The Neronian era is often identified as a moment of transition in Roman political thought, one marked by increasing willingness to acknowledge the constitutional transformation of the late first century bce. Although narratives of ancestral refoundation remained influential in public discourse, Neronian writers began to portray and address the princeps as an autocrat. At the same time, they also started constructing a rupture between the res publica populated by statesmen like Cicero and Cato and that governed by the Caesars. My book has traced one of the conceptual avenues through which this shift in political language became possible. It argues for the importance of figurative speech generally, and the metaphor of the body politic specifically, in integrating the idea of sole rule into the paradigm of Roman Republicanism. Looking for ways to articulate the relationship between the princeps and res publica, Julio-Claudian writers did not need to invent new models of political authority. They found plenty that were already well-developed in Late Republican literature. Among them were the metaphors of the head of state and the civic healer, which were used in different ways to negotiate the role of the statesman in the mixed constitution. Gradually adapting them to the context of autocracy over the span of a century, a variety of Roman thinkers addressed the Principate without ever naming it as such.

This story impacts our understanding of both Roman Republicanism and its Imperial reception. The fact that Julio-Claudian writers found Republican figurations of statesmanship amenable to the validation of sole rule should give pause to those interested in reviving classical republicanism today. Cicero and his contemporaries might have professed their hatred of kings and tyrants, but they also strongly believed in the ability of an exceptional statesman to guide the res publica on the basis of his civic wisdom rather than elected office. Indeed, one reason why they used metaphors of the body politic was to direct focus away from questions of legality and towards those of morality. That these metaphors could undermine the constitution they were invoked to protect became clear during the downfall of the Republic. Their revival in the context of autocracy is therefore revealing but not surprising. Equally important to this story, however, are the ways in which Imperial writers reworked the figurative language of the Late Republic to serve their own needs. By inventing a fictive Republican past for capital symbolism, in particular, they obscured the novelty of the Principate for themselves and those who later read their texts. Their efforts illustrate the difficulty of separating the political thought of the historical Roman Republic from the Julio-Claudian reception of Roman Republicanism. Only by carefully distinguishing between these two categories can we arrive at an accurate understanding of either.

By the mid-first century ce, an autonomous organism composed of interdependent parts had evolved into a collection of quarrelsome limbs reliant on a head of state for survival. The fact that this transformation took place confirms that Roman thinkers perceived the Principate to be a new political form in need of explanation, justification, and interrogation. They might have continued to use the term res publica in relation to it, but they developed other ways of distinguishing between self-governance and autocracy. Through their lamentations over the loss of libertas and related ideals, they confronted what was lost with the transition to sole rule. Through their celebrations of civil war’s end and the establishment of the pax Augusta, they illuminated what was gained. Expecting them to have distilled the complexity of their views into categories like “Republic” and “Principate” is to misunderstand the nature of their political thought, which resisted theoretical and terminological abstraction at nearly every turn. Entering the more diffuse world of storytelling and figurative speech allows us to see how Roman thinkers came to terms with a revolution to which they never assigned a name.

Organic metaphors played a key role in the legitimation of the Principate as a natural and necessary form of political organization. Yet they also allowed Roman thinkers to explore the limitations of a system dependent on a single individual whose selection was haphazard, whose actions lay beyond the scope of censure, and whose rule could only be challenged through assassination.Footnote ¹ These weaknesses worked in combination to make the Principate highly susceptible to violence, a problem that Romans tended to understand as the repetition of an ancestral curse rather than a product of their constitutional form.Footnote ² Even as Julio-Claudian writers grew more direct in their criticisms of sole rule, however, they also expressed skepticism towards the possibility of an alternative. Seneca argued that the separation of head and body would lead to mutual destruction, while Lucan posited civil war as the inevitable consequence of rebellion. Even as they criticized individual Caesars, then, they articulated a more profound commitment to their rule as the only viable option. They did not need to celebrate the Principate as an ideal institution, in other words, because they had already come to see it as a necessary one.

