in the Forum, from whom he had withdrawn the power, of which
they still boasted, of ruling their spreading empire. Nor were there
many, amongst those who looked up to his unpretentious palace on the
edge of the cliff, who did not feel that they had gained by the sale
of their tarnished democracy. There was more than literal truth in
Octavian’s boast that he had found Rome a city of brick, and had left
it a city of marble.
Yet all the augurs and soothsayers of Rome failed to see the swift
and terrible issue that would come of this seemingly happy change.
Corrupt and repellent as democracy had become, monarchy was presently
to exhibit spectacles which would surpass all the horrors of its civil
wars, and outshame the sordid reaches of its avarice. The new race of
rulers was to descend so low as to use its imperial power to shatter
what remained of old Roman virtue, and to embellish vice with its
richest awards. From the sobriety and public spirit of Octavian we pass
quickly to the sombre melancholy of Tiberius, the wanton brutality of
Caligula, the impotent sensuality of Claudius, the mincing folly of
Nero, and the alternating gluttony and cruelty of Domitian, before we
come to the second honest effort to avert the fate of Rome. From the
genial virtue of Livia we are led to contemplate the dissolute gaieties
of Julia, the cold ambition of Agrippina, the robust vulgarity of
Cæsonia, the infectious vice of Messalina, and the insipid frippery of
Poppæa. Had there been one syllable of truth in the divine messages
which augurs and Chaldæans saw in every movement of nature, not even
the beneficent rule of Octavian would have lured men to sacrifice even
the effigy of power that remained to them, and that they had lightly
sold for a measure of corn and the bloody orgies of the amphitheatre.