THE SAUCE FACTOR By L.J. Trafford

The Roman biographer Gaius Suetonius Tranquilius was born in 69AD, probably in North Africa. A friend of Pliny the Younger, Suetonius wrote several notable works. His most notable and most notorious is The Twelve Caesars.
This was a collected biography of twelve ruling Caesars from Julius Caesar to Domitian. As an employee of the Emperor Hadrian Suetonius had access to the Imperial archives and he used materials from there to pepper his work. 
Pepper his work with SAUCE, that is. Yes, Tacitus is a brilliant writer and oh so very quotable. Yes, Virgil wrote an epic poem that apparently is so good first year ancient history BA’s are forced to write essays on it two thousand years later. Yes, some people think Livy wrote good histories. But NONE of them have a patch on Suetonius. 

For Suetonius is the master sauce merchant. There is no scurrilous rumour too unlikely for him to commit to papyri. We thank him for being a gleaming light of entertainment sandwiched betwixt the Aeneid and those books that Livy wrote on stuff.

So to give him his due I have elected to celebrate his work with a competition we, (or rather I) like to call THE SAUCE FACTOR!

I have read each of Suetonius’ 12 chapters on emperors and rated each one according to their sauce level. I have also added in a category for omen/portent-ability. The Romans were heavy believers in the Gods transmitting their will via freak weather events, odd occurrences, dreams and the eating habits of chickens of the sacred variety. I shall be picking out the most incredible omen associated with that emperor and giving it a score.
Settle down with a large glass of wine, set your mind to boggling and your eyes to goggling because we are going in....
Welcome to the Sauce Factor!


1) Julius Caesar

He wasn't actually an emperor but we'll overlook that. Lover of many ladies, fighter of pirates, destroyer of the Republic.

Top Omen – There was a long steady string of what Suetonius calls ‘unmistakable signs’ before his assassination. The Gods were very much trying to SAY something. If only he’d LISTENED. Which is Caesar’s tragedy in a much shorter form than Shakespeare managed. Ha!
The best of these unmistakable signs is undoubtedly the horses that couldn’t stop crying.
Omen Rating: 4/5 for sheer quantity. 

Top Sauce - Definitely an affair with the King of Bithynia that earned him the hardly original nickname, “The Queen of Bithynia”. Frankly everyone could have done better on that one.
Sauce Rating: 3/5



2) Augustus
Now Augustus was definitely an Emperor.

 He Instituted laws against adultery whilst putting it away all over the place himself, was debauched by Julius Caesar and possessed a cruel & ruthless streak as streaky as Danish bacon. 

Top Omen – Augustus’ life must have been very tiring what with all those portents/omens flashing all around him constantly. A one man weather magnet he was frequently accompanied by lightening (very, very frightening. No genuinely, Augustus had a fear of thunderstorms) and rainbows.
The most notable of the young Augustus’ constant brush with portents was undoubtedly: The Silencing of the Frogs. The toddler Augustus annoyed by the constant croaking around him order the frogs to cease. They did. And never ever croaked in that area ever, ever again. 

Omen Rating: 5/5


Top Sauce - Deflowering maidens gathered by his wife. 
Sauce rating: 3/5

3) Tiberius.
Forced to divorce the wife he loved, so fed up with Augustus he ran away to Rhodes in a sulk, terrible judge of character *cough* Sejanus *cough* . Tiberius did not have the happiest of lives. But it really all kicks off when he retired to Capri, where despite being in his mid 70s he partook in debaucheries that would have killed a lesser man. Possibly he gained such stamina in his youth as a successful general in the provinces. Or possibly it was all made up. Suetonius refuses to take sides on the debate and instead lovingly records every gruesome detail so that we may make up our own minds (once our eyes have popped back in our skulls).

