David Woods, Neron
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Nero and Sporus The purpose of this paper is to propose a new understanding of the relation- ship between Nero and the young freedman Sporus whom he apparently ‘mar- ried’ sometime during his tour of Greece in AD 66-67. It is generally assumed at present that Nero was motivated by lust, if not love, in this relationship ( 1 ). This understanding of the relationship assumes that Dio preserves a full and correct explanation of his behaviour when he claims that Nero treated Sporus as he did because of his resemblance to his wife Poppaea Sabina whom he had acciden- tally killed in AD 65 : Kaì ouçtw ge au¬tæn o™ Nérwn e¬pójhsen wçste metà tòn jánaton au¬tñv tà mèn prøta gunaîká tina prosferñ oi™ majån ou®san metepémyato kaì e¢scen, e¢peita kaì paîda a¬peleújeron, oÇn Spóron w¬nómazen, e¬ktemån, e¬peidæ kaì au¬tòv tñıı Sabínhı proseåıkei, tá te a¢lla w™v gunaikì au¬tœı e¬crñto kaì proïóntov toû crónou kaì e¢ghmen au¬tón, kaíper Pujagóraı tinì e¬xeleujérwı gegamhménov, kaì proîka au¬tøı katà suggrafæn e¢neime, kaì toùv gámouv sføn dhmosíaı oiç te a¢lloi kaì au¬toì oi™ ¿Rwmaîoi e™årtasan. “Nero missed her [Poppaea Sabina] so greatly after her death that on learning of a woman who resembled her he at first sent for her and kept her ; but (1) M. G RIFFIN , Nero : The End of a Dynasty , London, 1984, p. 169 : ‘Nero demon- strated his sexual dependence on her [Sabina] by having Sporus, a young freedman who resembled her, castrated and using him as a substitute’. This romantic or erotic interpre- tation has been standard throughout modern treatments of the reign of Nero. See also e.g. M. G RANT , Nero , New York, 1970, p. 175 ; G. W ALTER , Nero , London, 1957, p. 207. Unusually, R. H OLLAND , Nero : The Man behind the Myth , Stroud, 2000, p. 204-05, seeks to minimize any sexual element to the relationship between Nero and Sporus. Instead, he interprets Nero’s treatment of Sporus as an exotic art project, even going so far as to claim that Nero ‘may only ever have pretended to have sex with his Poppaea-substitute’. E. C HAMPLIN , Nero , Cambridge, Mass., 2003, p. 148, argues similarly : ‘the more closely it is examined, the less erotic, the more dramatic, the liaison appears’. C. V OUT , Nero and Sporus in J.-M. C ROISILLE and Y. P ERRIN (eds.), Neronia VI : Rome à l’époque néronienne , Brussels, 2002 (Collection Latomus 286), p. 493-502, and C. V OUT , Power and Eroticism in Imperial Rome , Cambridge, 2007, p. 136-66, are unhelpful here in that she investigates the significance of Sporus to later historians of the reign of Nero as a symbol of all that was wrong with his reign rather than the substantial issue, the nature of this relationship itself. The fundamental flaw with this approach is that it refuses to acknowledge that Suetonius or Dio were limited in any way by their sources, by the historical ‘facts’, if one dare use such a word. It tends to treats their every word as a carefully chosen part in a greater literary construct rather than as an often clumsy paraphrase of an existing source. Latomus 68, 2009 74 D . WOODS later he caused a boy of the freedmen, whom he used to call Sporus, to be cas- trated, since he, too, resembled Sabina, and he used him in every way like a wife. In due time, though already “married” to Pythagoras, a freedman, he for- mally “married” Sporus, and assigned the boy a regular dowry according to con- tract ; and the Romans as well as others publicly celebrated their wedding” ( 2 ). Although Suetonius, our main surviving source for the relationship between Nero and Sporus, does not actually mention this fact, that Sporus bore a close resemblance to Poppaea Sabina, he treats the marriage of Nero to Sporus in a very similar fashion, as a matter of lust or love ( 3 ). Hence there is no good rea- son to deny that Sporus did bear a strong resemblance to Poppaea Sabina, or that the common source of Suetonius and Dio claimed as much at least. The greater question, however, is what significance Nero would have placed upon this strange resemblance between his former wife and the freedman Sporus ( 4 ). When two people bear a close physical resemblance to one another, the most natural assumption is that they are closely related to one another, although this need not always be correct. Certainly, several tales preserved by Valerius Maxi - mus, and by Pliny the Elder after him, prove that many Romans were inclined to think in this way ( 5 ). Most importantly, when two such similar people did not appear to be related to one another, the obvious suspicion was that the father of one had committed adultery with the mother of the other. Hence the close resem- blance between Sporus and Poppaea Sabina must have raised some suspicion that they were in fact much more closely related to one another than their differ- ent family and social backgrounds would seem to have suggested at first sight. It is important at this point to ask how Poppaea Sabina finally managed to per- suade Nero to divorce his wife Octavia and marry her instead. What finally per- suaded him to promote her from the position of much loved mistress to legal wife ? Tacitus alleges that Sabina had played an important role in convincing Nero to kill his mother Agrippina in AD 59 because she had