Showing posts with label Palatine Hill. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Palatine Hill. Show all posts

24 January 2019

Assassination of Caligula

Controversial emperor killed by Praetorian Guard


A line engraving depicting Caligula from the Wellcome Collection gallery
A line engraving depicting Caligula
from the Wellcome Collection gallery
Gaius Julius Caesar Germanicus, the Roman emperor usually referred to by his childhood nickname, Caligula, was assassinated at the imperial palace on the Palatine Hill in Rome on this day in 41AD.

His killers were officers of the Praetorian Guard who confronted him in an underground corridor at the imperial palace, where he had been hosting the Palatine Games, an entertainment event comprising sport and dramatic plays.

According to one account, Caligula was stabbed 30 times in a deliberate act of symbolism, that being the number of knife wounds some believe were inflicted on Julius Caesar, his great-great-grandfather after whom he was named, when he was murdered in 44BC, although the number of blows Caesar suffered is disputed.

Most accounts agree that the chief plotter in Caligula’s murder, and the first to draw blood, was Cassius Chaerea, an officer Caligula was said to have frequently taunted for his weak, effeminate voice.

The motives behind the assassination were much more than one aggrieved officer wishing to avenge a personal slight.

This bronze bust of Caligula is displayed in the Metropolitan Museum of New York
This bronze bust of Caligula is displayed in the
Metropolitan Museum of New York
A descendent of Rome's most distinguished family, the Julio Claudiens, Caligula had initially been popular when he succeeded Tiberius to become the third emperor. His great-grandfather was Augustus, the first emperor, while his father, Germanicus, was a much-loved leader in his own right.

The young Gaius adored his father, who would take him on military campaigns from the age of three, fitting him out with a uniform and a small pair of boots - caligula in Latin - the name Germanicus’s soldiers adopted as a nickname for the little boy, which was to stick with him for life.

Tiberius, who killed or imprisoned most of Caligula’s family and whom Caligula blamed for the death of his father during a mission to Rome’s eastern provinces, was deeply disliked by the Roman public, with whom Caligula won favour immediately by releasing citizens unjustly imprisoned by Tiberius and scrapping a number of unpopular taxes.

He also staged chariot races, boxing matches, plays and gladiator shows for the amusement of himself and his citizens.

This bust can be found in the Ny Carlsberg Glypotek museum in Copenhagen
This bust can be found in the Ny Carlsberg
Glypotek museum in Copenhagen
But then a severe mystery illness that struck him down barely six months into his rule seemed to change his character.

Tormented by crippling headaches, Caligula distracted himself by brazenly indulged his sexual proclivities, committing incest with his sisters and sleeping with other men's wives, bragging about it to them afterwards. He began to flaunt his power in the most cruel ways, eliminating his political rivals and forcing parents to watch the executions of their sons.

He is said to have killed for mere amusement. Once, at a games event over which he was presiding, it is alleged that he ordered his guards to throw an entire section of the audience into the arena to be eaten by lions because there were no prisoners left and he was bored.

Caligula caused more outrage with his declaration that he was a living God, spending a fortune on a bridge between his palace and the Temple of Jupiter and demanded that a statue of himself be erected in the Temple of Jerusalem for his worship.

In his insanity, he was said to have promised to make his horse, Incitatus, a consul, and actually did appoint him a priest.

The remains of Caligula's Bridge on the Palatine Hill in Rome
The remains of Caligula's Bridge on the Palatine Hill in Rome
Rome soon grew to hate its leader, and Chaerea’s plot was one of many conspiracies aimed at removing him from power, which gathered momentum when Caligula announced to the Senate that he planned to leave Rome permanently and to move to Alexandria in Egypt, which would have drastically reduced Rome’s political power.

Caligula’s wife and daughter were also killed and for a while the military were divided between those who sought the reinstatement of the Roman Republic and those who favoured a continuing imperial monarchy. Eventually, the latter faction prevailed, with Caligula’s uncle, Claudius, who is said to have hidden behind a curtain while his nephew was being murdered, announced as Caligula’s successor.



