THE END OF THE GOLDEN AGE
In tracing the further career of Livia we enter upon the opening acts
of the tragedy of the Cæsars, and we have to consider carefully if
there be any truth in the charge that Livia herself initiated the long
series of murders that now make a trail of blood over the annals of
Rome. With the coming of the Empire we more rarely find legion pitted
against legion in the horrors of civil war, but we have nerveless
ambition stooping to the despicable aid of the poisoner, autocracy
paralysing the best of the nobility with its murderous suspicions,
and folly growing more foolish with the increasing splendour of
the imperial house. We already know that the germs of this disease
were found in the quiet home of Livia and Octavian on the Palatine.
Scribonia had received her letter of divorce a few days after the birth
of her daughter Julia. As Livia bore no direct heir to the Emperor,
while Julia became the mother of many children, we have at once the
promise of a dramatic struggle for the succession. When we further
learn that the strain of Imperial blood, which takes its rise in Julia,
is thickly tainted with disease, we are prepared for a bloody and
unscrupulous conflict. And when we reflect that on this unstable pivot
the vast Empire will turn for many generations, we begin to understand
the larger tragedy of the fall of Rome.
Let us first glance at the interior of the modest household on the
Palatine. Besides Livia and Octavian, with whom we are now familiar,
there is Octavia, sister of the Emperor and divorced wife of Mark
Antony, a gentle lady with the matronly virtues of the time when a
Roman could slay his wife or daughter for irregular conduct. With
her were her children, Marcellus and Marcella, of whom we shall hear
much. Then there were Livia’s two sons--the elder, Tiberius, a tall,
silent, moody youth, with little care to please; the younger, Drusus, a
handsome, buoyant, fair-headed boy, threatening the elder’s birthright.
Octavian closely watched the education of the boys. He taught them to
write on the wax-faced tablets in the fine script on which he prided
himself, kept them beside him at table, and drove them in his chariot
about public business.
But the most interesting and fateful figure in the group was Julia.
Octavian had removed her at an early age from the care of Scribonia,
and adopted her in the palace. She learned to spin and weave, and
helped to make the garments of the family, under the severe eyes of
Livia and Octavia. The Emperor was charmed with the pretty and lively
girl, and would make a second Livia of her. Knowing well, if only from
his own youth, the vice and folly that abounded in those mansions on
the hills of Rome, and roared in its dimly-lighted valleys by night, he
kept her apart. None of the young fops who drove their chariots madly
out by the Flaminian Gate, and sipped their wine after supper to the
prurient jokes of mimes, were suffered to approach her. And, not for
the first or last time in history, the veiling of the young eyes had an
effect quite contrary to that intended. A Roman girl became a woman at
fourteen, a mother at fifteen. At that early age, in the year 25 B.C.,
Julia was married to her cousin Marcellus, who was then seventeen.
Marcellus was so clearly a possible successor to the throne that
courtiers hung about him, and taught him the art of princely living.
The doors of the hidden world were opened, and the tender eyes of Julia
were dazed.
The authorities are careless in chronology, and we may decline to
believe that Julia at once entered on the riotous ways which led her to
the abyss. Her marriage concerns us in a very different respect. All
the writers who adopt the view that Livia was a hard and unscrupulous
woman--a view that Tacitus must have taken from the memoirs of her
rival’s granddaughter, the Empress Agrippina, which were made public in
his time--consider that this marriage of Julia and Marcellus marks the
beginning of her career of crime. She is supposed to have been alarmed
at the marriage of two direct descendants of Cæsar, seeing that she
herself had no child by Octavian. Most certainly she was ambitious for
her elder son. The boy whom she had clasped to her breast, when she
fled along the roads of Campania and through the burning forests of
Greece, was now a clever and studious youth, and she wished Octavian to
adopt him. Unfortunately, Tiberius was of a moody and solitary nature,
and was easily displaced in Octavian’s affection by the handsome and
popular Marcellus and the beautiful and witty Julia.
The first cloud appeared in the year 23 B.C. Octavian fell seriously
ill, and Livia’s hope of securing the succession for her son was
troubled by two formidable competitors. One was Marcellus, the other
was Octavian’s friend and ablest general, M. V. Agrippa. He was of poor
origin, but of commanding ability and character, and was suspected
of entertaining a design to restore the Republic. He was married to
Marcella, and had some contempt for the spoiled boy, her brother
Marcellus--a contempt which Marcellus repaid with petulance and
rancour. Octavian recovered, sent Agrippa on an important errand to
the East, and made Marcellus Ædile of the city. Marcellus was winning,
the eager observers thought, when suddenly he fell seriously ill and
died. The death was so opportune for Tiberius that we cannot wonder
that a faint whisper of poison went through Rome when his ashes were
laid in the lofty marble tower that Octavian had built in the meadows
by the Tiber. But we need not linger over this first charge against
Livia. Even Dio, who is no sceptic in regard to rumours which defame
Empresses, hesitates to press on us so airy and improbable a myth.
