A remark attributed to the later emperor Domitian runs: “Emperors’ claims to have uncovered a conspiracy are not believed until they have been killed.” If we assemble all the details in the various accounts, then this insight appears to apply to the present case. Dio goes on to mention that disagreements had arisen, clouding the relationship between Caligula and the people. At plays the crowd had chanted loud protests against informers, refusing to stop and demanding that they be handed over. This reveals that — for the first time under Caligula’s rule — charges had been filed against a number of high-ranking aristocrats, including some who had their own supporters among the people, and that they were facing trial.
Soon afterward Caligula delivered a speech in the Senate (about which more will be said later), in response to which the Senators expressed their gratitude “that they had not perished like the others.” We can infer from this that many more of them were considered guilty of the same crime. They voted to offer sacrifices to his philanthropy in the future. (“Philanthropy” [philanthrōpia in Greek, clementia in Latin] was the technical term for the mercy or benevolence that a ruler showed to someone who had opposed him.) And last they approved honors for the emperor including an “ovation,” the “small” triumphal procession usually granted after military victories, “as if he had defeated some enemies” (Dio 59.16.9 and 11).
The evidence thus suggests a course of events as follows: In the period after Caligula resigned his consulate on 30 January, a conspiracy was uncovered in which many senatorial aristocrats had participated. The noteworthy feature of this conspiracy was that its leaders were neither old enemies of Germanicus’s family nor former adherents of Gemellus, whom Caligula had prosecuted after his illness. We know this because it is expressly reported that some of them had been charged with similar crimes in the reign of Tiberius, that is, at a time when opposition to the family of Germanicus or support for Gemellus was more likely to lead to political advantage than to trouble. There is no indication that old scores were being settled, then. Furthermore it was the “leading men” of the aristocracy, that is to say consulars, who had initiated the conspiracy. In other words the leaders were men who, while they may have disliked the emperor’s enthusiasm for Circus games and displays of extravagance and felt threatened by his plans for conquest, had received generally supportive and accommodating treatment at his hands.
The conspirators were charged and condemned in court proceedings. Was this Caligula’s only reaction? In his account of the first half of 39 Dio mentions that some former senatorial officeholders stood trial for corruption. Several times, he reports, the senator Gnaeus Domitius Corbulo had drawn attention to deficiencies in the Roman road network that had arisen in Tiberius’s time. Now with his help Caligula proceeded against all the men who had served as curatores viarum in the last few decades and received funds for road repairs but had not used them for the intended purpose. They — or the contractors whom they had hired — were required to pay the money back in full. Dio further mentions by name five senators who are supposed to have been victims of Caligula’s persecution at that time. Investigation of these cases, however, provides no foundation for the claim that he had senators liquidated in great numbers.
Gaius Calvisius Sabinus, just returned from serving as governor of Pannonia, and his wife were accused of crimes and took their own lives, according to Dio. We learn nothing about the charges against the husband, but the wife was said to have inspected troops acting as camp guards in the province and to have watched soldiers as they drilled. As it happens, Tacitus in a different context records that the prosecution of the lady, at least, was entirely justified. She was accused of going about the camp dressed as a man and of committing adultery with an officer in the staff headquarters. The next man named is Titius Rufus, who committed suicide because he had said that the Senate thought differently than it spoke. This statement was undoubtedly correct, but for precisely that reason it is more likely that he was denounced by opportunistic colleagues rather than persecuted by the emperor. The praetor Junius Priscus was accused of various transgressions but the real reason for his trial, according to Dio, was his wealth. When it transpired after his death that he had not been particularly rich, Caligula is supposed to have remarked that Priscus had deceived him and could have remained alive. It is not possible to assess his case, since the charges against him are not named.
The case of Gnaeus Domitius Afer, a well-known orator of the time, is a different matter. He proposed an inscription to honor Caligula, but the emperor took offense instead. Reportedly Afer was able to save his own life only by resorting to servile flattery. He cannot have been in danger of death, however, since Dio writes that Afer had good connections to Caligula’s freedman Callistus and was made a consul by the emperor soon afterwards — in the extremely volatile political atmosphere of the next conspiracy. Finally, Seneca is mentioned as someone who just barely escaped becoming a victim, because an outstanding speech he had delivered in the Senate aroused Caligula’s anger. He was allegedly saved by the intervention of a woman close to the emperor, who told Caligula that he was suffering from an advanced case of consumption. This account does not seem very convincing either. Suetonius reports that Caligula made fun of Seneca’s style and characterized it as “sand without lime”—an assessment that could have been made by a modern philologist as well. Seneca’s oratory can thus hardly have been the grounds for his jeopardy.
On the whole then, beyond sentences for conspirators and the punishment of corrupt magistrates, there is no conclusive evidence that members of the aristocracy were prosecuted at that time. Caligula’s reaction to the conspiracy of the consulars took an altogether different form. Although he did not resort to physical force, the effectiveness of his response left nothing to be desired.
The emperor began by giving a speech in the Senate from which Cassius Dio provides extensive excerpts. In it he said things that the venerable assembly had never before heard, starting with a critical summary of how the members of the senatorial order had behaved over the past few decades. Caligula reproached the senators and people for the criticism they had heaped on his predecessor, Tiberius — in which he himself had previously taken part. “Thereupon,” writes Cassius Dio, “he took up separately the case of each man who had lost his life, and tried to show, as people thought at least, that the senators had been responsible for the death of most of them, some by accusing them, others by testifying against them, and all by their votes of condemnation. The evidence of this, purporting to be derived from those very documents that he once declared he had burned, he caused to be read to them by the imperial freedmen.” And he added, “If Tiberius really did do wrong, you ought not, by Jupiter, to have honored him while he lived, and then, after repeatedly saying and voting what you did, turn about now. But it was not Tiberius alone that you treated in a fickle manner; Sejanus also you first puffed up with conceit and spoiled, then put him to death. Therefore I, too, ought not to expect any decent treatment from you” (Dio 59.16.2–4).
This was a personal and direct attack on the assembled senators. Caligula presented a historical analysis of the behavior of the aristocracy under Tiberius, evidently supported by the advance work and documentary research of his freedmen. He confronted the senators with the fact that members of their own body, motivated by opportunistic desires to win the emperor’s favor, had denounced other members. Furthermore, they themselves had pronounced the sentences of death against their colleagues. One can vividly imagine how the members of that august body felt as the freedmen on the imperial staff quoted from the records the statements they themselves had made during the trials for treason and then read the verdicts that the whole Senate had handed down. It must have been even worse, however, that in their presence — to their consternation, being senators — Caligula broached the subject of the opportunism and flattery that had characterized the Senate’s communication with the emperor since the time of Augustus. By confronting the aristocrats in the Senate first with the honors they had bestowed on Tiberius and Sejanus and then with their completely contrary behavior after the two men’s deaths — actions no one could deny — he exposed their behavior toward the emperor as consisting of hypocrisy, deception, and lies.