Transcript of 534. Emperors of Rome: Sex Secrets of the Caesars (Part 1)

Thank you for listening to The Rest is History. For weekly bonus episodes, add free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much loved chat community, go to therestishistory. Com and join the club. That is therestishistory. Com. Now, all Nero's attendance, urgent him to place himself beyond the reach of the indignities that were closing in on him. And so he ordered them as he watched to dig a hole the size of his body and to collect such fragments of marble as could be found and to bring water and firewood ready for the disposal of what would very soon be his corpse. And as these things were being done, so he wept and cried repeatedly, that I should die a mere artisan. When, during the delay, caused by these preparations, a letter was brought to his freedman by courier, he snatched it and learned by reading it that the Senate had claimed him a public enemy and ordered a search made for him so that he might be punished according to the ancestral fashion. And when, after asking what this punishment might be, he learned that a man sentenced to it would be stripped naked, have his neck put in a fork, and then be beaten to death with rods.

So terror-stricken was he that he grabbed two daggers he had brought with him and tested the blades of both. After which, on the grounds that the fatal hour had not yet arrived, he put them away again. But then came the horseman who had been commissioned to bring him back alive, closing in upon him. When he heard their approach, he said in a shaking voice, quoting Homer, The thundering of swift-footed horses echoes in my ears. Whereupon, with the assistance of his secretary, Epaphroditus, he slit his throat. Although still on the margins of consciousness, when a centurion came bursting in and pretending to have come with the aim of helping him, held a cloak up to staunch his wound, he only muttered, Too late and such loyalty. With these words, he died, and so fixedly did his eyeballs bold from their sockets that onlookers were filled with horror and dread. That tremendous passage is describing the death of Nero. On the ninth of June, 68, it was written by the Roman scholar Gaius Suttonius Tranquilus in his great collection of biographies, The Lives of the Caesars, the 12 Caesars, depending on what you call it. I'm delighted to say that that was translated by a top amateur translator.

That gifted young amateur, Tom, is yourself, because this is your new translation of Suttonius coming out in Penguin Classics on the 13th of February. Very exciting. Thanks, Dominic.

It is, and I believe it's available for pre-order. Everyone, fill your boots. The Lives of the Caesars, as you said, they are probably along with the biographies written by Plutarch, the most celebrated of all the biographies that we've received from the ancient world. These, I think, are with without doubt the most glamorous, the most scabrous, occasionally the most shocking. As you said, they describe the lives of 12 Caesars, and they range from the life of Julius Caesar, who was born in 100 BC, up to the Emperor Mission, who died in AD96. That's covering two centuries, probably the most dramatic, the most spectacular two centuries in all of Roman history. These are rulers who, in succession, were the most powerful men in the Roman Empire. We're at the heart of power.

Yeah. Let's just run through very quickly for those people who don't know. We kick off with Julius Caesar, crosses the Rubicon, it toples the Republic, but famously, he's not the first Emperor, as everybody thinks. He's the one we kick off with. Then it's Augustus, the first Emperor, arguably the greatest politician in Western history, who establishes the template for what follows. Then we have Tiberius. We will be doing an episode about Tiberius, won't we? We will. And of how How would you describe him in a sentence? Grizzled, experienced general who misbehaves on the island of Capri. Or does he?

We will be exploring that in our next episode. He is then succeeded by Caligula.

Mad.

We'll be doing an episode on him. Claudius, we'll be doing an episode on him. Then Nero, who we've just been hearing about. With Nero's death, the family of Augustus comes to an end. You then have a year of bloodshed and civil war, AD69, when four emperors in succession rule. That is Galba, Otho, Viteleus, and Vespasian. Again, Suetonius describes the lives of all four men. It's Vespasian who establishes himself as Emperor. He establishes a new dynasty and is succeeded by his two sons in turn. So first Titus and then Domitian. We begin, Julius Caesar, as you said, is born into a Rome that is still a Republic. Domitian is an Emperor who demands that the Romans call him dominus, master. So that is essentially the evolution from a Republican system to a much more autocratic system.

The fascination of these stories is both that they describe the evolution of Rome, so from Republic to Empire. But the other element of it is the extraordinary vividness and richness of the lives that it describes and the detail. So many of the things that people best know, that people immediately reach for about the Roman emperors, particularly Particularly the sex and violence. Many of these things come from these biographies, don't they? We mentioned Tiberius. Tiberius, when he's in retirement, unbelievable sexual depravation, or is it, on the island of Capri, or Nero or Caligula. I mean, these stories all come from Suttoneus, by and large, don't they?

