30 1 In the same consulate, Vipsanius Laenas was found guilty of malversation in his province of Sardinia; Cestius Proculus was acquitted on a charge of extortion brought by the Cretans. Clodius Quirinalis, who, as commandant of the crews stationed at Ravenna, had by his debauchery and ferocity tormented Italy, as though Italy were the most abject of the nations, forestalled his sentence by poison. Caninius Rebilus, who in juristic knowledge and extent of fortune ranked with the greatest, escaped the tortures of age and sickness by letting the blood from his arteries; though, from the unmasculine vices for which he was infamous, he had been thought incapable of the firmness of committing suicide. In contrast, Lucius Volusius departed in the fullness of honour, after enjoying a term of ninety-three years of life, a noble fortune virtuously gained, and the unbroken friendship of a succession of emperors.
31 1 In the consulate of Nero, for the second time, and of Lucius Piso, little occurred that deserves remembrance, unless the chronicler is pleased to fill his rolls with panegyrics of the foundations and the beams on which the Caesar reared his vast amphitheatre in the Campus Martius; although, in accordance with the dignity of the Roman people, it has been held fitting to consign great events to the page of history and details such as these to the urban gazette. Still, the colonies of Capua and Nuceria were reinforced by a draft of veterans; the populace was given a gratuity of four hundred sesterces a head; and forty millions were paid into the treasury to keep the public credit stable. Also, the tax of four per cent on the purchase of slaves was remitted more in appearance than in effect: for, as payment was now required from the vendor, the buyers found the amount added as part of the price. The Caesar, too, issued an edict that no magistrate or procurator should, in the province for which he was responsible, exhibit a gladiatorial spectacle, a display of wild beasts, or any other entertainment. Previously, a subject community suffered as much from the spurious liberality as from the rapacity of its governors, screening as they did by corruption the offences they had committed in wantonness.
32 1 There was passed, also, a senatorial decree, punitive at once and precautionary, that, if a master had been assassinated by his own slaves, even those manumitted under his will, but remaining under the same roof, should suffer the penalty among the rest. The consular Lucius Varus, sentenced long before under charges of extortion, was restored to his rank. Pomponia Graecina, a woman of high family, married to Aulus Plautius — whose ovation after the British campaign I recorded earlier — and now arraigned for alien superstition, was left to the jurisdiction of her husband. Following the ancient custom, he held the inquiry, which was to determine the fate and fame of his wife, before a family council, and announced her innocent. Pomponia was a woman destined to long life and to continuous grief: for after Julia, the daughter of Drusus, had been done to death by the treachery of Messalina, she survived for forty years, dressed in perpetual mourning and lost in perpetual sorrow; and a constancy unpunished under the empire of Claudius became later a title to glory.
33 1 The same year saw many on their trial. Publius Celer, one of the number, indicted by the province of Asia, the Caesar could not absolve: he therefore held the case in abeyance until the defendant died of old age; for in his murder (already recorded) of the proconsul Silanus, Celer had to his credit a crime of sufficient magnitude to cover the rest of his delinquencies. A charge had been laid by the Cilicians against Cossutianus Capito, a questionable and repulsive character, who had assumed that the same chartered insolence which he had exhibited in the capital would be permitted in a province. Beaten, however, by the tenacity of the prosecution, he finally threw up his defence, and was sentenced under the law of extortion. On behalf of Eprius Marcellus, from whom the Lycians were claiming reparation, intrigue was so effective that a number of his accusers were penalized by exile, on the ground that they had endangered an innocent man.
34 1 With Nero a third time consul, Valerius Messala entered upon office as his colleague, his great-grandfather, the orator Corvinus, being remembered now by only a few of old men as associated in the same magistracy with the deified Augustus, grandfather of Nero in the third degree. The honour, however, of a noble family received some increment in a yearly subsidy of five hundred thousand sesterces, on which Messala might support an honest poverty. An annual stipend was also assigned by the emperor to Aurelius Cotta and Haterius Antoninus, though they had dissipated their family estates in profligacy. In the beginning of the year, the war between Parthia and Rome for the possession of Armenia, feebly begun, and till now carried on in dilatory fashion, was taken up with energy. For, on the one hand, Vologeses declined to allow his brother Tiridates to be debarred from the kingdom, which he had himself presented to him, or to hold it as the gift of an alien power; and, on the other, Corbulo considered it due to the majesty of the Roman nation to recover the old conquests of Lucullus and Pompey. In addition, the Armenians — whose allegiance was a matter of doubt — were invoking the arms of both powers; though by geographical position and affinity of manners they stood closer to the Parthians, were connected with them by inter-marriage, and, in their ignorance of liberty, were more inclined to accept servitude in that quarter.
