"Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's"
This is the secret of writing: look at the external things until
you see pulsating behind them the rhythm and beauty of the
Eternal. Only look for it, and persist in your search, and
presently the Universal will be revealed shining through the
particular, the sweep of everlasting Law through the little
object, and happenings of a day.
Come to history with the same intent and method, and at last
things appear in their true light. Here, too, as in a landscape,
is the rhythm of the Eternal; here are the Basic Forms. I doubt
if the evidence of the annalists is ever worth much, unless
they had an eye to penetrate to these. When one sees behind
the supposed fact narrated and the judgments pronounced the
glimmering up of a basic form, one guesses one is dealing with a
true historian.
Recently I read a book called _The Tragedy of the Caesars,_ by
the novelist Baring-Gould; and in it the life of a certain man
presented in a sense flatly contradictory to the views of
nineteen centuries anent that man; but it seemed to me at last
an account that had the rhythm, the basic form, showing through.
So in this lecture what I shall try to give you will be Mr.
Baring-Gould's version of this man's life, with efforts of my
own to go further and make quite clear the basic form.
What does one mean by 'basic form'? In truth it is hard to
define. Only, this world, that seems such a heterogeneous
helter-skelter of mournful promiscuities, is in fact the pattern
that flows from the loom of an Eternal Weaver: a beautiful
pattern, with its rhythms and recurrences; there is no haphazard
in it; it is not mechanical,--yet still flawless as the
configuarations of a crystal or the petals of a perfect flower.
The name of the man we are to think of tonight has come down as a
synonym for infamy: we imagine him a gloomy and bloodthirsty
tyrant; a morose tiger enthroned; a gross sensualist;--well, I
shall show you portraits of him, to see whether you can accept
him for that. The truth is that aristocratic Rome, degenerate
and frivolous, parrot-cried out against the supposed deneracy of
the imperial, and for the glories of the old republican, regime;
for the days when Romans were Romans, and 'virtuous.' One came
to them in whom the (real) ancient Roman honor more appeared than
in another man in Italy, perhaps before or since;--and they could
not understand the honor, and hated the man. They captured his
name in a great net of lies; they breathed a huge fog of lies
about him, which come down to us as history. Now to see whether
a plain tale may not put them down.
Once more take your stand, please, on the Mountain of the Gods:
the time, in or about the year 39 B.C.:--and thence try to
envisage the world as Those do who guide but are not involved in
the heats and dusts of it. The Western World; in which
Rome, _caput mundi,_ was the only thing that counted. _Caput
mundi;_ but a kind of idiot head at that: inchoate, without
co-ordination; maggots scampering through what might have been
the brain; the life fled, and that great rebellion of the many
lives which we call decay having taken its place. And yet, it
was no true season for Rome to be dead; it was no natural
death; not so much decent death at all as the death in life
we call madness. For the Crest-Wave men were coming in; it
was the place where they should be. The cycle of Italy had
begun, shall we say, in 94 B.C., and would end in 36 A.D.;
--for convenience one must give figures, though one means
only approximations by them;--and not until after that latter
date would souls of any caliber cease to be incarnate in
Roman bodies. Before that time, then, the madness had to
be cured and Rome's mission had to be fulfilled.
The mission was, to homogenize the world. That was the task the
Law had in mind for Rome; and it had to be done while the
Crest-Wave remained in Italy and important egos were gathered
in Rome. Some half dozen strong souls, under the Gods' special
agent Octavian, had gone in there to do the work; but the
Crest-Wave had flowed into Rome when Rome was already vice-rotten;
and how could she expect to run her whole thirteen decades a great
and ruling people? None of those strong souls could last out the
whole time. Octavian himself, should he live to be eighty, would
die and not see the cycle finished: twenty years of it would
remain--to be filled by one worthy to succeed him, or how
should his work escape being undone? The world must be made
homogensous, and Rome not its conqueror and cruel mistress, but
its well-respected heart and agreed-on center; and all this must
be accomplished, and established firmly, before her cyclic
greatness had gone elsewhere:--that is, before 37 A.D.
The Republic, as we have seen, had had its method of ruling the
provinces: it was to send out young profligates to fleece and
exploit them, and make them hate Rome. This must be changed, and
a habit formed of ruling for the benefit of the subject peoples.
Two or three generations of provincials must have grown up in
love with Rome before the end of the cycle, or the Empire would
then inevitably break. By 37 A.D., the Crest-Wave would have
left Italy, and would be centering in Spain. Spain, hating Rome,
would shake off the Roman yoke; she would have the men to do
it;--and the rest of the world would follow suit. Even if Spain
should set herself to the Gods' work of union-making, what path
should she take towards it? Only that of conquest would be open;
and how should she hope to conquer, and then wipe out the evil
traces of her conquering, and create a homogeneity, all within
her possible cycle of thirteen decades? Rome's great opportunity
came, simply because Rome had done the conquering before ever the
Crest-Wave struck her; in days when the Crest-Wave was hardly in
Europe at all. Even so, it would be a wonder if all could be
finished in the few years that remained.
