16. Tacitus, Annals, 1.4-1.7, 1.8.3-1.8.6, 1.9-1.15, 1.10.6, 2.73, 3.6, 3.18, 3.56.1, 4.8, 4.12 (1st cent. CE - 2nd cent. CE)
| 1.4. It was thus an altered world, and of the old, unspoilt Roman character not a trace lingered. Equality was an outworn creed, and all eyes looked to the mandate of the sovereign â with no immediate misgivings, so long as Augustus in the full vigour of his prime upheld himself, his house, and peace. But when the wearing effects of bodily sickness added themselves to advancing years, and the end was coming and new hopes dawning, a few voices began idly to discuss the blessings of freedom; more were apprehensive of war; others desired it; the great majority merely exchanged gossip derogatory to their future masters:â "Agrippa, fierce-tempered, and hot from his humiliation, was unfitted by age and experience for so heavy a burden. Tiberius Nero was mature in years and tried in war, but had the old, inbred arrogance of the Claudian family, and hints of cruelty, strive as he would to repress them, kept breaking out. He had been reared from the cradle in a regt house; consulates and triumphs had been heaped on his youthful head: even during the years when he lived at Rhodes in ostensible retirement and actual exile, he had studied nothing save anger, hypocrisy, and secret lasciviousness. Add to the tale his mother with her feminine caprice: they must be slaves, it appeared, to the distaff, and to a pair of striplings as well, who in the interval would oppress the state and in the upshot rend it asunder! 1.5. While these topics and the like were under discussion, the malady of Augustus began to take a graver turn; and some suspected foul play on the part of his wife. For a rumour had gone the round that, a few months earlier, the emperor, confiding in a chosen few, and attended only by Fabius Maximus, had sailed for Planasia on a visit to Agrippa. "There tears and signs of affection on both sides had been plentiful enough to raise a hope that the youth might yet be restored to the house of his grandfather. Maximus had disclosed the incident to his wife Marcia; Marcia, to Livia. It had come to the Caesar's knowledge; and after the death of Maximus, which followed shortly, possibly by his own hand, Marcia had been heard at the funeral, sobbing and reproaching herself as the cause of her husband's destruction." Whatever the truth of the affair, Tiberius had hardly set foot in Illyricum, when he was recalled by an urgent letter from his mother; and it is not certainly known whether on reaching the town of Nola, he found Augustus still breathing or lifeless. For house and street were jealously guarded by Livia's ring of pickets, while sanguine notices were issued at intervals, until the measures dictated by the crisis had been taken: then one report announced simultaneously that Augustus had passed away and that Nero was master of the empire. 1.6. The opening crime of the new principate was the murder of Agrippa Postumus; who, though off his guard and without weapons, was with difficulty dispatched by a resolute centurion. In the senate Tiberius made no reference to the subject: his pretence was an order from his father, instructing the tribune in charge to lose no time in making away with his prisoner, once he himself should have looked his last on the world. It was beyond question that by his frequent and bitter strictures on the youth's character Augustus had procured the senatorial decree for his exile: on the other hand, at no time did he harden his heart to the killing of a relative, and it remained incredible that he should have sacrificed the life of a grandchild in order to diminish the anxieties of a stepson. More probably, Tiberius and Livia, actuated in the one case by fear, and in the other by stepmotherly dislike, hurriedly procured the murder of a youth whom they suspected and detested. To the centurion who brought the usual military report, the emperor rejoined that he had given no instructions and the deed would have to be accounted for in the senate. The remark came to the ears of Sallustius Crispus. A partner in the imperial secrets â it was he who had forwarded the note to the tribune â he feared the charge might be fastened on himself, with the risks equally great whether he spoke the truth or lied. He therefore advised Livia not to publish the mysteries of the palace, the counsels of her friends, the services of the soldiery; and also to watch that Tiberius did not weaken the powers of the throne by referring everything and all things to the senate:â "It was a condition of sovereignty that the account balanced only if rendered to a single auditor. 