Germanicus

The Magnificent Life and Mysterious Death of Rome's Most Popular General

Lindsay Powell

• Publisher: Pen & Sword Military
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781473826922
• Topic: Storia
• Subtopic: Biografie in ambito militare

"The story of a Roman Emperor that might have been" ( Fighting Times ). Germanicus was regarded by many Romans as a hero in the mold of Alexander the Great. His untimely death, in suspicious circumstances, ended the possibility of a return to a more open republic. This, the first modern biography of Germanicus, is in parts a growing-up story, a history of war, a tale of political intrigue, and a murder mystery. In this highly readable, fast paced account, historical detective Lindsay Powell details Germanicus's campaigns and battles in Illyricum and Germania; tracks him on his epic tour of the Eastern Mediterranean to Armenia and down the Nile; evaluates the possible causes of his death; and reports on the cruel fate his wife, Agrippina, and their children suffered at the hands of Praetorian Guard commander, and Tiberius's infamous deputy, Aelius Sejanus.

Chapter 1

In the Name of the Father

16 BCE–5 CE

The Legacy

The eyes stared back at him coldly and unblinking.¹ The young boy studied the face closely. He recognized in it the features of his father. It was his imago, the mask that had been made of him while he was alive, preserving every line and detail of his handsome visage.² It was attached to a life-size manequin of the man, dressed in his finest clothes and lying on the funeral bier, which the pallbearers had just placed on the raised speakers’ platform in the Forum Romanum in front of the Senate House.³ The man being honoured was Nero Claudius Drusus (Stemma Drusorum, no. 11, plate 1), war hero and consul of the Romans. His seven-year-old son watched the event intently, as he sat in his little toga on an uncomfortably hard chair. He was in the front row, sitting among the family and important guests assembled below the Rostra.⁴ Beside him, his mother Antonia Minor (plate 2), dressed in a black stola, fought to hold back the tears. Next to her, a teary trail glistened upon the soft skin of his grandmother Livia Drusilla’s cheek. His little sister and other relations were there, too – all except grand-stepfather. Augustus (plate 3) – the inheritor of Iulius Caesar’s name and legacy – was waiting for them in the Campus Martius, a couple of miles away, as ancient custom and statute law forbade him, as the head of state in a time of war, to cross the sacred boundary line (pomerium) and enter the city.⁵

Seated among the mourners on this chilly winter’s day were the imagines of the boy’s Claudian ancestors and those of the Julian stepfamily. They were worn by male actors dressed in the attire their deceased hosts had worn in life.⁶ They had been taken out of the display cabinets (armariae) and brought together on this sad day to welcome Drusus the Elder on his journey to the Elysian Fields, their home in paradise across the Styx.⁷ Some actors used gestures of the arms, seeming to bring the ancestors dramatically back to life. Stretching out beyond them in the Forum Romanum, from one side of the ancient market place to the other, and from every vantage point in the old court-houses and temples, people of each class of Roman society stood, pressed shoulder to shoulder, eager to see. Seeing the bier (lectus) resting on the Rostra, the chattering crowd fell silent. This was a day no one had hoped to see – or, at least, so soon.

Some said the signs had been there all along. Omens had warned Drusus not to go to Germania Magna at the start of that year, which bore his and his co-consul’s names, but in his eagerness for glory he did not heed them.⁸ After a campaign lasting four years, he had finally reached the Elbe River in the summer. Then tragedy struck. While leading his men back to the Rhine River, he had fallen from his horse, his leg having been crushed by his steed when it collapsed on him, and he had died a month later from the ensuing fever.⁹ When he perished, consul Drusus was just 29 years old. His body had been carried upon the shoulders of tribunes and centurions of his legions, from deep inside the forests of Germania Magna to the fortress of Mogontiacum, and then upon those of countless duoviri and aediles of the cities of Tres Galliae and Italia.¹⁰ At Colonia Copia Munata Felix, the foremost city of the Gauls, which had been Drusus’ headquarters for the last five years, Antonia and the family had joined the solemn march. Leading the cortège had been the boy’s Uncle Tiberius. In an extraordinary display of brotherly devotion (pietas), he had walked every step of the way, from the encampment the soldiers called Castra Scelerata, the ‘accursed camp’, where Drusus had died, to his resting place in Rome.¹¹

Tiberius (Stemma Drusorum, no. 12, plate 4) now mounted the platform and spoke the laudatio fenebris.¹² Young Nero sat quietly, watching and listening to the man who idolized his father. In his practised oratory, Tiberius eulogized his fallen brother, lauding his achievements as a statesman, commander and father, perhaps using similar words to those later written by the poet Ovid:

To Germania did Drusus owe his title and his death:

woe’s me! that all that goodness should be so short-lived!¹³

The crowd applauded his practised declamations and gestures. Many were visibly moved to tears. When Tiberius concluded his speech, he turned and approached the family, embracing each affectionately. It was now time to set off for the concluding part of the ceremony. Following his Uncle Tiberius, the little boy slipped his hand into his mother’s and together they walked past the speaker’s platform to the broad cobbled stones of the Via Sacra. When the ‘ancestors’ had remounted their waiting chariots, the procession left the Forum.¹⁴ Despite the pathos of the occasion, represented by the hired mourners who tore at their hair and wailed melodramatically, there was a carnival atmosphere, with gaudy clowns making ribald remarks about the deceased consul for the crowd’s amusement; men carrying placards bearing phrases and remarks for which Drusus was known; while musicians and dancers displayed their artistic talents.¹⁵