By Rome it never could have been done at all: it was the office
of a Man, not of a state or nation. The Man who should do it,
must do it from Rome: and Rome had first to be put into such
condition as to be capable of being used. It devolved upon
Augustus to do that first, or his greater work would be
impossible. He had to win Rome to acquiescence in himself as
Princeps. So his primary need was a personality of infinite
tact; and _that_ he possessed. He was the kind of man everybody
could like; that put everyone at ease; that was friendly and
familiar in all sorts of society; so he could make that
treacherous quagmire Rome stable enough to be his _pied-a-terre._
That done, he could stretch out his arms thence to the provinces,
and begin to weld them into unity. For this was the second
part and real aim of his work: to rouse up in the Empire a
centripetalism, with Rome for center, before centripetalism, in
Rome itself, should have given place to the centrifugal forces of
national death.
Rome ruled the world, and Augustus Rome, by right of conquest;
and that is the most precarious right of all, and must always
vanish with a change in the cycles. He had to, and did,
transmute it into a stable right: first with respect to his own
standing in Rome,--which might be done, with _tact_ for weapon,--
in a few years; then with respect to Rome's standing in the
world,--which could not be done in less than a couple of
lifetimes, and with the best of good government as means. If
the work should be interrupted too early it would all fall to
pieces. So then he must have one successor at least, a soul of
standing equal to his own: one that could live and reign until
37 A.D. Let the Empire until that year be ruled continuously
from Rome in such a manner as to rouse up Roman--that is, World,
--patriotism in all its provinces, and the appearance of the
Crest-Wave in a new center would not be the signal for a new
break-up of the world. The problem was, then, to find the man
able to do this.
The child: for he must not be a man yet. And seeing what was at
stake, he must be better equipped than Augustus: he must be
trained from childhood by Augustus. Because he was to work in
the midst of much more difficult conditions. Augustus had real
men to help him: the successor probably would have none. When
the Crest-Wave struck it, Rome was already mean and corrupt and
degenerate. Augustus, not without good human aid, might hope to
knock it into some kind of decency during the apex-time of the
thirteen decades. His reign would fall, roughly, in the third
quarter of the cycle, which is the best time therein; but his
successor would have to hold out through the last quarter, which
is the very worst. The Crest-Wave would then be passing from
Italy: Rome would be becoming ever a harder place for a Real Man
to live and work in. Meaner and meaner egos would be sneaking
into incarnation; decent gentlemanly souls would be growing ever
more scarce. By 'mean egos' I intend such as are burdened with
ingrate personalities: creatures on whom sensuality has done its
disintegrating work; whose best pleasure is to exempt themselves
from any sense of degradation caused by fawning on the one strong
enough to be their master, by tearing down as they may his work
and reputation, circulating lies about him, tormenting him in
every indirect way they can. Among such as these, and probably
quite lonely among the, the successor of Augustus would lave to
live, fulfilling Heaven's work in spite of them. Where to find a
Soul capable, or who would dare undertake the venture? Well;
since it was to be done, and for the Gods,--no doubt the Gods
would have sent their qualified man into incarnation.
In B.C. 39 Octavian proclaimed a general amnesty; and among
these who profited by it was a certain member of the Claudian
gens,--one of that Nero family to which Rome owed so much--
_Testis Metaurum flumen et Hasdrubal
Devictus_
He had been a friend of Caesar's and an enemy of Octavian's; and
had been spending his time recently in fleeing from place to
place in much peril; as had also his wife, aged eighteen, and
their three-year-old son. On one occasion this lady was hurrying
by night through a forest, and the forest took fire; she
escaped, but not until the heat singed the cloak in which the
baby boy in her arms was wrapped. Now they returned, and
settled in their house on the Palatine not far from the house
of Octavian.
In Rome at that time marriage was not a binding institution. To
judge by the lives of those prominent enough to come into
history, you simply married and divorced a wife whenever
convenient. Octavian some time before had married Scribonia, to
patch up an alliance with her kins-man Sextus Pompey, then
prominent on the high seas in the role--I think the phrase is Mr.
Stobart's--of gentleman-pirate. As she was much older than
himself, and they had nothing in common, it occurred to no one
that, now the utility of the match had passed, he would not
follow the usual custom and divorce her. He met Livia, the wife
of this Tiberius Claudius Nero, and duly did divorce Livia. A
new wedding followed, in which Claudius Nero acted the part of
father to his ex-wife, and gave her away to Octavian. It all
sounds very disgraceful; but this must be said: the great
Augustus could never have done his great work so greatly had he
not had at his side the gracious figure of the empress Livia,--
during the fifty-two years that remained to him his serenest
counselor and closest friend.
And then--there was the boy: I believe the most important
element in the transaction.
His father died soon afterwards, and he came to live in the
palace, under the care of his mother,--and of Augustus; who had
now within his own family circle the two egos with whom he was
most nearly concerned, and without whom his work would have been
impossible. So I think we may put aside the idea that the
marriage with Livia was an 'affair of the heart,' as they call
it:--a matter of personal and passional atraction. He was guided
to it, as always, by his _Genius,_ and followed the promptings of
the Gods.
But,--Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. The divorced
Scribonia never forgave Augustus. She became the center of a
faction in society that hated him, hated Livia, loathed and
detested the whole Claudian line. There must have been bad blood
in Scribonia. Her daughter Julia became profligate. Of Julia's
five children, Agrippa Postumus went mad through his vices;
Julia inherited her mother's tendencies, and came to a like end.
