Brief Overview of the Contents of the Drama
Louw’s drama moves in a series of eight (unnumbered) ‘scenes’ from the military front in Germania (roughly the present Germany west and south of the Rhine) at the time of Augustus’ death in 14 AD, to Rome at an unspecified date, then to the Near East, where it culminates in the death of Germanicus in 19. Historical events are in some cases collapsed and conflated, to suit the author’s artistic purpose.
The only editorial change that I have made is to number the scenes and to group them into three locality-based ‘Parts’ of unequal length. Part I comprises the first four scenes, all set in the Rhineland area. Part II features two scenes set in Rome, whereas the final two scenes that comprise Part III are both set in the Roman Near East: Scene Seven in Nabataea, and Scene Eight at Daphne, in front of the temple of Apollo. In what follows, quotations within the summary of a scene are further specified with reference to Louw’s original pagination and verse (line) numbers, assuming that each of Louw’s pages starts with ‘v.1’.
Scene One conveys the tone of Tacitus’ narrative (Ann. 1.31-37), rather than factual events. Some Roman officers, one of them Germanicus muffled in a disguising military cloak, approach a campfire, where soldiers are discussing the recent demise of Augustus. The soldiers are keen to rebel. Piso is portrayed as the champion of the republican ideal who urges the soldiers to declare Germanicus imperator. He argues that military power precedes the accession to civil power:
Who rules in Rome must rule here too,
and he whom we – and you all – don’t trust
drops faster from his saddle than he got on
Louw’s p. 12, vv. 24-6
Germanicus throws off his cloak and stands forth to repudiate the suggestion. Agrippina appears and upbraids the soldiers, who lapse into silence, all except one. He is summarily killed by the general. Germanicus will allow no talk of rebellion but calls his men to arms for a sweep to the north.
In the second scene during a discussion in the tent of Piso about the growing probability that Germanicus will succumb to the lure of ‘Caesarian’ power politics, a minor character, ‘Lucius’ (not attested in the sources, but apparently created by the playwright for the purposes of his plot) expresses preference for death rather than the loss of his republican dream and the fall of his idol. This follows from Piso’s suggestion that Lucius may be called upon to eliminate their potentially disappointing champion. From the dialogue we learn that Germanicus inclines more to thought than action and that Piso, a man of action, ‘sees life plainly, but sees it whole’. Lucius tells him:
You trained my noble thoughts, you taught me to live
in that high simplicity so much your own.
Louw’s p. 24, v 24 – p. 25 v 1
Lucius’ words appear to strengthen Piso’s resolve to champion freedom at any cost; he decries love, friendship and humanity as lesser things than honour and duty.
Scene Three is a masterpiece of conjecture: like the speeches in ancient historiographers such as Thucydides or Tacitus, it portrays ‘what might have been said’, in this case what might have been said in the tent of Agrippina during consecutive conversations with her female attendant, her physician and her husband. Agrippina’s fears are virtually ignored by an intellectual Germanicus, more interested in his poetic reworking of Aratus’ text on astronomy than in either the possibility of his untimely death or the invitation to usurp imperial power. Agrippina urges him to dare to rule in Rome. Here she is both the strong woman depicted by Tacitus (Ann. 1.40-1), and the conventionally fearful wife:
Whatever way I try to reach, I only touch
this coolly gleaming thing. This quiet rest of yours
tonight – Should you not fear? Yes, this fear,
it’s good and human: keep it near your heart.
Louw’s p. 32, vv. 18-21
In Scene Four Louw uses the ‘Botenbericht’ technique (narrative of action taking place off-stage) to convey the gist of Ann. 1.55-71, Germanicus’ victories over the Chatti and Cherusci. Piso’s reaction to Germanicus’ sorrow over the death in action of Lucius works as a device to illustrate the growing tension between the man of action and the man of thought and feeling. The pregnant wife and father-in-law of the German rebel leader, a former ‘ally’ of the Romans, Arminius (here referred to as ‘Herman’) are brought in. The father Segestes is all ingratiating subservience to Rome, but his daughter Thusnelda stands proudly aloof. She works as a prophetic figure, presaging the fate of all members of the imperial family: there is no escape from the cloying obligations of power. She addresses Germanicus:
I don’t know you ... perhaps,
perhaps you may be noble:
but noble Romans also bow to serve
to give soft names to horror-deeds,
and after carnage and fell battery to speak.
Your softest words reflect blind might.
Louw’s p. 45, vv 11-16
The woman is removed and Germanicus presents gifts to his closest friends: Piso is given his sword. A letter from Tiberius recalls Germanicus to Rome; his friends urge action. Another minor character, Marcus, commits suicide out of despair at Germanicus’ loyal refusal to move against Tiberius. Agrippina is aware of impending doom. ‘The skull sprouts out of us,’ she says (Louw’s p. 57, v. 17).
