8. Tacitus, Annals, 1.14, 1.43.3, 2.8.1, 2.27.1, 2.32.2, 2.83.1, 3.18.2, 3.64.3-3.64.4, 4.1.2, 4.9.2, 4.16.4, 4.17.1, 4.37.1, 4.58.3, 4.70.1-4.70.3, 4.74.2, 5.2.1, 6.46.3, 14.10.2, 14.12.2, 14.13, 14.15.1, 14.55, 15.23.4, 16.7.1, 16.21.1-16.21.2, 16.22.2-16.22.3 (1st cent. CE - 2nd cent. CE)
Tagged with subjects: • Senate, flattery of emperor by • adulatio • adulatio, Graeca • flattery • flattery, and pudor • pudor, and flattery • sycophancy • sycophancy, and religious honours • sycophancy, of senate
Found in books: Chrysanthou (2022), Reconfiguring the Imperial Past: Narrative Patterns and Historical Interpretation in Herodian’s History of the Empire. 199, 209; Davies (2004), Rome's Religious History: Livy, Tacitus and Ammianus on their Gods, 175, 180, 182, 183, 184, 186, 190, 194, 195, 199, 201; Kaster(2005), Emotion, Restraint, and Community in Ancient Rome, 167; Shannon-Henderson (2019), Power Play in Latin Love Elegy and its Multiple Forms of Continuity in Ovid’s , 47, 48, 50, 54, 65, 71, 100, 125, 128, 135, 163, 172, 182, 183, 184, 202, 204, 207, 208, 212, 213, 238, 250, 271, 301, 303, 308, 310, 330, 341, 344, 346, 352, 361
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1.14 Multa patrum et in Augustam adulatio. alii parentem, alii matrem patriae appellandam, plerique ut nomini Caesaris adscriberetur 'Iuliae filius' censebant. ille moderan- dos feminarum honores dictitans eademque se temperantia usurum in iis quae sibi tribuerentur, ceterum anxius invidia et muliebre fastigium in deminutionem sui accipiens ne lictorem quidem ei decerni passus est aramque adoptionis et alia huiusce modi prohibuit. at Germanico Caesari proconsulare imperium petivit, missique legati qui deferrent, simul maestitiam eius ob excessum Augusti solarentur. quo minus idem pro Druso postularetur, ea causa quod designatus consul Drusus praesensque erat. candidatos praeturae duodecim nominavit, numerum ab Augusto traditum; et hortante senatu ut augeret, iure iurando obstrinxit se non excessurum." 14.13 Tamen cunctari in oppidis Campaniae, quonam modo urbem ingrederetur, an obsequium senatus, an studia plebis reperiret anxius: contra deterrimus quisque, quorum non alia regia fecundior extitit, invisum Agrippinae nomen et morte eius accensum populi favorem disserunt: iret intrepidus et venerationem sui coram experiretur; simul praegredi exposcunt. et promptiora quam promiserant inveniunt, obvias tribus, festo cultu senatum, coniugum ac liberorum agmina per sexum et aetatem disposita, extructos, qua incederet, spectaculorum gradus, quo modo triumphi visuntur. hinc superbus ac publici servitii victor Capitolium adiit, grates exolvit seque in omnis libidines effudit quas male coercitas qualiscumque matris reverentia tardaverat.' "
14.55 Ad quae Nero sic ferme respondit: 'quod meditatae orationi tuae statim occurram id primum tui muneris habeo, qui me non tantum praevisa sed subita expedire docuisti. abavus meus Augustus Agrippae et Maecenati usurpare otium post labores concessit, sed in ea ipse aetate cuius auctoritas tueretur quidquid illud et qualecumque tribuisset; ac tamen neutrum datis a se praemiis exuit. bello et periculis meruerant; in iis enim iuventa Augusti versata est: nec mihi tela et manus tuae defuissent in armis agenti; sed quod praesens condicio poscebat, ratione consilio praeceptis pueritiam, dein iuventam meam fovisti. et tua quidem erga me munera, dum vita suppetet, aeterna erunt: quae a me habes, horti et faenus et villae, casibus obnoxia sunt. ac licet multa videantur, plerique haudquaquam artibus tuis pares plura tenuerunt. pudet referre libertinos qui ditiores spectantur: unde etiam mihi rubori est quod praecipuus caritate nondum omnis fortuna antecellis."" None | sup>
1.14 \xa0Augusta herself enjoyed a full share of senatorial adulation. One party proposed to give her the title "Parent of her Country"; some preferred "Mother of her Country": a\xa0majority thought the qualification "Son of Julia" ought to be appended to the name of the Caesar. Declaring that official compliments to women must be kept within bounds, and that he would use the same forbearance in the case of those paid to himself (in fact he was fretted by jealousy, and regarded the elevation of a woman as a degradation of himself), he declined to allow her even the grant of a lictor, and banned both an Altar of Adoption and other proposed honours of a similar nature. But he asked proconsular powers for Germanicus Caesar, and a commission was sent out to confer them, and, at the same time, to console his grief at the death of Augustus. That the same demand was not preferred on behalf of Drusus was due to the circumstance that he was consul designate and in presence. For the praetorship Tiberius nominated twelve candidates, the number handed down by Augustus. The senate, pressing for an increase, was met by a declaration on oath that he would never exceed it. <