Agrippina, a bitter and violent woman, became the evil genius of
the next reign. Of this Agrippina's children, Drusus and
Caligula went mad and her daughter was the mother of the madman
Nero. To me the record suggest this: that the marriage with,
not the divorce of, Scribonia was a grave mistake on the part of
Octavian; bringing down four generations of terible karma. He
was afloat in dangerous seas at that time, and a mere boy to take
arms against them: did he, trusting in material alliances and
the aid of Sextus Pirate, forget for once to trust in his
_Genius_ within? We have seen how the lines of pain became
deeply graven on his face during the years that followed Caesar's
death. A high soul, incarnating, must take many risks; and
before it has found itself and tamed the new personality, may
have sown griefs for itself to be reaped through many lives. The
descendants of Augustus and Scribonia were the bane of Augustus
and of Rome. But Livia was his good star, and always added to
his peace.
But now, back to the household on the Palatine, in the thirties B.C.
Julia (Scribonia's daughter), pert, witty, bold, and daring, was
the darling of her father, whom she knew well how to amuse.
Drusus, the younger son of Livia and Claudius Nero, was a bold
handsome boy of winning manners and fine promise, generally
noticed and loved. To these two you may say Augustus stood in
only human relations: the loving, careful, and _jolly_ father,
sharing in all their games and merriment. He always liked
playing with children: as emperor, would often stop in his walks
through the streets to join in a game with the street-boys. But
with Livia's elder son, Tiberius, he was different. Tiberius had
no charm of manner: Drusus his brother quite put him in the
shade. He carried with him the scars of his babyhood's perilous
adventures, and the terror of that unremembered night of fire.
He was desperately shy and sensitive; awkward in company;
reserved, timid, retiring, silent. Within the nature so pent up
were tense feelings; you would say ungovernable, only that he
always did govern them. He went unnoticed; Drusus was the pet
of all; under such conditions how much harmony as a rule exists
between two brothers? But Tiberius loved Drusus with his whole
heart; his thoughts knew no color of jealousy; unusual harmony
was between them until Drusus died.--The world said Augustus
disliked the boy: we shall see on what appearances that opinion
was based. But Tiberius, then and ever afterwards, held for
Augustus a feeling deeper and stronger than human or filial
affection: it was that, with the added reverence of a disciple
for his Teacher.--You shall find these intense feelings sometimes
in children of his stamp; though truly children of the stamp of
Tiberius are rare enough; for with all his tenderness, his
over-sensitiveness and timidity, put him to some task, whisper
to him _Duty!_--and the little Tiberius is another child altogether:
unflinching, silent, determined, pertinacious, ready to die
rather than give in before the thing is most whole-souledly done.
Augustus, merriest and most genial of men, never treated him as
he did Julia and Drusus: there were no games and rompings with
Tiberius. Let this grave child come into the room, and all
ended; as if the Princeps were a school-boy caught at it by some
stern prowling schoolmaster. Indeed, it was common talk that
Augustus, until the last years of his life, never smiled in
Tiberius' presence; that his smile died always on his stepson's
entry; the joke begun went unfinished; he became suddenly grave
and restrained;--as, I say, in the presence of a soul not to be
treated with levity, but always upon a considered plan.
The children grew up, and people began to talk of a successorship
to Augustus in the Principate. It would be, of course, through
Julia, his daughter. He married her to Marcellus, aged
seventeen, his sister Octavia's son, who he adopted. Marcellus
and Julia, then, would succeed him; no one thought of retiring
Tiberius. Marcellus, however, died in a couple of years; and
folk wondered who would step into his place. Augustus gave Julia
to Vipsanius Agrippa, the man who had won so many campaigns for
him. Agrippa was as old as the Princeps, but of much stronger
constitution; and so, likely to outlive him perhaps a long
while. Very appropriate, said Rome: Agrippa will reign next:
an excellent fellow. No one thought of shy Tiberius.--Agrippa,
by the way, was a strong man and a strict disciplinarian,--with
soldiers, at any rate: it might be hoped also with wives. It
was just as well for lady Julia to be under a firm hand.
Ten years later Agrippa died, and the heirship presumptive passed
to his two eldest children by Julia: the princes Caius and
Lucius. Augustus adopted them in due course. Heirship
presumptive means here, that they were the ones Rome presumed
would be the heirs: a presumption which Augustus, without being
too definite, encouraged. The Initiate Leaders and Teachers of
the world do not, as a rule, as far as one can judge, advertise
well beforehand the identity of their successors.--As for
Tiberius;--why, said Rome, his stepfather does not even like
him. Drusus, now, and _his_ children,--ah, that might be
a possibility.
For the marriages of the two brothers told a tale. Drusus had
married into the sacred Julian line: a daughter of Octavia and
Mark Anthony; his son Germanicaus was thus a grand-nephew of
Augustus, and a very great pet. But Tiberius had made a
love-match, with a mere daughter of Agrippa by some former wife:
an alliance that could not advance him in any way. Her name was
Vipsania; the whole intensity of his pent-up nature went into
his feeling for her; he was remarkably happily married;--that
is, for the human, the tender, sensitive, and affectionate
side of him.
