The Black Banquet — Domitian: Lord and God

A messenger from the emperor opens the door. The guest is certain that this time it is the end. The messenger carries a slab with his name — the same one that stood beside him at the banquet. Only now it is made of silver. Behind him come others: the vessels he ate from in the black hall, of precious metal. Last comes the boy who stood by his couch like a ghost. Now washed and dressed up. Also a gift.

The guests spent the whole night in mortal fear, and toward morning they received gifts. Rome soon had its own name for it: a funeral banquet for those who fell in Dacia and in Rome. Cassius Dio adds dryly that even in those days the emperor killed prominent men.

A joke? A lesson in obedience? A threat? With this emperor, all at once. Dio writes that Domitian could strike suddenly, like a thunderbolt, and at other times destroyed a man after long deliberation. And that he always feigned tenderness toward the one he had just decided to do away with.

Before you believe every word, ask: who is writing this? Dio lived more than a hundred years later. Tacitus and Pliny the Younger were senators under Domitian and were promoted during his reign — Tacitus admits it himself. Suetonius was then a boy in Rome. All of them wrote after Domitian was dead, when it was permitted to hate him.

That does not mean they lie. It means that the portrait of this emperor was painted by people who feared him and who bowed to him. Remember Caligula? It is much the same here. At the end of the episode we will put two portraits side by side, and you will see which is more convincing.

To understand this banquet, let us go back to the boy who escaped from the burning Capitol.