1.43.3 \xa0"For why, in the first day\'s meeting, my short-sighted friends, did you wrench away the steel I\xa0was preparing to plunge in my breast? Better and more lovingly the man who offered me his sword! At least I\xa0should have fallen with not all my army\'s guilt upon my soul. You would have chosen a general, who, while leaving my own death unpunished, would have avenged that of Varus and his three legions. For, though the Belgians offer their services, God forbid that theirs should be the honour and glory of vindicating the Roman name and quelling the nations of Germany! May thy spirit, Augustus, now received with thyself into heaven, â\x80\x94 may thy image, my father Drusus, and the memory of thee, be with these same soldiers of yours, whose hearts are already opening to the sense of shame and of glory, to cancel this stain and convert our civil broils to the destruction of our enemies! And you yourselves â\x80\x94 for now I\xa0am looking into changed faces and changed minds â\x80\x94 if you are willing to restore to the senate its deputies, to the emperor your obedience, and to me my wife and children, then stand clear of the infection and set the maligts apart: that will be a security of repentance â\x80\x94 that a guarantee of loyalty!" <
2.8.1 \xa0The fleet had now arrived. Supplies were sent forward, ships assigned to the legionaries and allies, and he entered the soâ\x80\x91called Drusian Fosse. After a prayer to his father, beseeching him of his grace and indulgence to succour by the example and memory of his wisdom and prowess a son who had ventured in his footsteps, he pursued his voyage through the lakes and the high sea, and reached the Ems without misadventure. The fleet stayed in the mouth of the river on the left side, and an error was committed in not carrying the troops further upstream or disembarking them on the right bank for which they were bound; the consequence being that several days were wasted in bridge-building. The estuaries immediately adjoining were crossed intrepidly enough by the cavalry and legions, before the tide had begun to flow: the auxiliaries in the extreme rear and the Batavians in the same part of the line, while dashing into the water and exhibiting their powers of swimming, were thrown into disorder, and a\xa0number of them drowned. As the Caesar was arranging his encampment, news came of an Angrivarian rising in his rear: Stertinius, who was instantly despatched with a body of horse and light-armed infantry, repaid the treachery with fire and bloodshed.' "
2.27.1 \xa0Nearly at the same time, a charge of revolutionary activities was laid against Libo Drusus, a member of the Scribonian family. I\xa0shall describe in some detail the origin, the progress, and the end of this affair, as it marked the discovery of the system destined for so many years to prey upon the vitals of the commonwealth. Firmius Catus, a senator, and one of Libo's closest friends, had urged that short-sighted youth, who had a foible for absurdities, to resort to the forecasts of astrologers, the ritual of magicians, and the society of interpreters of dreams; pointing to his great-grandfather Pompey, to his great-aunt Scribonia (at one time the consort of Augustus), to his cousinship with the Caesars, and to his mansion crowded with ancestral portraits; encouraging him in his luxuries and loans; and, to bind him in a yet stronger chain of evidence, sharing his debaucheries and his embarrassments." "
2.32.2 \xa0His estate was parcelled out among the accusers, and extraordinary praetorships were conferred on those of senatorial status. Cotta Messalinus then moved that the effigy of Libo should not accompany the funeral processions of his descendants; Gnaeus Lentulus, that no member of the Scribonian house should adopt the surname of Drusus. Days of public thanksgiving were fixed at the instance of Pomponius Flaccus. Lucius Piso, Asinius Gallus, Papius Mutilus, and Lucius Apronius procured a decree that votive offerings should be made to Jupiter, Mars, and Concord; and that the thirteenth of September, the anniversary of Libo's suicide, should rank as a festival. This union of sounding names and sycophancy I\xa0have recorded as showing how long that evil has been rooted in the State.\xa0â\x80\x94 Other resolutions of the senate ordered the expulsion of the astrologers and magic-mongers from Italy. One of their number, Lucius Pituanius, was flung from the Rock; another â\x80\x94 Publius Marcius â\x80\x94 was executed by the consuls outside the Esquiline Gate according to ancient usage and at sound of trumpet. <" 2.83.1 \xa0Affection and ingenuity vied in discovering and decreeing honours to Germanicus: his name was to be chanted in the Saliar Hymn; curule chairs surmounted by oaken crowns were to be set for him wherever the Augustal priests had right of place; his effigy in ivory was to lead the procession at the Circus Games, and no flamen or augur, unless of the Julian house, was to be created in his room. Arches were added, at Rome, on the Rhine bank, and on the Syrian mountain of Amanus, with an inscription recording his achievements and the fact that he had died for his country. There was to be a sepulchre in Antioch, where he had been cremated; a\xa0funeral monument in Epidaphne, the suburb in which he had breathed his last. His statues, and the localities in which his cult was to be practised, it would be difficult to enumerate. When it was proposed to give him a gold medallion, as remarkable for the size as for the material, among the portraits of the classic orators, Tiberius declared that he would dedicate one himself "of the customary type, and in keeping with the rest: for eloquence was not measured by fortune, and its distinction enough if he ranked with the old masters." The equestrian order renamed the soâ\x80\x91called "junior section" in their part of the theatre after Germanicus, and ruled that on the fifteenth of July the cavalcade should ride behind his portrait. Many of these compliments remain: others were discontinued immediately, or have lapsed with the years.' "
