Suetonius
Translated by Robert Graves, 1957
Robert Graves may be best known for I, Claudius, his tremendous novel of 1934, but he was also a keen-eyed translator of classical texts. The following extract comes from his translation of Suetonius’ (c. AD 69–c. 122) biography of Claudius’ nephew and predecessor, Caligula. Emperor from AD 37 until his assassination in AD 41, Caligula was renowned for his excesses, which frequently defy belief. Suetonius’ celebrated Lives of the Caesars, which date to the early second century AD, often seem to blur the line between reality and fiction. It is for each of us to decide how much of what Suetonius wrote is true.
No parallel can be found for Caligula’s far-fetched extravagances. He invented new kinds of baths, and the most unnatural dishes and drinks—bathing in hot and cold perfumes, drinking valuable pearls dissolved in vinegar, and providing his guests with golden bread and golden meat; and would remark that Caesar alone could not afford to be frugal. For several days in succession he scattered largesse from the roof of the Julian Basilica; and built Liburnian galleys, with ten banks of oars, jewelled poops, multi-coloured sails, and with huge baths, colonnades and banqueting halls aboard—not to mention growing vines and apple-trees of different varieties. In these vessels he used to take early-morning cruises along the Campanian coast, reclining on his couch and listening to songs and choruses. Villas and country-houses were run up for him regardless of expense—in fact, Caligula seemed interested only in doing the apparently impossible—which led him to construct moles in deep, rough water far out to sea, drive tunnels through exceptionally hard rocks, raise flat ground to the height of mountains, and reduce mountains to the level of plains; and all at immense speed, because he punished delay with death. But why give details? Suffice it to record that, in less than a year he squandered Tiberius’s entire fortune of 27 million gold pieces, and an enormous amount of other treasure besides.
When bankrupt and in need of funds, Caligula concentrated on wickedly ingenious methods of raising funds by false accusations, auctions, and taxes. He ruled that no man could inherit the Roman citizenship acquired by any ancestor more remote than his father; and when confronted with certificates of citizenship issued by Julius Caesar or Augustus, rejected them as obsolete. He also disallowed all property returns to which, for whatever reason, later additions had been appended. If a leading centurion had bequeathed nothing either to Tiberius or himself since the beginning of the former’s reign, he would rescind the will on the ground of ingratitude; and voided those of all other persons who were said to have intended making him their heir when they died, but had not yet done so. This caused widespread alarm, and even people who did not know him personally would tell their friends or children that they had left him everything; but if they continued to live after the declaration he considered himself tricked, and sent several of them presents of poisoned sweetmeats. Caligula conducted these cases in person, first announcing the sum he meant to raise, and not stopping until he had raised it. The slightest delay nettled him, and he once passed a single sentence on a batch of more than forty men charged with various offences, and then boasted to Caesonia,1 when she woke from her nap, that he had done very good business since she dozed off.
He would auction whatever properties were left over from a theatrical show; driving up the bidding to such heights that many of those present, forced to buy at fantastic prices, found themselves ruined and committed suicide by opening their veins. A famous occasion was when Aponius Saturninus fell asleep on a bench, and Caligula warned the auctioneer to keep an eye on the senator of praetorian rank who kept nodding his head. Before the bidding ended Aponius had unwittingly bought thirteen gladiators for a total of 90,000 gold pieces.
While in Gaul Caligula did so well by selling the furniture, jewellery, slaves, and even the freedmen of his condemned sisters at a ridiculous overvaluation that he decided to do the same with the furnishings of the Old Palace. So he sent to Rome, where his agents commandeered public Conveyances, and even draught animals from the bakeries, to fetch the stuff north; which led to a bread shortage in the City, and to the loss of many law-suits, because litigants who lived at a distance were unable to appear in court and meet their bail. He then used all kinds of tricks for disposing of the furniture; scolding the bidders for their avarice, or for their shamelessness in being richer than he was, and pretending grief at this surrender of family property to commoners. Discovering that one wealthy provincial had paid the Imperial secretariat 2,000 gold pieces to be smuggled into a banquet, Caligula was delighted that the privilege of dining with him should be valued so highly and, when next day the same man turned up at the auction, made him pay 2,000 gold pieces for some trifling object—but also sent him a personal invitation to dinner.
The publicans were ordered to raise new and unprecedented taxes, and found this so profitable that he detailed his Guards colonels and centurions to collect the money instead. No goods or services now avoided duty of some kind. He imposed a fixed tax on all foodstuffs sold in any quarter of the City, and a charge of 2½ per cent on the money involved in every lawsuit and legal transaction whatsoever; and devised special penalties for anyone who compounded or abandoned a case. Porters had to hand over an eighth part of their day’s earnings and prostitutes their standard fee for a single act of intimacy—even if they had quitted their profession and were respectably married; pimps and ex-pimps also became liable to this public tax.
These new regulations having been announced by word of mouth only, many people failed to observe them, through ignorance. At last he acceded to the urgent popular demand, by posting the regulations up, but in an awkwardly cramped spot and written so small that no one could take a copy. He never missed a chance of making profits; setting aside a suite of Palace rooms, he decorated them worthily, opened a brothel, stocked it with married women and boys, and then sent his pages around the squares and public places, inviting all men, of whatever age, to come and enjoy themselves. Those who appeared were lent money at interest, and clerks wrote down their names under the heading ‘Contributors to the Imperial Revenue’.
When Caligula played at dice he would always cheat and lie. Once he interrupted a game by giving up his seat to the man behind him and going out into the courtyard. A couple of rich knights passed; Caligula immediately had them arrested and confiscated their property; then resumed the game in high spirits, boasting that his luck had never been better.
His daughter’s birth gave him an excuse for further complaints of poverty. ‘In addition to the burden of sovereignty,’ he said, ‘I must now shoulder that of fatherhood’—and promptly took up a collection for her education and dowry. He also announced that New Year gifts would be welcomed on 1 January; and then sat in the Palace porch, grabbing the handfuls and capfuls of coin which a mixed crowd of all classes pressed on him. At last he developed a passion for the feel of money and, spilling heaps of gold pieces on an open space, would walk over them barefoot, or else lie down and wallow.
1 Caesonia was Caligula’s fourth and final wife.