the house of c?sar had perished with nero, and few sober folk can have regretted that it had no living representative to win the fancy of the frivolous people or the blind cupidity of the guards. there must have been men living in rome who had witnessed the whole of that appalling degradation, so swift it had been. the c?sars had sunk in little over forty years from the sobriety of octavian to the insanity of nero; their consorts had fallen from the strong standard of livia to the insipidity of popp?a; the resources of the empire had been squandered in spectacles that had left its people nerveless and debauched; the old roman ideal of character had been almost obliterated in the imperial city. it was our concern to see what part the empresses played in this lamentable history of four decades. it is, on the whole, one that their biographer must blush to acknowledge. we must remember, however, that corrupt rulers would necessarily choose weak or corrupt wives, and we cannot affect surprise or disappointment when we find them floating in the swift current.
we have now to open a new and more attractive gallery of imperial portraits, to pass in review the wives of those great emperors who restored the high character of rome and strengthened anew the fabric of the empire. a very brief summary of events will suffice to link the c?sars with the antonines, and introduce to us one or two curious types of empresses who dimly figure in the transition.
123 for a year after the fall of statilia messalina the throne of the empress was vacant, and that of the emperor had three successive occupants. galba was a widower at the time of his elevation to the throne. we saw in an earlier chapter that agrippina had wished to marry him twenty-six years earlier, and he had refused. his wife, lepida, was a delicate woman, of high character, and he refused to divorce her. she had an energetic champion in her mother, who fought agrippina sturdily and, if the story be true, laid fair patrician hands on her. but lepida died long before her husband was made emperor, and he refused to marry again. his reign was brief. tradition has blamed him for an excessive sternness and parsimony. they were not inopportune vices, but rome had been too long habituated to indulgence, and galba was too confident. the discontent at rome was inflamed by the news of the revolt in the provinces, and within a few weeks the guards, to whom he had refused the customary donation, set up a new emperor, and put galba to death.
the new ruler was no other than the first husband of popp?a, the companion of nero’s revels, salvius otho. rome acclaimed the choice, and expected that the circus and theatre were about to reopen their doors. but otho, who had matured during his years of office in spain, turned from them in disgust. he did, it is true, restore the statues of popp?a, and contemplated restoring the discarded statues of nero, but the alienation of roman feeling from him is a proof that he intended to rule with sobriety. the same spirit is seen in the fact that he corresponded affectionately with statilia messalina, and apparently thought of marrying her. but the legions in the provinces almost immediately rebelled against him, and, in the midst of the struggle, he committed suicide.
there had been no empress of rome for twelve months. with the death of otho, and the accession of vitellius, we come to the eleventh empress, galeria fundana, a very new and incongruous type in the series of imperial women.
124 the name of vitellius is already familiar to us. his father was the fulsome courtier who had inspired caligula with the idea that he was a god, and who had worn one of messalina’s little silk shoes under his tunic. his wife, sextilia, was a woman of strict morality and unambitious temper, but their son, the younger vitellius, lived in too tainted an atmosphere to prefer the plainness of his mother to the craft and greed of his father. he had learned vice in the band of young men who brought so evil a fame on tiberius’s villa at capri, and had made his way astutely through the successive reigns of caligula, claudius, and nero. he had made a considerable fortune as proconsul of africa, and had, on his return to rome, married petronia, the daughter of a wealthy consul. she settled her large fortune on her son, and when vitellius, having consumed his own wealth in luxury and riot, went on to sacrifice his son for the purpose of securing the fortune held in his name, petronia angrily remonstrated, and was divorced.
he then married galeria fundana. she was, says tacitus, “a pattern of virtue,” and since this defect—as vitellius would find it—was united with plainness of person, modesty of taste, and dull, if not defective, conversation, the match was a singularly unhappy one. vitellius had so far squandered his money that he was unable to pay his expenses to lower germany when galba gave him the command of the troops there. how he obtained that important appointment is not clear. some say that galba selected him because he was not ambitious; others that he secured it through the influence of the “blue” faction at the circus, of which he was a partisan. he mortgaged his house, and sextilia sold her jewels, to obtain funds for the journey. fundana and her child were left in a poor tenement at rome, little dreaming that they would be summoned from it to nero’s “golden house” in a few weeks.
