Titans of History (10 page)

Livia was forced into one final intervention. In
AD
4, during the final rearrangement of his succession plans, Augustus also adopted Agrippa Postumus—Agrippa's sole surviving son. Within two years, Postumus was exiled from Rome, possibly because of allegations that he had been involved in a coup plot against Augustus, though again Livia's hand in events should not be discounted. Nevertheless, by
AD
14 there were signs that Augustus was looking to rehabilitate his last adoptive son. Unwilling to countenance a possible late challenger to Tiberius, Livia is said to have poisoned her own husband, the aged emperor.

After Augustus' death, Agrippa Postumus was quickly murdered, and Tiberius became emperor. Livia continued to be a figure of major importance—not least because her husband had bequeathed her one third of his estate (a highly unusual move). She now became known by the title Julia Augusta. Tiberius had always been appalled by her intrigues, even though they were in his favor; now he resented her interference.

When she died in
AD
29 he did not attend the funeral. He also forbade her deification. Livia's most fitting eulogy was delivered by Augustus's great-grandson, whom she had helped to bring up in her own household. Caligula described her as a “Ulysses in a matron's dress”—his praise perhaps the surest damnation that Livia could ever have received.

Though Tiberius was a competent administrator and talented general, he was all too aware that he was not his adopted father's first choice—nor, indeed, his second or third preference, which perhaps explains why he never seemed comfortable as a ruler. Much of his reign was plagued by internal unrest and political intrigue. In
AD
26, tiring of affairs of state, he moved to a palace
on the island of Capri and spent the last decade of his rule in semi-retirement, leaving the Praetorian prefect, Lucius Aelius Sejanus, as
de facto
day-to-day ruler.

The ambitious Sejanus viewed his new role as a stepping-stone toward absolute power. From
AD
29 he unleashed a terror. His enemies among the senatorial and equestrian classes were falsely accused of treason, tried and executed, making him the most powerful man in Rome. Sejanus also contrived to sideline Tiberius' heirs. On becoming heir to Emperor Augustus in
AD
4, Tiberius had adopted his nephew Germanicus, who became a popular general and later governed the eastern part of the empire. In
AD
19, however, Germanicus died in Syria in mysterious circumstances. Tiberius' own son Drusus died in
AD
23—possibly poisoned by Sejanus, who was looking to further his political ambitions by marrying Drusus' widow Livilla. Tiberius, however, refused him permission to marry her. When two of Germanicus' sons were removed from the scene in
AD
30, the succession looked as though it must fall to Germanicus' surviving son Caligula or to Drusus' son Tiberius Gemellus. In
AD
31 Sejanus, determined to seize power for himself, hatched a plot to eliminate the emperor and the surviving male members of the imperial house. Tiberius had the Praetorian prefect arrested, then strangled and torn to pieces by a mob.

Meanwhile in Capri, Tiberius had devoted himself to more sensual pleasures since moving from Rome. The sensationalist historian Suetonius offers a flavor of what this entailed in his shocking
Life of Tiberius
:

On retiring to Capri he devised a pleasance for his secret orgies: teams of wantons of both sexes, selected as experts in deviant intercourse and dubbed analists, copulated before him in triple unions to excite his flagging passions. Some rooms were furnished with pornography and sex manuals from Egypt—which let the people
there know what was expected of them. Tiberius also created lechery nooks in the woods and had girls and boys dressed as nymphs and Pans prostitute themselves in the open … He acquired a reputation for still grosser depravities that one can hardly bear to tell or be told, let alone believe. He had little boys trained as “minnows” to chase him when he went swimming and to get between his legs and nibble him. He also had babies not weaned from their mother's breast suck at his chest and groin
.

On Tiberius's death in 37
AD
, he was succeeded by Caligula.

c.
4
BC
—
c.
AD
30

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.
Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth
.

