The last chapter asked how the shape of the res publica changed in response to the arrival of sole rule in the late first century bce. Building upon shifts in political language that were already under way in the Late Republic, Augustan writers integrated an exemplary ruler into their figurations of the res publica. Vergil and Horace implicitly linked the princeps to the curative properties of Venus and Apollo, while Valgius Rufus connected his maiestas to the healing of humanity. Around the same time, Livy began to rehabilitate the head of state metaphor as a model of good statesmanship. Staging distinct phases in the life cycle of the body politic, his Archaic history ultimately endorses a res publica topped by a caput as a solution to discord. Telling this story through exemplary founders like Romulus, Numa, and Camillus, he hinted at the contemporary stakes of his analysis. When Cornelius Severus praised Cicero as the patriae caput in his eulogy, he confirmed that this symbol had reversed its signifying force. The ramifications of Rome’s new shape began to emerge in Ovid’s exilic poetry, where the princeps is granted the authority of a caput orbis and the responsibility of a healer. Illustrating Augustus’ ability to use his role to positive and negative ends, however, Ovid gestured towards the risks posed by collective dependence on and obedience to one man. He thereby laid the groundwork for the continuing evolution of this metaphor in Julio-Claudian political thought.

The connections that the Augustan poets forged between the rule of the princeps and the health of Rome were elaborated upon by Tiberian writers, who began to portray the Principate as the remedy for a body politic sickened and wounded by civil war. Adapting traditional political language to new ends, they used familiar figurations of civic decline to justify autocracy. Their efforts were informed by the hindsight that nearly half a century of peace had bestowed.Footnote ¹ It was largely because discord – or at least public expressions of it – had been banished in the present that Tiberian writers were comfortable exploring its recurrence in the past. And explore it they did; in terms of volume, more accounts of the civil wars were produced under Tiberius than any other emperor.Footnote ² Although almost none of this literature is extant, its central themes are legible in Manilius, Velleius Paterculus, and Valerius Maximus.Footnote ³ This chapter shows how they worked together to construct a normative narrative of Julio-Claudian consensus, one that held the Principate responsible for the regeneration of the body politic.Footnote ⁴ Celebrating the princeps as the unifier of Rome’s discordant limbs, they offered a new solution to a problem that had long vexed their intellectual forebearers.

Even as they crafted this triumphant narrative, however, they also struggled to incorporate the transfer of power into it. The implementation of a dynastic succession soon provoked imagery of a two-headed and two-eyed body politic. Although these portrayals of dual rule were meant to be panegyrical, they reactivated a trope closely associated with discord in the paradigm of Roman Republicanism. They thereby exposed the conceptual tension that lay between the House of the Caesars and the Republican façade of the Principate. The precarity of the dynastic succession was subsequently thrown into sharp relief by the tyrannical rule and violent assassination of Caligula. Those who witnessed his downfall, including Philo, the Elder Seneca, and Curtius Rufus, revived imagery of a sick, aged, and headless body politic in response. Incorporating the theme of organic decline into their portrayals of the Imperial present rather than the Republican past, they confirmed that the Augustan restoration was not necessarily a permanent solution. With each transfer of power came a new princeps who could harm or heal the body politic under his care. The vulnerability of such a system became a central concern of the Neronian writers to whom we will turn our attention in the final chapter.

Augustus and the End of Civil War

One of the earliest texts to equate the foundation of the Principate with the regeneration of the body politic is Manilius’ Astronomica, a didactic poem in five books that promises to instruct readers in the astrological arts.Footnote ⁵ Although scholars agree that it was composed during the final years of Augustus’ reign or the first years of Tiberius’, the Caesar to whom Manilius refers at key moments remains unclear.Footnote ⁶ For our purposes, however, his identity is less important than his authoritative role in the universe. This role emerges as part of a broader analogy between the cosmos and res publica that operates throughout the text.Footnote ⁷ Manilius makes the parallel explicit at the conclusion of Book 5, where he analogizes the stellar magnitudes, or the visibility of stars from the brightest to dimmest, to the social divisions within Rome.Footnote ⁸ After comparing the hierarchy of the stars to that of the senators, equestrians, and people, he writes, sic etiam magno quaedam res publica mundo est | quam natura facit, quae caelo condidit urbem (“So there is a sort of res publica in the vast universe, which nature – who built a city in the sky – has established,” Man. 5.738–9).Footnote ⁹ Rather than describe a political community modeled upon the stars, as we might expect, Manilius suggests that the celestial sphere mimics the terrestrial one.Footnote ¹⁰ Katharina Volk draws attention to the disquieting implications of the idea.Footnote ¹¹ If the universe mirrors a res publica that recently saw total collapse, it too seems the product of a fragile peace rather than any intrinsic harmony. Such fragility invests the poem with a sense of precarious urgency.

The language that Manilius uses to describe the res publica in the sky directs readers towards contemporary political affairs. Using the phrase condidit urbem to figure nature as a founder, he invites readers to look back to an earlier passage in Book 4 that described the princeps in the same way: qua genitus Caesar melius nunc condidit urbem | et propriis frenat pendentem nutibus orbem (“Born under whose sign [Libra], Caesar has now established a better city and bridles a world hanging on his own nod,” Man. 4.776–7).Footnote ¹² Scholars disagree as to whether Augustus or Tiberius is the intended referent; while Tiberius was born under the Moon sign of Libra, Augustus was born under the Sun sign of Libra.Footnote ¹³ More relevant than the identity of the Caesar, however, is the way in which his role mirrors that of nature. The princeps and natura are both represented as the founders of their respective communities; within the Stoic logic of the poem, the former derives political legitimacy from his conceptual proximity to the latter.Footnote ¹⁴ The adverb melius hints that Caesar’s foundation is really an act of refoundation, one made possible by his ability to bridle (frenat) the world. Evoking Vergil’s famous analogy between civil strife and an out-of-control chariot (neque audit currus habenas, Verg. Georg. 1.514), Manilius introduces the problem of discord into his narrative.Footnote ¹⁵ His identification of the princeps as its solution invites readers to consider the political lessons implicit in the poem.

The metaphor of the body politic is integral to this structural framework. One of the guiding principles of the Astronomica is that the cosmos resembles a living organism, an idea central to ancient astrology and indebted to the Stoic tradition.Footnote ¹⁶ The proem announces this theme by inviting readers to learn about the innards of the great universe: scire iuvat magni penitus praecordia mundi (Man. 1.17).Footnote ¹⁷ In the books that follow, Manilius depicts everything from the natural elements to the zodiac signs through corporeal imagery. In a characteristic passage from Book 1, he writes, hoc opus immensi constructum corpore mundi | membraque naturae diversa condita forma | aeris atque ignis, terrae pelagique iacentis, | vis animae divina regit (“The divine force of a spirit governs this edifice, which is constructed from the body of the vast universe, and its limbs, built from the diverse elements of nature: air and fire, land and supine sea,” Man. 1.247–50). Legible in his rather convoluted image is the basic dichotomy of a commanding mind and obedient limbs. Which elements of the universe operate within this framework, however, vary in relation to Manilius’ subject matter. As he turns his attention to the zodiac, he asserts that the constellations resemble a body in which each sign plays a unique role: accipe divisas hominis per sidera partes | singulaque imperiis propriis parentia membra, | in quis praecipuas toto de corpore vires | exercent (“Understand that the different parts of man are distributed through the constellations, and that individual members are subject to distinct authorities; of the whole body, they [the signs] exercise particular influence over the members,” Man. 2.453–6). He identifies Aries as the head (caput) because it is foremost (princeps) among the constellations; Taurus acts as the neck, Gemini as the arms and shoulders, and so on through Pisces as the feet (Man. 2.456–65). Manilius’ lessons about the stars are in this way rooted in his readers’ familiarity with the functioning of their own bodies.Footnote ¹⁸ The interconnection of these seemingly distinct spheres structures the work as a whole.

