Blood of the Caesars: How the Murder of Germanicus Led to the Fall of Rome - Hardcover

Dando-Collins, Stephen

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 047013741X ISBN 13: 9780470137413

Publisher: Trade Paper Press, 2008

Synopsis

Unraveling a Murder Mystery That Changed History

Could the killing of a single great leader while the Roman Empire was still in its infancy have been the root cause of the empire's collapse more than four centuries later? Perhaps, but only if that leader were the grandson of Mark Antony, the adopted son of the emperor Tiberius, handpicked by Augustus to become the third emperor, as well as the father of Caligula and the grandfather of Nero.

Germanicus Julius Caesar was all of the above. He was also a brilliant general, a master politician, and the most beloved man in the empire. This brilliant investigation of his death and its aftermath is both a compelling, thought-provoking history and a first-class murder mystery with a plot twist Agatha Christie would envy.

About this title

About the Author

STEPHEN DANDO-COLLINS is the author of Caesar’s Legion: The Epic Saga of Julius Caesar’s Elite Tenth Legion and the Armies of Rome, Nero’s Killing Machine: The True Story of Rome’s Remarkable Fourteenth Legion, Cleopatra’s Kidnappers: How Caesar’s Sixth Legion Gave Egypt to Rome and Rome to Caesar, and Mark Antony’s Heroes: How the Third Gallica Legion Saved an Apostle and Created an Emperor. He is an Australian-born researcher, editor, and author who has spent the last three decades identifying and studying the individual legions of the Roman army of the late Republic and the empire of the Caesars.

From the Back Cover

It was an unfitting death for any Roman soldier. For the empire’s greatest hero—a brilliant thirty-three-year-old general, fierce warrior, and gifted diplomat, beloved by the people and in line to become the third emperor—to die in his bed, after suffering weeks of agony, was more than a shock: it was a crime. Germanicus Julius Caesar died with the names of his presumed murderers on his lips, imploring his friends to bring charges against them. The year was A.D. 19, and, says noted historian and author Stephen Dando-Collins, the seeds of the destruction of the empire had just been sown.

In Blood of the Caesars, the fifth of his stirring histories of Rome, Dando-Collins delves into this ancient murder mystery with a fresh eye, a keen mind, and a host of questions. He lays out the evidence that Germanicus was poisoned, assesses the cases against those accused of the murder, and unearths a raft of new suspects, many of whom were among the most prominent and respected citizens of Rome. Then, he supplies a stunning solution to the mystery.

This provocative account unveils the labyrinthian array of intrigues, plots, counterplots, deceptions, and double-dealing that led up to the death of Germanicus and came into full flower after his murder. Beginning with the killing (not suicide, as many claimed) of one of those accused of poisoning Germanicus and followed by verdicts and sentences in the trial that many believed to be a sham, these sub-rosa doings included both failed and successful attempts on the lives of emperors.

How profound was the impact of Germanicus’s death? Huge mobs stormed temples around the city because the gods had ignored their prayers for his life; Rome’s bitter enemy King Atarbanus of Parthia declared a period of mourning; barbarians at war with the empire made peace in his honor. More darkly, Dando-Collins shows that the emperor Augustus had picked Germanicus to succeed Augustus’s immediate heir, Tiberius, believing that the young general was the only man in Rome who could complete the job of empire-building that the first emperor had begun. With his death, Rome ceased to be a work in progress and became an unfinished edifice that could only crumble with time.

Blood of the Caesars combines a fascinating journey into the ancient world with a compelling real-life murder mystery and a truly astonishing solution that will require the rewriting of Roman history.

From the Inside Flap

It was an unfitting death for any Roman soldier. For the empire's greatest hero—a brilliant thirty-three-year-old general, fierce warrior, and gifted diplomat, beloved by the people and in line to become the third emperor—to die in his bed, after suffering weeks of agony, was more than a shock: it was a crime. Germanicus Julius Caesar died with the names of his presumed murderers on his lips, imploring his friends to bring charges against them. The year was a.d. 19, and, says noted historian and author Stephen Dando-Collins, the seeds of the destruction of the empire had just been sown.

