The Twelve Caesars

Livia (59/58 BCE-29 CE) was the first empress of the Roman Empire. She was originally married to her son Tiberius’s father, Nero (not to be confused with the emperor), but divorced him and married Augustus. According to rumors reported by Suetonius, Livia had an affair with Augustus while still married to Nero. Augustus and Livia’s marriage was reportedly a happy one, but it was motivated in no small part by her status as a daughter of the prestigious Claudii family.

Rome was an intensely misogynistic society with deep-seated distrust of women who held political power. However, Livia was a popular figure whom the Senate honored, in no small part because she publicly embodied the traditional ideals of the Roman matron. Even so, Livia allegedly tried to exercise political power during her son’s reign: “[Tiberius] was angered by his mother Livia on the grounds that she claimed an equal share in his power” (“Tiberius,” Section 50). Tiberius worked to deny her further honors the Senate wished to grant her, and their relationship became estranged.

Sejanus (20 BCE-31 CE) was the praetorian prefect under Tiberius and practically represented Tiberius during his time at Capri. Suetonius alleges that Sejanus aspired to become emperor, which drove him to have an affair with Livia the Younger, the wife of Tiberius’s son Drusus and a member of the imperial family, and murder Drusus by poisoning him so that he could marry Livia the Younger. Sejanus was brought down when Tiberius sent a letter to the Senate that first praised then condemned Sejanus, who was later arrested while attending a meeting of the Senate.

Suetonius claims that Sejanus exercised tremendous influence over Tiberius and also sought to destroy the family of Agrippina the Elder, so that he could clear his own path to the imperial office. However, he also claims that Sejanus was not solely responsible for what happened to Agrippina the Elder and her sons, especially because Agrippina and her son Drusus were still alive after Sejanus’s downfall.

Germanicus (15 BCE-19 CE) was a member of the Julio-Claudian family who was beloved by the Roman Republic. He linked both the Julian and the Claudian sides of the dynasty as Augustus’s grandnephew and Tiberius’s nephew. He was also father to Caligula and brother to Claudius.

Suetonius implies that Germanicus was Augustus’s preferred heir, but because he was still too young, Augustus made Tiberius adopt Germanicus as his son and successor. Germanicus is, in many ways, the ideal Roman who “had all the virtues of body and spirit to a degree achieved by no other man” (“Caligula,” Section 3). According to Suetonius, those virtues included tolerance of his enemies, religious piety, generosity, and selflessness.

Agrippina the Elder (circa 14 BCE-35 CE) was Augustus’s granddaughter through his daughter Julia and the wife of Germanicus. Also, she was the mother of Caligula. An outspoken and influential woman, she was willing to confront Tiberius and may have led a political faction that opposed him.

Certainly, she became the most high-profile victim of Tiberius’s tyranny and a powerful example of his cruelty. Not only did Tiberius imprison her and drive her to commit suicide by starving herself to death, he still “attacked her with the most appalling accusations and […] even made a merit of the fact that he had not had her strangled with a noose and thrown onto the Gemonian steps” (“Tiberius,” Section 53). The Gemonian steps were where the corpses of executed traitors were traditionally thrown. The fact that Tiberius would countenance such violence and postmortem humiliation of a granddaughter of Augustus is a grim highlight of Suetonius’s narrative.

Messalina (circa 20-48 CE) was the wife of Claudius when he became emperor and the great-grandniece of Augustus. She was also the mother of Claudius’s son Britannicus and daughter Octavia, who married the emperor Nero. Suetonius presents her like a female version of a “bad” Caesar, guilty of both cruelty in helping trick Claudius into ordering the execution of an enemy of hers and of sexual excess. Worse, she married an aristocrat named Gaius Silius while still married to Claudius. As a result, she was executed at Claudius’s own order.