The Julio-Claudian Dynasty

Podcast Transcript

The Roman Empire was ruled by a single family for its first century. The family was actually a merger of two of the most distinguished clans in Roman history.

This family included some of the best and worst emperors in Rome’s history. It also included a host of potential emperors who showed great potential but were killed under mysterious circumstances.

Ultimately, paranoia and poor leadership caused the family to collapse.

Learn more about the Julio-Claudian Dynasty and how they came to rule Rome on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

In previous episodes, I covered many of the topics that I’ll be covering in this episode.

In this episode, I want to zoom out to try and put many of these disparate topics together to try and explain the events of the first century of imperial rule and how they all fit together.

Historians use the term Julio-Claudian Dynasty to describe the first five emperors of Rome, who were all related.

The Julio-Claudians were representative of two separate gens or clans in Rome.

The first was the Julii.

The Julii claimed divine descent and were one of the oldest patrician families in Rome. They traced their lineage to Iulus, the son of the Trojan hero Aeneas, who was said to be the son of the goddess Venus. This divine connection became a key element in the family’s prestige and propaganda, especially under the rule of Augustus.

Members of the Julii held high offices throughout the Republic, including many consuls and military commanders.

The Julii are even a part of this discussion because of Julius Caesar. I’ve told the story about his rise to power and his victory in the Civil War against the Senate.

He was declared dictator for life, which was an actual office in the Roman Republic but traditionally only held for a maximum of six months.

After Caesar was assassinated, in his will, he posthumously adopted his 18-year-old great-nephew Octavius, who was also made his primary heir.

To cut through a lot of history, young Octavius turns out to be an absolutely brilliant politician, defeats Caesar’s lieutenant Marc Antony in another civil war, and is granted the title Augustus and becomes the first Roman emperor.

As I explained in a previous episode, there wasn’t really a position per se called emperor, rather, it was a collection of titles and powers that were passed from person to person.

That is how the Julii came to power.

The Claudii enter the picture through marriage. In particular, Augustus’s marriage to Livia Drusilla.

I should warn you that the story from here on out is going to sound a lot like a soap opera.

Augustus had been twice married, once to Claudia, Marc Antony’s stepdaughter, and then to Scribonia, with whom he had his only child, Julia.

Augustus divorced Scribonia and married Livia Drusilla, a member of the Claudii.

Livia, too, had been previously married to her cousin, who was also a member of the Claudii, Tiberius Claudius Nero….all three of those names should ring a bell.

She had two sons with Tiberius Claudius Nero: Tiberius and Drusus.

Augustus adopted Tiberius and Drusus, but they were not of his blood.

When he was making his plans for who was going to succeed him after his death, his first choice was his nephew, Marcellus, the son of his sister.

Marcellus was married to Augustus’ daughter Julia and was adopted by Augustus…which was a totally normal thing in Rome.

However, Marcellus unexpectedly died at the age of 19, probably due to an illness such as typhoid, but there was always lingering suspicion about his death.

In 9 BC, Drussus, who was an accomplished military commander, fell off his horse and died.

Julia was then married to Augustus’ right-hand man, Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa. Julia and Agrippa had five children, three boys and two girls.

The two eldest boys and the grandsons of Augustus were Gaius and Lucius.

Gaius and Lucius became the next heirs apparent. Lucius died in the year 2 at the age of 18. He simply fell ill and died.

Eighteen months later, his brother Gaius fell ill and died at the age of 24.

Both boys showed great potential and were extremely popular in Rome, and their deaths were considered to be highly suspicious.

As Augustus was getting older, the need for a successor became more pressing.

At this point, he had two choices: his grandson and the third son of Julia and Agrippa, Agrippa Postumus, and his stepson Tiberius.

Agrippa Postumus was initially a potential heir of Augustus. However, he was exiled in the year 6, likely due to erratic and embarssing behavior.

When August died in the year 14, Tiberius was left as the second emperor of Rome.

Agrippa Postumus was summarily executed while he was in exile.

….and just to stress how soap opera-like this family was, Augustus exiled his own daughter Julia in the year 1 BC, and she never again returned to Rome. Before that, she was forced to marry Tiberius after the death of Agrippa.

With Tiberius now emperor, the issue of succession came up again.

He had two choices. The first of them was his natural son, Drussus the Younger, who was not to be confused with Tiberius’ brother, Drussus the Elder, who died after falling off a horse.

The second option was his nephew, Germanicus, the son of his brother Drussus the Elder. Drussus the Elder also had another son named Claudius, who wasn’t seriously considered because the family thought him to be dim-witted….more on him in a bit.

Germanicus, an extremely popular military commander, died in the year 19 at the age of 34. Germanicus was so popular he was arguably more popular than Tiberius.

He believed he had been poisoned by Gnaeus Calpurnius Piso, the governor of Syria, possibly acting on Tiberius’ orders. Piso eventually committed suicide rather than face trial, and Tiberius was never implicated.

