Free A Brief History of the Private Lives of the Roman Emperors by Anthony Blond Page A

which was far beyond that with which the Roman soldier is
generally credited’. 15
    Here is an account 16 of a mutiny worth retailing. The Emperor Claudius, who was not stupid as Gibbon would have us believe, nor amiable as portrayed by
Charles Laughton, had decided to invade Britain. Julius Caesar had pointed the way in 55 and 54 BC , but he had not known about the lead mines which, together with wheat and
slaves, couldmake the operation ‘wipe its face’, as they say in the City. Besides, his predecessor, Caligula, made a fool of himself by pretending to invade the
island – the fleet never sailed – and to restore imperial pride, teach the barbarians a lesson, employ some under-extended legions and get himself a Triumph, Claudius assembled a force
of 40,000 men consisting of the legions from the Rhine and one from Pannonia (roughly where Austria is now). But as the historian Dio recounts, the army flatly refused to face an ocean voyage
‘outside the world’. When he heard of the mutiny, Claudius sent his top freedman, Narcissus, who was in charge of the new secretariat he had instituted (a sort of Army Council), to sort
it out. The soldiers were not impressed. They were used to a pep talk from their
imperator
at the outset of a campaign; to be addressed by an ex-slave, one can hear the centurions grumbling,
was too much – or too little. They shouted him down with the sort of jeering reserved for the Saturnalia, when slaves dressed up as masters and vice versa, like the Roman soldiers at the
Antonia in Jerusalem, crowning Jesus King of the Jews with twigs from kindling. Nevertheless, Narcissus must have turned them round because the mutiny evaporated and the legions went on board.
    The crucial battle was a two-day affair, unusual in ancient warfare, at the Medway (whose existence the Roman General did not expect), and the first day went badly for him. But the second went
well, especially when the Emperor turned up with a contingent of his Praetorian Guard and a detachment of elephants. The inscription cut on the triumphal arch celebrating his victory states
Claudius suffered no losses; at Colchester eleven kings had submitted to him. Not finding any existing town grand enough to constitute the capital of this new and peaceful province, the Emperor
founded Verulamium (St Albans). After three weeks, havingleft complicated instructions for the administration of Britain, he returned to Rome, where he added to his names that
of ‘Britannicus’. He also had his Triumph.
    A Roman Triumph was a terrible thing. It was the ultimate beano for the legionaries, who paraded through the city with sticks instead of swords and gorged themselves afterwards on oysters from
Baiae (Naples), freshwater eels, capons, ducks, piglets and kids and had their fill too of gilded prostitutes. They also received a
donativum
, a present of money. The procession followed a
prescribed route: assembling in the west of the city on the Campus Martius (cf. Champ de Mars in Paris), it went through a special gate called the Porta Triumphalis, through the Circus Maximus,
where it was cheered by a crowd of 150,000 people and ended at the temple of Jupiter Optimus, which the triumphant
imperator
entered to offer the god the laurels of victory.
    Floats were drawn through the streets depicting highlights from the campaign and the vanquished were paraded in their finery and with their captured treasures displayed. Jugurtha, King of
Numidia, cut a splendid figure at the Triumph of Marius, in his purple robes, his golden jewelled necklaces and bracelets flashing in the sun, his head encircled with a white diadem. He was led in
his chains to the Tullianum, Rome’s only execution cell, divested of all his finery (which was handed piece by piece to a clerk of the treasury) and, clad only in a loincloth, jumped into the
pit beneath. Rather than face such a humiliating end, the defeated Mithridates, hero of Mozart’s first opera, had himself