In Blood of the Caesars, the fifth of his stirring histories of Rome, Dando-Collins delves into this ancient murder mystery with a fresh eye, a keen mind, and a host of questions. He lays out the evidence that Germanicus was poisoned, assesses the cases against those accused of the murder, and unearths a raft of new suspects, many of whom were among the most prominent and respected citizens of Rome. Then, he supplies a stunning solution to the mystery.

This provocative account unveils the labyrinthian array of intrigues, plots, counterplots, deceptions, and double-dealing that led up to the death of Germanicus and came into full flower after his murder. Beginning with the killing (not suicide, as many claimed) of one of those accused of poisoning Germanicus and followed by verdicts and sentences in the trial that many believed to be a sham, these sub-rosa doings included both failed and successful attempts on the lives of emperors.

How profound was the impact of Germanicus's death? Huge mobs stormed temples around the city because the gods had ignored their prayers for his life; Rome's bitter enemy King Atarbanus of Parthia declared a period of mourning; barbarians at war with the empire made peace in his honor. More darkly, Dando-Collins shows that the emperor Augustus had picked Germanicus to succeed Augustus's immediate heir, Tiberius, believing that the young general was the only man in Rome who could complete the job of empire-building that the first emperor had begun. With his death, Rome ceased to be a work in progress and became an unfinished edifice that could only crumble with time.

Blood of the Caesars combines a fascinating journey into the ancient world with a compelling real-life murder mystery and a truly astonishing solution that will require the rewriting of Roman history.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Blood of the Caesars

How the Murder of Germanicus Led to the Fall of RomeBy Stephen Dando-Collins

John Wiley & Sons

Copyright © 2008 Stephen Dando-Collins
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-470-13741-3

Chapter One

THE MURDER OF GERMANICUS CAESAR

A murder is in progress. The most famous Roman of his day, heir apparent to Rome's imperial throne, lies on his bed, racked with pain and convinced that he has been poisoned. Thirty-three-year-old Germanicus Julius Caesar, grandson of Mark Antony, brother of Claudius, father of Caligula, grandfather of Nero, nephew, adopted son, and heir apparent of the emperor Tiberius, is a handsome, principled, dashing young Roman general adored by the Roman people. According to one Roman authority, Germanicus was seen as potentially the equal of Alexander the Great as a soldier and as a man. Talented, courageous, and kind, he was, to many, the hope of Rome. And here he is just hours away from meeting his death.

It is early October in the year A.D. 19, twenty-three years after the birth of Christ. We are in the grand palace at Daphne (sometimes called Epidaphna), on the Orontes River, five miles west of Antioch, capital of the Roman province of Syria. That province takes in most of modern-day Syria plus Lebanon and part of Turkey. In A.D. 19, the palace at Daphne, along with temples to Jupiter, Apollo, and Diana, sat amid ten shaded and sacred square miles of tall cypress trees, cool ponds, and rippling streams. This October day, beyond lofty, pillared halls and lush courtyard gardens with their tumbling, perfumed fountains and sweet-smelling flowers, all attention is focused on the bedchamber of the dying young general.

At the bedside kneels Germanicus's attractive thirty-two-year-old wife, Agrippina, granddaughter of the late emperor Augustus and daughter of Augustus's loyal lieutenant Marcus Agrippa. She is alternatively giving Germanicus sips of water and dabbing his flushed face with a damp cloth. His redheaded young chief of staff and five of his best friends-generals and Roman senators-cluster around the bed. Some of them are looking worried, others, angry. Anxious servants hover in the background.

