Complete Works of Tacitus (Delphi Classics) (Delphi Ancient Classics Book 24)

by Publius Cornelius Tacitus

  19 1 Silius had a wife, Sosia Galla, who by her affection for Agrippina had incurred the detestation of the emperor. On these two, it was decided, the blow should fall: Sabinus could be postponed awhile. Varro, the consul, was unleashed, and, under the pretext of continuing his father’s feud, gratified the animosities of Sejanus at the price of his own degradation. The defendant asked a short adjournment till the prosecutor could lay down his consulate, but the Caesar opposed:—”It was quite usual for magistrates to take legal action against private citizens, nor must there be any infraction of the prerogatives of the consul, on whose vigilance it depended ‘that the commonwealth should take no harm.’ “ It was a characteristic of Tiberius to shroud his latest discoveries in crime under the phrases of an older world. With scrupulous gravity, therefore, as though Silius were on trial before the law, as though Varro were a consul or that state of things a commonwealth, the Fathers were convened. With the defendant either holding his peace, or, if he essayed a defence, making no secret of the person under whose resentment he was sinking, the indictment was presented: Sacrovir long screened through complicity in his revolt, a victory besmirched by rapine, a wife the partner of his sins. Nor was there any doubt that, on the charges of extortion, the pair were inextricably involved; but the entire case was handled as an impeachment for treason, and Silius anticipated the impending condemnation by a voluntary end.

  20 1 Nevertheless, no mercy was shown to his estate: not that any sums were to be refunded to the provincial tribute-payers, none of whom lodged a claim; but the bounty of Augustus was summarily deducted and the claims of the imperial exchequer calculated item by item: the first instance in which Tiberius had given so sharp an eye to property other than his own. Sosia was driven into exile on the motion of Asinius Gallus, who had proposed to confiscate one half of her estate, while leaving the other to her children. A counter-motion by Manius Lepidus assigned a quarter, which was legally necessary, to the accusers, and the residue to the family.

  This Lepidus, I gather, was, for his period, a man of principle and intelligence: for the number of motions to which he gave a more equitable turn, in opposition to the cringing brutality of others, is very considerable. Nor yet did he lack discretion, since with Tiberius he stood uniformly high in influence and in favour: a circumstance which compels me to doubt whether, like all things else, the sympathies and antipathies of princes are governed in their incidence by fate and the star of our nativity, or whether our purposes count and we are free, between the extremes of bluff contumacy and repellent servility, to walk a straight road, clear of intrigues and perils. On the other side, Messalinus Cotta, with an equally distinguished lineage but a contrasted character, pressed for a senatorial decree ruling that magistrates, even if personally innocent and not aware of guilt in others, should be penalized for the misdeeds of their wives in the provinces precisely as for their own.

  21 1 Next there was treated the case of Calpurnius Piso, a man of birth and courage: it was he who, as I have stated already, had exclaimed to the senate that he would retire from the capital as a protest against the cabals of the informers, and, contemptuous of the influence of Augusta, had dared to bring Urgulania before a court and to summon her from under the imperial roof. For the moment, Tiberius took the incidents in good part; but in his heart, brooding over its grounds for wrath, though the first transport of resentment might have died down, memory lived. It was Quintus Granius, who charged Piso with holding private conversations derogatory to majesty; and added that he kept poison at his house and wore a sword when entering the curia. The last count was allowed to drop as too atrocious to be true; on the others, which were freely accumulated, he was entered for trial, and was only saved from undergoing it by a well-timed death. The case, also, of the exiled Cassius Severus was brought up in the senate. Of sordid origin and mischievous life, but a powerful orator, he had made enemies on such a scale that by a verdict of the senate under oath he was relegated to Crete. There, by continuing his methods, he drew upon himself so many animosities, new or old, that he was now stripped of his estate, interdicted from fire and water, and sent to linger out his days on the rock of Seriphos.