it is expressly recorded that sextilia and fundana had no ambition, and dreaded lest vitellius should aspire to125 reach the dizzy heights which some early prophet had promised him. they were, therefore, dismayed to hear, shortly after his arrival on the rhine, that the troops were offering to secure the throne for him. his genial and indulgent treatment of the soldiers was a betrayal of his trust to the stern galba, and may have been deliberately effected to win their support. he became very popular, and was hailed as a second “germanicus.” galba was presently murdered, and, as the german legions had had no part in the choice of otho, they urged vitellius to lead them against him. vitellius wavered for a time between the safe and considerable means of self-indulgence, which he had as commander, and the uncertain, but immeasurably greater, prospect which the throne suggested to his sensual dreams. the officers conquered his hesitation, and he set out for rome in the rear of the eight legions who had declared for him.
sextilia and fundana seemed to be in peril when the news came to rome that vitellius was marching upon the city. it is said that vitellius threatened reprisals if his family were injured, but there is no indication that otho would stoop to take a revenge on women and children. they saw him march out at the head of his troops to give battle to vitellius, and waited anxiously, with all rome, to hear the issue of the civil war. and while senate and people were enjoying the mummery of the theatre, a horseman rode in with the news that otho had taken his own life, and vitellius was leading his german troops upon rome. senate and people united at once to receive him, and sent him the title of augustus. he politely declined it for the time, and continued his leisurely march upon the city. there had been many a triumphant march over the roads of italy in the annals of rome, but never one so singular as that of the new monarch. “the roads from sea to sea groaned with the burden of his luxuries,” says tacitus; and, if we distrust tacitus, as an admirer of vitellius’s rival and successor, all the roman writers agree that his first use of supreme power was to command a126 stupendous ministration to his sensual appetites. he ordered his legions to move slowly southward, while he, in their train, exhausted each successive region of its delicacies, and filled the days and nights with his princely feasting. his example encouraged his wild german troops, and their line of march could be traced across gaul and italy by their pillage, cruelty, and debauchery.
the repeated messages from the provinces filled rome with laughter, in spite of its anxiety. people remembered this princely epicure sheltering, a few months before, in the poorer quarter of the town and evading the duns. the modest and virtuous sextilia and fundana shrank in pain from the hollow flattery which was paid them, and followed the march of the emperor with disgust. he was approaching rome at the head of sixty thousand men. legions of tall, fierce, fur-clad germans, with heavy javelins, were thundering along the italian roads and terrifying the peasantry. in their rear was a vast army of slaves, cooks, comedians, charioteers, and other ministers to the imperial appetite. he had sent for the whole of nero’s servants and appointments. it was said that he even intended to outrage one of the most sacred traditions of the city by entering it in full armour, at the head of an army with drawn swords; but the friends who met him at the milvian bridge persuaded him to change his costume, and sheathe the swords of his soldiers. he entered, in civil toga, at the head of the terrible germans, his officers clad in white as they bore the eagles. after visiting the capitol, and addressing the senate in terms of pleasant submissiveness to that body and of somewhat nauseating praise of himself, he settled in nero’s magnificent palace with fundana and her child. his troops, debauched with the license of their march, scattered in disorder through the city; and rome resigned itself to the inauspicious rule of its eighth emperor.
we may dismiss the nine months in which galeria fundana was empress of rome in a phrase: she was a helpless and disgusted spectator of the most imperial127 debauch that rome had yet witnessed. dio strangely accuses her of haughtily complaining of the poverty of the robes she found in nero’s golden house, but the testimony to her modesty is too strong for us to admit this. a more credible statement in the chroniclers is that she begged to be allowed to retire to a humble dwelling of her own, and vitellius refused. his mother did not long survive her mortification. one rumour preserved in suetonius is that vitellius had her starved to death, as it was predicted that she would outlive him; another version says that he sent her poison, at her own request. fundana was left alone to bewail his colossal gluttony. she saw his chief officers encourage him in his stupefying orgies, while they enriched themselves; and she had to submit in silence while his sister-in-law, triaria, “a woman of masculine fierceness,” goaded him to continued excesses. during the few months of his reign he spent 900,000,000 sesterces (about ￡7,000,000) in eating, drinking, and entertainment. he had three meals during the day, and ended with a costly and drunken supper. his brother one day entertained him at a banquet, at which two thousand choice fishes and seven thousand rare birds were served. vitellius in return gave a banquet, at which one dish—a compound of the livers of pheasants, the tongues of flamingoes, the brains of peacocks, the entrails of lampreys, and the roes of mullets—cost more than the whole of his brother’s dinner.
