Emperors of Rome

225 Pages·2007·1.077 MB·English

by  Fagan, Garrett G

Emperors of Rome
Part I

Professor Garrett G. Fagan

THE TEACHING COMPANY ®
Garrett G. Fagan, Ph.D.

Associate Professor of Classics and Ancient Mediterranean Studies and History
The Pennsylvania State University

Garrett G. Fagan is Associate Professor of Classics and Ancient Mediterranean
Studies and History at Penn State University. He was born in Dublin, Ireland,
and educated at Trinity College, Dublin. He received his Ph.D. from McMaster
University, Hamilton, Ontario, and has held teaching positions at McMaster
University, York University (Canada), University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill, Davidson College, and Penn State University. In all these institutions,
students have rated Professor Fagan’s courses on the classical world very
highly. He has also given numerous public lectures to audiences of all ages. He
has appeared on the PBS series NOVA and recorded interviews for The History
Channel, National Public Radio, and Sirius Satellite Radio.
Professor Fagan has an extensive research record in Roman history and has held
a Killam Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of British Columbia,
Vancouver, and an Alexander von Humboldt Research Fellowship at the
University of Cologne, Germany. He has published numerous articles in
international journals, and his first monograph, Bathing in Public in the Roman
World (1999), was published by the University of Michigan Press. An edited
volume, Archaeological Fantasies, on the phenomenon of pseudoarchaeology
(also known as “alternative” archaeology), appeared in 2006 with Routledge of
London (U.K.). Professor Fagan is currently completing a book on spectatorship
at the Roman arena and an edited volume on ancient warfare.
©2007 The Teaching Company i
Table of Contents

Emperors of Rome
Part I

Professor Biography...........................................................................................i
Course Scope......................................................................................................1
Lecture One The Shape of Roman Imperial History.....................3
Lecture Two The Roman Republic................................................7
Lecture Three Caesar and the Suicide of the Republic ..................10
Lecture Four The First Emperor—Augustus................................14
Lecture Five The Powers of Augustus.........................................18
Lecture Six Succession Woes.....................................................22
Lecture Seven Livia Drusilla, Empress of Rome............................27
Lecture Eight The Early Years of Tiberius....................................31
Lecture Nine The Would-Be Emperor—Sejanus.........................35
Lecture Ten The Mad Emperor? Caligula...................................39
Lecture Eleven Killing Caligula, Finding Claudius.........................43
Lecture Twelve The Odd Couple—Claudius and Messalina............48
Timeline............................................................................................................52
Glossary............................................................................................................60
Biographical Notes.....................................................................................Part II
Bibliography..............................................................................................Part III
The Julio-Claudian Dynasty...........................................................................73
The Flavian Dynasty..................................................................................Part II
The "Good Emperors"..............................................................................Part II
The Severan Dynasty................................................................................Part III
The Tetrarchy...........................................................................................Part III