3.18.2 \xa0Much in these suggestions was mitigated by the emperor. He would not have Piso's name cancelled from the records, when the names of Mark Antony, who had levied war on his fatherland, and of Iullus Antonius, who had dishonoured the hearth of Augustus, still remained. He exempted Marcus Piso from official degradation, and granted him his patrimony: for, as I\xa0have often said, he was firm enough against pecuniary temptations, and in the present case his shame at the acquittal of Plancina made him exceptionally lenient. So, again, when Valerius Messalinus proposed to erect a golden statue in the temple of Mars the Avenger, and Caecina Severus an altar of Vengeance, he vetoed the scheme, remarking that these memorials were consecrated after victories abroad; domestic calamities called for sorrow and concealment. Messalinus had added that Tiberius, Augusta, Antonia, Agrippina, and Drusus ought to be officially thanked for their services in avenging Germanicus: Claudius he had neglected to mention. Indeed, it was only when Lucius Asprenas demanded point-blank in the senate if the omission was deliberate that the name was appended. For myself, the more I\xa0reflect on events recent or remote, the more am\xa0I haunted by the sense of a mockery in human affairs. For by repute, by expectancy, and by veneration, all men were sooner marked out for sovereignty than that future emperor whom destiny was holding in the background. <" 3.64.3 \xa0About the same time, a serious illness of Julia Augusta made it necessary for the emperor to hasten his return to the capital, the harmony between mother and son being still genuine, or their hatred concealed: for a little earlier, Julia, in dedicating an effigy to the deified Augustus not far from the theatre of Marcellus, had placed Tiberius\' name after her own in the inscription; and it was believed that, taking the act as a derogation from the imperial dignity, he had locked it in his breast with grave and veiled displeasure. Now, however, the senate gave orders for a solemn intercession and the celebration of the Great Games â\x80\x94 the latter to be exhibited by the pontiffs, the augurs, and the Fifteen, assisted by the Seven and by the Augustal fraternities. Lucius Apronius had moved that the Fetials should also preside at the Games. The Caesar opposed, drawing a distinction between the prerogatives of the various priesthoods, adducing precedents, and pointing out that "the Fetials had never had that degree of dignity, while the Augustals had only been admitted among the others because theirs was a special priesthood of the house for which the intercession was being offered." <
4.1.2 \xa0The consulate of Gaius Asinius and Gaius Antistius was to Tiberius the ninth year of public order and of domestic felicity (for he counted the death of Germanicus among his blessings), when suddenly fortune disturbed the peace and he became either a tyrant himself or the source of power to the tyrannous. The starting-point and the cause were to be found in Aelius Sejanus, prefect of the praetorian cohorts. of his influence I\xa0spoke above: now I\xa0shall unfold his origin, his character, and the crime by which he strove to seize on empire. Born at Vulsinii to the Roman knight Seius Strabo, he became in early youth a follower of Gaius Caesar, grandson of the deified Augustus; not without a rumour that he had disposed of his virtue at a price to Apicius, a rich man and a prodigal. Before long, by his multifarious arts, he bound Tiberius fast: so much so that a man inscrutable to others became to Sejanus alone unguarded and unreserved; and the less by subtlety (in fact, he was beaten in the end by the selfsame arts) than by the anger of Heaven against that Roman realm for whose equal damnation he flourished and fell. He was a man hardy by constitution, fearless by temperament; skilled to conceal himself and to incriminate his neighbour; cringing at once and insolent; orderly and modest to outward view, at heart possessed by a towering ambition, which impelled him at whiles to lavishness and luxury, but oftener to industry and vigilance â\x80\x94 qualities not less noxious when assumed for the winning of a throne. <
4.9.2 \xa0All this was listened to amid general tears, then with prayers for a happy issue; and, had he only set a limit to his speech, he must have left the minds of his hearers full of compassion for himself, and of pride: instead, by reverting to those vain and oft-derided themes, the restoration of the republic and his wish that the consuls or others would take the reins of government, he destroyed the credibility even of the true and honourable part of his statement. â\x80\x94 The memorials decreed to Germanicus were repeated for Drusus, with large additions, such as sycophancy commonly favours at a second essay. The most arresting feature of the funeral was the parade of ancestral images, while Aeneas, author of the Julian line, with the whole dynasty of Alban kings, and Romulus, the founder of the city, followed by the Sabine nobles, by Attus Clausus, and by the rest of the Claudian effigies, filed in long procession past the spectator. <