The organic analogies of the Astronomica assume that nature commands the universe in the same way that reason commands the body. The parallel is immediately apparent in Manilius’ terminology; mundus, deus, natura, and fatum, on the one hand, and ratio, mens, anima, and spiritus, on the other, are used more or less interchangeably throughout all five books.Footnote ¹⁹ The opening of Book 2 blends much of this language together: namque canam tacita naturae mente potentem | infusumque deum caelo terrisque fretoque | ingentem aequali moderantem foedere molem (“For I will sing of the god who presides over nature with a silent mind, pervasive through the sky, lands, and sea, and manages the huge structure with an equitable pact,” Man. 2.60–2). Manilius once again invites readers to compare the cosmos and res publica; molis was often used to describe the scope of Rome’s empire,Footnote ²⁰ while foedus evokes the contractual language of Roman conquest.Footnote ²¹ He then incorporates the ideologically inflected ideal of consensus into this framework: totumque alterno consensu vivere mundum | et rationis agi motu, cum spiritus unus | per cunctas habitet partes atque irriget orbem | omnia pervolitans corpusque animale figuret (“How the whole universe lives by mutual consensus and is driven by the movement of reason, since one spirit dwells in all its parts and inundates the world, flying over everything, and shapes it like a living body,” Man. 2.63–6). Manilius argues that the governance of unus spiritus allows the diverse parts of the universe to coalesce into a living, breathing organism. Sole rule, in other words, enables cosmic concord. His politically resonant terminology hints at the earthly relevance of this lesson.

The mind of the universe must devote such attention to the realization of harmony because its disparate limbs are predisposed towards conflict. This idea is encapsulated in the paradoxical phrase discordia concors (Man. 1.142), which serves as shorthand for the complex alliances and enmities underlying the cosmos.Footnote ²² Manilius depicts the planets, for example, engaging in a perpetual war against the zodiac signs: aeternum et stellis adversus sidera bellum (Man. 2.119).Footnote ²³ Yet the signs of the zodiac also wage war against each other in private feuds: et privata gerunt secretis hostibus arma (Man. 2.540).Footnote ²⁴ Their conflicts are mirrored in those of nature, which are likewise described in martial language: sic bellum natura gerit, discordat et annus, | ne mirere in ea pugnantia sidera parte (“As nature wages war, and the year is discordant, do not be surprised that the stars are at war in their positions,” Man. 2.422–3).Footnote ²⁵ Repeatedly representing the universe as the product of strife and instability, Manilius introduces the possibility of systemic and unavoidable violence.Footnote ²⁶ Even as the world veers towards chaos, however, it is made orderly again through the commanding force of reason. Were this divine spirit to be lost, cosmic collapse would soon follow.Footnote ²⁷ Seeking concrete evidence of this principle, Manilius turns his attention to the civil wars that recently destroyed the res publica.

Just as the limbs of the universe tend towards conflict, so do the members of the Roman body politic. Rather than explore the generative nature of this predisposition, however, Manilius focuses instead on its destructive consequences. In the excursus on Roman history that opens Book 4, he identifies the Social War as the beginning of self-slaughter: adde etiam Latias acies Romamque suismet | pugnantem membris, adice et civilia bella (“Add also the Latin battles and Rome at war with her own limbs; include too the civil wars,” Man. 4.43–4). He then narrates key moments in Rome’s long saga of civil strife, including the flight of Marius (Man. 4.45–9) and death of Pompey (Man. 4.50–5). While these examples illustrate the fickleness of fortune generally, they also designate discord as the fate to which generations of Romans have been doomed. Even the divine Julius Caesar could not escape its grasp: ille etiam caelo genitus caeloque receptus, | cum bene compositis victor civilibus armis | iura togae regeret, totiens praedicta cavere | vulnera non potuit (“Even he, who was born from the sky and received by the sky, when he emerged as the victor after civilian arms were gladly put down and was implementing the laws of peacetime, could not avoid the wounds so often predicted,” Man. 4.57–60).Footnote ²⁸ The destiny of Caesar speaks to that of Rome, which has repeatedly witnessed brothers driven into arms against each other (mutuaque armati coeunt in vulnera fratres, Man. 4.83). Just because strife cannot be eradicated, however, does not mean it cannot be contained. The lessons embedded in the stars suggest that concord can be achieved by subordinating the warring members of the body politic to a single governing mind. Elsewhere in the text, the victory of Augustus in the civil wars emerges in proof of this point.

At the conclusion of Book 1, Manilius addresses the role of comets in predicting civic upheaval (civilis motus) and intra-familial warfare (cognata bella, Man. 1.906–7). The comets that presaged Philippi grant him the opportunity to contribute to the rapidly developing tropology of Roman civil war (Man. 1.907–11):

Manilius collapses the geographical distance between Philippi and Pharsalus to portray the former as a repetition of the latter. He thereby signals his poetic debt to Vergil, whose Georgics likewise depict cosmic conflagrations on the twice befouled fields of Philippi (Verg. Georg. 1.487–92).Footnote ²⁹ Just as Vergil imagines future farmers uncovering bones with their plows (Verg. Georg. 1.493–7), Manilius describes the armies of 42 bce standing upon the buried corpses of the combatants at Pharsalus.Footnote ³⁰ Self-consciously replicating the imagery of his predecessor, he suggests that both internal conflicts and the language used to describe them are reduplications in a seemingly endless cycle of self-destruction.Footnote ³¹ Astrology is positioned as a form of knowledge able to shed light on, and perhaps offer a solution to, this problem.

In a divergence from the uncertainty and pessimism that pervades earlier civil war literature, Manilius suggests that Augustus’ rule has put an end to Rome’s ancestral curse.Footnote ³² His bleak portrait of the Thessalian landscape is interrupted by the triumphant arrival of the princeps: imperiumque suis conflixit viribus ipsum, | perque patris pater Augustus vestigia vicit (“The empire itself fought against its own strength and father Augustus conquered in the footsteps of his father,” Man. 1.912–3). Anticipating Augustus’ role as pater patriae through his word order, Manilius identifies him as the successor to Julius Caesar. He then skips over the more problematic moments of triumviral history to narrate the Battle of Actium, which is framed as a cataclysmic struggle against an Egyptian Other.Footnote ³³ He uses a familiar set of tropes to grant the princeps a victory unpolluted by fraternal violence (Man. 1.914–8):

Augustus triumphs over the threat of civil strife by subduing a foreign enemy, a paradox that absolves him of blame for the events through which he secured sole rule. The propriety of that rule is confirmed through the title rector Olympi, which assimilates Augustus to Jupiter and puts the thunderbolts of the god in service of his autocratic ambitions.Footnote ³⁴ His implied divinity looks back to the proem, where the princeps is addressed as a living god: tu, Caesar, patriae princepsque paterque, | qui regis augustis parentem legibus orbem | concessumque patri mundum deus ipse mereris (“You, Caesar, princeps and pater patriae, who rules a world obedient to your august law, yourself a god, you deserve the heaven bestowed on your father,” Man. 1.7–9).Footnote ³⁵ The two passages, marked by the intertwined themes of paternity, divinity, and civic order, demand to be read in tandem. By connecting the divine heritage of Augustus to the end of civil strife, Manilius suggests that his rule on earth approximates that of the deus et ratio in the sky. Both use their preordained command to maintain order in a discordant world.

