He was violent, cruel, and
avaricious
with profusion.
Aurelius Victor - Caesars
" Likewise, plain brackets enclose translations of cognomina.
A few Latin words -- deus, dominatio, dominus, imperator, imperium, paterfamilias, potestas, princeps, procurator, and rex -- have been left untranslated, most because, to my mind, they seemed to convey some important nuance too easily lost in translation.
For those uninterested in nuance, their English meanings should appear evident.
Proper names of individuals and peoples appear in their latinate form except in very few instances - for example, "Constantine" rather than "Constantinus" (which is retained for Constantine's father and for Constantine's son of the same name) and "Alans" rather than "Alani.
" "Valentinian" is the emperor from 364-375; "Valentinianus," his son, emperor from 375-392.
My goal has not been to be consistent, but merely consistent enough.
Because Professor Bird's work will contain a full bibliography, none is offered here.
Thomas M. Banchich
Canisius College
Buffalo, N. Y.
NOTES
[[1]]The Epitome de Caesaribus and Its Sources," Review of Die Epitome de Caesaribus, by Jörg Schlumberger, Classical Philology 71 (1976), pp. 258-268, and The Sources of the Historia Augusta, Collection Latomus 155 (Brussels: Universa, 1978).
[[2]]Only after completing the initial draft of my translation did I discover the French version of N. A. Dubois, prepared for the Aurelius Victor volume of the Bibliothèque Latine-Française, 2nd Series (Paris: C L. F. Panckouke, 1846).
[[3]](Leipzig: B. G. Teubner, 1970).
[[4]](Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1993 [Eutropius] and 1994 [Aurelius Victor]).
A BOOKLET ABOUT
THE STYLE OF LIFE AND THE MANNERS
OF THE IMPERATORES
Abbreviated from the Books of Sextus Aurelius Victor
1
In the seven hundred and twenty-second year from the foundation of the city, but the four hundred and eightieth from the expulsion of the kings, the custom was resumed at Rome of absolute obedience to one man, with, instead of rex, the appellation imperator or the more venerable name Augustus. 2. Accordingly, Octavian, whose father was Octavius, a senator, and who was descended in his mother's line through the Julian family from Aeneas (but called Gaius Caesar, his grandmother's brother) was then given the cognomen Augustus on account of his victory. 3. Placed in control, he, per se, exercised tribunician potestas. 4. The region of Egypt, difficult to enter because of the inundation of the Nile and impassable because of swamps, he made into a form of province. 5. By the labor of soldiers, he opened canals, which through neglect had been clogged with the slime of ages, to make Egypt a bountiful supplier of the city's ration. 6. In his time, two hundred million allotments of grain were imported annually from Egypt to the city. 7. He joined to the number of provinces for the Roman people the Cantabri and Aquitani, Raeti, Vindelici, Dalmatae. The Suevi and Chatti he destroyed, the Sigambri he transferred to Gallia. The Pannonii [134] he added as tributaries. The peoples of the Getae and Basternae, aroused to wars, he compelled to concord. 8. To him Persia sent hostages and granted the authority of creating kings. 9. To him the Indians, Scythians, Garamantes, and Aethiopians sent legations with gifts. 10. Indeed, he so detested disturbances, wars and dissensions that he never ordered a war against any race except for just reasons. And he used to say that to be of a boastful and most capricious mind through the ardor of a triumph and on account of a laurel crown -- that is barren, fruitless foliage -- plunged the security of citizens into danger by the uncertain outcomes of battles; 11. and that nothing whatever was more appropriate to a good imperator than temerity: whatever was being done properly, happened quickly enough; 12. and that arms must never be taken up except in the hope of a very significant benefit, lest, because of heavy loss for a trifling reward, the sought-after victory be like a golden hook for fishermen, the damage of which, through its having been broken off or lost, no gain of the catch is able to compensate. 13. In his time, a Roman army and tribunes and propraetor were destroyed beyond the Rhine. So much did he mourn what had transpired that, made unsightly by his dress, hair, and the remaining symbols of mourning, he struck his head with a powerful blow. 14. He used to censure an innovation of his uncle, too, who, calling the soldiers comrades in novel and charming fashion, while he affected to ingratiate himself, had weakened the auctoritas of the princeps. 15. Indeed, toward citizens he was most clemently disposed. 16. He appeared faithful toward his friends, the most eminent of whom were Maecenas on account of his taciturnity, Agrippa on account of his endurance and the self-effacedness of his labor. Moreover, he used to delight in Virgil. He was a rare one, indeed, for making friendships; most steadfast toward retaining them. 17. He was so devoted to liberal studies, especially to eloquence, that no day slipped by, not even on campaign, without him reading, writing, and declaiming. 18. He introduced laws, some new, others revised, [135] in his own name. 19. He added to and ornamented Rome with many structures, glorying in the remark: "I found a city of bricks, I left her a city of marble. " 20. He was gentle, pleasant, urbane, and of charming disposition, handsome in his entire physique, but with large eyes, rapidly moving the pupils of which, in the fashion of the brightest stars, he used to explain with a smile that men turned from his gaze as from the intense rays of the sun. When a certain soldier averted his eyes from his face and was asked by him why he so behaved, he answered: "Because I am unable to bear the lightning of your eyes. "
21. For all that, so great a man did not lack vices. For he was somewhat impatient, a bit irascible, secretly envious, openly fatuous; furthermore, moreover, he was most desirous of holding dominion -- more than it is possible to imagine -- , an avid player at dice. 22. And though he was much at table or drink, to a certain degree, in fact, abstaining from sleep, he nevertheless used to gratify his lust to the extent of the dishonor of his public reputation. For he was accustomed to lie among twelve catamites and an equal number of girls. 23. Also, possessed by the love of the wife of another, when his wife Scribonia had been set aside, he joined Livia to himself as if with her husband's consent. Of this Livia there were already two sons, Tiberius and Drusus. 24. And while he was a servant of luxury, he was nevertheless a most severe castigator of the same vice, in the manner of men who are relentless in correcting the vices in which they themselves avidly indulge. For he damned to exile the poet Ovid, also called Naso, because he wrote for him the three booklets of the Art of Love. 25. And because he was of exuberant and cheerful spirit, he was amused by every type of spectacle, especially those with an unknown species and infinite number of wild animals.
26. When he had passed through seventy-seven years, he died at Nola of a disease. 27. Yet some write that he was killed by a deception of Livia, who, since she had gained information that Agrippa (the son of her stepdaughter, [136] whom, as a result of his mother-in-law's hatred, he had relegated to an island) was to be recalled, feared that, when he had obtained control of affairs, she would be punished. 28. Thereupon, the senate resolved that the dead or murdered man should be decorated with numerous and novel honors. For in addition to the title "Father of his Country," which it had proclaimed, it dedicated temples to him at Rome and throughout the most celebrated cities, with all proclaiming openly: "Would that he either had not been born or had not died! " 29. The first alternative said of a most base beginning, the second of a splendid outcome. For in pursuing the principate he was held an oppressor of liberty and in ruling he so loved the citizens that once, when a three-days' supply of grain was discerned in the storehouses, he would have chosen to die by poison if fleets from the provinces were not arriving in the interim. 30. When these fleets had arrived, the safety of the fatherland was attributed to his felicity. He ruled fifty-six years, twelve with Antony, but forty-six alone. 31. Certainly he never would have drawn the power of the state to himself or retained it so long if he had not possessed in abundance great gifts of nature and of conscious efforts.
