31 1 The reply ran, that he must address his petitions to the senate. Meanwhile, his house was picketed by soldiers; they were tramping in the portico itself, within eyeshot and earshot, when Libo, thus tortured at the very feast which he had arranged to be his last delight on earth, called out for a slayer, clutched at the hands of his slaves, strove to force his sword upon them. They, as they shrank back in confusion, overturned lamp and table together; and he, in what was now for him the darkness of death, struck two blows into his vitals. He collapsed with a moan, and his freedmen ran up: the soldiers had witnessed the bloody scene, and retired.
In the senate, however, the prosecution was carried through with unaltered gravity, and Tiberius declared on oath that, guilty as the defendant might have been, he would have interceded for his life, had he not laid an over-hasty hand upon himself.
32 1 His 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 have recorded as showing how long that evil has been rooted in the State. — 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 — Publius Marcius — was executed by the consuls outside the Esquiline Gate according to ancient usage and at sound of trumpet.
33 1 At the next session, the ex-consul, Quintus Haterius, and Octavius Fronto, a former praetor, spoke at length against the national extravagance; and it was resolved that table-plate should not be manufactured in solid gold, and that Oriental silks should no longer degrade the male sex. Fronto went further, and pressed for a statutory limit to silver, furniture, and domestics: for it was still usual for a member to precede his vote by mooting any point which he considered to be in the public interest. Asinius Gallus opposed:—”With the expansion of the empire, private fortunes had also grown; nor was this new, but consonant with extremely ancient custom. Wealth was one thing with the Fabricii, another with the Scipios; and all was relative to the state. When the state was poor, you had frugality and cottages: when it attained a pitch of splendour such as the present, the individual also throve. In slaves or plate or anything procured for use there was neither excess nor moderation except with reference to the means of the owner. Senators and knights had a special property qualification, not because they differed in kind from their fellow-men, but in order that those who enjoyed precedence in place, rank, and dignity should enjoy it also in the easements that make for mental peace and physical well-being. And justly so — unless your distinguished men, while saddled with more responsibilities and greater dangers, were to be deprived of the relaxations compensating those responsibilities and those dangers.” — With his virtuously phrased confession of vice, Gallus easily carried with him that audience of congenial spirits. Tiberius, too, had added that it was not the time for a censorship, and that, if there was any loosening of the national morality, a reformer would be forthcoming.
34 1 During the debate, Lucius Piso, in a diatribe against the intrigues of the Forum, the corruption of the judges, and the tyranny of the advocates with their perpetual threats of prosecution, announced his retirement — he was migrating from the capital, and would live his life in some sequestered, far-away country nook. At the same time, he started to leave the Curia. Tiberius was perturbed; and, not content with having mollified him by a gentle remonstrance, induced his relatives also to withhold him from departure by their influence or their prayers. — It was not long before the same Piso gave an equally striking proof of the independence of his temper by obtaining a summons against Urgulania, whose friendship with the ex-empress had raised her above the law. Urgulania declined to obey, and, ignoring Piso, drove to the imperial residence: her antagonist, likewise, stood his ground, in spite of Livia’s complaint that his act was an outrage and humiliation to herself. Tiberius, who reflected that it would be no abuse of his position to indulge his mother up to the point of promising to appear at the praetorian court and lend his support to Urgulania, set out from the palace, ordering his guards to follow at a distance. The people, flocking to the sight, watched him while with great composure of countenance he protracted the time and the journey by talking on a variety of topics, until, as his relatives failed to control Piso, Livia gave orders for the sum in demand to be paid. This closed an incident of which Piso had some reason to be proud, while at the same time it added to the emperor’s reputation. For the rest, the influence of Urgulania lay so heavy on the state that, in one case on trial before the senate, she disdained to appear as a witness, and a praetor was sent to examine her at home, although the established custom has always been for the Vestal Virgins, when giving evidence, to be heard in the Forum and courts of justice.
