Mary Beard looks at the revealing last words of Roman emperors, from Hadrian’s final poem, written to his own soul, to Claudius’s dying remarks: “Blimey, I think I’ve shat myself.”
One of the funniest works of Roman literature to survive—and the only one that has ever made me laugh out loud—is a skit, written by the philosopher Seneca, about the Emperor Claudius’ adventures on his way to Mt. Olympus after his death. Titled “Apocolocyntosis Divi Claudii” , it recounts how the Roman Senate declared that the dead Emperor was now a god, complete with his own temple, priests, and official rites of worship.
Most Romans thought the dead resided in a shadowy limbo, and, for emperors who hoped to transcend this fate, the Senate was the only path to deification. Turning dead emperors into immortal gods by a vote now seems like one of the most baffling aspects of politics during the first centuries of one-man rule in Rome. The tradition began with the deification of Julius Caesar, in 42 B.C.E., and petered out only with the arrival of a series of Christian emperors in the fourth century C.E.
Inevitably, the style of an emperor’s funeral varied according to the circumstances of his death, and whether it was in anyone’s interest to give him a splendid sendoff. Imperial victims of assassination might be quickly cremated and buried by whatever friends and staff had not yet changed sides; in Caracalla’s case, his ashes were put into an urn and delivered to his mother, Julia Domna, in Antioch —which may have driven her to suicide.
The staging of Augustus’ funeral procession placed the Emperor at the center of the Roman world, and of the whole sweep of Roman history. Following tradition, the parade featured people wearing masks of Augustus’ forebears. But the images on display were not just of direct ancestors but of all Romans “who had been distinguished in any way” , going back to the city’s founder, Romulus.
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