2
Claudius Tiberius, son of Livia, stepson of Octavian Caesar, ruled twenty-three years. 2. Since he used to be called Claudius Tiberius Nero, he was, because of his drinking, aptly referred to in jests as Caldius Biberius Mero ["Imbiber of Hot, Straight Wine"]. 3. Before imperium was assumed, he was, under Augustus, sagacious enough and fortunate enough in war that not undeservedly was control of the state entrusted to him. 4. He possessed much knowledge of literature. He was quite renowned for eloquence, but in character most base, grim, greedy, insidious, pretending that he wished what he did not; he seemed hostile to those in whose counsel he was taking pleasure, but well-disposed to those whom he despised. 5. He was better in spur-of-the-moment responses and deliberations than in those planned in advance. 6. Indeed, he fictitiously rejected the principate offered him by the senators (which he certainly did with cunning), [137] darkly exploring what each was saying or thinking: an affair which brought ruin to each who was good. 7. For when men who reckoned that he was sincerely declining the immensity of the imperial burden expressed sentiments in favor of his choice in a long speech, they unexpectedly met their final fates. 8. With Archelaus, their king, removed, he restored Cappadocia to a province. He suppressed the banditries of the Gaetulii. Marobodus, King of the Suevi, he shrewdly encompassed. 9. While he punished with great fury innocent and guilty, members of his own family and outsiders alike, with the skills of the army enfeebled, Armenia was ravaged by the Parthians, Moesia by the Dacians, Pannonia by the Sarmatians, and Gallia by neighboring peoples. 10. After his eighty-eighth year and fourth month, he was murdered in an intrigue of Caligula.
3
Caligula ruled four years. 2. He was the son of Germanicus, and, since he had been born in the camp, was given a cognomen of a military footwear (that is, caligula). 3. Before his principate he was accepted by and dear to all, but in his principate he was such that it was commonly said with justification that there had never been a dominus more terrible than he. 4. In fact, he stained his own three sisters with defilement. 5. He went about in the dress of his personal gods; he used to claim that he was Jove on account of his incest, and Liber, moreover, from his bacchanalian chorus. 6. I am uncertain whether it will have been proper to write about this for posterity, except perhaps since it helps to know everything about the principes, so that the unfit at least may shun such enormities through fear of their reputation. 7. In his palace, he subjected noble matrons to public wantonness. 8. He first, crowned with a diadem, ordered himself to be called dominus. 9. In the space of the three miles which lies between the moles in the Puteolan Gulf, he arranged ships in a double line and in a two-horse chariot drove down a roadway firmed up by an accumulation of sand to approximate earth [138] as if celebrating a triumph, dressed in a golden military cloak, with a horse ornamented in trappings of office and a bronze crown. 10. He perished afterward, struck down by the soldiers.
4
Claudius Titus, son of Tiberius' brother Drusus, paternal uncle of Caligula, ruled fourteen years. 2. When the senate had thought that the family of the Caesars had been exterminated, he was discovered by the soldiers in a hiding place that ill became him, and, since he was simpleminded, he seemed quite harmless to those ignorant men and was made imperator. 3. He was obedient to his stomach, wine, vile lust; simpleminded and almost doltish; lazy and tremulous; subject to the dictates of his freedmen and wife. 4. In his time, Scribonius Camillus was created imperator in Dalmatia and killed forthwith. The Mauri set the provinces ablaze; a force of Musulamii was cut to pieces. The Claudian Aqueduct was opened at Rome. 5. Messalina, his wife, was from the first indulging indiscriminately in extramarital affairs as if it were her legal prerogative: as a result of what she did, many men who abstained through fear were killed. Then, more violently aroused, she had certain of the more noble wives and maidens put up for sale with herself in the fashion of prostitutes, and males were compelled to attend. But if someone ever bristled at such enormities, he was savaged by means of a contrived charge against himself and his entire family, so that he seemed to be more in the power of the ruling man rather than the ruling wife. 6. In the same way, his freedmen, having attained the highest power, were defiling everything with debaucheries, exile, murder, and proscriptions. 7. From among these men, he made Felix prefect of the legions in Judaea. After the Britannic triumph, to Posidonius the eunuch, [139] along with the bravest of the soldiers, he gave arms and medals for a gift, as if to one who had taken part in the victory. He allowed Polybius to walk between the consuls. Narcissus, the secretary, used to surpass them all, deporting himself as dominus of the Dominus himself; and Pallas was exalted by the praetorian insignia. They were so rich that, with him debating about the bankruptcy of the fisc, it was most humorously noised about in a famous elegy that there would be wealth in great profusion for him, if, by the two freedmen, he were admitted into a partnership. 9. In his times, the Phoenix was seen in Egypt, a bird which they say flies every five hundred years from Arabia to remembered locations; and in the Aegean Sea an island suddenly sank. 10. He married Agrippina, daughter of Germanicus, his own brother, who, procuring the empire for her own son, first killed her stepchildren in multiform intrigues, then, by poison, her husband himself. 11. He lived sixty-four years; his death was kept secret a long while, as once before in the case of Tarquinius Priscus. 12. While his attendants simulated grief, Nero, his stepson, obtained the rights of imperium.
5
Domitius Nero, scion of Domitius Ahenobarbus, his father, and Agrippina, his mother, ruled thirteen years. 2. For five years he seemed bearable, whence some have reported that Trajan was accustomed to say that the principes as a group were far different than Nero -- for a five-year period. 3. In the city, he constructed an amphitheater and baths. 4. Pontus he reduced to the status of a province with the permission of King Polemo, from whom Pontus Polemoniacus is named, as likewise the Cottian Alps from the dead King Cottius. 5. For indeed he passed the remainder of his life shamelessly, so that it is embarrassing to commemorate any of this. He went so far that, sparing neither his own decency nor that of others, at last, veiled in the manner of a bride-to-be, [140] with dowry paid, with everyone crowding together in festive fashion, he was married in the presence of the senate. Covered with the skin of a wild animal, he used to forage the sexual organs of either sex with his face. He even contaminated with defilement his own mother, whom he afterward killed. After their husbands were slain, he married Octavia and the Sabina with the cognomen Poppaea. 6. Then Galba, proconsul of Hispania, and Gaius Julius usurped imperium. 7. When Nero learned that Galba approached and that the senate had resolved that, according to ancestral custom, when his neck had been thrust into a yoke, he was to be beaten to death with rods, he, completely deserted, left the city in the middle of the night with Phaon, Epaphroditus and Neophytus, and the eunuch Sporus, whom once, after he had been castrated, he had tried to transform into a woman; and he pierced himself with a blow of his sword, with the impure eunuch about whom we spoke aiding his trembling hand while, since no one had been found earlier by whom he might be struck, he soberly exclaimed: "So, do I have neither friend nor foe? I lived shamelessly, let me die shamefully. " 8. He perished in the thirty-second year of his life. The Persians had been so delighted with him that they sent legations furnishing materials for constructing a monument. 9. Otherwise the provinces as a whole and all Rome exulted in his death to such a degree that the urban masses donned the caps of freedmen and celebrated manumission, as if they had been delivered from a savage dominus.
6
Galba, scion of the noble clan of the Sulpicii, ruled seven months and an equal number of days. 2. He was disreputable toward young men, intemperate with regard to eating, and arranged everything in a council of his three friends, that is, Vinius, Cornelius, and Icelius, to such a degree that they were just as much residents of the Palatine mansion and used to be referred to commonly as "the tutors. " 3. Before dominatio was assumed, he administered many provinces with distinction, treating the soldiers most severely, so that, when he entered [141] the camps, the saying was quickly spread: "Learn to soldier, soldier; this is Galba, not Gaetilicus. " 4. When he was in the seventy-third year of his life, while he advanced in his armor to calm legions inflamed by the faction of Otho, he was killed near the Lake of Curtius.
7
Salvius Otho, sprung from distinguished ancestors from the town Ferentanum, ruled three months -- shameless in his entire life, in his youth most of all. 2. Defeated by Vitellius first at Placentium, then at Betriacum, he transfixed himself with a sword in the thirty-seventh year of his life -- so beloved to his own troops that, when his body was seen, a great many died by their own hands.
8
Vitellius, sprung from noble stock (his father, Lucius Vitellius, a consul) ruled eight months. 2.