It was a hot and pestilential summer, and Marcellus seems to have
contracted fever by remaining too long at his post, before going to
Baiæ on the coast.
The death of Marcellus, far from promoting the cause of Tiberius,
brought a more formidable obstacle in his way. Octavian sent for
Agrippa, and directed him to divorce Marcella and wed Julia. The
general, who was in his forty-second year, thought it immaterial which
of the two young princesses shared his bed, and Octavia consented to
the divorce of her daughter--as some conjecture, to thwart Livia’s
design. To the delight of Octavian the union of robust manhood and
amorous young womanhood was fruitful. During the ten years of their
marriage Julia gave birth to three sons and two daughters. Happily
unconscious of the tragedies which were to close the careers of these
children in his own lifetime, Octavian welcomed them with great
enthusiasm. During his whole reign he was engaged in a futile effort
to induce or compel the better families of Rome to take a larger
share in the peopling of the Empire. When he penalized celibacy,
they defeated him by contracting marriages with the intention of
seeking an immediate divorce. When he made adultery a public crime,
there were noblewomen--few in number, it is true; the facts are often
exaggerated--who enrolled themselves on the list of shame, and noblemen
who took on the degrading rank of gladiators, in order to escape the
penalties. He created a guild of honour for the mothers of at least
three children; but the distinction seemed to the ladies of Rome to be
an inadequate reward for so onerous an accomplishment, and they scoffed
when Livia was enrolled in the guild, though the only child she had
conceived of Octavian had never seen the light.
Far greater, however, was the amusement of Rome when Octavian held up
Julia as a model of maternity, and ostentatiously fondled her babies
in public. A coarse and witty reply that she is said to have made,
when some one asked her how it was that all her children so closely
resembled her husband, was then circulated in Roman society, and is
preserved in Macrobius.[4] Beautiful, lively, and cultivated, the young
girl had exchanged with delight the dull homeliness of her father’s
mansion for the rose-crowned banquets of her new world. Her marriage
with Agrippa restrained her gaiety for a time, but her husband was
often summoned to distant provinces, and she was left to her dissolute
friends. Octavian was curiously blind to her conduct, but when Agrippa
was compelled to undertake a lengthy mission in the East, he ordered
Julia to accompany him. The journey would not improbably foster her
vicious tendencies. There is truth in the old adage that all light
came to Europe from the East, but it is hardly less true that darkness
came to Rome from the East. Julia would not be ignorant how the
ancient Roman puritanism had been corrupted by the introduction of
Eastern habits and types--the poisoner, the Chaldæan astrologer, the
Syrian dancer, the eunuch, the cultivated Greek slave, the priests of
orgiastic Eastern cults. A mind like hers would seek to penetrate the
depths from which these types had emerged. In Greece she would find the
remains of its perfumed vices lingering at the foot of its decaying
monuments. In Antioch there would not be wanting freedwomen to gratify
her curiosity in regard to its unnatural excesses and the world-famed
license of its groves. In Judæa she was long and splendidly entertained
at the court of Herod, a monarch with ten wives and concubines
innumerable.
They returned to Rome in the year 13, and in the following year Agrippa
died of gout, and Julia was free. One of the most surprising features
of her wild career--one that would make us hesitate to admit the
charges against her, if hesitation were possible--is that Livia was
either ignorant of her more serious misdeeds, or unable to convince
Octavian of them. Livia would hardly spare her, as Julia was inflaming
Octavian’s dislike for Tiberius. Refined, sensitive, and studious,
the young man avoided the boisterous amusements in which other young
patricians spent their ample leisure, and his cold melancholy made him
distasteful to them. One of the Roman writers would have us believe
that Julia made love to him during the life of Agrippa, and that she
incited Octavian against him in revenge for his rejection of her
advances. The story is improbable. We need only suppose that Julia, in
speaking of Tiberius, used the disdainful language which was common to
her friends. Neither Livia nor Tiberius seems to have attempted to open
the Emperor’s eyes to Julia’s conduct. Octavian disliked her luxurious
ways, but was blind to her vices, though the names of her lovers were
on the lips of all. One day Octavian scolded her for having a crowd of
fast young nobles about her, and commended to her the staid example of
Livia. She disarmed him with the laughing reply that, when she was old,
her companions would be as old as those of the Empress. One writer says
that Octavian compelled her to give up a too sumptuous palace which
she occupied. One is more disposed to believe the story that, when he
remonstrated with her for her luxurious ways, she replied “My father
may forget that he is Cæsar, but I cannot forget that I am Cæsar’s
daughter.”