The events that took place after the deposition of Nero in 68 ce illustrated the prescience of Seneca’s and Lucan’s warnings about the reprisal of civil war, though neither survived long enough to witness them. Both were forced to commit suicide in the purge that followed a doomed effort to replace Nero with G. Calpurnius Piso.Footnote ³ The extent to which either played a role in the Pisonian Conspiracy is unclear; Seneca probably did not, while Lucan likely did.Footnote ⁴ Suetonius describes him as nearly the plot’s standard-bearer (paene signifer Pisonianae coniurationis) and claims that he called for Nero’s head (Caesaris caput, Suet. Vita Luc. 21–4).Footnote ⁵ Although later writers emphasized the personal rather than political motivations for his involvement, they nevertheless located him at the forefront of a mutiny of the body politic.Footnote ⁶ Tacitus portrays the conspiracy within this imagistic framework, introducing the familiar trope of a two-headed organism to mark the return of civil strife.Footnote ⁷ He reports the birth of two-headed fetuses and a calf with a head on its leg (bicipites hominum aliorumve animalium partus … natus viculus cui caput in crure esset, Tac. Ann. 15. 47.1–2), portents that signified the hatching of a new head of state: parari rerum humanarum aliud caput, sed non fore validum neque occultum (“Another head was being prepared for human affairs, but it would be neither strong nor secret,” Tac. Ann. 15.47.2). This symbolism conveys figuratively what his narrative soon confirms literally: the goal of the conspirators was to replace one head of state with another, not challenge the Imperial model of the body politic.Footnote ⁸ Even as the fallibility of the Principate provoked dissent, it was strong enough to set the terms within which that dissent operated. Failing in its objective and leading to a bloody purge, the ill-fated plot highlighted the risks that lay in rebellion.

Although the Pisonian Conspiracy was short-lived, dissatisfaction with Nero’s rule soon found expression on a much larger scale in the provincial rebellion fomented by G. Julius Vindex.Footnote ⁹ As Neronian writers predicted, the revolt produced wide-scale civil slaughter yet did little to change the constitution by which the res publica was governed. Although those competing for power invoked Republican political language – most notably the ideal of libertas – to establish their legitimacy, they did not view its tenets as mutually exclusive with sole rule.Footnote ¹⁰ The conceptual entrenchment of the Principate finds eloquent expression in Tacitus’ Histories, where S. Sulpicius Galba uses the metaphor of the body politic to assert the inevitability of autocracy.Footnote ¹¹ Speaking with Piso Licinianus, his chosen successor, he develops a counterfactual that locates Republican governance far in the past (Tac. Hist. 1.16.1):Footnote ¹²

In using the scope of the empire to justify the prop of sole rule, Tacitus’ Galba invokes a by now familiar rhetorical tradition. Foregrounding the structural tension between liberty at home and conquest abroad, he suggests that Romans long ago sacrificed internal autonomy in favor of external conquest.Footnote ¹³ Those living in the present have little choice but to accept a system of their predecessors’ making.

Plutarch’s narration of the Year of the Four Emperors in the Life of Galba similarly frames the necessity of the Principate in relation to the logic of the body. The text opens with a generalizing comparison of an army to a strong body that must be subjected to the reasoning faculties of its commander: οἱ δὲ πλεῖστοι, καθάπερ ἐρρωμένον σῶμα, τὸ στρατιωτικὸν ἀξιοῦσιν ἰδίᾳ μηδέποτε χρώμενον ὁρμῇ συγκινεῖσθαι τῇ τοῦ στρατηγοῦ (“Most people think it right that an army, like a vigorous body, should never use its own initiative but rather follow that of their commander,” Plut. Galb. 1.1). While each provincial governor acts as the mind of his own troops, the princeps stands at the head of the armed forces collectively. Nero’s failure to keep control of this body leads to the rebellion of Julius Vindex: τὴν δὲ Ῥωμαίων ἡγεμονίαν … εἰς πολλὰ διασπωμένην ἅμα καὶ πολλαχόθεν αὖθις ἑαυτῇ συμπίπτουσαν (“The Roman empire … was ripped into many pieces and at the same time collapsed into itself again from every direction,” Plut. Galb. 1.4). Plutarch blames the self-destruction of the body politic on the license of the soldiery rather than the ambition of those seeking power. Endorsing a key tenet of Julio-Claudian political thought, he suggests that the warring limbs of the empire are only able to achieve concord under autocracy. The absence of a strong head consequently denotes the beginning of a civil war.Footnote ¹⁴