He was violent, cruel, and avaricious with profusion. 3. In his time, Vespasian seized the principate in Oriens; conquered by his soldiers in a battle held under the walls of the city, Vitellius, with his hands bound behind him, was led from the palace to which he had removed himself and was paraded as a show before the mob. 4. And lest this man, at all events shameless to the last of the evils which he had done, lower a blushing face, with a sword placed under his chin, half-nude, while many assaulted his face with filth and excrement and, in speech, with other dirt more shameful, he was dragged down the Gemonian Steps where he had ordered Sabinius, Vespasian's brother, to be killed. 5. Transfixed by many blows, he perished. He lived fifty-seven years. 6. All these men whom I have briefly touched upon, especially the family of the Caesars, possessed learning, culture, and eloquence to such a degree that surely they would have covered their modest indiscretions, if they were not -- apart from Augustus -- excessive in all vices together.
9
Vespasian ruled ten years. 2. Among his good deeds, his disregard of animosities was singular [142] to the degree that he wed the daughter of his enemy Vitellius, who had been given a most lavish dowry, to a very eminent man. 3. He used to bear patiently the agitation of his friends, as he was very witty, responding to their jibes with jests. For he wittily softened Licinius Mucianus, with whom as an aide he had reached imperium, insolent by reason of his merits, saying, when another man, a common acquaintance, had been summoned, this alone: "I know that I am a man. " 4. But why is this a surprise with respect to his friends, since he even made light of the oblique pronouncements of advocates and the contumacy of philosophers? 5. Briefly put, he restored the orb of the earth, long faint and feeble. For, first of all, unless they had conducted themselves far too violently, he preferred to mollify followers of the tyrant rather than to destroy them after they had been tortured, having reckoned most prudently that nefarious works are carried out by the majority of the men through fear. 6. Moreover, by laws most equitable and by instruction, and what is stronger, by the example of his own life, he had abolished the majority of vices. 7. He was, nevertheless, weak, as some people wrongly think, with regard to money, since it is sufficiently agreed that through a shortage in the treasury and through the ruin of the cities he had sought new (nor afterward continued) payments of taxes. 8. If owners were lacking, he repaired, by means of resources granted to those willing, a Rome disfigured by fires and by aged ruins, the Capitol, the Temple of Peace, the monuments of the Claudii, and erected many new structures. 9. Through all lands, as is Roman custom, cities were renovated with surprising care; roads were fortified with the greatest labors. 10. Then the hills along the Flaminian Way were cut through for easy passage -- what is commonly called the "Punctured Peak. " 11. A thousand clans were composed, since he had with great difficulty found two hundred, the majority having been exterminated by the savageness of the tyrants. 12. By fear alone, Volgeses, King of Parthia, was compelled to peace. 13. The Syria for which Palestina is the name, [143] and Cilicia, and Trachia and Commagene, which today we call Augustophratensis, were added to the provinces. Judaea, too, was added. 14. When friends warned him to beware of Mettius Pomposianus, about whom a rumor had been spread that he would rule, he made him a consul, joking in the following cavil: "When will there ever be a memory of a gift so great? " 15. Indeed, he maintained a uniform mode of life during his whole reign. He stayed awake at night and, when public affairs were finished, he admitted his intimates, putting on his shoes and royal vesture while being saluted. Then, after whatever business that had come up was heard, he exercised with a ride, then rested; finally, when he had washed, he, in a quite convivial frame of mind, used to attend dinner. 16. Affection compels one to say more about a good imperator, whom, after fifty-six years from Augustus' death, the Roman state, bled by the savageness of the tyrants, chanced upon, as if by some divine destiny, lest it go completely to ruin. 17. And so, passing the sixty-ninth year of his life, he died, mingling with serious matters the jests in which he always took pleasure. 18. Indeed, first, when a comet had appeared, he said, "That concerns the King of Persia" (whose hair is rather long). Then, exhausted by an exudation of the bowels, he rose up and said, "It becomes an imperator to depart the earth standing. "
10
Titus, called also by his father's name Vespasian, the offspring of a freedwoman mother named Domitilla, ruled two years, two months, and twenty days. 2. Most earnestly devoted from boyhood to the admirable pursuits of probity, soldiery, and letters, he displayed gifts of mind and body in whatever he attempted. 3. When he accepted the care of the fatherland, it is incredible how much he surpassed the man whom he was replacing, especially in clemency, liberality, honor, and contempt of wealth, things which were quite dear to him because, as a result of some things done while he was yet a private citizen, he was believed to have been a particularly passionate lover of luxury [144] and of vice. 4. For, during his father's rule, he obtained the praetorian prefecture and, by means of agents who, spreading insidious things through the theaters and camps, demanded punishment, he oppressed as if convicted of a crime whoever was suspect or opposed to him. Among them, he ordered Caecena, a consular, who had been summoned to dinner and who had scarcely yet left his place at the table, to be slaughtered on account of suspicion of the debauched Bernice, his own wife. 5. Moreover, under his father, verdicts in legal disputes were put up for sale * him desirous of plunder, from which all in general, envisioning and invoking Nero, gravely accepted that he had reached the height of affairs. 6. But these things, having been turned to the better, brought him immortal glory to such a degree that he was called "Treasure" and "Lover of the Human Race. " 7. Then, as he submitted to regal constancy, he ordered Bernice, spurning her marriage with him, to return home, and the flocks of the effeminate to depart -- an act by which he offered, as it were, a sign of intemperance altered. Henceforth, while successors were accustomed to confirm awards and concessions from earlier principes, once he took control by means of an edict he spontaneously decreed such things for those who possessed them. 9. Also, on a certain day, recollecting in the evening that he had not awarded anything to anyone, he said in a laudable and lofty remark, "Friends, we have wasted a day" (because he was of great liberality). 10. Indeed, he carried clemency to the point that he first admonished two men of most distinguished rank because they had conspired against him and were unable to deny that a crime had been contemplated, and afterward he ordered the men, who had been led to the arena, to sit on either side of him, and, when a sword of the mirmillons whose combats were being viewed was intentionally requested, as if for the purpose of examining its edge, he gave it to one and then to the other; to those men, shocked and awed at his courage, he said, "Do you not see that powers are bestowed by Fate, [145] and that action prompted by the hope of gaining or fear of losing them is expended in vain? " 11. In tears he often supplicated his brother Domitian, too, who was hatching plots and agitating friends among the soldiers, not to desire to attain by parricide what by his own volition was going to fall to him and what, since he was a co-holder of potestas, he now possessed. 12. In his time, Mount Vesuvius in Campania began to flame, and at Rome there was a fire for three days and three nights without an evening's respite. 13. Pestilence, too, there was, as much as scarcely ever before. 14. These evils, nevertheless, he relieved with no one being burdened, by means of all sorts of remedies, now renewing the sick through his very own person, now consoling the afflicted with the deaths of his own family members. 15. He lived forty-one years and died among the Sabines, on the same estate as his father. 16. His death was scarcely able to be believed, so much lamentation excited the city and provinces that, calling him a "Public Treasure," as we have said, they mourned the orb of the earth as if it had been deprived of a perpetual guardian.
11
Domitian, son of Vespasian and Domitilla, the freedwoman, brother of Titus, ruled fifteen years. 2. At first, he feigned clemency nor did he seem at this point too inactive at home or in war; on which account he conquered the Chatti and Germans. 3. Law he pronounced most equitably. At Rome he constructed many buildings, whether already begun or from the foundations. 4. With exemplars sought from everywhere, especially Alexandria, he restored libraries consumed by fire. 5. He was so skilled at archery that his arrows flew between the spread fingers of the extended hand of a man positioned far away. 6. Then, cruel as a result of killings, he began to conduct executions of good men and, in the fashion of C. Caligula, forced himself to be called dominus and deus; and slothful, he, with everything laughingly set aside, used to pursue swarms of flies. 7. He was mad with lust, the foul exercise of which, in the language of the Greeks, he used to call ["bed-wrestling"]. 8. Hence, to someone inquiring [146] if anyone was in the palace, the response: "Not even a fly. " 9. Inflamed by these depravities of his and most of all by an injury of words, as a result of which he used to suffer to be called a male prostitute, Antonius, supervisor of Germania Superior, seized imperium. 10. With him brought low in battle through Norbanus Lappius, Domitian, more abominable by far toward the entire family of mankind, even toward his own family members, began raging in the fashion of wild animals. 11. Therefore, in fear of his cruelty and of their own conscience, many formed a plot, with the head chamberlain Parthenius and Stephanus the instigators, and then Clodianus, who expected punishment on account of fraud involving intercepted funds, with Domitia, the tyrant's wife, who dreaded torture by the princeps on account of her love of the actor Paris, also were received into the plot. 12. They pierced Domitian with many wounds after the forty-fifth year of his life. 13. And the senate decreed that his funeral be carried out in the fashion of a gladiator and that his name must be obliterated. 14. In his time, the Secular Games were celebrated.