Germanicus Caesar's multifaceted fame has spread beyond the borders of the Roman Empire, as far as Parthia, Rome's traditional enemy farther to the east in latter-day Iraq and Iran. The Parthians know that as a youthful colonel Germanicus had played an important role in putting down a five-year revolt in the Balkans, leading flying columns that tracked down and eliminated rebel forces in Dalmatia. As Roman commander in chief on the Rhine he led massive counteroffensives against German armies led by Arminius-or Hermann, as the Germans called him-after the three Roman legions of General Publius Quintilius Varus had been notoriously wiped out by Hermann in Germany's Teutoburg Forest. Sweeping into central Germany, Germanicus had defeated the Germans in three major battles, and had kept the German hordes east of the Rhine. After recapturing two of the three sacred golden eagle standards of the legions of Varus destroyed by Hermann, Germanicus had consecrated those standards at Rome. In doing so, he gave Romans back their pride.

The Senate had voted Germanicus a Triumph for his achievements in Germany. When he drove through the streets of Rome in a golden four-horse chariot on his triumphal procession on May 25, A.D. 17, those streets were lined with as many as a million cheering Romans, many seated in the massive Circus Maximus, through which the Triumphal procession passed, others seated on the temporary wooden tiers erected along the broader city streets for Triumphs. That day, too, Germanicus had done something quite unique. Prior to this, generals celebrating a Triumph had shared the chariot with just a driver and an attendant. On the day of his Triumph, Germanicus had shared his chariot with his then five children, including four-year-old Caligula and even his youngest daughter, two-year-old Agrippina the Younger.

Sent by the emperor Tiberius to become commander in chief of the Roman East that same year, Germanicus had sailed across the Mediterranean, landed in southern Turkey, and marched into Armenia, a country tussled over by Rome and Parthia for centuries, to dethrone one king and make another. The king of Parthia, Artabanus had made his son king of Armenia, but Germanicus had other ideas. He hadn't gone into Armenia with an army. He went with just his personal staff. After crossing treacherous mountains and trekking hundreds of miles, he had entered the Armenian capital of Artaxata as the Parthian-installed ruler fled ahead of him. There, Germanicus had crowned the son of the king of Roman ally Pontus as Armenia's new King Artaxias, allying the country to Rome.

Half a century before, Germanicus's grandfather Mark Antony had achieved a similar result in the face of Parthian resistance, but he had taken a hundred thousand Roman soldiers into Armenia to do it. According to the Roman historian Tacitus, King Artabanus of Parthia-the King of Kings, as he was styled-was in dread of Germanicus, and in dread of the possibility that the reputedly unbeatable Germanicus would lead his legions on an invasion of Parthia. To pacify Germanicus, the Parthian king had sent envoys with gifts of crowns of gold for the prince of Rome. And then he had come himself to the bank of the Euphrates River, the border between Parthia and Roman Syria, to meet with Germanicus and seal a peace treaty with Rome.

No Roman had ever before brought the Parthians to heel like this; certainly no Roman who marched without an army at his back and who achieved success purely on the strength of his reputation and his personality. Running out of honors for Germanicus, the Senate voted him an Ovation, a form of Triumph where the recipient rode through the streets of Rome on horseback on his triumphal progress rather than in a chariot.

Even before he came to the East, Germanicus, said the Roman biographer Suetonius, had won such popular devotion that he was "in danger of being mobbed to death whenever he arrived at or left Rome." No Roman before or after Germanicus won such popularity. From comforting his wounded soldiers at their bedsides to talking with people in the city streets, in the words of first-century Jewish historian Flavius Josephus, Germanicus had never let his royal dignity "prevent him being familiar with them all, as if they were his equals."

Germanicus's charismatic image was enhanced by his gutsy, much-admired wife, Agrippina, herself a member of the royal family of the Caesars, who devotedly went everywhere with her husband. Imagine a glamorous pair of young royals today who were also movie stars-such was the status achieved by Germanicus and his Agrippina in their day and long after it. If there had been celebrity magazines in those times, young Germanicus Caesar and Agrippina would have dominated their covers year in, year out.

