TWO
Two Years as Princeps
The journey from Misenum to Rome took ten days. As the young emperor, dressed in mourning, accompanied the body of Tiberius, he received striking demonstrations of sympathy from the population. “His progress was marked by altars, victims, and blazing torches, and he was met by a dense and joyful throng, who called him, besides other propitious names, their ‘star,’ their ‘chick,’ their ‘babe,’ and their ‘nursling’ ” (Suet. Cal. 13). Germanicus’s prestige and popularity had survived the reign of Tiberius and were now transferred to his remaining son — in more intense form because the other family members had met such tragic fates. Suetonius reports that Caligula was “the emperor most earnestly desired” (exoptatissimus princeps) by the inhabitants of the provinces and by the soldiers who had known him as a child, just as he was also by the whole population of the city of Rome (Suet. Cal. 13). When he entered the capital, the center of the ancient world in which he had not set foot for the past six years, the celebrations are said to have gone on for almost three months, and more than 160,000 animals were sacrificed — and eaten.
Figure 3. Bust of Caligula. Worcester, Massachussets, Museum of Art, Acc. 1914.23.
But how did the aristocracy react to the twenty-four-year-old new ruler? Would the flattery, denunciations, and intrigue continue as they had under Tiberius? And how would the young Augustus behave toward the senators? It was from their circle, after all, that the criminal charges against his mother and brothers had originated, and the Senate as a whole had pronounced the verdicts against them. After nearly seventy years of sole rule under Augustus and Tiberius, it had become evident that an emperor’s success or failure rested above all on the delicate business of communicating with his fellow aristocrats.
Caligula’s first step was to deliver a speech at a session of the Senate to which representatives of the equestrian order and the people had been invited. According to Cassius Dio’s account, he flattered the senators, promising to share his power with them and to do all he could to please them. He even referred to himself as their son and ward. Specifically, he announced that he was putting an end to trials for maiestas, which had had such dreadful effects on the aristocracy and its relationship with the emperor. All those who had been exiled or imprisoned under Tiberius would regain their freedom, Caligula declared. He ordered all the documents connected with those trials, which his predecessor had preserved and which also concerned the charges against his mother and his brothers, to be publicly burned in the Forum (not without securing copies of them first, as it would later transpire). This was an effort to assuage the fears of senators and knights who had played a prominent role in the trials, and to close this terrible chapter of the past. Caligula emphasized his intention truly to begin anew by his reaction to the first denunciation for conspiracy he received: He ignored it, and declared that he could have done nothing to arouse anyone’s hatred. He would pay no heed to informers.
How to commemorate the deceased emperor was another question. As Tiberius’s adopted grandson and successor Caligula had to preserve the proper degree of respect for his memory, but the dominant attitude in the Senate was still detestation. In his first written communication to the Senate Caligula had requested that Tiberius be granted the same honors that Augustus had received after death, elevation to the status of a god and inclusion in the Roman pantheon. The senators had not overcome their reluctance to comply with this request before the new emperor’s arrival, but neither had they taken the opposite step (which would no doubt have reflected their feelings more accurately) of officially condemning his memory (damnatio memoriae) and thereby expunging him from the public records. Caligula let the matter rest, in an undecided state that certainly matched the personality of the deceased; the body lay in state and was then buried in Augustus’s mausoleum in an elaborate public ceremony. Delivering the funeral oration, the new emperor mainly recalled Augustus and Germanicus and placed himself in their tradition.
Caligula then proceeded to honor Tiberius’s bequests — even though his will had been declared invalid. The members of the Praetorian Guard received 1,000 sesterces each, roughly the annual pay of an ordinary soldier. Forty-five million sesterces were paid out to the people of Rome; the urban cohorts, a kind of police force, and the firemen, who also exercised paramilitary functions, each received 500; and every citizen soldier in the Empire was given 300 sesterces. In addition the new emperor ordered distribution of the bequests in Livia’s will, which Tiberius had ignored after her death eight years earlier. Finally Caligula added his own contribution: He doubled the amount for the Praetorian Guard, and granted 300 sesterces to the head of every family in Rome. The money that rained down on the citizens of Rome at Caligula’s accession left a lasting impression of his generosity, a virtue loved above all by soldiers and the urban plebs, and one that made emperors popular.
The payments to the Praetorian Guard allowed Caligula to provide a striking reminder of his own power. Before the assembled Senate, he inspected his bodyguards, who had sworn an oath of loyalty to him. It was not lost on the spectators at the drill that the officers and men under Macro’s command were largely the same men who had not so long ago, on the orders of the previous emperor or Sejanus, arrested, tortured, or beheaded no small number of their Senate colleagues.
A further symbolic act honored the members of Caligula’s immediate family who had predeceased him. Despite stormy seas Caligula sailed at once to the islands where his mother and brother had died, exhumed their remains himself, and brought them back to Ostia, Rome’s port. From there he had them transported up the Tiber to the city by ship. At midday, when the streets were most crowded, prominent knights carried the two urns through Rome on litters normally used for transporting statues of gods. The procession ended at the Mausoleum of Augustus, where the remains were interred. The whole ceremony was arranged to resemble a delayed triumph for the family of Germanicus: A field marshal’s standard flew from the stern of the ship, and Caligula wore a purple-bordered toga and was accompanied by lictors, as if he himself were a victorious commander. It was decreed that an image of his mother, Agrippina, mounted on a carriage, would henceforth accompany all festival processions. The month of September was renamed after Germanicus, who joined Julius Caesar and Augustus as the only men so honored.
These extraordinary honors for the dead were complemented by others for the living members of Caligula’s family. The Senate granted to his grandmother Antonia Minor the title Augusta and all the further marks of distinction once given to Livia. The emperor chose his uncle Claudius, who until then had received no attention at all, to serve with him as co-consul during his first term in that office. And on behalf of his sisters Drusilla, Agrippina, and Livilla he decreed that the following sentence be included in all public oaths: “I will not hold myself and my children dearer than I do Gaius and his sisters” (Suet. Cal. 15.3). The sisters were further awarded the privilege of sitting with him in the emperor’s box when they attended games at the Circus. Lastly, Caligula adopted Tiberius Gemellus, only some seven years younger than himself, and granted him the toga virilis along with the title “Prince of the Youth,” which Augustus had given to the grandsons whom he intended to make his heirs. Thus Caligula’s co-heir and rival for the throne, who had been passed over when Tiberius’s will was set aside, became his son — and the favored candidate to succeed the brand-new emperor.