Meanwhile both brothers had proved their worth. At twenty-two,
Tiberius set up a kind in Armenia, and managed for Augustus the
Parthian affair, whereby the standards of Crassus were returned.
There were Swiss and German campaigns: in which Drusus was
rather put where he might shine,--and he did shine;--and Tiberius
a little in the shade. But Drusus in Germany fell from his
horse, and died of his injuries; and then Tiberius was without
question the first general of his age, and ablest man under the
Princeps. As a soldier he was exceedingly careful of the welfare
of his men; cautious in his strategy, yet bold; reserved; he
made his own plans, and saw personally to their carrying out;--
above all, he never made mistakes and never lost a battle. His
natural shyness and timidity and awkwardness vanished as soon as
there was work to be done: in camp, or on the battlefield, he was
a very different man from the shy Tiberius of Roman society.
Gossip left his name untouched. It took advantage of Augustus;
natural _bonhomie,_ and whispered tales agains _him_ galore:
even said that Livia retained her hold on him by taking his
indiscretions discreetly;--which is as much as to say that an
utterly corrupt society judged that great man by its own corrupt
standards. But Tiberius was too austere; his life chilled even
Roman gossip into silence. There was also his patent devotion to
Vipsania..... You could only sneer at him, if at all, for
lack of spirit.
He had, then, great and magnificent qualities; but the scars of
his babyhood peril remained. There was that timid and clinging
disposition; that over-sensitiveness that came out when he was
away from camp, or without immediate business to transact, or in
any society but that of philosophers and occultists:--for we do
know that he was a student of Occult Philosophy. He had grand
qualities; but felt, beneath his reserve, much too strongly;
had a heart too full of pent-up human affections. But it
is written:
_"Before the Soul can stand in the prescence of the Masters,
its feet must be washed in the blood of the heart."_
It devolved upon his Teacher to break that heart for him; so
that he might stand in the presence of the Masters.
Agrippa had died; and for Julia's sake it was wise and better to
provide her with a husband. Augustus hesitated long before he
dared take the tremendous step he did: as one doubtful whether
it would accomplish what he hoped, or simply kill at once the
delicate psychic organism to be affected by it. Then he struck,
--hurled the bolt. Let Tiberius put away Vipsania and marry Julia.
Put away that adored Vipsania:--marry that Julia,--whom every
single instinct in his nature abhorred! Incompatible:--that is
the very least and mildest thing you can say about it;--but he
must say nothing, for he is speaking to her father. He resists a
long time, in deep anguish; but there is one word that for
Tiberius was ever a clarion call to his soul.
What, cries he, is this terrible thing you demand of me?--and his
Teacher answers: _Duty._ Duty to Rome, that the Julian and
Claudian factions may be united; duty to the empire, that my
successors, Caius and Lucius, may have, after I am gone, a strong
man for their guardian.--You will note that, if you please.
Augustus had just adopted these two sons of Julias; they were,
ostensibly, to be his successors; there was no bait for ambition
in this sacrifice Tiberius was called on to make; he would not
succeed to the Principate; the marriage would not help him;
there was to be nothing in it for him but pure pain. In the name
of duty he was called on to make a holocaust of himself.
He did it; and the feet of his soul were indeed washed in the
blood of his heart. He said no word; he divorced Vipsania and
explained nothing. But for months afterwards, if he should
chance to meet her, or see her in the street far off, he could
not hide the fact that his eyes filled with tears.--Then Rome in
its own kindly way took upon itself the duty or pleasure of
helping him out a little: gossip got to work to soothe the ache
of his wound. "Vipasania," said gossip;--"you are well rid of
her; she was far from being all that you thought her." Probably
he believed nothing of it; but the bitterness lay in its being
said. A shy man is never popular. His shyness passes for pride,
and people hate him for it. Tiberius was very shy. So society
was always anxious to take down his pride a little. The truth
was, he was humble to the verge of self-distrust.
He did his best for Julia: lived under the same roof with her
for a few agonized months, and discovered what everyone knew or
suspected about her. The cup of his grief was now quite full;
and indeed, worse things a man could hardly suffer. Austere,
reserved, and self-controlled as he was, at sight of Vipsania he
could not hide his tears. But it is written:
_"Before the eyes can see, they must become incapable of
tears."_
--He was the butt of Roman gossip: in all rancorous mouths
because of the loved Vipsania; in all tattling mouths because of
the loathed Julia; laughed at on both accounts; sympathized
with by nobody; hearing all whispers, and fearfully sensitive to
them. But
_"Before the ear can hear, it must have lost its sensitiveness."_
The storm was upon him; the silence was ahead; he was rocked
and shaken and stunned by the earthquakes and thunders of
Initiation: when a man has to be hopeless, and battered, and
stripped of all things: a naked soul afflicted with fiery rains
and torments; and to have no pride to back him; and no ambition
to back him; and no prospect before him at all, save such as can
be seen with the it may be unopened eyes of faith. This is the
way Tiberius endured his trials:--
All Rome knew what Julia was, except Augustus. So it is said;
and perhaps truly; for here comes in the mystery of human
duality: a thing hard enough to understand in ourselves, that
are common humanity; how much harder the variety that appears in
one such as Augustus! You may say, He must have known. Well,
there was the Adept Soul; that, I doubt not, would have known.