ii ©2007 The Teaching Company
Emperors of Rome

Scope:
It has been claimed that the Roman emperors were the most powerful people
who ever lived. At their height, they presided over a realm with footholds on
three continents and a population of some 60 million souls. They had at their
fingertips the wealth and resources of some of the richest lands on Earth. This
course examines these emperors in all their fascinating diversity, from the
enlightened and conscientious to the feckless and deranged.
The course is essentially a series of biographic portraits, from Augustus, Julius
Caesar’s grandnephew, to Constantine, who, in my view, was the last Roman
emperor and the first medieval monarch. Along the way we will see what sort of
men these emperors were. What background and training, if any, prepared them
for their awesome responsibilities? What achievements can they claim? What
depravities did they display? As the course progresses, we will also come to see
the strengths and weaknesses of the available historical sources—how reliable
they are and how skeptical we must be of many of them. We proceed
chronologically and examine emperors by successive dynasty. When dynasties
fail, we look at the main players in the civil wars fought to sort out who would
found the next dynasty.
Aside from such issues as these, four other matters will command our attention
in varying degrees as we proceed. First, what was the role of imperial women at
court? From what source did they draw their power? How did they exercise that
power? Second, what was the relationship of the emperor to different groups in
Roman society: to the city of Rome, the provinces, the Senate, the people, and
the army? How was the empire run, and what was the role of the emperor in that
system? Third, linked to the second, what was the shape of the political and
social system that gave the emperor his position of dominance? Finally, any
serious student of history requires, at the very least, notification of where the
main scholarly debates lie in a given field of study. I draw attention to some of
these debates as we go along.
Our first two lectures set the stage, initially with a review of the primary sources
on which such a course depends—literary sources, inscriptions, coins, and
archaeological finds—followed by an examination of the political character of
the Roman Republic, the soil from which the emperors sprang. The next 14
lectures address the best documented imperial dynasty, the Julio-Claudians,
which started with Augustus in 31 B.C., and ended in A.D. 68 with Nero, who
had so thoroughly rid himself of rivals that his death not only brought about the
end of his dynasty but left a political vacuum as well.
In A.D. 69, four emperors reigned, with Vespasian finally coming to power and
establishing the Flavian Dynasty, which takes us through Lecture Nineteen. The
Senate’s selection of Nerva in A.D. 96 set in motion another succession of
©2007 The Teaching Company 1
rulers, covered in Lectures Twenty through Twenty-Four, including, among
others, Antoninus Pius (one of the handful of emperors to die peacefully in his
bed) and the philosopher-emperor Marcus Aurelius.
Lecture Twenty-Five marks a transition from one era of imperial history to
another, with civil war and the establishment of the Severan Dynasty in 193;
Lecture Twenty-Six covers the tumultuous years that followed and the dynasty’s
collapse with the death of Severus Alexander in 235.
In the next five lectures, we break from the biographic and chronological path
and take a thematic route, looking closely at the emperors’ relationships over the
decades to different entities in Roman society: the city of Rome itself, the
provinces of the empire, the elite, the people, and the army. My hope is to
address some issues that my focus on the lives and deeds of the individual rulers
might otherwise have obscured.
We resume our chronological path with Lecture Thirty-Two, aptly named
“Chaos.” To illustrate how completely and quickly the situation deteriorated
after the collapse of the Severan Dynasty, we need only note that in the 265
years between the rise of Augustus and the death of Severus Alexander, there
were 24 legitimate emperors and 15 claimants; in the 50 years between the death
of Severus Alexander in 235 and the accession of Diocletian, there were 21
legitimate emperors, 38 claimants, and 11 secessionist rulers. This lecture
outlines the problems that generated this instability, then studies the reigns of
four legitimate emperors as exemplars for how these problems played out during
this difficult time.
Lecture Thirty-Three covers the founding of Diocletian’s Tetrarchy and the
reestablishment of order between 285 and 305. Lectures Thirty-Four and Thirty-
Five examine the rise and reign of Constantine, whose conversion to
Christianity and founding of Constantinople were to change the face of history.
In my final lecture, I share some thoughts on this imperial roster and its
fascinating parade of characters, examining in particular why the popular
perception of “good” and “bad” emperors should be viewed with a skeptical eye
and proposing that we use a different and far more accurate lens to assess the
emperors of Rome.

2 ©2007 The Teaching Company
Lecture One

The Shape of Roman Imperial History

Scope: The republican era of Rome dates from 509 to 31 B.C., and the most
momentous and violent political upheavals in Roman history took
place toward the end of that period. This course focuses on what came
next, the rule of the emperors from Augustus to Constantine. These
lectures are, essentially, a series of biographic portraits, sometimes
encompassing towering achievement and progress and other times
taking us into some of the darkest recesses of the human condition.

After discussing an overview of the course and defining the term
Roman imperial history, we will survey the ancient sources available
for a study of Rome’s emperors: literary works, official inscriptions,
physical remains of structures erected by emperors, and coins stamped
with official messages of the emperors. While each source has its
strengths and weaknesses, each of them also sheds light, in its own
way, on this most intriguing and significant time in human history.

