A Walk With the Emperors: A Historic and Literary Tour of Ancient Rome

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Rome is the historian’s parallel to Einstein’s fourth dimension.  Within its walls, time and space interact.  A few steps can transport visitors through centuries of history, layered vertically and horizontally in an interwoven pattern of ages and creeds.

Rome’s abundance of art and architecture can delight artistic cravings; but, if approached from an historical perspective, Rome’s offerings can leave the tourist confused and distracted.  Is San Clemente Basilica baroque or medieval?  I once heard a frustrated tourist ask. Yes, the guide responded, before adding, and pagan, Paleochristian and Byzantine.

The present and many pasts of Rome live side by side, sometimes in disquieting juxtaposition.  Temples and churches come with staircases to different ages and religions, modern autostrade underpass roads built in 300 BC and city buses speed through gates in its 3rd century   AD Aurelian wall.  One mechanic on the Esquiline hill attaches motor oil advertising to the 4th century BC Servian wall that runs through his shop.  Seemingly discarded marble architraves, ancient Etruscan tombs, and Roman theaters lie in the countryside; an unknown number of   Romans occupy apartments atop or adjacent to ancient remains.  Twentieth century wine cellars compete for space with officially  undiscovered ancient artifacts.

Garage with fragment of Servian Wall

The three walking, or armchair, tours use Emperors as the timeline to put Roman sights into an historical context; and put its development in a human context.  Whenever possible, quotations from then contemporary authors are utilized to describe the sights and their imperial patrons, so that ancient gossip from Suetonius or an opinion or observation from Cicero, Horace, the disciple Luke or even an emperor, may provide insights to the times.  Dante, Goethe, Gibbon, Shakespeare and others share their judgments looking back through time.

What transpired during this 350 year period was quickly forgotten as the Roman Empire disintegrated. The architecture, literature, legal systems, engineering and governance structures   were then rediscovered or reinvented 1000 years or more later.    Walking through the center of where these events took place provides some provocative insights into the foundations of Western Civilization and its current level of development.

A pre-Imperial Prologue introduces Julius Caesar’s 48 BC overthrow of   Pompey, the assassination of Caesar, and the end of the Roman Republic.  The struggle for succession among Marc Antony, Lepidus, and Octavian ends in 31 BC.

The tour covers Imperial Rome from 27 BC (when the Senate named Augustus Imperator) to 333AD in three walking or armchair tours:

Tour 1 (27BC- 68 AD) begins in Trastevere (across the Tiber) with the reign of the first Emperor Caesar Augustus (Octavian), followed by the remaining four patrician Emperors of the Julio-Claudian Dynasty: Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius and Nero.

I inherited a Rome of brick and left a Rome of marble

Augustus, Res Gestae

Tour 2 (69-193) commences in the Forum, and finds the Empire led by a new style and class of leadership under the Flavian Dynasty (69-98) of Vespasian and his two sons; and then rise to its global height under the Adoptive and Antonine Emperors Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, Antoninus, Marcus Aurelius and Commodus.

In the second century of the Christian era, the Empire of Rome comprehended the keenest part of the earth, and the most civilized portion of mankind

E. Gibbon, History of the Decline and Fall…

Tour 3 (194-335) opens at the grain dole center, near the Largo Argentina, at the territorial apex of the Empire under Septimius Severus.  The vast Empire then began to disintegrate into chaos, and had a    temporary revival under Diocletian. Constantine made a final   grasp at Christianity to sustain the Empire’s viability.

Two great powers - The Roman Empire, which became a monarchy at that time and the teaching of Christ- proceeding as if from a single starting point, at once tamed and reconciled all to friendship.  Thus each blossomed at the same time and place as the other . . . in order to merge the entire race into one unity and concord.

Eusebius 336 AD

The tours should be read in advance of actually walking to the described sites; or they can be read as an armchair tour thousands of miles from Rome. Backtracking has been kept to a minimum, but now that there is an admission for the Forum, sites are visited there even if they do not fit the chronology of the emperor under discussion.