15. Until this time, men born in Rome or through Italy controlled imperium; henceforth foreigners. For this reason, it is ascertainable that the city Rome has been increased by the virtue of outsiders. For what was the quite wise and moderate Nerva? What the quite divine Trajan? What the quite eminent Hadrian?
12
Cocceius Nerva, born at the town Narnia, ruled sixteen months, ten days. 2. When he had accepted imperium and a rumor quickly arose that Domitian lived and would soon be at hand, he was sufficiently terrified so that, pale and unable to speak, he barely held firm. But, bolstered by assurances received from Parthenius, he was turned to festive blandishments. 3. When he had been joyfully received by the senate in the senate house, , alone from all Arrius Antoninus - a shrewd man and a very close friend of his -, wisely describing the lot of rulers, [147] embraced him and said that he congratulated the senate, people, and provinces, however, in no way Nerva himself, for whom to escape ever-evil principes had been better than, enduring the force of so great a burden, subjections not only to troubles and risks, but also to the assessment of enemies and, equally, of friends, who, since they presume they deserve everything, are bitterer than even enemies themselves, if they do not obtain something. 4. He exempted whatever had previously accrued to the taxes (called the "burdens"); he relieved afflicted cities; girls and boys born to indigent parents he ordered fed at public expense through the towns of Italy. 5. Lest he be alarmed by the approach of the malevolent, he was admonished in the following fashion in a comment of Junius Mauricus, a steadfast man: invited to a social gathering, when he had observed that Veiento, who had, indeed, enjoyed consular honor under Domitian, yet who had persecuted many with secret accusations, was present, when among the conversations mention was made of Catullus, a principle calumniator, and Nerva was saying, "What would he be doing now, if he had survived Domitian? ", Mauricus said, "He would be dining with us. " He was a most learned man and a frequent arbitrator of disputes. 6. Calpurnius Crassus, who was tempting the minds of the troops with grand promises, having been discovered and having confessed, he removed, along with his wife, to Tarentum, while the senate chided his leniency. 7. And when Domitian's murderers were being called to execution, he was so consternated that he was unable to keep from vomiting or from a paroxysm of the bowels, but nevertheless he vehemently objected, saying that it was more fitting to die than to befoul the authority of imperium as a result of the authors of the power that he was to acquire having been betrayed. 8. But the soldiers, with the princeps ignored, slaughtered those they sought, Petronius with a single blow, but Parthenius after his genitals had been torn out and shoved into his mouth †, with Casperius bought off by means of huge payoffs, who, more insolent than the savage crime, compelled Nerva to give thanks among the people to the soldiers, since they had killed the most base and wicked of all [148] mortals. 9. He admitted Trajan to the position of son and to a share of imperium; with him he lived three months. 10. It was he who, with his voice rising in anger as he shouted out very many things against someone by the name Regulus, was seized by a sweat. 11. When it abated, the excessive shivering of his body revealed the beginnings of a fever, nor much later did he end his life in his sixty-third year of age. 12. His body, as formerly that of Augustus, was conveyed with honor by the senate and buried in the tomb of Augustus. On the day on which he died, there was an eclipse of the sun.
13
Ulpius Trajan, from the city Tudertina, called Ulpius from his grandfather, Trajan from Traius, the founder of his paternal line, or named thus from his father Trajan, ruled twenty years. 2. He showed himself to be the sort of man of state that the awestruck abilities of consummate writers have scarcely and with difficulty been able to express. 3. He accepted imperium at Agrippina, the noble colony in Gallia, possessing diligence in military matters, mildness in civil, and largess in supporting citizens. 4. And since there are two things expected of egregious principes -- integrity at home, bravery in arms, and prudence in both -- so great was the quantity of what is best in him that, as if in some due proportion, he seemed to have combined the virtues, except that he was somewhat given to food and drink. 5. He was liberal toward friends and, as much as befit his style of life, thoroughly enjoyed associations. 6. He established baths in honor of Sura, with whose zeal he had secured imperium. 7. With regard to this, he appeared over and above what was necessary to wish to dedicate everything in his name, when it was enough to have said that he improved or repaired. 8. He was certainly tolerant of labor, a devotee of whatever was best and [149] warlike. He highly esteemed very straightforward characters or men most erudite, although he himself was of slight theoretical knowledge and moderately eloquent. 9. But of justice and human and divine law he was as much a deviser of the new as a guardian of the traditional. 10. All of these things were viewed the greater, because, with the Roman state destroyed and prostrated through many and fearsome tyrants, a divinity was thought to have been opportunely bestowed toward the remedy of evils so great to the extent that quite numerous and wondrous things proclaimed his coming. Among these, the main cornice proclaimed in Attic speech from the pediment of the Capitol: ["It will be well"]. 11. The ashes of his cremated body were borne back to Rome and interred in the Forum of Trajan under his column, and an image was placed above it, just as triumphators are accustomed to do, entering the city, with the senate preceding and the army. 12. At that time, more destructively by far than under Nerva, the Tiber flooded with great devastation of close-by buildings; and there occurred a serious earthquake through many provinces and a dreadful plague and famines and fires. 13. To all these things Trajan brought relief through remedies usually excellent, decreeing that the height of houses not exceed sixty feet on account of proneness to collapse and deadly expenses if ever things such as this should come to pass. 14. From this he was deservedly called "Father of his Country. " He lived sixty-four years.
14
Aelius Hadrian, a scion of Itala, born to Aelius Adrianus, a cousin of princeps Trajan, who came from Adria, the town in the Picenum area which also gave the name to the Adriatic Sea, ruled twenty-two years. 2. He was quite considerably learned in literature and was called by many "Greekling. " He devoured the pursuits and customs of the Athenians, having mastered not merely rhetoric, but other disciplines, too, the science of singing, of playing the harp, and of medicine, a musician, geometrician, painter, [150] and a sculptor from bronze or marble who approximated Polycletus and Euphranoras. Indeed, like those things in a way, he, too, was refined, so that human affairs hardly ever seem to have experienced anything finer. 3. With a power of memory beyond that which is believable for anyone, he was able to review by their names places, affairs, troops, and even those absent. 4. He was of immense industry, inasmuch as he made a circuit of all the provinces on foot, outstripping the accompanying retinue, while he revived all towns and increased the orders. 5. For indeed, on the example of the military legions, he had mustered into cohorts workmen, stone-masons, architects, and, of men for the building and beautifying of walls, every sort. 6. He was diverse, manifold, and multiform; as if a born arbiter with respect to vices and virtues, by some artifice he controlled intellectual impulse. He adroitly concealed a mind envious, melancholy, hedonistic, and excessive with respect to his own ostentation; he simulated restraint, affability, clemency, and conversely disguised the ardor for fame with which he burned. 7. With respect to questioning and likewise to answering in earnest, in jest, or in invective, he was very skillful; he returned verse to verse, speech to the speaker, so you might actually believe that he had given advance thought to everything. 8. His wife, Sabina, while she was nearly being incapacitated by servile affronts, was driven to a voluntary death. She used to say openly that, because she had judged his character inhuman, she had taken pains lest, to the bane of the human race, she become pregnant by him. 9. Overcome by a subcutaneous disease which he had long endured placidly, burning and impatient with pain, he destroyed many from the senate. 10. Since peace was procured from many kings by means of tributes, he used to say that he had obtained more by leisure than others had by arms. 11. Certainly he organized the public and palatine offices, though not those of the military, in the [151] form which, with a few things changed by Constantine, persists today. 12. He lived sixty-two years; then he was consumed by a miserable death, weakened by the torment of nearly all his limbs to such a degree that, beseeching his most faithful ministers, he frequently averred that he must be killed and, lest he vent his madness on himself, that a guard of those dearest to him be maintained.