But perhaps it is that those who have all knowledge at their beck
and call, have the power to know or not know what they will?--to
know what shall help, not to know what shall hinder their work?
Julia was not to be saved: was, probably, tainted with madness
like so many of her descendants:--then what the Adept Soul could
not forfend, why would the human personality, the warn-hearted
father, be aware of? Had that last known, how should he escape
being bowed down with grief: then in those years when all his
powers and energies were needed? Octavian had gone through storm
and silence long since: in the days of the Triumvirate, and his
enforced partnership in its nefarious deeds;--now his personal
mind and his hands were needed to guide the Empire: and needed
clear and untrammeled with grief... Until Tiberius should be
ready; at least until Tiberius.... So I imagine it possible that
the soul of Augustus kept from its personality that wounding
knowledge about Julia.
Tiberius was not the one to interfere with its purposes. Why did
he not get a divorce? The remedy was clear and easy; and he
would have ceased to be the laughing stock of Rome. He did not
get a divorce; or try to; he said no word; he would not
lighten his own load by sharing it with the Teacher he loved. He
would not wound that Teacher to save himself pain or shame.
Augustus had made severe laws for punishing such offenses as
Julia's; and--well, Tiberius would bear his griefs alone. No
sound escaped him.
But, as no effort of his could help or save her, live with Julia,
or in Rome, he could not. His health broke down; he threw up
all offices, and begged leave to retire to Rhodes. Augustus was
(apparently) quite unsympathetic; withheld the permission until
(they say) Tiberius had starved himself for four days to show it
was go or die with him. And no, he would not take Julia; and he
would give no reason for not taking her. Well; what was
Augustus to do, having to keep up human appearances, and suit his
action to the probabilities? What, but appear put out, insulted,
angry? Estrangement followed; and Tiberius went in (apparent)
disgrace. I find the explanation once more in _Light on the
Path;_ thus--
"In the early state in which a man is entering upon the silence
he loses knowledge of his friends, of his lovers, of all
who have been near and dear to him: _and also loses sight of
his teachers._"
So in this case. "Scarce one passes through," we read, "without
bitter complaint." But I think Tiberius did.
How else to explain the incident I cannot guess. Or indeed, his
whole life. Tacitus' account does not hang together at all; the
contraditions trip each other up, and any mud is good enough to
fling. Mr. Baring-Gould's version goes far towards truth; but
the well is deep for his tackle, and only esotericism, I think,
can bring up the clear water. Whether Augustus knew all
personally, or was acting simply on the promptings of his inner
nature, or of Those who stoood behind him,--he took the course,
it seems to me, which as an Occult Teacher he was bound to take.
His conduct was framed in any case to meet the needs of his
disciple's initiation. He, for the Law, had to break that
disciple's outer life; and then send him lonely into the silence
to find the greater life within. Truly these waters are deep;
and one may be guessing with the utmost presumption. But hear
_Light on the Path_ again; and judge whether the picture that
emerges is or is not consistent. It says:
"Your teacher or your predecessor, may hold your hand in his, and
give you the utmost sympathy the human heart is capable of. But
when the silence and the darkness come, you lose all knowledge of
him: you are alone, and he cannot help you; not because his
power is gone, but because you have invoked your great enemy."
--Tiberius was alone, and Augustus could not help him; and
he went off, apparently quite out of favor, to seven years
of voluntary exile in Rhodes, there to don the robe of a
philosopher, and study philosophy and "astrology," as they say.
Let us put it, the Esoteric Wisdom; I think we may.
The truth about Julia could not be kept from Augustus forever.
It came to his ears at last; when his work was by so much nearer
completion, and when Tiberius was by so much nearer his
illumination. The Princeps did his duty, thought it made an old
man of him: he banished Julia according to his own law. Then it
was the wronged husband who stepped in and interceded; who wrote
pleading letters to his stepfatehr, imploring him to have mercy
on the erring woman: to lighten her punishment; to let her
mother, at least, be with her in her exile. He knew well what
tales Julia had been telling her father about him; and how
Augustus had seemed to believe them; but "a courageous endurance
of personal injustice" is demanded of the disciple; and very
surely it was found in him. Rome heard of his intercession,
and sneered at him for his weak-spiritedness; as kindly
letter-writers failed not to let him know.
"Look for the flower to bloom in the silence that follows
the storm, not till then."
The flower bloomed in this case during those seven years at
Rhodes; then Tiberius was fit to return. Outer events shaped
themseves to fit inner needs and qualifications: here now at
last was the Man who was to succeed Augustus, duly and truly
prepared, worthy and well-qualified: initiated, and ready to be
named before the world Heir to the Principate. Within a few
months of each other Caius and Lucius, the hitherto supposed
successors designate, died; their brother Agrippa Postumus was
already showing signs of incipient madness. True, there
were many of the Julian line still alive and available, were
Augustus (as had been thought) bent on making Julian blood the
qualification necessary: there was Germanicus, married to
Agrippina; he the son of Drusus and Antonia, Octavia's
daughter; she the daughter of Julia, and so grand-daughter of
Augustus himself: there were these two with their several
children. But all else might wait upon the fact that Tiberius,
the real man, was now ready. The Princeps adopted him, and no
one was left to doubt who was to be the successor. The happiest
years in Tiberius's life began: he had at last the full,
unreserved, and undisguised friendship of his Teacher. His
portarait-busts taken at this period show for the fist and only
time a faint smile on his gravely beautiful face.