1.7. At Rome, however, consuls, senators, and knights were rushing into slavery. The more exalted the personage, the grosser his hypocrisy and his haste, â his lineaments adjusted so as to betray neither cheerfulness at the exit nor undue depression at the entry of a prince; his tears blent with joy, his regrets with adulation. The consuls, Sextus Pompeius and Sextus Appuleius, first took the oath of allegiance to Tiberius Caesar. It was taken in their presence by Seius Strabo and Caius Turranius, chiefs respectively of the praetorian cohorts and the corn department. The senators, the soldiers, and the populace followed. For in every action of Tiberius the first step had to be taken by the consuls, as though the old republic were in being, and himself undecided whether to reign or no. Even his edict, convening the Fathers to the senate-house was issued simply beneath the tribunician title which he had received under Augustus. It was a laconic document of very modest purport:â "He intended to provide for the last honours to his father, whose body he could not leave â it was the one function of the state which he made bold to exercise." Yet, on the passing of Augustus he had given the watchword to the praetorian cohorts as Imperator; he had the sentries, the men-atâarms, and the other appurteces of a court; soldiers conducted him to the forum, soldiers to the curia; he dispatched letters to the armies as if the principate was already in his grasp; and nowhere manifested the least hesitation, except when speaking in the senate. The chief reason was his fear that Germanicus â backed by so many legions, the vast reserves of the provinces, and a wonderful popularity with the nation â might prefer the ownership to the reversion of a throne. He paid public opinion, too, the compliment of wishing to be regarded as the called and chosen of the state, rather than as the interloper who had wormed his way into power with the help of connubial intrigues and a senile act of adoption. It was realized later that his coyness had been assumed with the further object of gaining an insight into the feelings of the aristocracy: for all the while he was distorting words and looks into crimes and storing them in his memory. 1.9. Then tongues became busy with Augustus himself. Most men were struck by trivial points â that one day should have been the first of his sovereignty and the last of his life â that he should have ended his days at Nola in the same house and room as his father Octavius. Much, too, was said of the number of his consulates (in which he had equalled the combined totals of Valerius Corvus and Caius Marius), his tribunician power unbroken for thirty-seven years, his title of Imperator twenty-one times earned, and his other honours, multiplied or new. Among men of intelligence, however, his career was praised or arraigned from varying points of view. According to some, "filial duty and the needs of a country, which at the time had no room for law, had driven him to the weapons of civil strife â weapons which could not be either forged or wielded with clean hands. He had overlooked much in Antony, much in Lepidus, for the sake of bringing to book the assassins of his father. When Lepidus grew old and indolent, and Antony succumbed to his vices, the sole remedy for his distracted country was government by one man. Yet he organized the state, not by instituting a monarchy or a dictatorship, but by creating the title of First Citizen. The empire had been fenced by the ocean or distant rivers. The legions, the provinces, the fleets, the whole administration, had been centralized. There had been law for the Roman citizen, respect for the allied communities; and the capital itself had been embellished with remarkable splendour. Very few situations had been treated by force, and then only in the interests of general tranquillity. 1.10. On the other side it was argued that "filial duty and the critical position of the state had been used merely as a cloak: come to facts, and it was from the lust of dominion that he excited the veterans by his bounties, levied an army while yet a stripling and a subject, subdued the legions of a consul, and affected a leaning to the Pompeian side. Then, following his usurpation by senatorial decree of the symbols and powers of the praetorship, had come the deaths of Hirtius and Pansa, â whether they perished by the enemy's sword, or Pansa by poison sprinkled on his wound, and Hirtius by the hands of his own soldiery, with the Caesar to plan the treason. At all events, he had possessed himself of both their armies, wrung a consulate from the unwilling senate, and turned against the commonwealth the arms which he had received for the quelling of Antony. The proscription of citizens and the assignments of land had been approved not even by those who executed them. Grant that Cassius and the Bruti were sacrificed to inherited enmities â though the moral law required that private hatreds should give way to public utility â yet Pompey was betrayed by the simulacrum of a peace, Lepidus by the shadow of a friendship: then Antony, lured by the Tarentine and Brundisian treaties and a marriage with his sister, had paid with life the penalty of that delusive connexion. After that there had been undoubtedly peace, but peace with bloodshed â the disasters of Lollius and of Varus, the execution at Rome of a Varro, an Egnatius, an Iullus." His domestic adventures were