In spite of their mutual aversion Octavian now ordered Tiberius to
marry her. He was already married to Vipsania, the virtuous and
affectionate daughter of Agrippa, and this enforced separation from
one whom he loved with an ardour that was fading from Roman marriage,
and union with one who contrasted with Vipsania as the wild flaming
poppy contrasts with the lily, further soured and embittered him. We
may dismiss in a very few words his relations with the woman who ought
to have been the second Empress of Rome. After a few years spent, as
a rule, in distant frontier wars, he returned to Rome in the year
6 B.C., to find that his wife had passed the last bounds of decency
and Octavian was as blind as ever. In intense disgust, and in spite of
his mother’s entreaties, he begged the Emperor’s permission to spend
some years in literary and scientific studies at Rhodes. Not daring to
open the eyes of Octavian to the true character of his daughter, he
had to bow to his anger and disdain, and seek consolation in the calm
mysteries of the planets and the fine sentiments of Greek tragedians.
[Illustration: JULIA
BUST IN THE MUSEUM CHIARAMONTI]
Julia now cast aside the last traces of restraint. A half-dozen of the
young nobles of Rome are associated with her in the chronicles, and,
gossipy and unreliable as the records are, in this case the issue of
the story disposes us to believe the charges. Round such a repute as
hers legends were bound to grow, and the conscientious biographer must
be reserved in giving details. Dio tells us, for instance, that she
expected her lovers to put crowns, for each success she permitted them
to attain, at the foot of the statue of Marsyas--a public statue, at
the feet of which Roman lawyers were wont to place a crown when they
had won a case. However that may be, it is certain that in the nightly
dissipation of Rome, when plebeian offenders sought the darkness of the
Milvian Bridge, or wantoned in the taverns and brothels of the Subura,
Julia’s party was one of the boldest and most conspicuous. Not content
with the riotous supper, which it was now the fashion to prolong by
lamp-light, in perfumed chambers, until late hours of the night, Julia
and her friends went out into the streets, and caroused in the very
tribunal in the Forum--the Rostra, a platform decorated with the prows
of captured vessels--from which her father made known his Imperial
decisions.[5]
The thunder of the Imperial anger scattered this licentious band some
time in the second year before Christ. In the earlier part of the year
Octavian had entertained Rome with one of the thrilling spectacles
which he often provided. To celebrate the dedication of a new temple of
Mars, which he had built, he had the Flaminian Circus flooded, gave the
people a mock naval battle, and had thirteen crocodiles slain by the
gladiators. Julia had hoodwinked the Emperor so long that she and her
friends seem to have abandoned all restraint, and their adventures came
to the knowledge of the Emperor.
The charges against Julia must have been beyond cavil, since Octavian,
who loved her deeply, at once yielded her to the course of justice. A
charge of conspiracy was made out against her companions. One of the
young nobles killed himself, and the rest were banished. Julia was
convicted of adultery--the evil that her father had fought for ten
years--and from the glitter of Rome she was roughly conducted to the
barren rock-island of Pandateria (Ponza), in the Gulf of Gæta. In that
narrow and depressing jail, with no female attendants, no wine and no
finery, accompanied only by her unhappy mother, the fascinating young
princess spent five years, looking with anguish over the blue water
toward the faint outline of the hills of Italy, or southward toward
those rose-strewn waters of Baiæ, where she had dreamed away so many
brilliant summers. Rome, touched with pity for the stricken woman,
implored Octavian to forgive her; and when he swore that fire and water
should meet before he pardoned her, the people naively flung burning
torches into the Tiber. Hearing, after a few years, that there was a
plot to release her, Octavian had her removed to a more secure prison
in Calabria. There she dragged out her miserable life until her father
died, and Tiberius came to the throne. When he in turn refused to
release her, she sank slowly into the peace of death.
There is no charge against Livia in connexion with this tragic fate
of Julia, but another possible rival of Tiberius had disappeared
during these years, and there is the usual vague accusation that the
Empress assisted the action of nature. Drusus, her younger son, died
in the year 9 B.C., and Livia is charged with sacrificing him to her
affection for her elder son. The charge is preposterous. Drusus had, it
is true, been much more popular than Tiberius at Rome. His genial and
engaging manner gave him a great advantage over the retiring and almost
sullen Tiberius. But the brothers loved each other deeply, and when
Tiberius, who was making a tour in the north of Gaul, heard that Drusus
was dangerously ill in Germany, he at once rode four hundred miles on
horseback, and held Drusus in his arms in his last hour. Livia was at
Ticinum, in the north of Italy, with Octavian when the news reached
them. That either Livia or Tiberius--for both are accused--should have
in any way promoted the death of Drusus is a frivolous suggestion.
The epitomist of Livy, Tacitus, and Suetonius, describe the death as
natural. Drusus was thrown and injured by a frantic horse. The libel
that his death was in some mysterious way accelerated may have been
set afoot by his partisans. It was generally believed that he favoured
a restoration of the Republic, and the corrupt officials who, at his
death, lost their faint hope of returning to the days of peculation
and bribery, may have begun the charge. No evidence is offered for it.
Livia and Octavian accompanied the remains to Rome with great sorrow.
Seneca says that the Empress was so distressed that she summoned one of
the Stoic philosophers to console her.