35 1 Of this year’s adjournment I should say nothing, were it not worth while to note the divergent opinions of Gnaeus Piso and Asinius Gallus on the subject. Piso, although the emperor had intimated that he would not be present, regarded it as a further reason why public business should go forward, so that the ability of the senators and knights to carry out their proper duties in the absence of the sovereign might redound to the credit of the state. Forestalled by Piso in this show of independence, Gallus objected that business, not transacted under the immediate eye of their prince, lacked distinction and fell short of the dignity of the Roman people; and for that reason the concourse of Italy and the influx from the provinces ought to be reserved for his presence. The debate was conducted with much vigour on both sides, while Tiberius listened and was mute: the adjournment, however, was carried.
36 1 Another passage of arms arose between Gallus and the Caesar. The former moved that the elections should determine the magistrates for the next five years, and that legionary commanders, serving in that capacity before holding the praetorship, should become praetors designate at once, the emperor nominating twelve candidates for each year. There was no doubt that the proposal went deeper than this, and trespassed on the arcana of sovereignty. Tiberius, however, replied by treating it as an extension of his own prerogative:—”To his moderate temper it was an ungrateful task to mete out so many appointments and disappointments. Even on the annual system, it was difficult to avoid offences, though hope of office in the near future softened the rebuff: how much odium must he incur from those whom he threw aside for above five years! And how could it be foreseen what would be the frame of mind, the family, the fortune of each over so long an interval of time? Men grew arrogant enough even in the twelve months after nomination: what if they had a whole quinquennium in which to play the official? The proposal actually multiplied the number of magistrates by five, and subverted the laws which had fixed the proper periods for exercising the industry of candidates and for soliciting or enjoying preferment.” With this speech, which outwardly had a popular appearance, he kept his hold upon the essentials of sovereignty.
37 1 In addition, he gave monetary help to several senators; so that it was the more surprising when he treated the application of the young noble, Marcus Hortalus, with a superciliousness uncalled for in view of his clearly straitened circumstances. He was a grandson of the orator Hortensius; and the late Augustus, by the grant of a million sesterces, had induced him to marry and raise a family, in order to save his famous house from extinction. With his four sons, then, standing before the threshold of the Curia, he awaited his turn to speak; then, directing his gaze now to the portrait of Hortensius among the orators (the senate was meeting in the Palace), now to that
of Augustus, he opened in the following manner:—”Conscript Fathers, these children whose number and tender age you see for yourselves, became mine not from any wish of my own, but because the emperor so advised, and because, at the same time, my ancestors had earned the right to a posterity. For to me, who in this changed world had been able to inherit nothing and acquire nothing, — not money, nor popularity, nor eloquence, that general birthright of our house, — to me it seemed enough if my slender means were neither a disgrace to myself nor a burden to my neighbour. At the command of the sovereign, I took a wife; and here you behold the stock of so many consuls, the offspring of so many dictators! I say it, not to awaken odium, but to woo compassion. Some day, Caesar, under your happy sway, they will wear whatever honours you have chosen to bestow: in the meantime, rescue from beggary the great-grandsons of Quintus Hortensius, the fosterlings of the deified Augustus!”
38 1 The senate’s inclination to agree incited Tiberius to a more instant opposition. His speech in effect ran thus:—”If all the poor of the earth begin coming here and soliciting money for their children, we shall never satisfy individuals, but we shall exhaust the state. And certainly, if our predecessors ruled that a member, in his turn to speak, might occasionally go beyond the terms of the motion and bring forward a point in the public interest, it was not in order that we should sit here to promote our private concerns and personal fortunes, while rendering the position of the senate and its head equally invidious whether they bestow or withhold their bounty. For this is no petition, but a demand — an unseasonable and unexpected demand, when a member rises in a session convened for other purposes, puts pressure on the kindly feeling of the senate by a catalogue of the ages and number of his children, brings the same compulsion to bear indirectly upon myself, and, so to say, carries the Treasury by storm though, if we drain it by favouritism, we shall have to refill it by crime. The deified Augustus gave you money, Hortalus; but not under pressure, nor with a proviso that it should be given always. Otherwise, if a man is to have nothing to hope or fear from himself, industry will languish, indolence thrive, and we shall have the whole population waiting, without a care in the world, for outside relief, incompetent to help itself, and an incubus to us.” These sentences and the like, though heard with approval by the habitual eulogists of all imperial actions honourable or dishonourable, were by most received with silence or a suppressed murmur. Tiberius felt the chill, and, after a short pause, observed that Hortalus had had his answer; but, if the senate thought it proper, he would present each of his male children with two hundred thousand sesterces. Others expressed their thanks; Hortalus held his peace: either his nerve failed him, or even in these straits of fortune he clung to the traditions of his race. Nor in the future did Tiberius repeat his charity, though the Hortensian house kept sinking deeper into ignominious poverty.