from this loathsome and stupid dream of imperial power vitellius was at length awakened by the echoes of rebellion in the provinces. after a few futile executions, and several relapses into his besetting gluttony, he was forced to set out for the north. he quickly returned, however, and wandered about rome in hysterical impotence, while the followers of vespasian closed upon the city. civil war had broken out, and the romans gazed with horror on the sacred capitol besieged by the german troops and bursting into flames. at last vitellius came out with fundana and her child, in mourning dress, and announced that he would resign. the consul refused his sword, and128 the mournful procession directed its steps towards his brother’s house. he was persuaded to return to the palace, but the vespasianists captured rome, and he was taken to fundana’s house on the aventine. from this he somehow wandered back to the palace. “the awful silence terrified him; he tried the closed doors, and shuddered at the empty chambers,” says tacitus. dazed and incapable of flight, he hid in the sordid room where the dogs were kept. here the soldiers found him, torn and bleeding, and forced him to walk the streets, while they kept his head erect with the point of a sword, and the people flung filth and epithets at him. they then inflicted on him a slow and painful death, and flung his remains in the tiber.
fundana was spared, and her daughter honourably given in marriage, by his magnanimous successor. from the brief and unwelcome splendour of the “golden house” she passed into private life, and lived only to bemoan the cruel fate that had lifted her husband to the intoxicating height of the roman throne.
there was no empress in the reigns of vespasian and titus, but a word may be said of the two remarkable women who shared their power to some extent. vespasian, whose sober and solid administration it would be pleasant to contrast with the orgiastic reigns of his predecessors, was a rough soldier, of humble extraction and homely ways. he had, in the time of caligula, married the mistress of a knight, flavia domitilla, who remains little more than a name in the chronicles. he had won distinction under narcissus, but the triumph of agrippina drove him and domitilla into exile. nero employed him to crush the rebellion in jud?a, and it was during this campaign that his wife died, leaving him with her two sons—his successors—titus and domitian. he was, therefore, a widower when the eastern troops made him emperor, but he took into his palace, and treated as empress, an emancipated slave of the name of c?nis.
the mistress of vespasian has the distinction of being associated—actively and usefully associated—with him in129 one of the soundest attempts to restore the decaying empire. she had been in the service of antonia, the grandmother of agrippina, and is said to have been the one who first disclosed to tiberius the perfidy of sejanus. from the first she was a dangerous rival of domitilla, and, when his wife died, vespasian entered into the quasi-matrimonial relation with her which is known in roman law as contubernium. she would probably have been empress if the law had permitted him to contract a solemn marriage with her. she had considerable ability, but an unhappy reputation for extortion and the sale of offices. it is not clear, however, that the wealth she obtained did not contribute to vespasian’s rehabilitation of the resources of the empire. they abandoned and destroyed the golden house of nero, the central site of which is now marked by the flavian amphitheatre, or coliseum. in their quiet gardens in the quirinal they received any citizen who cared to visit them, and maintained no timorous hedge of soldiers between themselves and their people. they wished to see money spent on public purposes, or hoarded for public emergencies, rather than squandered. “my hand is the base of the statue: give me the money,” c?nis is said to have told a wealthy man who proposed to raise a statue to her; but dio informs us that this and other stories of c?nis’s avarice properly belong to vespasian. she died, however—if the date assigned in dio is correct—in the second year of vespasian’s reign, and must not be credited with too large a share in that great purification of rome and reinvigoration of its life with healthy provincial blood which tacitus regards as the beginning of the recovery of the empire.
titus, who succeeded his father in the year 79, and reigned for two years, threatened at one time to give rome an even more singular and unwelcome type of empress. he had in early youth married arricidia tertulla, who died soon afterwards, and then marcia furnilla, a lady of illustrious family. he left his wife130 in rome when he took command under his father in jud?a, and became infatuated with a brilliant princess of the herod family, berenice. he divorced furnilla, and brought berenice to live with him at rome. but the romans resented the prospect of a jewish empress, and she was forced to return. on his accession to the throne he made no attempt to enforce her on them. he reigned alone for two years, “the love and delight of the human race,” and maintained the sober administration of his father.