Quotations: primarily from,

Augustus, Res Gestae, Tr. Frederick Shipley

Atchity, Kenneth J. ed. The Classical Roman Reader

Cicero, M. Tullius Cicero (BC 106 -43) various, Tr. K. Guinagh

Caesar, The Gallic War, Tr. H.J. Edwards

Dante, Dante Alighieri (1265-1321), The Divine Comedy, Tr. Longfellow, Cary, Norton

Dio Cassius, (155-235 AD), Roman History

Dudley, Donald R., Urbs Roma

Gibbon, Edward (1737-1794), The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832), Letters from Italy

Grant, Michael Roman Literature

Historia Augusta, various

Horace, Q. Horatius Flaccus (BC 65-8), various, Tr. Jacob Fuchs

Ogilvie, R.M. The Romans and their Gods

Ovid, P. Ovidius Naso (43BC -17AD), various

Pliny the Elder, (23-79 AD) Natural History, Tr. Bostock and Riley

Pliny the Younger, (62-113 AD) various, Tr.  Laing

Plutarch, various

Scarre, Chris Chronicle of the Roman Emperors & Historical Atlas of Rome

Suetonius, G. Suetonius Tranquillus (75-150 AD), Lives of the Caesar, Tr. Guinagh

Tacitus, Cornelius (55-117 AD), Annals, Ed. Laing

Soprintendenza Archeologica di Roma, The Roman Forum,

Virgil, P. Vergilius Maro, (BC 70-19), Georgics, Aeneid, Tr. Lind, Cobbald

Shakespeare, William, various

Museums:

Museums are referenced by underlined identification.

Capitoline Museum

National Roman Museum:

Palazzo Massimo alle Terme

Palazzo Altemps

Crypta Balbi

Baths of Diocletian

Centrale Montemartini

Museum of Roman Civilization, EUR

National Museum, Naples Museum

Vatican Museum

Via Ostiense Museum

Photographs: the author

MUSEUMS

Pre-Imperial Prologue

Julius Caesar, Gaius Julius Caesar (100 BC-44 BC)

Julius Caesar

Naples Museum

Proconsul, Warrior, Author

As the primary instigator in transforming a civil war-ridden Republican Rome into Imperial Rome, Julius Caesar was a primary influence in shaping the next 300 years of Western history.  While Proconsul of the three Gauls (now France, Belgium, Northern Italy) Julius Caesar chronicled the events of 58-52 BC in The Gallic War.   In the seven books he wrote (eighth written by Hirtius Aulus), he discusses the personalities, politics and battles that led to his conquest and governance over the Gallic lands in 51 BC.  This ancient classic provides vivid personal insights by the man whose personality and philosophy of leadership would provide an historical turning point in world history.

Reports of the exploits of Caesar that preceded The Gallic War provided Romans back home with much to gossip about as they went about their daily lives.

On The day of Caesar’s Gallic Triumph, the axle of the triumphal car broke as he rode through the Velabrum, and he nearly fell out.  .  . Later he went up to the Capitol, between two rows of elephants – of which there were forty in all. In the Pontic Triumph, on one of the floats, instead of the usual tableau showing scenes from the campaign, there was an inscription of three words only

VENI, VIDI, VINCI

Thus showing the speed of the whole operation.

A ribald song was sung by the troops at the Gallic Triumph:

Urbani, servate uxores: calvum moechum adducimus

Aurum in Galliam effutuisti, hic sumpisti mutuum.

Citizens, your wives defend!

Here’s a baldhead man of parts

All the money that you lend,

Squandered on his Gallic tarts!

Suetonius, Caesar

Cicero, a defender of the Republic, took careful note of the exploits of Caesar and his personality with which he was personally acquainted.

I foresee no peace that can last a year; and the nearer the struggle - and there is bound to be a struggle - approaches, the more clearly do we see the danger of it . . . Pompey is determined not to allow Gaius Caesar to be elected consul unless he has handed over his army and provinces; Caesar on the other hand is convinced that there is no safety for him if he once quits his army.

Cicero, Letter to Atticus

Revolutionary

In 49 BC, as Cicero had predicted, Julius Caesar took his battle-hardened and fiercely loyal legions beyond his authorized jurisdiction of Cisalpine Gaul (Northern Italy) and crossed the boundary line Rubicon into Italy.  In defiance of the Senate he marched on Rome.

From modest fountain blood-red Rubicon

In summer’s heat flows on; his pygmy tide

Creeps through the valleys and with slender marge

Divides the Italian peasant from the Gaul ...