Or Caesar crossing the Rubicon, or Caesar being murdered. In fact, the assassination of Caligula in his own palace, the murder of Phytelius in AD69, Being sliced up like sashimi on the steps leading up from the Forum to the Capitol. He's completely fascinated by how emperors meet their deaths. But important to emphasize as well that he's fascinated essentially in pretty much everything. There is almost no detail that he doesn't explore. We see the Caesars, rather as we might, contemporary politicians in a political context. We see them wrestling with PR scandals or funding shortfalls or foreign policy crises. We're shown their tastes, their foibles, the excentricities that they indulge in. We see them eat, we see them drink, we see them get married, we see them get divorced, we see them make jokes, take exercise or not take exercise, urinate, laugh at someone, breaking wind, tying their sandals, all these details. I think that it's not just that it brings the Caesars alive, but it brings ancient Rome alive.

You made this point in your introduction. For people who are hesitating whether or not to buy your translation, I have to say It obviously pains me to say this, especially to say it publicly, but it's prefaced by a brilliant introduction by you. Oh, you're very kind, Dominic, where you explain all the context and whatnot. You made the point that the pharos of Egypt or the great rulers of Persia, these people People are just names, really. It's very hard for us to get a sense of their personalities. But thanks to Soutonius, you have a real sense. You know what Augustus said, his appearance of modesty and simplicity. You know the tastes that Nero had, what clothes he wore, all of these details that allow them to speak to us as flesh and blood, three-dimensional characters in a way that's not really the case with any other people or very few other people from the ancient world.

Yeah. It's often assumed that our interest in ancient Rome over and above, say that of Egypt or Persia, whatever, is maybe because of Eurocentrism or whatever. But I truly think that it is simply because these rulers live more vividly than any other rulers in antiquity. This is largely down to Suetonius. You said that Suetonius is interested in violence. He is also, of course, massively interested in sex. I would say that probably of all the things that Antonius is known for, that is what he is probably, well, you might say, almost most notorious for. The details that you get about the sex lives of the Caesars, it was capable of making the Romans themselves slightly go pale. We have a poem that was written in the late IV century, admittedly a time when the Roman elites were starting to become Christian. This is by the poet Claudian. He wrote about the early Caesars, the Caesars recorded in Suetonius, his biographies, and he wrote, The stains of the crimes committed by the men of old, so that's the first Caesars, the 12 Caesars, will endure for all time. Condemnation will never be lacking of the monstrous deeds perpetrated by the house of Caesar, Nero's unspeakable depravities and those vile cliffs of Capri, the lair of an aged pervert.

That aged pervert, as you've suggested already, is Tiberius, who retires there and gets up to it, supposedly unspeakable things. Of course, we have mentioned Suetonius quite recently because we did a series on Charlemagne. Einhardt, the great biographer of Charlemagne, is very influenced by Suetonius and models his biography of Charlemagne on that of Augustus. There's the sense in the Middle Ages that if you want to learn about how to exercise power, you do go to Suetonius, you read these biographies. But in the Middle Ages as well, there are people who are reading these lives to be titulated and shocked as well as to be inspired. The most notorious example of someone who is influenced by what he reads in Suetonius to a repellent degree is a figure called Gilles De Ray, who in the 15th century is fighting the English in the Hundred Years War, actually alongside Joan of Arques, it said. He has read Suetonius, and he reads about all these hideous crimes that Tiberius is supposed to have perpetrated against young children and ends up becoming a child killer, and is hanged for this in 1440. That's a reflection of the strange ambivalence of Suetonius's reputation.

He's writing models for kings, but he's simultaneously inspiring unspeakable crimes. This is a tension that runs throughout the Renaissance when he's a huge business. You will get medallions, pictures, portraits, coins of the 12 Caesars throughout the Renaissance, going into the Enlightenment, But at the same time, if you think of the Enlightenment, we did an episode on the Marquis de Sade. The Marquis de Sade, of course, has a copy of Suetonius in his library. Dominic, we also did a series on public schools in the Victorian period. We did indeed. The thing that I've always thought is mad about that is that Suetonius is a school text for school boys at rugby under the muscularly Christian Dr Arnold. These boys are being given Even texts of Suetonius, where the more dirty passages has asterisks. But of course, if they end up reading Latin very fluently, their privilege is that they can go and get the full Latin copy and read these disgusting accounts So essentially, Dr. Arnold is training them to read about beastiness.

There's quite a lot of beastiness in your translation, isn't there? Because obviously, the first thing I did when I saw your translation was to check for the beastly bits, and they're very much present and correct. You haven't gone for the asterisk. I have to say, if there are people listening to this podcast with 10-year-old children who love the Romans, this probably is not the ideal book because there's some quite pungent behavior, isn't there? I think it's fair to say.

Suetonius contains probably the most revolting passages in the whole of ancient literature. I would guess if I were to say the single most revolting sentence, stuff that we don't want to repeat on this podcast. But having said that, I would say that obviously today, throughout the 20th century, in fact, we've tended to pride ourselves on not being prudish in a Victorian manner. We don't put in the asterisks. I haven't in this translation. There's a sense in which the themes of sex and violence in Suetonius have come into their own in popular culture in the 20th century. That's highlighted by the identity of the man who translated the previous edition of Suetonius's Lives for Penguin Classics, who's none other than Robert Graves.