with the accession of his younger brother, domitian, rome received a new empress, and, by an unhappy coincidence, saw the imperial palace return to the evil ways of the c?sars. those of our time who attach almost the entire importance to stock or birth, and little to circumstances, in the formation of character, will find a peculiar problem in domitian and his wife. the emperor was the second son of the “plain sabine burgher” and sturdy soldier, vespasian, and of the lowly provincial woman, flavia domitilla. the empress, domitia longina, was the daughter of domitius corbulo, one of the strongest and ablest generals that rome produced in the first century. yet of these sound and vigorous stocks came, in one generation, one of the most morbid of the emperors and an empress who, in some respects, rivalled messalina. rome knew them both, and had no false hope.
domitia—as she is usually called—makes her first appearance as a young girl of great beauty and promise, caressed and protected by the wealth and prestige of her distinguished father, who, it is interesting to note, was a brother of caligula’s masculine wife c?sonia. she was married to a noble of distinction and character, lucius ?lius lamia ?milianus, and she seems to have been an estimable young matron until her father incurred the anger of nero and was forced to commit suicide. procopius and josephus, indeed, represent her as virtuous to the end, but there seems to be little room for doubt that the nearer and131 less indulgent authorities are correct. her young mind opened on the sordid scenes of the closing part of nero’s reign and the folly of vitellius. she then met the fascinating and effeminate domitian, and very speedily capitulated to his assaults.
domitia
bust in uffizi gallery, florence
gibbon speaks of him as “the timid and inhuman domitian,” while dio opens his biographical sketch of the emperor with the deliberate epithet, “bold and wrathful.” we shall find a very natural dread of assassination in domitian’s later years, but he was undoubtedly bold and crafty in the service of venus, and a stranger to moral sentiment. his elder brother titus had developed the manly qualities of their father on the battlefields of jud?a, and had proved strong enough to crush his irregular feelings on his accession to the throne. domitian had remained at rome, discharging only civic duties, and had become one of the most heartless dandies in the group of degenerate young patricians. during the civil strife of the vitellianists and vespasianists on the streets of rome he had made his escape in the fitting disguise of a priest of isis. titus knew his vicious and luxurious ways, and endeavoured to check him by offering him his own charming daughter julia in marriage; but domitian was engaged in fascinating the pretty and accomplished wife of lamia ?milianus, and refused. titus, on his accession, associated him in the government, and his first act was to separate his mistress from her husband, and marry her.
domitia’s triumph was quickly tempered with mortification. julia married her cousin sabinus, and, out of pique or devilry, domitian now discovered her charm and seduced her. to such a pair as these the attainment of supreme power meant an occasion of imperial license, and sober romans saw their community rapidly lose the ground that had been won in the previous reigns. it was even rumoured that domitian had hastened his brother’s death by putting him in a box of snow during his last illness, though this remains no more than an idle rumour. at all events, domitia soon discovered the despicable character132 for whom—or for whose prospects—she had abandoned her saner husband. while the affairs of the empire needed his most strenuous attention, he would spend hours catching flies and spitting them with a bodkin; and from the spitting of flies he presently passed to the larger sport of murdering men. he conducted his little frontier-wars from safe and luxurious quarters, and came home to enjoy a triumph and erect a colossal bronze memorial of his valour. he banished eunuchs from rome, and kept them in his palace; waged war against vice in all forms, and practised it in all forms. in the general relaxation of roman manners even the vestal virgins had been for some decades permitted an alleviation of their onerous vows. domitian posed as a moralist, on no other apparent ground than that he was closely acquainted with every shade of immorality, and drastically punished them. he raised fine public buildings, and depleted the public treasury by reckless expenditure and incompetent administration; prosecuted officials for extortion, and put men to death for their wealth; gave brilliant entertainments, and darkened the city and the empire with his sanguinary brooding.
if we were to accept josephus’s estimate of the virtue of domitia, we should conceive her as living in melancholy isolation in the gloomy palace, an outraged spectator of her husband’s relations with julia. but there is good evidence that she sought relief with something of the freedom of a messalina. an authentic occurrence in the third year of domitian’s reign puts her guilt beyond question. he had the actor paris murdered in the street, and divorced domitia. the people boldly sympathized with her, and covered with flowers the spot on which paris had been killed. the emperor had a number of them executed, but public feeling seems to have been expressed so strongly that he was forced to recall domitia to the palace, and the sordid comedy ran on amid the jeers of rome. a poet was put to death for making it the theme of his verse; domitia’s former husband and others were executed for their freedom of speech. then the beautiful and captivating133 julia perished miserably in an attempt of domitian’s to destroy the too obvious proof of their incest, and he became more sombre than ever.
