Emperors of Rome: The Monsters

From Tiberius to Theodora, AD 14–548

Paul Chrystal

• Publisher: Pen & Sword Military
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781526728852
• eBook ISBN: 9781526728869
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Historical Biographies
• Index: History

As with everything else, there were good and bad Roman emperors. The good, like Trajan (98117), Hadrian (117138), Antoninus Pius (138161) and Marcus Aurelius (161180) were largely civilized and civilizing. The bad, on the other hand, were sometimes nothing less than monsters, exhibiting varying degrees of corruption, cruelty, depravity and insanity. It is a sobering thought that these ogres were responsible for governing the greatest civilization in the world, simultaneously terrorizing, brutalizing and massacring. Tiberius, Caligula, Nero, Domitian, Commodus, Caracella, Elagabalus, Septimius Severus, Diocletian, Maximinus Thrax, Justinian and Theodora all had more bad days than good; they are all covered in this book.Their exploits have, of course, been well documented since classical times but much of the coverage can only be called gratuitous, sensationalist or tabloid. This book is different because it is based on primary sources and evidence and attempts to balance out the shocking with any mitigating aspects in each of their lives. Many of our monsters have some redeeming factors and it is important that these are exposed if a true record of their lives is to be conveyed. The book also examines how each of the twelve has been treated for posterity in literature, theatre and film, and the lessons intended to be drawn from popular culture through the ages.

1. MONSTROUS BEHAVIOUR BEFORE ROME

Atrocious behaviour has been with us since the dawn of civilization. To give a couple of examples from the countless millions that no doubt took place before the founding of Rome in 753 BC, women were being physically and sexually assaulted by men as soon as man took to fighting fellow man: relatively recently, a 2,000-year-old adult female skeleton excavated in South Africa reveals that the woman was shot in the back with two arrows; a late Ice Age discovery from Sicily has unearthed a woman with an arrow in her pelvis.

Sargon of Akkad, probably our first great conqueror and the first ruler of the Semitic-speaking Akkadian Empire, is famous for his conquests of the Sumerian city-states between 2400 and 2300 BC. Among his conquests was Kazalla which he razed to the ground so comprehensively that the “birds could not find a place to perch away from the ground”. He celebrated the conquest of Uruk and the victory over its leader Lugalzagesi, by leading him “in a collar to the gate of Enlil” in humiliation.

An equally disturbing instance of barbaric cruelty comes when we learn that the Israelites may have pioneered ethnic cleansing: they theologized (blamed their god for) their uncompromising reprisals when Yahweh was said to have decreed that the raiding Amalekites would be expunged from memory for all time—an early damnatio memoriae (lit. a damnation of memory)—for their attacks on and appropriation of Israelite settlements. This curse endured into the time of Samuel and Saul (c. 1100 BC) when the former ordered the latter to exterminate the Amalekites down to the last woman and child, and to erase their agrarian economy. Yahweh’s sanction of the Amalekite genocide was indicative of the worrying fact that a warring state’s actions, however execrable, could be justified and mitigated by the apparent will of God. Divine approval has been necessary before the opening of and during hostilities in many theatres of war throughout the ages; omens in the ancient world were there to be interpreted and had to be favourable before battle, while failure to observe them could be very costly. An imprudent and impious Naram-Sin lost 250,000 men when he chose to ignore ill omens before a battle. Divine sanction has often been a convenient tool in the convenient and conscience-salving justification and mitigation of unspeakable atrocities.

The Assyrians had a shocking reputation for mutilation, ripping open the stomachs of pregnant enemy women, as did some Egyptians, not least Amenophis II (or Amenhotep, 1439–1413 BC) who massacred all surviving opposition at Ugarit.

Joshua fighting Amalek in Exodus 17. (Phillip Medhurst Collection)

Sphinx head of a young Amenhotep II. (Musée du Louvre/ Iry-Hor)

The Egyptians were also infamous for systematically mutilating the defeated; for example, the detritus from the battle of Megiddo yielded eighty-three severed hands. The walls of the temple at Medinet Habu show piles of phalluses and hands which were hacked from Libyan invaders and their allies by Ramesses III (1193–1162 BC). Ashurbanipal, the Assyrian king who reigned from 668–627 BC, rejoiced in his violence, boasting, “I will hack up the flesh [of the defeated] and then carry it with me, to show off in other lands.” His ostentatious brutality is widely depicted: one picture shows him implanting a dog chain through the cheek and jaw of a vanquished Bedouin king, Yatha, and then reducing him to a life in a dog kennel, where he guards the gate of Ninevah or hauls the royal chariot. Babylon was a particular threat; when Ashurbanipal destroyed the city he tore out the Babylonians’ tongues before smashing them to death with their shattered statuary, and then fed their corpses— thoughtfully diced into little pieces—to the dogs, pigs, zibu birds, vultures, and fish. Ashur-etil-ilani (627–623 BC), Ashurbanipal’s heir, had a predilection for cutting open the bellies of his opponents “as though they were young rams”.