The next charge against Livia requires a more careful examination. By
the beginning of the present era, when the poor health of Octavian
gave occasion for many speculations as to the succession, there were
only two rivals to the chances of Tiberius. These were the elder sons
of Julia, and Livia must have reflected gloomily on their fortune.
While Tiberius remained in retirement at Rhodes the young princes were
idolized by Octavian and by the people. Tiberius had proposed to return
to Rome after the banishment of Julia, but Octavian peevishly told him
to remain in Greece. Every astrologer in Rome must have read in the
planets that either Caius or Lucius was born to the purple. They were
spoiled by Octavian, enriched with premature honours, and, glittering
in silver trappings, appeared in the spectacles as “Princes of the
youth of Rome.” Let those youths be removed from the scene by any
accident, and so prurient a city as Rome will be bound to discover some
insidious action on the part of Livia; and later writers, brooding over
a chronicle in which ambition leads freely to the most brutal murders,
will be disposed to believe her guilty.
It is somewhat surprising to find more recent writers caught by the
fallacy. We are not puzzled when the scandal-loving Serviez opens his
chapter on Livia with a glowing enumeration of her virtues, adopts
nearly every libel against her as he proceeds, and closes with a
very dark estimate of her character; but we are entitled to expect
more discrimination in Merivale. Even Mr. Tarver, in his recent
“Tiberius the Tyrant” (1902), does much injustice to the mother in
vindicating the son. He speaks of her as “hard, avaricious, and a
lover of power,” and, without the least evidence--indeed, against all
probability--suggests that it was Livia who urged Octavian to keep
Tiberius in retirement at Rhodes. He makes Livia hostile to Tiberius
in favour of Julia’s sons, on the ground that she would find them
more pliant than Tiberius. Every other writer suggests precisely the
contrary. They make her murder Julia’s sons in the interest of Tiberius.
The death of the younger son, Lucius, is obscure. He was sent on a
mission to Spain in the year 2 A.D., and died at Marseilles on the
way. Since the only ground for the rumour that he was poisoned is the
indubitable fact that he died, we need not delay in considering it.
Octavian then sent the elder brother Caius on a mission into Syria
under the care of his old tutor Lollius. His counsellor unhappily died
in the East, and the young prince was left to the vicious companions
who regarded him as the future dispenser of Imperial favours. He fell
into Oriental ways, and was at length (A.D. 3) treacherously wounded
by a Syrian patriot. Instead of returning to Rome, he remained in the
unhealthy atmosphere of the East, indulged in its habits of languor
and vice, and died eighteen months after the death of his brother.
There is no obscurity about his death. It is beyond question that he
was severely wounded by a Syrian. But the deaths of the two brothers
happened so opportunely for Tiberius that one cannot wonder at the
suspicion, in certain minds, that Livia had had the youths poisoned.
Nothing more than this vague rumour is given us by Tacitus, Dio,
Suetonius, or Pliny; and it is from a sheer pruriency of romance that
later writers, like Serviez, have accepted and emphasized the suspicion
recorded in the Roman historians. Not on such slender grounds can we be
asked to sacrifice the conception of Livia’s character which is forced
on us by the plainer facts of her career. The youths were delicate;
Caius, at least, had undermined his frail constitution by luxury, if
not by vice; and the Roman world harboured death in a hundred forms.
If we still hesitate to choose between the artifice of Livia and the
unaided action of natural causes in this removal of the obstacles to
the advancement of Tiberius, we have only to glance at the fate of
the rest of Julia’s children. The third son, Agrippa, was as robust
in body as his brothers were weak, but he was defective in mind and
devoid of moral control. His boorish conduct as a boy gave great pain
to Livia and Octavia, and his great physical strength broke out in
uncontrollable gusts of passion. In his adolescence he readily adopted
the worst vices that Rome could teach him, and Octavian was obliged
to condemn him to imprisonment and exile. There remained the two
daughters, Julia and Agrippina. The younger, the sanest of Julia’s
children, lived to intrigue for power, and greatly to embarrass Livia’s
later years; though we shall find the same tragic fate befalling her
after the death of the Empress, who protected her. The elder, Julia,
was banished (A.D. 9) for incest, and, like her mother, lacking the
courage or virtue to end her shame as the nobler Romans did, she
protracted her miserable life for twenty years, her hard lot only
alleviated by the charity of Livia.
Fate had removed every possible competitor to the succession of
Tiberius. He returned to Rome, and his judicious and sedulous activity
removed the last traces of the Emperor’s resentment. Peace returned,
after many years of storm, to the mansion on the Palatine. But Octavian
had suffered profoundly from those terrible and persistent storms.
The Rome of his manhood was gone. All his friends and counsellors had
disappeared, and the future of his people filled him with apprehension.
The patrician stock was decaying from luxury and vice; the ordinary
citizens clamoured for free food and free entertainment with a blind
disregard of the laws of national health. He shrank from the public
gaze, and leaned affectionately on Livia and Tiberius.