The author of iClaudius.

Yes.

Robert Graves obviously turned the raw material from the 12 Caesars into his novels, iClaudius and Claudius, the God. Iclaudius then became a BBC TV series in the 1970s, hugely successful. The appeal of it, I guess, both in iClaudius and actually in Suttonius's original, is it's got a little bit of the soap opera about it, hasn't it? The sex and the violence, the narrative twists, the melodrama, because it is a family. Certainly, the first few lives are a family melodrama, the family of Augustus Augustus and the crazy things that happen.

Yeah. You have the figure of Augustus, who's the patriarch. You have a murderous competition to succeed him. In the figure of Livia, Augustus's wife, as reworked by Robert Graves, you have the V ultimate homicidal matriarch. You have Claudius, who survives the terrifying reins of Tiberius and Caligula, and it ends with him as Emperor, so he seems to be triumphant. But in the final pages of the novel and the final episode of the series, you have the encroaching shadow of the reign of Nero as it comes. There are so many elements of that that then feeds into TV drama through the '80s and later. In the United States, the so-called dynasty with Joan Collins.

You've said it in the American way, Tom. You've absolutely shamed yourself.

Yeah, lots of shoulder pads and lip gloss. It's all set in, I think, in Denver, isn't it? Yeah. Very clearly modeled on iClaudius. But then in the late '90s, going into the early 21st century, there's a series that is even more influential and even more obviously influenced by iClaudius, very overtly so, in fact, and that's the Sopranos. There is an episode in which Tony Soprano sits on the bleachers at a baseball game and discusses Augustus and says of his reign, It was the longest time of peace in Rome's history. He was a fail leader, and all his people loved him for that.

Yeah, he identifies with him, doesn't he?

Yeah, he does, although Actually, Tony Soprano's mother is called Livia as Tiberius as was. There's a slight element in which he's Tiberius as well as Augustus. It works brilliantly because, of course, the power of the Caesars is founded on muscle, on intimidation. If you think of Augustus as a godfather figure with a family, that maps on very well onto what's happening with the Sopranos. Then the Sopranos, in turn, of course, influences Game of Thrones or whatever. Although Game of Thrones is clearly drawing on specific episodes in medieval history, the overarching idea of a wrestling for power with poison and incest and dynastic feuding. Again, the wellsprings for this, I think, are, I audience. I always wondered, so Jack Gleeson, the actor who played Geoffrey, the Caligula-type king. I mean, he looks like Caligula. If you've ever seen a portrait bust of Caligula, I always wondered whether that was deliberate.

To go to this thing about being a drama. You make this point at some length. You talk about this in your introduction to the new translation. Also, to pick up your point about Augustus being the godfather, you made the point that Augustus, from the very beginning, arguably his greatest physical skill, is that he's brilliant at playing lots of different parts, and he has lots of different masks and personas. You describe him as Rome's greatest actor. There's this very famous scene, which is from Suttonius, where Augustus is on his deathbed, and he has himself all primped and whatnot. He does his hair, and he has his jaw set straight, and then he has all his friends in, and he says to them, Do you think I played my part in the Comedy of Life well? Then he quotes lines from a play, If the play has been a good one, clap your hands and let me leave the stage to the sound of your applause. It's a brilliant, brilliant-ending. If it really happened, who knows whether it happened or whether it's a folk tale that was told about Augustus.

But even if it didn't happen, it's telling that that story should have been told about him. It seems appropriate and fitting.

This idea of the Caesars as actors, that runs through Soutonius, doesn't it? That they're playing parts on a stage. Yeah.

Again, it's why Augustus is the exemplary. Augustus, in a way, is the center of the collection of biographies. It's by far the longest, the most sophisticated, the most complex of the biographies. One of the ways in which it sets the template is that, as you said, Augustus is the model of how to be a Caesar because he is also the model of how to be an actor. His ability to play all the roles that Caesar has to play is portrayed by Suetonius as being key to his success. This is evident in the range of names that he has throughout his life. He begins as Gaius Octavius, Then he's adopted as Julius Caesar's heir, so he becomes Julius Caesar. Then he's given the name Augustus. Suetonius tells us that when he stamps official documents, Augustus uses a seal that is decorated with a sphincts, so very practiced at telling riddles. Over the course of his life, he picks up masks and then lays them down as circumstances require. As a young man, it's his mission to avenge his murdered adoptive father, Julius Caesar, and he consciously practices terrorism to do that. He makes his name one that would chill even the highest ranking noblemen in Rome.