4.16.4 \xa0Nearly at the same date, the Caesar spoke on the need of choosing a flamen of Jupiter, to replace the late Servius Maluginensis, and of also passing new legislation. "Three patricians," he pointed out, "children of parents wedded \'by cake and spelt,\' were nominated simultaneously; and on one of them the selection fell. The system was old-fashioned, nor was there now as formerly the requisite supply of candidates, since the habit of marrying by the ancient ritual had been dropped, or was retained in few families." â\x80\x94 Here he offered several explanations of the fact, the principal one being the indifference of both sexes, though there was also a deliberate avoidance of the difficulties of the ceremony itself. â\x80\x94 ".\xa0.\xa0.\xa0and since both the man obtaining this priesthood and the woman passing into the marital control of a flamen were automatically withdrawn from paternal jurisdiction. Consequently, a remedy must be applied either by a senatorial resolution or by special law, precisely as Augustus had modified several relics of the rough old world to suit the needs of the present." It was decided, then, after a discussion of the religious points, that no change should be made in the constitution of the flamenship; but a law was carried, that the flamen\'s wife, though under her husband\'s tutelage in respect of her sacred duties, should otherwise stand upon the same legal footing as any ordinary woman. Maluginensis\' son was elected in the room of his father; and to enhance the dignity of the priests and increase their readiness to perform the ritual of the various cults, two million sesterces were voted to the Virgin Cornelia, who was being appointed to succeed Scantia; while Augusta, whenever she entered the theatre, was to take her place among the seats reserved for the Vestals. <
4.17.1 \xa0In the consulate of Cornelius Cethegus and Visellius Varro, the pontiffs and â\x80\x94 after their example â\x80\x94 the other priests, while offering the vows for the life of the emperor, went further and commended Nero and Drusus to the same divinities, not so much from affection for the princes as in that spirit of sycophancy, of which the absence or the excess is, in a corrupt society, equally hazardous. For Tiberius, never indulgent to the family of Germanicus, was now stung beyond endurance to find a pair of striplings placed on a level with his own declining years. He summoned the pontiffs, and asked if they had made this concession to the entreaties â\x80\x94 or should he say the threats? â\x80\x94 of Agrippina. The pontiffs, in spite of their denial, received only a slight reprimand (for a large number were either relatives of his own or prominent figures in the state); but in the senate, he gave warning that for the future no one was to excite to arrogance the impressionable minds of the youths by such precocious distinctions. The truth was that Sejanus was pressing him hard: â\x80\x94 "The state," so ran his indictment, "was split into two halves, as if by civil war. There were men who proclaimed themselves of Agrippina\'s party: unless a stand was taken, there would be more; and the only cure for the growing disunion was to strike down one or two of the most active malcontents."
4.37.1 \xa0About the same time, Further Spain sent a deputation to the senate, asking leave to follow the example of Asia by erecting a shrine to Tiberius and his mother. On this occasion, the Caesar, sturdily disdainful of compliments at any time, and now convinced that an answer was due to the gossip charging him with a declension into vanity, began his speech in the following vein:â\x80\x94 "I\xa0know, Conscript Fathers, that many deplored by want of consistency because, when a little while ago the cities of Asia made this identical request, I\xa0offered no opposition. I\xa0shall therefore state both the case for my previous silence and the rule I\xa0have settled upon for the future. Since the deified Augustus had not forbidden the construction of a temple at Pergamum to himself and the City of Rome, observing as I\xa0do his every action and word as law, I\xa0followed the precedent already sealed by his approval, with all the more readiness that with worship of myself was associated veneration of the senate. But, though once to have accepted may be pardonable, yet to be consecrated in the image of deity through all the provinces would be vanity and arrogance, and the honour paid to Augustus will soon be a mockery, if it is vulgarized by promiscuous experiments in flattery.
4.58.3 \xa0His exit was made with a slender retinue: one senator who had held a consulship (the jurist Cocceius Nerva) and â\x80\x94 in addition to Sejanus â\x80\x94 one Roman knight of the higher rank, Curtius Atticus; the rest being men of letters, principally Greeks, in whose conversation he was to find amusement. The astrologers declared that he had left Rome under a conjunction of planets excluding the possibility of return: a\xa0fatal assertion to the many who concluded that the end was at hand and gave publicity to their views. For they failed to foresee the incredible event, that through eleven years he would persist self-exiled from his fatherland. It was soon to be revealed how close are the confines of science and imposture, how dark the veil that covers truth. That he would never return to Rome was not said at venture: of all else, the seers were ignorant; for in the adjacent country, on neighbouring beaches, often hard under the city-walls, he reached the utmost limit of old age. <
