75 1 For the rest, Tiberius, after personally conferring on Gnaeus Domitius the hand of his grandchild Agrippina, ordered the marriage to be celebrated in Rome. In Domitius, to say nothing of the antiquity of his family, he had chosen a blood-connection of the Caesars: for he could boast Octavia as his grandmother, and, through Octavia, Augustus as his great-uncle.
BOOK V
1 1 In the consulate of Rubellius and Fufius, both surnamed Geminus, Julia Augusta departed this life in extreme old age; by membership of the Claudian family and by adoption into the Livian and Julian houses, associated with the proudest nobility of Rome. Her first marriage and only children were to Tiberius Nero; who, exiled in the Perusian War, returned to the capital on the conclusion of peace between Sextus Pompeius and the triumvirate. In the sequel, Augustus, smitten by her beauty, took her from her husband. Her regrets are doubtful, and his haste was such that, without even allowing an interval for her confinement, he introduced her to his hearth while pregnant. After this, she had no issue; but the union of Agrippina and Germanicus created a blood connection between herself and Augustus, so that her great-grandchildren were shared with the prince. In domestic virtue she was of the old school, though her affability went further than was approved by women of the elder world. An imperious mother, she was an accommodating wife, and an excellent match for the subtleties of her husband and the insincerity of her son. Her funeral was plain, her will long unexecuted: º her eulogy was delivered at the rostra by her great-grandson Gaius Caesar, soon to occupy the throne.
2 1 Tiberius, 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.
3 1 In any case, there followed from now onward a sheer and grinding despotism: for, with Augusta still alive, there had remained a refuge; since deference to his mother was ingrained in Tiberius, nor did Sejanus venture to claim precedence over the authority of a parent. But now, as though freed from the curb, they broke out unrestrained, and a letter denouncing Agrippina and Nero was forwarded to Rome; the popular impression being that it was delivered much earlier and suppressed by the old empress, since it was publicly read not long after her death. Its wording was of studied asperity, but the offences imputed by the sovereign to his grandson were not rebellion under arms, not meditated revolution, but unnatural love and moral depravity. Against his daughter-in-law he dared not fabricate even such a charge, but arraigned her haughty language and refractory spirit; the senate listening in profound alarm and silence, until a few who had nothing to hope from honesty (and public misfortunes are always turned by individuals into stepping-stones to favour) demanded that a motion be put — Cotta Messalinus being foremost with a drastic resolution. But among other leading members, and especially the magistrates, alarm prevailed: for Tiberius, bitter though his invective had been, had left all else in doubt.
4 1 There was in the senate a certain Julius Rusticus, chosen by the Caesar to compile the official journal of its proceedings, and therefore credited with some insight into his thoughts. Under some fatal impulse — for he had never before given an indication of courage — or possibly through a misapplied acuteness which made him blind to dangers imminent and terrified of dangers uncertain, Rusticus insinuated himself among the doubters and warned the consuls not to introduce the question—”A touch,” he insisted, “could turn the scale in the gravest of matters: it was possible that some day the extinction of the house of Germanicus might move the old man’s penitence.” At the same time, the people, carrying effigies of Agrippina and Nero, surrounded the curia, and, cheering for the Caesar, clamoured that the letter was spurious and that it was contrary to the Emperor’s wish that destruction was plotted against his house. On that day, therefore, no tragedy was perpetrated. There were circulated, also, under consular names, fictitious attacks upon Sejanus: for authors in plenty exercised their capricious imagination with all the petulance of anonymity. The result was to fan his anger and to supply him with the material for fresh charges:—”The senate had spurned the sorrow of its emperor, the people had forsworn its allegiance. Already disloyal harangues, disloyal decrees of the Fathers, were listened to and perused: what remained but to take the sword and in the persons whose effigies they had followed as their ensigns to choose their generals and their princes?”
5 1 The Caesar, therefore, after repeating the scandalous allegations against his grandson and daughter-in-law and rebuking the populace by edict, expressed his regret to the senate “that by the dishonesty of a single member the imperial majesty should have been publicly turned to scorn,” but demanded that the entire affair should be left in his own hands. Further deliberation was needless, and they proceeded, not indeed to decree the last penalties (that course was forbidden) but to assert their readiness for vengeance, from which they were debarred by compulsion of the sovereign. . . .
BOOK VI
V.6 . . . Forty-four speeches were delivered on the subject, a few dictated by alarm, the majority by the habit of adulation. . . .
“. . . I considered likely to result in my own disgrace or the odium of Sejanus. The tide has turned, and while he who designated the fallen as colleague and son-in-law pronounces his own exculpation, the rest, who fawned upon him in their degradation, now persecute him in their villainy. Which is the more pitiful thing — to be arraigned for a friendship or to arraign the friend — I do not seek to determine. I shall experiment with the cruelty of none, the mercy of none: a free man, approved by my own conscience, I shall anticipate my danger. I conjure you to preserve my memory not more with sorrow than in joy, and to add me, one name more, to the roll of those who by a notable ending found an escape from public calamity.”