The first three of the nine beatitudes (blessings) delivered by Jesus in his Sermon on the Mount

Jesus of Nazareth was the founder of Christianity, whose followers believe that he was the son and earthly manifestation of God. He lived in Judaea and Gallilee under the Romans and the princes of the Herodian dynasty. After working as a carpenter his ministry was short—perhaps one year, no more than three. He preached the coming of the kingdom of God and exhorted his followers to live lives of humility and compassion. He is also reported to have healed the sick and performed miracles. As a result of his activities, he was
crucified, after which Christians believe he rose from the dead and ascended to heaven. His legacy, in the form of the Christian Church, not only underpins much of Western society and culture but also provides spiritual inspiration and guidance to millions of people worldwide.

The story of Jesus' birth is well known, but little is recorded of the rest of his early years. His parents were Joseph, a carpenter, and Mary, who is known as the Virgin, though the Gospels of the New Testament differ over whether Jesus was immaculately conceived and there is much debate as to whether Jesus had brothers and a sister. Competing views of the exact nature and composition of his family continue to proliferate. He was born in the town of Bethlehem during a census that took place at the end of the reign of the Judaean king Herod the Great, who died in 4
BC
. Various groups of pilgrims, including shepherds and “wise men” from the east, visited him at the time of his birth. Like all Jews, he was circumcised in the Temple of Jerusalem and had a dove sacrificed for his blessing.

Jesus was apparently a precociously intelligent child. As a young man he went to be baptized by his cousin, John the Baptist, a prophet who had predicted his arrival. Sometime after this, Jesus became an itinerant preacher and healer, traveling the Jewish areas of Palestine and spreading his message.

The Gospels report that Jesus was able, usually by the laying-on of hands, to cure men and women of blindness, paralysis, leprosy, deafness, dumbness and bleeding. He was also famed for his powers of exorcism—he visited synagogues to cast out demons, thereby apparently curing both mental and physical ailments. It is said that he conferred this ability on his disciples.

Further attention and bigger crowds were attracted by Jesus' ability to perform miracles. Some of his most famous miracles included the ability to walk on water; to multiply small numbers of
fishes and loaves to feed large groups of people; and to turn water into wine. When he cursed a fig tree, it withered, to the amazement of his disciples.

As well as performing miracles, Jesus preached and his main message was the imminence of the kingdom of God, the Apocalypse and Judgment Day in which eternal life awaited those who repented and believed in him. He approved of poverty as a state of grace and chose to surround himself with sinners and the deprived, asserting that he was sent to preach not to the righteous but to those who had strayed. Jesus also taught the forgiveness of enemies and the observance of a humble and pious moral code.

According to some of the Gospels, he saw himself as the Messiah (or Christ), others claimed he used instead the vaguer “Son of Man.” A student of the Jewish prophets, his every act was a conscious fulfillment of the prophecies of Isaiah, Ezekiel and others. But he mocked the Temple's priestly aristocracy and Herodian princelings and that, coupled with his apocalyptic message, made him a threat to the Romans too. Judaea was disturbed by a constant succession of Jewish “pseudo-prophets” and self-declared Messiahs, all of whom were ruthlessly suppressed by the Romans. Jesus remained a practicing Jew and as such he knew that a Jewish prophet had to live and die in Jerusalem. So when, around
AD
30, Jesus went to Jerusalem for Passover, he was a source of considerable concern to the city's governors.

Roman troops were usually stationed in Jerusalem for Passover, as the crowds present spelled trouble. Soldiers would have watched Jesus' triumphant entry into the city, mounted on a donkey. But he created far greater concern when he entered the city's Temple, turning over tables as people convened to pay the temple tax and buy sacrificial pigeons.

The Jewish authorities were understandably aggrieved at the disruption, but the Roman prefect Pontius Pilate had already
crushed a Galilean rebellion in the city. Pilate—notorious for his clumsy violence, tactless blunders and brutal repressions—would not tolerate any Jewish threats, particularly one connected to messianic expectations. Pilate encouraged the high priest to ensure Jesus was silenced. The high priest suborned one of Jesus' disciples, Judas Iscariot, to betray him. After a final meal with his disciples—the Last Supper—at which they shared bread and wine, Jesus led his disciples to the Mount of Olives for prayer. Here, in the garden of Gethsemane, Jesus was identified by Judas, arrested and taken before Caiaphas, the Jewish high priest, who adjudged him guilty of blasphemy. Brought before Pontius Pilate, Jesus was sentenced to death. He was flogged, forced to drag a cross through the streets of Jerusalem, and crucified outside the city in the company of two thieves. It was clear from his crucifixion that his trial and execution were the acts of the Romans: had it been the act of the Jewish high priests, he would have been stoned.