Top Omen – Tiberius had no deep regard for the Gods and clearly they had not a lot for him because portents/omens are thin on the ground. The best Suetonius can find is an earthquake on Capri shortly before he died which destroyed a light house.
Omen Rating: 1/5

Top Sauce - Retiring to Capri & partaking of activities 'too vile to discuss'. Which Suetonius then lists. 
Sauce Rating: A deserved OMG 5/5

4) Caligula.
Suetonius does a nice quotable bit on Caligula which is worth memorising and repeating every time someone annoys you. “So much for the man. Now for the Monster.” Suetonius

Photo by Clio20

then has great fun listing all of Caligula’s monstrous acts including incest with all 3 sisters, wearing *the horror* silk robes, snuggling up with the actor Mnester, inviting people to dinner then nicking their wives and a thing with Valerius Catullus, who announced to all “that he had buggered the Emperor, and quite worn himself out in the process”

Top Omen – Much like Julius Caesar Caligula was plagued with signs of DEATH before his brutal murder. The best of these is the statue of Jupiter that burst into laughter. 
Omen Rating: 4/5

Top Sauce - Summoning three terrified Senators in the dead of night solely to perform a dance for them.
Sauce Rating:  5/5 for effort & speed of sauce given he only ruled for 3 years.


5) Claudius.
Not as kindly as Robert Graves would have you think. Married four times, Suetonius intriguingly tells us Claudius divorced his first wife for scandalous behaviour and suspicion of MURDER. Then infuriatingly does not elaborate any further.

Photo by  Marie-Lan Nguyen

Top Omen – Claudius unlike Caesar and Caligula actually paid attention to the Gods and was all over omens like a slobbering rash. 
One night Claudius’ attendant Narcissus had a terrible dream that the emperor had been murdered by a certain Appius Silanus. When Claudius told this to his wife she revealed she had had the EXACT same dream. Now this was clearly a sign that needed LISTENING to. So Claudius had Silanus executed. Only it was actually a FAKE omen dreamed up by the Empress and Narcissus to get rid of Silanus. 

Omen Rating: A pathetic and fake 0/5

Top Sauce - Making it legal to marry your niece. So he could marry his niece. She later had him poisoned
Sauce Rating: 3/5

6) Nero.
Fabulous at getting rid of family members including his wife, his step brother & most shamefully his mother, Nero lived life LARGE. So large he had to take himself over to

Greece to accommodate his growing ego. Suetonius informs us sagely that Nero practised every kind of obscenity. But this time, unlike with Tiberius, he leaves it to our imagination. After that Tiberius chapter my imagination has descended hitherto unknown depths, so I’m confident they were horrifically obscene.

Top Omen – Suetonius has several bad omens at the birth of Nero including the words of his own father that any child of his and Agrippina’s was bound to have a detestable nature. Which when you think about it is more of an informed comment than an omen. 

After this the best Suetonius can do is to record the people who post Nero’s death remembered that the Emperor had during his artistic career played various characters who met unfortunate ends. But given Nero acted in Greek Tragedy this is not terribly surprising.
Though Nero’s death was short on omens the end of the Julio Claudian dynasty begun by Augustus was predicted by a bolt of lightening that hit the Capitol and decapitated all the statues. So we’ll give him points for that. 

Omen Rating: 2/5

Top Sauce - Toss up between marrying his eunuch Sporus as a groom & marrying his ex-slave Doryphorus as a bride. 

Sauce Rating: 4/5 for being ever the bride and the groom



7) Galba.
The first of the four emperors that ruled in a single year, Galba reigned but a short time. During that whole time there were omens everywhere predicting bad things. Or perhaps that was all the work of a certain Otho who organised the coup that deposed Galba.

Top Omen – So many, so lovingly recorded but my personal favourite is when Galba went to read the auspices. His garland fell off and scared the sacred chickens, who flew away. I like it because it’s the sort of thing that would happen to me.
Omen Rating: 2/5

Top Sauce - A preference for mature & very sturdy men.

Sauce rating: 2/5




8) Otho.
He reigned even shorter than Galba who he overthrew in a very bloody coup. Otho wore a toupee so good that nobody knew about it, says Suetonius 70 years later. He also used to 

prevent beard growth using moist bread & shaved his entire body of hair.

Top Omen – Otho owed his entire position to his astrologer Seleucus who convinced him that not only would he outlive Nero but also that he would become Emperor. Having dispatched Galba, Otho arrived at the palace to find that Vitellius had declared himself Emperor in Germania and was on route with a massive unbeatable army. Which rather served Otho right. Suetonius does not record what happened to Seleucus. 