From the base of the Capitolinus Hill the twisting Via Lata became the straight Via Flaminia which ran to the Campus Martius. Crowds lined the way.¹⁶ Some, understanding the historic significance of the day, cried as the hearse passed by, while others applauded as they saw Antonia and her son. Flanking the bier, a detail of twelve lictors – each hand-picked by Drusus and dressed respectfully in black – sloped their fasces, the bundle of axes and rods that was the distinctive badge of the bodyguard of the state’s highest ranking magistrate.¹⁷ In recognition of the death of the consul, their fasces were ceremonially reversed.¹⁸ Stopping at the Circus Flaminius – the largest building outside the pomerium able to hold such a great crowd – Augustus gave a speech in honour of Drusus. It was a very personal eulogy. He spoke in glowing terms of the man who was his stepson. Here was a Roman in the best tradition, he said. Drusus was a bold and fearless warrior. He was a man who had devoted his whole life to the service of the commonwealth. Augustus beseeched the gods ‘to make his Caesars like him, and to grant himself as honourable an exit out of this world as they had given him’.¹⁹ The crowd applauded warmly. Then the procession re-assembled and continued on the Via Flaminia past the Ara Pacis, which had only been consecrated months before, and where in life Drusus had been a honoured guest.²⁰ Finally, the long line of the colourful courtege arrived at the ustrinum, an enclosure located beside Augustus’ mausoleum. At its centre was a pyre (rogus) built to resemble an altar with panels painted with garlands of oak leaves.²¹ The princeps was waiting there and greeted Livia, Tiberius and Antonia. He embraced each one and exchanged some comforting words. To console young Nero, he bent down and placed his hand affectionately on the boy’s shoulder. The family then took their designated places before the pyre. The crowd had already assembled a safe distance away, held back by Augustus’ Praetorian Cohorts dressed resplendently in their parade armour.

Drusus’ decomposing body lay inside a casket on a lower shelf of the bier, and the whole wooden apparatus was now carefully lifted up on the pyre. Antonia said a final, personal farewell. The close members of the family then took turns to throw onto the pyre some of Drusus’ favourite things – items from his youth and adulthood, from his family and military life, which he could take with him to the underworld.²² The family quietly and solemnly stood well back, away from the wooden platform. Presented with a burning torch, Tiberius grasped it firmly with his right hand, lifted it high for all to see, turned about, and thrust it into the pyre. The kindling quickly spat and crackled as flames licked the combustible material. Soon the ustrinum was engulfed by fire and curls of acrid black smoke filled the air, rising high above the mourning crowd, where it was blown away by the cold breeze.

Hours passed. When the embers had cooled, the ashes were gathered up, sprinkled with oil and placed in an urn. In a private ceremony, Augustus turned and led the family inside the double door of the mausoleum, and walked solemnly down the dark, high vaulted corridor, the way ahead lit by the flickering light of oil lamps. Standing among the shifting shadows, young Nero watched as his mother carefully placed the urn in one of the niches that had been prepared for him. Above it was a verse composed by the princeps himself as a fond tribute to his stepson. The boy’s father had finally reached his resting place. Pater, ave atque vale!

A few days later – and quite unprompted – the Senate decreed civic honours for Nero Claudius Drusus.²³ An arch of marble was to be erected, which would straddle the Via Appia, and statues were to be erected in public places. His peers also voted him a unique agnomen, a battle honour which encapsulated his military achievements in a single word that would forever after be a key part of his name: Germanicus. It meant simply ‘The German’, but it conveyed the powerful and emotive image of the great Roman military commander as victor over savage warriors in the wild and untamed land of rivers, swamps and forests of far away Germania Magna. Significantly, the Senate voted that his surviving sons should be able to inherit the unique agnomen.

* * *

The boy who would become known through history simply as Germanicus was born nine days before the Kalends of June, on 24 May 16 BCE, probably in Rome (fig. 1).²⁴ On the ninth day after birth, a cleansing ritual (lustratio) was carried out to offer thanks to the gods for his good health, and he was given his father’s name, Nero Claudius Drusus. At the time, his father was a junior magistrate and, being based in the city, was able to spend time with his newborn son during the early months of his life. The first of many separations, however, occurred towards the end of the first year, when Drusus the Elder was called to Colonia Copia Munatia Felix Lugdunum to meet his stepfather Augustus and brother Tiberius to discuss a military campaign.²⁵ Up to that time, he had not yet served as a soldier, and this campaign would provide him with the opportunity to gain the military experience required for his higher political career. The following spring, Drusus led an expeditionary force through the Alps, squashed the Raeti, who had harassed Roman settlements and traders in northern Italy for years, and, with the assistance of his brother, subjugated the Vindelici and annexed the Kingdom of Noricum, in a whirlwind campaign that was celebrated by the court poet Horace.²⁶ Drusus was rewarded for his skilful leadership by Augustus with a praetorship and the position of legatus Augusti pro praetore in charge of the Tres Provinciae Galliae (‘Three Gallic Provinces’).²⁷ Soon after, Antonia relocated from Rome to the provincial capital with young Nero Drusus. There, they took up residence in the praetorium, a modestly appointed, palatial-sized building designed by Augustus’ friend and a former governor of Gaul, M. Vi...