this is not the place to tell the long and dreary story of the reign of domitian, of which, for twelve further years, the empress remains an inconspicuous, and perhaps a sobered, spectator. for a few years he maintained his singular and obscure mixture of good and evil, but the brighter features of his administration gradually faded, and a horrible gloom settled on the palace and the city. hosts of spies and informers sprang up; large numbers of nobles, of both sexes, were executed or banished, on the slightest suspicion, and their wealth divided between the informers and the emperor’s shrinking treasury. so great was his dread of assassination that he lined the portico at the palace, in which he used to walk, with white glazed tiles that would reflect the approach of any person behind him. but an extraordinary incident that dio relates will suffice to give some idea of the reign of terror under which the empress and all rome suffered.
a number of the leading citizens of rome were summoned to a banquet at the palace at a late hour of the night. they were frozen with horror when they found that the entire dining-room—walls, ceiling, and floor—was draped in black, and a miniature tombstone, with his name engraved on it, was placed opposite each guest. as they gazed, a number of nude boys, whose bodies were washed with ink, burst into the room and danced amongst them, and then the dishes of a funeral banquet were served. the guests sat silent and shivering; the emperor grimly discoursed to them of deaths and executions. when the banquet was over, they were relieved to find themselves dismissed. they found, however, that their litters had been sent away, and they were put into strange vehicles, with strange servants. the gloomy journey ended at their own houses, and they were beginning to breathe, when they were thrown into fresh alarm by the news that a messenger had come from the palace. the messenger to134 each guest was one of the dancing boys, now cleaned, perfumed, and clothed with flowers, bearing the gold and silver vessels which the guest had used at the banquet. the boys and the dishes were presented to them with the emperor’s greeting.
unhappily, domitian did not confine himself to intimidation. the heads of the wealthier nobles fell in quick succession, and, in great secrecy, amid an army of spies, the empress and a few others came to an understanding. the story of the actual fall of the tyrant has clearly been embroidered with a good deal of unauthentic detail in popular gossip, but even in its most sober version it does not lack romance.
the version which dio assures us he “had heard” is one that the conscientious historian must hesitate to accept. the emperor, he says, had been informed of the conspiracy, and had drawn up a list of those who were to be executed for taking part in it. he put the list under his pillow, with the sword which he always kept there, and went to sleep. we have previously seen something of the bejewelled boys who used to run with great freedom about the palaces of the romans of the first century. domitian, the great censor of other people’s vices, had a number of them, and the legend is that one of them, playing in his bedroom, noticed the parchment under his pillow, and took it out into the palace. domitia met the boy, and idly glanced at the parchment. she saw her own name at the head of the list of the condemned, and at once summoned the other conspirators. they entered the emperor’s room, snatched the sword from under his pillow, and despatched him.
pretty as the story is, we must prefer the more prosaic account given us by suetonius, who lived in the next generation. domitia felt that the emperor had at last conceived a design on her life, and she sent her steward to despatch him. he offered domitian a fictitious report of a plot, and stabbed him while he read it. other servants rushed in at the signal, and completed the assassination.135 it is the one action that historians have recorded to the honour of the twelfth empress of rome, and we leave her company with little regret. she was an ordinary woman of the patrician world at the time—fair, frail, accomplished, and luxurious. with the death of her husband she merges in the indistinguishable crowd of selfish and wayward ladies on whom juvenal was then beginning to pour his exaggerated rhetoric.
it remains to describe very briefly how the sceptre passes into the nobler hands of the stoic emperors and their wives. the throne was offered to, and accepted by, m. cocceius nerva, an aged noble of known moderation and long public service. he at once removed all traces of the hateful reign of his predecessor, and entered upon a sober and useful administration of the empire. he was in the later sixties of his age, and we find no mention of a wife. but the task of enforcing sobriety on so corrupted a population was too great for his age and moderate ability. a conspiracy against him was discovered. he disarmed the conspirators by inviting them to sit by him in the theatre, and even putting a sword in their hands and asking them what they thought of its keenness; but he saw that a stronger man was needed, and he chose as his colleague marcus ulpius nerva trajanus, a spaniard of great military ability and commanding personality, who was then at the head of the troops in germany. nerva died soon afterwards, and, with the accession of trajan, we come to the thirteenth empress of rome and the commencement of a new and more splendid chapter in the story of the empire.
