Complete Works of Tacitus (Delphi Classics) (Delphi Ancient Classics Book 24)
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59 1 All this, however, left Plautus unmoved. Either, exiled and unarmed, he foresaw no help; or he had wearied of hope and its incertitudes; or possibly the cause was affection for his wife and children, to whom he supposed the emperor would prove more placable if no alarms had disturbed his equanimity. There are those who state that fresh couriers had arrived from his father-in-law with news that no drastic measures were pending, while his teachers of philosophy — Coeranus and Musonius, Greek and Tuscan respectively by origin — had advised him to have the courage to await death, in preference to an uncertain and harassed life. At all events, he was found in the early afternoon, stripped for bodily exercise. In that condition he was cut down by the centurion, under the eyes of the eunuch Pelago, placed by Nero in charge of the centurion and his detachment like a king’s minion over his satellites. The head of the victim was carried back to Rome; and at sight of it the prince exclaimed (I shall give the imperial words exactly):—”Nero,
60 1 On the reception, therefore, of the senatorial decree, since it was evident that his crimes each and all passed muster as eminent virtues, he ejected Octavia on the pretext of sterility, then consummated his union with Poppaea. Long the paramour of Nero, and dominating him first as an adulterer, then as a husband, she incited one of the domestics of Octavia to accuse her of a love affair with a slave: the part of defendant was assigned to a person named Eucaerus; a native of Alexandria, and an expert performer on the flute. Her waiting-maids, in pursuance of the scheme, were examined under torture; and, although a few were forced by their agony into making groundless admissions, the greater number steadfastly maintained the honour of their mistress, one of them retorting under pressure from Tigellinus that Octavia’s body was chaster than his own mouth. She was removed, however, first under colour of a civil divorce, and received — two ominous gifts — the mansion of Burrus and the estates of Plautus. A little later, she was banished to Campania and put under military supervision. The measure led to general and undisguised protests from the common people, endowed with less discretion than their superiors, and — thanks to their humble station — faced by fewer perils. Then came a rumour that Nero had repented of his outrage and recalled Octavia to his side.
61 1 At once exulting crowds scaled the Capitol, and Heaven at last found itself blessed. They hurled down the effigies of Poppaea, they carried the statues of Octavia shoulder-high, strewed them with flowers, upraised them in the forum and the temples. Even the emperor’s praises were essayed with vociferous loyalty. Already they were filling the Palace itself with their numbers and their cheers, when bands of soldiers emerged and scattered them in disorder with whipcuts and levelled weapons. All the changes effected by the outbreak were rectified, and the honours of Poppaea were reinstated. She herself, always cruel in her hatreds, and now rendered more so by her fear that either the violence of the multitude might break out in a fiercer storm or Nero follow the trend of popular feeling, threw herself at his knees:—”Her affairs,” she said, “were not in a position in which she could fight for her marriage, though it was dearer to her than life: that life itself had been brought to the verge of destruction by those retainers and slaves of Octavia who had conferred on themselves the name of the people and dared in peace what would scarcely happen in war. Those arms had been lifted against the sovereign; only a leader had been lacking, and, once the movement had begun, a leader was easily come by, — the one thing necessary was an excursion from Campania, a personal visit to the capital by her whose distant nod evoked the storm! And apart from this, what was Poppaea’s transgression? in what had she offended anyone? Or was the reason that she was on the point of giving an authentic heir to the hearth of the Caesars? Did the Roman nation prefer the progeny of an Egyptian flute-player to be introduced to the imperial throne? — In brief, if policy so demanded, then as an act of grace, but not of compulsion, let him send for the lady who owned him — or else take thought for his security! A deserved castigation and lenient remedies had allayed the first commotion; but let the mob once lose hope of seeing Octavia Nero’s wife and they would soon provide her with a husband!”
62 1 Her varied arguments, with their calculated appeal to fear and to anger, at once terrified and incensed the listener. But suspicion resting on a slave had little force; and it had been nullified by the examinations of the waiting-women. It was therefore decided to procure a confession from some person to whom there could also be imputed a false charge of contemplated revolution. Anicetus, perpetrator of the matricide, was thought suitable. Prefect, as I have mentioned, of the squadron at Misenum, he had, after the commission of his murder, experienced some trivial favour, afterwards replaced by a more serious dislike, since the instruments of crime are counted a visible reproach. He was summoned accordingly, and the Caesar reminded him of his earlier service:—”Singly he had ensured the emperor’s safety in opposition to a treacherous mother. The opportunity for a not less grateful action was at hand, if he could remove a malignant wife. Not even force or cold steel was necessary: he had simply to commit adultery with Octavia.” He promised him a reward, secret, it might be, at the outset, but large; also, a pleasant place of retirement: should he refuse he held out the threat of death. Anicetus, with inbred perversity and an ease communicated by former crimes, invented and confessed more than had been ordered, in the presence of friends convened by the emperor to play the part of a privy council. He was then banished to Sardinia, where he supported a not impecunious exile, and died by a natural death.