Manilius’ digression culminates in a celebratory vision of discord in chains, an image that further correlates the beginning of the Principate with the end of civil war. Expressing a fervent wish for peace, he writes, sed satis hoc fatis fuerit: iam bella quiescant | atque adamanteis discordia vincta catenis | aeternos habeat frenos in carcere clausa (“But let this be enough for the fates: let wars now be quiet and let discord – bound by steel chains – be reined in forevermore, enclosed in jail,” Man. 1.922–4). Manilius’ description of the reins (frenos) that constrain discord looks ahead to Book 4, where the princeps is praised for bridling (frenat, Man. 4.777) a world subservient to his will. Both images respond to the out-of-control chariot at the end of Georgics I, reassuring readers that the res publica has been put back on its proper course.Footnote ³⁶ Discord might be an inherent feature of both the terrestrial and cosmic spheres, but this fact does not doom Rome to an endless cycle of self-destruction. Just as the discordant limbs of the universe can be kept in harmony under a single governing mind, those of the res publica are able to achieve concord under the rational authority of the princeps.Footnote ³⁷ An idea that operates tentatively and implicitly in earlier Augustan literature is thereby transformed into an organizing principle of Manilius’ poetry.Footnote ³⁸ Within a few years, Velleius Paterculus and Valerius Maximus began articulating similar perspectives from their respective historical and antiquarian perches. Their mid-Tiberian dates, however, suggest that it was only after Augustus’ rule had come to an end that his restoration of the res publica became fully legible in political discourse.

Tiberius and the Transfer of Power

Written under the height of the Tiberian Principate, Velleius Paterculus’ Historiae and Valerius Maximus’ Facta et Dicta Memorabilia share in and build upon the political perspective of Manilius’ Astronomica.Footnote ³⁹ Despite professing a disinterest in talking about the wounds of civil war, both authors juxtapose the self-destructive body politic of the Republic with the civic regeneration made possible by the Caesars. In doing so, they reinforce historically what Manilius conveys astrologically. They stand out, however, in their efforts to incorporate the transfer of power into this figurative framework.Footnote ⁴⁰ This section explores the difficulty that lay in reconciling the metaphor of the body politic with the complexities of a dynastic succession that resisted formalization.Footnote ⁴¹ Faced with not just one Caesar, but a House of Caesars, Velleius and Valerius Maximus were forced to innovate.Footnote ⁴² Velleius tried to incorporate a two-headed body politic into the developing language of Imperial panegyric, while also depicting Augustus and Tiberius as the two eyes of the res publica. Valerius Maximus took a similar path, comparing the princeps and his successors to divine eyes watching over Rome. In reactivating the trope of doubling, however, they unintentionally imported a hint of discord into their portrayals of the Imperial household.Footnote ⁴³ Their imagery anticipated concerns that the transfer of power might undermine the promise of Julio-Claudian consensus, an idea that became central to the representation of the first succession in Tacitus’ Annales.

At first glance, both Velleius and Valerius seem deeply invested in avoiding the topic of civil war in their narratives.Footnote ⁴⁴ Velleius claims that his short history does not allow him to detail the catastrophe at Pharsalus (non recipit enarranda hic scripturae modus, Vell. Pat. 2.52.3),Footnote ⁴⁵ while Valerius shies away from the question of civil war triumphs with the comment, Piget taedetque per volnera rei publicae ulterius procedere (“It is both revolting and tiresome to proceed further through the wounds of the res publica,” Val. Max. 2.8.7).Footnote ⁴⁶ He later criticizes those who bring up traumatic events from Rome’s strife-ridden past, citing the example of a speech that the aged Helvius Mancia delivered against Pompey. His description of the murders performed by Sulla’s “boy butcher” (adulescentulus carnifex), Valerius argues, reopened obducta iam vetustis cicatricibus bellorum civilium vastissima volnera (“the deepest wounds of the civil wars, which were now covered by old scars,” Val. Max. 6.2.8).Footnote ⁴⁷ In his view, detailing the crimes of civil war undoes the process of healing, an idea vividly conveyed through imagery of scarring. Yet neither he nor Velleius manages to avoid a subject that dominated nearly a century of Roman history. Both use imagery of a sick and mutilated body politic at key points in their narratives: the death of Tiberius Gracchus,Footnote ⁴⁸ the struggle between Sulla and Marius,Footnote ⁴⁹ the war between Caesar and Pompey,Footnote ⁵⁰ and the domination of Antony.Footnote ⁵¹ The continuity of such imagery across time and space creates the impression of an organism trapped in a single cycle of self-destruction.Footnote ⁵² Its abrupt end after the Battle of Actium, in turn, implicitly frames the Principate as a remedy.

Both Valerius and Velleius draw attention to the curative properties of the Principate. Like many thinkers before him, Valerius correlates the health of the res publica with the moral rectitude of its foremost statesman. The preface to Book 1 of Facta et Dicta addresses Tiberius as certissima salus patriae, a status earned through the cultivation of virtue (virtutes … benignissime foventur) and punishment of vice (vitia severissime vindicantur, Val. Max. praef.).Footnote ⁵³ Referred to as the salutaris princeps elsewhere in the text (Val. Max. 2.9.6; 8.13.praef.), Tiberius possesses the soundness of character necessary for the maintenance of civic vitality. Ascribing similar roles to Augustus and Julius Caesar before him, he constructs a “seamless teleological progression” from the Republican past to the domus Augusta.Footnote ⁵⁴ Healing imagery works in the service of this vision insofar as it posits the revival of an old body politic rather than creation of a new one. As the bloodstained exempla of the first century bce yield to the tranquility of the Tiberian present, sole rule emerges as an unspoken solution to the problem of civil strife.

Velleius is more direct in his equation of the foundation of the Principate with the end of internecine warfare.Footnote ⁵⁵ He joins Valerius in linking the soundness of the contemporary res publica to the restoration of its ancestral morals under the Caesars.Footnote ⁵⁶ With the end of the bella civilia, peace was reestablished (revocata pax), the laws regained their force (restituta vis legibus), and the power of the magistrates was reduced to its former limits (imperium magistratuum ad pristinum redactum modum, Vell. Pat. 2.89.3). The repetition of the prefix re- rejects the linear progression typical of historical narration; as Alain Gowing notes, “Rome has moved not from Republic to Principate, but from Republic to a better Republic.”Footnote ⁵⁷ Clarifying the organic implications of this idea, he proclaims the restoration of Rome’s previous shape: prisca illa et antiqua rei publicae forma revocata (“that old and ancestral form of the res publica was recovered,” Vell. Pat. 2.89.4). The next section invests this metaphor of the body politic with greater detail: sepultis, ut praediximus, bellis civilibus coalescentibusque rei publicae membris, †etiam coaluere† quae tam longa armorum series laceraverat (“As I have already explained, when the civil wars were buried and the limbs of the res publica were healing, the [provinces], which such a long series of wars had lacerated, were also coming together,” Vell. Pat. 2.90.1).Footnote ⁵⁸ Like Livy’s Romulus, Augustus enables the coalescence of the body politic.Footnote ⁵⁹ The circumstances surrounding its reunification are made clear by lacero, a favorite verb in Cicero and Sallust’s portrayal of discord. Positioning his analysis as a response to a long line of Roman thinkers, Velleius textually buries the civil wars that Augustus ended in more literal fashion.