4.70.1 \xa0However, in a letter read on the first of January, the Caesar, after the orthodox prayers for the new year, turned to Sabinus, charging him with the corruption of several of his freedmen, and with designs against himself; and demanded vengeance in terms impossible to misread. Vengeance was decreed without loss of time; and the doomed man was dragged to his death, crying with all the vigour allowed by the cloak muffling his head and the noose around his neck, that "these were the ceremonies that inaugurated the year, these the victims that bled to propitiate Sejanus!" In whatever direction he turned his eyes, wherever his words reached an ear, the result was flight and desolation, an exodus from street and forum. Here and there a man retraced his steps and showed himself again, pale at the very thought that he had manifested alarm. "For what day would find the killers idle, when amid sacrifices and prayers, at a season when custom prohibited so much as an ominous word, chains and the halter come upon the scene? Not from want of thought had odium such as this been incurred by Tiberius: it was a premeditated and deliberate act, that none might think that the new magistrates were precluded from inaugurating the dungeon as they did the temples and the altars." â\x80\x94 A\xa0supplementary letter followed: the sovereign was grateful that they had punished a mann who was a danger to his country. He added that his own life was full of alarms, and that he suspected treachery from his enemies. He mentioned none by name; but no doubt was felt that the words were levelled at Agrippina and Nero. 4.70.2 \xa0However, in a letter read on the first of January, the Caesar, after the orthodox prayers for the new year, turned to Sabinus, charging him with the corruption of several of his freedmen, and with designs against himself; and demanded vengeance in terms impossible to misread. Vengeance was decreed without loss of time; and the doomed man was dragged to his death, crying with all the vigour allowed by the cloak muffling his head and the noose around his neck, that "these were the ceremonies that inaugurated the year, these the victims that bled to propitiate Sejanus!" In whatever direction he turned his eyes, wherever his words reached an ear, the result was flight and desolation, an exodus from street and forum. Here and there a man retraced his steps and showed himself again, pale at the very thought that he had manifested alarm. "For what day would find the killers idle, when amid sacrifices and prayers, at a season when custom prohibited so much as an ominous word, chains and the halter come upon the scene? Not from want of thought had odium such as this been incurred by Tiberius: it was a premeditated and deliberate act, that none might think that the new magistrates were precluded from inaugurating the dungeon as they did the temples and the altars." â\x80\x94 A\xa0supplementary letter followed: the sovereign was grateful that they had punished a mann who was a danger to his country. He added that his own life was full of alarms, and that he suspected treachery from his enemies. He mentioned none by name; but no doubt was felt that the words were levelled at Agrippina and Nero. <
4.74.2 \xa0Thus the Frisian name won celebrity in Germany; while Tiberius, rather than entrust anyone with the conduct of the war, suppressed our losses. The senate, too, had other anxieties than a question of national dishonour on the confines of the empire: an internal panic had preoccupied all minds, and the antidote was being sought in sycophancy. Thus, although their opinion was being taken on totally unrelated subjects, they voted an altar of Mercy and an altar of Friendship with statues of the Caesar and Sejanus on either hand, and with reiterated petitions conjured the pair to vouchsafe themselves to sight. Neither of them, however, came down so far as Rome or the neighbourhood of Rome: it was deemed enough to emerge from their isle and present themselves to view on the nearest shore of Campania. To Campania went senators and knights, with a large part of the populace, their anxieties centred round Sejanus; access to whom had grown harder, and had therefore to be procured by interest and by a partnership in his designs. It was evident enough that his arrogance was increased by the sight of this repulsive servility so openly exhibited. At Rome, movement is the rule, and the extent of the city leaves it uncertain upon what errand the passer-by is bent: there, littering without distinction the plain or the beach, they suffered day and night alike the patronage or the insolence of his janitors, until that privilege, too, was vetoed, and they retraced their steps to the capital\xa0â\x80\x94 those whom he had honoured neither by word nor by look, in fear and trembling; a\xa0few, over whom hung the fatal issue of that infelicitous friendship, with misplaced cheerfulness of heart. <
5.2.1 \xa0Tiberius, however, without altering the amenities of his life, excused himself by letter, on the score of important affairs, for neglecting to pay the last respects to his mother, and, with a semblance of modesty, curtailed the lavish tributes decreed to her memory by the senate. Extremely few passed muster, and he added a stipulation that divine honours were not to be voted: such, he observed, had been her own wish. More than this, in a part of the same missive he attacked "feminine friendships": an indirect stricture upon the consul Fufius, who had risen by the favour of Augusta, and, besides his aptitude for attracting the fancy of the sex, had a turn for wit and a habit of ridiculing Tiberius with those bitter pleasantries which linger long in the memory of potentates.