The ruins of the Palace of Augustus on the Palatine Hill, seen from the Roman Forum
The ruins of the Palace of Augustus on the Palatine Hill,
seen from the Roman Forum
Travel tip:

From the time of Augustus, who ruled from 27 BC to 14 AD, Roman emperors traditionally lived in an imperial palace atop the Palatine Hill, the central hill among the seven hills of ancient Rome.  There are remains visible today of at least three palaces, built next to one another over the years, in which Augustus, Tiberius and Domitian lived.  The word ‘palace’ – palazzo in Italian – derives from the name of the hill, which looks down upon the Roman Forum on one side, and the Circus Maximus on the other.




The Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus on the Capitoline Hill, as it would have looked
The Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus on the
Capitoline Hill, as it would have looked
Travel tip:

The Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus, which was the most important temple in ancient Rome, was located on the Capitoline Hill. It was the equivalent to a basilica in status in the official religion of Rome, presiding over the Area Capitolina, a square used for certain assemblies and where numerous shrines, altars and statues were displayed. The remains of the temple podium and foundations can be seen today behind the Palazzo dei Conservatori, in an exhibition area built in the Caffarelli Garden, and within the Musei Capitolini.





(Picture credits: Line engraving from Wellcome Images; second bust by Louis le Grand; Palace of Augustus by Lalupa; Model of temple by Hiro-o; all via Wikimedia Commons)




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13 October 2017

Claudius - Roman emperor

Suspicious death of leader who conquered Britain


Claudius - as depicted in a marble bust at the  National Archaeological Museum in Naples
Claudius - as depicted in a marble bust at the
 National Archaeological Museum in Naples
The Roman emperor Claudius, whose reign was notable among other things for turning Britain into a province of the Empire, died on this day in 54 AD.

It is a widely held view that he was murdered, by poisoning, on the orders of his scheming fourth wife, Julia Agrippina, the mother of his successor, Nero, in one of the power struggles that at the time were ever present.

It is thought he ingested some poisonous mushrooms that his taster, the eunuch Halotus, had assured him were safe to eat, either at an official banquet on the evening of October 12 or at his first meal of the following day.

When Claudius began to show signs of distress, one version of the story is that his physician, Xenophon, pushed a feather into his throat, ostensibly to make him vomit, but actually to ensure that he did not recover by administering more poison, with which he had coated the feather.

There have been arguments that the poisoning story was nonsense and that, at 63, Claudius died from natural causes related to ageing. Yet Agrippina - sometimes referred to as Agrippina the Younger - seemed to have had a clear motive.

Beautiful and ambitious, she had seduced Claudius into marriage even though their coupling was against the law – he was her uncle – and even though after surviving one plot against him by his third wife, Valeria Messalina, Claudius had vowed never to marry again.

He had the Senate pass a special decree to authorise his union with Agrippina and was sufficiently besotted with her to trust there would be no repeat of Messalina’s attempt, with her lover, Gaius Silius, to instigate a coup.

Agrippina the Younger, mother of Nero, who is thought to have ordered Claudius's murder
Agrippina the Younger, mother of Nero, who
is thought to have ordered Claudius's murder
Agrippina was no innocent, however.  Her real motive was to persuade Claudius that Nero – otherwise known as Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus, one of the last male descendants of Augustus – was a better choice to succeed him than his own, younger son Britannicus, whom he had fathered with Messalina.

Claudius duly adopted Nero as his own and promised him the hand of his daughter, Octavia, in marriage.   As Britannicus grew up, though, there were suggestions that he might be reinstated as the emperor’s heir, which is thought to have been the reason Agrippina decided to take action.

She was determined that Nero would be proclaimed emperor while he was still young, with her acting as guardian, so that she could influence the way he ran the empire. The move backfired spectacularly when, as soon as he was old enough to govern in his own right, he had her murdered.

Claudius had been an unlikely emperor.  As a child and adolescent, he suffered from a number of physical ailments including tremors, a stammer, a limp, and foaming at the mouth. Historians have speculated that he may have had Tourette’s syndrome.