Also he was given plenty of work. His great German campaigns
followed quickly; and the quelling of the Pannanian insurrection
that called him back from the Rhine; and Varus' defeat while
Tiberius was in Pannonia; and Tiberius's triumphant saving of
the situation. It was then, when the frontier was broken and all
the world aquake with alarm, that he consulted his generals; the
only time he ever did so. Says Velleius Paterculus, who served
uner him:--"There was no ostentation in his conduct; it was
marked by solid worth, practicality, humaneness. He took as much
care of any one of us who happened to be sick, as if that one's
health were the main object of his concern." Ambulances, he
continues, were always in attendance, with a medical staff, warm
baths, suitable food, etc., for the sick. "The general often
admonished, rarely punished; taking a middle part, dissembling
his knowledge of most faults, and preventing the commission of
others.... He preferred the approval of his own conscience to the
acquisition of renown."
He returned to Rome in triumph in the autumn of A.D. 12; and
dismissed his chief captives with present, instead of butchering
them in the fine old Roman way. He was at the height of his
fame; undeniably Rome's savior, and surely to be Princeps on his
Teacher's death. Augustus, in letters that remain, calls him
"the only strength and stay of the Empire." "All who were with
you," says he, "admit that this verse suits you:"
'One man by vigilance has restored the state.'
Whenever anything happens that requires more than ordinary
consideration, or when I am out of humor, then, by Hercules, I
long for the presence of my dear Tiberius; and Homer's lines
rise in my mind:
'Bold from his prudence, I could e'en aspire
To dare with him the burning rage of fire.'
"When I hear that you are worn out with incessant fatigue, the
Gods confound me if I am not all in a quake. So I entreat you
to spare yourself, lest, should we hear of your being ill, the
news prove fatal to your mother and myself, and the Roman people
be alarmed for the safety of the Empire. I pray heaven to
preserve you for us, and bless you with health now and ever,--if
the Gods care a rush for the Roman people. ....Farewell, my
dearest Tiberius; may good success attend you, you best of all
generals, in all that you undertake for me and for the Muses."
Two years later Augustus died, and Tiberius became emperor; and
the persecution broke out that was not to end till his death.
Let us get the whole situation firmly in mind. There was that
clique in high society of men who hated the Principate because it
had robbed them of the spoils of power. It gathered first round
Scribonia, because she hated Augustus for divorcing her; then
round Julia, because she was living in open contempt of the
principles her father stood for. Its chief bugbear of all
was Tiberius, because he was the living embodiment of those
principles; and because Julia, the witty and brilliant, hated
him above all things and made him in the salons the butt for her
shafts. Its darling poet was Ovid; whose poetic mission was, in
Mr. Stobart's phrase, "to gild uncleannes with charm." Presently
Augustus sent him into exile: whiner over his own hard lot. But
enough of unsavory him: the clique remained and treasured his
doctrine. When Caius and Lucius died, it failed not to whisper
that of course Tiberius had poisoned them; and during the next
twenty-five years you could hardly die, in Rome, without the
clique's buzzing a like tale over your corpse.--A faction that
lasted on, handing down its legends, until Suetonius and Tacitus
took them up and immortalized them; thus creating the Tiberius
of popular belief and "history," deceiving the world for
twenty centuries.
The Augustan system implied no tyranny; not even absolutism:--it
was through no fault of its founder, or of his successor, that
the constitutional side of it broke down. Remember the divine
aim behind it all: to weld the world into one. So you must
have the provinces, the new ones that retaineed their national
identity, under Adept rule; there must be no monkeying by
incompetents there. Those provinces were, absolutely all in the
hands of Caesar. But in Rome, and Italy, and all quiet and
long-settled parts, the senate was to rule; and Augustus' effort,
and especially Tiberius' effort, was to make it do so. But by
this time, you may say, there was nothing resembling a human ego
left among the senators: when the Manasaputra incarnated, these
fellows had been elsewhere. They simply could not rule.
Augustus had had constantly to be intervening to pull them out of
scrapes; to audit their accounts for them, because they could
not do the sums themselves; to send down men into their
provinces to put things right whenever they went wrong. Tiberius
was much more loath to do this. At times one almost suspects him
of being at heart a republican, anxious to restore the Republic
the first moment it might be practicable. That would be, when
the whole empire was one nation and some few souls to guide
things should have appeared. At any rate (in his latter years)
it must have seemed still possible that the Principate should
continue: there was absolutely no one to follow him in it. So
the best thing was to leave as much as possible the senate's duty
to the senate, that responsibility might be aroused in them. For
himself, he gave his whole heart and mind to governing the
provinces of Caesar. He went minutely into finances; and would
have his sheep sheared, not flayed. His eyes and hands were
everywhere, to bring about the Brotherhood of Man. There is,
perhaps, evidence in the Christian Evangels: where we see the
Jewish commonalty on excellent good terms with the Roman soldier,
and Jesus consorting freindily with Tiberius' centurions and
tax-gatherers; but the Jewish national leaders as the enemies of
both--of the Romans, and of the democratic Nazarene. If this
emperor's life had come down through provincial, and not
metropolitan, channels, we should have heard of him as the most
beneficent of men. Indeed, Mr. Baring-Gould argues that among
the Christians a tradition came down of him as of one "very near
the Kingdom of God." It may be so; and such a view may even be
the reflexion of the Nazarene Master's own opinion as to
Tiberius. At any rate, we must suppose that at that time the
Christian Movement was still fairly pure: its seat was in the
provinces, far from Rome; and its strength among humble people
seeking to live the higher life. But those who were interested
to lie against Tiberius, and whose lies come down to us for
history, were all metropolitans, and aristocrats, and apostles
of degeneracy. I do not mean to include Tacitus under the last
head; but he belonged to the party, and inherited the tradition.