Thomas M. Banchich
Canisius College
Buffalo, N. Y.
NOTES
[[1]]The Epitome de Caesaribus and Its Sources," Review of Die Epitome de Caesaribus, by Jörg Schlumberger, Classical Philology 71 (1976), pp. 258-268, and The Sources of the Historia Augusta, Collection Latomus 155 (Brussels: Universa, 1978).
[[2]]Only after completing the initial draft of my translation did I discover the French version of N. A. Dubois, prepared for the Aurelius Victor volume of the Bibliothèque Latine-Française, 2nd Series (Paris: C L. F. Panckouke, 1846).
[[3]](Leipzig: B. G. Teubner, 1970).
[[4]](Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1993 [Eutropius] and 1994 [Aurelius Victor]).
A BOOKLET ABOUT
THE STYLE OF LIFE AND THE MANNERS
OF THE IMPERATORES
Abbreviated from the Books of Sextus Aurelius Victor
1
In the seven hundred and twenty-second year from the foundation of the city, but the four hundred and eightieth from the expulsion of the kings, the custom was resumed at Rome of absolute obedience to one man, with, instead of rex, the appellation imperator or the more venerable name Augustus. 2. Accordingly, Octavian, whose father was Octavius, a senator, and who was descended in his mother's line through the Julian family from Aeneas (but called Gaius Caesar, his grandmother's brother) was then given the cognomen Augustus on account of his victory. 3. Placed in control, he, per se, exercised tribunician potestas. 4. The region of Egypt, difficult to enter because of the inundation of the Nile and impassable because of swamps, he made into a form of province. 5. By the labor of soldiers, he opened canals, which through neglect had been clogged with the slime of ages, to make Egypt a bountiful supplier of the city's ration. 6. In his time, two hundred million allotments of grain were imported annually from Egypt to the city. 7. He joined to the number of provinces for the Roman people the Cantabri and Aquitani, Raeti, Vindelici, Dalmatae. The Suevi and Chatti he destroyed, the Sigambri he transferred to Gallia. The Pannonii [134] he added as tributaries. The peoples of the Getae and Basternae, aroused to wars, he compelled to concord. 8. To him Persia sent hostages and granted the authority of creating kings. 9. To him the Indians, Scythians, Garamantes, and Aethiopians sent legations with gifts. 10. Indeed, he so detested disturbances, wars and dissensions that he never ordered a war against any race except for just reasons. And he used to say that to be of a boastful and most capricious mind through the ardor of a triumph and on account of a laurel crown -- that is barren, fruitless foliage -- plunged the security of citizens into danger by the uncertain outcomes of battles; 11. and that nothing whatever was more appropriate to a good imperator than temerity: whatever was being done properly, happened quickly enough; 12. and that arms must never be taken up except in the hope of a very significant benefit, lest, because of heavy loss for a trifling reward, the sought-after victory be like a golden hook for fishermen, the damage of which, through its having been broken off or lost, no gain of the catch is able to compensate. 13. In his time, a Roman army and tribunes and propraetor were destroyed beyond the Rhine. So much did he mourn what had transpired that, made unsightly by his dress, hair, and the remaining symbols of mourning, he struck his head with a powerful blow. 14. He used to censure an innovation of his uncle, too, who, calling the soldiers comrades in novel and charming fashion, while he affected to ingratiate himself, had weakened the auctoritas of the princeps. 15. Indeed, toward citizens he was most clemently disposed. 16. He appeared faithful toward his friends, the most eminent of whom were Maecenas on account of his taciturnity, Agrippa on account of his endurance and the self-effacedness of his labor. Moreover, he used to delight in Virgil. He was a rare one, indeed, for making friendships; most steadfast toward retaining them. 17. He was so devoted to liberal studies, especially to eloquence, that no day slipped by, not even on campaign, without him reading, writing, and declaiming. 18. He introduced laws, some new, others revised, [135] in his own name. 19. He added to and ornamented Rome with many structures, glorying in the remark: "I found a city of bricks, I left her a city of marble. " 20. He was gentle, pleasant, urbane, and of charming disposition, handsome in his entire physique, but with large eyes, rapidly moving the pupils of which, in the fashion of the brightest stars, he used to explain with a smile that men turned from his gaze as from the intense rays of the sun. When a certain soldier averted his eyes from his face and was asked by him why he so behaved, he answered: "Because I am unable to bear the lightning of your eyes. "
21. For all that, so great a man did not lack vices. For he was somewhat impatient, a bit irascible, secretly envious, openly fatuous; furthermore, moreover, he was most desirous of holding dominion -- more than it is possible to imagine -- , an avid player at dice. 22. And though he was much at table or drink, to a certain degree, in fact, abstaining from sleep, he nevertheless used to gratify his lust to the extent of the dishonor of his public reputation. For he was accustomed to lie among twelve catamites and an equal number of girls. 23. Also, possessed by the love of the wife of another, when his wife Scribonia had been set aside, he joined Livia to himself as if with her husband's consent. Of this Livia there were already two sons, Tiberius and Drusus. 24. And while he was a servant of luxury, he was nevertheless a most severe castigator of the same vice, in the manner of men who are relentless in correcting the vices in which they themselves avidly indulge. For he damned to exile the poet Ovid, also called Naso, because he wrote for him the three booklets of the Art of Love. 25. And because he was of exuberant and cheerful spirit, he was amused by every type of spectacle, especially those with an unknown species and infinite number of wild animals.
26. When he had passed through seventy-seven years, he died at Nola of a disease. 27. Yet some write that he was killed by a deception of Livia, who, since she had gained information that Agrippa (the son of her stepdaughter, [136] whom, as a result of his mother-in-law's hatred, he had relegated to an island) was to be recalled, feared that, when he had obtained control of affairs, she would be punished. 28. Thereupon, the senate resolved that the dead or murdered man should be decorated with numerous and novel honors. For in addition to the title "Father of his Country," which it had proclaimed, it dedicated temples to him at Rome and throughout the most celebrated cities, with all proclaiming openly: "Would that he either had not been born or had not died! " 29. The first alternative said of a most base beginning, the second of a splendid outcome. For in pursuing the principate he was held an oppressor of liberty and in ruling he so loved the citizens that once, when a three-days' supply of grain was discerned in the storehouses, he would have chosen to die by poison if fleets from the provinces were not arriving in the interim. 30. When these fleets had arrived, the safety of the fatherland was attributed to his felicity. He ruled fifty-six years, twelve with Antony, but forty-six alone. 31. Certainly he never would have drawn the power of the state to himself or retained it so long if he had not possessed in abundance great gifts of nature and of conscious efforts.
2
Claudius Tiberius, son of Livia, stepson of Octavian Caesar, ruled twenty-three years. 2. Since he used to be called Claudius Tiberius Nero, he was, because of his drinking, aptly referred to in jests as Caldius Biberius Mero ["Imbiber of Hot, Straight Wine"]. 3. Before imperium was assumed, he was, under Augustus, sagacious enough and fortunate enough in war that not undeservedly was control of the state entrusted to him. 4. He possessed much knowledge of literature. He was quite renowned for eloquence, but in character most base, grim, greedy, insidious, pretending that he wished what he did not; he seemed hostile to those in whose counsel he was taking pleasure, but well-disposed to those whom he despised. 5. He was better in spur-of-the-moment responses and deliberations than in those planned in advance. 6. Indeed, he fictitiously rejected the principate offered him by the senators (which he certainly did with cunning), [137] darkly exploring what each was saying or thinking: an affair which brought ruin to each who was good. 7. For when men who reckoned that he was sincerely declining the immensity of the imperial burden expressed sentiments in favor of his choice in a long speech, they unexpectedly met their final fates. 8. With Archelaus, their king, removed, he restored Cappadocia to a province. He suppressed the banditries of the Gaetulii. Marobodus, King of the Suevi, he shrewdly encompassed. 9. While he punished with great fury innocent and guilty, members of his own family and outsiders alike, with the skills of the army enfeebled, Armenia was ravaged by the Parthians, Moesia by the Dacians, Pannonia by the Sarmatians, and Gallia by neighboring peoples. 10. After his eighty-eighth year and fourth month, he was murdered in an intrigue of Caligula.
