To him the Indians, Scythians, Garamantes, and Aethiopians sent
legations
with gifts.
Aurelius Victor - Caesars
Epitome De Caesaribus
A BOOKLET ABOUT
THE STYLE OF LIFE AND THE MANNERS
OF THE IMPERATORES
Sometimes Attributed to Sextus Aurelius Victor
Translated by Thomas M. Banchich
Canisius College Translated Texts, Number 1
Canisius College. Buffalo, New York
2009
-2nd edition-
PREFACE
Some twenty years ago, in the course of research on Eunapius of Sardis, two studies of Timothy Barnes drew me to the Epitome de Caesaribus [[1]] My belief that there then existed no published translation in any modern language convinced me that, should the opportunity arise, the production of such a translation, together with a commentary, would be a worthwhile project. [[2]] A 1988 summer research grant from Canisius College allowed me to complete a rough version based on the Teubner text of Franz Pichlmayr and Roland Gruendel. [[3]] Kristin Ennis, my student assistant checked my translation and supervised the collection of scholarship on the Epitome that was to figure in the projected commentary. But resumption of teaching duties and Ms. Ennis' graduation forced a suspension of work on both translation and commentary, and these factors, plus commitments to other research projects and administrative duties, made it impossible to devote any extended period of time to the Epitome. In light of this, I was happy to learn of Harry Bird's plan to do a translation of and commentary on the Epitome for the series Translated Texts for Historians, in which his volumes on Eutropius and Aurelius Victor have already appeared. [[4]]
My recent association with the electronic encyclopedia De Imperatoribus Romanis has sent me back to the Epitome in the belief that it might be worthwhile to make my translation, equipped with suitable links to De Imperatoribus Romanis, available in electronic from. These links, I thought, would give to those interested access to some of what would have been included in my commentary, while Professor Bird's forthcoming commentary would doubtless fill any remaining void. Michael DiMaio, of De Imperatoribus Romanis, agreed with my view and oversaw the creation of the necessary connections between encyclopedia and translation.
The translation as it stands now is a thorough revision of the draft completed in 1988. It retains the Teubner textual divisions and also includes in boldface type within boldface brackets -- [ ] -- the pagination of that edition. In addition, it reproduces in boldface the Teubner sigla for various textual difficulties: * for a suspected lacuna, † for a suspected corruption, and < > to enclose editorial additions. Greek works employed in the Epitome have been retained, followed by translations within plain brackets, as, for example, at Epitome 16. 5: "a disorder which the Greeks call [apoplexy]. " 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.
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.
A BOOKLET ABOUT
THE STYLE OF LIFE AND THE MANNERS
OF THE IMPERATORES
Sometimes Attributed to Sextus Aurelius Victor
Translated by Thomas M. Banchich
Canisius College Translated Texts, Number 1
Canisius College. Buffalo, New York
2009
-2nd edition-
PREFACE
Some twenty years ago, in the course of research on Eunapius of Sardis, two studies of Timothy Barnes drew me to the Epitome de Caesaribus [[1]] My belief that there then existed no published translation in any modern language convinced me that, should the opportunity arise, the production of such a translation, together with a commentary, would be a worthwhile project. [[2]] A 1988 summer research grant from Canisius College allowed me to complete a rough version based on the Teubner text of Franz Pichlmayr and Roland Gruendel. [[3]] Kristin Ennis, my student assistant checked my translation and supervised the collection of scholarship on the Epitome that was to figure in the projected commentary. But resumption of teaching duties and Ms. Ennis' graduation forced a suspension of work on both translation and commentary, and these factors, plus commitments to other research projects and administrative duties, made it impossible to devote any extended period of time to the Epitome. In light of this, I was happy to learn of Harry Bird's plan to do a translation of and commentary on the Epitome for the series Translated Texts for Historians, in which his volumes on Eutropius and Aurelius Victor have already appeared. [[4]]
My recent association with the electronic encyclopedia De Imperatoribus Romanis has sent me back to the Epitome in the belief that it might be worthwhile to make my translation, equipped with suitable links to De Imperatoribus Romanis, available in electronic from. These links, I thought, would give to those interested access to some of what would have been included in my commentary, while Professor Bird's forthcoming commentary would doubtless fill any remaining void. Michael DiMaio, of De Imperatoribus Romanis, agreed with my view and oversaw the creation of the necessary connections between encyclopedia and translation.
The translation as it stands now is a thorough revision of the draft completed in 1988. It retains the Teubner textual divisions and also includes in boldface type within boldface brackets -- [ ] -- the pagination of that edition. In addition, it reproduces in boldface the Teubner sigla for various textual difficulties: * for a suspected lacuna, † for a suspected corruption, and < > to enclose editorial additions. Greek works employed in the Epitome have been retained, followed by translations within plain brackets, as, for example, at Epitome 16. 5: "a disorder which the Greeks call [apoplexy]. " 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.
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.