realized that Agrippina would never tolerate her marriage to Nero, but the fact that Nero did not actually marry Sabina until AD 62 proves that other factors must have been at play also ( 6 ). In so far as Tacitus describes how Nero had both Faustus Corne - lius Sulla Felix, the husband of Antonia, his step-sister and the natural daughter of his predecessor Claudius, and Gaius Rubellius Plautus, a great-grandson of (2) D IO 62,28,2-3. Text and translation from E. C ARY , Dio Cassius VIII , Cambridge, Mass., 1925 (Loeb Classical Library 176), p. 134-37. (3) S UET ., Nero 28,1. (4) V OUT , Power and Eroticism [n. 1], p. 157-61, explores the significance of this alleged resemblance to later historians of the reign of Nero, but fails to explore what it would have meant to Nero and his contemporaries. (5) V AL . M AX . 9,14 ; P LIN ., NH 7,50-56. (6) T AC ., Ann . 14,1. NERO AND SPORUS 75 the emperor Tiberius, executed immediately before his decision to divorce Octavia and marry Sabina, and claims that this had caused Nero to cast away some of the fears which had caused him to delay the marriage, the suspicion must be that he had delayed the marriage because of fears that his divorce of the natural daughter of his predecessor would have weakened his claim to the throne and could have encouraged other members of the dynasty to plot against him ( 7 ). Hence his execution of the strongest possible alternative claimants to the throne freed him to engage in a marriage which ought to have weakened his claim to the throne. Yet given Nero’s natural fear concerning the strength of his dynastic claim to the throne, one wonders whether he might not have taken some more positive action also, besides simply executing Sulla and Plautus. Two points need to be borne in mind here. First, when he had been besotted by the charms of the freedwoman Acte during the earliest years of his reign, and may even have been contemplating marriage with her, he had tried to pretend that she was of royal birth, descended from the Attalids of Pergamum ( 8 ). Second, the family and polit- ical circumstances surrounding the birth of Sabina were such that it was not impossible that she might have been the daughter of the emperor Tiberius. The facts that her mother, Poppaea Sabina the Elder, had been one of most beautiful society women of the day, that Tiberius had enjoyed a reputation for forcing his attentions upon Roman noble women even, and that Titus Ollius, Sabina’s appar- ent father, had eventually suffered execution because of his close association with the disgraced praetorian prefect Sejanus, may all have encouraged the sus- picion that Poppaea Sabina had attempted to use her charms to protect herself, if not her husband also, and that Poppaea Sabina the Younger was the result of this liaison ( 9 ). This need not actually have been the case, of course. It matters here only that Nero and Sabina may have seized upon this situation to promote the idea that she was really the daughter of Tiberius rather than of Titus Ollius. In that case, she would have had a better dynastic pedigree than Octavia, and it could have been argued that a marriage to her would have strengthened rather than weakened Nero’s claim to the throne. I suggest, therefore, that Sabina man- aged to persuade Nero that she was of imperial descent, that Nero shared this information with his closest advisors and friends, and that no-one dared object very strongly to his proposed divorce of Octavia and marriage to Sabina now that (7) T AC ., Ann . 14,57-59. His ruthless treatment of his potential legitimate rivals, par- ticularly during his later years, is well known. See R. S. R OGERS , Heirs and Rivals to Nero in TAPhA 86, 1955, p. 190-212. His problem, however, was that the less he had to fear from potential legitimate rivals, the more he had to fear from potential illegitimate rivals. (8) S UET ., Nero 28,1. Cf. D IO 61,7,1. (9) On the parentage of Sabina, see T AC ., Ann . 13,45. On Tiberius as a sexual predator upon Roman noble women, see S UET ., Tib . 45. Strictly speaking, this last only describes Tiberius’ passion for oral sex, given and received, but it would be naïve to assume that this was all that ever occurred. 76 D . WOODS he had found a reason to argue that it would strengthen rather than weaken his claim to the throne. It is never wise to attempt to dissuade an absolute ruler from his plans, least of all in matters of the heart ( 10 ). Two further arguments may be adduced in support of this thesis. First, when Sabina was killed in AD 65, Nero’s first instinct was to seek marriage to his step- sister Antonia, whom he had executed on a trumped-up charge when she refused his offer ( 11 ). This encourages the suspicion that he believed that his marriage to Sabina represented part of the same pattern of marriage, or proposed marriage, to female members of the Julio-Claudian dynasty – Octavia, Sabina, Antonia. Second, the idea that Nero believed that Sabina was the daughter of Tiberius best explains also his decision to murder her young son by a previous marriage, Rufrius Crispinus. Suetonius claims that Nero had the young boy drowned because he used to play at being a general and an emperor, but that is hardly a sufficient explanation ( 12 ). Obviously, Nero must have regarded him as a