Caligula: A Biography (23 page)

The theater seems to have been located in the Area Palatina, a site on the hillside above the Forum. It had one exit into the city and one into the imperial palace. After the audience had been admitted and found their way through the crowd to their seats Caligula performed an animal sacrifice in honor of Augustus. Then he took his own seat, surrounded by the highest-ranking senators in his retinue, and gave orders for expensive sweets to be thrown to the spectators. On the program were a pantomime in which the leader of a band of robbers was nailed to a cross, and the tragedy of Cinyras and Myrrha. Both plays called for a good deal of imitation blood to flow on the stage. Shortly before one in the afternoon Caligula could not decide whether to stay till the end—since it was the last day of the performances—or to leave as usual for a bath and a meal and return later.

Chaerea, who was in readiness at the palace with the other officers participating in the conspiracy, could hardly endure the wait. He had already made up his mind that he would go into the theater and strike Caligula where he was sitting—meaning that he was prepared for the inevitable bloodbath among the senators and knights in the audience—when word suddenly came that Caligula and his entourage were entering the palace. Claudius, Marcus Vinicius, and Valerius Asiaticus were at the front of the group, followed by Caligula himself and Paullus Arruntius. On the pretext that the emperor wanted a moment of peace and quiet, the plotters kept the rest of his retinue from following. While Claudius and the two others proceeded along a main corridor lined with servants, Caligula, now flanked by Chaerea and Sabinus, turned into a side passage. It led to a room where Greek
boys, sons of noble families, were rehearsing a performance to be given in his honor.

Different versions of the murder are reported. Suetonius offers two. As the emperor was speaking to the boys Chaerea, who was standing behind him, swung his sword with full force and hit him in the neck; then Sabinus stabbed him in the chest. The other version relates that Sabinus asked Caligula for the password and split his jaw as he turned around. As the emperor lay on the ground writhing in pain and shouting that he was still alive, all the other conspirators rushed forward and killed him with thirty further blows. In Josephus’s account the “freedom fighter” Chaerea comes off somewhat better: Instead of attacking the emperor from behind he came at him in full view and struck a deep but not fatal wound. His sword pierced Caligula between the neck and shoulder and was stopped by his collarbone. Caligula neither shouted nor called for help, but only let out a loud groan and tried to flee. Then all the others fell on him with their swords. According to Seneca, Chaerea managed to decapitate the emperor with one blow, but many of the conspirators surrounded the emperor and thrust their swords into the corpse anyway.

Immediately following the murder Chaerea sent a tribune named Lupus to kill Caesonia and Drusilla, the emperor’s young daughter. Reports say that the empress faced the blow courageously, and that the little girl was dashed against a wall. Then Chaerea and Sabinus, fearful of what would follow, fled into the interior of the palace complex and from there, by a different route, into the city.

Caligula was dead, but his power lasted for another few hours. The first to appear were his litter bearers, followed by members of his Germanic bodyguard. They seized several of the assassins
and killed them on the spot, and also made short work of three senators who happened to be in the vicinity and fell into their hands. The bodyguards and Praetorian guardsmen went off in search of the other assassins, combing the corridors and rooms of the palace. In the theater spectators were horrified as news of what had happened spread. Rumors were rife: The emperor was wounded but not dead, and was receiving medical aid. Despite his wounds he had gone to the Forum, covered in blood, and was addressing the people. He wasn’t dead at all, but had merely spread the rumor in order to test people’s reactions. The senators who were hoping that the news was correct felt stunned and unable to move from their seats, but none of the others dared to stand up and leave the theater either, for fear that their action would be misinterpreted. Finally Germanic bodyguards who still hoped that the emperor was alive surrounded the theater with swords drawn. They placed the decapitated heads of the three dead senators on the sacrificial altar where everyone could see them. Now fear of death seized everyone. Some rushed toward the soldiers and fell on their knees, pleading that they had known nothing about an assassination attempt, if one had actually occurred. The soldiers should leave them in peace and go look for the people who were responsible for the outrage. “And so,” writes Josephus, “even those who hated Gaius heartily and with justice were left with no chance to rejoice at his death, because they were on tenterhooks for fear of perishing with him . . .” (Jos.
Ant
. 19.144).