Now Germanicus is dying. And he knows it. Weeks before, in September, he had been hit by the first violent symptoms. News of his sudden illness, which quickly laid him low, swept around the Roman Empire. At that time, the government courier service, the Cursus Publicus Velox-literally "the State's very fast runner"-could take news to Rome from the farthest edge of the empire in just ten days via its express riders and fast stage coaches. At Rome, when the news of Germanicus's serious illness arrived late one day in the early fall, people rushed in their thousands to the temples on the Capitoline Mount with burning torches in their hands and leading sacrificial animals. According to Roman biographer Suetonius, the crush of devotees was so great that the gates to the Capitoline complex were nearly torn down.

The next day, says Tacitus, the courts of Rome were deserted. Shops closed down, business ceased. Barges lay idle at the Tiber River docks. Streets were eerily deserted. Private houses, which usually only closed their outer doors at night, left their doors shut and bolted throughout the day. People would not venture out unless it was to seek the latest news of Germanicus's condition or to make offerings at temples for his recovery. Rome had come to a standstill; the city had never before experienced a paralysis like it.

When a merchant ship from Syria soon after arrived at Ostia, the port of Rome, with the news that Germanicus had recovered, the word spread rapidly and the city rejoiced. Tacitus says that people ran through the streets shouting the news-Germanicus is alive and well, thanks be to the gods! Suetonius says that the emperor Tiberius was awoken by crowds in the city below his Palatine Hill palace singing that all was well again at Rome now that their Germanicus was well again. Life went back to normal.

But the rejoicing had been premature. Even as Romans returned to their daily lives believing that their prince had fully recovered, at Daphne, within weeks of the first attack, Germanicus's symptoms had returned, only worse than before. Vomiting racked Germanicus's strong body until he had no strength left. This was a man who had never been seriously ill in his life. He was a soldier-young, fit, and athletic. Suetonius says that when Germanicus was a youth his legs were weak but he deliberately strengthened them with regular exercise. He trained every day; marched hundreds of miles; and, unlike many Roman generals, fought the enemies of Rome hand-to-hand at the head of his troops. No one had been fitter than Germanicus Caesar. Surviving carved marble busts of him depict Germanicus as big-boned, with a square face, jutting jaw, Roman nose, and the same thick neck as his grandfather Mark Antony. "Germanicus is described everywhere as being of outstanding physical and moral stature," Suetonius was to say. Unlike most wealthy Romans, the prince did not even employ a personal doctor.

Now, on his deathbed, Germanicus himself has become convinced that he had been poisoned, and equally convinced that he knows who is responsible. Ever since he'd arrived in the East, he'd been hindered by the new propraetor, or imperial governor, of Syria, Gnaeus Calpurnius Piso. Appointed by the emperor Tiberius at the same time that Germanicus received his posting, Piso, in late middle age, is a former consul of Rome who had previously governed the provinces of Africa and Farther Spain under the emperor Augustus. Germanicus's unique appointment as commander in chief of the entire eastern half of the empire-it would be centuries before a similar division of power would be made by a Roman emperor-made Piso the prince's subordinate.

Provincial governors usually had free rein in their provinces, to rule as they pleased, being answerable to no one but the emperor at Rome. More than once, this virtually unrestricted power tempted a corrupt or vicious governor to plunder his subjects or treat them cruelly. But here in Syria, Piso had to give way to the emperor's nephew and adopted son. All Piso's administrative decisions in the province, civil and military, were subject to Germanicus's approval or overrule. Nor was Piso the most senior judge in his own province; while the governor of Syria had previously presided in major court cases, now Germanicus sat in judgment, as his seniority dictated. Even before he arrived in Syria, the haughty Piso had been notorious for respecting no one, not even the emperor himself. And to compound the governor's humiliation, Germanicus, his superior, was half his age.