It was on the provinces that Tiberius had his hand, not on the
metropolis. He hoped the senators would do their duty, gave them
every chance to; he rather turned his eyes away from their
sphere, and kept them fixed on his own. We must understand this
well: the histories give but accounts of Roman and home affairs;
with which, as they were outside his duty, Tiberius concerned
himself as little as he might.
But the senate's conception of duty-doing was this: flatter the
Caesar in public with all the ingenuity and rhetoric God or the
devil has given you; but for the sake of decency slander him in
private, and so keep your self-respect.--I abased my soul to
Caesar, I? Yes, I know I licked his shoes in the senate house;
but that was merely camouflage. At Agrippina's _at home_ I made
up for it; was it not high-souled I who told that filthy story
about him?--which, (congratulate me!) I invented myself. How
dare you then accuse me of being small-spirited, or one to
reverence any man soever?--So these maggots crawled and tumbled;
untill they brought down their own karma on their heads like the
Assyrian in the poem, or a thousand of bricks. Constitutuionalism
broke down, and tyranny came on awfully in its place; and those
who had not upheld the constitution suffered from the tyranny.
But it was not heroic Tiberius who was the tyrant.
He was unpopular with the crowd, because austere and taciturn;
he would not wear the pomps and tinsels, or swagger it in public
to their taste. He was too reserved; he was not a good mixer:
if you fell on your knees to him, he simply recoiled in disgust.
He would not witness the gladiatorial games, with their sickening
senseless bloodshed; nor the plays at the theatre, with their
improprieties. In these things he was an anomaly in his age, and
felt about them as would any humane gentleman today. So it was
easy for his enemies to work up popular feeling aginst him.
At the funeral of Augustus he had to read the oration. A lump in
his throat prevented him getting through with it, and he handed
the paper to his son Drusus to finish. "Oh!" cried his enemies
then and Tacitus after them, "what dissimulation! what rank
hypocrisy! when in reality he must be overjoyed to be in the
dead man's shoes." When that same Drusus (his dear son and sole
hope) died some years later, he so far controlled his feelings
that none saw a muscle of his face moved by emotion while he read
the oration. "Oh!" cried his enemies then and Tacitus after
them, "what a cold unfeeling monster!" Tiberius, with an
absolute eye for reading men's thoughts, knew well what was being
said on either occasion.
When Augustus died, his one surviving grandson, Agrippa Postumus,
was mad and under restraint in the island of Planasia, near Elba.
A plot was hatched to spirit him away to the Rhine, and have him
there proclaimed as against Tiberius by the legions. One Clemens
was deputed to do this; but when Clemens reached Planasia, he
found Agrippa murdered. Says Suetonius:
"It remained doubtful whether Augustus left the order (for the
murder) in his last moments, to prevent any public disturbance
after his death; or whether Livia issued it in the name of
Augustus, or whether it was issued with or without the knowledge
of Tiberius."--Tacitus in the right,--though truly this Agrippa
Postumus was a peculiarly violent offensive idiot, and Augustus
knew well what the anti-Claudian faction was capable of. Nor can
one credit that gracious lady Livia with it; though it was she
who persuaded Tiberius to hush the thing up, and rescind his
order for a public senatorial investigation. For an order to
that effect he issued; and Tacitus, _more suo,_ puts it down to
his hypocrisy. Tacitus' method with Tiberius is this: all his
acts of mercy are to be attributed to weak-spiritedness; all his
acts of justice, to blood-tyranny; everything else to hypocrisy
and dissimulation.
Neither Augustus, nor yet Livia, then, had Agrippa killed; must
we credit it to Tiberius? Less probably, I think, it was he than
either of the others: I can just imagine Augustus taking the
responsibility for the sake of Rome, but not Tiberius criminal
for his own sake. Here is an explanation which incriminates
neither: it may seem far-fetched; but then many true things do.
We know how the children of darkness hate the Messengers of
Light. Tiberius stood for private and public morality; the
Julian-republican clique for the opposite. He stood for the
nations welded into one, the centuries to be, and the high
purposes of the Law. They stood for anarchy, civil war, and the
old spoils system.--Down him then! said they. And how?--Fish up
mad Postumus, and let's have a row with the Legions of the
Rhine.--Yes; that sounds pretty--for you who are not in the deep
know of the thing. But how far do you think the Legions of the
Rhine are going to support this young revolting-habited madman
against the first general of the age? You are green; you are
crude, my friends;--but go to it; your plot shall do well. But
we, the cream and innermost of the party,--we have another. Let
the madman be murdered,--and who shall be called the murderer?