Suetonius describes one incident. It is claimed by some authors that on the ides of March, so that's the anniversary of Caesar's murder, he selected 300 senators and knights from among those who had surrendered and had them butchered like sacrificial animals on an altar dedicated to Julius Caesar. So Suetonius is upfront about that, even though he greatly admires Augustus. But ultimately, the reason that he admires Augustus isn't because he is a murderous vigilante, wiping out the assassins of his adoptive father, but because having done that, he gives the Roman people what they have not had for many decades, namely peace. He lives so long that he comes to serve the Romans as their father. Suetonius sees this as an achievement that is genuinely, literally more than human. The word Augustus means more than human, halfway to the divine. When he comes to the end of his biography, Suetonius writes, Perhaps it will not be off topic to include here an account of everything that happened prior to his birth, Augustus's birth, on the actual day of his nativity, and then subsequent to it, which serves to pretend his future greatness and to offer the hope of good fortune without end.

It's in the reign of Augustus that Jesus is born, and the echo of the stories that are told by Christians about the nativity of Jesus and about the propheses that were told about his coming are very, very redolent of the stories that Suetonius gives about the birth of Augustus. I think it's a crucial part of the biographies biographies that even though you are getting details about urination and farts and all that stuff, you are also getting a sense that this extraordinary drama, these extraordinary lives, exist in the context of the supernatural. When Julius Caesar crosses the Rubicon, a mysterious spirit blows a trumpet. The Ghost of Caesar is seen on lonely paths. Omens and portents shadow the lives of the Caesars right the way through, and that, too, is a part of the story. That's what makes Augustus Augustus's achievement as an actor who stands on the stage of the world. He's also standing on the stage of the heavens, and his death will become a God.

That thing about Augustus as an actor, this is also a brilliant primer in politics and how politics works. And politics as It's something that actually Donald Trump instinctively knows and Kier Starmer doesn't, which is that politics is about performance and about display and ritual and so on, and show business, I guess, to an extent. Soutonius is brilliant on politics as show business. That runs right through the 12 biographies, doesn't it?

Absolutely. It highlights something that makes the Caesars distinctive among the autocrats of antiquity, which is that they are expected to put themselves up before the mass of the people. They are expected to stage entertainments and shows and gladiatorial combats, which means that if they are unpopular, they will be booed. It's a constant process of testing your popularity. That, I think, is why Suetonius so interested in things like gladiatorial combats, the details of beast hunts and things like that. It's not just the show itself. It's the fact that being able to put on a show, it's a crucial part of what it is to be a good Emperor.

Obviously, Augustus establishes the template for what it is to be a good Emperor. To some extent, I guess you could argue the story of Sittonius's book is the story of people struggling to fill his shoes.

Yeah, I think that's absolutely right.

Definitely the case of Tiberius, I guess, for the killer, Ghislain and Claudius, the initial successors. They're all part of his family. I mean, this is the remarkable thing, isn't it? That it's a monarchy in all but name. At first, purely for dynastic reasons, not because they've won power. Well, Tiberius is a very accomplished man. The others are not so accomplished. But as long as that family endures, which it does to the time of Nero, the line of succession makes some sense. But when Nero is killed, and then you have the year of the Four Emperies, and then the rise of the Flavian dynasty, how do they see themselves in terms of their succession? They're still trying to become Augustus, aren't they?

Yeah. As you said, I think Augustus is at the heart of it. Then the emperors who belong to his family, the house of Caesar, they're the next ring. Then on the outer ring, you have the biographies of figures who provide a different perspective on the course of Roman history. If you look backwards from Augustus, you have the first of the 12 Caesars, who, as you said, isn't an Emperor at all, and that's Julius Caesar. That serves as a reminder to the reader that there is a world that is less claustrophobic than that of the autocracy introduced by Augustus, because Caesar is operating in a Republic. With the lives of the emperors, there's the sense that the Emperor is at the heart of the state. Julius Caesar is a man of incredible accomplishment, but he is just one of a multitude of power players.

In a very chaotic, very chaotic world.

Yeah, in the drama of his age. Suetonius judges him by the standards of that age. He really amires Julius Caesar. He recognizes that Caesar is an extraordinary genius, a great general, a great orator, great writer. He's a brilliant in urban planning. I mean, drawing up calendar There's almost nothing he can't do. Also, he's a man of great mercy. He pardons his defeated enemies. But in the buildup to his account of the murder of Caesar in the Ides of March, he judges the reckoning must still be that Caesar abused his position of power and deserved to be slain. That's a fascinating perspective that the reader can then take into the lives of the subsequent Caesars.

Yeah, given that they are autocrats, Julius Caesar wasn't Right, exactly.

