Apart from being part of the First Triumvirate together with Julius Caesar and Pompey, Marcus Licinius Crassus has gone down in history as the epitome of the wealthy man, on whose fortune Caesar relied to achieve power and who has left his cognomen as synonymous with fat, something that could apply both to his heritage and to the fatal military error that would cost him his life against the Parthians. However, in ancient Rome there was a man who managed to surpass his wealth, according to Pliny the Elder ; he was called Gaius Julius Callisto and he had a special merit if one takes into account that he was a freedman and that he survived the fearsome reign of Caligula.
Practically all of Callisto's life prior to his manumission is unknown, except that he was of Greek origin:it is not known exactly where he was born or when, nor the reason why he had been enslaved. He does not appear in the story until Seneca writes about it in his Moral Epistles to Lucilius , when talking about the treatment of slaves:
Seneca narrates how the Greek was presented at auction with a tablet that was placed hanging from the neck of the slaves, indicating their country of origin, their qualities and their defects; therefore, it is a pity that the famous writer did not go into more detail, offering us the information that we lack. On the other hand, he says that it was one of the "waste slaves" , that is, those that were left over, those for which there was no bid, since the others were sold according to the category they held. It follows that Callisto was worthless, at least at first glance. In fact, Seneca insists:
This despised Greek was purchased for palace service, perhaps as servus publicus , a modality with a certain qualification that was often subject to manumission, so it is possible that those attending the auction had sought another profile in their purchases; After all, Greek slaves used to have intellectual training, which is why they were highly sought after for administrative jobs or, almost topically, as teachers and tutors.
Then reigned a young emperor named Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus Germanicus, better known by the nickname of Caligula that the legionnaires had given him because of the small boots he wore during his father's military campaigns. Caligula, officially adopted by his predecessor, Tiberius, rose to power on his death in 37 AD. and after his will was annulled to exclude the other heir, his grandson was his twin.
The first seven months of his mandate were promising, with the new imperator acclaimed by all by issuing pardons for the many accused by Tiberius, allowing the exiles to return, respecting the Senate, restoring the right to elect magistrates to the elections, rewarding the Praetorians, offering colorful shows in the amphitheater and, above all, the mere fact of being the offspring of a hero as loved and longed for as Germanicus.
In this context, perhaps for good services, Caligula granted Callisto freedom and with it he obtained the prenomen (Caius) and the nomen (Julio) of his benefactor, who apparently fascinated him enough to exercise considerable influence over him, advising him on political matters and suggesting solutions to emerging problems. It follows that he enjoyed an unusual authority, to the point that he forced his previous master to wait standing or even vetoed him in the audiences he requested with the emperor. Returning to Seneca's words:
Callisto also took advantage of this absolute power to profit through venality, a system of awarding public positions in exchange for an appraised price that had become common since the 1st century BC. In this way, he acquired a lavish standard of living, described by Pliny the Elder in his Naturalis historia , specifically in books XXXIII (Treatise on metals and their nature , where he compares Callisto to Crassus) and XXXVI (Of the art of sculpting stone , in which he mentions the splendid dining room of the freedman, which had some thirty onyx columns). Now, he was not the only beneficiary of that advantageous position.
Another privileged person responded to the name of Gnaeus Domicio Afro, although in his case it was not an economic advantage. He was a lawyer, a native of Nemausus (Nimes, in Gaul Narbonensis), who in the year 25 had achieved celebrity and the position of praetor for having betrayed Claudia Pulcra (second cousin of Agrippina the Elder) to Tiberius. em> , granddaughter of Augustus), accusing her of adultery and use of magical arts against the emperor. Domitius Afro, who earned a well-deserved fame as a great orator, then had a dispute with Caligula, who accused him of treason in the Senate; Calisto's astute recommendation to feign defeat before the president in the oratory duel, plus the dissuasive capacity that he demonstrated with the emperor, not only saved his life but also allowed him to earn the position of consul suffectus (interim).
Today it is impossible to know the reason for the ascendancy of the freedman over the ruler. Plutarch tells that his grandson, Gaius Nymphidius Sabinus, prefect of the Praetorian Guard during the reign of Nero (shared with Ofonius Tigellinus), explained it by claiming that his mother Ninphidia, daughter of Callisto, had been a lover of Caligula (who, therefore, would be his natural father). The problem, in the absence of separate evidence, is that Sabinus revealed it in a very convenient context for him:after encouraging the Praetorians to abandon Nero and participate in his overthrow, he ran as the legitimate successor to the throne against other candidates such as Vindex and Galba (the latter, in the end, was proclaimed after getting the Praetorians to assassinate Sabinus).
Now, that first period of Caligula ended abruptly, coinciding with an undetermined disease (encephalitis, epilepsy, hyperthyroidism?) That changed his personality making him insane, as described by authors such as Seneca, Flavio Josephus or Philo of Alexandria. The truth is that the main sources, the works of Suetonius and Dio Cassius, are partial because they were written much later and belong to the patriciate, a social class at odds with the emperor. After all, the backdrop was the confrontation between the authority of the princeps and the Senate.