Despite Velleius’ insistence that the res publica has returned to its traditional shape, he goes on to offer a model of the body politic that is radically different than any considered thus far. Confirming the rehabilitation of the head of state metaphor in public discourse, he calls Tiberius the alterum rei publicae lumen et caput (“the second light and head of the res publica,” Vell. Pat. 2.99.1). These words mark the first time in extant Latin literature that the head–body analogy is applied to the relationship between the princeps and res publica. Augustan writers, as we have seen, paved the way for this development; Livy described Camillus as the caput rei Romanae, while Ovid called Augustus the caput orbis. Velleius merges these two strands of discourse in an obsequious celebration of Tiberius, who is represented as Augustus’ equal (aequatus Augusto) yet also selected for special emphasis through a series of superlatives: the most eminent of citizens after his adoptive father (civium post unum … eminentissimus), greatest of generals (ducum maximus), and most distinguished of men in reputation and fortune (fama fortunaque celeberrimus, Vell. Pat. 2.99.1).Footnote ⁶⁰ His tone carries no hint of the subversion lurking in Ovid, suggesting that the head of state metaphor had shed the last of its transgressive vestiges. It could now be fully incorporated into the burgeoning language of Imperial panegyric, where it was framed as a return to tradition rather than innovation of autocracy.Footnote ⁶¹ Seamlessly blending the old and the new, Velleius’ prose exemplifies the norms of Tiberian discourse.Footnote ⁶²

Even as Velleius constructs this celebratory metaphor, however, he also complicates it through the application of the adjective alter to caput and lumen. Suggesting that Augustus and Tiberius serve as twin heads and lights of the res publica, he crafts an image that is both conceptually confusing and ideologically problematic.Footnote ⁶³ His reference to duo capita reactivates one of the key symbols of civil strife in the paradigm of Roman Republicanism. Associated with Gaius Gracchus, Catiline, and the First Triumvirate, the two-headed res publica marked the perversion of the political order. Velleius himself reflects this tradition in his narration of the civil war between Caesar and Pompey, who are depicted as rival heads of state (Vell. Pat. 2.52.3):

Velleius describes Caesar and Pompey in the same terms as Augustus and Tiberius: dual heads (duo rei publicae capita) and luminaries (alterum Romani imperii lumen) of Rome.Footnote ⁶⁴ It is difficult to avoid the implication that the transfer of power mirrors the conflict that tore the Republic apart. We need not interpret such resonance as purposeful; there are few texts more loyal to the House of the Caesars than the Historiae. Rather, Velleius’ imagery reflects the insufficiency of contemporary organic analogies in describing a system of shared rule. In using the terminology available to him, he inadvertently disrupts his own thematic boundary between the strife of the past and consensus of the present. Astute readers might therefore begin to wonder whether the problem of civil strife had truly been solved.

Perhaps realizing that there was no easy way to incorporate multiple heads onto the body politic, Velleius quickly transitions from the symbol of the caput to that of the lumen. This metaphor was not only more amenable to multiplication, but also had a long history in Roman figurations of statesmanship.Footnote ⁶⁵ It plays a prominent role in Ciceronian oratory, where it appears in both the singular and plural to validate statesmen like Q. Hortensius and Scipio Aemilianus.Footnote ⁶⁶ Its utility in naturalizing the Principate emerges in Valerius Maximus, who portrays the Caesars as the culmination of famed Republican families: inde oriebantur Camilli Scipiones Fabricii Marcelli Fabii, ac ne singula imperii nostri lumina simul percurrendo sim longior, inde, inquam, caeli clarissima pars, divi fulserunt Caesares (“Then arose the Camilli, Scipiones, Fabricii, Marcelli, Fabii, and – so that I do not spend too long running through the individual luminaries of our empire – then, I say, the most brilliant part of the sky, the divine Caesars, shone,” Val. Max. 2.1.10). Kathryn Welch argues that the lumen was one among many metaphors of statesmanship whose point of reference was narrowed to the Imperial household after the transition to sole rule.Footnote ⁶⁷ In its movement from Republican gentes generally to the Caesars specifically, Valerius’ list embodies the new teleology operative under the Principate. Light imagery proved useful in its construction because it functioned similarly in the singular or plural. A domus Augusta that shone with many lights posed little problem for political language.

When viewed in relation to the metaphor of the body politic, however, the lumen introduced the more specific symbol of the eye, which literalized the ideal of the emperor’s vigilance.Footnote ⁶⁸ Valerius explores this figuration of the Caesars’ authority more explicitly in a rather convoluted passage in praise of the lofty morals of the Elder Drusus. Identifying Augustus and Tiberius as oculi, he writes, Drusum etiam Germanicum, eximiam Claudiae familiae gloriam patriaeque rarum ornamentum, et, quod super omnia est, operum suorum pro habitu aetatis magnitudine vitrico pariter ac fratri, duobus rei publicae divinis oculis mirifice respondentem (“Drusus Germanicus – the distinguished glory of the Claudian family and the remarkable ornament of his country and, most important of all, by the greatness of his actions in consideration of his youth, one who amazingly matched his stepfather and brother, the two divine eyes of the res publica,” Val. Max. 4.3.3). In his quest for an imagistic framework that persuasively describes a system of shared rule, Valerius sets aside the head in favor of its most striking feature. The res publica, he suggests, benefits from two Caesars in the same way that a person does from two eyes. The divinity of these oculi assimilates Augustus and Tiberius to the gods, who are later portrayed watching over Rome in similar fashion: vigilarunt oculi deorum (Val. Max. 9.11.ext.4).Footnote ⁶⁹ Yet what role the Elder Drusus, the nominal subject of this passage, plays in the body politic is left unspecified.Footnote ⁷⁰ For while the eyes represented a useful adaptation of corporeal imagery to co-rule, the complexity of relationships within the domus Augusta proved difficult to reconcile with the simple math of the human body.

The imagery employed by Valerius Maximus and Velleius confirms that the transfer of power was not easily integrable into the normative body politic tradition. The ill fit between the two was later brought into sharper focus by Tacitus, who opened the Annales by asking how the res publica could survive without a caput during an interregnum.Footnote ⁷¹ While we should not assume this text accurately reflects Julio-Claudian political language, it remains useful in distilling themes that operate implicitly in earlier literature. Among them was the apparent headlessness of Rome while Tiberius dithered over the assumption of power in 14 ce.Footnote ⁷² Tacitus reports that the senator G. Asinius Gallus tried to persuade Tiberius to step into the role of princeps by asking him which part of Rome he would like to rule. Offending Tiberius with the question, he explained that he had not asked ut divideret quae separari nequirent sed ut sua confessione argueretur unum esse rei publicae corpus atque unius animo regendum (“In order to divide what should not be separated, but so that it would be clear from his answer that the body of the res publica was singular and should be governed by one mind,” Tac. Ann. 1.12.3). His language echoes that of Manilius; both compare the princeps to a mind that allows the disparate parts of the res publica to coalesce as one.Footnote ⁷³ Asinius Gallus, however, exposes the logical consequences of this idea. Were Rome to be deprived of its governing mind, its body would soon revert to division.Footnote ⁷⁴ Insofar as the interregnum signified an official period of headlessness, it exposed a key vulnerability of the new model of the body politic operative in Rome.