Imminent bloodbath was prevented by a well-known, wealthy auctioneer named Arruntius Euaristus. He entered the theater—at whose behest is not reported—in mourning attire and announced the death of Caligula in a loud voice. That put an end to the uproar among the
Germani
, since there was no emperor left
for them to defend. With much pushing and shoving the theater emptied out.

Now Rome was without a ruler. At first the situation appeared to be in flux, but that impression was rapidly contradicted. Caligula belonged to the past, but the experiences and structures he left behind continued to determine behavior. The aroused populace streamed to the Forum, where popular assemblies took place, vigorously demanding that the murderers be punished. Despite the recent conflicts Caligula’s popularity with the common people of Rome had remained intact. The senators attempted to take advantage of this favorable moment. The consuls called a session of the Senate in the Capitol and gave instructions for the contents of the emperor’s treasury to be carried there immediately. The
cohortes urbanae
, who functioned as the city’s police force, obeyed their orders and took up positions around the Capitol and Forum. In an agitated debate the senators fought over the future of Rome. Voices were raised calling for the end of imperial rule and the restoration of “freedom,” meaning rule by the Senate in the style of the late Republic. Some senators even wanted to expunge the memory of all previous emperors and to destroy their temples. One of these was the consul Sentius Saturninus, who delivered a stirring speech. He portrayed Caligula as the culminating figure in a despotism that had been expanding since the days of Julius Caesar, declaring that imperial rule was tyranny and replaced freedom and law with the arbitrary will of an individual. He also recognized the senators’ own role in all this, however: “This tyranny was fostered by nothing but indolence and our failure to speak in opposition to any of its wishes. We have succumbed to the seduction of peace and have learned to live like conquered prisoners. Whether we
have suffered incurable disasters ourselves or have only observed the calamities of our neighbors, it is because we are afraid to die like brave men that we must endure being slain with the utmost degradation” (Jos.
Ant
. 19.180–81).

Saturninus had in fact been conspicuous for his servility to the emperor, since otherwise he would hardly have been serving as consul at the time. Josephus reports that after this speech another senator leaped to his feet and pulled from Saturninus’s finger a ring with a likeness of Caligula on it, which identified him as a man in particularly high favor with the tyrant who had just been murdered. The rhetoric of freedom could little avail against the existing structures of power and modes of behavior that directed even the action of senators. In reality ambiguous communication within the aristocracy, which Caligula through his cynical behavior had allowed to run out, celebrated a joyous resurrection, and the debate was actually about who would become the new emperor. Three aspirants are mentioned by name. All three came from the group of senators who had maintained close contact with Caligula to the very end and who would also number among the favorites during Claudius’s rule. Valerius Asiaticus’s ambitions to succeed to the throne were thwarted by Annius Vinicianus, who had the same end in view for himself and tried to achieve it a year later: He was one of two central figures in the first great conspiracy against Claudius. The third aspirant was Marcus Vinicius, Caligula’s brother-in-law. His move was blocked by the two consuls, Saturninus and Pomponius, who according to Dio had kissed Caligula’s feet at a banquet only the day before. Presumably Saturninus’s speech on freedom was aimed to position him as a possible candidate for emperor. The Senate debate encapsulates the paradox of the era, which had dominated Caligula’s brief reign and that he had set himself
against in a new fashion: No one wanted an emperorship, but everyone wanted to be emperor.

If even senators could come to no agreement about “freedom,” then others were even less able to do so. As the Senate session dragged on and on, new facts had long since been created on the ground. The regular soldiers of the Praetorian Guard, who had known nothing about the conspiracy, had rushed here and there excitedly for a while hunting the emperor’s killers, and then gathered to discuss further steps. This was probably the moment the two prefects had been waiting for, when they would take center stage. Understandably the Guard had no interest in rule by the Senate, nor did they want to wait for the Senate to choose a claimant to the throne. Their own importance would increase if they created the emperor themselves. They quickly agreed on Claudius, who benefited from the soldiers’ loyalty to the dynasty. The guards discovered him hiding on the Palatine Hill, where he had sought safety in the uproar; they proclaimed him emperor in the Area Palatina and then took him to the Praetorians’ camp. The idea of Republican “freedom” was rejected in the Forum as well, for the people also backed Claudius, hoping in that way to avoid a battle over the succession and the threat of civil war.