63 1 Nero, for his part, announced by edict that Octavia had seduced the prefect in the hope of gaining the co-operation of his squadron; that, conscious of her infidelities, she had procured abortion, — he failed to remember his recent charge of sterility! — and that these were facts ascertained by himself. He then confined her in the island of Pandateria. No woman in exile ever presented a more pitiful spectacle to the eye of the beholder. There were yet some who recollected the banishment of Agrippina by Tiberius; the more recent memory of Julia’s expulsion by Claudius still dwelt in the minds of men. But to these the maturity of life had come; they had seen some little happiness, and could soften the cruelty of the present by recalling the brighter fortunes of the past. To Octavia, first of all, her day of marriage had been tantamount to a day of burial, entering as she did a house where mourning alone awaited her — where her father was snatched away by poison, to be followed at once by her brother. Then had come the maid, more potent than her mistress, and Poppaea turning bride only to destroy a wife; last of all, an accusation more bitter than any doom.
64 1 And so this girl, in the twentieth year of her age, surrounded by centurions and soldiers, cut off already from life by foreknowledge of her fate, still lacked the peace of death. There followed an interval of a few days; then she was ordered to die — though she protested she was husbandless now, a sister and nothing more, evoking the Germanici whose blood they shared, and, in the last resort, the name of Agrippina, in whose lifetime she had supported a wifehood, unhappy enough but still not fatal. She was tied fast with cords, and the veins were opened in each limb: then, as the blood, arrested by terror, ebbed too slowly, she was suffocated in the bath heated to an extreme temperature. As a further and more hideous cruelty, the head was amputated and carried to Rome, where it was viewed by Poppaea. For all these things off
erings were decreed to the temples — how often must those words be said? Let all who make their acquaintance with the history of that period in my narrative or that of others take so much for granted: as often as the emperor ordered an exile or a murder, so often was a thanksgiving addressed to Heaven; and what formerly betokened prosperity was now a symbol of public calamity. Nevertheless, where a senatorial decree achieved a novelty in adulation or a last word in self-abasement, I shall not pass it by in silence.
65 1 In the same year, he was credited with the poisoning of two of his principal freedmen: Doryphorus, as an opponent of the marriage with Poppaea; Pallas, because he kept his vast riches to himself by a too protracted old age. — Romanus had attacked Seneca, in private informations, as the associate of Gnaeus Piso, but was himself more surely struck down by Seneca on the same charge. The result was the alarm of Piso and the birth of an elaborate and luckless conspiracy against Nero.
BOOK XV
1 1 Meanwhile, the Parthian king Vologeses — apprized of Corbulo’s feats and the elevation of the alien Tigranes to the throne of Armenia, and anxious furthermore to take steps to avenge the slur cast upon the majesty of the Arsacian line by the expulsion of his brother Tiridates — was drawn, on the other hand, to different lines of thought by considerations of Roman power and by respect for a long-standing treaty. For he was by nature prone to temporize, and he was hampered by a revolt of the powerful Hyrcanian tribe and by the numerous campaigns which it involved. He was still in doubt, when news of a fresh indignity stung him into action: for Tigranes, emerging from Armenia, had ravaged the bordering country of Adiabene too widely and too long for a plundering foray, and the grandees of the nations were becoming restive; complaining that they had sunk to a point of humiliation where they could be harried, not even by a Roman general, but by the temerity of a hostage whom for years the enemy had counted among his chattels. Their resentment was inflamed by Monobazus, the ruling prince of Adiabene:—”What protection,” he kept demanding, “was he to seek? or from what quarter? Armenia had already been ceded; the adjacent country was following; and, if Parthia refused protection, then the Roman yoke pressed more lightly upon a surrendered than upon a conquered nation!” Tiridates too, dethroned and exiled, carried a weight increased by his silence or his restrained protests:—”Great empires were not conserved by inaction — they needed the conflict of men and arms. With princes might was the only right. To retain its own possessions was the virtue of a private family: in contending for those of others lay the glory of a king.”
2 1 Vologeses, accordingly, moved by all this, convened a council, installed Tiridates next to himself, and opened thus:—”This prince, the issue of the same father as myself, having renounced to me the supreme title upon grounds of age, I placed him in possession of Armenia, the recognized third degree of power; for Media had already fallen to Pacorus. And it seemed to me that, in contrast with the old brotherly hatreds and jealousies, I had by fair means brought order to our domestic hearth. The Romans forbid; and the peace, which they have never themselves challenged with success, they are now again breaking to their destruction. I shall not deny it: equity and not bloodshed, reason and not arms, were the means by which I should have preferred to retain the acquisitions of my fathers. If I have erred by hesitancy, I shall make amends by valour. In any event, your power and fame are intact; and you have added to them that character for moderation which is not to be scorned by the most exalted of mankind and is taken into account by Heaven.” — Therewith he bound the diadem on the brows of Tiridates. A body of cavalry, regularly in attendance on the king, was at hand: he transferred it to a noble named Monaeses, adding a number of Adiabenian auxiliaries, and commissioned him to eject Tigranes from Armenia; while he himself laid aside his quarrel with Hyrcania and called up his internal forces, with the full machinery of war, as a threat to the Roman provinces.