In the year 14 he remained at Rome in the early heat of the summer,
and became seriously ill. Livia and Tiberius went down with him to
the coast, where he rallied, and some pleasant days were spent on
the island of Capreæ (Capri), which he had bought. They passed to
the mainland, where Tiberius left them, but he was soon recalled by
a message from his mother that the Emperor was sinking. On the last
morning of his life Octavian dressed with unaccustomed care, and
summoned his friends to his bedside. Was Rome tranquil on receiving
the news of his dangerous condition? Did they approve of his conduct
and accomplishments? They gave him the assurance he desired, and were
dismissed. Could they have foreseen the line of rulers who were to
stain the purple robe with blood, and load it with shame, for so many
decades to come, they would have wept. The last moments were for Livia.
He died kissing her, and murmuring: “Be mindful of our marriage, Livia.
Farewell.” So ended, peacefully, a union that had lasted fifty-two
years in a city where divorce was as lightly esteemed as marriage.
There can be little serious doubt about the character of the first
Empress of Rome.
Livia probably concealed the death of Octavian until Tiberius arrived
from Dalmatia. A report was given out that Tiberius arrived in time
to receive the last injunctions of the Emperor. This may be doubted
without any serious reflection on her character; if, indeed, it
was she, and not Tiberius, who spread the report. There were grave
fears--well-founded fears, as we shall see--that a plot, in the
interest of corruption, had been framed to prevent the succession of
Tiberius. In the coolness of the night, so as to avoid the intense heat
of August, they bore the remains with great pomp to the capital. There,
on a bed of ivory and purple, preceded by wax effigies of Octavian
and of earlier rulers of Rome, the body was carried to the temple of
Julius, where Tiberius read a funeral oration. The cortège went on
to the Field of Mars, by the Tiber, through lines of black-draped
citizens. The pile was fired, and zealous eyes saw the soul of Octavian
mount toward heaven in the outward form of an eagle.
Livia, on approved custom, remained by the sacred ashes for five days,
and then returned to face the new life which opened for her. With
the especially wild suggestion that she had accelerated the death of
her husband we may disdain to concern ourselves. It was owing to her
devoted care that the ailing and delicate Octavian had lived to old
age. But a second libel in connexion with the death of Octavian must be
briefly considered.
The apprehension, or the secret information, of the dying Emperor
was correct. No sooner was his death announced than a servant of the
imprisoned son of Julia hurried to the coast, and set sail for the
island of Planasia, with the intention of bringing Agrippa to Rome as
a candidate for the purple. He arrived only to find a bleeding corpse.
The centurion in charge had dispatched Agrippa as soon as the Emperor’s
death was made known to him.
Who gave the order for this execution? One cannot call it murder, for
Agrippa was unfit to be restored to society, and any attempt to raise
him to the throne would have been disastrous to Rome. The authorities,
as usual, merely give us the rumours that circulated at the time,
and leave us to choose between Octavian, Livia, and Tiberius. We can
have little difficulty in choosing. It would be so natural for either
Octavian or Tiberius to crush the conspiracy by executing Agrippa that
the introduction of Livia is superfluous. Most probably Octavian had
left directions with Agrippa’s custodian. There is a curious story,
in several contradictory versions, but credible in substance, that
Octavian in his later years paid a secret visit to Planasia, to see
personally what Agrippa’s real condition was. Quite the most plausible
theory is that, after personal verification of his madness, Octavian
felt it best for Rome, and not inhuman to Agrippa, to have him put to
death as soon as the question of succession was opened.
We come to the last phase of Livia’s career. Tiberius was now a
tall, handsome man, though slightly disfigured, with long fair hair
and features strangely delicate for one of his exceptional physical
strength. A better soldier than his predecessor, and not an inept
statesman, he was well enough fitted to wield the power which Octavian
had virtually bequeathed to him. But a retiring disposition, an unhappy
youth, and long years of study, had made him shrink from the society
of any but scholars, and he long hesitated to ascend the throne to
which the Senate invited him. We have not good ground to regard this
reluctance as feigned. At last he consented, and the critics of Livia
would have it that her ambition now passed such bounds as had been set
to it by the ability of Octavian. We may freely admit that she looked
forward to being closely associated in power with the son whose career
she had followed with such devotion and helpfulness. On the other hand,
we shall see how advantageous to the State her influence was; the evils
that at once begin to darken the life of Rome when Tiberius rejects
her counsels will plainly show this. Nor is there any evidence that
she sought power from any other motive than the good of the State. She
might take pride in what she did, and even exaggerate it, but such
a pride is not inconsistent with the view that she was ever gentle,
humane, and generous.
The first searching test of her character occurs a few years after the
accession of Tiberius. As the news of the death of Octavian slowly
travelled over the Empire, there were mutinous movements among the
legions in many provinces. In Lower Germany, especially, the troops
considered that their commander, Germanicus, the nephew of Tiberius,
was entitled to the purple, and they asked him to lead them to Rome.