  22 1 About this time, the praetor Plautius Silvanus, for reasons not ascertained, flung his wife Apronia out of the window, and, when brought before the emperor by his father-in-law, Lucius Apronius, gave an incoherent reply to the effect that he had himself been fast asleep and was therefore ignorant of the facts; his wife, he thought, must have committed suicide. Without any hesitation, Tiberius went straight to the house and examined the bedroom, in which traces were visible of resistance offered and force employed. He referred the case to the senate, and a judicial committee had been formed, when Silvanus’ grandmother Urgulania sent her descendant a dagger. In view of Augusta’s friendship with Urgulania, the action was considered as equivalent to a hint from the emperor: the accused, after a fruitless attempt with the weapon, arranged for his arteries to be opened. Shortly afterwards, his first wife Numantina, charged with procuring the insanity of her husband by spells and philtres, was adjudged innocent.

  23 1 This year at last freed the Roman nation from the long-drawn war with the Numidian Tacfarinas. For earlier commanders, once they considered their exploits sufficient for a grant of triumphal decorations, usually left the enemy in peace; and already three laurelled statues adorned the capital, while Tacfarinas was still harrying Africa, reinforced by contingents of Moors, who, during the heedless youth of Juba’s son Ptolemy, had sought in war a change from royal freedmen and servile despotism. The Garamantian king acted as the receiver of his booty and the partner of his forays, not to the extent of taking the field with an army, but by despatching light-armed troops, whose numbers report magnified in proportion to the distance; and from the province itself every man of broken fortunes or turbulent character rushed to his standard with an alacrity all the greater because, after the successes of Blaesus, the Caesar, as though no enemies were left in Africa, had ordered the ninth legion back, nor had Publius Dolabella, proconsul for the year and more apprehensive of the emperor’s orders than of the chances of war, ventured to detain it.

  24 1 Accordingly, after launching a report that other nations as well were engaged on the dismemberment of the Roman Empire, which on that account was step by step evacuating Africa, while the garrison remaining might be cut off by the combined onslaught of all who preferred liberty to bondage, Tacfarinas increased his strength, established a camp, and invested the town of Thubuscum. Dolabella, on the other hand, mustered every available man, and, through the terrors of the Roman name and the inability of the Numidians to face embattled infantry, raised the siege at his first advance and fortified the various strategic points: at the same time he brought to the block the Musulamian chieftains who were contemplating rebellion. Then, as several expeditions against Tacfarinas had shown that a nomadic enemy was not to be brought to bay by a single incursion carried out by heavy-armed troops, he summoned King Ptolemy with his countrymen, and arranged four columns under the command of legates or tribunes; companies of raiders were led by picked Moors; he himself was present as adviser to all the divisions.

  25 1 Before long, word came in that the Numidians had pitched their tents and were lying close by a half-ruined fort called Auzea, to which they had themselves set fire some time ago: they felt confident of their ground, as it was encircled by enormous woods. On this, the light cohorts and mounted squadrons, without being informed of their destination, were hurried off at full speed. Day was just breaking when with a fierce yell and a blast of trumpets they came on the half-awakened barbarians, while the Numidian horses were still shackled or straying through distant pasture-grounds. On the Roman side, the infantry were in massed formation, the cavalry disposed in troops, every provision made for battle: the enemy, in contrast, were aware of nothing, without weapons, without order, without a plan, dragged to slaughter or to captivity like cattle. The soldiers, embittered by the memory of hardships undergone and of batt
le so often hoped for against this elusive foe, took every man his fill of revenge and blood. Word was passed round the maniples that all were to make for Tacfarinas, a familiar figure after so many engagements: there would be no rest from war till the arch-rebel was slain. He, with his guards cut down around him, his son already in chains, and Romans streaming up on all hands, rushed on the spears and escaped captivity by a death which was not unavenged. This marked the close of hostilities.