Envoys were sent back and forth between the Senate and the Praetorians’ camp, and it is said that King Agrippa of Judaea, Caligula’s close associate, skillfully advocated Claudius’s cause. In the middle of the night the balance of power tipped definitively in his favor. Only one hundred senators were present in the Senate; the others had cautiously retreated to their homes. In the end the urban cohorts joined the Praetorian Guards and backed Claudius, too. The few hours in which the senators had believed they had power were over, and now their fear of the new emperor was beginning to grow.

The next morning Claudius was escorted into the palace. He announced a donative of 15,000 (or 20,000) sesterces for every Praetorian. The Senate recognized him as emperor and awarded him the customary rights and honors. Cassius Chaerea, Lupus, and the centurions who had participated in the assassination were executed, and Sabinus committed suicide. Reportedly it was Agrippa who disposed of Caligula’s badly mutilated corpse, taking it to the Lamian Gardens and interring it in a makeshift grave.

“The histories of Tiberius and Caligula, of Claudius and Nero,” writes Tacitus at the start of his
Annals
, “were falsified through cowardice while they flourished, and composed, when they fell, under the influence of still rankling hatreds” (Tac.
Ann
. 1.1.2). The denunciatory devaluation that followed the emperors’ deaths formed a perfect counterpart to the servile adulation they enjoyed during their lifetimes. But this alone does not mean that the Roman aristocracy was made up of morally inferior people. Or to put it more precisely: Moral categories are unsuitable here—just as in the case of the emperors also—to explain what occurred. The senators were victims of a clash between new circumstances and their old ways of behaving, which no longer fit. The few who were unwilling to come to terms with imperial rule—or who wished to be emperor themselves—tried their hand at conspiracy and only made matters more complicated. Those who were most successful at adapting the traditional aristocratic striving for power and honor to the new circumstances acquired a bad reputation as opportunists. Occasionally the same people managed to
stand out in both groups. Once someone had set flattery on the path of runaway inflation, the others had no choice but to join in and go along.

Under Caligula the senators had been confronted with unprecedented experiences. They could not accuse him of committing murder arbitrarily; instead he had simply let them give free rein to their servility and cynically taken it at face value. He had held up a mirror to the Roman aristocracy and showed them the absurdity of their own behavior. In so doing he had made them look ridiculous and let them humiliate themselves as never before. Utterly powerless, they had been forced to tolerate his game and join in it. What form did their “still rankling hatred” take after his death?

A good clue is available in the speech given in the Senate by consul Sentius Saturninus after the assassination, which Josephus quotes from his Roman source. The consul fell back on a long-standing pattern and accused Caligula of extreme tyranny. Clearly it never crossed anyone’s mind to call him insane. Why should it have? The men leading the debate in the Senate had remained the emperor’s aristocratic followers until the end, and if they had advanced the implausible claim that they had been serving a madman, they would have only created new embarrassments for themselves and the aristocracy as a whole.

Seneca is the first to speak of Caligula’s madness (
furor
and
insania
) in his writings, which date from not long afterwards. If one examines these passages more closely, however, it emerges that he is not passing judgment on the deceased emperor’s mental health, but is rather filled with hatred and accusing him of tyrannical behavior and the annihilation of freedom. He deplores the ignominy that this has brought on the Roman Empire. Seneca uses “insanity” as a term of abuse, to censure immorality and the
violation of all aristocratic conventions. He uses the term in a similar sense when he speaks of women so extravagant that they wore earrings worth more than the combined fortunes of two or three aristocratic families. Finally, it is noteworthy that in various places in his writings he excoriates Alexander the Great in almost exactly the same language, as an “insane” and “megalomaniacal” young man—a parallel to which Caligula would have had no objection.