39 1 In the same year, the country, but for prompt measures, would have been plunged into faction and civil war by the hardihood of a solitary serf. Clemens by name, he was the slave of Agrippa Postumus; but there was nothing servile in the imagination which, on the news of Augustus’ death, conceived the idea of making for the isle of Planasia, rescuing Agrippa by fraud or force, and conveying him to the armies of Germany. The tardy movement of a cargo-boat interfered with his venture; and since in the meantime the execution had been carried out, he fell back on a more ambitious and precarious scheme; purloined the funeral ashes; and sailing to Cosa, a promontory on the Etruscan coast, vanished into hiding until his hair and beard should have grown: for in age and general appearance he was not unlike his master. Then, through fitting agents, partners in his secret, a report that Agrippa lived began to circulate; at first, in whispered dialogues, as is the way with forbidden news; soon, in a rumour which ran wherever there were fools with open ears, or malcontents with the usual taste for revolution. He himself took to visiting the provincial towns in the dusk of the day. He was never to be seen in the open, and never overlong in one neighbourhood: rather, as truth acquires strength by publicity and delay, falsehood by haste and incertitudes, he either left his story behind him or arrived in advance of it.
40 1 Meanwhile, it was rumoured through Italy that Agrippa had been saved by the special grace of Heaven: at Rome the rumour was believed. Already huge crowds were greeting his arrival in Ostia, already there were clandestine receptions in the capital itself, when the dilemma began to distract Tiberius: — Should he call in the military to suppress one of his own slaves, or leave this bubble of credulity to vanish with the mere lapse of time? Tossed between shame and alarm, he reflected one moment that nothing was despicable; the next, that not everything was formidable. At last he handed over the affair to Sallustius Crispus, who chose two of his clients (soldiers according to some accounts) and instructed them to approach the pretender in the character of accomplices, offer him money, and promise fidelity whatever the perils. These orders they carried out: then, waiting for a night when the impostor was off his guard, they took an adequate force and haled him, chained and gagged, to the palace. To the inquiry of Tiberius, how he turned himself into Agrippa, he is said to have answered: “As you turned yourself into a Caesar.” He could not be forced to divulge his confederates. Nor did Tiberius hazard a public execution, but gave orders for him to be killed in a secret quarter of the palace, and the body privately removed: and notwithstanding that many of the imperial household, as well as knights and senators, were said to have given him the support of their wealth and the benefit of their advice, no investigation followed.
41 1 The close of the year saw dedicated an arch near the temple of Saturn commemorating the recovery, “under the leadership of Germanicus the auspices of Tiberius,” of the eagles lost with Varus; a temple to Fors Fortuna on the Tiber bank, in the gardens which the dictator Caesar had bequeathed to the nation; a sanctuary to the Julian race, and an effigy to the deity of Augustus, at Bovillae.
In the consulate of Gaius Caelius and Lucius Pomponius, Germanicus Caesar, on the twenty-sixth day of May, celebrated his triumph over the Cherusci, the Chatti, the Angrivarii, and the other tribes lying west of the Elbe. There was a procession of spoils and captives, of mimic mountains, rivers, and battles; and the war, since he had been forbidden to complete it, was assumed to be complete. To the spectators the effect was heightened by the noble figure of the commander himself, and by the five children who loaded his chariot. Yet beneath lay an unspoken fear, as men reflected that to his father Drusus the favour of the multitude had not brought happiness — that Marcellus, his uncle, had been snatched in youth from the ardent affections of the populace — that the loves of the Roman nation were fleeting and unblest!
