By the murder of Vardanes Parthian affairs were thrown into confusion, as there was no unanimity with regard to his successor. Many leaned to Gotarzes; some to Phraates’ descendant Meherdates, who had been given in hostage to ourselves. Then Gotarzes carried the day, made himself master of the palace, and by dint of cruelty and debauchery drove the Parthians to send a secret petition to the Roman emperor, pleading that Meherdates might be set free to ascend the throne of his fathers.
11 1 Under the same consulate, eight hundred years from the foundation of Rome, sixty-four from their presentation by Augustus, came a performance of the Secular Games. The calculations employed by the two princes I omit, as they have been sufficiently explained in the books which I have devoted to the reign of Domitian. For he too exhibited Secular Games, and, as the holder of a quindecimviral priesthood and as praetor at the time, I followed them with more than usual care: a fact which I recall not in vanity, but because from of old this responsibility has rested with the Fifteen, and because it was to magistrates in especial that the task fell of discharging the duties connected with the religious ceremonies. During the presence of Claudius at the Circensian Games, when a cavalcade of boys from the great families opened the mimic battle of Troy, among them being the emperor’s son, Britannicus, and Lucius Domitius, — soon to be adopted as heir to the throne and to the designation of Nero, — the livelier applause given by the populace to Domitius was accepted as prophetic. Also there was a common tale that serpents had watched over his infancy like warders: a fable retouched to resemble foreign miracles, since Nero — certainly not given to self-depreciation — used to say that only a single snake had been noticed in his bedroom.
12 1 However, the memory of Germanicus left him with a residue of popularity as the one male offshoot left of the family; and growing pity was felt for his mother Agrippina in view of her persecution by Messalina; who, always her enemy and now more than usually excited, was only withheld from marshalling accusations and accusers by a fresh amour verging upon insanity. For her passion for Gaius Silius, most handsome of Roman youths, had burned so high that she drove his distinguished wife, Junia Silana, from under her husband’s roof, and entered upon the possession of a now unfettered adulterer. Silius was blind neither to the scandal nor to the danger, but, since refusal was certain death, since there was some little hope of avoiding exposure, and since the rewards were high, he consoled himself by closing his eyes to the future and enjoying the present. Messalina, with no attempt at concealment, went incessantly to the house with a crowd of retainers; abroad, she clung to his side; wealth and honours were showered upon him; finally, as though the transference of sovereignty was complete, slaves, freedmen, and furnishings of the palace were to be seen in the house of an adulterer.
13 1 Claudius, meanwhile, ignorant of his own matrimonial fortune and engrossed by his censorial functions, reprimanded in austere edicts the licence shown in theatres by the populace, which had directed its ribaldry upon the consular Publius Pomponius (he composed pieces for the stage), and upon several of rank. He checked by legislation extortion on the part of creditors, prohibiting loans to a minor, repayable at the father’s death: he brought the spring-water down from the Simbruine hills, and introduced it to the capital; and, after making the discovery that not even the Greek alphabet was begun and completed in the same instant, he invented and gave to the world some additional Latin characters.
14 1 The Egyptians, in their animal-pictures, were the first people to represent thought by symbols: these, the earliest documents of human history, are visible to-day, impressed upon stone. They describe themselves also as the inventors of the alphabet: from Egypt, they consider, the Phoenicians, who were predominant at sea, imported the knowledge into Greece, and gained the credit of discovering what they had borrowed. For the tradition runs that it was Cadmus, arriving with a Phoenician fleet, who taught the art to the still uncivilized Greek peoples. Others relate that Cecrops of Athens (or Linus of Thebes) and, in the Trojan era, Palamedes of Argos, invented sixteen letters, the rest being added later by different authors, particularly Simonides. In Italy the Etruscans learned the lesson from the Corinthian Demaratus, the Aborigines from Evander the Arcadian; and in form the Latin characters are identical with those of the earliest Greeks. But, in our case too, the original number was small, and additions were made subsequently: a precedent for Claudius, who appended three more letters, which had their vogue during his reign, then fell into desuetude, but still meet the eye on the official bronzes fixed in the forums and temples.