That's one thing that frames the life of Augustus and the emperors who belong to the house of Caesar. But then the other thing is what succeeds him. When Nero dies, he's succeeded by this guy called Galba, who, like Julius Caesar, Augustus is a man from a ancient Republican dynasty. He's a reminder of an age that preceded the coming to power of Augustus. But the thing is, he has no conceivable link to the divine family of the first Emperor. He seizes power because he has the armies and the backing that enable him to do it. It's because of that that he doesn't really have sufficient authority to maintain his rule and therefore his life. As a Caesar, if you're to rule, then you're going to die. Galbra is succeeded by Otho, by Vertelius, by Vespasian. Vespasian survives, founds this dynasty, succeeded by his sons, Titus and Domitian. You have six biographies following Nero in all. I think all of these, in comparison to the biographies of the emperors who are succeeding Augustus, they feel a bit slight, a bit attenuated. These emperors are less terrible than Caligula or or Nero, but they're also less awesome. The family of Augustus, the family of Julius Caesar, they claim descent from Venus, the Goddess Venus.

The house of Aspazian, they have descent from a bailiff. That essentially is telling you about the diminished character of the age. The sense that an Emperor is properly part of a, almost a mythological world has pretty much gone When Dimitri dies, Dimitri is assassinated, and he's not assassinated as Caesar was by his peers, by his senators, but by Friedmann in a squalid scuffle in the palace, his memory is completely erased. Raced, except, of course, it isn't a raced because Suetonius is telling us this in his biography. But he ends Dimitri's biography, and therefore, all the lives of the Caesars with this passage. Even Domitian himself, they say, when he dreamed that a pump of gold sprouted out of his back, interpreted this as a sure sign that the Republic was destined to enjoy happier and more prosperous times once he had gone. Sure enough, thanks to the measured and moderate behavior displayed by the emperies who followed him, so it rapidly came to pass. Here is a further sense in which the terrifying age of crime and bloodshed and sexual extravagance is fading away because Suetonius is situating himself in an age of measured and moderate emperies.

Yeah. This is the age in which he is writing.

So a slightly quieter age, I guess, but without the excitement and the histrionics of the first Caesars.

Yes.

Now, by the way, listeners who are interested in those first Caesars, we have three episodes to come on Taibit Siderius, Caligula, and Claudius. Obviously, if you're a member of the Restus History Club, you can hear those straight after this. But we will be back after the break to hear about Suttonius himself, because this is a fascinating story about the man who wrote these biographies. Actually, the man from whom we derive so much of our understanding of the early Roman Empire. We'll be back after the break. As a boy, I obtained a small bust of Augustus, an old bronze which had the name Thurinus, inscribed on it in letters of iron, albeit it almost faded away. I made a gift of this statuet to the Emperor, who now keeps it in his If it chamber as an object of reverence. So this comes from Suttonius's biography of Augustus. And Suttoneus is, of course, talking about himself. It's a very rare glimpse of the author himself. He's telling you a little detail about the statue that he gave to the Emperor, as we will discover the Emperor is Hadrian. Tom, unpack this a little bit for us.

Yeah, I think it's rare, it's precious, and it's fascinating because it highlights Well, I suppose two things. Firstly, Suetonius's methods. This is in the context of a debate that Suetonius is having with unnamed critiques about whether the name Therrinus had been one of the names adopted by Augustus. Suetonius thinks it was, his critiques think that it wasn't. He's offering the fact that this bust existed with the word Therrinus on it as evidence. It demonstrates the way in which Suetonius is a proper scholar. He does research, he compiles evidence. But it's also fascinating because it illustrates that he knows what he's talking about when he discusses the Caesars and the Court of the Caesars, because he is clearly very close to the Emperor. If he can give to Hadrian a portrait bust that he's found, that suggests a real degree of intimacy. It's evident both from Suetonius's biographies, but also from all the evidence that we have from the Roman world, that power in antiquity in the Roman Empire depends on proximity to Caesar. Suetonius clearly has that. He is a man who's operating at the absolute heart of the Imperial administration. He knows what he is talking about.

What else do we know about him? Do we have any sense, for example, of when he might have been born or where his family came from?

There are other details that are scattered through the lives of the Caesar. We know that his grandfather watched Caligula when he built the great bridge of boats and rode across the Bay of Naples, to and fro on a chariot. We know that his father had been with Otto in the Civil War, that Otto had fought against Fertelius, his army gets defeated, Otto commit suicide, Suetonius as his father had been in Otto's camp when that happened. He personally bears witness to the campaign of taxation that Domitian and the Flavians, generally, the family of Domitian, had conducted against the Judeans. So Vespasian and Titus had conquered Judea and had then imposed a tax on the Judeans, which required them to pay money that had previously gone to the temple in Jerusalem to the restoration of the temple of Jupiter in the heart of Rome. Of course, there were Judeans who tried to get out of this. Suetonius describes Domitian's determination not to let these tax evaders get away with it. He writes, he gave no quarter to those who pretended not to be Judean in an attempt to avoid paying the tribute levied on their nation. Indeed, and this is the personal note, I remember as a young man being present in a very crowded court when an old man who was 90 years old had his penis inspected by a financial official to see if he had been circumcised.