3
Caligula ruled four years. 2. He was the son of Germanicus, and, since he had been born in the camp, was given a cognomen of a military footwear (that is, caligula). 3. Before his principate he was accepted by and dear to all, but in his principate he was such that it was commonly said with justification that there had never been a dominus more terrible than he. 4. In fact, he stained his own three sisters with defilement. 5. He went about in the dress of his personal gods; he used to claim that he was Jove on account of his incest, and Liber, moreover, from his bacchanalian chorus. 6. I am uncertain whether it will have been proper to write about this for posterity, except perhaps since it helps to know everything about the principes, so that the unfit at least may shun such enormities through fear of their reputation. 7. In his palace, he subjected noble matrons to public wantonness. 8. He first, crowned with a diadem, ordered himself to be called dominus. 9. In the space of the three miles which lies between the moles in the Puteolan Gulf, he arranged ships in a double line and in a two-horse chariot drove down a roadway firmed up by an accumulation of sand to approximate earth [138] as if celebrating a triumph, dressed in a golden military cloak, with a horse ornamented in trappings of office and a bronze crown. 10. He perished afterward, struck down by the soldiers.
4
Claudius Titus, son of Tiberius' brother Drusus, paternal uncle of Caligula, ruled fourteen years. 2. When the senate had thought that the family of the Caesars had been exterminated, he was discovered by the soldiers in a hiding place that ill became him, and, since he was simpleminded, he seemed quite harmless to those ignorant men and was made imperator. 3. He was obedient to his stomach, wine, vile lust; simpleminded and almost doltish; lazy and tremulous; subject to the dictates of his freedmen and wife. 4. In his time, Scribonius Camillus was created imperator in Dalmatia and killed forthwith. The Mauri set the provinces ablaze; a force of Musulamii was cut to pieces. The Claudian Aqueduct was opened at Rome. 5. Messalina, his wife, was from the first indulging indiscriminately in extramarital affairs as if it were her legal prerogative: as a result of what she did, many men who abstained through fear were killed. Then, more violently aroused, she had certain of the more noble wives and maidens put up for sale with herself in the fashion of prostitutes, and males were compelled to attend. But if someone ever bristled at such enormities, he was savaged by means of a contrived charge against himself and his entire family, so that he seemed to be more in the power of the ruling man rather than the ruling wife. 6. In the same way, his freedmen, having attained the highest power, were defiling everything with debaucheries, exile, murder, and proscriptions. 7. From among these men, he made Felix prefect of the legions in Judaea. After the Britannic triumph, to Posidonius the eunuch, [139] along with the bravest of the soldiers, he gave arms and medals for a gift, as if to one who had taken part in the victory. He allowed Polybius to walk between the consuls. Narcissus, the secretary, used to surpass them all, deporting himself as dominus of the Dominus himself; and Pallas was exalted by the praetorian insignia. They were so rich that, with him debating about the bankruptcy of the fisc, it was most humorously noised about in a famous elegy that there would be wealth in great profusion for him, if, by the two freedmen, he were admitted into a partnership. 9. In his times, the Phoenix was seen in Egypt, a bird which they say flies every five hundred years from Arabia to remembered locations; and in the Aegean Sea an island suddenly sank. 10. He married Agrippina, daughter of Germanicus, his own brother, who, procuring the empire for her own son, first killed her stepchildren in multiform intrigues, then, by poison, her husband himself. 11. He lived sixty-four years; his death was kept secret a long while, as once before in the case of Tarquinius Priscus. 12. While his attendants simulated grief, Nero, his stepson, obtained the rights of imperium.
5
Domitius Nero, scion of Domitius Ahenobarbus, his father, and Agrippina, his mother, ruled thirteen years. 2. For five years he seemed bearable, whence some have reported that Trajan was accustomed to say that the principes as a group were far different than Nero -- for a five-year period. 3. In the city, he constructed an amphitheater and baths. 4. Pontus he reduced to the status of a province with the permission of King Polemo, from whom Pontus Polemoniacus is named, as likewise the Cottian Alps from the dead King Cottius. 5. For indeed he passed the remainder of his life shamelessly, so that it is embarrassing to commemorate any of this. He went so far that, sparing neither his own decency nor that of others, at last, veiled in the manner of a bride-to-be, [140] with dowry paid, with everyone crowding together in festive fashion, he was married in the presence of the senate. Covered with the skin of a wild animal, he used to forage the sexual organs of either sex with his face. He even contaminated with defilement his own mother, whom he afterward killed. After their husbands were slain, he married Octavia and the Sabina with the cognomen Poppaea. 6. Then Galba, proconsul of Hispania, and Gaius Julius usurped imperium. 7. When Nero learned that Galba approached and that the senate had resolved that, according to ancestral custom, when his neck had been thrust into a yoke, he was to be beaten to death with rods, he, completely deserted, left the city in the middle of the night with Phaon, Epaphroditus and Neophytus, and the eunuch Sporus, whom once, after he had been castrated, he had tried to transform into a woman; and he pierced himself with a blow of his sword, with the impure eunuch about whom we spoke aiding his trembling hand while, since no one had been found earlier by whom he might be struck, he soberly exclaimed: "So, do I have neither friend nor foe? I lived shamelessly, let me die shamefully. " 8. He perished in the thirty-second year of his life. The Persians had been so delighted with him that they sent legations furnishing materials for constructing a monument. 9. Otherwise the provinces as a whole and all Rome exulted in his death to such a degree that the urban masses donned the caps of freedmen and celebrated manumission, as if they had been delivered from a savage dominus.
6
Galba, scion of the noble clan of the Sulpicii, ruled seven months and an equal number of days. 2. He was disreputable toward young men, intemperate with regard to eating, and arranged everything in a council of his three friends, that is, Vinius, Cornelius, and Icelius, to such a degree that they were just as much residents of the Palatine mansion and used to be referred to commonly as "the tutors. " 3. Before dominatio was assumed, he administered many provinces with distinction, treating the soldiers most severely, so that, when he entered [141] the camps, the saying was quickly spread: "Learn to soldier, soldier; this is Galba, not Gaetilicus. " 4. When he was in the seventy-third year of his life, while he advanced in his armor to calm legions inflamed by the faction of Otho, he was killed near the Lake of Curtius.
7
Salvius Otho, sprung from distinguished ancestors from the town Ferentanum, ruled three months -- shameless in his entire life, in his youth most of all. 2. Defeated by Vitellius first at Placentium, then at Betriacum, he transfixed himself with a sword in the thirty-seventh year of his life -- so beloved to his own troops that, when his body was seen, a great many died by their own hands.
8
Vitellius, sprung from noble stock (his father, Lucius Vitellius, a consul) ruled eight months. 2.
He was violent, cruel, and avaricious with profusion. 3. In his time, Vespasian seized the principate in Oriens; conquered by his soldiers in a battle held under the walls of the city, Vitellius, with his hands bound behind him, was led from the palace to which he had removed himself and was paraded as a show before the mob. 4. And lest this man, at all events shameless to the last of the evils which he had done, lower a blushing face, with a sword placed under his chin, half-nude, while many assaulted his face with filth and excrement and, in speech, with other dirt more shameful, he was dragged down the Gemonian Steps where he had ordered Sabinius, Vespasian's brother, to be killed. 5. Transfixed by many blows, he perished. He lived fifty-seven years. 6. All these men whom I have briefly touched upon, especially the family of the Caesars, possessed learning, culture, and eloquence to such a degree that surely they would have covered their modest indiscretions, if they were not -- apart from Augustus -- excessive in all vices together.