Tacitus sustains this theme as Tiberius’ debate with the senate continues. Q. Haterius goes even further than Gallus in articulating the impossibility of Rome’s survival without a head of state. Comparing the res publica to a decapitated organism, he asks, quo usque patieris, Caesar, non adesse caput rei publicae? (“Up to what point will you allow, Caesar, the res publica to have no head?” Tac. Ann. 1.13.4).Footnote ⁷⁵ His question alludes to the famous opening line of the first Catilinarian, where Cicero asks his adversary, quo usque tandem abutere, Catilina, patientia nostra? (“How long, then, will you try our patience, Catiline?” Cic. Cat. 1.1).Footnote ⁷⁶ The logic of the allusion locates Haterius in the role of Cicero and Tiberius in that of Catiline, who achieved notoriety by trying to become the caput populi Romani. In urging Tiberius to assume the same role that marked Catiline as a tyrant, Haterius dismantles the Republican façade of the Principate and reveals the princeps as an autocrat. Paradoxically, however, he uses the words of Cicero to argue in favor of rather than against this arrangement. His speech thereby exemplifies the perversion of Republican political language under sole rule, a theme central to the Annales.Footnote ⁷⁷ Equipped with the hindsight granted by his Antonine perch, Tacitus identifies the Tiberian interregnum as a key moment when the Principate was exposed as a monarchy yet also accepted as a necessity. He uses the metaphor of the body politic to flag the implementation of the succession as a pivot point in Rome’s constitutional trajectory.Footnote ⁷⁸

Despite the chronological distance of the Annales from the events it narrates, the senatorial debate that Tacitus stages clarifies a conceptual shift that was in fact taking place under Tiberius. From the mid-first century ce onward, a res publica topped by a caput became the normative figuration of the Imperial body politic. Once Rome had acquired a head, the conditions under which it had survived without one began to recede from view. Headlessness became an absence rather than an omission, so that even the Fable of the Belly lost its original logic. The shift becomes clear in Valerius Maximus’ retelling of the story, which identifies the head rather than the belly as the locus of governing authority. Calling the senate the head of Rome, he writes, regibus exactis, plebs dissidens a patribus iuxta ripam fluminis Anienis in colle qui sacer appellatur armata consedit, eratque non solum deformis sed etiam miserrimus rei publicae status, a capite eius cetera parte corporis pestifera seditione divisa (“After the expulsion of the kings, the plebs, who were disagreeing with the patricians, took up arms and settled near the bank of the River Anio on the hill which is called Sacer; the shape of the res publica was not only deformed but also very unwell, since the rest of the body had been separated from its head through pestilential discord,” Val. Max. 8.9.1).Footnote ⁷⁹ Retrojecting the Tiberian head of state metaphor back onto the Republican past, Valerius assumes the senate must have played the role now being fulfilled by the princeps. His point is not that the senate should be the head of the body politic; elsewhere, he calls it the heart (rei publicae pectus curia, Val. Max. 2.2.1). Rather, he has become so accustomed to the new shape of the body politic that he can no longer imagine its prior form. Tacitus’ senators reflect a similar perspective; they treat the caput rei publicae as a normative ideal from which divergence has ceased to be possible.

The ill fit between the metaphor of the body politic and the transfer of power, which emerges in different ways in Velleius, Valerius, and Tacitus, reflects the broader conceptual challenge that lay in reconciling a dynastic succession with ancestral norms.Footnote ⁸⁰ Because Augustus’ position was not construed in institutional terms, but rather closely tied to his person, it could not be easily transferred to a successor. “After all, Olivier Hekster writes, “only monarchy by absolute right can be unequivocally dynastic, and the principate was explicitly formulated not to seem to be simply an absolute monarchy.”Footnote ⁸¹ Augustus’ solution to this problem was characteristic of his approach to politics more generally. He publicly refrained from acknowledging any dynastic ambitions while also investing male members of his family with powers and privileges that paralleled his own, thereby ensuring that they outranked all other Romans in terms of honor and status. He framed these efforts in relation to the dynastic logic of the Late Republic, where it was expected for political capital to be passed from fathers to sons.Footnote ⁸² Although his solution was successful in the short term, it raised a number of thorny issues.Footnote ⁸³ What allowed the res publica to survive the death of its caput? What happened when a good princeps was replaced by a bad one? Were the struggles for power within the domus Augusta different than those which precipitated the civil wars? As the Principate veered towards crisis under Caligula, Roman writers used organic imagery to respond to such questions.

Caligula and the Return of Discord

While those living under Caligula and Claudius continued to endorse normative ideals of concord and consensus, they also started acknowledging that Augustus’ successors had not lived up to his example. This concern led to renewed interest in the decline of the body politic, a theme that played a central role in the political discourse of the Late Republic before receding from view in the early first century ce.Footnote ⁸⁴ Its revival emerges in a fragment of the Elder Seneca’s Historiae, typically dated to the early reign of Caligula.Footnote ⁸⁵ Preserved in Lactantius, the passage portrays the Principate as both a regression to infancy and progression to old age (Lactant. Inst. Div. 7.15.14). Those writing under Claudius picked up where the Elder Seneca left off; Philo of Alexandria portrayed Caligula sickening the body of humanity, Curtius Rufus compared his assassination to a collective beheading, and the Younger Seneca beseeched Claudius to heal the wounds inflicted by his predecessor. Although the force of their critiques was muted by their praise of the current princeps, these writers began to examine the limitations of a political community dependent on a single man for its survival. In doing so, they transformed organic analogies into tools of critique rather than praise.

This shift in political language first appears in the Elder Seneca’s Historiae, which reworks an organic model of civic growth and decay from the perspective of the 30s ce.Footnote ⁸⁶ According to a lost biography composed by his son, the text opened with the onset of the civil wars (ab initio bellorum civilium), identified as the moment when truthfulness first declined (unde primum veritas retro abiit), and continued until nearly the day of his father’s death around 39 ce (paene usque ad mortis suae diem).Footnote ⁸⁷ Before turning to its contents, it is necessary to address two obstacles to its interpretation. The first is the ambiguity of its author; the identical names of the Elder and Younger Seneca have led some to attribute the fragment to a lost work of the son rather than the Historiae of the father.Footnote ⁸⁸ Because its biological analogy is compatible with historiography, a genre in which the Younger Seneca had little interest, and its model of decline hews closely to that of the Controversiae, I am inclined towards the authorship of the Elder Seneca.Footnote ⁸⁹ Nevertheless, my argument does not hinge on this point.Footnote ⁹⁰ The second issue is the extent to which Lactantius has influenced the form in which the fragment is preserved.Footnote ⁹¹ It is possible, perhaps even probable, that some of its language should be viewed as Lactantian rather than Senecan.Footnote ⁹² Even so, it seems highly likely that Lactantius provides evidence (directly or indirectly) for revived interest in the theme of organic decline in the mid-first century ce. This shift indicates a new phase in the continued evolution of the Roman body politic.