not spared; the abduction of Nero's wife, and the farcical questions to the pontiffs, whether, with a child conceived but not yet born, she could legally wed; the debaucheries of Vedius Pollio; and, lastly, Livia, â as a mother, a curse to the realm; as a stepmother, a curse to the house of the Caesars. "He had left small room for the worship of heaven, when he claimed to be himself adored in temples and in the image of godhead by flamens and by priests! Even in the adoption of Tiberius to succeed him, his motive had been neither personal affection nor regard for the state: he had read the pride and cruelty of his heart, and had sought to heighten his own glory by the vilest of contrasts." For Augustus, a few years earlier, when requesting the Fathers to renew the grant of the tribunician power to Tiberius, had in the course of the speech, complimentary as it was, let fall a few remarks on his demeanour, dress, and habits which were offered as an apology and designed for reproaches. However, his funeral ran the ordinary course; and a decree followed, endowing him a temple and divine rites. 1.11. Then all prayers were directed towards Tiberius; who delivered a variety of reflections on the greatness of the empire and his own diffidence:â "Only the mind of the deified Augustus was equal to such a burden: he himself had found, when called by the sovereign to share his anxieties, how arduous, how dependent upon fortune, was the task of ruling a world! He thought, then, that, in a state which had the support of so many eminent men, they ought not to devolve the entire duties on any one person; the business of government would be more easily carried out by the joint efforts of a number." A speech in this tenor was more dignified than convincing. Besides, the diction of Tiberius, by habit or by nature, was always indirect and obscure, even when he had no wish to conceal his thought; and now, in the effort to bury every trace of his sentiments, it became more intricate, uncertain, and equivocal than ever. But the Fathers, whose one dread was that they might seem to comprehend him, melted in plaints, tears, and prayers. They were stretching their hands to heaven, to the effigy of Augustus, to his own knees, when he gave orders for a document to be produced and read. It contained a statement of the national resources â the strength of the burghers and allies under arms; the number of the fleets, protectorates, and provinces; the taxes direct and indirect; the needful disbursements and customary bounties catalogued by Augustus in his own hand, with a final clause (due to fear or jealousy?) advising the restriction of the empire within its present frontiers. 1.12. The senate, meanwhile, was descending to the most abject supplications, when Tiberius casually observed that, unequal as he felt himself to the whole weight of government, he would still undertake the charge of any one department that might be assigned to him. Asinius Gallus then said:â "I ask you, Caesar, what department you wish to be assigned you." This unforeseen inquiry threw him off his balance. He was silent for a few moments; then recovered himself, and answered that it would not at all become his diffidence to select or shun any part of a burden from which he would prefer to be wholly excused. Gallus, who had conjectured anger from his look, resumed:â "The question had been put to him, not with the hope that he would divide the inseparable, but to gain from his own lips an admission that the body politic was a single organism needing to be governed by a single intelligence." He added a panegyric on Augustus, and urged Tiberius to remember his own victories and the brilliant work which he had done year after year in the garb of peace. He failed, however, to soothe the imperial anger: he had been a hated man ever since his marriage to Vipsania (daughter of Marcus Agrippa, and once the wife of Tiberius), which had given the impression that he had ambitions denied to a subject and retained the temerity of his father Asinius Pollio. 1.13. Lucius Arruntius, who followed in a vein not much unlike that of Gallus, gave equal offence, although Tiberius had no standing animosity against him: he was, however, rich, enterprising, greatly gifted, correspondingly popular, and so suspect. For Augustus, in his last conversations, when discussing possible holders of the principate â those who were competent and disinclined, who were inadequate and willing, or who were at once able and desirous â had described Manius Lepidus as capable but disdainful, Asinius Gallus as eager and unfit, Lucius Arruntius as not undeserving and bold enough to venture, should the opportunity arise. The first two names are not disputed; in some versions Arruntius is replaced by Gnaeus Piso: all concerned, apart from Lepidus, were soon entrapped on one charge or another, promoted by Tiberius. Quintus Haterius and Mamercus Scaurus also jarred that suspicious breast â Haterius, by the sentence, "How long, Caesar, will you permit the state to lack a head?" and