Domitian

Tragic Tyrant

Pat Southern

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9781317798439
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Ancient History
• Index: History

This is the first ever study to assess Emperor Domitian from a psychological point of view and covers his entire career from the early years and the civil war AD through the imperial rule to the dark years and the psychology of suspicion. Pat Southern strips away hyperbole and sensationalism from the literary record, revealing an individual who caused undoubted suffering which must be accounted for.

I

Early Years

The eighteen years between Domitian’s birth on 24 October AD 51 and 18 December AD 69 when he first properly entered history, are singularly lacking in documentation. Suetonius records that Domitian was born on the ninth day before the Kalends of November in the year that his father was consul elect, in a house on Pomegranate Street (ad Malum Punicum, probably corresponding to the modern via delle Quattro Fontane) on the Quirinal Hill in the sixth region of the city of Rome. Apart from the date and place of his birth, there are scarcely any recorded facts about the early life of the third and last of the Flavian Emperors which can be truthfully described as wholly unsullied by retrospective bias. This charge applies equally to the favourable as to the hostile sources. The few statements of Josephus relative to Domitian do not touch on his early life, and in any case Josephus carries the flag of Flavian propaganda so blatantly that his statements have to be weighed just as carefully, if not more carefully, than those of Tacitus, Pliny, or Suetonius.¹

The authors and poets who worked during Domitian’s reign, such as Silius Italicus, Statius and Martial, are hardly less partisan than Josephus, however different their writings, their backgrounds, or their motives. Tacitus, Pliny, Suetonius and Juvenal, who had all lived through the reign of the ‘monster’, published their works after Domitian’s murder, when expression of opinion about the deceased Emperor no longer incurred mortal danger. Despite the creditable efforts of Tacitus and Suetonius to search out and reproduce the truth, these authors cannot help repeating what was by then the accepted version of Domitian’s dreadful character, all traceable, by implication if not actual affirmation, to his earliest years. Suetonius’ account is a collection of facts, some of them credible, some of them shading off into anecdotes of dubious authenticity, but whilst it is not exactly favourable, neither is it wholly derogatory. Tacitus was intent on correcting the official Flavian party line, in order to reveal it for the propaganda that it was. In the late first century this propaganda was no doubt all-pervasive and much more extensive than the remnants that have survived. Josephus and the Flavian poets suffice for modern scholars to detect a consciously favourable representation of Flavian history that was both selective and economical with the unpalatable truths. In Tacitus’ own day, after a quarter of a century of Flavian rule, there would be reminders in all aspects of life, in virtually every building in Rome, in art and literature, on the coinage, in the laws and in living memory. It would be a monumental task to set the record straight in mere words. Damnatio memoriae and Tacitus have not succeeded in eradicating Domitian, only in obscuring him.²

Had there been a fully documented and authenticated version of the first eighteen years of Domitian’s existence, compiled not in retrospect but contemporaneously and therefore imprinted in living memory, Suetonius, for instance, would not have needed recourse to hearsay. As it is, he covers himself by using non-committal phrases such as ‘it is said’, or ‘there are those who affirm’, which is a neat way of circumventing the problem of including all the rumours while avoiding the obligation of vouching for their accuracy. As reported in the hostile sources, Domitian displayed from an early age the characteristics of a depraved tyrant. The undoubted terror that marred the last years of his reign required explanation in the form of readily believable antecedents, whereby Domitian could be seen to possess all along a latent inclination towards tyranny, at first cunningly and successfully repressed, but later given free rein. If he displayed any creditworthy attributes, then he must have been simply pretending: simulavit et ipse mire modestiam, says Suetonius, dismissing as deliberate shamming Domitian’s early modesty during the turmoil of AD 69. The accusations against him as a youth are that he spent his early years in poverty and infamous conduct, selling himself to one Claudius Pollio, who kept the letter of assignation to prove it. More interesting is the charge of having been debauched by Nerva, the Senate’s choice of Emperor after Domitian was murdered in 96. In connection with this story, Nerva has been described as ‘the future paragon’, and it is difficult to comprehend how this scandalous affair confirms Domitian’s moral turpitude without staining Nerva’s reputation.³