  26 1 The request of Dolabella for triumphal distinctions was rejected by Tiberius: a tribute to Sejanus, whose uncle Blaesus might otherwise have found his glories growing dim. But the step brought no added fame to Blaesus, and the denial of the honour heightened the reputation of Dolabella, who, with a weaker army, had credited himself with prisoners of note, a general slain, and a war concluded. He was attended also — a rare spectacle in the capital — by a number of Garamantian deputies, whom the tribesmen, awed by the fate of Tacfarinas and conscious of their delinquencies, had sent to offer satisfaction to the Roman people. Then, as the campaign had demonstrated Ptolemy’s good-will, an old-fashioned distinction was revived, and a member of the senate was despatched to present him with the traditional bounty of the Fathers, an ivory sceptre with the embroidered robe, and to greet him by the style of king, ally, and friend.

  27 1 During the same summer, the seeds of a slave war, which had begun to stir in Italy, were rendered harmless by an accident. The instigator of revolt was Titus Curtisius, a former private in a praetorian cohort. First at clandestine meetings in the neighbourhood of Brundisium and the adjacent towns, then by openly posted manifestoes, he kept summoning the fierce country slaves of the outlying ranches to strike for freedom, when almost providentially three biremes for the protection of sea-borne traffic put in to port. As in addition the quaestor Cutius Lupus, who in accordance with an old custom had been assigned the “grazing-tracks” for his province, happened to be in the district, he drew up a force of marines and shattered the conspiracy at the very outset. The tribune Staius, hurriedly sent by the Caesar with a strong force, dragged the leader and the bolder of his subordinates to Rome, where tremors were already felt at the size of the slave-establishments, which were assuming huge dimensions while the free-born populace dwindled day by day.

  28 1 In the same consulate, as an appalling example of the miseries and heartlessness of the age, there appeared before the senate a father as defendant and a son as prosecutor, each bearing the name of Vibius Serenus. The father, haled back from exile, a mass of filth and rags, and now in irons, stood pitted against the invective of his son: the youth, a highly elegant figure with a cheerful countenance, informer at once and witness, told his tale of treason plotted against the sovereign and missionaries of rebellion sent over to Gaul; adding that the funds had been supplied by the ex-praetor, Caecilius Cornutus. Cornutus, as he was weary of his anxieties and risk was considered tantamount to ruin, lost no time in making away with himself. The prisoner on the other hand, with a spirit totally unbroken, faced his son, clanked his chains, and called upon the avenging gods:—”For himself, let them give him back his exile, where he could live remote from these fashions; as for his son, let retribution attend him in its own time!” He insisted that Cornutus was guiltless, the victim of an unfounded panic, and that the fact would be patent if other names were divulged: for certainly he himself had not contemplated murder of the emperor and revolution with a solitary ally!

  29 1 The accuser then named Gnaeus Lentulus and Seius Tubero, greatly to the discomfiture of the Caesar, who found two most prominent nobles, close friends of his own, the former far advanced in years, the latter in failing health, charged with armed rebellion and conspiracy against the peace of the realm. These, however, were at once exempted: against the father resort was had to examination of his slaves under torture — an examination which proved adverse to the prosecutor; who, maddened by his crime and terrified also by the comments of the multitude, threatening him with the dungeon and the rock or the penalties of parricide, left Rome. He was dragged back from Ravenna and forced to proceed with his accusation, Tiberius making no effort to disguise his old rancour against the exile. For, after the condemnation of Libo, Serenus had written to the emperor, complaining that his zeal alone had gone without reward, and concluding with certain expressions too defiant to be safely addressed to that proud and lightly offended ear. To this grievance the Caesar harked back after eight years; finding in the interval materials for a variety of charges, even though, through the obduracy of the slaves, the torture had disappointed expectations.

  30 1 When members then expressed the view that Serenus should be punished according to ancestral custom, he sought to mitigate the odium by interposing his veto. A motion of Asinius Gallus, that the prisoner should be confined in Gyarus or Donusa, he also negatived: both islands, he reminded him, were waterless, and, if you granted a man his life, you must also allow him the means of living. Serenus was, therefore, shipped back to Amorgus. And since Cornutus had fallen by his own hand, a proposal was discussed that the accuser’s reward should be forfeited whenever the defendant in a charge of treason had resorted to suicide before the completion of the trial. The resolution was on the point of being adopted, when the Caesar, with considerable asperity and unusual frankness, took the side of the accusers, complaining that the laws would be inoperative, the country on the edge of an abyss: they had better demolish the constitution than remove its custodians. Thus the informers, a breed invented for the national ruin and never adequately curbed even by penalties, were now lured into the field with rewards.