Scaurus, by remarking that, as he had not used his tribunician power to veto the motion of the consuls, there was room for hope that the prayers of the senate would not be in vain. Haterius he favoured with an immediate invective: against Scaurus his anger was less placable, and he passed him over in silence. Wearied at last by the universal outcry and by individual appeals, he gradually gave ground, up to the point, not of acknowledging that he assumed the sovereignty, but of ceasing to refuse and to be entreated. Haterius, it is well known, on entering the palace to make his excuses, found Tiberius walking, threw himself down at his knees, and was all but dispatched by the guards, because the prince, either from accident or through being hampered by the suppliant's hands, had fallen flat on his face. The danger of a great citizen failed, however, to soften him, until Haterius appealed to Augusta, and was saved by the urgency of her prayers. 1.14. Augusta 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 majority 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. 1.15. The elections were now for the first time transferred from the Campus to the senate: up to that day, while the most important were determined by the will of the sovereign, a few had still been left to the predilections of the Tribes. From the people the withdrawal of the right brought no protest beyond idle murmurs; and the senate, relieved from the necessity of buying or begging votes, was glad enough to embrace the change, Tiberius limiting himself to the recommendation of not more than four candidates, to be appointed without rejection or competition. At the same time, the plebeian tribunes asked leave to exhibit games at their own expense â to be called after the late emperor and added to the calendar as the Augustalia. It was decided, however, that the cost should be borne by the treasury; also, that the tribunes should have the use of the triumphal robe in the Circus; the chariot was not to be permissible. The whole function, before long, was transferred to the praetor who happened to have the jurisdiction in suits between natives and aliens. 2.73. His funeral, devoid of ancestral effigies or procession, was distinguished by eulogies and recollections of his virtues. There were those who, considering his personal appearance, his early age, and the circumstances of his death, â to which they added the proximity of the region where he perished, â compared his decease with that of Alexander the Great: â "Each eminently handsome, of famous lineage, and in years not much exceeding thirty, had fallen among alien races by the treason of their countrymen. But the Roman had borne himself as one gentle to his friends, moderate in his pleasures, content with a single wife and the children of lawful wedlock. Nor was he less a man of the sword; though he lacked the other's temerity, and, when his numerous victories had beaten down the Germanies, was prohibited from making fast their bondage. But had he been the sole arbiter of affairs, of kingly authority and title, he would have overtaken the Greek in military fame with an ease proportioned to his superiority in clemency, self-command, and all other good qualities." The body, before cremation, was exposed in the forum of Antioch, the place destined for the final rites. Whether it bore marks of poisoning was disputable: for the indications were variously read, as pity and preconceived suspicion swayed the spectator to the side of Germanicus, or his predilections to that of Piso. 3.6. All this Tiberius knew; and, to repress the comments of the crowd, he reminded them in a manifesto that "many illustrious Romans had died for their country, but none had been honoured with such a fervour of regret: a compliment highly valued by himself and by all, if only moderation were observed. For the same conduct was not becoming to ordinary families or communities and to leaders of the state and to an imperial people. Mourning and the solace of tears had suited the first throes of their affliction; but now they must recall their minds to fortitude, as once the deified Julius at the loss of his only daughter, and the deified Augustus at the taking of his grandchildren, had thrust aside their anguish. There was no need to show by earlier instances how often the Roman people had borne unshaken the slaughter of armies, the death of generals, the complete annihilation of historic houses. Statesmen were mortal, the state eternal. Let them return, therefore, to their usual occupations and â as the Megalesian Games would soon be exhibited â resume even their pleasures! 3.18. Much 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 have 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 reflect on events recent or remote, the more am I 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. 