Rome’s emperors (like one played by Joaquin Phoenix in Gladiator) remain compelling 2,000 years later (Image: Dreamworks/Universal/Kobal/Shutterstock)
Ancient Rome produced the longest-lasting empire in human history. It wasn’t the biggest – that was the British Empire. It wasn’t even the largest in terms of land mass – that was the vast sea of grass under Genghis and Kublai Khan. In terms of influence though, in the Top Trumps of empires, it is the card that wins the game.
From languages like English, Italian, French and Spanish, to architecture, philosophy and the American Senate (Senate meaning “old men” in Latin) it continues to influence cultures today.
We can read Seneca or Emperor Marcus Aurelius on how to live a good life.
Those voices can speak to us across 2,000 years and still be understood.
While the Romans revered courage and self-sacrifice, love and personal honour, some of their attitudes were very different to ours. There was a great deal of good in the Roman Empire – but some parts were so completely bonkers they’re hard to believe.
Luckily, they were recorded, by eye-witness scribes and clerks, sometimes by the men and women themselves, such as Julius Caesar.
They wrote things down, the Romans. And thank goodness for that.
It forms a record of a vast and complex culture: 10,000 stories that are both infinitely strange and completely recognisable. Tiberius and the Fisherman, for example.
When I speak at book festivals, I don’t tell many stories about Tiberius. He was an absolute monster and did incredible damage to the reputation of Rome. He is at least partly responsible for Caligula, an emperor who terrified the whole empire for years.
No sources speak well of Tiberius, or suggest any redeeming features. One short tale serves to show the man.
Tiberius: He would stage decadent parties on cliffs and occasionally throw people off the top, onto the rocks below. (Image: Heritage Art/Heritage Images via Getty Images)
Tiberius spent a lot of his reign on the island of Capri, ignoring his responsibilities. He left a friend in charge of Rome and spent his time in palaces on the cliffs, staging increasingly decadent parties. He would occasionally throw people off the top, onto the rocks below. I’ve since stood in that spot and it’s a long way down.
One day he was walking on the beach in the sun. He had a couple of guards following behind, but he was otherwise alone with his thoughts.
Out at sea, a fisherman spotted the emperor and realised there was a possible market for the enormous fish he had caught. The fisherman beached his little boat, took up the fish and came running along the sand, falling to his knees and offering the fish to Tiberius.
The emperor was furious at being interrupted in his thoughts. He called his men forward and told them to take that fish and scrub the man’s face with it. Now, a fish is covered in rough scales and this was no small punishment. It would have been a cruel act causing immense pain.
However, the legionaries worked it over the fisherman’s face vigorously. When they had finished, the emperor asked the fisherman what he had to say for himself.
His reply is one of my favourite lines from history. He said: “I’m just pleased I didn’t try to sell the lobster I caught.” That is a very funny response. Unfortunately, Tiberius had no sense of humour at all. He just sniffed and told his guards: “Fetch the lobster.” They brought the lobster from the little boat and scrubbed the poor man’s face with that as well.
Tiberius should have been followed by a good man known as Germanicus, but Germanicus was poisoned, his wife exiled and two of his sons murdered.
Only one son was left – and that poor devil had spent years on Capri with Tiberius. His name was Gaius Caesar, though we know him better for the nickname given when he was presented with a child’s set of Roman armour: “Little Boot” or Caligula.
Gaius Caesar Caligula: His madness kept all of Rome in a state of constant terror. He killed or tortured on a whim, keeping a list of favourite poisons. (Image: Fine Art Images/Heritage Images via Getty Images)
Just about everyone he loved had been murdered – and he had survived horrors, every single day for years, without a chance of being saved. He was so damaged, he never really stood a chance. We think Caligula was involved in Tiberius being smothered in his own bed, but no one knows for sure. All we know is that when the old spider was dead, Caligula tried first to rule like a good and noble Roman.
The crowds called him Shining Light and Baby Boy for his youth and good looks.
He put aside his troubled past, married a young woman named Junia Claudilla and she became pregnant.
However, Caligula was present when both she and the baby died in a brutal childbirth where everything went wrong. That traumatic event sent him back over the edge.
The story goes that when he called her father into the room, Caligula whispered a message for his dead wife and then killed the old man to send it to her.
That was the beginning of four years of horror. Caligula’s madness kept all of Rome in a state of constant terror. He killed or
tortured on a whim, keeping a list of favourite poisons. He was exactly the sort of young man you’d expect after growing up with Tiberius. Caligula spent fortunes on chariot racing, gladiators and savage entertainments of all kinds.
He brought Rome to the edge of bankruptcy and introduced new taxes on everyone to pay for his excesses. He didn’t actually make his horse Incitatus a Consul – head of the senate – though he did buy it a house and give the horse its own slaves.
Claudius: He survived by being humiliated by all in the imperial court. But he did invade Britannia (Image: PHAS/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
After a reign of three years and ten months, his Praetorian Guards couldn’t stand it any more. Without a plan they suddenly snapped, stabbing Caligula to death.
In a panic, they looked around for a successor, one who might not have them all killed for what they had done. They found him hiding behind a curtain.
Claudius was Caligula’s uncle, a stuttering scholar who had survived by being a sort of Baldrick from Blackadder in the imperial court, humiliated by all.
The strange thing is, he was not a fool and he saw his chance. He forgave the Praetorians publicly and was crowned emperor. Emperor Claudius achieved quite a lot in his reign.
He did have a lot of senators executed and took all they owned, but he improved the grain and water supply to Rome at the same time. He also pulled off a successful invasion of Britannia, something even Julius Caesar had not managed.
Claudius even renamed his son Britannicus to honour that achievement. Unfortunately, he was very taken with a lady named Agrippina. She was Caligula’s sister and that should have been a red flag all on its own.
Her first two husbands had died suspiciously early and poor Claudius was like a fly taking a shortcut along a very beautiful web. In just a short time, Agrippina had her own face on coins.
She persuaded Claudius to grant her honours and titles – and even to make her son Lucius the official heir! It is an extraordinary story. She really must have been a beauty and Claudius never saw it coming.
As with the death of Tiberius, we don’t know for certain Claudius was poisoned by Agrippina – it’s just extremely likely.
Tyrant by Conn Iggulden is out now (Image: Penguin)
The morning after Claudius died, Lucius was ready to be declared Emperor.
He was just 16 and, as with the new pope, he chose a new name: Nero.
His mother clearly thought she would rule through him. But any mother of a teenage boy knows how that was going to go.
When I started writing a trilogy on Nero, friends I asked knew only two things – his name and that he “fiddled while Rome burned”.
Most of us know the violin didn’t exist, but the lyre did and the funny thing is the rest is true. In the great fire of Rome in AD 64, Nero saw his new theatre burning.
He raced down from the Palatine Hill and went inside, even though the whole building was on fire and could have collapsed at any moment.
He stood on the stage and played his lyre, singing and speaking lines of epic poetry with flames roaring all around.
It should have been a brave and epic moment for a young man, but his enemies said he didn’t care about the burning city – and that became the story.
Nero certainly wasn’t as bad as Tiberius, nor as mad as Caligula, but he was still corrupted by power.
He was the last of Julius Caesar’s line – one of a thousand stories of Rome still worth telling, 2,000 years on.
Tyrant by Conn Iggulden (Penguin, £22) is out now