That's a strange memory.

Isn't it? I mean, incredible detail to have, very vivid and strange.

People have played with that to go backwards to say, Well, if he was a young man then, then he was probably born round about the time of the death of Nero, because that would place him as a very young man during the reign of Domitian and Domitian's campaign against the tax evaders and so on and so forth. He's from North Africa. Is that right? What his family are from North Africa originally?

That seems to be the implication of an inscription that was found in 1952 in the ruins of a city called Hippo Regius. That's actually the city which in due course, St Augustine would become the bishop of. It suggests that Suetonius's family had originally come from there. But if so, there's no evidence, really, of any particular stake in North Africa from Suetonius's writing. His focus is very much on Italy and Rome, and that seems to be where he grew up. We also know from the letters of Pliny the Younger, the guy who gives us two brilliant accounts of the eruption of Suvius, that destroys Pompei and Herculeanium, that Suetonius is part of Pliny the Younger set. It's a literary set. It's a set in which Pliny the Younger will advance able, younger people like Suetonius who could benefit his patronage. We know actually that Plinid the Younger seems to have obtained a post for Suetonius in Britain, which Suetonius then turned down. There is an intriguing detail that in 1973 in Vindolanda, so the fort just south of what would become Hadrian's Wall, there was a letter found there detailing the contents of a trunk that had been sent by someone called Tranquilus.

That, of course, is one of Suetonius his names. The great scholar, Anthony Burley, who had actually excavated at Vindolanda, he pondered whether this had actually been Suetonius's kit. He wrote, Is it possible that Suetonius had had a box of his gear, including blankets, dining outfits and vests sent ahead to Britain.

Great.

It'd be wonderful to think that he had.

But luckily for Suetonius, he doesn't end up in the north of England.

In Vindolanda.

He ends up working very closely in the Imperial Archive Is that right? In Rome, in the libraries in Rome. Yeah.

So first the Imperial Archives, then the Roman libraries, and then under Hadrian, he becomes what was called the Abbe Epistulus, which essentially is his senior secretary, the guy who handles his correspondence. That means that there is no letter that comes to Hadrian or goes from Hadrian that Suetonius has not handled. It means that for the term of his office, he is one of the most important functionaries in the whole of the empire. This must explain his ready to all the historical documents that he is sighting in the biographies. He probably obtained this not from Pliny the Younger, because by this point, Pliny seems to have died, but by another patron who's a guy called Septitius Clarus, who is the dedicatee of the lives of the Caesars and who has become the chief of the Pratorians, so probably the most significant imperial servant in the whole of the empire because he's responsible for the Emperor's security.

But this is a problem, isn't it, in the long run? Because in 122, so this is the thing about going to Britain. You should basically never go to Britain. Because Soutonius and Septicius Clarus gone to Britain as well with Hadrian.

Yes, of course, because Hadrian is traveling, and so the court goes with him. So both the captain of the Pratorians and the Chief Secretary, they all have to go.

Something terrible happens in Britain, and they're sacked.

Yes.

Have they been rude to Hadrian's wife?

Is that it? No, they seem to have been involved in some mysterious way in a sex scandal. So There's a later life of Hadrian that says that they had at that time behaved in the company of Hadrian's wife, Sabina, in their association with her in a more informal manner than respect for a court household demanded. So unclear, But it clearly highlights for Suetonius the fact that getting on the wrong side of an Emperor and his wife and being imbroiled in their intimate relationship is not a good thing.

What can't it be that bad a scandal? Because they're not executed. No.

But he's dismissed, and so he seems to have retired to his villa and Basically, that's the last we know of him, but presumably, he uses his time to maybe write the Lives of the Caesars. There's not a huge amount to go on there, but there's enough, I think, to make you see the attitudes that he seems to have brought to the writing of these biographies. He's a scholar. He has a very deep interest in a broad range of subjects. He has a lack of military experience. He doesn't seem to have served with the army, and his knowledge of military affairs and the lives isn't brilliant. Clearly, very familiar with libraries and archives. He understands how power works at the heart of the Roman state, and he knows what it is to be the victim of the anger of a Caesar. Of course, as we said, he knows that sex is something that can be weaponized, that can be exploited and turned against people.

Just on this issue of sex, this is the thing that when people first read the Lives of the Caesar, especially if they're young and they're really into the Roman. I remember having this book when I I was 13 or so having it for Christmas. I went to my grandfather's house and I had it with me. It's, oh, very good. He's reading a Penguin classic. I can remember sitting there reading through it and going really red. Oh, God, I hope they don't find out. It's really, really strong stuff, some of it.

It really is, yes.

Is Suetonius, do you think, peculiarly fascinated in it, or is he typical? Does he tell us something about Roman society and culture more broadly?

