AELIUS SEJANUS: His son. Promoted by Tiberius to the joint command of the Praetorians, then served as sole Prefect. Tiberius’s right-hand man.
APICATA: Sejanus’s wife. Divorced in AD 23.
MACRO: Prefect in succession to Sejanus.
CASSIUS CHAEREA: A grizzled veteran with a soft voice.
CORNELIUS SABINUS: Praetorian officer. Colleague of Cassius Chaerea.
BURRUS: Agrippina’s protégé, appointed as Prefect under Claudius. Famed for his blunt speaking.
TIGELLINUS: Gigolo, racehorse trainer and party animal. Appointed one of two prefects by Nero in succession to Burrus.
FAENIUS RUFUS: Tigellinus’s colleague as Prefect.
NYMPHIDIUS SABINUS: Prefect in succession to Faenius Rufus. Rumoured to be Caligula’s son.
Victims
CREMUTIUS CORDUS: A historian who named Brutus and Cassius ‘the last of the Romans’, and paid for it.
ASINIUS GALLUS: Husband of Vipsania, Tiberius’s divorced wife. Fatally prone to snideness.
TITIUS SABINUS: An associate of Germanicus. Victim of a sting.
JUNIUS SILANUS: Former consul. Father-in-law of Caligula.
ATANIUS SECUNDUS: Equestrian. Victim of his own hyperbole.
JUNIUS PRISCUS: Not as rich as he was rumoured to be.
PASTOR: Father of a murdered son.
ASPRENAS: A senator spattered with flamingo blood.
SILANUS: The victim of a bad dream.
POPPAEA SABINA (I): Love rival of Messalina.
SUILLIUS RUFUS: Notorious prosecutor. His comeuppance arrived in the end.
RUBELLIUS PLAUTUS: Tiberius’s great-grandson. Suspected of having an affair with Agrippina (II).
LUCIUS JUNIUS SILANUS: Nero excepted, the last surviving descendant of Augustus.
THRAESA PAETUS: Famously upright, in the sternest moral tradition of the Senate.
Conspirators
MARCUS AEMILIUS LEPIDUS: Caligula’s close friend, and intimate of his sisters.
GAETULICUS: A henchman of Sejanus. Commander of the Rhine under Tiberius and Caligula.
BETILIENUS CAPITO: Father of a murdered son.
MARCUS VINICIUS: Married to Julia Livilla. Would-be emperor in the wake of Caligula’s death.
ANNIUS VINICIANUS: Friend of Lepidus. Would-be emperor in the wake of Caligula’s death.
PAETUS: Not as brave as his wife.
GAIUS SILIUS: The most handsome man in Rome. Reported to have made an unwise marriage.
GAIUS CALPURNIUS PISO: Distinguished, well-bred and ambitious to reach the top – despite not being related to the August Family.
FLAVIUS SCAEVINUS: A senator in possession of a dagger removed from a temple.
Survivors
MEMMIUS REGULUS: Consul and trusted henchman of Tiberius. Husband of Lollia Paulina, before Caligula obliged him to divorce her.
THRASYLLUS: Tiberius’s astrologer. Avoided being thrown off a cliff.
LUCIUS VITELLIUS: Governor of Syria. Returned from his term of office to establish himself in Rome as a trusted agent of both Caligula and Claudius. A smooth operator.
CAECINA LARGUS: An early backer of Claudius to be emperor. Owned a house on the Palatine complete with lotus trees.
Freedmen and Slaves
CLEMENS: Slave and lookalike of Agrippa Postumus – or was he?
PALLAS: Former slave of Antonia the Younger. One of Claudius’s most valued freedmen.
CALLISTUS: Powerful freedman under Caligula and Claudius. Died in his bed. The grandfather of Nymphidius Sabinus.
NARCISSUS: The third of Claudius’s triumvirate of powerful freedmen. Not an admirer of Messalina.
CALPURNIA: One of Claudius’s concubines.
ACTE: Nero’s first girlfriend. Presided over his funeral.
SPORUS: A young boy possessed of girlish looks. Castrated, then married, by Nero.
PHAON: Owner of a villa north of Rome.
Actors and Artists
APELLES: Actor, with a tendency to stammer without a script.
MNESTER: Actor. Much admired by Caligula.
PARIS: Actor. Much admired by Nero.
ZENODORUS: Sculptor of Nero’s Colossus.
Gauls
GAIUS JULIUS VERCONDARIDUBNUS: High priest of Rome and Augustus at Lugdunum.