35 Still, Corbulo’s main difficulty was rather to counteract the lethargy of his troops than to thwart the perfidy of his enemies. For the legions transferred from Syria showed, after the enervation of a long peace, pronounced reluctance to undergo the duties of a Roman camp. It was a well-known fact that his army included veterans who had never served on a picket or a watch, who viewed the rampart and fosse as novel and curious objects, and who owned neither helmets nor breastplates — polished and prosperous warriors, who had served their time in the towns. Accordingly, after discharging those incapacitated by age or ill-health, he applied for reinforcements. Levies were held in Galatia and Cappadocia, and a legion from Germany was added with its complement of auxiliary horse and foot. The entire army was kept under canvas, notwithstanding a winter of such severity that the ice-covered ground had to be dug up before it would receive tents. As a result of the bitter cold, many of the men had frost-bitten limbs, and a few died on sentinel-duty. The case was observed of a soldier, carrying a bundle of firewood, whose hands had frozen till they adhered to his load and dropped off from the stumps. Corbulo himself, lightly dressed and bare-headed, was continually among his troops, on the march or at their toils, offering his praise to the stalwart, his comfort his weak, his example to all. Then, owing to the rigours of the climate and the service, recalcitrancy and desertion grew common, and the cure was sought in severity. For, contrary to the rule in other armies, mercy did not attend first and second offences, but the man who had left the standards made immediate atonement with his life. That the treatment was salutary and an improvement on pity was proved by experience, the camp showing fewer cases of desertion than those in which pardons were the rule.
36 1 In the interval, until spring matured, Corbulo detained the legions in camp and distributed the auxiliary cohorts at suitable points, with orders not to risk a battle unattacked: the charge of these garrison-posts he entrusted to Paccius Orfitus, who had held the rank of leading centurion. Orfitus, though he had sent a written despatch that the barbarians were off their guard and an opportunity presented itself for a successful action, was ordered to keep within his lines and wait for larger forces. However, on the advent from the neighbouring forts of a few squadrons inexperienced enough to clamour for battle, he violated orders, engaged the enemy, and was routed. His reverse, in turn, so demoralized the troops which ought to have come to his rescue that they beat a hasty retreat to their various stations. The incident tried Corbulo’s temper; and, after a sharp reprimand to Paccius, he, his prefects, and his men, were ordered to bivouac outside the rampart; and in that humiliating position they were kept, until released at the petition of the entire army.
37 1 But Tiridates — now supported, apart from his own vassals, by help from his brother Vologeses — began to harass Armenia, no longer by stealth
but in open war, ravaging the communities which he considered loyal to ourselves, or, if force was brought against him, eluding contact and, as he flew hither and thither, disseminating a terror due more to rumour than to the sword. Corbulo, therefore, frustrated in his persevering quest for battle, and forced to imitate the enemy by carrying his arms from district to district, divided his strength, so that the legates and prefects might deliver a simultaneous attack at widely separate points: at the same time, he directed King Antiochus to march upon the prefectures adjoining him. For Pharasmanes, who had put his son Radamistus to death as a traitor, was now prosecuting his old feud against the Armenians with a readiness meant as evidence of his fidelity to ourselves; while the Moschi, most loyal of tribes to the Roman alliance, were now won over for the first time, and raided the less accessible parts of Armenia. The plans of Tiridates were thus being completely reversed, and he began to send legations, demanding, in his own name and that of Parthia, “why, after his late grant of hostages, and the renewal of a friendship meant to pave the way to further kindnesses, he was being evicted from his long-standing occupancy of Armenia. The only reason why Vologeses himself had as yet made no movement was that they both preferred to proceed by argument rather than force. But, if war was persisted in, the house of Arsaces would not be found wanting in the valour and fortune which had several times already been demonstrated by a Roman disaster.” Corbulo, who had sure information that Vologeses was detained by the revolt of Hyrcania, rejoined by advising Tiridates to approach the emperor with a petition:—”A stable throne and a bloodless reign might fall to his lot, if he would renounce a dim and distant hope in order to pursue one which was within his grasp and preferable.”