He has an almost anthropological biological interest in sex that I think is quite unusual. But Suetonius is interested in all kinds of subjects like that. Although Lives of the Caesar, it's not actually complete, we're missing the beginning of the life of Julius Caesar, but it's pretty much intact. We have fragments of a few others of works, but we have a list of all the subjects that Suotonia has tackled, and they're incredibly eclectic. He writes a series of Lives of the Great Cortesans, for instance. That is a reflection, obviously, of his interest in subjects, but he also writes about children's games, about the character of insults, about different styles of dress, about public spectacles. These are all themes that are evident in his lives of the Caesars. I think that that is because he assumes that there's no aspect of his subject's lives so insignificant that it doesn't shed light on their nature. Also that how an Emperor relates, say, to public spectacles or to dress or whatever, or to sex, that this situates him within the broader cultural context of Rome, that it highlights a man's moral character. The Romans are a very moral people, and Sittonius is actually, despite his prudent reputation is a very moral writer.

When he approves the behavior, he says so, and when he disapproves of it, he really lets you know.

You make the point in the introduction, don't you, that the Romans didn't have the distinction that we had between private and public. The idea we have which is that you have a public face, but you also have a private life, and you have a right to a private life, would have struck them as absolutely bizarre, absurd, and meaningless, because to them, the idea of privacy in and of itself was perverted, and sinister, and weird.

Yes. If you have a craving for privacy, it is assumed the only reason that you have that is because you are getting up to disgusting things. You are a sexual pervert. That's why you would want to lead your life privately. At the same time, people are always studying how people conduct themselves sexually in public to look for signs, again, of moral degeneracy. It means that every Roman has to tread a real tight rope between making it seem that he has something to hide and displaying behavior that might make him the object of benomous gossip. If this is a challenge for the average Roman, then, of course, it's even more of a challenge for a Caesar because how he presents himself to the world is fundamental to how he will be understood by the world.

That brings us on to those characters that we'll be doing in the next three episodes, Tiberius, Caligula, and Claudius. Because in each case, Soutonius makes a series of punchy allegations about what we would call their private lives. How much can we trust what Soutonius is telling us? For example, about Caligula getting up to no good, or Tiberius is biography habits. Is this part of a literary tradition? In other words, it's just invented, it's propagandistic, it's political spin, effectively. How much do you think it's grounded in the reality of what must have been a very different sexual culture to our own?

We'll be exploring those questions in the episodes we're going to do on Tiberius and then Caligula. The thing that's, I think, very interesting about those two men and why they make such good paired biographies is that in a way, they illustrate the two extremes of how the Romans would identify sexual depravedy. So Tiberius is a man who ends up retiring to Capri. It's an island. He's isolated. It is assumed I think, for entirely understandable reasons, once you understand how the Romans judged a great man's craving for privacy, that if he's on this island and he stays there for years, he must be getting up to no good. From that, it's a very easy development to start imagining what he's been getting up to on his island.

What's the worst he could be doing? He's probably doing that.

And Calicula, of course, is the opposite extreme, because even more than Nero, he is an Emperor who's supposed to have made a point of parading his deviancies and positively exalting in them. This is a man who, according to Suttonia, sleeps with one of his sisters, pimps the others out, dresses up as a woman, completely shocking behavior for a Roman, goes to banquets and appraises the wives of his guests, guests as though they're slaves. Again, this is shocking. It's either meant to be shocking, i. E, Caligula is intending it, or it's expressive of attitudes to Caligula that may have deeper roots. Again, we'll explore that when we come to the life of Caligula. But the fact that gossip is being reported of these emperies, the gossip itself may not be true, but the fact that the gossip is being reported does tell you quite a lot, maybe about the emperies, but definitely about the the cultural context in which those emperies are functioning, I think.

Well, on that point about cultural context, obviously, one problem that we have reading this is that our understanding of sexual morality, as it were, and in fact, our understanding of sexuality more broadly is completely at odds with the Romans' understanding. For example, you made the point that they would have had no sense of the terms that we use, heterosexual and homosexual. That would have just seemed weird and baffling to them.

Is that right? Yeah. We touched on this in the episode we did on Hadrian and Antinnus, actually. But just to reiterate, the notion of there being heterosexual and homosexual conditions, instincts, inclinations, this is a modern categorization. The Romans certainly had no sense of that whatsoever. Of course, Suetonius may note that one empress tastes runs exclusively to women and another's runs exclusively to men. But he doesn't attach any moral significance to it. He doesn't see it as fundamental to the identity of an Emperor. It's an interesting incidental detail. Suetonius says, Of Claudius, he notes, he never slept with men, although his appetites, when it came to women, were voracious. Then of Galba, he says, he preferred sex with males, although only with fully grown, well-muscled ones. It's as though Suetonius is describing a preference that a man might have for blonde women or for brunettes. It's on that level. It's not fundamental to their identity. That makes the the sexual landscape that you see in Suetonius's lives, I think, very strange to us. What makes it even stranger, and I think pretty unsettling, is that the sexual order that Suetonius is taking for granted in his biographies is founded on an assumption that all Romans take for granted, namely a man in a position of power, so not just an Emperor, but a free male Roman citizen.