Omen Rating: Because history would have been very different if Otho hadn't listened to his astrologer 4/5

Top Sauce - A threesome with Nero & his wife Poppaea 

Sauce Rating: 3.5/5




9) Vitellius 
Suetonius says Vitellius' main vices were extravagance & cruelty. So the sauce is literal sauce.

 Photo by Luis García

Top Omen – When he was at Vienna a rooster perched first on his shoulder and then on his hand. As Vitellius was later overthrown by the advance of General Antonius Primus, whose childhood nickname had been Roosters’ Beak, this was seen as a very good premonition. Though the big question is surely what part of Primus was shaped like a rooster’s beak to gain him that nickname? 

Omen Rating: 3/5

Top literal sauce - So greedy he nicked meat off the altar during sacrifices.

Sauce Rating: Probably garum but we'll give him 1/5

10) Vespasian.
Picked up Rome after the civil wars of 69ad. Very lacking in sauce. But positively awash with omens! So it’s not all bad. The Gods were super keen to alert all that Vespasian would be emperor. They repeatedly threw odd events his direction to signal this. But much like

Attributed to Shakko

nobody can quite see that Clark Kent and Superman are clearly the same guy, everyone seems to have just accepted that weird things kept happening to Vespasian and thought no more of it. After Nero died the omens trebled in number and poor Vespasian couldn’t walk down a street without the statues turning round or random passersbys declaring he would be ruler. In the end it would have been rude not to declare himself emperor, so he did.

Top Omen – So, so many to choose from but my favourite is the dog that deposited a human hand on Vespasian’s foot. This was apparently a sure sign he would be emperor. Though the bigger question is where did the hand come from? And shouldn’t someone have gone and found out? 

Omen Rating: 5/5


Top Sauce - Treating his long term mistress Caenis as his wife. 

Sauce Rating: Sorry Vespasian that's nowhere near saucy enough, it's a 0.5/5


11) Titus.
He had a love affair with Queen Berenice of Judaea & declared that he had only one regret in life. Possibly his inability to finish sentences, because he never finished that one.

Attributed TcfkaPanairjdde

Top Omen – Titus’ reign ought to be one of terrible omens given he presided over the eruption of Vesuvius, another devastating fire in Rome and an outbreak of plague. Annoyingly Suetonius does not attribute the Gods’ displeasure to any of these events and Titus gets off scot free. Apparently he was “an object of universal love and adoration.” I hate him.

Omen Rating: Pah! Only 1/5 because nobody recognised the Gods hated Titus and were desperately trying to tell everyone so.

Top Sauce - Owning a troop of dancing boys who he released into the wild on becoming emperor. 
Sauce Rating: 3/5

12) Domitian.
Domitian is an excellent study in paranoia and also how to induce it in others. 

He was so paranoid he had his floor polished to glass like standards so he could see anyone sneaking up on him. Which still didn't prevent his assassination.

Top Omen- Domitian's paranoia is probably explained by the fact that astrologers had long predicted the day and hour of his death. Something his father, Vespasian, used to joke about over breakfast. Then lunch. Then Dinner. Then just before he read young Domitian his bedtime story. Domitian did not find this remotely amusing.
Amongst a barrage of freak weather, including a hurricane, the top omen is surely the raven that perched on the Capitol and declared “All is well.” Suetonius points out helpfully that the raven was speaking in the future tense and all would be well once Domitian was dead 
Omen Rating: 4/5 for knowing his WHOLE life exactly when he would die. One has to appreciate the specifics of it.

Top Sauce - An affair with his niece Julia. Which isn't that saucy given Claudius had made relationships between uncles and nieces legal.
Sauce Rating: 3/5


The Results
Well, it's been a pleasure and I can now exclusively reveal (after a ten minute pause inserted to create tension) that our top Emperor for Suetonian Sauciness is a joint affair between..........drum roll.............

Tiberius and Caligula!!!!

And our emperor who produced the most impressive omens is....well would you believe it....it's another tie! This time between Vespasian and Augustus.

Well done to all our losers also. Try not to take it too badly.

L.J. Trafford is the author of The Four Emperors Series. With the fourth book in the series being released on 1st December 2018.