38 1 Then, as these messages and counter-messages were achieving nothing towards a definite peace, it was decided to fix the time and place for a personal interview. A guard of a thousand horsemen, Tiridates announced, would be present with himself: as to the forces of all arms, which might attend Corbulo, he made no stipulation, so long as they came divested of cuirasses and helmets, in the guise of peace. Any man whatever — and most of all, a veteran and far-sighted leader — was bound to fathom the barbarian ruse and to reflect that the motive for specifying a restricted number on one side, while offering a larger on the other, was to prepare an act of treachery; since, if unprotected flesh and blood were to be closed to a cavalry trained in the use of the bow, numerical strength would be of no avail. Feigning, however, to understand nothing, he replied that discussions of a national importance would be more fitly conducted in presence of the whole armies; and chose a site, one half of which consisted of gently sloping hills suited for lines of infantry, while the other spread out into a plain admitting the deployment of mounted squadrons. First in the field on the appointed day, Corbulo stationed on the flanks the allied infantry and the auxiliaries furnished by the king; in the centre, the sixth legion, with which he had embodied three thousand men of the third, summoned from another camp during the night: a solitary eagle produced on the spectator the impression of a single legion. The day was already declining when Tiridates took up his position at a distance from which he was more visible than audible: the Roman commander, therefore, without conference, ordered his troops to draw off to their various camps.
39 1 The king, either suspecting a ruse from the different directions in which our men were simultaneously moving, or hoping to cut off the supplies reaching us by way of the Euxine and the town of Trapezus, left in haste. Not only was he powerless, however, to molest the supplies, since they were convoyed over mountains occupied by our posts, but Corbulo, to avoid a protracted and fruitless campaign, and at the same time to reduce the Armenians to the defensive, prepared to demolish their fortresses. The strongest in that satrapy was known as Volandum, and he reserved it for himself: minor holds he left to the legionary commander Cornelius Flaccus and the camp-prefect Insteius Capito. Then, after inspecting the defences and making suitable provision for the assault, he urged the troops “to force from his lair this shifting enemy, disposed neither for peace nor for battle but confessing his perfidy and his cowardice by flight, and to strike equally for glory and for spoil.” He next divided the army into four bodies. One, massed in the tortoise formation, he led to undermine the rampart, another he ordered to advance the ladders to the walls, while a strong party were to discharge brands and spears from the military engines. The slingers of each type were assigned a position from which to hurl their bullets at long range — the object being that, with danger threatening equally on all hands, pressure at one point should not be relieved by reinforcements from another. In the sequel, the army showed so much enthusiasm in action that before a third of the day was elapsed the walls had been cleared of defenders, the barricades in the gateways broken down, the fortifications taken by escalade, and the whole of the adult population put to the sword: all without the loss of one soldier, and with extremely few wounded. The mob of non-combatants was sold by auction; the rest of the spoils became the property of the victors. The legionary commander and the prefect enjoyed equal good fortune; and, with three forts carried by storm in one day, the rest capitulated, from panic, or, in some cases, by the voluntary act of the inhabitants. — All this inspired confidence for an attack upon the national capital of Artaxata. The legions, however, were not taken by the shortest road, since to use the bridge over the Araxes, which runs hard under the city walls, would have brought them within missile range: the crossing was effected at some distance, and by a wider ford.