Even his own family mocked his afflictions. His mother described him as a “monstrosity” and Caligula - his nephew and predecessor as emperor – was relentlessly cruel to him.

Over time his handicaps eased and he had ambitions of a political career. But he was passed over time and again for public office and eventually took to filling his days with drinking, womanising and gambling, although he was intellectual enough in sober moments to spend long hours immersed in books, expanding his knowledge.

Later in life, he would produce many volumes of history, on Carthage, the Etruscans and the Roman Republic.

Lawrence Alma-Tadema's 1867 painting shows Claudius pleading for his life with the Praetorian Guard
Lawrence Alma-Tadema's 1867 painting shows Claudius
pleading for his life with the Praetorian Guard
Things changed when Caligula ascended to power at the age of 25 and, suddenly vulnerable when confronted with responsibility, turned to Claudius, then 46, to act as his consul.

In the event, Caligula was murdered by his own supposed protectors, the Praetorian Guard, in a sudden but seemingly long-planned coup in 41 AD.  Claudius is said to have cowered behind a curtain while the bloody deed was taking place and expected himself to be slain.

Instead, when he was discovered by soldiers, he was saluted as the new emperor and taken to a place of safety to prepare for office.

It took a substantial pay rise to ensure the support of the Praetorian Guard going forward but once installed Claudius proved a clever and effective leader.

Domestically, he improved the judicial system, encouraged urbanisation, revived several old religious festivals, organised a spectacular Secular Games and ordered the construction of a new port at Ostia.

But by far his most eyecatching achievements were in foreign policy, where he annexed several territories in Africa and Asia and succeeded where others before him had failed in launching and completing the conquest of Britain.

Assembling a force of 40,000 soldiers and accompanying war elephants, he targeted the tribal stronghold at what is now Colchester and captured their leader, Caratacus. 

He made a personal visit to Britain during the invasion and remained for 16 days before returning to a hero’s welcome in Rome.


The ruins of the Forum in Rome
The ruins of the Forum in Rome
A triumphal arch on the Via Flaminia was built in his honour, and he was hailed him as the man who “brought barbarian peoples beyond Ocean for the first time under Rome’s sway.”

Travel tip:

For a fine view across the ruins of ancient Rome towards the Colosseum in the distance, head for Michelangelo’s Piazza del Campidoglio, next to the Palazzo Nuovo and Capitoline musuems, where there is a balcony that looks out across the ancient city.

Travel tip:

From the time of Augustus, who ruled from 27 BC to 14 AD, Roman emperors traditionally lived in an imperial palace atop the Palatine Hill, the central hill among the seven hills of ancient Rome.  The remains visible today are of at least three  palaces, built next to one another over the years, in which Augustus, Tiberius and Domitian lived.  The word ‘palace’ – palazzo in Italian – derives from the name of the hill.









21 April 2017

The birth of Rome

City said to have been founded on April 21, 753BC


Nicolas Mignard's 1654 painting shows Faustulus  bringing home Romulus and Remus to his wife
Nicolas Mignard's 1654 painting shows Faustulus
bringing home Romulus and Remus to his wife
Three days of celebrations begin in Rome today to mark the annual Natale di Roma Festival, which commemorates the founding of the city 2,770 years ago.

The traditional celebrations take place largely in the large open public space of Circus Maximus, which hosts many historical re-enactments, and where Sunday’s main event – a costumed parade around the city, featuring more than 2,000 gladiators, senators, vestal virgins and priestesses – begins and ends, departing at 11.15am.

City museums offer free entry today and many of the city’s restaurants have special Natale di Roma menus.  After dark, many public places will be lit up, torches will illuminate the Aventine Hill, and firework displays will take place by the Tiber river.

According to legend, Romulus and his twin brother, Remus, founded Rome on the site where they were suckled by a she-wolf as orphaned infants.

They were said to be the sons of Rhea Silvia, the daughter of King Numitor of Alba Longa, a city located in the nearby Alban Hills southeast of what would become Rome.

Before they were born, Numitor was deposed by his younger brother Amulius, who murdered his existing son and forced Rhea to become a vestal virgin so that she would not give birth to rival claimants to his title.