Person, is not just entitled but expected to exploit his inferiors in a sexual manner as he pleases. Obviously, that is an absolute taboo to us. That is Harvey Weinstein behavior.

But the taboo for them is if that's turned on its head and somebody who is a powerful person allows himself to be exploited or yields to others in some way or debases himself. Is that right? Right.

Because that then reduces It is him, in the eyes of Roman Convention to the level of a woman or a slave, which in the opinion of Roman men, is by definition to be inferior. That's why, of all the mud that can stick to a Roman's reputation, and there's a lot of mud being thrown around. Absolutely the worst, the most damaging, the one that is hardest to scrub clean, is a charge that he has allowed himself to be used sexually like a woman. This is the single most damaging charge. It's really vividly illustrated by a, almost a throwaway anecdote in the life of Domitian, where Suetonius is describing the aftermath of a failed coup that Domitian has defeated. In the wake of this, he's determined to smoke out all the conspirators. He's in a mood for vengeance. He puts his known opponents, people he knows have been hostile to him, to torture and Suetonius gives a horrible description of it. This he did by jabbing burning splints into their genitals, a form of interrogation, Suetonius notes, never practiced before. Of all the prominent people he accuses of having been involved in the conspiracy, he pardons only two.

One of them is a senator who had been serving as a tribune, and one of them is a centurian. Suetonius gives us the reason. These two men, to demonstrate all the more conclusively that they had taken no part in the conspiracy, provided evidence that they like to be used sexually as women, and therefore were viewed as undeserving of attention, both by the man in command of them and by the soldiers under their own command. In other words, they couldn't possibly have been part of a conspiracy because they're so debased, so effeminate so unmanned that they have this sexual taste, and it's taken for granted, and they get off scot-free.

That's unbelievable. But I'll tell you what, the interesting thing is that the life that kicks off the volume, the 12 Caesars, the first of the 12 lives is obviously that of Julius Caesar. But this was a suspicion that was attached to Julius Caesar, was it not? Was it not claimed that as a young man, he'd gone off to Bethania, and the king of Bethania had had his way with Julius Caesar? Everybody said, Well, that shows that Julius Caesar is an absolute nothing and a weakling and he's a nobody. Yeah.

This accusation follows him throughout his life. Even after he's conquered Gaul and defeated Pompei and made himself the master of the Roman world, people are still sniggering about it behind his back.

What about that business with the king of Bethania? Yeah.

So Sittonia specifically says that this was a lingering scandal and one serious enough to provide material for endless taunts. Caesar, of course, is a guy. I mean, he's endlessly sleeping around. He's committing adultery left, right, and center, but nobody cares about that. It's this one supposed fling.

One small slip when I was a young man and they'd judge me forever, that thing.

Yeah. I think that it's so strange to us. It seems so alien to us. But the very alien quality of it focuses I think what is most fascinating about Suetonius's biographies, and actually by extension, Rome itself, which is this unsettling, fascinating fusion of the very alien and the very intimate. On one level, this is a world of a sexual morality that is completely terrifying, I think, to us. It's a world in which one sees there, so Cefidero is described by Suetonius as dressing up as a wild animal and then falling upon the genitals of men and women who had been fastened to stakes. I mean, it's so odd. Then you have his description of Domitian sitting alone in a room doing nothing but catching flies and stabbing them with a well-sharpened pen. So very dark, macabre, fantastical images. But then at the same time, you also have these unbelievably personal details. So he tells us Augustus had small yellow teeth and they had gaps between them. Tiberius has a mullet.

Oh, man, I can't believe that.

Otho has splayed feet, wears a toupet. Vespasian, we're told, has an expression like a man straining for a shit. It's that degree of personal detail and after strangeness that makes these stories, I just think, brilliant.

They're endlessly readable and endlessly fascinating. And so, as we said, in the next three episodes, we are going to dig in, dig deep into three of them. They are two of the most notorious of all the Caesars. So Tiberius on his island on Capri, getting up to no good or not, and Caligula. I mean, Caligula is one of the great biographies in all history. I mean, one of the most fascinating lives in all history, let alone Roman history. Then we'll also look at the Caesar who inspired iClaudius, the book and the series, and that is, of course, Claudius himself. So if you want to listen to this episode right now and you're not already a member of the Rest is History Club, just head to therestishistory. Com and sign up. You get a host of unbelievable benefits. You do. But you also get to listen to Tom's dissection of these extraordinary lives immediately. But we will be back for the rest of you on Thursday with the sordid, or not, life of Tiberius. Tom, thank you so much. That was an absolute tour de force. Great fun. And we'll see you next time. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.