6.46.3 \xa0This the emperor knew; and he hesitated therefore with regard to the succession â\x80\x94 first between his grandchildren. of these, the issue of Drusus was the nearer to him in blood and by affection, but had not yet entered the years of puberty: the son of Germanicus possessed the vigour of early manhood, but also the affections of the multitude â\x80\x94 and that, with his grandsire, was a ground of hatred. Even Claudius with his settled years and aspirations to culture came under consideration: the obstacle was his mental instability. Yet, if a successor were sought outside the imperial family, he dreaded that the memory of Augustus â\x80\x94 the name of the Caesars â\x80\x94 might be turned to derision and to contempt. For the care of Tiberius was not so much to enjoy popularity in the present as to court the approval of posterity. Soon, mentally irresolute, physically outworn, he left to fate a decision beyond his competence; though remarks escaped him which implied a foreknowledge of the future. For, with an allusion not difficult to read, he upbraided Macro with forsaking the setting and looking to the rising sun; and to Caligula, who in some casual conversation was deriding Lucius Sulla, he made the prophecy that he would have all the vices of Sulla with none of the Sullan virtues. At the same time, with a burst of tears, he embraced the younger of his grandsons; then, at the lowering looks of the other:â\x80\x94 "Thou wilt slay him," he said, "and another thee." Yet, in defiance of his failing health, he relinquished no detail of his libertinism: he was striving to make endurance pass for strength; and he had always had a sneer for the arts of the physicians, and for men who, after thirty years of life, needed the counsel of a stranger in order to distinguish things salutary to their system from things deleterious. <' "
14.10.2 \xa0But only with the completion of the crime was its magnitude realized by the Caesar. For the rest of the night, sometimes dumb and motionless, but not rarely starting in terror to his feet with a sort of delirium, he waited for the daylight which he believed would bring his end. Indeed, his first encouragement to hope came from the adulation of the centurions and tribunes, as, at the suggestion of Burrus, they grasped his hand and wished him joy of escaping his unexpected danger and the criminal enterprise of his mother. His friends in turn visited the temples; and, once the example had been given, the Campanian towns in the neighbourhood attested their joy by victims and deputations. By a contrast in hypocrisy, he himself was mournful, repining apparently at his own preservation and full of tears for the death of a parent. But because the features of a landscape change less obligingly than the looks of men, and because there was always obtruded upon his gaze the grim prospect of that sea and those shores, â\x80\x94 and there were some who believed that he could hear a trumpet, calling in the hills that rose around, and lamentations at his mother's grave, â\x80\x94 he withdrew to Naples and forwarded to the senate a letter, the sum of which was that an assassin with his weapon upon him had been discovered in Agermus, one of the confidential freedmen of Agrippina, and that his mistress, conscious of her guilt, had paid the penalty of meditated murder. <" "
14.12.2 \xa0However, with a notable spirit of emulation among the magnates, decrees were drawn up: thanksgivings were to be held at all appropriate shrines; the festival of Minerva, on which the conspiracy had been brought to light, was to be celebrated with annual games; a\xa0golden statue of the goddess, with an effigy of the emperor by her side, was to be erected in the curia, and Agrippina's birthday included among the inauspicious dates. Earlier sycophancies Thrasea Paetus had usually allowed to pass, either in silence or with a curt assent: this time he walked out of the senate, creating a source of danger for himself, but implanting no germ of independence in his colleagues. Portents, also, frequent and futile made their appearance: a\xa0woman gave birth to a serpent, another was killed by a thunderbolt in the embraces of her husband; the sun, again, was suddenly obscured, and the fourteen regions of the capital were struck by lightning â\x80\x94 events which so little marked the concern of the gods that Nero continued for years to come his empire and his crimes. However, to aggravate the feeling against his mother, and to furnish evidence that his own mildness had increased with her removal, he restored to their native soil two women of high rank, Junia and Calpurnia, along with the ex-praetors Valerius Capito and Licinius Gabolus â\x80\x94 all of them formerly banished by Agrippina. He sanctioned the return, even, of the ashes of Lollia Paulina, and the erection of a tomb: Iturius and Calvisius, whom he had himself relegated some little while before, he now released from the penalty. As to Silana, she had died a natural death at Tarentum, to which she had retraced her way, when Agrippina, by whose enmity she had fallen, was beginning to totter or to relent. <" 14.13 \xa0And yet he dallied in the towns of Campania, anxious and doubtful how to make his entry into Rome. Would he find obedience in the senate? enthusiasm in the crowd? Against his timidity it was urged by every reprobate â\x80\x94 and a court more prolific of reprobates the world has not seen â\x80\x94 that the name of Agrippina was abhorred and that her death had won him the applause of the nation. Let him go without a qualm and experience on the spot the veneration felt for his position! At the same time, they demanded leave to precede him. They found, indeed, an alacrity which surpassed their promises: the tribes on the way to meet him; the senate in festal dress; troops of wives and of children disposed according to their sex and years, while along his route rose tiers of seats of the type used for viewing a triumph. Then, flushed with pride, victor over the national servility, he made his way to the Capitol, paid his grateful vows, and abandoned himself to all the vices, till now retarded, though scarcely repressed, by some sort of deference to his mother. <
14.15.1 \xa0Reluctant, however, as yet to expose his dishonour on a public stage, he instituted the soâ\x80\x91called Juvenile Games, for which a crowd of volunteers enrolled themselves. Neither rank, nor age, nor an official career debarred a man from practising the art of a Greek or a Latin mummer, down to attitudes and melodies never meant for the male sex. Even women of distinction studied indecent parts; and in the grove with which Augustus fringed his Naval Lagoon, little trysting-places and drinking-dens sprang up, and every incentive to voluptuousness was exposed for sale. Distributions of coin, too, were made, for the respectable man to expend under compulsion and the prodigal from vainglory. Hence debauchery and scandal throve; nor to our morals, corrupted long before, has anything contributed more of uncleanness than that herd of reprobates. Even in the decent walks of life, purity is hard to keep: far less could chastity or modesty or any vestige of integrity survive in that competition of the vices. â\x80\x94 Last of all to tread the stage was the sovereign himself, scrupulously testing his lyre and striking a\xa0few preliminary notes to the trainers at his side. A\xa0cohort of the guards had been added to the audience â\x80\x94 centurions and tribunes; Burrus, also, with his sigh and his word of praise. Now, too, for the first time was enrolled the company of Roman knights known as the Augustiani; conspicuously youthful and robust; wanton in some cases by nature; in others, through dreams of power. Days and nights they thundered applause, bestowed the epithets reserved for deity upon the imperial form and voice, and lived in a repute and honour, which might have been earned by virtue.
