Dio's Rome Volume VI Part 1

Dio's Rome.

by Ca.s.sius Dio.

Antoninus begins his reign by having various persons a.s.sa.s.sinated, among them his brother Geta (chapters 1-3).

Cruelty of Antoninus toward Papinia.n.u.s, Cilo, and others (chapters 4-6).

Antoninus as emulator of Alexander of Macedon (chapters 7, 8).

His levies and extravagance (chapters 9-11).

His treachery toward Abgarus of Osrhoene, toward the Armenian king, the Parthian king, and the Germans (chapters 12, 13).

The Cenni conquer Antoninus in battle (chapter 14).

He strives to drive out his disease of mind by consulting spirits and oracles (chapter 15).

Slaughter of vestals, insults to the senate, demise of others contrary to his mother's wishes (chapters 16-18).

Antoninus's Parthian war (chapters 19-21).

Ma.s.sacres of Alexandrians caused by Antoninus (chapters 22-24).

DURATION OF TIME.

Q. Epidius Rufus Lollia.n.u.s Gentia.n.u.s, Pomponius Ba.s.sus (A.D. 211 = a.

u. 964 = First of Antoninus, from Feb. 4th).

C. Iulius Asper (II), C. Iulius Asper. (A.D. 212 = a.u. 965 = Second of Antoninus.)

Antoninus Aug. (IV), D. Coelius Balbinus (II). (A.D. 213 = a.u. 966 = Third of Antoninus.)

Silius Messala, Sabinus. (A.D. 214 = a.u. 967 = Fourth of Antoninus.)

Laetus (II), Cerealis. (A.D. 215 = a.u. 968 = Fifth of Antoninus.)

C. Attius Sabinus (II), Cornelius Annullinus. (A.D. 216 = a.u. 969 = Sixth of Antoninus.)

(_BOOK 78, BOISSEVAIN_.)

[Sidenote: A.D. 211 (_a.u._ 964)] [Sidenote:--1--] After this Antoninus secured the entire power. Nominally he ruled with his brother, but in reality alone and at once. With the enemy he came to terms, withdrew from their country, and abandoned the forts. But his own people he either dismissed (as Papinia.n.u.s the prefect) or else killed (as Euodus, his nurse, Castor, and his wife Plautilla, and the latter's brother Plautius). In Rome itself he also executed a man who was renowned for no other reason than his profession, which made him very conspicuous. This was Euprepes, the charioteer; he killed him when the man dared to show enthusiasm for a cause that the emperor opposed. So Euprepes died in old age after having been crowned in an endless number of horse-races.

He had won seven hundred and eighty-two of them,--a record equaled by none other.

Antoninus had first had the desire to murder his brother while his father was still alive, but had been unable to do so at that time because of Severus, or later, on the road, because of the legions. The men felt very kindly toward the younger son, especially because in appearance he was the very image of his father. But when Antoninus arrived in Rome, he got rid of this rival also. The two pretended to love and commend each other, but their actions proved quite the reverse to be true, and anybody could see that some catastrophe would result from their relations. This fact was recognized even prior to their reaching Rome. When it had been voted by the senate to sacrifice in behalf of their harmony both to the other G.o.ds and to Harmony herself, the a.s.sistants made ready a victim to be sacrificed to Harmony and the consul arrived to do the slaughtering; yet he could not find them, nor could the a.s.sistants find the consul. They spent nearly the whole night looking for each other, so that the sacrifice could not be performed on that occasion. The next day two wolves climbed the Capitol, but were chased away from that region: one of them was next encountered somewhere in the Forum, and the other was later slain outside the pomerium. This is the story about those two animals.

[Sidenote:--2---] It was Antoninus's wish to murder his brother at the Saturnalia, but he was not able to carry out his intention. The danger had already grown too evident to be concealed. As a consequence, there were many violent meetings between the two,--both feeling that they were being plotted against,--and many precautionary measures were taken on both sides. As many soldiers and athletes, abroad and at home, day and night, were guarding Geta, Antoninus persuaded his mother to send for him and his brother and have them come along to her house with a view to being reconciled. Geta without distrust went in with him. When they were well inside, some centurions suborned by Antoninus rushed in a body.

Geta on seeing them had run to his mother, and as he hung upon her neck and clung to her bosom and b.r.e.a.s.t.s he was cut down, bewailing his fate and crying out: "Mother that bore me, mother that bore me, help! I am slain!!"

[Sidenote: A.D. 212 (_a.u._ 965)] Tricked in this way, she beheld her son peris.h.i.+ng by most unholy violence in her very lap, and, as it were, received his death into her womb whence she had borne him. She was all covered with blood, so that she made no account of the wound she had received in her hand. She might neither mourn nor weep for her son, although, untimely he had met so miserable an end (he was only twenty-two years and nine months old): on the contrary, she was compelled to rejoice and laugh as though enjoying some great piece of luck. All her words, gestures, and changes of color were watched with the utmost narrowness. She alone, Augusta, wife of the emperor, mother of emperors, was not permitted to shed tears even in private over so great a calamity.