He was a handsome, engaging young general, of imperial blood, with
moderate ability and much conceit, and had won the regard of the
soldiers by visiting the sick and wounded, advancing their pay out
of his own purse, and other popular acts. He was married to Julia’s
daughter, Agrippina, who lived in camp with him. They dressed their
little son Caius in soldier’s costume, and his quaint appearance
in miniature military boots won for him the pet-name Caligula
(“Little-boots”) by which he is known to history. The legionaries
thought that they had with them a model Imperial family, and promised
to wrest the throne from Tiberius. Germanicus weakly composed the
mutiny--mainly by forging a letter in the name of Tiberius and then
treacherously executing the leaders--and endeavoured to cover his
blunders by vigorous and rather aimless attacks upon the Germans.
Tiberius recalled him to Rome to enjoy a “triumph,” and to keep him out
of further mischief.
Merivale acknowledges that his conquests were “wholly visionary,”
but Germanicus had inherited the charm and popularity of his father,
Drusus, and Rome was easily won for him. People streamed out from
the gates to meet him, and gazed with awe on his gigantic blue-eyed
captives and on the large highly-coloured paintings of his victories in
Germany. It was a new source of concern for Livia and Tiberius, and,
to the satisfaction of Livia’s critics, the danger ended like all the
others.
Germanicus and Agrippina were sent on a mission to the East. Tiberius
seems to have had some disdain for his spoiled and conceited nephew,
and he was well aware of the interested aims of those who affected to
see in him a restorer of the old republican liberty. He chose an older
statesman, Cn. Calpurnius Piso, to go out as Governor of Syria, to
watch and prudently direct the movements of Germanicus. With Piso was
his wife Plancina, an intimate friend of Livia. From these Tiberius and
Livia shortly heard exasperating accounts of the progress of Germanicus
and Agrippina. Piso found, on calling at Athens, that Germanicus had
been flattering the Greeks for their ancient culture, instead of
pressing the dominion of Rome. He made free comments on the young
general’s conduct, pushed past his galleys, as they dallied in Greek
waters, and was hard at work in Syria when Germanicus arrived. The
wives conducted the quarrel with more asperity than their husbands.
Rome had now its party of Germanicus and party of Tiberius, and the
news from the East was heatedly discussed. Germanicus has gone to
Egypt, without asking the Emperor’s permission, and is patronizing
the Greek and Egyptian cults, which Tiberius represses, and going
about in Greek instead of Roman dress. Piso has had a violent quarrel
with Germanicus, and left Syria. And before they have time to discuss
this important intelligence there comes a report that Germanicus
is dangerously ill; that bones of dead men, half-burnt fragments
of sacrificial victims, leaden tablets with the name of Germanicus
scrawled on them, and other deadly charms, have been found under the
floors and between the walls of his house. At length the news comes
that Germanicus is dead, and that with his last breath he has urged
his friends to avenge him. Rome goes into mourning. All the shops are
closed, and crowds gather everywhere to discuss this fresh tragedy
of the Imperial house. In the middle of the night a rumour spreads
that Germanicus is not dead, and people fill the streets with the
glare of their torches, and break into the temples. But the fatal
news is confirmed, and, when at last Agrippina comes with the golden
urn containing his ashes, such mourning is seen as no living man can
remember.
People observed that neither Livia nor Tiberius appeared at the
funeral. Livia had no reason to be present, and Tiberius knew that the
demonstration was due largely to a spirit of hostility to himself.
For the rest, it was merely the feeling of a frivolous people for a
handsome and unfortunate youth. But Livia incurred more serious censure
during the trial of Piso which followed. The ex-governor of Syria
defended himself resolutely for a day or two, and then, hearing that
his wife had deserted him, committed suicide. The anger of the citizens
now turned on the wife, Plancina. The Empress, with whom she had been
in close communication throughout, begged Tiberius to save her, and he
reluctantly checked the prosecution. Livia was, of course, accused of
sheltering a murderess. It must be recollected that the accounts of
the story are taken in part from the memoirs of Agrippina’s daughter,
and are coloured with prejudice against Tiberius and his mother. One
cannot see anything more serious than indiscretion in Livia’s conduct.
Her conviction of the innocence of Plancina is intelligible enough, and
one can equally understand how she would distrust a trial held at Rome
in the inflamed state of public feeling. There is no serious reason to
suspect, in the death of Germanicus, the action of any other poison
than the tainted atmosphere of the East.
But the interference of Livia annoyed Tiberius, and the ten years that
follow are full of differences between mother and son. The Emperor’s
resentment of his mother’s share in public affairs had begun with his
reign. Livia had proposed to erect a statue to the memory of Octavian.
Tiberius interfered, and referred her to the Senate for permission.