Lactantius introduces his quotation of Seneca in a discussion of the rise and fall of empires, a theme that culminates with the example of Rome. He suggests that Seneca narrated Roman history through the Ages of Man tradition, which compared stages of civic development to those of human development: non inscite Seneca Romanae urbis tempora distribuit in aetates (“Not unwisely did Seneca distribute the eras of the Roman city into ages,” FRHist Sen. Fr. 2).Footnote ⁹³ Although texts like Varro’s De Vita Populi Romani had already gestured in this direction, Seneca provides our first evidence for the fully fledged form of the tradition.Footnote ⁹⁴ He placed Rome’s infancy (infantia) under Romulus, childhood (pueritia) during the regal period, adolescence (adulescentia) between the foundation of the Republic and conclusion of the Second Punic War, physical prime (iuvenescere) during Rome’s conquest of the Mediterranean, and decline upon the onset of the civil wars (viribus suis male uteretur, quibus se ipsa confecit, “Rome used her own strength poorly and attacked herself with it,” FRHist Sen. Fr. 2). From Rome’s Romulean birth to its self-destructive demise, Seneca closely follows the body politic tradition that we have been tracing thus far. He diverges from this normative model, however, in his effort to extend Rome’s life cycle beyond the Augustan Settlement. As a witness to the civil wars and rule of three principes, he was uniquely positioned to tell this story.Footnote ⁹⁵ Contained within it is a direct confrontation with the constitutional transformation through which he lived.

As Seneca turns his attention to the state of the contemporary body politic, he initially appears to endorse a standard narrative of Augustan restoration. Like those writing under Tiberius, he identifies a renascence after the conclusion of the civil wars: haec fuit prima eius senectus, cum bellis lacerata civilibus atque intestino malo pressa rursus ad regimen singularis imperii recidit quasi ad alteram infantiam revoluta (“This was Rome’s first old age, when torn apart by civil wars and oppressed by intestinal ills she receded again to the guidance of sole rule as if returning to a second infancy,” FRHist Sen. Fr. 2). Seneca follows Velleius in using the concept of a return (rursus, recidit, revoluta) to proclaim the rebirth of a community at war with itself. Whereas Velleius employed such imagery to elide the constitutional changes wrought by Augustus, however, Seneca uses it to draw attention to them. In a striking divergence from the norms of Julio-Claudian discourse, he refers to the implementation of sole rule with the phrase singulare imperium, which Late Republican writers used to denote the absolute authority of kings.Footnote ⁹⁶ In applying this language to the Principate, Seneca confirms its autocratic foundations.Footnote ⁹⁷ He underscores the point through his description of the Augustan age as a second infancy (altera infantia), which prompts readers to look back to Rome’s first infancy (prima … infantia) under rex Romulus. Although such an allusion need not be negative, it activates an exemplum that Augustus himself used cautiously.Footnote ⁹⁸ After predicating foundation upon kingship in this manner, Seneca turns his attention to the ramifications of the rebirth uncritically celebrated by others.

Seneca’s “giudizio polemico,” as Chiara Renda puts it, becomes clear as he proceeds to cast liberty as an ancestral ideal unrealizable in contemporary Rome.Footnote ⁹⁹ Andrew Gallia has persuasively demonstrated how Romans used lamentations over the loss of liberty to contrast the Imperial present with the Republican past.Footnote ¹⁰⁰ Lactantius suggests that Seneca contributed to this topos through his invocation of Brutus: amissa enim libertate, quam Bruto duce et auctore defenderat, ita consenuit tamquam sustentare se ipsa non valeret, nisi adminiculo regentium niteretur (“For liberty, which Brutus had defended as a leader and progenitor, was lost, and in this way, Rome grew old, as if she were not strong enough to hold herself up except by depending on the prop of rulers,” FRHist Sen. Fr. 2). The reference to Brutus without a praenomen blurs the distinction between Lucius Junius Brutus, the founder of the Republic, and Marcus Junius Brutus, the famed assassin of Caesar.Footnote ¹⁰¹ The logic of the passage suggests that Seneca means the former, whose expulsion of the Tarquins marked the end of Rome’s childhood. The ambiguity between Archaic and contemporary history is nevertheless productive. It reminds readers of a more recent Brutus who defended the cause of liberty before being vanquished by Augustus.Footnote ¹⁰² Seneca encourages this reading by calling Brutus an auctor, an inversion of the term’s traditional association with the princeps. Directing readers towards the sacrifices rather than rewards of the pax Augusta, he suggests that the reestablishment of peace required the surrender of liberty.

Seneca puts the loss of civic autonomy into biological terms by collapsing the life stages of infancy and old age, which appear to occur simultaneously under the Principate (ad alteram infantiam … consenuit). It was commonplace in ancient literature that old age could be understood as a second childhood due to the dependence entailed by physical and mental decline.Footnote ¹⁰³ The idea was pithily expressed in the proverb bis pueri sumus.Footnote ¹⁰⁴ Seneca exploits the comparison to represent a civic organism that has regressed in two different ways at once. The negative inflection of his imagery is confirmed through his reference to an adminiculum upon which Rome relies. As we saw in Chapter 3, Livy used the same word to convey the rebirth of the body politic under Camillus (Liv. 6.1.4). Yet while he compared Camillus to the stake upon which a flourishing vine grows, Seneca instead describes the cane upon which an old man leans. He thereby orients his symbolism towards senescence rather than nascence, complicating a normative narrative of Julio-Claudian restoration. His divergence from Livy comes into sharper focus with his modification of adminiculum by the plural regentium, which implies a series of rulers rather than one exemplary statesman. His language suggests his recognition of the Principate as a governing form that supersedes any single representative. It flags the vulnerability of a civic community dependent on a dynastic succession over which it exercises no control.

Seneca’s reservations about Rome’s constitutional transformation found realization in the problematic rule of Caligula, whose descent into tyranny he did not live to see. Those writing under Claudius, however, responded to the failure of the Caligulan Principate in a manner reminiscent of the Historiae. Although the norms of discourse mandated their panegyrical portrayal of the current princeps, they began to depict the reign of Caligula as a period of organic decline. In doing so, they suggested that the vitality of the body politic depended on the identity of its ruler rather than the fact of his rule. Among these thinkers was Philo of Alexandria, whose Legatio ad Gaium recounts his experience as the head of an embassy sent to Rome in 39 ce.Footnote ¹⁰⁵ While Philo’s perspective is rooted in Jewish theology and oriented towards a Jewish audience, it is also deeply engaged with the nature and operation of the emperor’s authority.Footnote ¹⁰⁶ Like many before him, he illustrates the ideals of rulership through his portrayal of Augustus, whose ending of the civil wars is compared to the eradication of a pestilence (Philo Leg. 145, trans. Smallwood):

Positioning Augustus as the healer of a world sickened by civil strife, Philo reflects and reinforces the norms of Julio-Claudian discourse.Footnote ¹⁰⁷ When viewed in relation to the broader aims of the text, however, his imagery takes on a subversive edge. It sets up a contrast between the first princeps and the third, who is cast as the opposite of his great grandfather in nearly every way.Footnote ¹⁰⁸ The dichotomy of sickness and health, which recurs throughout the text, emerges as a tool used to judge rather than simply endorse the authority of the princeps.