The two scenes in Rome that comprise Part II of the drama set the tone for the action in its last part. In Scene Five, again a dramatic figment of the author’s imagination, four women feature, three of them contrasted: Livia, the widow of the recently deceased emperor Augustus, and grandmother to Germanicus, is portrayed as monstrous, wrapped in blind hatred for all around her, including her son, the new emperor Tiberius, whom she nonetheless vows still to protect. The attitude of the enslaved Thusnelda reflects the spirit of Tacitus’ grudging admiration for the noble savagery of German women in his great anthropological work Germania (or, more correctly, De origine et situ Germanorum, ‘about the origin and state of the German peoples’). Against both Agrippina is matronly and noble in her attempt to protect the hapless captive. The fourth woman, Plancina, wife of Piso, Livia’s confidante when the scene opens, remains a virtual lay figure, subservient to her evil patroness. She is willing, albeit uncomfortably so, to carry out the older woman’s arbitrary command to stand up and measure herself against the German woman. Plancina’s complaisance contrasts with the fierce independence of the captive, who speaks of herself as ‘no longer human’, the embodiment of hatred (Louw’s p. 61, v. 7). The scene ends with Livia’s injunction to Plancina to be her ‘hands’ when the latter accompanies her husband to the East in the entourage of Germanicus. Livia’s physician will aid her on the way. We are left in no doubt that this way will be evil. Louw appears to subscribe unquestioningly to Tacitus’ most negative opinions of the dowager.
The drunken and haunted emperor Tiberius of Scene Six, the son of Livia by her first husband and only lately and reluctantly adopted by Augustus as his heir, exhibits all the worst characteristics of the emperor as portrayed by both Tacitus and Suetonius. His consciousness of the monstrosity of power does not prevent his wielding such power to grim effect. The slave Clemens (who had pretended to be the murdered Agrippa Postumus, the brutish brother of Agrippina, and Augustus’ grandson, whose death by assassination soon after Augustus’ demise Tacitus designates the ‘first misdeed of the new regime’, Ann. 1.6), is brought on, blinded and horribly maimed, then taken off to suffer a predictably terrible death. This slave cannot recognize the passive Germanicus standing by horrified, and, like the voice of Thusnelda earlier, Clemens’ voice becomes the voice of prophecy, predicting an early death for the unknown young man before him. Germanicus retreats further into dismayed silence when a ‘message to Germanicus’ is given him to relay: that all had thought to find a saviour in the prince, but:
... he ... he swills with them from the selfsame trough.
You take this message: say: ‘The world, it hates him
and thinks he’s small’.
Louw’s p. 78, v. 32
Louw’s Tiberius exhibits awareness of the many-headedness of the monster Power but he has willingly accepted the burden of guilt, whether it be the need to sign a death warrant for a hundred slaves or to suppress a revolt against his own rule: he is trapped in a circle of violence:
This is what to rule becomes, so blind, so pitiless!
Louw’s p. 81, v.31
An aspect of the problem of the author’s portrayal of initial friendship between Piso and Germanicus and the gradual revulsion of Piso against his hero may be found in this scene: Livia comes to warn her son against Piso’s potential for rebellion, indicates Plancina as her informant and offers the latter’s services in the East as a check upon her own husband. So Plancina does not share her husband’s ideals. The complicity of Louw’s Plancina presages the statement of her loyalty to Livia in the Senatusconsultum de patre Pisone, referred to in the Introduction above. Louw, however, highlights a dimension which that document vigorously denies: his Plancina will be the purveyor of the poison.
During the course of this episode it becomes abundantly clear that, while no love is lost between Tiberius and his mother, they are inextricably tied together. The scene closes with Livia’s explanation to Plancina that she never knows, but can only guess, what Tiberius intends and that the two of them must try to carry out what they think are his wishes:
we, we are his hands
which by some quirk are severed wholly from his heart.
Louw’s p. 88, v. 19
The action of the last two scenes (Part III) takes place in the Roman Near East. Scene Seven stages the events of Ann. 2.57 – a feast at which the king of the Nabataeans offered his Roman visitors golden coronets. Germanicus accepts his gift as a gesture of courtesy but Piso rejects his with contumely. Germanicus is hesitant, clearly ill. Piso is strong and violent in his reactions. After the Easterners have withdrawn there is some discussion among the Romans about the nature of Germanicus’ ailment and the possibility that he is systematically being poisoned. Agrippina appears concerned, Plancina angry at an insinuation of her complicity in Germanicus’ illness and the implication that Livia and Tiberius are involved. When all leave, Germanicus and Piso talk. Each complains of the other’s behaviour. The contrast between the two is clear: Piso is the staunch republican to whom trappings of royal power are anathema: he does not understand diplomacy and accuses Germanicus of having succumbed to the lure of the East:
Germanicus, you’re young-old, weak and limp.
