Suetonius' Lives of the Caesars is one of the most important sources for the period following Nero's Death. Among his "Twelve Caesars" are Galba, Otho, Vitellius, Vespasian, Titus, and Domitian Suetonius includes all sorts of fascinating biographical details about the men he describes--along with plenty of sometimes unverifiable gossip and rumor.For extra credit, please read Suetonius account of any one of the caesars of this period (links above) . Pick an incident from the life of this caesar that shows a way in which Augustus' system (the Principate) can work well, or an incident that shows that system created by Augustus was not working out particularly well.
If you have fallen behind on your blogs, you can add to your extra credit by doing an extra blog entry on a *different* ceasar than you talk about in your first post.
I chose Titus and am left somewhat with mixed feelings.
ReplyDeleteYou see, he was viewed as the possible second Nero, however briefly that was.
But this was later proven to be wrong, or at the very least, it was proven not to be as serious as Nero was.
In fact, Titus's status as emperor appeared to be more used as a means to help others, even if those around him insisted he was being too generous.
This throws the Principate back in the face of Augustus. No doubt the system was created to establish a proper reason for the people to practically worship the emperors of Rome, but Titus did not appear to share in these sentiments.
To him, he was his people. He was happy when they were, and when they suffered horribly, so did he. He clearly suffered from the inability to do 'enough' for the people under his care. He connected with them through various means, including bathing in public baths that commoners accessed often.
To me, it seems that he did not want to be placed higher than the others. That the 'godly blood' that supposedly ran through his veins was not so different from the people than his ancestors insisted it was.
I chose to read about Vespasian, and over all I thought he was a pretty decent emperor and man. I got the impression that Suetonius was maybe a little biased toward him. I felt like he spoke overly favorably about him, more than he deserved in certain areas, but Vespasian did seem to do a pretty good job. He was more fair than not, and he was often merciful. He allowed people to insult him without having them killed as some emperors would have done. He didn't come from a famous family, and throughout his reign he was fair to the lower status people.
ReplyDeleteOne area where Augustus' system was not working well was when it came to money. In section XVI, we read that Vespasian cheated and stole from people, and used other irreputable ways of making money to increase the treasury, including extreme taxation. Some think this was just because he was greedy, others think that the treasury was in trouble and really needed more money. Regardless, this was an abuse of power that he was capable of under Augustus' system of the Principate.
Also, he sold many offices and would often pardon people in trials for money, even if they were guilty.
DeleteI also read about Domitian. He appeared to be someone who faked an interest in the arts and other things in order to win favor and then quickly discarded those things and was very lustful and cruel.
ReplyDeleteIn section V, he restored several buildings that had been destroyed by fire. He made some other changes, some of which seemed good, others more negative or neutral. But Domitian became a very violent partying emperor. He spent lots of money on the games and circuses, and he kept adding things to increase the spectacle.
He pretty much used Augustus' system to do whatever he wanted, and he began killing many many people for frivolous things (like killing a pupil of an actor because he was too similar to his master).
He had detailed dreams of being assassinated. In spite of all he tried to do to stop it, that's exactly what happened to him