50 Bizarre Claims About Domitian

Caroline Lawrence & the 'Emperor Domitian'

In screenwriting classes they often urge authors to give their hero the most powerful opponent possible. 

So when it came time for me to write a long-planned spinoff to my Roman Mysteries books I looked at my timeline in the late first century AD and realised I had the perfect opponent, a fascinating tyrant who was the most powerful man in the world at that time: the Emperor Domitian. 

Domitian was the eleventh emperor if you start counting from Augustus. He was the third Flavian and ruled for fifteen years, longer than his father Vespasian or his brother Titus. By all accounts he was a corrupt monster. Recently some scholars have tried to argue that his reputation was the result of a smear campaign by a few disgruntled senators.

For the first three books in my Roman Quests series, he is the unseen opponent sending soldiers, guards and torturers to pursue my protagonists. In the final book, Return to Rome, we finally meet him and witness his assassination. Of course I am writing for children so some of the action happens offstage and other events are seen through the eyes of my young protagonists.  

When you write about someone you can’t help but empathise. I feel Domitian was probably somewhere on the spectrum and socially dysfunctional. As one of my characters says near the end of Return to Rome, ‘If Domitian had been merely a butcher or a sailor he only would have made life miserable for his small circle of family and slaves. A man like that should not be given the power to rule an empire.’

Domitian’s assassination in AD 96 was documented in gory detail by Suetonius Tranquillus, the great biographer of the Caesars who was about 27 years old at the time of Domitian’s death. You can read a vivid account in all its gruesome detail here. Other ancient authors who write bitterly about the eleventh emperor include Aelius Aristides, Dio Chrysostom, Dio Cassius, Eusebius, Martial, Pliny the Younger, Statius and Tacitus. 

Here are fifty bizarre claims about Domitian  – all made by ancient sources – that make him an irresistible opponent in a historical novel set at the end of the first century.

He was born on 24 Oct AD 51 in a house on Pomegranate Street in Rome.
This is one of the few ancient addresses that has come down to us.
He later turned the house into a temple dedicated to the Flavians, his family.
He grew up in poverty, although his father Vespasian later became emperor.
Once, before his father became emperor, he was forced to flee for his life.
He survived by dressing like a woman and hiding in the house of a friend.
He always plotted against his older brother Titus, who succeeded their father.
He was a skilled archer and often fired arrows through slaves’ spread fingers.
He often amused himself by spearing heat-drugged flies with a stylus. 
A steward once quipped that nobody was with him, ‘not even a fly’.
He became emperor in AD 81 after the mysterious death of his brother Titus.
An officer named Saturninus conspired against him in late 80s.
Domitian’s resultant paranoia led to a ‘reign of terror’ in the AD 90s.
He covered some walls with reflective stone so that nobody could sneak up on him.
He put the freedman who assisted Nero’s suicide to death.
Unlike Nero, he did not avert his eyes from torture.
He liked to watch people and terrify them with his gaze
He often pretended to befriend people just before he executed them.
He encouraged slaves to denounce their rich masters as traitors
He then confiscated the property and split the proceeds with the delator.
He accused a pantomime actor named Paris of having an affair with his wife.
He spared his wife Domitia but murdered Paris in the middle of a street.
He executed people caught leaving flowers at spot where Paris had died.
He was a notorious womaniser and called his lustful activity ‘bed wrestling’.
He seduced his niece Julia, daughter of his brother Titus, and got her pregnant.
He caused Julia’s death by demanding she have an abortion that went wrong. 
He terrified guests by inviting them to death-themed dinner parties
The dinner parties were held in pitch-black rooms draped in black cloth.
Guests’ name-tags resembled grave slabs and were lit by grave lamps.
He gave them food commonly served at banquets for the dead.
Guest were served by naked boys painted black to resemble ghosts
He liked to watch female gladiators and pygmies battle in the arena.
He collected freaks and was especially fond of a boy with a tiny head.
Late in his reign, he demanded to be addressed as ‘master and god’.
He erected a gigantic bronze equestrian statue of himself in Caesar’s forum
He changed the name of his birth-month October to Domitianus.
(This change of month name did not catch on.)
He added gold and purple to the chariot factions of red, white, green and blue.
(The new chariot factions did not catch on.)
He put a high podium in his palaces to lift himself above others.
He was obsessed with his hair loss and wore an expensive wig.
He wrote a book about curing baldness.
He revered Minerva above all other gods and considered her his protector.
Shortly before his assassination he dreamt that Minerva abandoned him.
From an early age he knew the exact day and hour of his foretold assassination.
He had several astrologers put to death in order to stop their prophecies.
On the fated day lying slaves told him the deadly hour had passed and he relaxed.
After the first assassin stabbed him, several others piled in, too.
His wife was out of town but reputedly knew of the planned assassination.
Rome’s initial reaction to his death was fairly low-key.
The Senate proclaimed Nerva emperor with suspicious rapidity.
The Senate also decreed that his name and image be destroyed.
Domitian’s body was removed and cremated by his childhood nurse Phyllis.
She mixed his ashes with those of his niece Julia, whose death he had caused. 