Outline
I. This course focuses on the rule of the Roman emperors, concentrating on
the personalities and actions of the rulers from Augustus to Constantine.
A. In addition to looking at what sort of men these emperors were, we will
look at their awesome responsibilities, their achievements, and on
occasion, their depravities.
B. Four other matters will also command our attention.
1. What was the role of imperial women at court, and how did they
exercise their power?
2. What was the relationship of the emperor to different groups in
Roman society—the city of Rome, the provinces, the Senate, the
people, and the army?
3. What was the shape of the political and social system that gave the
emperor his position of dominance?
4. What are the main scholarly debates that still exist in the study of
Roman imperial history?
II. The public thinks of history as a story about great and significant figures,
usually men, who are believed to shape events.
A. Professional scholars, in contrast, tend to see history more as a matter
of impersonal forces working themselves out:
B. This course takes the position that a mixture of the two shaped Roman
history.
©2007 The Teaching Company 3
III. Now, let’s turn to an overview of the course.
A. Between Augustus, who established the Principate in 31 B.C., and
Severus Alexander, who was murdered by his own troops in A.D. 235,
there were 24 legitimate emperors. The length of their reigns ranged
from Augustus’s 45 years to the 66-day rule of Didius Julianus.
B. The 50-year period following Severus Alexander was one of great
instability: It saw some 21 legitimate emperors and 38 usurpers; all of
the latter perished violently as did all but three of the legitimate rulers.
C. After Diocletian reestablished order between 285 and 305, matters
settled down some but not entirely, as we will see.
IV. The broad shape of Roman imperial history alternates between relatively
stable dynasties and periods of civil war or, in the mid-3rd century,
sustained chaos.
A. Note that the term Roman imperial history refers to the period of rule
by the emperors, beginning with Augustus in 31 B.C.
B. Therefore, Roman imperial history refers not to the period of Rome’s
territorial supremacy, which was established under the republic, but to
governance by the emperors that supplanted the republican oligarchy.
C. We proceed chronologically and examine emperors by successive
dynasty. We pause occasionally to examine particularly powerful
women at court, relevant scholarly debates, and in later lectures, the
emperor’s relationship to different groups in Roman society.
V. Before proceeding, it is vital to appreciate the strengths and limitations of
the source material available for the study of the Roman emperors.
A. As with all ancient history, the primary sources are literary works,
official inscriptions, physical remains of structures erected by
emperors, and coins stamped with official messages of the emperors.
B. Ideally, all these classes of material can be deployed in unison, but
rarely does such a fortuitous convergence.
1. For Augustus and the Julio-Claudian Dynasty that followed him
(down to A.D. 68), we have relatively full written accounts,
supplemented by coins and inscriptions. This richness begins to
thin out with the Flavians (A.D. 69–96) and runs out entirely for
Trajan and much of the 2nd century. For that era, we must rely on
Byzantine summaries of lost earlier works and on coins and
inscriptions.
2. With Marcus Aurelius, Commodus, and the Severan Dynasty that
followed (roughly A.D. 160–235), literary evidence again becomes
more plentiful, supplemented by coins and inscriptions. Darkness
descends again for much of the 3rd century, until Diocletian and
Constantine.
4 ©2007 The Teaching Company
VI. The literary sources for the Roman emperors are those polished, essentially
artificial works of literature composed by ancient Romans and preserved by
a process of copying through the centuries.
A. Ancient literature stems from the upper classes and was composed by
men, most of whom lived in Rome. It is, thus, bounded by class,
gender, and geography.
B. The most directly pertinent literary sources imaginable for Roman
emperors would be imperial memoirs published by the men
themselves.
1. We know that several emperors wrote such memoirs, notably
Augustus, Claudius, and Septimius Severus, but none of their
works has survived.
2. Only two emperors have left us works by their own hands:
Augustus and Marcus Aurelius.
C. The most directly pertinent literary sources for the emperors are the
ancient historians.
1. Of these, the greatest is Cornelius Tacitus (c. A.D. 56–120), who
wrote the Histories and the Annals.
2. As a secretary to Hadrian, Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus (c. A.D.
70–130) wrote biographical portraits known today as The Twelve
Caesars, stretching from Julius Caesar to Domitian.
3. Lucius Cassius Dio (c. A.D. 164–230) composed a global history
of Rome in 80 books.
4. For many of the 3rd-century emperors down to Diocletian, we
encounter what is perhaps the strangest source in all of ancient
history: the Historia Augusta.
D. In addition to writers of history, there are contemporary authors who
provide insight into the rule of the emperors.
1. Lucius Annaeus Seneca (c. 4 B.C.–A.D. 65) was deeply embedded
in the Julio-Claudian Dynasty. His literary output was impressive,
including letters, tragedies, speeches, and philosophical treatises.
2. The major literary contribution of Pliny the Younger (c. A. D. 61–
112) is a collection of stylized letters published in 10 books, which
are excellent documents for the Roman senatorial lifestyle and
sensibilities of his day.
VII. Ancient Mediterranean cultures inscribed important documents on stone.
A. Inscriptions relevant to the study of emperors include epitaphs of dead
emperors and members of the imperial house, senatorial decrees,
imperial rescripts or edicts, decrees of local authorities, and sometimes,
copies of correspondence between local communities and emperors.
B. Particularly noteworthy are lists of consuls, termed fasti, with notations
of historical events appended as they occurred. These were erected in
Rome and other cities.
©2007 The Teaching Company 5
C. Another useful source is the so-called Acts of the Arval Brethren,
whose minutes, carved on stone, survive in fragments and record such
events as imperial births and deaths, conspiracies uncovered, and so on.
VIII. Roman imperial coins were minted under state contracts and paid
primarily to soldiers.
A. On the obverse side of the coin is usually found the head of the
emperor in profile. On the reverse is found the “message” of the coin:
symbolic images, usually accompanied by text.
B. A series of coins can confirm and corroborate the accounts in the
literary sources, but such neat convergences are the exception.
IX. Finally, we turn to archaeological evidence, that is, the remains of buildings
erected by and for the emperors.
A. These are mostly found at Rome itself, the chief beneficiary of the
resident emperor’s largesse.
B. We will survey the various emperors’ building activities in Rome as we
proceed and assess the value and implications of such material in
adding to our understanding.
X. As we will see, each source has its strengths and weaknesses, and we will
return to these issues as we proceed through the course.