15 1 He next consulted the senate on the question of founding a college of diviners, so that “the oldest art of Italy should not become extinct through their indolence. Often, in periods of public adversity, they had called in diviners, on whose advice religious ceremonies had been renewed and, for the future, observed with greater correctness; while the Etruscan nobles, voluntarily or at the instance of the Roman senate, had kept up the art and propagated it in certain families. Now that work was done more negligently through the public indifference to all liberal accomplishments, combined with the progress of alien superstitions. For the moment, indeed, all was flourishing; but they must show their gratitude to the favour of Heaven by making sure that the sacred rituals observed in the time of hazard were not forgotten in the day of prosperity.” A senatorial decree was accordingly passed, instructing the pontiffs to consider what points in the discipline of the haruspices needed to be maintained or strengthened.
16 1 In the same year the tribe of the Cherusci applied to Rome for a king, as intestine strife had exterminated their nobility, and of the royal house there survived one member, who was kept at Rome and bore the name of Italicus. On the father’s side he sprang from Arminius’ brother Flavus, his mother being the daughter of the Chattan chieftain Actumerus: he himself was a handsome figure, trained to arms and horsemanship on both the German and the Roman systems. The Caesar, therefore, made him a grant of money, added an escort, and encouraged him to enter on his family honours with a high heart:—”He was the first man born at Rome, and not a hostage but a citizen, to leave for a foreign throne.” At the outset, indeed, his arrival was greeted by the Germans with enthusiasm; and, as he was imbued with no party animosities and showed himself equally anxious to oblige all men, admirers flocked round a prince who practised occasionally the inoffensive foibles of courtesy and restraint, but more frequently the drunkenness and incontinence dear to barbarians. His fame was already beginning to reach, and to transcend, the neighbouring states, when, in jealousy of his power, the men who had flourished upon faction made their way to the adjacent tribes and there took up their testimony:—”The ancient freedom of Germany was being filched away, and Roman power was mounting. Was it so indisputable that there was not a man born upon the same soil as themselves who was competent to fill the princely station, without this offspring of the scout Flavus being exalted above them all? It was idle to invoke the name of Arminius. Had a son of Arminius returned to govern them after being reared in the enemy’s country, they might well have dreaded a youth infected by foreign nurture, servitude, and dress, — in a word, by all things foreign! As for Italicus, if he had the family disposition, no man had waged a more implacable war against country and home than had his father!”
17 1 With these and similar appeals they collected a large force; nor was Italicus’ following inferior:—”He had not,” he reminded them, “taken an unwilling people by storm, but had been summoned because in nobility he stood higher than his rivals: as to his courage, let them test it and see if he proved himself worthy of his uncle Arminius, his grandsire Actumerus! Nor did he blush for his father — that he had never renounced the obligations to Rome which he contracted with German assent. The name of liberty was being used as a dishonest pretext by men who, base-born themselves and a curse to the realm, had no hope but in civil dissensions.” The crowd shouted applause, and in a battle, great as barbarian battles go, victory rested with the king. Then, flushed by
success, he lapsed into arrogance, was expelled, was restored a second time by the Langobard arms, and in his prosperity and in his adversity remained the scourge of the Cheruscan nation.
18 1 During the same period, the Chauci, untroubled by domestic strife and elated by the death of Sanquinius, forestalled the arrival of Corbulo by raiding Lower Germany under the leadership of Gannascus, — a Canninefate by extraction, once an auxiliary in the Roman service, then a deserter, and now with a piratical fleet of light vessels engaged in ravaging principally the coast of Gaul, with the wealth of whose peaceful communities he was well acquainted. On his entry into the province, however, Corbulo, showing extreme care and soon acquiring that great reputation which dates from this campaign, brought up his triremes by the Rhine channel and the rest of his vessels, according to their draughts, by the estuaries and canals. Sinking the hostile boats, he ejected Gannascus, and, after adequately settling affairs on the spot, recalled the legions, as lethargic in their toils and duties as they were ardent in pillage, to the old code with its prohibitions against falling out on march or beginning an action without orders. Outpost and sentry work, duties of the day and the night, were carried out under arms; and it is on record that two soldiers were punished by death, one for digging soil for the rampart without side-arms, the other for doing so with none but his dagger. Exaggerated and possibly false as the tales may be, their starting-point is still the severity of the commander; and the man may safely be taken as strict and, to grave offences, inexorable, who was credited with such rigour in regard to trifles.