V.7 He now spent part of the day in detaining or dismissing his visitors, as each was inclined to take his leave or to speak with him; and while the gathering was still thronged, while all eyes were fixed on his intrepid countenance, and the belief prevailed that some time remained before the last act, he fell on a sword which he had concealed in the fold of his dress. No accusation or calumny from the Caesar, who had laid many revolting charges against Blaesus, followed him to the grave.
V.8 Next, Publius Vitellius and Pomponius Secundus came under discussion. The first-named was accused by the informers of offering the keys of the treasury, of which he was prefect, together with the army fund, to the cause of revolution: against the latter the offence alleged by the ex-praetor Considius was his friendship with Aelius Gallus, who after the execution of Sejanus had taken shelter in Pomponius’ garden as his surest resource. Their only help in the hour of danger was the firmness of their brothers, who came forward as securities. Later, as adjournment followed adjournment, Vitellius, anxious to be rid alike of hope and fear, asked for a pen-knife on the ground that he wished to write, slightly incised an artery, and in the sickness of his heart made an end of life. On the other hand, Pomponius, a man of great refinement of character and shining talents, bore the reverses of fortune with equanimity and outlived Tiberius.
V.9 It was then determined that the surviving children of Sejanus should pay the penalty, though the anger of the populace was nearly spent and the majority of men had been placated by their earlier executions. They were therefore carried to the dungeon, the boy conscious of the fate in store for him, the girl so completely ignorant that she asked repeatedly what her offence had been and to what place they were dragging her: she wou
ld do wrong no more, and she could be cautioned with the usual childish beating. It is recorded by authors of the period that, as it was considered an unheard-of thing for capital punishment to be inflicted on a virgin, she was violated by the executioner with the halter beside her: they were then strangled, and their young bodies thrown on to the Gemonian Stairs.
V.10 Towards the same time, Asia and Achaia were thrown into panic by a rumour, more vigorous than durable, that Drusus, the son of Germanicus, had been seen in the Cyclades and, not long afterwards, on the continent. There was, in fact, a youth of not dissimilar age, whom a few of the emperor’s freedmen had pretended to recognize. In pursuance of the plot, they acted as his escort, and ignorant recruits began to be drawn in, allured by the prestige of his name, aided by Greek avidity for the new and strange; for the tale they no sooner coined than credited was that he had escaped from watch and ward and was making for his father’s armies with the intention of invading Egypt or Syria. Already a rallying-point for youthful volunteers and popular enthusiasm, he was flushed with actual success and groundless hope, when the affair came to the ear of Poppaeus Sabinus. He was now occupied in Macedonia, but responsible also for Achaia. Determined, therefore, to take the story — true or false — in time, he hastened past the bays of Torone and Thermae, left behind him the Aegean island of Euboea, Piraeus on the Attic sea-board, then the Corinthian coast and the narrow neck of the Isthmus, and made his way by the Ionian Sea into the Roman colony of Nicopolis. There at last he discovered that the adventurer, when questioned more skilfully as to his identity, had declared himself the son of Marcus Silanus; and that, as many of his adherents had slipped away, he had boarded a ship, bound ostensibly for Italy. Sabinus sent a written report to Tiberius, nor have I further information as to the origin or end of the incident.
V.11 At the close of the year, the chronic disagreement between the consuls came to a head. For Trio, always ready to enter upon a quarrel, and versed in the methods of the courts, had indirectly censured Regulus for slowness in crushing the creatures of Sejanus: Regulus, tenacious of his self-control except under deliberate provocation, not merely parried his colleague’s attack but proposed to call him to account for criminal complicity in the plot; and, in spite of entreaties from many members of the senate that they would lay aside an enmity bound to have a fatal issue, they maintained their hostile and threatening attitude till they went out of office.
VI.1 Gnaeus Domitius and Camillus Scribonianus had entered on their consulate, when the Caesar crossed the channel that flows between Capreae and Surrentum, and skirted the shores of Campania, in doubt whether to enter the capital or not, — or, possibly, affecting the intention of arrival because he had decided not to arrive. After landing frequently at neighbouring points and visiting the Gardens by the Tiber, he resorted once more to the rocks and the solitude of the sea, in shame at the sins and lusts whose uncontrollable fires had so inflamed him that, in the kingly style, he polluted with his lecheries the children of free-born parents. Nor were beauty and physical charm his only incitements to lasciviousness, but sometimes a boyish modesty and sometimes a noble lineage. And now were coined the names, hitherto unknown, of sellarii and spintriae, one drawn from the obscenity of a place, one from the versatility of the pathic; while slaves, commissioned to seek and fetch, plied the willing with gratuities, the reluctant with threats, and, if a kinsman or parent refused compliance, resorted to force, abduction, and the slaking of their own desires as if in a captured city.
