In his history of death,
The Mortal Coil, Andrew Doig reminds us that we are the most dangerous animal on the planet. It certainly seemed so to the Roman Senate shortly after the death of Domitian, the 12th of the first 12 Caesars. It had all begun in some triumph with Augustus, growing and consolidating a vast military empire, taking a swerve or six with Caligula and Nero, and hitting rock bottom with Domitian.
Son of vulpine Vespasian and brother of beefcake brother Titus, Domitian grew up in resentful poverty and isolation. Even at the age of 12, he dreamed of power and glory, if only he could remove obstacles to obtaining it, like his father and his brother. Historians tell us, reliably they said, that Domitian fought snakes and rats in his cradle. And so things turned out for him: he became Emperor, started well, and ended very badly (with a sword through and through, and blood everywhere).
A bad lot, the Senate decided, so bad in fact that the Roman state should 'obliterate him from history itself'. In Latin, this was the 'damnatio memoriae'. But figures like Domitian cannot be air-brushed from history, nor should they be. The problem is that history might lie. The records we have are notoriously unreliable, particularly Suetonius whose
The Twelve Caesars – along with equally contentious accounts by Lucius Dio Cassio and sardonic asides by Juvenal and Tacitus – is a masterpiece of political double-speak.
It was not all bad: Domitian sponsored ambitious building projects, persuaded the Senate to work with him on public policy, and tried to maintain order in the vast Roman Empire. Bad along with the good: he overspent, he had ways of compelling compliance (such as death), and had little of the success his brother Titus had on military campaigns. In fact, he made a real mess of them.
All too many of the tribes (who saw themselves as nations) wanted out: they feared Roman military power, knowing all about Carthage, and grudgingly recognised the benefits Roman civilisation gave them, but, upstarts that they were, they wanted independence. Call it an embryonic form of democracy. Domitian was having no more of that. There was continual unrest in Germany, no surprise there, even with the pipeline of regular fortifications to keep them safe and reliable supplies of energy in the form of law and order. But it was Dacia that was the real problem.
Dacia was an area on and to the north of the lower Danube, near the Black Sea. It was full of insurrection and terrorism, and no end of trouble. Domitian had had enough: wayward children must be disciplined, and he was man enough to do it. Flashback first to his own self-image. Some years before, when Vespasian and Titus were dealing with civil war in Rome (where savage butchery took place), Domitian had been forced to hide. Tacitus tells of Domitian's inglorious escape disguised as a follower of the Egyptian cult of Isis.
Afterwards, Domitian's narrative of this was that he had been the hero of the day. Lindsey Davis, the author of the well-known 'Falco' and 'Flavia Albia' series, in her
Master and God (her novel about Domitian), exposes Domitian's cowardice when a rank-and-file soldier finds him trembling in the darkness. Domitian was a hollow man, a paper tiger, the Clark Kent who only thought he was Superman. Before the age of video and social media, he paraded his noble profile on coinage and encouraged propaganda about the nobility of his position. As time went by, he came to believe his own heroic story.
But back to foreign adventurism under the guise of protecting the Empire. Domitian quickly found ways of getting the top people in society to go along with his wishes. They were suckers for nostalgia and the great times of the Roman Republic, nurtured so cunningly by Augustus and sustained so erratically thereafter. They too wanted Rome to be all-powerful and to that end were prepared to support anything Domitian did. That, and fear that their wives would be seduced or their lives lost. Nothing like death to concentrate the mind, especially if you can rationalise it as good sense.
Suetonius tells us that many of Domitian's campaigns were unjustified. When they were, when the Sarmatians for instance had the gall to massacre a legion and murder its commander, something really had to be done. The Dacians made the big mistake of being successful in defeating the Roman governor in battle, and they went on winning. Domitian led two punitive expeditions against them in person, Suetonius says. The outcome was inconclusive (for which we read that Rome came off worst and had to compromise).
Lindsey Davis describes the Roman defeat at the battle of Tapae vividly in chapter 15 of
Master and God; it is impossible to call this battle anything other than a humiliation for Rome, a David versus Goliath situation, as we say. Poor supply-lines, reluctant troops, pointlessly savage butchery, incoherent strategy. Despite all that, driven by his personal narrative that he 'always won and never lost', and terrified of losing face in Rome itself, Domitian 'celebrated a double triumph over the Chatti and the Dacians', giving a laurel wreath to Jupiter for good measure.
It is said that the gods look after real heroes, and that the good guys are the ones who win because God is on their side. The dubious logic of the just war rings hollow to anyone looking seriously at the history of warfare, above all WW1. Nevertheless, Domitian looked to the gods – all and any of them – for endorsement. He began to call himself a god: Suetonius again says that Domitian regularly gave himself the title: 'Lord God both in writing and in conversation. His images in the Capitol had to be of either gold or silver'.
Yet, one day, even the gods deserted him. 'He dreamed that Minerva, whom he worshipped fervently, emerged from her shrine to tell him that she had been disarmed by Jupiter and could not longer protect him.' It had been a good ideological and cultural move on Domitian's part to scoop up religious sentiment as part of his own power-play. Dictators cannily play on yearnings for nationalist nostalgia and false consciousness, and ecclesiastical bodies, orthodox and marginal, like to know they have dictators on their side, and are all too ready to offer the incense of obedience to someone they fear.
All this understandably leads historians to wonder whether Domitian was paranoid. We read about his smiling face and blackened heart, his increasing isolation, his immersion in the delusions of his own inviolability and infallibility. The infamous 'black banquet' typifies this psychopathic period in Domitian's reign.
Mary Beard, in her book,
S.P.Q.R. A History of Ancient Rome, describes this well as a strange exercise in imperial menace. A group of senators were invited. When they came, they found black décor, black marble tables, and serving boys daubed black. Each guest's name was inscribed on a slab: 'we know where you are' was the message. Mary Beard suggests that: 'this was a classic tale of Roman fear, fed by paranoia, suspicion and distrust'.
As things went from bad to worse, leading finally to the assassination of Domitian in AD96, all manner of ordinary people – soldiers, secretaries, tribunes, citizens – were drawn into the vortex of tragedy. One of the strengths of Lindsey Davis's
Master and God, a more sombre work than most of her others, is to show Domitian's life from that point of view. A young soldier and a young woman are caught up in events and used as a lens to show the inescapable fear at the time, and how anger and betrayal pervaded the public mood.
Young soldiers were being forced to fight people they saw as friends and allies. They were sent on vainglorious missions that lacked military and moral logic. Roman citizens were fed with fake news and hints of opposition were met with imprisonment or death. Lies were truth, tyranny was power, might was right, Rome was top dog. There were rumours of a writer called Georgius Orwellius, living far away in Britannia, compiling notes for a history of the period. It was said that he was an expert on animal behaviour.
If human beings are indeed the most dangerous animal on the planet, some animals seem a lot more dangerous than the others. The ones that skulk on four legs now aspire to strut on four. Thank goodness we have all learnt the lessons of history, and there are no tyrants like Domitian any more.
Dr Stuart Hannabuss is a writer and reviewer based in Scotland