poten- tial rival to any children by his marriage to Sabina, but the mere fact that he was an imperial step-son ought not in itself to have made him seem particularly dan- gerous. True, Nero had himself used his position as imperial step-son to worm his way onto the throne, but he had enjoyed the very important advantage of being of imperial descent also. Hence there must be a suspicion that Nero felt that Crispinus had some potential claim upon the throne independent of his sta- tus as imperial step-son, that is, that he was of imperial blood also. Given the resemblance between Sporus and Sabina, and the possibility that Nero believed that Sabina was the daughter of Tiberius, then Nero may well have believed that Sporus was of imperial descent also. Since Sporus was only a boy when Nero ‘married’ him in AD 66, and Tiberius had died in AD 37, it is clear that Tiberius cannot have fathered Sporus himself, but he could have fathered his father or mother, although nothing now is known about either of these. Hence the resemblance between Sporus and Sabina may have led Nero to conclude that Tiberius was the grandfather of Sporus as well as the father of Sabina. Three arguments may be adduced in support of the thesis that Nero believed Sporus to be of imperial descent. First, there is the nature of the sexual relation- ship itself. Two examples prove that Nero was accustomed to use sexual violence in order to assert his authority over other males whom he regarded as potential rivals for the throne. First, Tacitus reports that Nero had subjected his step-broth- er Britannicus to some form of sexual abuse before the latter died in controver- (10) See D IO C HRYS ., Or . 21,9 reporting that no-one ever dared to contradict Nero in anything, or declare that anything which he commanded was impossible to perform, even human flight ! (11) S UET ., Nero 35,4. (12) S UET ., Nero 35,5. On the basis of P SEUDO -S ENECA , Octavia 728, K. R. B RADLEY , Suetonius’ Life of Nero : An Historical Commentary , Brussels, 1978 (Collection Latomus 137), p. 215, suggests that Nero may have had him murdered as early as AD 62 even. NERO AND SPORUS 77 sial circumstances in AD 55 : Tradunt plerique eorum temporum scriptores, cre- bris ante exitium diebus illusum isse pueritiae Britannici Neronem, ut iam non praematura neque saeua mors uideri queat, quamuis inter sacra mensae, ne tem- pore quidem ad complexum sororum dato, ante oculos inimici properata sit in illum supremum Claudiorum sanguinem, stupro prius quam ueneno pollutum . “The assertion is made by many contemporary authors that, for days before the murder, the worst of all outrages had been offered by Nero to the boyish years of Britannicus : in which case, it ceases to be possible to regard his death as either premature or cruel, though it was amid the sanctities of the table, without even a respite allowed in which to embrace his sister, and under the eyes of his enemy, that the hurried doom fell on this last scion of the Claudian house, upon whom lust had done its unclean work before the poison” ( 13 ). Second, Suetonius hints that Nero had orally raped a certain Aulus Plautius before he had him killed because of a fear that his mother was grooming him as a potential alternative candidate for the throne : … in quibus Aulum Plautium iuuenem, quem cum ante mortem per uim conspurcasset : “Eat nunc”, inquit, “mater mea et successorem meum osculetur,” iactans dilectum ab ea et ad spem imperii impulsum . “Among these was the young Aulus Plautius, whom he forcibly defiled before his death, saying “Let my mother come now and kiss my successor,” openly charging that Agrippina had loved Plautius and that this had roused him to hopes of the throne” ( 14 ). The fact that Nero treated both Britannicus and Aulus Plautius in this way encourages the belief that he had decided to dominate Sporus sexually for much the same reason. The main difference is that he apparently did so for a much longer period of time, for about 18 months before his own death. This proves only that he regarded Sporus as a much less immediate danger than either Britannicus or Plautius. It does not prove that he would not have killed him even- tually. The other difference is that he went through a public marriage ceremony with Sporus and paraded their relationship openly for all to see. Yet this tells us more about the relative social status of Nero’s victims, that he was able to indulge himself much more openly in his abuse of Sporus because of the latter’s servile origin, than it does about any difference in the nature of these sexual rela- tionships. The second argument pointing to the belief that Sporus was of imperial descent lies in the decision by Nero to have him castrated, an element of the ‘marriage’ of Nero and Sporus which distinguishes it very clearly from other (13) T AC ., Ann . 13,17. Text and translation from J. J ACKSON , Tacitus V , Cambridge, Mass., 1937 (Loeb Classical Library 322), p. 28-29. (14) S UET ., Nero 35,4. Text and translation from J. C. R OLFE , Suetonius II , Cambridge, Mass., 1914 (Loeb Classical Library 38), p. 148-49. It is not clear how Aulus Plautius was related to the Julio-Claudian dynasty. See B RADLEY , Suetonius’ Life of Nero [n. 12], p. 214-15. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ] |