That left Tiberius’s son, Drussus the Younger.

Unfortunately for Drussus, Tiberius had a very ambitious right-hand man named Sejanus, whom I’ve covered in a previous episode.

Sejanus basically ran the government while Tiberius was holed up in his pleasure palace on the island of Capri.

Sejanus began an affair with the wife of Drussus and eventually poisoned Drussus so he would be next in line for the imperial throne after Tiberius died.

Tiberius caught wind of Sejanus’ role in the death of his son and had him condemned to death on the floor of the Senate in a very dramatic turn of events.

Tiberius’s options were now extremely limited. If he were to keep the imperial throne in the family, his only real options were the son of his nephew Germanicus, Caligula, and his grandson, Gemellus, the son of Drusus the Younger.

The reason why these were his options was because Tiberius previously exiled both Germanicus’s wife and son Drusus who both died in exile…..and this is the third Drusus of the story,

Tiberius died in the year 37 under….suspicious circumstances. Many people believed that Caligula may have had a hand in his death.

At the time of Tiberius’s death, Caligula was 24 years old, and Gemellus was just 17.

Caligula was proclaimed emperor, in part because Gemellus was too young and also because Tiberius hated him because he thought he was the product of an affair.

By this time, the Julii and connected again with the Claudii as Germanicus’ wife and Caligula’s mother was the daughter of Julia, the daughter of Augustus.

History has painted Caligua as being crazy, and he probably was, but he was also known as being intelligent and a good orator.

However, as Lord Acton noted, power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Calignula proved this true.

Months after taking power, Caligula had Gemellus killed. He had his father-in-law, Marcus Junius Silanus, killed. He had Macro, the Praetorian Prefect who had helped him come to power killed.

Caligula accused numerous senators and wealthy citizens of treason, executing them or forcing their suicides.

There were a host of things he did that angered the Senate, and eventually, he was assassinated in the year 41 at the age of 28.

The Praetorian Guards, who needed an emperor to guard to keep their jobs, eventually selected the brother of Germanicus, Claudius, the one everyone thought was a dim wit.

Claudius was not a dim wit. It turns out he was actually probably the smartest of the bunch.

By all accounts, he was a wise and just ruler.

I had a previous episode devoted to Claudius, which I’ll refer you to for a more detailed overview of his life.

With regard to succession, he had two sons. Tiberius Claudius Drusus, who died as a teenager and a younger son, Britannicus.

He also had a stepson from his fourth wife, Agrippina the Younger, who also happened to be his niece. His stepson was named Nero.

Agrippina the Younger was very ambitious and wanted her son to become emperor.

Claudius died in the year 54 at the age of 63. His death was under……suspicious circumstances. Most historians believe that Claudius was poisoned by his wife, who gave him poisoned mushrooms.

Nero was proclaimed emperor at the age of just 16.

It should not surprise you to hear that Brittanicus was killed soon after Nero came to power.

Nero’s mother sought to rule the empire herself by controlling her son, and Nero was aware of this.

In the year 59, Nero arranged for his mother to die in a boating accident, but she survived. She swam to shore, where she was killed by one of Nero’s associates, who then claimed she had killed herself.

Nero divorced his first wife and step-sister, Octavia, and exiled her on false charges of adultery, later ordering her execution in the year 62 to ensure she posed no threat to his reign.

Nero’s second wife, Poppaea Sabina, allegedly died after being kicked by Nero during a fit of rage in the year 65. However, some accounts suggest her death may have been due to complications during pregnancy.

Nero had several more wives but only had one child, a daughter who died as an infant.

He reigned for 14 years and while he too was probably crazy, he wasn’t nearly as bad as Caligula. By all accounts, he was popular with the common people.

However, he eventually earned the wrath of the Senate and was declared an enemy of Rome, and he committed suicide in the year 68 at the age of 30.

With Nero dead, Rome had a problem.

For the last century, Rome had been ruled by the five emperors of the Julio-Claudian dynasty. No one alive knew any other system of government, and no one was around who could remember the republic.

After multiple emperors eliminated all of their potential rivals, and because Nero had no children, there was no one from the family who was around to take up the mantle of emperor.

In the uprising against Nero, the Senate proclaimed the 70-year-old, childless governor of Hispania emperor Glaba.

The problem was, if someone outside of the imperial family could be emperor, then why not them?

The power vacuum left by the collapse of the Julio-Claudian dynasty became known as the Year of the Four Emperors because of the four men who were proclaimed emperor, all of whom attempted to seize the throne by violence.

The 95-year reign of the Julio-Claudian dynasty was matched only by the 96-year reign of the Nerva–Antonine dynasty.

While this particular family eventually died out, there were other, more distant branches of both the Julii and Claudii clans who continued to exist. In fact, centuries later, there were other distant members of the Julii who became emperor.

For centuries, the Romans feared one thing more than anything else- the establishment of a king. Yet, in the end, that is basically what they ended up with, complete with a royal family filled with intrigue and murder.