19 1 However, the terror he inspired had opposite effects on the soldiers and on the enemy: to us it meant a revival of courage, to the barbarians a weakening of confidence. So, the Frisian clan, hostile or disaffected since the rebellion inaugurated by the defeat of Lucius Apronius, gave hostages and settled in the reservation marked out by Corbulo: who also imposed on them a senate, a magistracy, and laws. To guard against neglect of his orders, he built a fortified post in the district, while despatching agents to persuade the Greater Chauci to surrender, and to attempt the life of Gannascus by ruse. The trap was neither ineffective nor, against a deserter and a violator of his faith, dishonourable; yet the killing of Gannascus unsettled the temper of the Chauci, and Corbulo was sowing the seeds of rebellion. Hence the news, though acceptable to many, was by some regarded as sinister:—”Why was he raising up an enemy? Any losses would fall upon the state: if success attended him, then a distinguished soldier, intolerable as such to a nervous emperor, constituted a threat to peace.” — Claudius, therefore, so firmly prohibited fresh aggression against Germany that he ordered our garrisons to be withdrawn to the west bank of the Rhine.
20 1 Corbulo was already arranging for his encampment on hostile ground, when the despatch was delivered. He was taken by surprise; but although a multitude of consequences poured upon his mind — danger from the emperor, contempt from the barbarians, ridicule on the side of the provincials — he made no remark except: “Happy the Roman generals before my time!” and gave the signal for retreat. To give the troops occupation, however, he ran a canal, •twenty-three miles in length, between the Meuse and Rhine, thus making it possible to evade the hazards of the North Sea. The Caesar, though refusing him a war, conceded him none the less the insignia of a triumph.
Nor was it long before the same distinction was gained by Curtius Rufus, who had opened a mine, in search of silver-lodes, in the district of Mattium. The profits were slender and short-lived, but the legions lost heavily in the work of digging out water-courses and constructing underground workings which would have been difficult enough in the open. Worn out by the strain — and also because similar hardships were being endured in a number of provinces — the men drew up a private letter in the name of the armies, begging the emperor, when he thought of entrusting an army to a general, to assign him triumphal honours in advance.
21 1 As to the origin of Curtius Rufus, whom some have described as the son of a gladiator, I would not promulgate a falsehood and I am ashamed to investigate the truth. On reaching maturity, he joined the train of a quaestor to whom Africa had been allotted, and, in the town of Adrumetum, was loitering by himself in an arcade deserted during the mid-day heat, when a female form of superhuman size rose before him, and a voice was heard to say: “Thou, Rufus, art he that shall come into this province as proconsul.” With such an omen to raise his hopes, he left for the capital, and, thanks to the bounty of his friends backed by his own energy of character, attained the quaestorship, followed — in spite of patrician competitors — by a praetorship due to the imperial recommendation; for Tiberius had covered the disgrace of his birth by the remark: “Curtius Rufus I regard as the creation of himself.” Afterwards, long of life and sullenly cringing to his betters, arrogant to his inferiors, unaccommodating among his equals, he held consular office, the insignia of triumph, and finally Africa; and by dying there fulfilled the destiny foreshadowed.
22 1 At Rome, in the meantime, for no reason then evident or afterwards ascertained, the Roman knight Gnaeus Nonius was discovered with a sword at his side amid the throng at the emperor’s levée. Lacerated by the torturer, he admitted his own guilt, but divulged no accomplices: whether he concealed any is uncertain.
Under the same consuls, Publius Dolabella proposed that an exhibition of gladiators should be given yearly at the expense of the men who obtained a quaestorship. With our ancestors, office had been the prize of merit, and all citizens who had confidence in their qualities could legitimately seek a magistracy; nor was there even a distinction of age, to preclude entrance upon a consulate or dictatorship in early youth. The quaestorship itself was instituted while the kings still reigned, as shown by the renewal of the curiate law by Lucius Brutus; and the power of selection remained with the consuls, until this office, with the rest, passed into the bestowal of the people. The first election, sixty-three years after the expulsion of the Tarquins, was that of Valerius Potitus and Aemilius Mamercus, as finance officials attached to the army in the field. Then, as their responsibilities grew, two were added to take duty at Rome; and before long, with Italy now contributory and revenues accruing from the provinces, the number was again doubled. Later still, by a law of Sulla, twenty were appointed with a view to supplementing the senate, to the members of which he had transferred the jurisdiction in the criminal courts; and, even when that jurisdiction had been reassumed by the knights, the quaestorship was still granted without fee, in accordance with the dignity of the candidates or by the indulgence of the electors, until by the proposition of Dolabella it was virtually put up to auction.