She then proposed to give a commemoratory banquet to the Senators and
their wives. Tiberius restricted her to the wives, and entertained
the Senators himself. He reduced her escort, frowned on the public
honours that were paid to her, and resented her interference in public
affairs. On one occasion her friend Urgulania was summoned for debt,
and, presuming on her intimacy with the Empress, treated the process
with contempt. Livia asked Tiberius to quash the proceedings, and he
deliberately lingered so much on his way to the Forum that the case was
allowed to proceed.
These are a few of the stories which illustrate the want of harmony
between them. For this Livia was largely to blame. It was not unnatural
that she, who had been so often and so profitably consulted by
Octavian, should expect a larger power under the young Emperor, but
she failed to take discreet account of the extreme sensitiveness of
Tiberius. If a story given in Suetonius is correct, she so far lost
her discretion in one of their quarrels as to produce old letters in
which Octavian had made bitter reflections on the defects of Tiberius.
The fault was not wholly on her side, however. Tiberius was jealous
when he contrasted the honour and respect paid to her with the general
feeling of reserve and distrust toward himself, and he pleaded the
old-fashioned idea of woman’s sphere as a pretext to restrain her. He
grumbled when he one day found her directing the extinction of a fire,
as she had done more than once in Octavian’s time, and he was seriously
angry when he found that she had placed her name before his on a public
inscription.
But we may leave these lesser matters and come to the next tragedy in
the Imperial chronicle, the shadow of which darkened Livia’s closing
years. She had retired from the palace to the house which she had
inherited from her first husband, Tiberius Nero. Here she remained a
saddened and helpless spectator of the coming disaster. Tiberius, whom
she saw only once more before she died, had become a peevish and gloomy
old man. His tall spare frame was bent, his head bald, his face, which
had always been disfigured with pimples, now hideous with eczema, or
concealed with bandages. His large melancholy eyes so startled people
that they believed he could see in the dark. Astrologers and students
of the occult gathered about him in the palace he had built on the
Palatine, and the way lay open for adventurers.
The two chief aspirants for power were Agrippina, the widow of
Germanicus, and Sejanus, Tiberius’s favourite general. Julia’s younger
daughter seems to have concentrated in her person all the masculinity
of her family. “Implacable,” as Tacitus says, proud, and ambitious, she
added to the gloom that was deepening on the Palatine. Merivale calls
her the “she-wolf.” It seems probable that she sought marriage with
the aged Tiberius in order to secure power for herself or her son. The
only son of the Emperor had been poisoned by Sejanus, as we shall see
presently, and her son had a plausible title to inherit the purple. The
authorities tell us that Tiberius one day found her in tears, and was
entreated, when he asked the reason, to find her a husband. She thought
it expedient to forget the supposed share of Tiberius in the death of
her husband.
Her innocent manœuvres were met, however, by the sinister intrigues
of Sejanus, one of the most unscrupulous characters we have yet
encountered. Under a cloak of friendliness he was countering her
schemes and ruining her house. He had seduced her daughter Livilla,
the wife of Tiberius’s son Drusus, and had, with her connivance,
poisoned the young prince, and kept the secret from the Emperor for
many years. It is said that he then made proposals to Agrippina to
unite their ambitions, and, when these were rejected, he determined
to destroy her and secure the supreme power for himself. He put his
great ability astutely at the service of the Emperor, and once had
the good fortune to save his life, by arching his herculean body over
Tiberius when the roof of a cave fell on them. It is probable that
he inflamed the resentment of Tiberius against his mother, and then
used the estrangement to increase the unpopularity of the Emperor.
Scurrilous libels on “the ungrateful son” were current in Rome. These
are sometimes attributed to writers in the service of Livia, but it
would be a natural part of the scheme of Sejanus to spread them. On one
occasion a noble lady, Appuleia Varilia, was charged by the Senate with
accusing Tiberius and Livia of incest. Tiberius consulted his mother,
and declared to the Senate that they wished to treat the libel with
contemptuous indifference.
To Sejanus also we must, on the authority of Tacitus, attribute a plot
against Agrippina, which other writers assign to Tiberius or to Livia.
At a banquet in the palace it was noticed that Agrippina, pale and
sullen, passed all the dishes untouched. Tiberius at length invited her
to eat a fine apple which he chose. Under the eyes of all she handed it
to a servant to throw away, and Tiberius not unnaturally complained of
her unjust suspicions. Tacitus, who gives the most credible version of
the story, says that the agents of Sejanus had warned her that she was
to be poisoned at the banquet, so that she would act in a way that the
Emperor would resent.
Tiberius, weary of the violent passions of the capital, now lived
chiefly in Campania. It is not improbable that his disfigurement made
him sensitive. Rome would not spare the feelings of so unpopular
a ruler. It is not at all clear that he shrank from his Imperial
duties--Suetonius expressly says that he thought it possible to rule
better from the provinces--or that he wished to indulge in the wild
debauches which some attribute to him. Probably Sejanus, to secure
more power for himself, persuaded him that he could best discharge his
duties from a provincial seat.
