49 Seneca and Agrippina: Griffin 1976 (в 71). Coins: GCN 107 = AN 240; Sutherland 1987 (в 358) chs. 35-6. Seneca and Nero: Leach 1989 (в 106).
buildings were in accordance with the best Roman traditions of public benefaction: 'What was worse than Nero? What is better than Nero's Baths?'50
The idea of Nero's quinquennium is unlikely to have been invented in order to explain the excellence of Nero's buildings, or the real (but marginal) military successes associated with Corbulo and other commanders. It was perhaps rather an attempt to explain why so many senators who later reviled Nero as a monster were prepared to support him for so many years. 'Five years' from 5 4 take us up to a.d. 5 9, the year in which Nero killed his mother, and one senator who paraded his belief in libertas, Thrasea Paetus, walked out of the Senate; Paetus was later hailed as a Stoic martyr. Whether or not such Stoic propaganda was the source of the concept of a quinquennium Neronis, the idea itself shows there was unease about the fact that Nero had been a popular emperor until the last years of his reign.
It would be naive to believe that Nero's rule was perfect so long as he was under the control of Seneca and Burrus - and not only because Cassius Dio tells us how rich Seneca managed to become during his years as imperial adviser, to the extent that he was at least partly to blame for the exasperation of the Britons which led to Boudica's rebellion in a.d. 60. Political conflict did not cease because the emperor was being advised by a Stoic. Nero may have been the obvious candidate to succeed Claudius; but should he make any false move, there were a number of men who had survived Claudius' reign who might provide a focus of opposition - Domitia Lepida's grandson Britannicus, of course, but also her son (by a different marriage from that which produced Messallina), Faustus Cornelius Sulla Felix, the husband of Claudius' daughter Antonia. And further candidates of Julian ancestry were available in the person of Rubellius Plautus (Tiberius' great-grandson), and the surviving brothers and sisters of Lucius Iunius Silanus, who were grandchildren of Augustus' granddaughter Iulia. Nero's position needed strengthening by fair means, and foul. Fair means included claims to military prestige; in a.d. 55, the administration made much of an imperial salutation for a temporary success in Armenia achieved by Domitius Corbulo. To buttress his gloria, Nero was awarded a statue in the temple of Mars Ultor and an ovation.
Nero's legitimacy as emperor also needed strengthening in dynastic terms. Immediately after Claudius' funeral, the Senate had voted the late emperor divine honours; although the unpopularity of Tiberius and Caligula at the time of their deaths had prevented them from being
50 Quinquennium: Aur. Vic. De Caes. v.2—4. Cf. Murray 1965 (c 380); Hind 1971 (c 3; j); Levick 1983 (c j68). Nero's baths: Mart, vii.34. The character of Tigellinus: Roper 1979 (c 389).
similarly acclaimed, some female members of the domus Caesaris had been deified (Livia, Antonia, Drusilla), and Nero and his advisers had little choice but to do this for Claudius.The problem was that while the new emperor could now describe himself as divij. (and did so on his coinage for the next year or so), Britannicus was equally a divijand Sulla the son-in-law of a divus. While they remained on the scene, they would be a constant threat. Just as the rift between Domitia Lepida and Messallina contributed to the latter's fall, so a rift between Nero and Agrippina might lead her to drop her son in favour of any one of the other descendants of Augustus who were her cousins. The immediate problem was Britannicus; Agrippina, after all, was formally Britannicus' mother as well as Nero's.
The death of Britannicus early in 5 5, whether or not Seneca and Burrus were personally responsible, certainly strengthened their position — and Nero's — against Agrippina. So did the removal of Agrippina's ally Pallas from his post as a rationibus\ he went on condition that no one should ask questions about the finances of the domus Caesaris under his stewardship. Although the removal of Pallas seems to have been directed against him personally — his brother Felix was allowed to remain procurator of Judaea until a.d. 60 — it was interpreted as an attack on Agrippina; Domitia Lepida and Iunia Silana (a sister of Caligula's first wife Iunia Claudilla) accused her of plotting to replace her son with Rubellius Plautus. His father-in-law Antistius Vetus was Nero's colleague as consul in this year; he went on to become legate of Upper Germany, but was replaced after a year. Although the charge was not believed, Agrippina's weakness as an emperor's mother, compared to her power as an emperor's wife, is demonstrated by the disappearance of her portrait from the coinage after 5 5.
During these years, Seneca and Burrus seem to have used their influence to appoint associates to positions of honour and power. The brother of Seneca's wife, Pompeius Paulinus from Aries, commanded the army of Lower Germany from 5 6 to 5 8; he was succeeded by Lucius Duvius Avitus, who came from Burrus' home town, Vasio, also in Narbonese Gaul. (Nero's supporters from this region had been inherited from his paternal ancestors, the Domitii Ahenobarbi, rather than from the Julio-Claudians.) Avitus had been consul in 56. Another provincial who may well have been associated with them, Lucius Pedanius Secundus from Barcelona, had been consul in 43 and was appointed praefectus urbi in 56. Secundus' murder at the hands of his own slaves in a.d. 61 was a major scandal, and provoked the veteran consular and famous jurist C. Cassius Longinus (consul in a.d. 30) to propose strong measures to control slaves. In accordance with the strict interpretation of the existing law, about 400 of Secundus' slaves (present in his palace when he was killed) were executed, in spite of demonstrations by the urban plebs, many of whom were themselves ex-slaves.
It has been argued that Longinus' interpretation of the law should be seen as evidence of a new direction in imperial policy, no longer under the influence of freedmen as it had been under Claudius. This raises the question whether the events of Nero's reign should be ascribed to the 'policies' of the emperor and his advisers rather than to his individual personality and temperament. During his first consulship, Nero realized that he vastly enjoyed being a public figure and at the centre of attention. He was delighted to accept the title of pater patriae when the Senate offered it to him a second time in 5 6, and he took repeated consulships (the second in 5 7, and the third in 5 8), although a proposal put forward by the Senate in 58, that he be consul perpetuus (something the Senate clearly thought he would enjoy) was turned down as being without precedent. The young man's desire to be seen and heard led him to intervene in senatorial debates, sometimes without proper briefing. On one occasion he suggested, apparently on his own initiative, that all customs dues (portoria) throughout the empire ought to be abolished, since they caused much resentment against unscrupulous tax-farmers. Having committed himself to this astonishing proposal, he could only be persuaded not to implement his promise with the utmost.difficulty. The incident is no evidence for any hypothetical imperial 'policy' towards the provinces, or towards trade (there was a time when scholars anachronis- tically suggested that it proved that Nero or his advisers favoured free market economics); but it does throw a great deal of light on Nero's desire to make spectacular public utterances. Examples of imperial beneficence, for instance settling veterans on Italian land, should not be confused with an economic or agricultural 'policy'. In 5 7, Nero founded formal veteran settlements at Capua and Nuceria, and in 60, Puteoli was raised to the status of a colony as Colonia Claudia Neronensis; that may have been less to provide for veterans than as a response to internal political difficulties which had led to major disturbances in the colony two years previously, necessitating the intervention of troops.