3 1 So soon as Corbulo had the news by sure messengers, he sent two legions under Verulanus Severus and Vettius Bolanus to reinforce Tigranes; with private instructions, however, that all their actions were to be circumspect rather than rapid; for in truth, he was more desirous to have war upon his hands than to wage it. Also he had written to Nero that a separate commander was required for the defence of Armenia: Syria, he observed, stood in the graver danger, if Vologeses attacked. In the interval, he stationed his remaining legion on the Euphrates bank, armed an improvised force of provincials, and closed the hostile avenues of approach by garrison-posts. Further, as the region is deficient in water, forts were thrown up to command the springs: a few brooks he buried under piles of sand.
4 1 While Corbulo was thus preparing for the defence of Syria, Monaeses, who had marched at full speed in order to outstrip the rumour of his coming, failed none the less to catch Tigranes unawares or off his guard. He had occupied Tigranocerta, a town formidable by the number of its defenders and the scale of its fortifications. In addition, a part of the walls is encircled by the Nicephorius, a river of respectable width; and a huge fosse had been drawn at points where the stream was not to be relied upon. Within lay Roman troops, and supplies to which attention had been given beforehand: that, in bringing them up, a few men had advanced too eagerly and been cut off by the sudden appearance of the enemy, had excited more anger than alarm in the remainder. But the Parthian lacks the boldness at close quarters demanded for the prosecution of a siege: he resorts to occasional flights of arrows, which both fail to terrify the garrison and delude himself. The Adiabeni,º on beginning to push forward their ladders and machines, were easily thrown back, then cut to pieces by a sally of our men.
5 1 Corbulo, however, favourably though matters were turning, decided not to press fortune too hard, and forwarded a protest to Vologeses:—”Violence had been offered to his province: siege was being laid to an allied and friendly monarch and to Roman cohorts. It would be better to raise the blockade, or he also would pitch his camp in hostile territory.” The centurion Casperius, who had been selected for the mission, approached the king at Nisibis, a town thirty-seven miles distant from Tigranocerta, and delivered his message with spirit. With Vologeses it was an old and deep-seated principle to avoid the Roman arms; nor at the moment was the current of events too smooth. The siege had been fruitless; Tigranes was safe with his garrison and supplies; the force which had undertaken to storm the position had been routed; legions had been sent into Armenia, and more stood ready on the Syrian frontier to take the offensive by an invasion. His own cavalry, he reflected, was incapacitated by lack of fodder; for a swarm of locusts had made its appearance and destroyed every trace of grass or foliage. Hence, while keeping his fears in the background, he adopted a milder tone, and replied that he would send ambassadors to the Roman emperor to discuss his application for Armenia and the establishment of peace on a firm footing. Monaeses he ordered to abandon Tigranocerta, while he himself began his retirement.
6 1 By the majority of men these results were being acclaimed as a triumph due to the fears of the king and to Corbulo’s threats. Others found the explanation in a private compact stipulating that, if hostilities were suspended on both sides and Vologeses withdrew, Tigranes would also make his exit from Armenia. “For why,” it was asked, “should the Roman army have been withdrawn from Tigranocerta? Why abandon in peace what they had defended in war? Was it an advantage to have wintered upon the verge of Cappadocia in hastily erected hovels rather than in the capital of a kingdom which they had but lately saved? The fact was, the clash had been deferred, so that Vologeses might be pitted against another antagonist than Corbulo, and Corbulo risk no further the laurels earned in the course of so many years!” For, as I have related, he had demanded a separate general for the defence of Armenia, and it was heard that Caesennius Paetus was at hand. Before long he was on the spot, the forces being so divided that the fourth and twelfth legions, reinforced by the fifth, which had recently been called up from Moesia, and the auxiliaries of Pontus, Galatia, and Cappadocia, were placed at the orders of P
aetus; the third, sixth, and tenth legions, and the old troops in Syria, remaining with Corbulo, while the rest were to be employed in conjunction or separately as the course of events should require. However, not only was Corbulo impatient of rivals, but Paetus, for whom it might have been glory enough to rank second to such a leader, treated his achievements with high disdain. “Bloodshed and booty,” he kept repeating, “there had been none; to speak of the storming of cities was nothing but a form of words it remained for himself to impose on the conquered tributes, laws, and Roman jurisdiction in place of a phantom king.”
7 1 Almost at the same time, the deputies of Vologeses, whose mission to the emperor I have already noticed, returned without result, and Parthia embarked upon undisguised war. Paetus did not evade the challenge, but with two legions — the fourth, at that time commanded by Funisulanus Vettonianus, and the twelfth, under Calavius Sabinus — entered Armenia under sinister auspices. For at the passage of the Euphrates, which the troops were crossing by a bridge, the horse carrying the consular insignia took fright for no obvious reason and escaped to the rear. A victim standing by in the winter camp, while it was being fortified, broke away, dashed through the half-completed works, and made its way of the entrenchments. Fire, too, played on the javelins of the troops — a prodigy the more striking that the Parthian is an enemy whose battles are decided by missiles.