14.55 \xa0Nero\'s reply, in effect, was this:â\x80\x94 "If I\xa0am able to meet your studied eloquence with an immediate answer, that is the first part of my debt to you, who have taught me how to express my thought not merely after premeditation but on the spur of the moment. Augustus, the grandfather of my grandfather, allowed Agrippa and Maecenas to rest after their labours, but had himself reached an age, the authority of which could justify whatever boon, and of whatever character, he had bestowed upon them. And even so he stripped neither of the rewards conferred by himself. It was in battle and jeopardy they had earned them, for such were the scenes in which the youth of Augustus moved; and, had my own days been spent in arms, your weapons and your hand would not have failed me; but you did what the actual case demanded, and fostered first my boyhood, then my youth, with reason, advice, and precept. And your gifts to me will be imperishable, so long as life may last; but mine to you â\x80\x94 gardens, capital, and villas â\x80\x94 are vulnerable to accident. They may appear many; but numbers of men, not comparable to you in character have held more. Shame forbids me to mention the freedmen who flaunt a wealth greater than yours! And hence I\xa0even blush that you, who have the first place in my love, do not as yet excel all in fortune. Or is it, by chance, the case that you deem either Seneca lower than Vitellius, who held his three consulates, or Nero lower than Claudius, and that the wealth which years of parsimony won for Volusius is incapable of being attained by my own generosity to you? <
15.23.4 \xa0In the consulate of Memmius Regulus and Verginius Rufus, Nero greeted a daughter, presented to him by Poppaea, with more than human joy, named the child Augusta, and bestowed the same title on Poppaea. The scene of her delivery was the colony of Antium, where the sovereign himself had seen the light. The senate had already commended the travail of Poppaea to the care of Heaven and formulated vows in the name of the state: they were now multiplied and paid. Public thanksgivings were added, and a Temple of Fertility was decreed, together with a contest on the model of the Actian festival; while golden effigies of the Two Fortunes were to be placed on the throne of Capitoline Jove, and, as the Julian race had its Circus Games at Bovillae, so at Antium should the Claudian and Domitian houses. But all was transitory, as the infant died in less than four months. Then fresh forms of adulation made their appearance, and she was voted the honour of deification, a place in the pulvinar, a temple, and a priest. The emperor, too, showed himself as incontinent in sorrow as in joy. It was noted that when the entire senate streamed towards Antium shortly after the birth, Thrasea, who was forbidden to attend, received the affront, prophetic of his impending slaughter, without emotion. Shortly afterwards, they say, came a remark of the Caesar, in which he boasted to Seneca that he was reconciled to Thrasea; and Seneca congratulated the Caesar: an incident which increased the fame, and the dangers, of those eminent men. <
16.7.1 \xa0To the death of Poppaea, outwardly regretted, but welcome to all who remembered her profligacy and cruelty, Nero added a fresh measure of odium by prohibiting Gaius Cassius from attendance at the funeral. It was the first hint of mischief. Nor was the mischief long delayed. Silanus was associated with him; their only crime being that Cassius was eminent for a great hereditary fortune and an austere character, Silanus for a noble lineage and a temperate youth. Accordingly, the emperor sent a speech to the senate, arguing that both should be removed from public life, and objecting to the former that, among his other ancestral effigies, he had honoured a bust of Gaius Cassius, inscribed:â\x80\x94 "To the leader of the cause." The seeds of civil war, and revolt from the house of the Caesars, â\x80\x94 such were the objects he had pursued. And, not to rely merely on the memory of a hated name as an incentive to faction, he had taken to himself a partner in Lucius Silanus, a youth of noble family and headstrong temper, who was to be his figure-head for a revolution.