In the political discourse of the Late Republic, it was commonplace to assign the governing class responsibility for the vitality of the civic community over which it presided. In the works of Cicero, Sallust, and Varro, moral corruption is repeatedly figured as an ill that spreads from the top to bottom of Roman society. By the first century ce, we have seen, this principle narrowed from the leading citizens (principes) generally to the princeps specifically. Philo suggests that the shift posed no problem under the salutary rule of Augustus, but became a matter of public concern under Caligula, whose literal illness in 37 ce figuratively sickened the entire world: τὰ γὰρ μέρη πάντα τῆς οἰκουμένης αὐτῷ συνενόσησε, βαρυτέρᾳ νόσῳ χρησάμενα τῆς κατασχούσης Γάιον· ἐκείνη μὲν γὰρ σώματος ἦν αὐτὸ μόνον, ἡ δὲ τῶν πανταχοῦ πάντων (“All parts of the habitable world were ill with Gaius; but they were suffering from a more serious illness than that which had seized him. For his illness was merely physical, whereas theirs was universal,” Philo Leg. 16, trans. Smallwood).Footnote ¹⁰⁹ Just as Varro depicted gangrene creeping from the senate to people, Philo describes a pestilence traveling from ruler to ruled. He later assigns Caligula agency in its spread, asserting, ὁ δὲ ἔμπαλιν νόσους μὲν τοῖς ὑγιαίνουσι, πηρώσεις δὲ τοῖς ὁλοκλήροις, καὶ συνόλως θανάτους τοῖς ζῶσι (“Gaius, on the other hand, brought disease upon the healthy, mutilation upon the sound, and in general unnatural, premature, and cruel deaths upon the living,” Philo Leg. 107, trans. Smallwood). The contrast that Philo constructs is with Apollo Medicus, who is praised for developing the art of medicine and promoting the health of mankind (Philo Leg. 106). This deity was also linked to Augustus, who invested his curative powers with political significance in the triumviral era. Through Caligula’s subversion of the Apollonic example set by his predecessor, Philo suggests, the civic diseases of the past have returned to the present.

Philo elaborates upon this idea by calling Caligula a dēmoboros (“devourer of his people,” Philo Leg. 108), an accusation famously wielded by Achilles against Agamemnon in the Iliad (Hom. Il. 1.231).Footnote ¹¹⁰ In Roman political discourse, the trope of the cannibalizing despot was closely connected to the civil war generals of the 80s bce. Valerius Maximus portrays Cinna and Marius greedily drinking civic blood (L. Cinna et C. Marius hauserant quidem avidi civilem sanguinem, Val. Max. 2.8.7) and Sulla figuratively feasting on the heads of his victim: (abscisa miserorum capita … manderet, Val. Max. 9.2.1).Footnote ¹¹¹ Under the Principate, however, this charge also began to be wielded against the princeps.Footnote ¹¹² Suetonius reports the circulation of invective verses that depicted Tiberius drinking Rome’s blood as if it were wine: fastidit vinum, quia iam sitit iste cruorem: | tam bibit hunc avide, quam bibit ante merum (“That man shudders at wine because he now thirsts for blood; he drinks it as greedily as he used to drink undiluted wine,” Suet. Tib. 59.1). The verses go on to compare Tiberius to Sulla, Marius, and Antony, suggesting that the horrors of civil war have found a new home in the House of the Caesars. Philo’s characterization of Caligula as a dēmoboros makes the same point through Homeric allusion. Through his consumption of the body under his care, the princeps has perverted his role as the head and healer of the Roman world. Exposing the dark side of civic interdependence, Philo depicts an Imperial body politic no less vulnerable than the Republican organism that preceded it. Both are ultimately subject to the variable morals of those who command them.

The Younger Seneca offers a similar perspective in the Consolatio ad Polybium, a treatise composed during the philosopher’s exile in Corsica that portrays Claudius as the healer of wounds inflicted by his predecessor.Footnote ¹¹³ Seneca first establishes Claudius’ curative powers at the level of public welfare, then illustrates their personal relevance to his addressee. He enjoins Fortuna, patere illum generi humano iam diu aegro et adfecto mederi, patere quicquid prioris principis furor concussit in suum locum restituere ac reponere (“Allow him to heal the human race, sickened and weakened for so long now; allow him to restore and put back in its place whatever the madness of the previous princeps disrupted,” Sen. Polyb. 13.1). Seneca joins Philo in blaming the madness of Caligula for the proliferation of figurative illnesses in the body politic. The implication is that Rome’s health fluctuates in relation to the virtue of its current ruler, an idea to which we will see Seneca return under Nero. For now, he is happy to live under a princeps who has cured the grief of his freedman in the same way that he has healed the body of Rome: hic itaque princeps, qui publicum omnium hominum solacium est, aut me omnia fallunt aut iam recreavit animum tuum et tam magno vulneri maiora adhibuit remedia (“And so this princeps, who is a common salve for all men, unless I am mistaken, has already restored your spirit and applied greater remedies to a wound so grave,” Sen. Polyb. 14.1). Seneca expresses optimism about the regeneration of Rome, but the need for such regeneration raises troubling questions about the institutional viability of the Principate. The failure of Claudius to live up to the ideals laid out in the text only made such questions more urgent in the years to come.Footnote ¹¹⁴

Whereas Philo and Seneca show the dangers that a bad princeps poses for the res publica, Q. Curtius Rufus addresses the risks posed by his removal. In a famous passage from Book 10 of De Gestis Alexandri Magni, he depicts Rome as a body that has been beheaded through the loss of its princeps. Yet as is the case with the Elder Seneca’s Historiae, the uncertain composition date of the text has hampered the interpretation of its imagery. External evidence for the identity of its author is sparse, while internal evidence is lacking due to its missing preface and Hellenistic subject matter.Footnote ¹¹⁵ Debate therefore hinges upon the identity of the emperor to whose death he refers. Most of those who have taken up the question argue for either Caligula or Nero, though opinion remains somewhat divided between them.Footnote ¹¹⁶ Whether Curtius Rufus describes a crisis that the new princeps has successfully averted or rather recently ended is a key point of contention. My own reading of the passage follows J. E. Atkinson’s influential argument for a Claudian date. Both options, nevertheless, allow us to see how a Roman writer responded to the violent deposition of a princeps in the mid-to-late first century ce.

Curtius Rufus shifts his gaze to contemporary affairs in response to the conflicts that arose between Alexander’s generals in the aftermath of his death. Stressing the precarity of a monarchy over which multiple men fight, he writes, sed iam fatis admovebantur Macedonum genti bella civilia; nam et insociabile est regnum et a pluribus expetebatur (“But already civil wars were being pushed onto the Macedonians by the Fates; for monarchy is unsociable and was being sought by many,” Curt. 10.9.1).Footnote ¹¹⁷ He not only correlates multiple aspirants to the Macedonian throne with the outbreak of civil war, but also uses the present tense to frame this development as expected and inevitable. His generalizing claim about the unsociability of monarchy hints at the struggle for power within the House of the Caesars, which saw the removal of a prominent rival with every succession.Footnote ¹¹⁸ Tiberius (or someone close to him) eliminated Agrippa Postumus, Caligula eliminated Tiberius Gemellus, Nero eliminated Britannicus, and countless lesser threats were removed along the way. Imperial writers characterized these murders as necessary evils; Philo cites the unsociability of monarchy to explain Caligula’s murder of Tiberius Gemellus (ἀκοινώνητον ἀρχή, θεσμὸς φύσεως ἀκίνητος, “Absolute power cannot be shared. Nature’s ordinance on this point is unchangeable,” Philo Leg. 68, trans. Smallwood, lightly adapted), while Tacitus suggests that many condoned Nero’s murder of Britannicus for the same reason: antiquas fratrum discordias et insociabile regnum aestimantes (“Taking into account ancestral discord of the brothers and the unsociability of monarchy,” Tac. Ann. 13.17.1, translation of Philo is lightly adapted from Smallwood 1961).Footnote ¹¹⁹ As Curtius’ analysis continues, it becomes clear that he recognizes the relevance of this idea to the Principate as well.

