The emperor Claudius, uncle of Caligula and brother of Germanicus, had
never been adopted by Tiberius; whereas all the other emperors were, by
a fiction, the sons of their predecessors. He had preserved his life in
the reign of Caligula only as it were by a miracle; and he was then
fifty years of age. Whilst of Caligula we can but speak as of a monster,
Claudius deserves our deepest pity; yet he has done very bad things
which betoken a turn for evil, though this indeed was only developed by
his misfortunes. Even his mother Antonia, a daughter of the triumvir
Antonius, called him a _portentum hominis_; he was an ἀτελέστον; he had
capacities and talents; yet he was deficient in what really constitutes
human reason, whence, in a psychological point of view, he was a real
curiosity. Although he had a desire of knowledge, application, memory,
and a taste for science and literature, he was wanting in judgment and
discretion, so that he often said and did things which were downright
stupid: it is as if a thick rind had grown round his better nature,
which he but seldom broke through; there are a great many absurdities of
his on record. Suetonius is very instructive with regard to him, very
aptly describing his character by the Greek words ἀβλεψία and μετεωρία.
The Greeks always have most adequate expressions to draw characters;
those phrases mean a thoughtless absence of mind and a want of
reflection, when one says what is most preposterous, and one leaves
untold what ought to have been told: there was a complete disproportion
between his thoughts and his power of uttering them, and this it is,
what those Greek words admirably express. By the whole of his family he
was knocked about, being the brother of those distinguished persons who
possessed the whole love of the family. Old Augustus, who always felt
such circumstances keenly, wished to keep him altogether aloof from the
public gaze, whilst his grandmother Livia treated him with peculiar
harshness and imperiousness. The unfortunate youth took this to heart.
Had he been brought up with kindness, he would have become a good,
plodding, and somewhat weak-headed man: as it was, he became vicious,
and the feeling that he was despised made him a coward; so that he
always kept in the background, and whenever he at all wished to put
himself forward, it was but to meet with a failure. Thus he found his
only comfort in literature. Livy, whose kind heart may even be seen from
his work, had great pity on him, and, trying to find him some
occupation, encouraged him to write history. Now, as he knew a great
many things, he deemed himself to be called upon to write the history of
the civil wars; and he told it in such an honest manner, that his family
got very angry with him. Afterwards, he wrote memoirs of Augustus, which
they allowed to pass muster, but so as only to despise their author. He
was indeed thoroughly honest; yet he always got little thanks for it.
Augustus would not give him any employment, on account of his dreadful
stupidity; Tiberius, although he did not care much for him, gave him
even the consulship. He was married more than once. The profligacy of
the female sex at that time went beyond all bounds: Augustus had striven
in vain to repress it; Tiberius promulgated some legal decisions against
it, yet without any result. Claudius therefore was highly unfortunate in
this respect also; he attached himself very affectionately to the women
who betrayed and disgraced him.
Thus Claudius, generally despised, had reached his fiftieth year when
Caligula was murdered. His behaviour as emperor at first was reasonable
and good; he made no one smart for the childish attempt to restore the
republic, there was a general _abolitio dictorum factorumque_. A few
only of the murderers of Caius he had executed, although they had
deserved very well of the Roman world. He also was the first who, on
entering upon his power, gave a _donativum_ to the soldiers. Caius
already had undertaken the government, without repeating that farce
which Tiberius still played; Claudius also forbore to do so. His reign,
which lasted fourteen years, was at first truly a relief after that of
Caius; people felt comforted, and cherished hopes, whilst he on his side
made many good regulations. Yet he was altogether without any will of
his own; had he had an honest friend whom he could have entirely relied
on, his rule might have been good and praiseworthy. But he did not go
beyond the walls of his palace; he only sought to amuse his ladies, and
lived almost exclusively with slaves and freedmen, as he was generally
despised by men of rank. He was in fact of a kind and loving temper; but
he was shy and timid. Slaves now stood forth as his advisers and
friends; just as Don Miguel’s most intimate confidant is his barber.
