Civilis Princeps: Between Citizen and King

Abstract

When the emperor Claudius decided, at the instigation of his freedman Pallas, to make a highly unconventional marriage with his niece, he manoeuvred the senate, through the agency of his staunch amicus Vitellius, into passing an ‘unsolicited’ request that he marry Agrippina. He declared that his hesitations would be overcome if the senate put pressure on him: who was he to resist the will of the community, being but a citizen like the rest? Some senators even rushed to the palace promising to compel him by brute force. The incident encapsulates an ambivalence in the emperor's role familiar to all readers of Tacitus. On the one hand the autocratic reality: a decision of high political moment (it was no surprise that Agrippina's son subsequently acceded to the throne) taken in the palace on the counsel of freedmen, potent and resented, involving a violation of the mos maiorum. On the other hand the elaborate and yet transparent republican façade: the senate decrees, the princeps submits to the will of the citizen body.