In the Bible we read of the children of the defeated being dashed to death, and, yet again, pregnant women having their stomachs ripped open. War rape was a constant; again in the Bible, the prophet Zechariah exults in the sexual violation of women; Isaiah’s vision was equally apocalyptic when he states: “Their little children will be dashed to death before their eyes. Their homes will be sacked, and their wives will be raped.” In Lamentations it is written that “women have been violated in Zion, and virgins in the towns of Judah”.

Jezebel (d. 850 BC) was trouble for the Israelites. A Phoenician and probably the great aunt of Dido, queen of Carthage, she married King Ahab of Israel and brought with her a zeal for her religion, centred on Baal and Asherah, equal to the Israelites’ devotion to Yahweh. Conflict was inevitable: Jezebel imposed her religion on Ahab and ruthlessly executed hundreds of prophets of Israel, forcing more into exile. Jezebel, however, was first up against Elijah, then Elisha and Jehu who eventually saw to it that she, dressed in all her finery and seductively made up, was thrown out of her window and consumed by ravenous dogs below. Her skull, her feet, and the palms of her hands were all that remained; Jehu’s horse trampled on the corpse.

Nebuchadnezzar II (c. 630-562 BC) ruled Babylon from 605 BC until his death in 562 BC. He was the archetypal warrior king, “the destroyer of nations” and would tolerate “no opponent from horizon to sky”.

A revolt in Judah in 588 BC led by Zedekiah provoked a merciless siege of Jerusalem which culminated in the city, including the First Temple, being totally razed and the inhabitants butchered. Zedekiah was forced to endure watching his sons being slaughtered before his own eyes were gouged out. The Jews were then deported east where they mourned Zion “by the rivers of Babylon”. Nebuchadnezzar’s prowess on the battlefield was matched by a civic building programme second to none which saw armies of slave labour extend an extravagant royal palace including a public museum, possibly the world’s first; he built a bridge over the Euphrates, constructed the Processional Way and the magnificent Ishtar Gate lavishly decorated with glazed brick, plus the wondrous Hanging Gardens of Babylon, a gift for his wife. The formidable city walls were fifty-six miles long and wide enough at the top to accommodate chariot races. Women enjoyed something like equal rights, education was promoted with schools and temples, other religions were tolerated and the arts flourished making Babylon a centre of culture in the region. Despite his ruthlessness and cruelty on the battlefield, he was a social reformer who defended the poor, criminalized bribery and corruption and strengthened the rule of law.

Nebuchadnezzar by William Blake (1757–1827) (Tate Gallery, London)

For the ancient Greeks too, rape came with the sanction of the gods. The Greek gods and heroes were rape role models: Zeus raped Leda in the form of a swan, Europa in the guise of a bull. He raped Danae disguised as a shower of rain. He raped Alkmen masquerading as her own husband. Zeus male-raped Ganymede. Antiope was raped by Zeus, Cassandra was raped by Ajax the Lesser, Chrysippus was raped by his tutor Laius, Persphone was raped by Hades, Medusa was raped by Poseidon, Philomela was raped by her brother-in-law, and the daughters of Leucippus, Phoebe and Hilaeira, were abducted, raped and later married to Castor and Pollux.

Nebuchadnezzar ordering the construction of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon to please his consort by Amyitis René-Antoine Houasse (1645–1710) (Palace of Versailles Salon de Vénus/ RMN)

In the real world, the battle of Sepeia in 494 BC finally clinched for Sparta their dominance over the Argives in the struggle for supremacy in the Peloponnese. Based on information revealed to him by the oracle at Delphi, Cleomenes I of Sparta was inspired to lead an army to take Argos at Sepeia near Tiryns. A different oracle had warned the Argives of impending doom and to beware Spartan duplicity. So, in obedience to this, they instructed their herald to listen to what the Spartan herald said and repeat it verbatim to his Argive troops. Cleomenes soon caught on and told his men to charge and attack when given the order to take breakfast. The Argives were massacred as they ate and when the thousand or so survivors took refuge in a sacred grove nearby, Cleomenes simply set fire to it, ruthlessly killing all within.