40 1 But Tiridates, divided between shame and the fear that, if he acquiesced in the siege, he would give the impression of being powerless to prevent it — while, if he intervened, he might entangle himself and his mounted troops on impossible ground — determined finally to display his forces drawn up for battle; then, if a day offered, either to begin an engagement or by a simulated flight to seek the opportunity for some ruse of war. He therefore suddenly attacked the Roman column from all quarters, but without surprising our commander, who had arranged his army as much for battle as for the road. On the right flank marched the third legion, on the left the sixth, with a chosen contingent of the tenth in the centre: the baggage had been brought within the lines, and the rear was guarded by a thousand horse, whose instructions were to resist an attack at close quarters, but not to pursue, if it became a retreat. On the wings were the unmounted archers and the rest of the cavalry force, the left wing extending the further, along the foot of a range of hills, so that, if the enemy forced an entry, he could be met both in front and by an enveloping movement. On the other side, Tiridates launched desultory attacks, never advancing within javelin-cast, but alternately threatening action and simulating panic, in the hope of loosening the ranks and falling on them while separated. Then, as there was no rash break of cohesion, and the only result attained was that a decurion of cavalry, who advanced too boldly and was transfixed with a flight of arrows, had confirmed by his example the obedience of the rest, he drew off when darkness began to approach.
41 1 Pitching his camp on the spot, Corbulo resolved the problem whether he should leave the baggage, move straight upon Artaxata with the legions under cover of night, and invest the city, on which he presumed Tiridates to have retired. Later, when scouts came in with the news that the king’s journey was a lengthy one, and that it was difficult to say whether his destination was Media or Albania, he waited for the dawn, but sent the light-armed troops in advance to draw a cordon round the walls in the interval and begin the attack from a distance. The townsmen, however, opened the gates voluntarily, and surrendered themselves and their property to the Romans. This promptitude ensured their personal safety; Artaxata itself was fired, demolished and razed to the ground; for in view of the extent of the walls it was impossible to hold it without a powerful garrison, and our numbers were not such that they could be divided between keeping a strong retaining force and conducting a campaign; while, if the place was to remain unscathed and unguarded, there was neither utility
nor glory in the bare fact of its capture. In addition, there was a marvel, sent apparently by Heaven: up to Artaxata, the landscape glittered in the sunlight, yet suddenly the area encircled by the fortifications was so completely enveloped in a cloud of darkness and parted from the outside world by lightning flashes that the belief prevailed that it was being consigned to its doom by the hostile action of the gods. — for all this, Nero was hailed as Imperator, and in obedience to a senatorial decree, thanksgivings were held; statues and arches, and successive consulates were voted to the sovereign; and the days on which the victory was achieved, on which it was announced, on which the resolution concerning it was put, were to be included among the national festivals. There were more proposals in the same strain, so utterly extravagant that Gaius Cassius, who had agreed to the other honours, pointed out that, if gratitude, commensurate with the generosity of fortune, had to be shown to the gods, the whole year was too short for their thanksgivings, and for that reason a distinction ought to be made between holy days proper and working days on which men might worship Heaven without suspending the business of earth.
42 1 And now the hero of a chequered and stormy career, who had earned himself a multitude of hatreds, received his condemnation, though not without some detriment to the popularity of Seneca. This was Publius Suillius, the terrible and venal favourite of the Claudian reign, now less cast down by the change in the times than his enemies could wish, and more inclined to be counted a criminal than a suppliant. For the sake, it was believed, of crushing him, there had been revived an earlier decree of the senate, together with the penalties prescribed by the Cincian law against advocates who had pleaded for profit. Suillius himself spared neither complaints nor objurgations, using the freedom natural not only to his fierce temper but to his extreme age, and assailing Seneca as “the embittered enemy of the friends of Claudius, under whom he had suffered his well-earned exile. At the same time, since his only experience was of bookish studies and single-minded youths, he had a jaundiced eye for those who applied a living and unsophisticated eloquence to the defence of their fellow-citizens. He himself had been Germanicus’ quaestor; Seneca, the adulterer under the prince’s roof. To obtain as the voluntary gift of a litigant some reward for honourable service — was that an offence to be judged more harshly than the pollution of the couch of imperial princesses? By what branch of wisdom, by what rules of philosophy, had he acquired, within four years of royal favour, three hundred million sesterces? In Rome his nets were spread for the childless and their testaments: Italy and the provinces were sucked dry by his limitless usury. But he, Suillius, had his hard-earned and modest competence! He would suffer accusation, trial, everything, rather than stoop his old, home-made honour before this upstart success.”
Complete Works of Tacitus (Delphi Classics) (Delphi Ancient Classics Book 24) Page 80