From the commencement of his appointment, Germanicus had allowed Piso to govern without interference, deliberately leaving Antioch, the provincial capital, to Piso, and taking up residence outside the city at Daphne so that their paths crossed only when absolutely necessary. This Daphne palace that Germanicus made his home had frequently been used in the past by his grandfather Mark Antony, and also had been visited by the likes of Antony's lover Cleopatra and Antony's close friend King Herod the Great. Yet, over the two years since taking up his post, whenever Germanicus was away, Piso had deliberately and provocatively ignored or reversed his orders in a variety of matters, particularly in relation to the legions in Syria and the annexed subprovince of Judea, whose governor, the prefect of Judea, reported to the much more senior propraetor of Syria in Antioch. At official dinners attended by both Germanicus and Piso, Piso had done his best to embarrass Germanicus. Clearly, Piso had been bent on making life difficult for Germanicus.

After Germanicus had fallen ill for the first time, the prince had been reminded that at a banquet shortly before, Piso had occupied the position beside him on the dining couch, as his rank required, giving him the opportunity to introduce poison to Germanicus's food or drink. To compound suspicions, since Germanicus had become ill, Piso and his wife, Munatia Plancina, were known to have been delighted. What was more, Piso had audaciously sent members of his staff to disrupt the religious observances of locals who were making vows at the temples of Antioch for Germanicus's recovery.

When he heard this, Germanicus had sent Piso a letter, terminating their friendship, such as it was, using a traditional formula, and ordering the governor home to Rome. After the furious, humiliated Piso had set sail in a small fleet of ships with his wife, son, adherents, and hundreds of slaves, Germanicus had sent men to search the vacated governor's palace, which occupied an island in the middle of the Orontes River at Antioch. There at Piso's former palace, hidden under the floor and in the walls, the investigators had found the remains of unidentified bodies taken from tombs, and cinders smeared with blood. On lead tablets they found the name of Germanicus engraved, as well as incantations and spells. This all cried witchcraft, with which, it was now rumored, Piso's wife, Plancina, had been involved. Now, too, envoys from Piso began to arrive at the palace at Daphne, asking about the current state of Germanicus's health.

Those present at Germanicus's palace in his final weeks and days would say that he'd become angry when these "spies" were detected in his palace. According to them, Germanicus had said, "If my doors are to be besieged, if I must breathe my last breath under the gaze of my enemies, what hope is there for my grieving wife and my little children?" Piso, he observed, seemed to be in a hurry to regain control of Syria and its garrison of twenty thousand Roman legionaries. "But Germanicus is not yet dead," said the dying prince, "nor will the murderer keep his reward for the fatal deed, if I do die."

With his first recovery, Germanicus's spirits had been buoyed, and he had thought himself safe. But now, even though every precaution had been taken at the palace to make sure his food and drink were untainted, this time the poison seemed even stronger than before, its symptoms plainly more violent. Somehow Germanicus's enemies had circumvented the security, and with an increased dosage were achieving with a new batch of poison what they'd failed to do the first time. The usual treatment for poisoning during Roman times involved using purgatives to induce the victim to vomit. This was supposed to remove the poison from the body. But a major symptom of all of the most deadly plant poisons was vomiting, so more often than not, all the use of purgatives achieved was the further weakening of the patient.

The actual poison administered to Germanicus would never be identified by Roman authorities. Roman physicians did occasionally conduct autopsies on the dead. One such famous autopsy following the assassination of Julius Caesar in 44 B.C. indicated that only one of twenty-three stab wounds received by Caesar, that to the heart, had been fatal. But the science of forensics was not sophisticated in those times, and there was no test in existence to identify a particular poison in the system of a murder victim.

(Continues...)

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Edition details

• Publisher: Trade Paper Press
• Publication date: 2008
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 047013741X
• ISBN 13: 9780470137413
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 288