When Caesar crossed and trod beneath his feet

The soil of Italy’s forbidden fields,

Here spake he, "peace, here broken laws be left;

Farewell to treaties. Fortune lead me on;

War is our judge, and in the fates our trust"

Lucan, Pharsalia I

Virgil imagines Caesar’s offensive in the Aeneid,

And look at those two in their polished armor: one of them is Julius Caesar, and the other Pompey.  They are friends now, and friends for as long as they stay down here.  But when they reach the light of day, they will take up arms against each other.  You cannot imagine the forces that they will collect, or the ferocity of their conflict, or the number of the dead.  Even though Pompey’s wife is Caesar’s daughter, Caesar will attack him from his provinces beyond the Alps, and Pompey will stand ready to oppose him in the East.

 Virgil tr. Cobbold, The Aeneid

Pompey and his Senatorial supporters fled to Greece and assembled an army.

In 48 BC Julius Caesar soundly defeated that army at the battle of Pharsalus and pursued Pompey to Egypt.   There, Caesar defeated the Egyptian monarch Ptolemy XIII and was handed Pompey’s head by his brother Ptolemy XIV.  He was captured by Ptolemy’s daughter Cleopatra, with whom he had an illegitimate son. 

Dictator

Leaving Cleopatra in control of Egypt, Caesar returned to Rome.  There, he assembled an army to confront Pompey’s son in Spain, and left Rome under the care of his deputies, led by Marc Antony. He defeated one of Pompey’s sons and returned to Rome to assume control.

In 44 BC, he declared himself perpetual dictator of all Roman territory.  This comprised much of Gaul, the Adriatic territories, Spain, parts of the Middle East, North Africa and the newly conquered Egypt.

Map of Rome 44 BC

Roman Forum

Those who sought the restoration of the Republic were deeply suspicious that Caesar aspired to be King. 

Ides of March

Republican Senators opposed Caesar’s self-proclaimed dictatorship. Brutus and Cassius instigated a conspiracy to assassinate him on the Ides of March 44 BC.  The event would take place at the theater named after his predecessor Pompey, where the Senate would meet that day.   There, Caesar died from 23 knife wounds, the last delivered by his friend and alleged son, Brutus.  But his death would not change the direction that he had begun.  The Roman Republic that had been formed 465 years earlier was finished in all but name.

 Pompey Theatre

Rome, Largo Argentina

It is possible these things might have happened by chance; however, the fact that the place where the Senate met that day and which was destined to be the stage for the impending drama was the same building that Pompey had built as an annex to his theater and contained his statue plainly shows that some supernatural power directed the action and arranged for the murder to occur in that particular place.  They say that just before the assassination took place even Cassius, who was a follower of Epicurus, looked at the statue of Pompey and silently invoked his assistance, for this critical moment of grave danger seems to have made him forget all rationalism and filled him with emotion.

 Plutarch, Parallel Lives, Caesar

Roman building over curved foundation of the Pompey Theatre,

Vicolo delle Grotte

Thirteen hundred years later in the Divine Comedy, the Pilgrim Dante located Julius Caesar in Limbo alongside history’s heroes who had preceded the birth of Christ and the way of grace.

There was Electra standing with a group,

Among whom I saw  Hector and Aeneas,

And Caesar, falcon-eyed and fully armed.

Dante, Inferno

Julius Caesar

Palazzo Altemps

Caesar’s Altar, Ides of March 2004

Roman Forum

Julian Calendar        Text Box

On March 1, 45 BC, Caesar’s Julian calendar, with its  365-day solar year and a leap year every four years, came into effect.  The Alexandrian astronomer Sosigenes, who wrote Revolving Spheres, was one of Julius Caesar’s  key advisers  on this matter.    Caesar himself, however,  provided the intellectual energy behind this much  needed change in the way time was recorded.

Ovid, the satirist,  records this calendar change in his Fasti,  a poem describing festivals and legends.

I’ll speak of divisions of time throughout the Roman year,

Their origins, and the stars that set beneath the earth and rise.

Germanicus Caesar, accept this work, with a calm face,

And direct the voyage of my uncertain vessel:

Not scorning this slight honour, but like a god,

Receiving with favour the homage I pay you.