9
Vespasian ruled ten years. 2. Among his good deeds, his disregard of animosities was singular [142] to the degree that he wed the daughter of his enemy Vitellius, who had been given a most lavish dowry, to a very eminent man. 3. He used to bear patiently the agitation of his friends, as he was very witty, responding to their jibes with jests. For he wittily softened Licinius Mucianus, with whom as an aide he had reached imperium, insolent by reason of his merits, saying, when another man, a common acquaintance, had been summoned, this alone: "I know that I am a man. " 4. But why is this a surprise with respect to his friends, since he even made light of the oblique pronouncements of advocates and the contumacy of philosophers? 5. Briefly put, he restored the orb of the earth, long faint and feeble. For, first of all, unless they had conducted themselves far too violently, he preferred to mollify followers of the tyrant rather than to destroy them after they had been tortured, having reckoned most prudently that nefarious works are carried out by the majority of the men through fear. 6. Moreover, by laws most equitable and by instruction, and what is stronger, by the example of his own life, he had abolished the majority of vices. 7. He was, nevertheless, weak, as some people wrongly think, with regard to money, since it is sufficiently agreed that through a shortage in the treasury and through the ruin of the cities he had sought new (nor afterward continued) payments of taxes. 8. If owners were lacking, he repaired, by means of resources granted to those willing, a Rome disfigured by fires and by aged ruins, the Capitol, the Temple of Peace, the monuments of the Claudii, and erected many new structures. 9. Through all lands, as is Roman custom, cities were renovated with surprising care; roads were fortified with the greatest labors. 10. Then the hills along the Flaminian Way were cut through for easy passage -- what is commonly called the "Punctured Peak. " 11. A thousand clans were composed, since he had with great difficulty found two hundred, the majority having been exterminated by the savageness of the tyrants. 12. By fear alone, Volgeses, King of Parthia, was compelled to peace. 13. The Syria for which Palestina is the name, [143] and Cilicia, and Trachia and Commagene, which today we call Augustophratensis, were added to the provinces. Judaea, too, was added. 14. When friends warned him to beware of Mettius Pomposianus, about whom a rumor had been spread that he would rule, he made him a consul, joking in the following cavil: "When will there ever be a memory of a gift so great? " 15. Indeed, he maintained a uniform mode of life during his whole reign. He stayed awake at night and, when public affairs were finished, he admitted his intimates, putting on his shoes and royal vesture while being saluted. Then, after whatever business that had come up was heard, he exercised with a ride, then rested; finally, when he had washed, he, in a quite convivial frame of mind, used to attend dinner. 16. Affection compels one to say more about a good imperator, whom, after fifty-six years from Augustus' death, the Roman state, bled by the savageness of the tyrants, chanced upon, as if by some divine destiny, lest it go completely to ruin. 17. And so, passing the sixty-ninth year of his life, he died, mingling with serious matters the jests in which he always took pleasure. 18. Indeed, first, when a comet had appeared, he said, "That concerns the King of Persia" (whose hair is rather long). Then, exhausted by an exudation of the bowels, he rose up and said, "It becomes an imperator to depart the earth standing. "
10
Titus, called also by his father's name Vespasian, the offspring of a freedwoman mother named Domitilla, ruled two years, two months, and twenty days. 2. Most earnestly devoted from boyhood to the admirable pursuits of probity, soldiery, and letters, he displayed gifts of mind and body in whatever he attempted. 3. When he accepted the care of the fatherland, it is incredible how much he surpassed the man whom he was replacing, especially in clemency, liberality, honor, and contempt of wealth, things which were quite dear to him because, as a result of some things done while he was yet a private citizen, he was believed to have been a particularly passionate lover of luxury [144] and of vice. 4. For, during his father's rule, he obtained the praetorian prefecture and, by means of agents who, spreading insidious things through the theaters and camps, demanded punishment, he oppressed as if convicted of a crime whoever was suspect or opposed to him. Among them, he ordered Caecena, a consular, who had been summoned to dinner and who had scarcely yet left his place at the table, to be slaughtered on account of suspicion of the debauched Bernice, his own wife. 5. Moreover, under his father, verdicts in legal disputes were put up for sale * him desirous of plunder, from which all in general, envisioning and invoking Nero, gravely accepted that he had reached the height of affairs. 6. But these things, having been turned to the better, brought him immortal glory to such a degree that he was called "Treasure" and "Lover of the Human Race. " 7. Then, as he submitted to regal constancy, he ordered Bernice, spurning her marriage with him, to return home, and the flocks of the effeminate to depart -- an act by which he offered, as it were, a sign of intemperance altered. Henceforth, while successors were accustomed to confirm awards and concessions from earlier principes, once he took control by means of an edict he spontaneously decreed such things for those who possessed them. 9. Also, on a certain day, recollecting in the evening that he had not awarded anything to anyone, he said in a laudable and lofty remark, "Friends, we have wasted a day" (because he was of great liberality). 10. Indeed, he carried clemency to the point that he first admonished two men of most distinguished rank because they had conspired against him and were unable to deny that a crime had been contemplated, and afterward he ordered the men, who had been led to the arena, to sit on either side of him, and, when a sword of the mirmillons whose combats were being viewed was intentionally requested, as if for the purpose of examining its edge, he gave it to one and then to the other; to those men, shocked and awed at his courage, he said, "Do you not see that powers are bestowed by Fate, [145] and that action prompted by the hope of gaining or fear of losing them is expended in vain? " 11. In tears he often supplicated his brother Domitian, too, who was hatching plots and agitating friends among the soldiers, not to desire to attain by parricide what by his own volition was going to fall to him and what, since he was a co-holder of potestas, he now possessed. 12. In his time, Mount Vesuvius in Campania began to flame, and at Rome there was a fire for three days and three nights without an evening's respite. 13. Pestilence, too, there was, as much as scarcely ever before. 14. These evils, nevertheless, he relieved with no one being burdened, by means of all sorts of remedies, now renewing the sick through his very own person, now consoling the afflicted with the deaths of his own family members. 15. He lived forty-one years and died among the Sabines, on the same estate as his father. 16. His death was scarcely able to be believed, so much lamentation excited the city and provinces that, calling him a "Public Treasure," as we have said, they mourned the orb of the earth as if it had been deprived of a perpetual guardian.
11
Domitian, son of Vespasian and Domitilla, the freedwoman, brother of Titus, ruled fifteen years. 2. At first, he feigned clemency nor did he seem at this point too inactive at home or in war; on which account he conquered the Chatti and Germans. 3. Law he pronounced most equitably. At Rome he constructed many buildings, whether already begun or from the foundations. 4. With exemplars sought from everywhere, especially Alexandria, he restored libraries consumed by fire. 5. He was so skilled at archery that his arrows flew between the spread fingers of the extended hand of a man positioned far away. 6. Then, cruel as a result of killings, he began to conduct executions of good men and, in the fashion of C. Caligula, forced himself to be called dominus and deus; and slothful, he, with everything laughingly set aside, used to pursue swarms of flies. 7. He was mad with lust, the foul exercise of which, in the language of the Greeks, he used to call ["bed-wrestling"]. 8. Hence, to someone inquiring [146] if anyone was in the palace, the response: "Not even a fly. " 9. Inflamed by these depravities of his and most of all by an injury of words, as a result of which he used to suffer to be called a male prostitute, Antonius, supervisor of Germania Superior, seized imperium. 10. With him brought low in battle through Norbanus Lappius, Domitian, more abominable by far toward the entire family of mankind, even toward his own family members, began raging in the fashion of wild animals. 11. Therefore, in fear of his cruelty and of their own conscience, many formed a plot, with the head chamberlain Parthenius and Stephanus the instigators, and then Clodianus, who expected punishment on account of fraud involving intercepted funds, with Domitia, the tyrant's wife, who dreaded torture by the princeps on account of her love of the actor Paris, also were received into the plot. 12. They pierced Domitian with many wounds after the forty-fifth year of his life. 13. And the senate decreed that his funeral be carried out in the fashion of a gladiator and that his name must be obliterated. 14. In his time, the Secular Games were celebrated.