Very likely, Polybus, or Polybius, before whom Seneca humbled himself,
was far from being altogether contemptible;—the Greek slaves received a
very good education in the Roman houses; if they had good abilities,
they were very accomplished. Pallas and Narcissus, on the other hand,
were men of a different stamp; thoroughly bad, and of insatiable
rapacity, they plundered the empire. By the influence of these men, and
owing to his unhappy marriage with Agrippina, his own brother’s
daughter, who was very beautiful, but who had not a trace of the virtues
of her parents, he was ruled with absolute sway. She, being without
virtue and shame, by her intrigues succeeded in getting him to adopt
Nero, her son by her first marriage, although Claudius had a son of his
own, Britannicus. Hence it was that his reign became so disgraceful and
disastrous; a large number of innocent men were also put to death under
his rule, though not so many as under other emperors. Whenever Narcissus
demanded a victim, Claudius was his tool; so that his life was one
continual degradation.
There were, however, considerable works executed in his reign. The
finest and most magnificent aqueduct which has been carried on to Rome,
the _Aqua Claudia_, was built by him; and there is no doubt but that in
the restoration of the city in the fifteenth century, it might have been
completely repaired. Other relics also of his buildings are in the very
grandest style; the two great arches, known under the name of the _Porta
Maggiore_ are undoubtedly his. He likewise accomplished the draining of
the Lake Fucinus into the Liris, which Augustus had given up in despair:
the fallen in vaults may still be seen. At first, some mistakes were
made in the levelling, and an attempt to let off the water miscarried;
but the fault was soon remedied.
He undertook a warlike expedition against Britain, a country which no
one had thought anything about since the time of Julius Cæsar; and he
extended the boundary of the Roman empire thus far. He himself led the
army over, and established a province which comprised the greater part
of south-eastern England, and in which colonies and _municipia_ were
soon founded: from thence the subjection of Caledonia was afterwards
effected. He died, being undoubtedly poisoned by his wife Agrippina; for
she wanted to secure the succession for her son Nero, as she knew that
Claudius was sorry that he had adopted him, and wished to reinstate
Britannicus in his rights. He had always been unhappy,—fortune indeed
had been too hard upon him,—and he died despised and laughed at; an
instance of which we have in the _Ludus de morte Claudii Cæsaris_
(incorrectly called ἀποκολοκύνθωσις) written by Seneca.
LITERATURE AFTER THE DEATH OF AUGUSTUS. MORAL CONDITION OF ROME AND THE
PROVINCES.
Already in the time of Augustus, a dearth in literature begins which is
a striking contrast to the great number of poets in the days of the
dictator Cæsar: not one poet can be named who was young in the latter
years of Augustus. I could not undertake to explain this; yet it is a
phenomenon which has very often been repeated in modern times. But prose
was likewise barren. Even in the best days of Roman literature, the
influence of the Greek Rhetoricians had become very considerable, and
the writers after Cicero, Cæsar, and Sallust, are not altogether free
from the effects of these school exercises: many passages may be shown
in Livy, which he would not have written had he not passed through the
declamation school. But in the later times this influence became still
more powerful, and of this period we may get the best idea from the
_Suasoria_ and the Controversies of the elder Seneca: those symptoms
then broke out, which are described in Tacitus’ excellent dialogue _de
Oratoribus_. From this school, of which it was the sole task, without
regard to the contents of a work, without any subject-matter to awaken
thought, to make an effect merely by unexpected turns, a swell of words,
far-fetched thoughts, and a jingle of periods, arose the era of Seneca;
for it must in justice be ascribed to him. The elder Seneca still
belongs to a different age, and he remembers very well the earlier and
better taste. From what he writes to his sons, it may be seen to how low
an ebb taste had then fallen: he rails at them for their fondness for
the new manner, but has himself already acquired a sort of relish for
it: he wrote his Controversies when an old man upwards of eighty. The
philosopher Seneca is the most remarkable character of that time, and
one of the few eminent persons living in it: not to be unjust to him,
one must know the whole range of that literature to which he belonged,
and then one sees how well he understood how to make something even of
what was most absurd. To the self-same school of literature belongs the
elder Pliny, although his is quite a different mind: this is what is
called the _argentea ætas_. This sort of division is very silly; one
should divide Roman literature quite differently: it is a senseless
thing to put Tacitus, Seneca, and Pliny side by side; they do not bear
the smallest resemblance to each other. This literary period began as
early as the reign of Augustus, and it lasted down to that of Domitian,
when absurdity reached its height; only we have lost its _coryphæi_,
such as Aufidius, and others. Tacitus does not by any means belong to
this rabble, as the earlier school continues along with a modern one.