Essential Reading:
Crawford, Sources for Ancient History.

Supplementary Reading:
Biers, Art, Artefacts and Chronology.
Bodel, Epigraphic Evidence.
Finley, Evidence and Models.
Oxford Classical Dictionary, 3rd ed. (for information about individual ancient
authors).

Questions to Consider:
1. Which class of evidence is, to your mind, the most essential for studying
the Roman emperors?
2. What peculiar pressures does the nature of the evidence for Roman history
put on the modern student?
6 ©2007 The Teaching Company
Lecture Two

The Roman Republic

Scope: Before there were emperors, there was the Roman Republic. The
republic had been founded in 509 B.C. in reaction to monarchy and had
retained as a core element in its political ideology a strong aversion to
imposed one-man rule. In this lecture, we investigate the political
character of the republic—rule by the Senate, people, and
magistrates—especially in light of a recent and heated debate about
whether or not the system was more or less “democratic” or
“oligarchic.” The most important characteristics of the republic for
understanding the events that follow are that it had no written
constitution, that it was dominated by leading families who expected to
pass prestige and political prominence down the dynastic tree, and that
its institutions existed on the scale of a city-state. However, as the 2nd
century B.C. drew to a close, these institutions were expected to
regulate a Mediterranean-wide empire.

Outline
I. The Roman Republic was founded in 509 B.C., when the last of Rome’s
kings, Tarquin the Arrogant, was expelled.
A. The king’s former duties were distributed among several magistracies
and priesthoods, staffed by Rome’s leading families, who adopted a
corporate identity in the form of the Senate, or Council of Elders.
B. Attached to the Senate was a corps of executive officers, the
magistrates. The most important of the magistrates were those imbued
with the quality of imperium, or the power of command.
C. Every year, two consuls were elected who presided over the Senate, put
proposals to it, and raised and commanded the armies of Rome.
D. The praetors were assistant consuls who held lesser imperium than the
consuls, but whose main duties lay in the judicial sphere.
E. Every fifth year, a special election was held to chose two censors from
among the ex-consuls. The censors carried out the census of Roman
citizens, let contracts for public works, and reviewed the rolls of the
Senate for deadbeats and the morally offensive, whom they could
expel.
F. The extraordinary office of the dictatorship was empowered only in
emergencies.
II. The Senate had no legislative power; laws were enacted by a vote of the
people convened into one of four voting assemblies.
©2007 The Teaching Company 7