|
Main
- books.jibble.org
My Books
- IRC Hacks
Misc. Articles
- Meaning of Jibble
- M4 Su Doku
- Computer Scrapbooking
- Setting up Java
- Bootable Java
- Cookies in Java
- Dynamic Graphs
- Social Shakespeare
External Links
- Paul Mutton
- Jibble Photo Gallery
- Jibble Forums
- Google Landmarks
- Jibble Shop
- Free Books
- Intershot Ltd
|
books.jibble.org
Previous Page
| Next Page
Page 33
In truth, if he, still harking back to Egyptian ideas and customs, had
been content with surrounding his family, especially its women, with a
respect which would have protected them against the infamous
accusations and iniquitous persecutions to which many had fallen
victims, he might have had credit for an action which was good, just,
and useful to the state. That strange condition of affairs which had
been growing up under Tiberius was both absurd and dangerous to the
country: the emperor was honored with extraordinary powers and made the
object of a semi-religious veneration; but his family, and especially
its women, were, as a sort of retribution, set outside the laws and
fiercely assailed in a thousand insidious ways. But the lunatic
Caligula was not the man to keep even a wise proposal within reasonable
limits. Power, popularity, and praise quickly aroused all that was
warped and excessive in his nature, and very soon, as he showed at the
end of the year 37, he entertained an idea which must have seemed to
the Romans a horrible impiety. His wife died soon after he became
emperor. Another marriage seemed obligatory, and he decided that he
would marry his sister Drusilla.
Historians have represented this intention as the perverse delirium of
an unbridled sensuality. It was certainly the gross act of a madman,
but there was perhaps more politics in his madness than perversity; for
it was an attempt to introduce into Rome the dynastic marriages between
brothers and sisters which had been the constant tradition of the
Ptolemies and the Pharaohs of Egypt. This oriental custom certainly
seems a horrible aberration to us, who have been educated according to
the strict and austere doctrines of Christianity, which, inheriting in
these matters the fine flower of Greco-Latin ideas, has purified and
rendered them more rigorous. But for centuries in Egypt,--that is, in
the most ancient of the Mediterranean civilizations,--this horrible
aberration was looked upon as a sovereign privilege which brought the
royal dynasty into relationship with the gods. By means of it, this
family preserved the semi-divine purity of its blood; and perchance
this custom, which had survived up to the fall of the Ptolemies, was
only the projection of ideas and customs which in most ancient times
had had a much wider diffusion along the Mediterranean world, for
traces of it can be found even in Greek mythology. For were not
Jupiter and Juno, who constituted the august Olympian couple, at the
same time also brother and sister? Gradually restricted through the
spreading of Greek civilization, this custom was finally eradicated at
the shores of the Mediterranean by Rome after the destruction of the
kingdom of the Ptolemies.
The lunatic Caligula now suddenly took it into his head to transplant
this custom to Rome--to transplant it with all the religious pomp of
the Egyptian monarchy, and thus transform the family of Augustus, which
up to the present had been merely the most eminent family of the Roman
aristocracy, into a dynasty of gods and demigods, whose members were to
be united by marriage among themselves in order not to pollute the
celestial purity of their blood. A fraternal and divine pair were to
rule at Rome, like another Arsino� and Ptolemy, whom the Alexandrian
throngs had worshiped on the banks of the Nile. The idea had already
matured in his mind at the end of the year 37, and among his three
sisters he had already chosen Drusilla to be his wife. This is proved
by a will made at the time of an illness which he contracted in the
autumn of the first year of his rule. In this will he appointed
Drusilla heir not only of his goods, but also of his empire, a wild
folly from the point of view of Roman ideas, which did not admit women
to the government; but it proves that Caligula had already thought and
acted like an Egyptian king.
[Illustration: Remains of the Bridge of Caligula in the Palace of the
Caesars.]
It is easy to understand why the peace and harmony which had been
reestablished for a moment in the troubled imperial family by the
advent of Caligula should have been of brief duration. His grandmother
and his sisters were Romans, educated in Roman ideals, and this exotic
madness of his could inspire in them only an irresistible horror. This
brought confusion into the imperial family, and after having suffered
the persecutions of Sejanus and his party, the unhappy daughters of
Germanicus found themselves in the toils of the exacting caprices of
their brother. In fact, in 38, Caligula had already broken with his
grandmother, whom the year before he had had proclaimed Augusta; and
between the years 38 and 39, catastrophes followed one another in the
family with frightful rapidity. His sister Drusilla, whom, as
Suetonius tells us, he already treated as a lawful wife, died suddenly
of some unknown malady while still very young. It is not improbable
that her health may have been ruined by the horror of the wild
adventure, which was neither human nor Roman, into which her brother
sought to drag her by marriage. Caligula suddenly declared her a
goddess, to whom all the cities must pay honors. He had a temple built
for her, and appointed a body of twenty priests, ten men and ten women,
to celebrate her worship; he decreed that her birthday should be a
holiday, and he wished the statue of Venus in the Forum to be carved in
her likeness.
Previous Page
| Next Page
|
|