The World

Augustus brokered the marriages that ultimately produced the emperors Caligula, Claudius and Nero. Livia’s younger son Drusus, married to Antonia, daughter of Octavia and Antony, delivered two sons, the handsome, charismatic Germanicus and the stammering, limping Claudius. Claudius was lucky not to be exposed as a baby – his mother reviled him as ‘the monster’ – but he married four times and had children. Their father Drusus died young, but Augustus promoted Germanicus, who won laurels in the wars against the Germans. Augustus married Germanicus to Agrippina, daughter of Agrippa and Julia, who produced six children, three girls and three boys. Agrippina insisted on serving in camp with her husband, giving orders in battle when necessary and turning her youngest son, Gaius, into a military mascot, dressed in a mini-legionary’s uniform, hence his nickname Caligula – Little Boots. Augustus merged these plans by naming Tiberius as his heir but ordering him to adopt Germanicus as his son.

As he lay dying, Augustus talked about his one big fiasco: in AD 9, three legions had been wiped out by German tribesmen in the Teutoburg Forest. Archaeologists have found Roman armour there. Augustus spent his last years murmuring, ‘Give me back my legions.’ ‘If I played my part well,’ said Augustus before he died, with Livia beside him,^* ‘then give me applause.’ He had and they did, deifying him like Caesar as he was cremated and buried in his magnificent mausoleum, which still stands in Rome.

As soon as Tiberius took power, advised by his mother Livia – her female auctoritas recognized in the cognomen Augusta – he ordered the killing of Augustus’ last grandson, Postumus. Tiberius retired to Capri, where this reptilian princeps petted his tame iguana and enjoyed swimming while, according to lurid historians, being probed by the tongues of a troop of boys whom he nicknamed his ‘minnows’. (Then as now, an orgy in a swimming pool was shorthand for depravity).

In Rome, he delegated his power to a henchman, Sejanus, prefect of the Praetorian Guards,^* whom he used to purge his enemies. His heir was his son Drusus, married to Germanicus’ sister, Livilla. Livilla, however, started an affair with Sejanus, who aspired to rule and may have poisoned Drusus. Finally, in 31, Antony’s daughter Antonia visited Capri to reveal Sejanus’ treason. The princeps appeared in Rome and had him executed. Livilla’s fate was to be starved to death by her steely mother.

An empire is only as good as its governors. Tiberius’ focus was drawn to the east, to where he dispatched his adopted son Germanicus as viceroy. The old iguana was jealous of this princeling. When Germanicus, at the age of thirty-three, fell fatally ill in Antioch, he accused Tiberius of poisoning him – and died watched by his wife and sons, who included the seven-year-old Caligula. Later Tiberius drove his widow to starve herself and then arrested, and quietly killed, Germanicus’ elder sons.

Further south, Tiberius’ prefect Pontius Pilate struggled to control the turbulent Jews, who were wary of Roman idolatry and despotism.^* Pilate’s violent suppression of Jewish protests in Jerusalem and Samaria had exacerbated tensions. Now in AD 33, Pilate confronted a Jewish prophet, Jesus, one of many such preachers. Jesus – Joshua in Hebrew – was a scion of the Davidic dynasty who had been brought up in Galilee, which was ruled by one of Herod’s sons. Like all Jews, he had been circumcised in the Temple in Jerusalem, and regularly travelled to the city for Passover and other Jewish festivals. The first decades of his life are unknown. When he emerged as a preacher, he did not claim to be the Messiah, though he performed acts of healing and the magical delivery of provisions. Instead, criticizing the Temple grandees and supporting the downtrodden, he preached moral conduct in this life in preparation for an imminent End of Days, prophesied in the Jewish Torah. It struck a chord with the human need for a moral mission that offered meaning in life and redemption in death. Faced with disorders during the Jewish festival of Passover when Jerusalem was packed with pilgrims, Pilate crucified Jesus on a hill outside the city. When the body disappeared from his tomb, his followers believed he was the Messiah – son of God – risen from the dead to bear the sins of mankind.

Tiberius would not have spent long on this minor incident among the crazy Jews, but, hearing of Pilate’s bungling, he recalled him. On the succession, he selected the last of Germanicus’ sons as the Caesar to deliver calm and continuity: Caligula.

IF ONLY ROME HAD ONE NECK: CALIGULA AND SISTERS

No princeps ever came to power with such popular enthusiasm as Little Boots. He was raised by stern women – first by his great-grandmother Livia (whom he called ‘Odysseus in a dress’), then by Antonia, daughter of Antony – in a vortex of murder and ambition. No wonder he was damaged and insecure.