At this juncture, in the year 29, saddened by the estrangement from
her son, by his helpless surrender to an unscrupulous adventurer, and
by the increasing degeneration of Rome, Livia died. She had, by sober
living--Pliny adds, by the constant chewing of a sweetmeat containing
a certain medicinal root, and by the use of Pucinian wine--attained
the great age of eighty-six. She had seen her husband dispel the long
horrors of civil war, refresh the Empire, and adorn Rome; and she
had felt the gloom and chill of a coming tragedy in her later years.
Few of the Empresses have been so differently estimated as Livia.
Merivale regards her as “a memorable example of successful artifice,
having obtained in succession, by craft if not by crime, every object
she could desire in the career of female ambition.” He adds: “But she
had long survived every genuine attachment she may at any time have
inspired, nor has a single voice been raised by posterity to supply the
want of honest eulogium in her own day.”[6]
The more concentrated research of the biographer has often to reverse
the verdict of the historian, and in this case it must acquit Livia of
either craft or vice. It is a singular error to say that Livia had no
“honest eulogium” in her own day. The Roman Senate is exposed to the
disdain of historians for its obsequiousness to the reigning Emperor,
yet, at the death of Livia, it sought to honour her memory in spite
of the resentment of Tiberius. The Emperor had refused to go to Rome,
either to see her before death or to attend her funeral. He gave to
Rome an example of silent indifference. Yet he had to use his authority
to prevent the Senate from decreeing divine honours to Livia, building
an arch to her memory, and declaring her “mother of her country.”
Dio remarks that the Senators were moved to do these things out of
sincere gratitude and respect. Few of the less wealthy members of the
Senate had not profited by her generosity. Their children had been
educated, and their daughters had received dowries, from her purse. Her
generosity is recognized by all the authorities. Her humanity is made
plain by the contents of this chapter.
The adverse estimate of Livia’s character is chiefly based on the
“Annals” of Tacitus, and it has long been recognized that Tacitus
drew his account largely from the memoirs of the younger Agrippina,
daughter of the woman who hated Livia. Yet Tacitus adds, when he has
recorded the death of Livia: “From this moment the government of
Tiberius became a sheer oppressive despotism. While Augusta lived one
avenue of escape remained open, for the Emperor was habitually deferent
toward his mother, and Sejanus dared not thwart her parental authority;
but when this curb was removed, there was nothing to check their
further career.”[7]
We have seen that Livia had used the same restraining influence on
the impetuosity of Octavian. With her died the attribute, or the wise
policy, of Imperial clemency, only to be revived by Emperors who
adopted that Stoic creed in which she found consolation after the
death of her son. That she was “hard” and “unscrupulous” is entirely
at variance with the most authenticated facts of her career. To say
that she was “avaricious” is a sheer absurdity. She maintained her
sober personal habits to the end, and took money only to bestow it on
the indigent and worthy, or expend it in raising public buildings. We
may grant that she had some ambition, but may claim that it was well
for Rome that she had it. She fell into many errors of judgment in her
later years, when Roman life was confused by such strong undercurrents
of intrigue; but these very errors tend to discredit the notion that
she employed a consummate art and strong intelligence in the furthering
of her own interests. In a word, it is the vices and follies of later
Empresses that have disposed historians to regard her sober virtues as
a mere mask.
NOTE
For the guidance of the general reader it is advisable to add
a few words on the Latin authorities, whom we now constantly
quote. Tacitus, the chief source of our knowledge down to the
year 70 A.D., is not only weakened as an historian by the very
strength of his morality, but he has too lightly followed the
memoirs in which the later Agrippina defamed the rival Imperial
family. Suetonius, who takes us as far as Domitian, is no less
honest, but he has too genial and indulgent a love of anecdotes
to discard any on the mere ground that they are untrue or
improbable. Dio Cassius, who covers the first two centuries, is
usually described as malignant; but one may question if he does
more than indulge still further the same amiable preference of
piquancy to truth. The “Historia Augusta,” which is our chief
authority for the greater part of the Empresses and the richest
source of scandal, has been much and profitably discussed
since Gibbon placed such reliance on it. It is now thought
by some experts that the original writers of this series of
biographical sketches of the Roman Emperors lived at the
beginning of the third century, and had a comparatively sober
standard of work. Toward the close of the third, or beginning
of the fourth, century the work was written afresh by the
group of less scrupulous writers whose names, or pseudonyms,
actually stand at the head of its chapters. But a still later
writer once more recast the work, and lowered its authority. He
wrote frankly from the point of view of the piquant anecdotist,
omitting much that would interest only the prosy student of
exact facts, and filling up the vacant space with such faint
legends of Imperial vice or folly as still, in his time,
lingered without the pale of history, or arose in the field
of romance. The question is fully discussed by Otto Schultz,
“Leben des Kaisers Hadrian” (1905), and Professor Kornemann,
“Kaiser Hadrian” (1906).