[Sidenote:--3--] Antoninus, although it was evening, took possession of the legions after bawling all the way along the road that he had been the object of a plot and was in danger. On entering the fortifications, he exclaimed: "Rejoice, fellow-soldiers, for now I have a chance to benefit you!" Before they heard the whole story he had stopped their mouths with so many and so great promises that they could neither think nor speak anything decent. "I am one of you," he said, "it is on your account alone that I care to live, that so I may afford you much happiness. All the treasuries are yours." Indeed, he said this also: "I pray if possible to live with you, but if not, at any rate to die with you. I do not fear death in any form, and it is my desire to end my days in warfare. There should a man die, or nowhere!"

To the senate on the following day he made various remarks and after rising from his seat he went towards the door and said: "Listen to a great announcement from me. That the whole world may be glad, let all the exiles, who have been condemned on any complaint whatever in any way whatever, be restored to full rights." Thus did he empty the islands of exiles and grant pardon to the worst condemned criminals, but before long he had the isles full again.

[Sidenote:--4--] The Caesarians and the soldiers that had been with Geta were suddenly put to death to the number of twenty thousand, men and women alike, wherever in the palace any of them happened to be.

Antoninus slew also various distinguished men, among them Papinia.n.u.s.

--While the Pretorians accused Papia.n.u.s (_sic_) and Patruinus [Footnote: This is Valerius Patruinus.] for certain actions, Antoninus allowed the complainants to kill them, and added the following remark: "I hold sway for your advantage and not for my own; therefore, I defer to you both as accusers and as judges."

He rebuked the murderer of Papinia.n.u.s for using an axe instead of a sword to give the finis.h.i.+ng stroke.

He had also desired to deprive of life Cilo, his nurse and benefactor, who had served as prefect of the city during his father's reign, whom he had also often called father. The soldiers sent against him plundered his silver plate, his robes, his money, and everything else that belonged to him. Cilo himself they conducted along the Sacred Way, making the palace their destination, where they prepared to give him his quietus. He had low slippers [Footnote: Reading [Greek: blahytast] in the place of the MS. [Greek: chlhapast]. This emendation is favored by Cobet (Mnemosyne, N.S., X, p. 211) and Naber (Mnemosyne, N.S., XVI, p. 113).]

on his feet, since he had chanced to be in the bath when apprehended, and wore an abbreviated tunic. The men rent his clothing open and disfigured his face, so that the people and the soldiers stationed in the city made clamorous objections. Therefore Antoninus, out of respect and fear for them, met the party, and, s.h.i.+elding Cilo with his cavalry cloak,--he was wearing military garb,--cried out: "Insult not my father!

Strike not my nurse!" The tribune charged with slaying him and the soldiers in his contingent lost their lives, nominally for making plots but really for not having killed their victim.

[Sidenote:--5--] [But Antoninus was so anxious to appear to love Cilo that he declared: "Those who have plotted against him have plotted against me." Commended for this by the bystanders, he proceeded: "Call me neither Hercules nor the name of any other G.o.d;" not that he was unwilling to be termed a G.o.d, but because he wished to do nothing worthy of a G.o.d. He was naturally capricious in all matters, and would bestow great honors upon people and then suddenly disgrace them, quite without reason. He would save those who least deserved it and punish those whom one would never have expected.

Julia.n.u.s Asper was a man by no means contemptible, on account of his education and good sense as well. He exalted him, together with his sons, and after Asper had walked the streets surrounded by I don't know how many fasces he without warning insulted him outrageously and dismissed him to his native place [Footnote: I.e., Tusculum.] with abuse and in mighty trepidation. Laetus, too, he would have disgraced or even killed, had this man not been extremely sick. So the emperor before the soldiers called his sickness "wicked," because it did not allow him to display wickedness in one more case.

Again he made way with Thrasea Priscus, a person second to none in family or intelligence.

Many others also, previously friends of his, he put to death.]

[Sidenote:--6--]

"Nay, I could not recite nor give the names all over"

[Footnote: From Homer's Iliad, II, verse 488.] of the distinguished men whom he killed without any right. Dio, because the slain were very well known in those days, even makes a list of them. For me it suffices to say that he crushed the life out of everybody he chose, without exception,

"whether the man was guilty or whether he was not ";

[Footnote: From Homer's Iliad, XV, verse 137.] and that he simply mutilated Rome, by rendering it bereft of excellent men. [Antoninus was allied to three races. And he possessed not a single one of their good points, but included in himself all their vices. The lightness, the cowardice, and recklessness of Gaul were his, the roughness and cruelty of Africa, the abominations of Syria (whence he was on his mother's side).] Veering from slaughter to sports, he pursued his murderous course no less in the latter. Of course one would pay no attention to an elephant, rhinoceros, tiger, and hippotigris being killed in the theatre, but he took equal pleasure in having gladiators shed the greatest amount of one another's blood. One of them, Bato, he forced to fight three successive men on the same day, and then, when Bato met death at the hands of the last, he honored him with a conspicuous burial.