Suetonius leaps from Domitian’s birth to the events of 69 in a breathless three sentences, none of them complimentary, and one is left with the impression that they were included merely to provide packing for the void of uncertainty between the few facts that are ascertainable. It is unfortunate that Domitian enters history before he had embarked on his career. Had he been a few years older, he would probably have taken the first steps on the cursus honorum, thereby affording modern researchers some clues as to his past education and future ambitions. In the absence of this information, speculation based on knowledge of Roman custom is the only tool available to reconstruct a possible life history for Domitian up to the Civil War of 68–9.⁴

When Domitian was born in 51, his father Titus Flavius Vespasianus (Vespasian; pl. 1) was forty-two years old, and had just attained the suffect consulship for the months of November and December of that year. His brother, Domitian’s uncle Flavius Sabinus, was governor of Moesia, and would not return to Rome for about another five years. The two brothers were the first generation of their family to achieve senatorial status. Their grandfather Titus Flavius Petro of Reate (modern Rieti, 77 km (48 miles) north-east of Rome) had served in the army of Pompey and had fled from the battlefield of Pharsalus in 48 BC after Caesar’s victory. He returned home, obtained pardon and honesta missio, and launched himself on a financial career. His son, also Titus Flavius Sabinus, followed him in tax-collecting and banking, in which he was eminently successful. He may have achieved equestrian status for himself, and definitely acquired sufficient wealth to provide both his sons with the minimum fortune necessary for a senatorial career.⁵

This rise from plebeian to senatorial status in only three generations demands explanation. In the Republic it would not have been possible; in the first century of the Empire it was not unusual. The civil wars between Caesar and Pompey, followed by those between Octavian and Antony, had eased the path of promotion and democratized it – a trend which was not reversed in the Augustan and post-Augustan ages. Opportunity allied to unusual circumstances provided the initial spur, but in isolation did not lead directly to advancement. Wealth, conspicuous ability and connections with the right people in the right places at the right times, were all equally important.⁶

Despite the Flavian family’s satisfactory financial position and upwardly mobile careers, a persistent theme in Vespasianic iconography was their poverty and obscurity. It is quite true that the Flavii were newly arrived on the political scene. They were not of the old nobility and consequently were unable to display ancestral imagines or portraits of illustrious forebears who had held curule magistracies. Yet obscurity was no obstruction to advancement. Real poverty, on the other hand, would have been a very serious disadvantage. It is difficult to accept it as genuine, however, and Brian Jones describes it as a myth, pointing out that since the property qualification for entry into the Senate was 1,000,000 sesterces, and since both Sabinus and Vespasian, Domitian’s uncle and father, became senators, it can hardly be said that they were poor. Flavius Petro, their grandfather, had engaged in a profitable money-lending business and had also married the wealthy Tertulla, who owned land around Cosa. The next generation built on this foundation and it was Sabinus, Vespasian’s father, who was the true provider of the family’s wealth, by a combination of hard work, shrewd business sense and a useful marriage to Vespasia Polla, whose brother was a senator and whose lineage was modest but impeccable. As a tax-collector in Asia, Sabinus seems to have been not only successful but also honest: Suetonius reports that statues were erected to him in several Asian cities, inscribed in Greek ‘to an honest tax farmer’. He died in Switzerland, apud Helvetios, where he had established his banking business, survived by his wife and two sons, who were presumably far from destitute.⁷

Behind this carefully fostered myth of Flavian poverty there may be several motives. One interpretation could possibly be the nuance that Dio puts upon it, that though Vespasian was prepared to indulge the population with expensive festivals and everything for their welfare, his own style of living was deliberately and ostentatiously simple, so that it could be clearly seen that he did not spend money on his own pleasures and did not amass wealth for selfish reasons. Thus far the propaganda is probably truthful and undertaken for virtuous and honourable purposes. There may be alternatives, however, not quite so honourable. It may perhaps have been best, for example, to keep silent about the wealth and position acquired by the Flavii during the supremacy of the notorious Sejanus and during the reigns of Caligula and Nero.⁸