42 1 For the rest, Tiberius, in the name of Germanicus, made a distribution to the populace of three hundred sesterces a man: as his colleague in the consulship he nominated himself. All this, however, won him no credit for genuine affection, and he decided to remove the youth under a show of honour; some of the pretexts he fabricated, others he accepted as chance offered. For fifty years King Archelaus had been in possession of Cappadocia; to Tiberius a hated man, since he had offered him none of the usual attentions during his stay in Rhodes. The omission was due not to insolence, but to advice from the intimates of Augustus; for, as Gaius Caesar was then in his heyday and had been despatched to settle affairs in the East, the friendship of Tiberius was believed unsafe. When, through the extinction of the Caesarian line, Tiberius attained the empire, he lured Archelaus from Cappadocia by a letter of his mother; who, without dissembling the resentment of her son, offered clemency, if he came to make his petition. Unsuspicious of treachery, or apprehending force, should he be supposed alive to it, he hurried to the capital, was received by an unrelenting sovereign, and shortly afterwards was impeached in the senate. Broken, not by the charges, which were fictitious, but by torturing anxiety, combined with the weariness of age and the fact that to princes even equality — to say nothing of humiliation — is an unfamiliar thing, he ended his days whether deliber
ately or in the course of nature. His kingdom was converted into a province; and the emperor, announcing that its revenues made feasible a reduction of the one per cent sale-tax, fixed it for the future at one half of this amount. — About the same time, the death of the two kings, Antiochus of Commagene and Philopator of Cilicia, disturbed the peace of their countries, where the majority of men desired a Roman governor, and the minority a monarch. The provinces, too, of Syria and Judaea, exhausted by their burdens, were pressing for a diminution of the tribute.
43 1 These circumstances, then, and the events in Armenia, which I mentioned above, were discussed by Tiberius before the senate. “The commotion in the East,” he added, “could only be settled by the wisdom of Germanicus: for his own years were trending to their autumn, and those of Drusus were as yet scarcely mature.” There followed a decree of the Fathers, delegating to Germanicus the provinces beyond the sea, with powers overriding, in all regions he might visit, those of the local governors holding office by allotment or imperial nomination. Tiberius, however, had removed Creticus Silanus from Syria — he was a marriage connection of Germanicus, whose eldest son, Nero, was plighted to his daughter — and had given the appointment to Gnaeus Piso, a man of ungoverned passions and constitutional insubordinacy. For there was a strain of wild arrogance in the blood — a strain derived from his father Piso; who in the Civil War lent strenuous aid against Caesar to the republican party during its resurrection in Africa, then followed the fortunes of Brutus and Cassius, and, on the annulment of his exile, refused to become a suitor for office, until approached with a special request to accept a consulate proffered by Augustus. But, apart from the paternal temper, Piso’s brain was fired by the lineage and wealth of his wife Plancina: to Tiberius he accorded a grudging precedence; upon his children he looked down as far beneath him. Nor did he entertain a doubt that he had been selected for the governorship of Syria in order to repress the ambitions of Germanicus. The belief has been held that he did in fact receive private instructions from Tiberius; and Plancina, beyond question, had advice from the ex-empress, bent with feminine jealousy upon persecuting Agrippina. For the court was split and torn by unspoken preferences for Germanicus or for Drusus. Tiberius leaned to the latter as his own issue and blood of his blood. Germanicus, owing to the estrangement of his uncle, had risen in the esteem of the world; and he had a further advantage in the distinction of his mother’s family, among whom he could point to Mark Antony for a grandfather and to Augustus for a great-uncle. On the other hand, the plain Roman knight, Pomponius Atticus, who was great-grandfather to Drusus, seemed to reflect no credit upon the ancestral effigies of the Claudian house; while both in fecundity and in fair fame Agrippina, the consort of Germanicus, ranked higher than Drusus’ helpmeet, Livia. The brothers, however, maintained a singular unanimity, unshaken by the contentions of their kith and kin.
Complete Works of Tacitus (Delphi Classics) (Delphi Ancient Classics Book 24) Page 53