In any case, historiography speaks of a new stage, a «terror regime» , in the words of Kovalev, which was a rosary of eccentricities, scandals and murders. One after another, his mother-in-law, Marco Silano, fell; his cousin, Tiberius Gemelo; the former praetorian prefect, Nevio Sutorio Macron; his brother-in-law, Marco Aemilius Lepidus; the governor of Germania, Gnaeus Cornelio Lentulo Getúlico; the prefect of Egypt, Aulus Avilius Flaccus... his sisters, Agrippina the Younger and Julia Livilla, had more luck and only suffered exile.
It is understandable, then, that Calisto himself ceased to feel safe; especially after a conspirator who unsuccessfully attempted against the emperor's life cited his name as part of the plot. Caligula heeded the pleas of his former slave, but he understood that it was a matter of time before his turn would come and he joined the assassination perpetrated by Cassius Quereas and the Praetorians in the year 41. Flavius Josephus explains it in his Antigüedades de the jews , leaving an unflattering portrait of Callisto:
Claudius, Caligula's uncle, who was proclaimed successor, ordered the murderers hunted down and executed. However, Callisto was spared because he had not obeyed the previous emperor's order to poison Claudius; it is true that Flavius Josephus questions such an assertion:
Like his ill-fated nephew, Claudius was influenced by the freedman. To be exact, not only by Callisto but also by other ancient Greek slaves, such as Marco Antonio Palas -or Palante- (manumitted by Antonia la Mayo r, daughter of Marco Antonio, hence the name they gave him) and Narcissus (released by Claudius himself, who appointed him praetor). If Pallas took care of the officia a rationibus (finance), Narcissus held the ab epistulis (imperial general secretariat) and Callisto the a libellis (justice, requests, complaints…) shared with another Hellenic, Polybius; a fourth chancellery was added, to heritage , directed by a team that managed the real estate of the imperial house. They themselves had slaves and freedmen to whom they delegated part of their extensive functions and private businesses.
Because, as a supervisor of trials and courts, Calisto had access to new ways of enrichment, thanks to which he increased his assets even more; something in which he was not unique either, since Juvenal also evokes Croesus and the Persian kings when speaking of Narcissus and estimates his capital at around four hundred million sesterces, while Suetonius mentions that Polybius used to walk with the consuls. Calisto also reproduced with Claudius the path he had followed with Caligula, advising him on many aspects. For example, it was he who recommended the services of his friend Scribonius Largo as personal physician to the emperor (at the request of the Greek, by the way, Largo compiled a vast compilation of pharmacological prescriptions which he titled De compositione medicinalum ).
The three Hellenes, protagonists of what is sometimes referred to in historiography as the "freedmen's regime", had to act beyond the strictly administrative when they were immersed in the web of conspiracies that spread through the palace as a result of the adultery of Valeria Messalina, the emperor's wife. They were the ones who became aware of the matter and decided to report it to Claudio, although, as Tacitus explains in his work Annals Callisto preferred to stay out of it and let Narcissus inform the lord about him, which would earn him the position of quaestor:
Messalina, forced to take her own life, was unable to do so by her own hand and a centurion of hers beheaded her. To replace her, Calisto proposed a new wife to Claudio:Lolia Paulina, daughter of a senator and whom he had known for years. She had previously been married twice, first to the suffect consul Publio Memmio Regulo, whom she divorced by order of Caligula to contract a brief marriage with him, who repudiated her as infertile, forbidding her to meet more men. The fact of not having children was considered an advantage by Callisto because, according to Tacitus, she "would be free from emulation and for her stepchildren she would take the place of a mother" .
However, both Callisto's and Narcissus's candidates, Elia Petina (who had already been married to Claudius, but he divorced in favor of Messalina), were rejected by the emperor, who preferred the proposal by Marco Antonio Palas:his niece, Julia Agrippina the Younger , which seemed to augur a descent worthy of the lineage of Germanicus (her brother, Caligula, was also the son of Germanicus but would be considered an anomaly, perverted by Tiberius in his degenerate stage of self-seclusion in Capri).
That choice may have spelled the end of Callisto's career, as Agrippina turned out to be wildly ambitious; seized the reins of power, managing to be named empress and conspiring so that her son Nero would be placed in the succession ahead of the legitimate heir, Britannicus, the only male offspring that Claudius had with Messalina (he had a sister, Claudia Octavia ).
We do not know if, once she gained control of the state, Agrippina acted against the freedman, but it seems likely that she wanted no hindrance. So Callisto became the first of the Greeks to fall ( "died at the height of his power" , in the words of Dio Cassius); Narcissus was executed by order of Agrippina shortly after Claudius died (presumably poisoned by her) and Pallas, who would have helped her get rid of her husband and Callisto to save himself, ended up murdered by Nero when he wanted to erase all memory of his possessive mother. and, by the way, keep his fortune.
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Seneca, Moral Epistles to Lucilius | Pliny the Elder, Natural history | Flavius Josephus, Jewish Antiquities | Tacitus, Annals | Casius Dio, Roman history | Plutarch, Parallel Lives:Galba | Sergei Ivanovich Kovalev, History of Rome | Stanford McKrause, Slavery and economy in ancient Rome | André Aymard and Jeannine Auboyer, Civilization's general history. Rome and her empire | Fergus Miller, The Mediterranean world in ancient times. The Roman Empire and its neighboring towns | Wikipedia