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The Historians' History of the World 06 [The Early Roman Empire]
- Автор: Gutenberg
- Год: 1905
- Язык: английский
- Жанр: История
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We must be careful notwithstanding to observe that both the shame and the degradation were for the most part confined to the city and its vicinity, which were oppressed by the shadow of the imperial despot.f
Caligula (Caius Julius Cæsar Caligula), 37-41 A.D.
All Rome drew a deep breath at the great news. Macro’s adroitness and the devotion of the Romans to the house of Germanicus induced the senate to confer all the imperial prerogatives on the youthful Caligula. Thus began one of the strangest and most terrible episodes in the history of Rome. The dangerous defects and the baleful forces inherent in the system created by the first two emperors were fated to come to light with amazing rapidity in the course of this young Cæsar’s reign; a reign which it is difficult for the historian to consider critically, because one result of the wrath and contempt most justly evoked by his scandalous misrule has been that of many of his sanguinary and foolish deeds no record except a deliberate caricature has come down to us. The fervid enthusiasm with which the capital hailed the son of Germanicus seemed at first justified by the manner in which Caligula exercised the authority which had now devolved upon him.
Impelled by nervous haste and violent passion in all things, whether good or evil, and relying on neither minister nor favourite, he displayed a restless energy of the type natural to a man of but moderate ability who is wholly deficient in administrative training and incapable of exact thought. His delight at the enthusiastic acclamations of the Roman people inspired this singularly organised being with the best of resolutions; he fully intended to make the Romans happy.
Thus he bore himself at first with modesty and good sense, especially in his dealings with the senate. His liberality to the populace and the soldiers, his pious reverence towards the dead, no less than his consideration for the living members of his house, and the pardon of all persons accused of offences of majestas, together with various liberal ordinances, all conspired to produce a strong impression in his favour. But what most roused the enthusiasm of all classes was that, casting aside the niggardly economy of the emperor Tiberius, he shared freely with them all in the festive humour of “games” of every kind.
For eight months he ruled in this fashion, and at the end of that time his unbridled excesses brought on a dangerous malady, from which he recovered much to the hurt of the Roman Empire and his own reputation. Previous to this time he had lived as in a state of perpetual mental intoxication, brought to a climax probably by the fulsome expressions of popular concern during his illness. Whether the latter really had an ill effect upon his mental faculties or not, the madness of which he thenceforth gave manifest proofs is of a different type; a type to which critical students of the history of imperial Rome have given the name of megalomania or Cæsarian madness, and we meet with it in others besides Caligula.
A man in this condition—sane enough to realise that as long as the material basis of his power, the loyalty of the soldiery and the masses, is unshaken, he will meet with no opposition in the gratification of his maddest whims—may at any moment conceive the idea of testing the validity of his omnipotence in any direction. It is a mere chance whether this display of power is directed towards great or even reasonable ends, or whether it issues in deeds of crime and horror. This is more particularly the case when the monarch in question is the victim of shattered nerves, the child of caprice, and the toy of every passing impulse.
The premonitory signs of the evil to come manifested themselves soon after the beginning of the year 38. Caligula, who chiefly delighted in the company of charioteers, stage-players, and buffoons, began to make a wanton exhibition of his despotic power, thus abruptly breaking with the astute policy of his predecessors. And it was a despotism which ignored the precepts of ancient Roman decorum, which, in sexual relations, overstepped all bounds of law and modesty, nay, even of common decency. To the wearisome admonitions of Macro, who exhorted him to act with some degree of discretion, he replied by forcing both the general and his wife to commit suicide.
Presently, however, the monarch having spent the vast riches of Tiberius in the space of nine or ten months, and being possessed with a mania for building as well as with a passion for games, became aware of a very perceptible limit to his omnipotence. To relieve himself of his financial embarrassments, he had recourse to the most sanguinary as well as to the pettiest and most infamous measures. Capital charges, most of which were decided before the emperor’s own tribunal, became more and more numerous, partly to satisfy Caligula’s growing lust of blood, partly to fill his coffers with the proceeds of confiscation. Trials for offences of majestas were revived as a matter of course (39 A.D.).
The money thus acquired was squandered again and again on objects that could only be called colossal whims. Of these the most notorious was the construction of the ephemeral bridge of boats between Puteoli and Baiæ, across which he caused a substantial highway to be made, with aqueducts and posting stations, after the model of the Appian way, for the sole purpose of crossing it, surrounded by his guards, in the character of triumphator, and celebrating this chaining of the ocean by a gorgeous banquet.
His administration of imperial affairs was characterised by the same whimsical caprice. Having restored for no good purpose the kingdom of Commagene, he bestowed upon his friend and contemporary, M. Julius Agrippa (or Herod Agrippa, born 11 B.C.), grandson of Herod the Great, the greater part of his grandfather’s dominions, most of which had been annexed to Syria under Augustus and Tiberius. On the other hand, he summoned Ptolemy, king of Mauretania (from 23 B.C. onwards), to Rome in the year 40, and there put him out of the way for the sake of his wealth.
Tradition represents all the scenes of Caligula’s visit to Gaul in a light absolutely grotesque. [Some details from Suetonius will be introduced presently.] The shout of triumph after a sortie across the Rhine in which some of his Germanic guards were brought back as sham prisoners, strikes the reader as wholly comic, but we note with indignation that at Lyons Caligula continued the disgraceful system of making money by capital sentences and criminal charges against persons of rank, and recruited his finances by putting interesting and ancient articles from the palace of the Cæsars at Rome up to public auction.
The collection of an army, estimated at some 250,000 men, in the ports of the Morini on the Channel with a view to the conquest of Britain remained nothing but an empty demonstration. It may have induced the British chiefs to avert the danger by a formal act of homage and valuable presents; but tradition represents Caligula as concluding this bloodless expedition with a piece of buffoonery, and after bestowing costly gifts on the soldiers, commanding them to pick up shells on the shore as “spoils won from the ocean.”