Seneca is a man of real genius, which after all is the main thing: his
influence upon literature has been a most beneficial one; and this I say
the more readily, as I dislike him so much. The opinion Dio Cassius
gives of him, has a great deal in it which is true and correct; but it
is exaggerated, and much too bitter. His affected and sentimental style,
strikingly reminds one of a French school, of which Rousseau and Buffon
were the founders, and which owing to its faults would be quite
unbearable, had it not originated from men of such transcendent talent.
Seneca, however, is not to be compared with either of them for loftiness
of intellect. _Diderot’s Essai sur le règne de Claude et de Néron_, is a
very remarkable book, and the contrast between him and Dio Cassius is
highly interesting: his too was a very ingenious mind, and his manner
was like that of Seneca, as he also was but the creature of his age. In
the time of Nero, lived Lucan, whose poetry is of the school of Seneca,
a striking proof how much more intolerable this mannerism is in poetry
than in prose. Bernardin de St. Pierre and Chateaubriand are of the same
school: it would be still more bearable, did it not always fall into
moralizing sentimentality, which is the case with the former, whilst
Chateaubriand is neither more nor less than a bad Lucan. The latter kept
his ground until late in the middle ages, and was immensely read, almost
as much as Virgil: people were divided into the Virgilian and Lucanian
school. The true restorator of good taste in Rome was Quintilian, who is
by no means to be reckoned as one of the _argentea ætas_. With that
insupportable mannerism Nero also was tainted; whose talent no one can
deny, but who, wherever he was not a fiend, showed himself strange and
wrong-headed. In prose the same tone pervaded history also: Fabius
Rusticus, who was so much read, has undoubtedly written likewise in the
Annæan manner.
The empire was, on the whole, in a prosperous condition. Certain it is
that during the eighty years after the battle of Actium, in a time of
profound peace, and of great vitality, which only required that there
should not be any devastations and destructions,—men felt very
comfortable and happy, and recovered their strength. Caligula’s
exactions, it is true, were very hard to bear; yet they did not so very
much check this development: the population after the wars was certainly
more than doubled, the towns became filled with inhabitants, and the
wastes were peopled. Unhappy Greece alone remained a wilderness, even to
the reign of Trajan. Such countries as had fallen into the hands of the
farmers-general,—who, using them as pastures, would not rebuild the
towns, nor allow of any tillage,—lay waste; yet they were gardens indeed
in comparison with what they were at the time of the battle of Actium.
It was just the same in Italy; there the fields were cultivated by
bondmen, and the population was indeed restored by slaves who were
imported, though it increased in quite a different ratio from what it
did in the provinces, where it was recruited by _ingenui_. It is not
mere declamation in Lucan, when he says with regard to the state of
Italy,
_Rarus et antiquis habitator in urbibus errat._
Marriage, although it was so easy to dissolve, was distasteful to most
persons, so that they lived in concubinage; the many freedmen whose
names are found on the inscriptions of that period, are the children
whom the masters had by their female slaves. This gave rise to those
celebrated laws, the _Lex Julia_ and the _Lex Papia Poppæa_. The
degeneracy and profligacy of the freeborn female citizens was so awful,
that many a man who was no profligate, may have found a much more
faithful and estimable partner in a slave than in a Roman lady of high
birth; and thus it was looked upon as a point of conscience not to
marry. Hence there were now many more born slaves and _libertini_ than
there were freeborn citizens; besides which, in the great houses,
innumerable hosts of bought slaves were kept. In the provinces, where
the _parsimonia provincialis_ was still reigning, there was no such
disproportion: these had a population of _ingenui_; in some it was also
restored and recruited by the military colonies;—such a soldier, though
he may formerly have been a brigand, might after all have turned out
quite a respectable man, after having once got a home of his own. These
men made the use of the Latin language more general. Nor could this be
helped: for what was spoken in those countries was but a jargon, from
which the people did their best to wean themselves; and they were none
the worse for it. The main object of the provincials could not have
been, and indeed was not, anything else but to become Romans. In the
midst, therefore, of the most detestable tyranny, the vital energies of
the countries bordering upon the Mediterranean revived. The tyranny of
the governors was, however, far less than what it had been in the times
of the republic; at least, it was so under Tiberius, in whose reign a
fraudulent proconsul would certainly not have been acquitted.