[Sidenote:--7--] He had Alexander on the brain to such an extent that he used certain weapons and cups which purported to have belonged to the great conqueror, and furthermore he set up many representations of him both among the legions and in Rome itself. He organized a phalanx, sixteen thousand men, of Macedonians alone, named it "Alexander's phalanx," and equipped it with the arms which warriors had used in his day. These were: a helmet of raw oxhide, a three-ply linen breastplate, a bronze s.h.i.+eld, long pike, short spear, high boots, sword. Not even this, however, satisfied him, but he called his hero "The Eastern Augustus." Once he wrote to the senate that Alexander had come on earth again in, the body of the Augustus, [Footnote: Antoninus meant himself.] so that when he had finished his own brief existence he might enjoy a larger life in the emperor's person. The so-called Aristotelian philosophers he hated bitterly, wis.h.i.+ng even to burn their books, and he abolished the common messes they had in Alexandria and all the other privileges they enjoyed: his grievance, as stated, was the tradition that Aristotle had been an accomplice in the death of Alexander.

This was the way he behaved in those matters. And, by Jupiter, he took around with him numbers of elephants, that in this respect, too, he might seem to be imitating Alexander, or rather, perhaps, Dionysus.

[Sidenote:--8--] On Alexander's account he was fond of all the Macedonians. Once after praising a Macedonian tribune because the latter had shown agility in jumping upon his horse, he enquired of him first: "From what country are you?" Then, learning that he was a Macedonian, he pursued: "What is your name?" Having thereupon heard that it was Antigonus, he further questioned: "How was your father called?" When the father's name was found to be Philip, he declared: "I have all my desire." He straightway bestowed upon him the whole series of exalted military honors and before a great while appointed him one of the senators with the rank of an ex-praetor.

There was another man who had no connection with Macedonia, but had committed many dreadful crimes, and for this reason was tried before him in an appealed case. His name proved to be Alexander, and when the orator accusing him said repeatedly "the bloodthirsty Alexander, the G.o.d-detested Alexander," the emperor became angry, as if he were personally slandered, and spoke out: "If Alexander doesn't suit you, you may regard yourself as dismissed."

[Sidenote:--9--] Now this great Alexandrophile, Antoninus, [kept many men about him, alleging reasons after reasons, all fict.i.tious, and wars upon wars. He had also this most frightful characteristic, that he was fond of spending money not only upon the soldiers but for all other projects with one sole end in view,--to] strip, despoil and grind down all mankind, and the senators by no means least. [In the first place, there were gold crowns that he kept demanding, on the constant pretext that he had conquered some enemy or other (I am not speaking about the actual manufacture of the crowns,--for what does that amount to?--but the great sums of money constantly being given under that name by the cities, for the "crowning" (as it is called) of their emperors). Then there was the provisions which we were all the time levying in great abundance from all quarters, sometimes seizing them without compensation and sometimes spending a little something on them: all this supply he presented or else peddled to the soldiers. And the gifts, which he demanded from wealthy individuals and from states. And the taxes, both the new ones which he published and the ten per cent. tax that he inst.i.tuted in place of the twenty per cent. to apply to the emanc.i.p.ation of slaves, to bequests left to any one, and to all gifts; for he abolished in such cases the right of succession and exemption from taxes which had been accorded to those closely related to persons deceased.

This accounts for his giving the t.i.tle of Romans to all the men in his empire. Nominally it was to honor them, but his real purpose was to get an increased income by such means, since foreigners did not have to pay most of those taxes. But aside from all these] we were also compelled to build at our own expense all sorts of dwellings for him whenever he took a trip from Rome, and costly lodgings in the middle of even the very shortest journeys. Yet not only did he never live in them but he had no idea of so much as looking at a single one. Moreover, without receiving any appropriation from him we constructed hunting-theatres and race-courses at every point where he wintered or expected to winter.

They were all torn down without delay and apparently the sole purpose of their being called into existence was to impoverish us.

[Sidenote:--10--] The emperor himself kept spending the money upon the soldiers (as we said) and upon beasts and horses. He was forever killing great collections of wild beasts, of horses, and also of domestic animals, forcing us to contribute the majority of them, though now and then he bought a few. One day he slew a hundred boars at once with his own hands. He raced also in chariots, and then he would wear the Blue costume. In all undertakings he was exceedingly hot-headed and exceedingly fickle, and besides this he possessed the rascality of his mother and of the Syrians, to which race she belonged. He would put up some kind of freedman or other wealthy person as director of games merely that in this occupation, too, the man might spend money. From below he would make gestures of subservience to the audience with his whip and would beg for gold pieces like one of the lowliest citizens. He said that he used the same methods of chariot-driving as the Sun G.o.d, and he took pride in the fact. Accordingly, during the whole extent of his reign the whole earth, so far as it yielded obedience to him, was plundered. Hence the Romans once at a horse-race uttered this among other cries: "We are destroying the living in order to bury the dead."