Domitian (erased) with his wife Domitia on a coin

These are only a few fascinating claims about the life and death of Domitian. You can read lots more of them along with a fictionalised account of his assassination in my fourth and final Roman Quests book, Return to Rome. He also appears in my Roman Mysteries, especially final book in the series, The Man from Pomegranate Street. 

Finding Vespasian by Robert Fabbri

Photo copyright © James Potter

Our guest this month is Robert Fabbri and we are very excited to have him here. His Vespasian novels have been creating quite a stir in the book world. Here's something about him:

Robert Fabbri read Drama and Theatre at London University and has worked in the film and TV industry for 25 years. He is an assistant director and has worked on productions such as Hornblower, Hellraiser, Patriot Games and Billy Elliot. His life-long study and passion for ancient history, especially for that of the Roman Empire, drew him to write the bestselling Vespasian series – the first of which, Vespasian: Tribune of Rome, put him in the Top Ten Hardback Fiction debuts for the whole of 2011. He lives in London and Berlin.  

Vespasian crept up on me slowly as – eight or so years ago – I was looking around for a subject to base a series of books upon. I had been inspired by the sleeve notes on Simon Scarrow’s first book, Under the Eagle; it said: he (Simon) decided to write the book that he wanted to read. Having never thought of writing before in those terms, the phrase stuck in my head and the desire to “try to do a Scarrow” grew over the next couple of years. Simon’s books take two fictional characters and weave them into history, so, not wanting to follow the same route, I decided to look for an historical character.

My favourite historical eras are Alexander the Great and the wars of the Successor States and the fall of the Roman Republic and the rise of Imperial Rome. It’s the scale of these times that always impresses me; no endeavour is too large to be discounted as impossible. I only have to look at Caesar bridging the Rhine in ten days, or his siege-works at Alesia facing in against the town and out against the relieving army; or at Alexander’s siege of Tyre, to see examples of massive feats of engineering. To just think about the logistics involved in those endeavours or the Roman invasion of Britain or Alexander’s crossing of the Hellespont makes me reel with a surfeit of arithmetic as I try and calculate roughly how much food and fodder was required to keep every man and beast fed for just one day.

So it was into these grand periods that I delved to find a hero that could sustain at least a trilogy. I had three criteria: a varied and exciting life, an interesting family and set of acquaintances, and a sense of humour. Just thinking about all the usual suspects I realised that so many have been covered by excellent authors. Colleen McCullough’s Masters of Rome series is, to my mind, the final word on Marius, Sulla, Caesar, Anthony and Octavian; that series and Margaret Georges’ The Memoires of Cleopatra pretty much cover that particular queen and her relationship with the last three of those great men. Rome’s story is then taken up by one of the masters of Historical Fiction, Robert Graves, in I Claudius and Claudius the God, and further punctuated by Allan Massie’s series on the Emperors – no room for me there then. Mary Renault’s matchless Fire from Heaven and The Persian Boy – favourites from my youth – told Alexander’s story in a way that I think cannot be beaten – although I look forward to reading Christian Cameron’s The God of War. So that left the Successors or a more obscure Roman.