3.56.1. Tiberius, now that his check to the onrush of informers had earned him a character for moderation, sent a letter to the senate desiring the tribunician power for Drusus. This phrase for the supreme dignity was discovered by Augustus; who was reluctant to take the style of king or dictator, yet desirous of some title indicating his pre-eminence over all other authorities. Later, he selected Marcus Agrippa as his partner in that power, then, on Agrippa's decease, Tiberius Nero; his object being to leave the succession in no doubt. In this way, he considered, he would stifle the misconceived hopes of other aspirants; while, at the same time, he had faith in Nero's self-restraint and in his own greatness. In accordance with this precedent, Tiberius then placed Drusus on the threshold of the empire, although in Germanicus' lifetime he had held his judgment suspended between the pair. â Now, however, after opening his letter with a prayer that Heaven would prospect his counsels to the good of the realm, he devoted a few sentences, free from false embellishments, to the character of the youth:â "He had a wife and three children; and he had reached the age at which, formerly, he himself had been called by the deified Augustus to undertake the same charge. Nor was it in haste, but only after eight years of trial, after mutinies repressed, wars composed, one triumph, and two consulates, that he was now admitted to share a task already familiar. 4.8. Sejanus, therefore, decided to lose no time, and chose a poison so gradual in its inroads as to counterfeit the progress of a natural ailment. It was administered to Drusus by help of the eunuch Lygdus, a fact brought to light eight years later. Tiberius, however, through all the days of his son's illness, either unalarmed or to advertise his firmness of mind, continued to visit the senate, doing so even after his death, while he was still unburied. The consuls were seated on the ordinary benches as a sign of mourning: he reminded them of their dignity and their place. The members broke into tears: he repressed their lamentation, and at the same time revived their spirits in a formal speech:â "He was not, indeed, unaware that he might be criticized for appearing before the eyes of the senate while his grief was still fresh. Mourners in general could hardly support the condolences of their own kindred â hardly tolerate the light of day. Nor were they to be condemned as weaklings; but personally he had sought a manlier consolation by taking the commonwealth to his heart." After deploring the extreme old age of his august mother, the still tender years of his grandsons, and his own declining days, he asked for Germanicus' sons, their sole comfort in the present affliction, to be introduced. The consuls went out, and, after reassuring the boys, brought them in and set them before the emperor."Conscript Fathers," he said, "when these children lost their parent, I gave them to their uncle, and begged him, though he had issue of his own, to use them as if they were blood of his blood â to cherish them, build up their fortunes, form them after his own image and for the welfare of posterity. With Drusus gone, I turn my prayers to you; I conjure you in the sight of Heaven and of your country:â These are the great-grandchildren of Augustus, scions of a glorious ancestry; adopt them, train them, do your part â and do mine! Nero and Drusus, these shall be your father and your mother: it is the penalty of your birth that your good and your evil are the good and the evil of the commonwealth. 4.12. However, while Tiberius on the Rostra was pronouncing the panegyric upon his son, the senate and people, from hypocrisy more than impulse, assumed the attitude and accents of mourning, and exulted in secret that the house of Germanicus was beginning again to flourish. This incipient popularity, together with Agrippina's failure to hide her maternal hopes, hastened its destruction. For Sejanus, when he saw the death of Drusus passing unrevenged upon the murders, unlamented by the nation, grew bolder in crime, and, since his first venture had prospered, began to revolve ways and means of eliminating the children of Germanicus, whose succession was a thing undoubted. To distribute poison among the three was impossible; for their custodians were patterns of fidelity, Agrippina's chastity impenetrable. He proceeded, therefore, to declaim against her contumacy, and, by playing upon Augusta's old animosity and Livia's recent sense of guilt, induced them to carry information to the Caesar that, proud of her fruitfulness and confident in the favour of the populace, she was turning a covetous eye to the throne. In addition, Livia, with the help of skilled calumniators â one of the chosen being Julius Postumus, intimate with her grandmother owing to his adulterous connection with Mutilia Prisca, and admirably suited to her own designs through Prisca's influence over Augusta â kept working for the total estrangement from her grandson's wife of an old woman, by nature anxious to maintain her power. Even Agrippina's nearest friends were suborned to infuriate her haughty temper by their pernicious gossip. |
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