VALERIUS ASIATICUS: Fabulously wealthy. Would-be emperor in the wake of Caligula’s assassination. Owner of expensive gardens.
JULIUS CLASSICIANUS: Appointed by Claudius to restore the administration of Britain after Boudicca’s revolt.
JULIUS VINDEX: A descendant of kings with a rebellious instinct.
Barbarians
DELDO: King of the Bastarnians.
PHRAATES: King of Parthia and enthusiast for détente with Augustus.
ARMINIUS: Roman equestrian and chieftain of the Cherusci.
CUNOBELIN: King of the Catuvellauni.
CARATACUS: His son. Leader of British resistance to the Roman invasion.
PRASUTAGAS: King of the Iceni.
BOUDICCA: Queen of the Iceni. Fiery.
TIRIDATES: King of Armenia. Crowned in Rome by Nero.
Friends and FOES OF NERO
SENECA: Philosopher, rhetorician and writer. Exiled by Claudius, but brought back to Rome by Agrippina (II). Nero’s tutor.
AULUS VITELLIUS: Son of Lucius Vitellius. Friend of Caligula and Nero. Charioteer.
OTHO: Partner of Nero’s night-time revels. Husband of Poppaea Sabina (II).
POPPAEA SABINA (II): Amber-haired beauty, and daughter of Messalina’s great rival. The love of Nero’s life.
VATINIUS: Nero’s court jester.
VESPASIAN: Seasoned general of humble background. Fought in Britain and accompanied Nero to Greece.
STATILIA MESSALINA: Nero’s third wife. A noted intellectual.
CALVIA CRISPINILLA: Sporus’s instructress in the art of being a woman.
PETRONIUS TURPILIANUS: Former governor of Britain. Commander of Nero’s troops in Italy.
VIRGINIUS RUFUS: Commander of the Rhine.
NOTES
Unless otherwise stated, ‘Tacitus’ refers to The Annals; Valerius Maximus to Memorable Doings and Sayings; Livy, Justin, Florus, Appian, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Cassius Dio, Velleius Paterculus and Herodotus to their respective Histories; Lucretius to On the Nature of Things; Petronius to The Satyricon; Lucan to The Civil War; Strabo to his Geography; Aulus Gellius to Attic Nights; Macrobius to The Saturnalia; Pliny to Pliny the Elder, and his Natural History; Artemidorus to The Interpretation of Dreams; Vitruvius to On Architecture; and Frontinus to On Aqueducts.
Preface
1 Suetonius. Caligula: 46
2 Ibid: 22
3 Ibid: 50.2
4 Seneca. To Helvia: 10.4
5 Eusebius. The Proof of the Gospeclass="underline" 3.139
6 Philo. On the Embassy to Gaius: 146–7
7 Ovid. Letters from Pontus: 4.9.126
8 Mark 12.17
9 Cassius Dio: 52.34.2
10 Ibid: 53.19.3
11 Tacitus: 3.19
12 Ibid: 1.1
13 Tacitus: 3.65
14 Valerius Maximus: 3.6. preface
15 Seneca. Letters: 57.2
16 Seneca. On Clemency: 1.11.2
17 Ovid. Sorrows: 4.4.15
1 Children of the Wolf
1 Witness, for instance, a dedication made in the late third or early second century BC by a Greek on the Aegean island of Chios, which showcased Romulus and Remus. ‘According to the story,’ the inscription read, ‘it came about that they were begotten by [the war god himself], which one might well consider to be a true story because of the bravery of the Romans.’ Quoted by Wiseman (1995), p. 161.
2 Livy: 31.34
3 Justin: 38.6.7–8
4 Ennius: fragment 156
5 Florus: 1.1.8
6 Sallust. The Conspiracy of Catiline: 7.1–2
7 Livy: 7.6.2
8 Lucretius: 3.834
9 Livy: 37.45
10 So, at any rate, reports Valerius Maximus: 2.2.1
11 Livy: 38.53
12 Livy: 38.50
13 Valerius Maximus: 6.2.8
14 Cicero. On Piso: 16
15 Cicero. On his House: 66
16 Manilius: Astronomica: 1.793
17 Petronius: 119
18 Suetonius. The Deified Julius: 20
19 Livy. Periochae: 103
20 Propertius: 3.4, line 2
21 Appian: 2.31
22 Lucan: 1.109–11
23 Petronius: 121