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DOMITIAN: OF POLIO, LITTERS, ARCHERY, AND FLIES
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 March 2025
Abstract
Domitian, son of the war hero and emperor Vespasian and related to a large number of Roman soldiers, should logically have found himself as a young man in the army. His repeated requests to serve, however, were all denied, reportedly from fear of his political ambitions. A more immediate reason may have been physical inadequacy. Suetonius writes of Domitian's malformed toes, and of a lingering disease – here we suggest polio – that left Domitian with thin legs. Residual weakness and chronic pain could explain Domitian's preference for a litter and his perceived unsuitability for military service. His martial interests and desire to display virtus, manly courage, however, never wavered, and found their outlet in archery, a skill requiring dexterity of hand rather than fast footwork. Hostile writers played on this skill by relating it to an alleged habit of spearing flies for pleasure. Modern scholars may find the suggestion of a chronic disability useful in considering his character.
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- Copyright © The Author(s), 2025. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Classical Association
Footnotes
The author would like to thank the anonymous readers for their painstaking, rigorous, and instructive commentary, without which this work would have been greatly inferior. Remaining shortfalls are mine alone. Thanks are due also to Cindy Mears, M.D.
References
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4 PIR 1 P 191.
5 Southern, P., Domitian: Tragic Tyrant (London, 1997), 24–5Google Scholar. It is also possible that Vespasian hoped to rebuild filial connections, strained by Vespasian's own long absence and the near fatal consequences (for Domitian) of his bid for the purple. Tacitus and Cassius Dio suggest that Vespasian feared his son's ambition, but this seems unlikely. Tac. Hist. 4.39; Cass. Dio 66(65) 3.4.
6 Quintilian correlates litters with indulged soft living Roman youth: in lecticis crescunt; si terram attigerint, e manibus utrinque sustinentium pendent (Quint. Inst. 1.2.7), ‘they come of age in litters; if they touch the ground, they dangle from the hands of attendants who support them on either side.’ Pliny the Younger cites a dedication to work as his uncle's excuse for being carried by litter in Rome (Plin. Ep. 3.5). He did not mention the elder Pliny's obesity, amplitudinem corporis (Plin. Ep. 6.16.13). For the status and the uses of the lectica, see Hudson, J., The Rhetoric of Roman Transportation (Cambridge, 2021), 304–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
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9 B. W. Jones, Suetonius Domitian, Edited with Introduction, Commentary and Bibliography (London, 1996), 141. Suetonius may have been deliberately ambiguous. Murison interprets ἄπονος as implying ‘standard abuse directed against any disliked authority’. C. L. Murison, Rebellion and Reconstruction Galba to Domitian: An Historical Commentary on Cassius Dio's Roman History Books 64–67 (A.D. 68–96) (Atlanta, 1999), 232.
10 Suet. Dom. 19.1; ‘Incapable de supporter la moindre fatigue’, ‘unable to endure the slightest effort’, M. Cabaret-Dupaty, Oeuvres de Suétone (Paris, 1893), 459. J. C. Rolfe, Suetonius 1 (London, 1914), 381. Kline comes closest to the ambiguity: ‘He found exercise intolerable’, A. S. Kline, The Twelve Caesars (Poetry in Translation, 2010), 400. https://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/Latin/Suetonius8.php#anchor_Toc276122371, accessed 24 October 2024.
11 Suet. Calig. 3.1, gracilitas crurum, ‘thinness of legs’; Suet, Calig. 50.1, gracilitate maxima cervicis et crurum, ‘great thinness of neck and legs’; Suet. Ner. 51.1, gracillimis cruribus, valitudine prospera, ‘with thin legs, good health’.
12 R. S. Katz suggests that Gaius may have suffered from hyperthyroidism, for which thinness is a secondary symptom. R. S. Katz, ‘The Illness of Caligula’, The Classical World 65 (1972), 223–5.
13 Remacruerant is unique in classical Latin; its prefix ‘re’ suggests a return to a previous thin condition. Neither Suetonius nor any other source, however, records Domitian's legs as having been thin originally, subsequently normal, only to return to a thin state after his illness. We can reasonably conclude that the prefix is intended here as an intensifier. For a detailed discussion, see Mooney (n. 8), 594.
14 Southern dates it to Domitian's childhood. P. Southern (n. 5), 12.
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18 J. Jannsen, C. Suetonii Tranquilli Vita Domitiani (Groningen, 1919), 83.
19 H. Ailloud (n. 8), 98; A. Stahr, (n. 8), 488; H. Martinet (n. 8), 923, F. Orpianesi, (n. 8), 591.
20 OLD s.v. restrictus 1.
21 Mooney (n. 8), 594. Mooney cites S. Pitiscus, Caji Suetonii Tranquilli Opera et in illa commentarius Samuelis Pitisci II (Leeuwarden, 1715), 1052.