2 1 But in Rome, at the opening of the year, as though the offences of Livia were crimes but recently detected, not crimes actually punished long before, stern measures were advocated even against her statues and her memory; while the estate of Sejanus was to be withdrawn from the treasury and confiscated to the imperial exchequer, as though a difference existed. The proposals were being supported with great earnestness, in identical or slightly varied terms, by men of the rank of Scipio, Cassius, and Silanus, when suddenly Togonius Gallus thrust his insignificance into the series of great names and was heard with derision. For he begged the emperor to choose a number of senators, twenty of whom, drawn by lot and carrying weapons, were to protect his safety whenever he had entered the curia. He had believed, forsooth, the Caesar’s letter, when he demanded the support of one of the consuls, in order that he might make the journey from Capreae to Rome in safety. None the less, Tiberius, with his habit of blending jest and earnest, expressed his thanks for the good-will of the Fathers:—”But who could be passed over — who chosen? Were the chosen to be always the same, or with now and then a change? Men with their career behind them, or youths? Private individuals or officials? Finally, what sort of figure would his protectors make when assuming their swords on the threshold of the curia? Nor, indeed, did he hold his life to be worth the price, if it had to be shielded by arms.” — This answer was studiously moderate in its references to Togonius, and avoided any suggestion beyond the deletion of the proposal.
3 1 On the other hand, Junius Gallio, who had moved that the Praetorians, on finishing their service, should acquire the right to a seat in the Fourteen Rows, drew down a fierce rebuke:—”What,” demanded Tiberius, as if addressing him to his face, “had he to do with the soldiers, who had no right to take any but their master’s orders or any but their master’s rewards? He had certainly hit upon something not taken into consideration by the deified Augustus! Or was it a minion of Sejanus, fostering disaffection and sedition, in order by a nominal compliment to drive simple souls into a breach of discipline?” Such was the reward of Gallio’s studied adulation: he was ejected at once from the senate; later from Italy; and, as the charge was made that he would carry his exile lightly, since he had chosen the famous and pleasant island of Lesbos, he was dragged back to the capital and detained under the roof of various magistrates. In the same letter, the Caesar, to the intense pleasure of the senate, struck at the former praetor Sextius Paconianus — fearless, mischievous, a searcher into all men’s secrets, and the chosen helper of Sejanus in the laying of his plot against Gaius Caesar. On the announcement followed an explosion of long-cherished hatreds, and the last penalty was all but decreed, when he offered to turn informer.
4 1 However, when he began upon Latinius Latiaris, accuser and accused — impartially detested as they were — furnished the most grateful of spectacles. — Latiaris, as I have recorded, had formerly been the chief agent in entrapping Titius Sabinus; and he was now the first to make atonement.
In the midst of all this, Haterius Agrippa attacked the consuls of the year before:—”Why,” he demanded, “after preferring their charges and counter-charges, were they silent now? The truth was that they were treating their fears and their consciousness of guilt as a bond of alliance; but the senate could not keep silence upon the statements to which it had listened.” Regulus answered that he was awaiting the proper time for his vengeance, and would pursue his case in the presence of the emperor; Trio, that this rivalry between colleagues, together with any words they might have let fall during the feud, would be better blotted from memory. As Agrippa urged the point, the consular Sanquinius Maximus begged the members not to augment the cares of the emperor by raking up fresh vexations: he was competent to prescribe a remedy by himself. To Regulus this brought salvation; to Trio, a respite from doom: Haterius was detested all the more, because, enervated by sleep or wakeful hours of lust, and so lethargic as to have no fear of the emperor however great his cruelty, he yet amid his gluttony and lecheries could plot the ruin of the famous.
5 1 Next Cotta Messalinus, father of every barbarous proposal and therefore the object of inveterate dislike, found himself, on the first available occasion, indicted for hinting repeatedly that the sex of Gaius Caesar was an open question; for dining with the priests on Augusta’s birthday and describing the function as a wake; for adding, when he was complaining of the influence of Manius Lepidus and Lucius Arruntius, his opponents in a money dispute:—”The senate will side with them, but my
pretty little Tiberius with me.” The whole of the charges were proved against him by men of the highest position; and, as they pressed their case, he appealed to the emperor. Before long came a letter; in which Tiberius, by way of defence, harked back to the origin of the friendship between himself and Cotta, commemorated his many services, and desired that mischievously perverted phrases and the frankness of table-talk should not be turned into evidence of guilt.
Complete Works of Tacitus (Delphi Classics) (Delphi Ancient Classics Book 24) Page 67