Three days after Jesus' death, sightings of him began to be reported. He did not reappear as a ghost, nor as a reanimated corpse, but was transformed in some mysterious way. After visiting a number of his acquaintances and friends, Jesus ascended to heaven, leaving his followers the task of establishing the Christian Church.

After centuries of persecution, the Christian Church eventually became the dominant religious force in the Western world. While Catholics, Protestants and others have at times been responsible for appalling excesses in the name of their particular denomination or viewpoint, Jesus' philosophy of pacifism, humility, charity and kindness has endured through the ages. Judeo-Christian ideas provide the inspiration for, and foundation of, much of Western political thought, government and law, morals, art, architecture, music and literature.

Yet there is an irony in the story of Christianity: Jesus left no writings; the Gospels were mostly written forty years later, after
the destruction of the Jewish Temple by the Romans in
AD
70. Until then, the Christians, led by members of Jesus's family, had prayed as Jews in the Temple. The destruction of Jerusalem and the fall of the Jews led to the final separation of Christianity from the mother-religion. However it is clear that Jesus saw himself as a Jew and not the founder of a new religion, but certainly a prophet, a reformer and the Son of Man, if not the actual Messiah. It was the dynamic visionary Saul of Tarsus, a Jew converted on the road to Damascus, who as Saint Paul forged Christianity as a universal religion based not so much on Jesus's teachings, but on his sacrificial crucifixion and resurrection and the achievement of grace through faith in Jesus the savior of all mankind. It was Paul—keen to convert Gentiles, not just Jews—who made Christianity a world religion.

AD
12–41

Make him feel that he is dying
.

Caligula's order when any of his victims was being executed, according to Suetonius

Caligula ascended the imperial throne as the young darling of the Romans—and ended his four-year reign with a reputation as an insanely cruel tyrant. Capricious, politically inept and militarily incompetent, sexually ambiguous and perversely incestuous, he went from beloved prince to butchered psychopath in a reign that quickly slid into humiliation, murder and madness.

Caligula—properly Gaius Caesar—was the great-grandson of Augustus, the first emperor of Rome. His nickname Caligula—meaning “little boots”—derives from the miniature army sandals he was dressed in as a boy when he accompanied his father Germanicus on campaign. This made Caligula the favorite mascot of the army. Germanicus died suddenly in
AD
19, followed by Caligula's two elder brothers and his mother Agrippina. Many suspected that Caligula's great-uncle the emperor Tiberius had poisoned the much-loved Germanicus as a threat to his throne. In
AD
31 Caligula went to live with Tiberius at his villa on the island of Capri. It was during this time that the dark side of Caligula's character began to emerge. As the Roman historian Suetonius (albeit not an objective source) later reported, “He could not control his natural cruelty and viciousness, but he was a most eager witness of the tortures and executions of those who suffered punishment, reveling at night in gluttony and adultery, disguised in a wig and a long robe.” Rumors also began to circulate that Caligula was conducting an incestuous relationship with his sister Drusilla.

When Tiberius died in March
AD
37 some said that Caligula had smothered the old man with a pillow. Tiberius had willed that after his death Caligula and his cousin Tiberius Gemellus should rule jointly, but within months of his accession, Caligula had Gemellus murdered. Caligula's lack of political experience, combined with his spoiled arrogance and lust for absolute power, would prove disastrous.

There are many examples of Caligula's megalomania. To repudiate a prophecy that he had as much chance of becoming emperor as he did of riding a horse across the Gulf of Naples, he had a bridge of ships built across the water, over which he rode in triumph, wearing the breastplate of Alexander the Great. It was also said that he elevated his favorite horse, Incitatus, to the consulship. On another occasion, while in Gaul, he ordered his
troops to defeat Neptune by gathering seashells from the shore, as “spoils of the sea.”