Curtius cites the collapse of Alexander’s empire as evidence that a body politic cannot survive without the unifying command of a head of state. In a passage that could just as easily describe the historical trajectory of Rome, he explains, primum ergo conlisere vires, deinde disperserunt; et cum pluribus corpus, quam capiebat, <capitibus> onerassent, cetera membra deficere coeperunt, quodque imperium sub uno stare potuisset, dum a pluribus sustinetur, ruit (“First therefore forces collided, then scattered; and when they had burdened the body with more <heads> than it could handle, all the limbs began to grow tired, and an empire which could have survived under one man, fell while it was being held by many,” Curt. 10.9.2).Footnote ¹²⁰ Roman writers often portrayed the collapse of the Republic in these terms; Livy’s preface describes Rome laboring under her own weight (iam magnitudine laboret sua) and turning her strength against herself (vires se ipsae conficiunt, Liv. Praef. 4), while Horace’s Epodes feature the famous proclamation, altera iam teritur bellis civilibus aetas, | suis et ipsa Roma viribus ruit (“Another age is now consumed by civil wars, and Rome herself collapses under her own strength,” Hor. Ep. 16.1–2).Footnote ¹²¹ Unlike Livy and Horace, Curtius explicitly ties the problem of civic collapse to the dispersal of power among multiple men. He joins Manilius in suggesting that discord can only be checked by the unifying command of a single ruler. While Alexander’s empire provides historical evidence for this principle, recent events in Rome confirm its contemporary relevance.

Curtius praises Rome’s new princeps for averting a crisis like that which followed the death of Alexander. He writes, proinde iure meritoque populus Romanus salutem se principi suo debere profitetur, qui noctis, quam paene supremam habuimus, novum sidus inluxit (“In the same way, the Roman people justly and deservedly professes that it owes its health to its princeps, who gleamed like a new star in the night which we nearly considered our last,” Curt. 10.9.3). Although scholars have tried to identify a specific princeps as Curtius’ novum sidus, the popularity of such symbolism in Imperial political discourse precludes certainty. The comets that proliferated during Nero’s reign could have induced it, but so could have Claudius’ efforts to represent his rule as the beginning of a new saeculum.Footnote ¹²² We might compare a passage from the Younger Seneca that figures Claudius as a star who restored light to a darkened world: sidus hoc, quod praecipitato in profundum et demerso in tenebras orbi refulsit, semper luceat (“Let this star, which restored light to a world plunged headlong into darkness and submerged in shadows, always shine,” Sen. Polyb. 13.1). While Seneca describes the whole reign of Caligula as a period of darkness, Curtius envisions a single cataclysmic night. His analysis suggests that it is the loss of the princeps rather than the tyranny of his rule that brought Rome to the brink of ruin.

Drawing out the violence implicit in Tacitus’ portrayal of the Tiberian interregnum, Curtius figures the death of the princeps as the beheading of the body politic.Footnote ¹²³ With the loss of the head comes the disagreement of the limbs: huius, hercule, non solis ortus lucem caliganti reddidit mundo, cum sine suo capite discordia membra trepidarent (“His rise, not that of the sun, by Hercules, returned light to a darkened world, since the limbs without their head were agitated by discord,” Curt. 10.9.4). Curtius describes the realization of the fear implicit in Manilius’ Astronomica, where a divine governing mind is necessary to keep discord in chains. Depicting Rome’s limbs on the same precipice of civil war that doomed the Macedonian empire, he stresses the impossibility of empire-building in the absence of an emperor. The stakes are equally high for the domestic sphere, where the threat of civil war seems to reemerge with every transfer of power. Although Curtius would like to posit the ascension of the next emperor as the solution to this problem, his text identifies a structural weakness that cannot be resolved through good governance. As long as the survival of the body depends upon that of the head, Rome will remain vulnerable to the same conflicts that doomed Alexander’s kingdom.

Rather than delving into the consequences of this problem, Curtius retreats to the safer territory of panegyric. Positioning Claudius’ (or Vespasian’s) virtue as a solution to the constitutional precarity exposed by the death of his predecessor, he employs three familiar tropes to announce the restoration of peace: quot ille tum extinxit faces! quot condidit gladios! quantam tempestatem subita serenitate discussit! (“How many firebrands did he then extinguish! How many swords did he sheath! How great a storm did he disperse with suddenly clear weather!” Curt. 10.9.5). He models the new princeps on Augustus, with whom the language of civic restoration remained closely associated throughout the Julio-Claudian era. Making recourse to the idea of rebirth, he suggests that another act of refoundation has now taken place: Non ergo revirescit solum sed etiam floret imperium (“And so the empire has not only revived, but is even flourishing,” Curt. 10.9.5). Yet insofar as this refoundation is necessary, it indicates that the Principate did not provide a definitive solution to the problems of the Late Republic. Internal conflict remains an ever-present threat, one that modulates the optimism with which Curtius concludes his digression: absit modo invidia, excipiet huius saeculi tempora eiusdem domus utinam perpetua, certe diuturna posteritas (“Provided only that envy is absent, the posterity of his house will prolong the days of this age, I hope forever, but at least for a very long time,” Curt. 10.9.6). His oblique reference to ill will seems to gesture towards future struggles for power, which are positioned as the primary obstacle to the perpetuity of the current House of the Caesars. The themes of discord and succession, which first appeared in Tiberian literature, are thereby merged into a single analytic framework.

This chapter has explored the intersection of two themes central to Julio-Claudian political thought: civil strife and the dynastic succession. It began with the writers of the Late Augustan and Tiberian eras, whose works celebrate the Principate for putting an end to discord among the warring limbs of the res publica. Manilius found this lesson lurking in the stars, while Velleius Paterculus and Valerius Maximus applied it to Rome’s recent past. Their portrayals of Tiberius as another healer and head of state illustrate how the Republican body politic tradition continued to evolve in a new constitutional context. The success of their conceptual project was nevertheless complicated by the transfer of power, which resisted persuasive portrayal in organic terms. This problem of representation hinted at the ill fit between the Republican fiction of the Principate and the monarchical nature of the succession. Tacitus later foregrounded the same tension in his portrayal of the Tiberian interregnum, where the transfer of power simultaneously unmasks and naturalizes the autocratic underpinnings of Rome’s new form.

The vulnerability of a body politic reliant on a head of state became increasingly clear under Caligula, whose tyrannical rule and violent assassination confirmed that the Principate was not necessarily the panacea for which Romans had hoped. Across the works of Seneca the Elder and Younger, Philo of Alexandria, and Curtius Rufus, a familiar narrative of organic decline reappeared. While Tiberian writers had relegated images of illness, wounding, and senescence to the past, Claudian writers applied them to the present. Their impulse to blame Caligula for harming the organism under his care undermined a normative narrative of Julio-Claudian consensus. The force of their critiques was nevertheless muted by their celebration of Claudius as a new Augustus. When confronted with a bad princeps, they offered a new and better princeps as the solution. The norms of discourse encouraged such panegyrizing, but they do not tell the whole story. Increasingly willing to criticize the character of a princeps but not the institution of the Principate, Claudian thinkers reflected the growing entrenchment of autocracy in the Roman political imagination. Those writing under Nero soon picked up where they left off, portraying the Principate as a deeply flawed yet profoundly necessary constitutional form. Their perception of the Republic as a relic of the past led them to envision a body politic often wounded by its Caesars but unable to survive without them.