Vespasianus. Plaster cast in Pushkin museum after original in Louvre. •

In my younger days I had always been aware of Vespasian because of the three main things that he’s remembered for: the Coliseum, his part in the invasion of Britain and, of course, taxing urine – hence a urinal being called a Vespasiano in Italy or a Vespasienne in France; however, I did not really know much more than that about him. But then through reading Suetonius, Tacitus, Josephus and Cassius Dio I became more acquainted with this New Man who, despite his background, managed to scrape his way to the top of the Roman heap and I realised the blindingly obvious: to do that he had to survive the reigns of Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius and Nero, a feat at which many Romans from greater families failed dismally. If I told Vespasian’s story it would be to the backdrop of these eccentric, to say the least, reigns. Further research, which included reading and re-reading Barbara Levick’s excellent biography Vespasian, convinced me that I had found a character whose life could sustain not just a trilogy but a series of seven books.

Here was a man who had served almost everywhere in the empire: he had been a military tribune in Thrace at around the time of the Thracian revolt; he then became one of the vigintivirii – the twenty junior magistrates – in Rome, possibly in charge of executions at the time of Sejanus’ downfall. After that he served as a quaestor in the combined province of Crete and Cyrene – modern day Libya; he then went back to Rome and served first as the aedile for roads and then as a praetor during Caligula’s reign when he distinguished himself with a very sycophantic speech in the Senate thanking the emperor for inviting him to dinner – an excellent clue as to how he survived Caligula’s reign. Under Claudius he served as the Legate for the Second Augusta Legion in the invasion of Britain for four years and is credited by Suetonius as the subjugator of two tribes, fighting thirty battles and capturing twenty hill-forts as well as conquering the Isle of Wight! He returned to Rome in time for the downfall of Messalina and the rise of Agrippina the Younger and was made consul for the last two months of AD 51.

Temple of Vespasian in the Roman Forum**

And then he goes quiet for twelve years, having probably fallen foul of Agrippina, until he becomes the governor of Africa in AD 63, after her death. The following year he joined Nero’s progress around Greece, falling asleep in one of the artistic emperor’s many interminable recitals. Eventually he was forgiven and in AD 66 was put in charge of suppressing the Jewish revolt where he remained until AD 69, the Year of the Four Emperors, when he emerged as the final victor and Emperor of Rome.

So his life certainly fulfilled the first criterion I had set; what of his family and acquaintances?
His mother, Vespasia Polla, is the person whom we have to thank for pushing Vespasian on his path to the purple; without her he would have probably remained on his family estate farming mules for the army all his life. According to Suetonius he was less than keen in following his brother, Sabinus, up the cursus honorum, the career path in Rome, causing his mother to refer to him sarcastically as “his brother’s client”, which seemed to do the trick.

In Rome he somehow, probably through his uncle, Vespasius Pollo, got the patronage of a most formidable woman, Antonia Minor, daughter of Mark Antony, sister-in-law to Tiberius, mother to Claudius and grandmother to Caligula. I could see that her connections in the highest strata of Roman society would make her a perfect engine for the political intrigue sections of the books and what is Roman Historical Fiction without intrigue?

Through Antonia, Vespasian met the love of his life, Caenis. She was Antonia’s slave and secretary and was reputed to have a photographic memory – or whatever the expression would have been in those days. Even once she was freed on Antonia’s death, Caenis and Vespasian could never marry because of a law forbidding the union of senators and freedwomen; however, she must have stuck by him because after the death of his wife, before he became emperor, Caenis stayed with him for the rest of her days.

This fact would give me ample scope for a love affair that could never be fully realised and heart-breaking sacrifices that the two of them – but mainly Caenis – would have to make.
And then, of course, there was his wife, Flavia Domitilla; how would she fit into this? We do not know much about her other than she was the mistress of a wealthy businessman from Africa before Vespasian married her in around AD 38. What were her motivations to make her enter into a marriage and bear three children to a man who had already found his lifetime’s partner? For me it was perfect and it sealed the second of the criteria.

As to the final criterion, a sense of humour, I need only point to Vespasian’s dying words: in those days of deified emperors he departed life saying, “I think I’m turning into a god”.

 The paperback of Rome's Executioner will be out on 1st November.

• Image of Vespasian's bust cropped and colour-adjusted by Wikipedia user Shakko, reproduced under the Creative Commons agreement.

** Photo by Wikipedia user Alago, reproduced under the Creative Commons agreement