15. Until this time, men born in Rome or through Italy controlled imperium; henceforth foreigners. For this reason, it is ascertainable that the city Rome has been increased by the virtue of outsiders. For what was the quite wise and moderate Nerva? What the quite divine Trajan? What the quite eminent Hadrian?
12
Cocceius Nerva, born at the town Narnia, ruled sixteen months, ten days. 2. When he had accepted imperium and a rumor quickly arose that Domitian lived and would soon be at hand, he was sufficiently terrified so that, pale and unable to speak, he barely held firm. But, bolstered by assurances received from Parthenius, he was turned to festive blandishments. 3. When he had been joyfully received by the senate in the senate house, , alone from all Arrius Antoninus - a shrewd man and a very close friend of his -, wisely describing the lot of rulers, [147] embraced him and said that he congratulated the senate, people, and provinces, however, in no way Nerva himself, for whom to escape ever-evil principes had been better than, enduring the force of so great a burden, subjections not only to troubles and risks, but also to the assessment of enemies and, equally, of friends, who, since they presume they deserve everything, are bitterer than even enemies themselves, if they do not obtain something. 4. He exempted whatever had previously accrued to the taxes (called the "burdens"); he relieved afflicted cities; girls and boys born to indigent parents he ordered fed at public expense through the towns of Italy. 5. Lest he be alarmed by the approach of the malevolent, he was admonished in the following fashion in a comment of Junius Mauricus, a steadfast man: invited to a social gathering, when he had observed that Veiento, who had, indeed, enjoyed consular honor under Domitian, yet who had persecuted many with secret accusations, was present, when among the conversations mention was made of Catullus, a principle calumniator, and Nerva was saying, "What would he be doing now, if he had survived Domitian? ", Mauricus said, "He would be dining with us. " He was a most learned man and a frequent arbitrator of disputes. 6. Calpurnius Crassus, who was tempting the minds of the troops with grand promises, having been discovered and having confessed, he removed, along with his wife, to Tarentum, while the senate chided his leniency. 7. And when Domitian's murderers were being called to execution, he was so consternated that he was unable to keep from vomiting or from a paroxysm of the bowels, but nevertheless he vehemently objected, saying that it was more fitting to die than to befoul the authority of imperium as a result of the authors of the power that he was to acquire having been betrayed. 8. But the soldiers, with the princeps ignored, slaughtered those they sought, Petronius with a single blow, but Parthenius after his genitals had been torn out and shoved into his mouth †, with Casperius bought off by means of huge payoffs, who, more insolent than the savage crime, compelled Nerva to give thanks among the people to the soldiers, since they had killed the most base and wicked of all [148] mortals. 9. He admitted Trajan to the position of son and to a share of imperium; with him he lived three months. 10. It was he who, with his voice rising in anger as he shouted out very many things against someone by the name Regulus, was seized by a sweat. 11. When it abated, the excessive shivering of his body revealed the beginnings of a fever, nor much later did he end his life in his sixty-third year of age. 12. His body, as formerly that of Augustus, was conveyed with honor by the senate and buried in the tomb of Augustus. On the day on which he died, there was an eclipse of the sun.
13
Ulpius Trajan, from the city Tudertina, called Ulpius from his grandfather, Trajan from Traius, the founder of his paternal line, or named thus from his father Trajan, ruled twenty years. 2. He showed himself to be the sort of man of state that the awestruck abilities of consummate writers have scarcely and with difficulty been able to express. 3. He accepted imperium at Agrippina, the noble colony in Gallia, possessing diligence in military matters, mildness in civil, and largess in supporting citizens. 4. And since there are two things expected of egregious principes -- integrity at home, bravery in arms, and prudence in both -- so great was the quantity of what is best in him that, as if in some due proportion, he seemed to have combined the virtues, except that he was somewhat given to food and drink. 5. He was liberal toward friends and, as much as befit his style of life, thoroughly enjoyed associations. 6. He established baths in honor of Sura, with whose zeal he had secured imperium. 7. With regard to this, he appeared over and above what was necessary to wish to dedicate everything in his name, when it was enough to have said that he improved or repaired. 8. He was certainly tolerant of labor, a devotee of whatever was best and [149] warlike. He highly esteemed very straightforward characters or men most erudite, although he himself was of slight theoretical knowledge and moderately eloquent. 9. But of justice and human and divine law he was as much a deviser of the new as a guardian of the traditional. 10. All of these things were viewed the greater, because, with the Roman state destroyed and prostrated through many and fearsome tyrants, a divinity was thought to have been opportunely bestowed toward the remedy of evils so great to the extent that quite numerous and wondrous things proclaimed his coming. Among these, the main cornice proclaimed in Attic speech from the pediment of the Capitol: ["It will be well"]. 11. The ashes of his cremated body were borne back to Rome and interred in the Forum of Trajan under his column, and an image was placed above it, just as triumphators are accustomed to do, entering the city, with the senate preceding and the army. 12. At that time, more destructively by far than under Nerva, the Tiber flooded with great devastation of close-by buildings; and there occurred a serious earthquake through many provinces and a dreadful plague and famines and fires. 13. To all these things Trajan brought relief through remedies usually excellent, decreeing that the height of houses not exceed sixty feet on account of proneness to collapse and deadly expenses if ever things such as this should come to pass. 14. From this he was deservedly called "Father of his Country. " He lived sixty-four years.
14
Aelius Hadrian, a scion of Itala, born to Aelius Adrianus, a cousin of princeps Trajan, who came from Adria, the town in the Picenum area which also gave the name to the Adriatic Sea, ruled twenty-two years. 2. He was quite considerably learned in literature and was called by many "Greekling. " He devoured the pursuits and customs of the Athenians, having mastered not merely rhetoric, but other disciplines, too, the science of singing, of playing the harp, and of medicine, a musician, geometrician, painter, [150] and a sculptor from bronze or marble who approximated Polycletus and Euphranoras. Indeed, like those things in a way, he, too, was refined, so that human affairs hardly ever seem to have experienced anything finer. 3. With a power of memory beyond that which is believable for anyone, he was able to review by their names places, affairs, troops, and even those absent. 4. He was of immense industry, inasmuch as he made a circuit of all the provinces on foot, outstripping the accompanying retinue, while he revived all towns and increased the orders. 5. For indeed, on the example of the military legions, he had mustered into cohorts workmen, stone-masons, architects, and, of men for the building and beautifying of walls, every sort. 6. He was diverse, manifold, and multiform; as if a born arbiter with respect to vices and virtues, by some artifice he controlled intellectual impulse. He adroitly concealed a mind envious, melancholy, hedonistic, and excessive with respect to his own ostentation; he simulated restraint, affability, clemency, and conversely disguised the ardor for fame with which he burned. 7. With respect to questioning and likewise to answering in earnest, in jest, or in invective, he was very skillful; he returned verse to verse, speech to the speaker, so you might actually believe that he had given advance thought to everything. 8. His wife, Sabina, while she was nearly being incapacitated by servile affronts, was driven to a voluntary death. She used to say openly that, because she had judged his character inhuman, she had taken pains lest, to the bane of the human race, she become pregnant by him. 9. Overcome by a subcutaneous disease which he had long endured placidly, burning and impatient with pain, he destroyed many from the senate. 10. Since peace was procured from many kings by means of tributes, he used to say that he had obtained more by leisure than others had by arms. 11. Certainly he organized the public and palatine offices, though not those of the military, in the [151] form which, with a few things changed by Constantine, persists today. 12. He lived sixty-two years; then he was consumed by a miserable death, weakened by the torment of nearly all his limbs to such a degree that, beseeching his most faithful ministers, he frequently averred that he must be killed and, lest he vent his madness on himself, that a guard of those dearest to him be maintained.