22 S. Parker, MRCS Applied Basic Science and Clinical Topics (London, 2013), 363; C. Simon, H. Everitt, F. Van Dorp, N. Hussain, E. Nash, D. Peet, Oxford Handbook of General Practice, fifth edition (Oxford, 2020), 472.
23 The triumph took its toll on Vespasian. Suet. Vesp. 12.1.
24 Statius (Stat. Silv. 1.1.22–55) describes the Forum's colossal bronze Equus Domitiani. The statue appears on a contemporary sestertius: https://www.judaism-and-rome.org/sestertius-depicting-bust-and-equestrian-statue-domitian-95-96%C2%A0ce, accessed 24 October 2024. Coins portray Domitian on horses by turns at rest, rearing, and trampling barbarians.
25 Tac. Hist. 3.74; Suet. Dom 1.2; Cass. Dio 65(66).17.2–5.
26 Cass. Dio 66(65).9.3. Domitian's first recorded long journey was the aborted expedition to Germany to help fight rebels (Suet. Dom 2.2). Health could have played an (unstated) part in deciding to head home well before he and Mucianus reached the Alps (Tac. Hist. 4.85.1).
27 Suet. Dom. 14.4.
28 Suet. Dom. 19.2. Tuck suggests that Domitian was attempting to raise hunting to the level of warfare as marking a man's virtus. Tuck, S. L., ‘The Origins of Roman Imperial Hunting Imagery: Domitian and the Redefinition of Virtus under the Principate’, Greece & Rome 52 (2005), 243CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
29 Suet. Dom. 19.3–4.
30 Plin. Pan. 81.3. Earlier, Pliny self-deprecatingly wrote to his friend Tacitus that he too had taken to hunting, snaring three boars with nets while he waited and wrote nearby (Plin, Ep. 1.6).
31 Joseph. BJ 6.2.10.
32 Suet. Tit. 5.2.
33 Joseph. BJ 5.6.5.87–8. Eutropius repeats Suetonius's claim of Titus and the twelve fatal arrows (Eutr. 7.21.2).
34 Tac. Hist. 4.86; Suet. Dom. 2.2.
35 Suet. Dom. 18.2. For contemporary praise of Domitian's literary work, see Plin. HN; Val. Flacc. Arg.1.12–14; Mart. 5.5; Sil. Pun. 3.618–21; Mart. 8.82; Stat. Achil.1.14018.
36 J. L. Penwill, ‘Quintilian, Statius, and the Lost Epic of Domitian’, Ramus 2000 67; ibid. 68.
37 Suet. Dom. 3.1; PIR 1 V 379.
38 Cass. Dio 66(65).9.4.
39 Aur. Vict. Caes. 11.5. Such a room would be a parallel in small to the arena at Domitian's Alban estate, dedicated to killing larger game.
40 Ibid.
41 See also Zadorojnyi, A.V., ‘The Lords of the Flies; Literacy and Tyranny in Imperial Biography’ in McGing, E. B. and Mossman, J. (eds.), The Limits of Ancient Biography (Swansea, 2006), 351–3Google Scholar.
42 B. W. Jones (n. 9), 140, cites Pseudo-Aristotle (810a), who associates curved toes, ποδῶν οἱ δάκτυλοι καμπύλοι, with ἀναίδεια, ‘shamelessness’. (Cf. Galli [n. 8], 98). Jones, B. and Milns, R. D., Suetonius: The Flavian Emperors (London, 2002), 163Google Scholar, reiterate Pseudo-Aristotle and adds Polemon's Physiognomonica 2.5 on the corollary of thin legs with timidity. (Adamantius the Sophist argued simply that πόδες κυρτοὶ κάτωθεν κοῖλοι κακοί, ‘curved feet that are hollow underneath are bad’ [Physiognomy B6]). Orpianesi (n. 8), 937, fn 208, writes only that ‘alcuni studiosi hanno voluto vedere in questo particolare, all'apparenza insignificante, un tratto fisico che preannuncia rapacità’, ‘some scholars have wished to see in this apparently insignificant detail a physical trait that foreshadows rapacity’.
43 Of book-length biographers, neither Gsell (S. Gsell, Essai sur le regne de l'Empereur Domitien, [Paris, 1894]) nor Jones (n. 2) mention the state of Domitian's physical health at all.
44 Southern (n. 5), 123.
45 Domitian's infamous black dinner comes to mind as an example of the emperor's taste for dark humour. Cass. Dio, 67.9.