After the siege of Olynthus in 479 BC the Persian forces massacred most of the inhabitants. In 431 BC the massacre of Plataea saw 150 Theban prisoners of war executed: Thucydides tells us that an armed force of 300 Thebans commanded by two leading Theban generals were admitted into Plataea by two private citizens who expected the Theban force to immediately capture and kill the democratic leaders and bring Plataea into alliance with Thebes. Instead the Plataeans killed over half of the 300 Thebans. Some of the remaining Thebans escaped with the help of a Plataean woman who provided them with an axe to break open one of the town gates. Some of the invaders tried to escape by jumping off the city wall, but most of these were killed in the fall. Others entered a large open building, mistaking it for an exit from the town. The Plataeans locked the building and held them there for a short time before killing them all. Four years later at the fall of Plataea in 427 BC two hundred Plataean and Athenian PoWs were executed.

Thucydides describes how the Thracians sacked Mycalessus and the women and children were put to the sword; but were the women raped beforehand? How often was rape committed during the euphemistic enslavement of women? The pupils in a boys’ school there were certainly massacred. After the Mytilenean revolt in 427 BC a thousand ringleaders were executed without trial by the Athenians. The Helot massacre in 425 BC saw Sparta’s brutal Krypteia (secret police) execute 2,000 Helot slaves. The Spartan suppression of the Helots was endless; this is what Myron of Priene of the middle 3rd century BC has to say: “They assign to the Helots every shameful task leading to disgrace. For they ordained that each one of them must wear a dog-skin cap [κυνῆ / kunễ] and wrap himself in skins [διφθέρα/ diphthéra] and receive a stipulated number of beatings every year regardless of any wrongdoing, so that they would never forget they were slaves. Moreover, if any exceeded the vigour proper to a slave’s condition, they made death the penalty; and they allotted a punishment to those controlling them if they failed.”*

Plutarch describes the ritual humiliation they had to endure, that Spartans treated the Helots “harshly and cruelly …also they compelled them to drink pure wine [which was considered dangerous, wine usually being diluted with water] … and to lead them in that condition into their public halls, that the children might see what a sight a drunken man is; they forced them to dance low dances, and sing ridiculous songs … during syssitia [obligatory banquets].†

In 423 BC, Scione revolted from Athens with support from the Spartans, resulting in the siege of the town which lasted for two years until 421 BC, even though the two enemies had earlier agreed a temporary peace treaty. Ultimately, the defenders of the city were either executed or sold into slavery. At the massacre of Hysiae in 417 BC all male citizens were murdered by the Spartans; the destruction of Melos the following year 416 BC saw all Melian men killed by the Athenians, their women and children enslaved.

In 335 BC Alexander the Great slew 6,000 men, women and children when he took the city of Thebes; 30,000 more were sold into slavery. In 315 BC Apollonides, governor of Argos, invaded Arcadia, and captured the town of Stymphalus. Back home the Argives promised to surrender their town to Alexander, the son of Polyperchon. Apollonides got wind of the plan and suddenly returned to Argos.

About 500 senators were assembled in the prytaneum: Apollonides had all the doors of the house well guarded, so that none of them might escape, and then set fire to it. All perished. The other Argives who had taken part in the conspiracy were either exiled or put to death. In 213 at Messene 200 magistrates and their supporters were killed by demagogues supported by Macedon. In 167 BC, 550 Aetolian leaders were slain by Roman soldiers.

In this 14th-century Byzantine illustration Alexander the Great’s infantry invades Athens. The horses of Alexander and his adjutant are represented as cataphract (armored cavalry). (Alexander Romance in S. Giorgio dei Greci, Venice)

* Thucydides 7, 29.

† Life of Lycurgus 28, 8-10.

2. MONSTROUS BEHAVIOUR IN THE REPUBLIC

And so on into Rome where the foundation of the city reeks of rapine: in legend, the Sabine women were abducted as baby-makers and raped to guarantee the survival of the nascent Roman state; that paragon of Roman wifely chastity, Lucretia (d. c. 510 BC), was cruelly raped and took her life in shame, thus ensuring the foundation of the city. Verginia (c. 465 BC–449) was slain by her own solicitous father to avoid the very real prospect of being raped. Her death guaranteed the restoration of the Roman republic.

Carales and Beneventum (214 BC)

The Romans won a decisive victory at Carales, in Sardinia, under Titus Manlius Torquatus. The slaughter was extensive: 12,000 Sardinians and Carthaginians were killed, and Hasdrubal the Bald, Hanno, and Mago were all ta...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• 1. Monstrous Behaviour Before Rome
• 2. Monstrous Behaviour in the Republic
• 3. The Imperial Monsters
• Appendix 1: The Reigns
• Appendix 2: The Julio-Claudian Dynasty
• Appendix 3: The Flavian Dynasty
• Further Reading