The Corridor on the Palatine — Caligula: The Horse in the Senate
Warnings pour in. Suetonius lists them: the statue of Jupiter from Olympia, which was to travel to Rome, bursts into laughter so loud that the scaffolding collapses; on the Ides of March lightning strikes the Capitol at Capua; an omen from Antium warns the emperor against Cassius. Caligula reads it his own way. He has the governor Cassius Longinus, a descendant of Caesar’s killer, brought from Asia as a prisoner. He forgets that a man with the same family name serves in his own Guard.
Cassius Chaerea is an old soldier, a tribune of the Guard. For years the emperor has mocked him for being soft. When Chaerea comes for the day’s watchword, he gets “Priapus” or “Venus” (Dio records “Love”). When Chaerea thanks him, the emperor holds out his hand to be kissed and shapes his fingers into an obscene gesture. Around Chaerea the discontented gather: the other tribune, Cornelius Sabinus, prefects, the freedman Callistus, some senators. Dio writes that nearly the whole court favored the plot, and those who took no part in it did not betray it.
The emperor feels the circle tightening. Dio records how he summons the Guard commanders and Callistus for a talk.
Then he does the opposite: he talks to each of them privately about the others, to set them against one another. The conspirators understand they have no time left. They endured five days of games in the palace in silence. When the emperor announces three more days, in which he himself will dance and perform in a tragedy, their patience runs out.
What exactly happened in the corridor we do not know. Suetonius gives two versions. According to the first, Chaerea comes up from behind and strikes first, and Sabinus finishes him off. According to the second, Sabinus, having sent the crowd away through his centurions, asks for the watchword, and when the emperor answers “Jupiter,” Chaerea strikes the blow. Both versions end the same way: Caligula falls and cries that he is still alive. Then comes the cry that Suetonius knows from reports: “Strike again.”
First the litter-bearers with poles, and right after them the German bodyguards, run to the emperor’s aid. In the confusion some of the assassins are killed, along with a few innocent senators. The assassins do not stop at the emperor: they also kill his wife Caesonia and their little daughter. Josephus records that to some of the conspirators this deed seemed too cruel, but the view prevailed that his line must vanish with him.
The verdict, plainly: not the madman of caricature, but a young man with unlimited power and no restraints, described by hostile sources.
For a moment no one believes it. Suetonius writes that at first it was suspected that the emperor himself had spread the news of his own death, to test how people felt about him. Once the doubts are gone, chaos breaks out in the palace. The German bodyguards fall on anyone who stands in their way, and the Praetorians run about asking who killed the emperor. They are calmed by the former consul Valerius Asiaticus. He climbs onto a raised spot and shouts a single sentence.
The consuls move the treasury to the Capitol and convene the Senate. The Senate, as Suetonius writes, is unanimous: the republic must be restored. They meet not in the Curia, which bears the Julian name, but on the Capitol, and some propose tearing down the temples of the Caesars and erasing their memory. Josephus records that when Chaerea asks the consuls for the watchword, he gets “Liberty.” For the first time in a hundred years the consuls give the watchword.
The assassins have a dead emperor, but no successor. The Senate wants a republic, and the Praetorians cannot imagine life without a ruler to serve. Meanwhile soldiers are searching every corner of the palace.
In the next episode: a pair of feet sticks out from under a curtain. A man his own family thought unfit to rule all his life becomes emperor. Why did the soldiers choose him? And how long can someone like that survive on the Palatine, where his nephew has just died?