Plutarch makes the toppling of Rome’s head of state explicit in the letter that Vindex sends to Galba to persuade him to rebel: ὁ Οὐίνδιξ ἔγραψε τῷ Γάλβᾳ παρακαλῶν ἀναδέξασθαι τὴν ἡγεμονίαν καὶ παρασχεῖν ἑαυτὸν ἰσχυρῷ σώματι ζητοῦντι κεφαλήν, ταῖς Γαλατίαις (“Vindex wrote to Galba, urging him to assume power and offer himself to a strong body seeking a head, namely the Gallic provinces,” Plut. Galb. 4.3).Footnote ¹⁵ Directing readers’ attention to Galba’s head, Plutarch foreshadows the gruesome manner of his death later in the text. At the same time, he employs a metaphor strikingly similar to that which Catiline used on the senate floor in 63 bce.Footnote ¹⁶ Locating the Gallic provinces in the role previously played by the populus Romanus, he illustrates the growing importance of the army as a determinative force in Imperial politics.Footnote ¹⁷ Galba’s reaction to Vindex’s invitation, in turn, foregrounds the extent to which Roman political language had evolved over the preceding century. Whereas Catiline’s speech had provoked horror among his fellow senators, Vindex’s letter convinces Galba to revolt. A metaphor that connoted tyranny in the Late Republic could now be used – at least in Plutarch’s imagination – to flatter the political ambitions of a prominent general.Footnote ¹⁸ As the Praetorian Guard and senate turn against the princeps, a contest of heads begins that is soon decided in Galba’s favor. This reading allows us to see Nero’s subsequent suicide as a prefiguration of the self-destruction of the body politic.

Although Galba emerged as the victor in his contest of heads with Nero, he soon earned the dubious distinction of becoming the first Roman head of state to suffer literal decapitation.Footnote ¹⁹ After he was killed in a mutiny of the Praetorian Guard, his head was chopped off, affixed to a pole, and paraded through the city. The event serves as the climax of Plutarch’s biography, which revels in the gory detail of Galba’s bald head proving too slippery to hold (Plut. Galb. 27.3). Borrowing from the tropes of theater to stage the scene, Plutarch describes Galba’s executioner as a crazed Bacchant: δρόμῳ χωρεῖν, ὥσπερ αἱ βάκχαι, πολλάκις μεταστρεφόμενον, καὶ κραδαίνοντα τὴν λόγχην αἵματι καταρρεομένην (“He ran on foot, as if a Bacchant, often twirling himself around and brandishing the spear dripping with blood,” Plut. Galb. 27.3).Footnote ²⁰ The comparison not only alludes to the beheading of Pentheus in Euripides’ Bacchae, but also to the death of Crassus, whose severed head was supposedly received by the Parthian king while he was watching a production of the play.Footnote ²¹ The fate of Crassus, in turn, hints at that of his fellow triumvir Pompey, whose head was also paraded on a pike before a crowd of spectators in an Eastern land.Footnote ²² Because Pompey’s death was often portrayed as a reprisal of Priam’s, scholars have seen references to the mythical Trojan king lurking in portrayals of Galba’s demise.Footnote ²³ This thicket of allusions locates the death of Galba in a cycle of beheadings that stretches back centuries. Although the first princeps to suffer decapitation, Galba is cast as another victim in a long line of statesmen felled by ancestrally rooted violence.

The Life of Galba concludes without providing any sense of closure to the violence that structures the text.Footnote ²⁴ Plutarch instead foreshadows the integration of M. Salvius Otho, Galba’s successor, into the same pattern of civil war. He reports that when Otho was presented with Galba’s head, he immediately demanded that of Piso Licinianus too.Footnote ²⁵ Going above and beyond, his soldiers also bring him the heads of Titus Vinius, the current consul, and Cornelius Laco, the commander of the Praetorian Guard. In a particularly gruesome image, Otho assumes the role of princeps while standing amid their severed trunks: καὶ Καίσαρα καὶ Σεβαστὸν ἀνηγόρευον, ἔτι τῶν νεκρῶν ἀκεφάλων ἐν ταῖς ὑπατικαῖς ἐσθῆσιν ἐρριμμένων ἐπὶ τῆς ἀγορᾶς (“They proclaimed him both Caesar and Augustus while the decapitated corpses clad in their consular robes were still strewn throughout the Forum,” Plut. Galb. 28.1). In her reading of this scene, Rhiannon Ash notes the disjuncture between the titles Otho receives and the bloodied consular robes that surround him. “The trappings of power,” she writes, “prove to be no protection against brute force, and inevitably, the outlook for Otho, being awarded his lofty titles amidst the mutilated bodies, is not good.”Footnote ²⁶ Although Plutarch sees the selection of a strong princeps as the best defense against civil war, his own narrative seems to revel in its cyclical and iterative nature.Footnote ²⁷