In addition to wealth, a rising aspirant to higher office required ability and ambition. Suetonius and Tacitus both imply that Vespasian was a little indolent and irresolute, lagging behind his elder brother Sabinus in enthusiasm and ambition. The story goes that he displayed a marked reluctance to enter the Senate, and did so only because his mother kept reminding him that he seemed content to remain almost as a sort of client of Sabinus. It is true that Vespasian’s career was certainly not one of rapid promotion. He served as military tribune in Thrace at an unknown date, then as quaestor in Crete-Cyrene, in about 34 or 35. His first attempt in the elections for aedile failed, and he finally reached that post in 37 or 38. He became praetor in 39. In 41 or 42 he was sent to Strasbourg as legate of II Augusta, which he led to Britain in 43 when Claudius ordered the invasion of the island under the command of Aulus Plautius. The date of his return from Britain is not established – he may have been back in Rome by 45, or he may have remained in Britain until 47. He was awarded ornamenta triumphalia on his return, and a few years later at the age of forty-two he reached the consulship. Thus far, his career was neither distinguished nor extraordinarily inadequate; Vespasian at forty-two could almost be described as ‘middle of the road’, a consular courtier with the all-round administrative and military experience required of Roman higher officials.⁹

Money, capability and ambition were not sufficient, even in combination, to guarantee success in Roman political life. It was essential either to be admitted to the court circle or at least to form alliances with men and women who had the Emperor’s ear. Patronage and clientship were engrained in the Roman way of life from earliest times, and never more so than in the Empire. Without someone of influence to intercede on one’s behalf at court, the attainment of any appointment would have been impossible. Such connections with the court could be made in several ways, by marriage alliances, for example, or by entering into client relationships with influential families.¹⁰

In the matrimonial sphere, the previous generations of the Flavii had married shrewdly, for wealth or for influence. Vespasian looked elsewhere for assistance. He married Flavia Domitilla, whose father was a quaestor’s clerk and whose freeborn status had to be established in a court of law. In Vespasian’s case it was not his wife but his mistress, Caenis, who interceded for him at court. Caenis was a freedwoman of Antonia, the daughter of Mark Antony, the mother of Claudius and the grandmother of Caligula. There could scarcely have been a more direct means of ensuring that the name of Vespasian came to the Emperor’s notice. Reinforcement came from the Imperial freedman Narcissus, the wealthy and influential secretary ab epistulis of Claudius. It was reported to be Narcissus who obtained for Vespasian the post of legionary legate of II Augusta – an appointment important for two reasons. In the first instance it demonstrates that Vespasian had survived the transition between the court of the Emperor Caligula and that of Claudius. It was not always easy for adherents of one regime to be accepted in the next, especially when the previous regime had ended in disaster and assassination. Secondly the appointment cannot have been as casual as it may seem at first sight: Claudius could not afford to leave an incompetent man in command of II Augusta once it had been chosen as part of the invasion forces of Britain, nor could Narcissus risk his reputation by recommending someone unsuited to the post.¹¹

Apart from connections with men and women resident at court, the support of influential families was still necessary for a novus homo such as Vespasian. The Petronii, Plautii, Pomponii and Vitellii were the most powerful families in Rome when Vespasian embarked on his career. One of Claudius’ advisers was L. Vitellius, while the general chosen to lead the invasion of Britain was Aulus Plautius. Under Claudius these families, and Vespasian himself, prospered and advanced their careers. Life must have seemed entirely satisfactory to Vespasian at the end of 51 – he was consul for the last two months of the year, his second son Domitian had just been born and his first son Titus, eleven years old, was being educated at court alongside the Emperor’s son Britannicus. He could look forward to further appointments after his consulship and the eventual promotion of his two sons in their careers. Unfortunately the rise to power of Agrippina, fourth wife of Claudius and mother of Nero, left neither Vespasian nor some of the families who had assisted him unscathed. Domitian’s birth coincided with the marriage of Claudius to Agrippina, and the consequent lack of Imperial interest in Vespasian.¹²

