Caligula's visit to the Rhine legions provided him with an opportunity to enhance his status by winning military glory. The first imperative was to regain the loyalty of the Rhine army. Gaetulicus' replacement was Lepidus' brother-in-law Servius Sulpicius Galba; his friendship with Caligula will have dated to the period when Caligula lived in Livia's household. Galba restored strict standards of discipline to the legions, and Caligula himself led a number of expeditions across the Rhine. They were not obviously less successful in reasserting Roman prestige in the eyes of the German tribes than his father Germanicus' had been in a.d. 14-16. It is only because of Caligula's own unpopularity that our ancient sources with one accord decry them as artificial and unreal, accusing Caligula of cowardice, and suggesting that he fabricated the fighting, and bought or kidnapped the captives in Gaul, where he spent the winter.
Accounts of Caligula's activities at Lyons during the winter emphasize his bad relations with the Senate, and his need for funds. The property of Gallic notables was confiscated, as well as senatorial estates in Italy (eg. those of Sextus Pompeius, cos. a.d. 14); he auctioned off the property of his exiled sisters, and even some of the effects of the imperial household. Such anecdotes illustrate the fiscal requirements of policies that were themselves likely to strengthen the regime. Coins advertise the abolition of the \ percent sales tax on slaves, which will have been welcome to wealthy Italians; the tax had already been reduced from 1 per cent by Tiberius, at the time when Germanicus had overseen the annexation of Cappodocia. To make up for the lost income, Caligula will have looked for another client kingdom to integrate into the empire. His choice fell on Mauretania, whose king, Caligula's cousin Ptolemy, was summoned to Lyons and executed (not, as has been suggested, because Caligula coveted his alleged position as high priest of the Isis cult).36
и Lepidus and Gaetulicus: Meise 1969(0 5 75) ch. 5; Simpson 1980(0 394); Acta Arvalium,GCN 9. For Vespasian's role, Jones 1984 (c 560).
36 Ptolemy and Mauretania: Fishwick 1971 (e 732); Braund 1984 (c 254); Hoffman 1959 (c 275) (Isis). Coins advertising tax reduction ('RCC'): Sutherland 1987 (в 358) ch. 19. Victory over the Ocean: Suet. Calig. 46; Dio ux.25.
But Caligula was also planning to follow in the footsteps of his ancestor Iulius Caesar by imposing Roman military control over Britain. The expulsion from his kingdom and flight to Gaul of Cunobelinus' son Adminius gave Rome an excuse to intervene. Two new legions (the Fifteenth and Twenty-second) seem to have been raised at this time; they were called Primigeniae, probably in honour of the emperor's first-born daughter. Their numbers suggest that they were intended to be twinned with two of the upper Rhine legions, the Fourteenth at Mainz and Twenty-first at Vindonissa, an indication of Caligula's caution regarding the loyalty of Gaetulicus' old army. Other preparations for the invasion included the construction of a lighthouse at Boulogne. Again, the ancient sources argue that Caligula was far too great a coward to have been serious about invading Britain; and anecdotes about the operation are selected with a view to suggesting that the whole affair was further proof of his madness. It is impossible to judge why the army never embarked. The story that Caligula intended to punish the legions by decimation suggests that there may have been a mutiny (he is said to have reminded them of the mutiny of their predecessors after Augustus' death, in which as a baby he had been taken away to Trier by Agrippina); alternatively, the Bridsh chieftains may have acceded to his demands without the need for an invasion. If there is any truth behind Suetonius' story that Caligula ordered his troops to collect seashells in the context of military operations either on the north German coast or against Britain, it may be that he meant these shells to be a symbol of his victory over the Ocean. (An unlikely alternative explanation has been that the musculi he ordered the troops to pack up were not sea-shells, but siege engines.)
Caligula returned to Italy in the summer of a.d. 40. ТЪе winter in Lyons had not been conducive to good relations with the Senate. Communications were a problem; when one of the consuls-elect died shortly before 1 January, there was not enough time for Caligula to be consulted about a replacement, and he was (very unreasonably) blamed for entering office without a colleague — perhaps the context of the story about his wishing to appoint the horse Incitatus to the consulship. There had been executions, such as that of the father of Tacitus' father-in-law Agricola. After the removal of Lepidus, any relative represented a threat, even his uncle Claudius. He was said to have thrown Claudius into the river Rhine when he arrived at the head of a senatorial delegation sent to congratulate him on the elimination of Lepidus and Gaetulicus.
Caligula remained outside Rome for a time, possibly simply to avoid the unhealthy summer months, rather than out of fear of conspiracies (although he is said to have remarked that he wished he could eliminate the entire Senate at a stroke). We should beware of taking Seneca's hostile remarks, or the later justifications for his murder, as evidence for widespread unpopularity. It is hardly surprising that Cassius Chaerea and the other disgruntled praetorian officers responsible for Caligula's death and the brutal killing of his wife and baby daughter on 24 January a.d. 41 should have justified their treason by claiming that it was tyrannicide. No doubt Chaerea was genuinely unhappy about Caligula's persecution of other members of Germanicus' family, but it also irked him that the emperor kept drawing attention to Chaerea's effeminate tone of voice.
IV. CLAUDIUS37
Most ancient sources treat Claudius as a fool who became emperor by accident. Already in Seneca's satire the Apocolocyntosis, written some months after Claudius' death, he is represented as vicious, stupid and fearful. It may not have been entirely Claudius' fault that he executed some two hundred equestrians and thirty-five senators, including many of his relatives, during a reign of just over thirteen years. But we should not be too keen to rehabilitate Claudius in the face of the judgment of antiquity. Nor should all Claudius' acts be ascribed to a grandiose and far-seeing overall 'policy', when many can be explained as particular responses to standard political threats. Claudius' 'policy' was above all that of any other Roman princeps-. staying alive, controlling the succession, rewarding clients and winning glory - even though the form it took may have been influenced by traditions about the Claudii, and by his respect for Iulius Caesar.
The reported views of Augustus, of Claudius' grandmother Livia and his mother Antonia the Younger as to his unsuitability for public office should not be ignored. A public position was not something automatically inherited at Rome; it was something that each individual had to prove himself fit for. Neither Augustus nor Tiberius felt that Claudius was suitable for election to office, and he had remained an eques. Although he had been granted some honours by Tiberius, on the rare occasions when he appeared on the political scene it was only in a private capacity - for example, to accompany his brother Germanicus' ashes on their return from the East - or as the representative of the equestrian ordo at Augustus' funeral and to congratulate Tiberius on the overthrow of Sejanus. Tiberius had no intention of allowing Claudius to inherit the political support of his brother Germanicus. Like other Romans excluded from politics, Claudius turned to intellectual pursuits, and in particular to the study of history. He wrote about Carthage and the Etruscans (many of his associates, including his first wife Plautia