The 2016 Festival: Actors dressed as gladiators
gather at Circus Maximus ready to march on Rome
The legend has it that Rhea was nonetheless impregnated by the war god Mars and gave birth to Romulus and Remus, whom Amulius immediately ordered to be put to death by drowning in the Tiber.

Yet they did not die.  There are different explanations as to what happened next, but somehow the baby boys ended up on the shore of the river at the foot of the Palatine Hill – either because they were washed up there or because Amulius’s men took pity on them and left them at the side of the river instead of throwing them into the water.

It was there, according to the legend, that they were discovered by the she-wolf, who suckled them until they were found by a shepherd called Faustulus.

Brought up by Faustulus and his wife, the twins later became leaders of a band of shepherd warriors. When they learned who they really were they went to Alba Longa, where they killed Amulius and restored their grandfather, Numitor, to power.

They decided to found a city on the site where they had been saved as infants, only for the story to take a bizarre twist when an argument between them turned into a fight and Remus was killed. 

Women dressed as Vestal Virgins are part of the day's fun
Again there are different explanations for the argument. One is that it stemmed simply from their failure to agree on the exact location of their new city. Another says that a site was agreed, but that when Romulus ploughed a furrow around the Palatine Hill to mark where the walls of the city would be, Remus mocked his ‘wall’ by jumping over it, at which point Romulus struck him with such ferocity he fell to the ground, dead.

When work commenced on building the city, named Rome in his honour, Romulus divided the early population into three tribes, giving each an area of the city – a tribune – in which to live.  He chose 100 men from leading families to form a senate.  He called these men the patres – or city fathers – and their descendants became known as patricians, forming one half of the Roman class system.  The other class – which comprised servants, freedmen, the fugitives to whom Romulus offered asylum, and others – became known as plebians, or plebs for short.

The lack of women compared with men among the early population caused a problem for Romulus, which he tried to solve in a way that was always likely to end badly.  He invited the people of cities near Rome to attend a festival, promising games and entertainment, but had secretly instructed his soldiers at a given signal to kidnap women of marriageable age.

Most of those seized happened to be from the Sabine tribe. Naturally, the Sabine men were not pleased and war ensued, a settlement reached only when Romulus agreed to share Rome with the Sabine king, Titus Tatius, an arrangement that lasted until Tatius was killed in a riot.

The city then returned to the sole rule of Romulus, who went on to reign for 37 years until his death in 717BC, apparently during a violent storm.  Witnesses claimed to have seen him picked up by a whirlwind, which led to the idea that he had been plucked from the earth and changed into Quirinus, the god of the Roman state.

Circus Maximus is the largest public open space in Rome
Travel tip:

The Circus Maximus – or Circo Massimo in Italian - is an open space south of the Forum and south-west of the Colosseum, in the valley between the Aventine Hill and the Palatine Hill, that was the site of an ancient Roman chariot racing stadium. It was the first and largest stadium in ancient Rome and its later Empire, measuring 621 m (2,037 ft) in length and 118 m (387 ft) in width, and capable of holding more than 150,000 spectators. Nowadays it is a public park often used for open-air music events and mass gatherings, such as took place after Italy won the 2006 World Cup in Germany, when thousands of Romans turned out to see the players show off their trophy on a stage in the park.

Rome hotels from Hotels.com

The papal residence opens on to a normal square in Castel Gandolfo
The papal residence opens on to a normal
square in Castel Gandolfo
Travel tip:

The Alban Hills – or Colli Albani – is an area of volcanic terrain just 20km (12 miles) south-east of Rome, which comprises the Albano and Nemi lakes and the towns of the Castelli Romani, so-called because each originally had a castle. They include Frascati, Albano Laziale, Rocca di Papa and Castel Gandolfo, the traditional summer residence of the pope.


More reading:


How emperor Trajan balanced military expansion with progressive social policies

Emperor Titus and the relief effort for victims of 79AD Vesuvius eruption

Moment that inspired Gibbon's epic history of the Roman Empire


Also on this day:


1574: The death of Cosimo I de' Medici