  31 1 The round of tragedies was broken by a relatively cheerful interlude when the emperor spared Gaius Cominius, a Roman knight convicted of a poetical lampoon upon himself, as a concession to the prayers of his brother, a member of the senate. The fact heightened the general wonder that, cognizant as he was of better things and of the fame that attended mercy, he should still prefer the darker road. For neither did he err by thoughtlessness; nor, indeed, is it difficult to divine when the acts of emperors are applauded with sincerity and when with feigned enthusiasm. Moreover, he himself, otherwise an artificial speaker whose every word had apparently to struggle for utterance, spoke out with more fluency and promptness whenever he spoke in charity. On the other hand, when Publius Suillius, an old quaestor of Germanicus, was about to escape with banishment from Italy after being convicted of judicial corruption, he moved for his deportation to an island, with so much earnestness as to make a declaration on oath that the change was demanded by national interests. His intervention, severely criticized at the time, redounded before long to his credit: for Suillius returned, and the succeeding generation viewed him in the plenitude of power, the venal favourite of Claudius, exploiting the imperial friendship long profitably, never well. The same penalty was invoked upon Firmius Catus, a member of the senate, for laying a false charge of treason against his sister. Catus, as I have said, had laid the trap for Libo and afterwards destroyed him by his evidence. In the recollection of that service, Tiberius, though producing other reasons, now procured a remission of his banishment: to his ejection from the senate he raised no hindrance.

  32 1 I am not unaware that very many of the events I have described, and shall describe, may perhaps seem little things, trifles too slight for record; but no parallel can be drawn between these chronicles of mine and the work of the men who composed the ancient history of the Roman people. Gigantic wars, cities stormed, routed and captive kings, or, when they turned by choice to domestic affairs, the feuds of consul and tribune, land-laws and cornº-laws, the duel of nobles and commons — such were the themes on which they dwelt, or digressed, at will. Mine is an inglorious labour in a narrow field: for this was an age of peace unbroken or half-heartedly challenged, of tragedy in the capital, of a prince careless to extend the empire. Yet it may be not unprofitable to look beneath the surface of those incidents, trivial at the first inspection, which so often set in motion the great events of history. />
  33 1 For every nation or city is governed by the people, or by the nobility, or by individuals: a constitution selected and blended from these types is easier to commend than to create; or, if created, its tenure of life is brief. Accordingly, as in the period of alternate plebeian dominance and patrician ascendancy it was imperative, in one case, to study the character of the masses and the methods of controlling them; while, in the other, those who had acquired the most exact knowledge of the temper of the senate and the aristocracy were accounted shrewd in their generation and wise; so to-day, when the situation has been transformed and the Roman world is little else than a monarchy, the collection and the chronicling of these details may yet serve an end: for few men distinguish right and wrong, the expedient and the disastrous, by native intelligence; the majority are schooled by the experience of others. But while my themes have their utility, they offer the minimum of pleasure. Descriptions of countries, the vicissitudes of battles, commanders dying on the field of honour, such are the episodes that arrest and renew the interest of the reader: for myself, I present a series of savage mandates, of perpetual accusations, of traitorous friendships, of ruined innocents, of various causes and identical results — everywhere monotony of subject, and satiety. Again, the ancient author has few detractors, and it matters to none whether you praise the Carthaginian or the Roman arms with the livelier enthusiasm. But of many, who underwent either the legal penalty or a form of degradation in the principate of Tiberius, the descendants remain; and, assuming the actual families to be now extinct, you will still find those who, from a likeness of character, read the ill deeds of others as an innuendo against themselves. Even glory and virtue create their enemies — they arraign their opposites by too close a contrast. But I return to my subject.