16.21.1 \xa0After the slaughter of so many of the noble, Nero in the end conceived the ambition to extirpate virtue herself by killing Thrasea Paetus and Barea Soranus. To both he was hostile from of old, and against Thrasea there were additional motives; for he had walked out of the senate, as I\xa0have mentioned, during the discussion on Agrippina, and at the festival of the Juvenalia his services had not been conspicuous â\x80\x94 a\xa0grievance which went the deeper that in Patavium, his native place, the same Thrasea had sung in tragic costume at the .\xa0.\xa0. Games instituted by the Trojan Antenor. Again, on the day when sentence of death was all but passed on the praetor Antistius for his lampoons on Nero, he proposed, and carried, a milder penalty; and, after deliberately absenting himself from the vote of divine honours to Poppaea, he had not assisted at her funeral. These memories were kept from fading by Cossutianus Capito. For, apart from his character with its sharp trend to crime, he was embittered against Thrasea, whose influence, exerted in support of the Cilician envoys prosecuting Capito for extortion, had cost him the verdict. 16.21.2 \xa0After the slaughter of so many of the noble, Nero in the end conceived the ambition to extirpate virtue herself by killing Thrasea Paetus and Barea Soranus. To both he was hostile from of old, and against Thrasea there were additional motives; for he had walked out of the senate, as I\xa0have mentioned, during the discussion on Agrippina, and at the festival of the Juvenalia his services had not been conspicuous â\x80\x94 a\xa0grievance which went the deeper that in Patavium, his native place, the same Thrasea had sung in tragic costume at the .\xa0.\xa0. Games instituted by the Trojan Antenor. Again, on the day when sentence of death was all but passed on the praetor Antistius for his lampoons on Nero, he proposed, and carried, a milder penalty; and, after deliberately absenting himself from the vote of divine honours to Poppaea, he had not assisted at her funeral. These memories were kept from fading by Cossutianus Capito. For, apart from his character with its sharp trend to crime, he was embittered against Thrasea, whose influence, exerted in support of the Cilician envoys prosecuting Capito for extortion, had cost him the verdict. <
16.22.2 \xa0He preferred other charges as well:â\x80\x94 "At the beginning of the year, Thrasea evaded the customary oath; though the holder of a quindecimviral priesthood, he took no part in the national vows; he had never offered a sacrifice for the welfare of the emperor or for his celestial voice. Once a constant and indefatigable member, who showed himself the advocate or the adversary of the most commonplace resolutions of the Fathers, for three years he had not set foot within the curia; and but yesterday, when his colleagues were gathering with emulous haste to crush Silanus and Vetus, he had preferred to devote his leisure to the private cases of his clients. Matters were come already to a schism and to factions: if many made the same venture, it was war! \'As once,\' he said, \'this discord-loving state prated of Caesar and Cato, so now, Nero, it prates of yourself and Thrasea. And he has his followers â\x80\x94\xa0his satellites, rather â\x80\x94 who affect, not as yet the contumacity of his opinions, but his bearing and his looks, and whose stiffness and austerity are designed for an impeachment of your wantonness. To him alone your safety is a thing uncared for, your talents a thing unhonoured. The imperial happiness he cannot brook: can he not even be satisfied with the imperial bereavements and sorrows? Not to believe Poppaea deity bespeaks the same temper that will not swear to the acts of the deified Augustus and the deified Julius. He contemns religion, he abrogates law. The journal of the Roman people is scanned throughout the provinces and armies with double care for news of what Thrasea has not done! Either let us pass over to his creed, if it is the better, or let these seekers after a new world lose their chief and their instigator. It is the sect that produced the Tuberones and the Favonii â\x80\x94 names unloved even in the old republic. In order to subvert the empire, they make a parade of liberty: the empire overthrown, they will lay hands on liberty itself. You have removed Cassius to little purpose, if you intend to allow these rivals of the Bruti to multiply and flourish! A\xa0word in conclusion: write nothing yourself about Thrasea â\x80\x94 leave the senate to decide between us!\'\xa0" Nero fanned still more the eager fury of Cossutianus, and reinforced him with the mordant eloquence of Eprius Marcellus. < 16.22.3 \xa0He preferred other charges as well:â\x80\x94 "At the beginning of the year, Thrasea evaded the customary oath; though the holder of a quindecimviral priesthood, he took no part in the national vows; he had never offered a sacrifice for the welfare of the emperor or for his celestial voice. Once a constant and indefatigable member, who showed himself the advocate or the adversary of the most commonplace resolutions of the Fathers, for three years he had not set foot within the curia; and but yesterday, when his colleagues were gathering with emulous haste to crush Silanus and Vetus, he had preferred to devote his leisure to the private cases of his clients. Matters were come already to a schism and to factions: if many made the same venture, it was war! \'As once,\' he said, \'this discord-loving state prated of Caesar and Cato, so now, Nero, it prates of yourself and Thrasea. And he has his followers â\x80\x94\xa0his satellites, rather â\x80\x94 who affect, not as yet the contumacity of his opinions, but his bearing and his looks, and whose stiffness and austerity are designed for an impeachment of your wantonness. To him alone your safety is a thing uncared for, your talents a thing unhonoured. The imperial happiness he cannot brook: can he not even be satisfied with the imperial bereavements and sorrows? Not to believe Poppaea deity bespeaks the same temper that will not swear to the acts of the deified Augustus and the deified Julius. He contemns religion, he abrogates law. The journal of the Roman people is scanned throughout the provinces and armies with double care for news of what Thrasea has not done! Either let us pass over to his creed, if it is the better, or let these seekers after a new world lose their chief and their instigator. It is the sect that produced the Tuberones and the Favonii â\x80\x94 names unloved even in the old republic. In order to subvert the empire, they make a parade of liberty: the empire overthrown, they will lay hands on liberty itself. You have removed Cassius to little purpose, if you intend to allow these rivals of the Bruti to multiply and flourish! A\xa0word in conclusion: write nothing yourself about Thrasea â\x80\x94 leave the senate to decide between us!\'\xa0" Nero fanned still more the eager fury of Cossutianus, and reinforced him with the mordant eloquence of Eprius Marcellus. <'' None |
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