Tacitus’ Histories explores the same themes of headlessness and irresolution through the burning of the Capitoline temple by Vitellius’ troops. This catastrophe, which serves as the climax of Book 3, has been widely recognized as a duplication of Galba’s beheading.Footnote ²⁸ As the caput orbis, the Capitoline occupied a place in the Roman imagination that mirrored that of the princeps. The parallel allowed readers to connect the figurative decapitation of the city to the literal decapitation of its ruler.Footnote ²⁹ Tacitus encourages this reading by crafting thematic symmetry between Galba and the Capitoline, both cast as old and noble eminences felled by their own citizens.Footnote ³⁰ Tacitus further personifies the hill by providing it with a eulogy and describing its loss as a physical disfigurement (saeva ac deformis urbe tota facies, Tac. Hist. 3.83.2).Footnote ³¹ The ramifications of its destruction become even clearer when the Gauls interpret the disaster as a sign that the Roman Empire is coming to an end (finem imperio adesse crederent, Tac. Hist. 4.54.2). Their judgment, which calls to mind the Gallic Sack, confirms the existential threat posed by the indulgence in internal warfare. In this way, the mutilated city – headless in more ways than one – serves as “a graphic symbol of the suicide which is civil war.”Footnote ³²

In the short term, the crisis of 68–69 ce was resolved through the victory of Vespasian, who set out to cure the ills that had festered under the Julio-Claudians and their usurpers.Footnote ³³ Insofar as Vespasian came to power through civil war and promised to heal its attendant wounds, he self-consciously occupied a position that recalled that of the first princeps. Whereas Augustus’ connection to such imagery remained figurative, however, Vespasian was rumored to have actually performed healing miracles amid his rise to power. Legend held that he was approached by two men, one blind and the other lame, while visiting Alexandria.Footnote ³⁴ They informed him that Serapis had visited them in their sleep and advised them to seek a cure from his hands. Although skeptical, Vespasian agreed to spit into the eyes of the blind man and touch the paralyzed limb of the lame man. Both were miraculously healed, revealing the curative capacities of the man fated to rule Rome. This story likely arose in a local Alexandrian context in relation to the cult of Serapis, but its subsequent incorporation into Roman historiography suggests that it took on a broader role in establishing Vespasian’s political legitimacy.Footnote ³⁵ Marking a new phase in the body politic tradition, it literalized the promise of sole rule as a remedy for civil strife. At the same time, it confirmed the continued reliance of the Flavians on the political language – and constitutional form – developed under their Julio-Claudian predecessors.Footnote ³⁶

A story often told about the arrival of sole rule in Rome is that Augustus offered his fellow citizens a bargain: peace in exchange for liberty. Looking back on the civil wars of the Late Republic, Florus is one of many authors to invoke “the fiction of historical necessity,” as K. Welwei terms it, to justify the establishment of the Principate.Footnote ³⁷ Like the Julio-Claudian writers who preceded him, he uses the duality of mind and body to make his case (Flor. 2.15.5–6):

Florus’ analysis serves a fitting point of conclusion to the story of the Roman body politic. Through his narration of the civil wars that brought the Caesars to power, he validates the prioritization of peace over liberty. Faced with the constant threat of civic collapse, who would not choose the same?

What Florus fails to acknowledge, however, is that the implementation of sole rule did not solve the problem of civil war. Flaws in the constitutional fabric of the Principate ensured that it would remain a problem for centuries to come. Yet even as Augustus’ successors failed to uphold their end of the bargain, there was little talk of restoring the Republic. This book illuminates one reason why this was so. Imperial thinkers were so successful at incorporating heads and healers into their models of the res publica that they lost sight of the conditions under which they had ever survived without them. By retrojecting their own form of political organization onto the past, they created a Roman Republic that looked strikingly similar to the Principate. The construction of this continuity between past and present helped them come to terms with autocracy but also made it difficult to recover a historical constitution rooted in self-governance. Paradoxically, it was their commitment to the paradigm of Roman Republicanism that helped cement the Principate as Rome’s governing form for centuries to come.