Here in the East you have gone too soft,
/ ................ / ... etc
You’re now a dilettante.
Louw’s p. 97, vv. 12-13, 24
Germanicus’ counter-complaint is about Piso’s abuse of his power as local governor, as described by Tacitus (Ann. 2.55, 57 and 69) and spelled out at Piso’s later trial. This may be seen as an illustration of the clash between the republican system which the emperor Augustus had pretended to restore and the fact of a new, imperial system, to which Germanicus was the heir-apparent. The areas of authority of the representatives of the old and new systems had not yet been sufficiently clearly defined. Louw’s Piso accuses Germanicus of being reluctant to uphold Roman control and finally tries to manipulate him into action against Tiberius with a promise to detect and prevent the poisoning which is sapping the prince’s strength, even if it should mean the death of his own wife.
Germanicus’ cosmic vision of the insignificance of human action against the sweep of the universe translates into a realization of his inability – as well as his reluctance – to act. He indignantly repudiates Piso’s offer. Like his young friend Lucius, he will not be untrue to old loyalties. His choice is certain death rather than rebellion against Tiberius; and the scene ends with a formal renuntiatio amicitiae (‘renouncing of friendship’) before witnesses, which was an acknowledged manner of recognising irreconcilable differences between former political allies. Tacitus reports Germanicus’ use of a formal letter (Ann. 2.70). Germanicus abjures all further intimacy with Piso. From various ancient sources we know that loss of imperial friendship had become a virtual ‘kiss of death’ since the poet Cornelius Gallus, late prefect of Egypt, lost favour with Augustus in about 26 BC and was forced to commit suicide. All this is implied in Louw’s presentation in this scene of a face-to-face confrontation between his two protagonists.
In the eighth and last scene, set at Daphne near Antioch on the Orontes, Germanicus’ officers discuss the reaction of the local population to the illness of their general. Louw’s emphasis on Eastern elements in the last part of the drama is generally interpreted as his recognition of a changing world-order and of the rise of Christianity as an Eastern religion that brought about this change. This creative interpretation of the era would have had no basis in the consciousness of the historical figures concerned, nor in that of the historiographer Tacitus; and it should not be over-emphasized in judging Louw’s drama.
A dying Germanicus repeatedly inquires about the doings of his erstwhile friend. He then admits to his presence a muffled stranger, on receipt of a token – the sword he gave to Piso in Germany. Piso enters. Their last conversation essentially recapitulates the immovable stance of each protagonist; inevitably their clash is fatal. Piso dominates the conversation in a series of virtual monologues. His formerly idealized champion is dying because he would not be a hero and he himself will die because he could not move Germanicus to take up the calling. Germanicus replies mildly that no one person is the cause of his death, but time itself:
Not you, nor Livia, nor Plancina ...
I’m dying of this time
Louw’s p. 113, v. 20
He does not explain further than this. He is a passive onlooker, both of his own death and of the changing world. In this Louw deviates widely from Tacitus’ version, where amid lamentation Germanicus denounced Piso and Plancina and called for revenge (Ann. 2.69). Schunk (1955: 131-4) considers that Tacitus intended with this episode to suggest the essential guilt of the Caesars, where Piso, too, has become ein Opfer des Tiberius (‘a victim of Tiberius’). Agrippina enters and threatens Piso with revenge:
You may not perish without pain!
Louw’s p. 115, v. 7
Vengeance will be her ‘child’, Agrippina says. Germanicus has the last, apparently flaccid, word in what Antonissen has called the ‘sublime dispute’:
Go now, please, Piso. This is not really parting.
Piso off. [To Agrippina]
And now it’s time to die, dearest. I loved you
dearly. Let them now carry me inside.
And maybe nothing will be lost.
Louw’s p. 115, v. 24 – p. 116, v. 1
Right to the end his cosmic speculations appear of more importance to Louw’s Germanicus than the end of a friendship, or even than the parting with his wife. The old doctor, by implication the real murderer, makes the final pronouncement:
By now he’s with the Caesars.
Louw’s p. 116, v. 3
PART I
ROMAN ENCAMPMENT NEAR THE RHINE BORDER
Scene One
Roman camp in northern France
Evening
[1]
Evening. Roman camp in Northern France near the present Netherlands. Tents in the background. Three or four soldiers are sitting or standing around a campfire. Others occasionally pass to and fro in the darkness behind. The glow of other fires may be seen. Drizzle. Gloomy light.
Germanicus Page 6