United States. Are we not disrespectful to this high office? No. One of the reasons for
glancing back at Imperial Rome is to remind ourselves that in times of moral and cultural
degradation like our own, rulers of great evil have inflicted incalculable suffering on
humanity. In our modern time of war and depression, this is once again the case. If
Caligula was possible then, who could claim that the America of the New World Order
should be exempt? Let us therefore tarry for a moment with these old Romans, because
they can show us much about ourselves.
In order to find Roman writers who tell us anything reliable about the first dozen
emperors, we must wait until the infamous Julio-Claudian dynasty of Julius Caesar,
Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, Nero and the rest had entirely passed from the
scene, to be supplanted by new ruling houses. Tiberius reigned from 14 to 37 AD;
Caligula, his designated successor, from 37 to 41 AD; and Nero from 54 to 68 AD. But
the first accurate account of the crimes of some of these emperors comes from Publius
Cornelius Tacitus, a very high Roman official, and it appeared about 115-117 AD, late in
the reign of the emperor Trajan. It was feasible for Tacitus to write and publish a more
realistic account of the Julio- Claudian emperors because one of the constant themes of
Trajan's propaganda was to glorify himself as an enlightened emperor through
comparison with the earlier series of bloody tyrants.
Tacitus is important because he manages to convey something of how the destructiveness
of these emperors in their personal lives correlated with their mass executions and their
genocidal economic policies. Tacitus was familiar with the machinery of Roman Imperial
power: he was of senatorial rank, served as consul in Italy in 97 AD, and was the
governor of the important province of western Anatolia (today's Turkey) which the
Romans referred to simply as Asia. Tacitus writes of Tiberius:
...his criminal lusts shamed him. Their uncontrollable activity was worthy of an oriental
tyrant. Free-born children were his victims. He was fascinated by beauty, youthful
innocence, and aristocratic birth. New names for types of perversions were invented.
Slaves were charged to locate and procure his requirements. [...] It was like the sack of a
captured city.
Tiberius was able to dominate the legislative branch of his government, the senate, by
subversion and terror:
It was, indeed, a horrible feature of this period that leading senators became informers
even on trivial matters-- some openly, many secretly. Friends and relatives were as
suspect as strangers, old stories as damaging as new. In the Main Square, at a dinner-
party, a remark on any subject might mean prosecution. Everyone competed for priority
in marking down the victim. Sometimes this was self-defense, but mostly it was a sort of
contagion, like an epidemic. [...] I realize that many writers omit numerous trials and
condemnations, bored by repetition or afraid that catalogues they themselves have found
over-long and dismal may equally depress their readers. But numerous unrecorded
incidents, which have come to my attention, ought to be known.