This highlights the potentially disastrous reverse-of-the-coin effect inherent in the necessary search for connections at court. A person of influence who was in a position to dispense patronage could just as easily block the progress of a career. In the case of Agrippina, it was dangerous ever to have had anything but friendly contacts with her, for she had a long memory for the smallest insult and her rancour extended to the friends and acquaintances of those who had injured her. Suetonius says that she hated any friend of Narcissus; consequently when Narcissus fell from power, Vespasian found himself de trop at court, and without any official post. The disfavour seems to have been purely personal and not life-threatening – he was not, after all, invited to remove himself by falling on his sword, nor was his family under any threat. His son Titus was still educated at court and his brother Sabinus remained in office. After Agrippina had dispatched Claudius in 54, she still held sufficient sway over Nero to exclude Vespasian from court, an exclusion which seems to have continued for some years even after 59, when Nero’s second attempt to murder his mother succeeded. Vespasian obtained the proconsulship of Africa by lot, at some unspecified date in the early 60s, most probably in 63 or 64.¹³

Throughout Domitian’s earliest years, therefore, his father was at home, in leisurely retirement (in otio secessuque). Exactly what this means is not quite clear. Vespasian was still a senator as well as a priest and so perhaps did not withdraw altogether from public life. Whether he found his exclusion from court burdensome and whether there was any financial hardship at this period of his life is debatable. Suetonius depicts his trepidation at being denied access to Nero’s circle but does not state that he was financially embarrassed. This idea derives from the life of Domitian, where Suetonius says he was brought up in poverty. There are two episodes in Vespasian’s life where this charge of poverty could have had some basis in fact, one being his fall from favour between 51 and 59, and the other on his return from Africa when, having neglected to enrich himself, he was forced to mortgage all his property to his brother. In both instances, since he was allowed to remain a senator, he presumably still held the requisite financial resources for otherwise he would have been ejected from the Senate. Furthermore, official posts in the Roman Empire did not bring with them any remuneration, except whatever could be obtained by personal initiative, so that to be without appointments cannot be compared to modern forms of redundancy.¹⁴

Even so, on his return from Africa, Vespasian was forced to engage in trade in order to keep up his position (sustinendae dignitatis causa). The exact nature of his business is disputed. Taken on face value from his nickname mulio, it is likely that he sold or hired out mules for transport, but some scholars have suggested that we should read between the lines and that in reality Vespasian was engaged in the slave trade. Ancient and modern aversions to this trade stem from completely different standpoints. Modern disapproval on moral and humanitarian grounds would have no place in the ancient world, where disapproval would have been reserved for the shocking spectacle of a member of the senatorial class actually engaging in this sort of work. There is, however, probably no need to read between the lines at all. Had Vespasian been a slave-trader, the post-Flavian authors would certainly not have demurely drawn a veil over his activities. Transport contractor is the most feasible translation. It is natural to wonder what had happened to Vespasian’s fortunes in the early 60s, and why the situation then was any different from his earlier return from Britain. After all, he had probably derived no personal or financial profit from his tour of duty in the new British province and had presumably lived on the proceeds of his estates. If these estates had for some unknown reason ceased to be profitable it is not likely that he would have been able to mortage them to Sabinus, unless his brother simply bailed him out of an awkward situation. According to Tacitus, the episode created bad feeling between the brothers. The tale of Vespasian as mule vendor is probably not entirely untrue, and is not without a certain panache. Suetonius’ description of the guile, not to mention sharp practice, that Vespasian employed leaves the reader in no doubt that in modern times the future Emperor would have been quite successful in selling used cars. The degree of hardship incurred in this episode and the possible effects upon Domitian are difficult to estimate. Poverty is a relative term, subject to varying shades of inference, depending upon the background and way of thought both of those experiencing it and of those merely observing it.¹⁵

Suetonius uses the poverty theme as damning evidence against Domitian, as though he had brought it all on himself, with neither his grandfather Sabinus nor his father Vespasian having anything to do with it. This is not blind acceptance of Flavian propaganda. It is a sneer, of the snobbish senatorial kind, presenting poverty as a shameful crime. The lack of silver plate to whi...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of illustrations
• List of plates
• Preface and acknowledgements
• Chapter I. Early Years
• Chapter II. Bellum Jovis
• Chapter III. Augusti Filius
• Chapter IV. Domitian Imperator
• Chapter V. Imperial Rule
• Chapter VI. The Cost of Empire
• Chapter VII. Perdomita Britannia
• Chapter VIII. Chatti
• Chapter IX. Dacia
• Chapter X. AD 89
• Chapter XI. The Dark Years
• Chapter XII. The Psychology of Suspicion
• Appendix: Domitian as Builder
• Notes
• Select bibliography
• Index