23 1 In the consulate of Aulus Vitellius and Lucius Vipsanius, the question of completing the numbers of the senate was under consideration, and the leading citizens of Gallia Comata, as it is termed, who had long before obtained federate rights and Roman citizenship, were claiming the privilege of holding magistracies in the capital. Comments on the subject were numerous and diverse; and in the imperial council the debate was conducted with animation on both sides:—”Italy,” it was asserted, “was not yet so moribund that she was unable to supply a deliberative body to her own capital. The time had been when a Roman-born senate was enough for nations whose blood was akin to their own; and they were not ashamed of the old republic. Why, even to-day men quoted the patterns of virtue and of glory which, under the old system, the Roman character had given to the world! Was it too little that Venetians and Insubrians had taken the curia by storm, unless they brought in an army of aliens to give it the look of a taken town? What honours would be left to the relics of their nobility or the poor senator who came from Latium? All would be submerged by those opulent persons whose grandfathers and great-grandfathers, in command of hostile tribes, had smitten our armies by steel and the strong hand, and had besieged the deified Julius at Alesia. But those were recent events! What if there should arise the memory of the men who essayed to pluck down the spoils, sanctified to Heaven, from the Capitol and citadel of Ro
me? Leave them by all means to enjoy the title of citizens: but the insignia of the Fathers, the glories of the magistracies, — these they must not vulgarize!”
24 1 Unconvinced by these and similar arguments, the emperor not only stated his objections there and then, but, after convening the senate, addressed it as follows:—”In my own ancestors, the eldest of whom, Clausus, a Sabine by extraction, was made simultaneously a citizen and the head of a patrician house, I find encouragement to employ the same policy in my administration, by transferring hither all true excellence, let it be found where it will. For I am not unaware that the Julii came to us from Alba, the Coruncanii from Camerium, the Porcii from Tusculum; that — not to scrutinize antiquity — members were drafted into the senate from Etruria, from Lucania, from the whole of Italy; and that finally Italy itself was extended to the Alps, in order that not individuals merely but countries and nationalities should form one body under the name of Romans. The day of stable peace at home and victory abroad came when the districts beyond the Po were admitted to citizenship, and, availing ourselves of the fact that our legions were settled throughout the globe, we added to them the stoutest of the provincials, and succoured a weary empire. Is it regretted that the Balbi crossed over from Spain and families equally distinguished from Narbonese Gaul? Their descendants remain; nor do they yield to ourselves in love for this native land of theirs. What else proved fatal to Lacedaemon and Athens, in spite of their power in arms, but their policy of holding the conquered aloof as alien-born? But the sagacity of our own founder Romulus was such that several times he fought and naturalized a people in the course of the same day! Strangers have been kings over us: the conferment of magistracies on the sons of freedmen is not the novelty which it is commonly and mistakenly thought, but a frequent practice of the old commonwealth.—’But we fought with the Senones.’ — Then, presumably, the Volscians and Aequians never drew up a line of battle against us.—’We were taken by the Gauls.’ — But we also gave hostages to the Tuscans and underwent the yoke of the Samnites. — And yet, if you survey the whole of our wars, not one was finished within a shorter period than that against the Gauls: thenceforward there has been a continuous and loyal peace. Now that customs, culture, and the ties of marriage have blended them with ourselves, let them bring among us their gold and their riches instead of retaining them beyond the pale! All, Conscript Fathers, that is now believed supremely old has been new: plebeian magistrates followed the patrician; Latin, the plebeian; magistrates from the other races of Italy, the Latin. Our innovation, too, will be parcel of the past, and what to-day we defend by precedents will rank among precedents.”
Complete Works of Tacitus (Delphi Classics) (Delphi Ancient Classics Book 24) Page 72