I believe they argued that way;--and very wisely; for Tiberius
still carries the odium of the murder of Agrippa Postumus.
Why did he allow himself to be dissuaded from the public
investigation? Was it weakness? His perturbation when he heard
of the murder, and his orders for the investigation, were natural
enough. One can perhaps understand Livia, shaken with the grief
of her great bereavement, fearing the unknown, fearing scandal,
fearing to take issue with the faction whose strength and
bitterness she knew, pleading with her son to let the matter be.
Was it weakness on his part, that he concurred? This much must
be allowed: Tiberius was always weak at self-defense. Had he
taken prompt steps against his personal enemies, it might have
been much better for him, in a way. But then and always his eyes
were upon the performance of his duty; which he understood to be
the care of the empire, not the defense of himself. We called
Augustus the bridge; Tiberius was the shield. He understood the
business of a shield to be, to take shafts, and make no noise
about it. Proud he was; with that sublime pride that argues
itself capable of standing all things, so that the thing it cares
for--which is not its own reputation--is unhurt. You shall see.
We might call it unwisdom, if his work had suffered by it; but
it was only his peace, his own name--and eventually his enemies--
that suffered. He brought the world through.
Detail by detail, Mr. Baring-Gould takes the incidents of his
reign, and show how the plot was worked up against him, and every
happening, all his deeds and motives, colorless or finely
colored, given a coat of pitch. We can only glance at one or two
points here: his relations with Germanicus, and with Agrippina;
the rise and fall of Sejanus.
Germanicus, his nephew, was fighting on the Rhine when Tiberius
came to the throne. There was a mutiny; which Germanicus
quelled with much loss of dignity and then with much bloodshed.
To cover the loss of dignity, he embarked on gay adventures
against the Germans; and played the fool a little, losing some
few battles. Tiberius, who understood German affairs better than
any man living, wanted peace in that quarter; and recalled
Germanicus; then, lest there should be any flavor of disgrace in
the recall, sent him on a mission to the East. Your textbooks
will tell you he recalled him through jealousy of his brilliant
exploits. Germanicus being something flighty of disposition, the
emperor sent with him on his new mission a rough old fellow by
the name of Calpurnius Piso to keep a weather eye open on him,
and neutralize, as far as might be, extravagant actions. The
choice, it must be said, was a bad one; for the two fought like
cat and dog the better part of the time. Then Germanicus died,
supposing that Piso had poisoned him; and Agrippina his wife
came home, an Ate shrieking for revenge. She had exposed her
husband's naked body in the marketplace at Antioch, that all
might see he had been poisoned; which shows the kind of woman
she was. Germanicus was given a huge funeral at Rome; he
was the darling of the mob, and the funeral was really a
demonstration against Tiberius. then Piso was to be tried for
the murder: a crabbed but honest old plebeian of good and
ancient family, who Tiberius knew well enough was innocent.
There were threats of mob violence if he should be acquitted;
and the suggestion studiously sown that Piso, guilty, had been
set on to the murder by the Princeps. Tiberius, knowing the
popular feeling, did not attend the funeral of his nephew. It
was a mistake in policy, perhaps; but his experience had been
unpleasant enought at the funeral of Augustus. Tacitus says he
stayed away fearing lest the public, peering into his face thus
from close to, might see the marks of dissimulation in it, and
realize that his grief was hypocrisy. How the devil did Tacitus
know? Yet what he says comes down as gospel.
This sort of thing went on continually, and provided him a poor
atmosphere in which to do his great and important work. As he
grew older, he retired more and more. He trusted in his minister
Sejanus who had once heroically save his life: an exceedingly
able, but unfortunately also an exceedingly wicked man. Sejanus
became his link with Rome and the senate; and used that
position, and the senate's incompetence, to gather into his own
hands a power practically absolute in home affairs. Home
affairs, be it always remembered, were what the Princeps expected
the senate to attend to: their duty, under the constitution.
Instead, however, they fawned on Sejanus _ad lib._ Sejanus
murdered Tiberius' son Drusus, and aspired to the hand of
Livilla, his widow: she was the daughter of Germanicus and
Agrippina; and she certainly, and Agrippina probably, were
accessories to the murder of Drusus. For Agrippina was obsessed
with hatred for Tiberius: with the idea that he had murdered her
husband, and with thirst for revenge. Sejanus was thus in a fair
way to the ends of his ambition: to be named the successor to
the Principate.
Then Tiberius found him out; and sent a message to a senate
engaged in Sejanus-worship, demanding the punishment of the
murderers of Drusus.
Sejanus had built up his power by fostering the system of
delation. There was no public prosecutor in the Roman system:
when any wrong had been done, it was anyone's business to
prosecute. The end of education was rhetoric, that you might get
on in life. The first step was to bring an accusation against
some public man, and support it with a mighty telling speech. If
you succeeded, and killed your man,--why, then your name was
made. On this system, with developments of his own, Sejanus had
built; had employed one half of Rome informing against the
other. It took time to bring about; but he had worked up by
degrees a state of things in which all went in terror of him;
and the senate was eager perpetually to condemn any one he might
recommend for condemnation. When Tiberius found him out, they
lost their heads entirely, and simply tumbled over themselves
in their anxiety to accuse, condemn, and execute each other.
Everyone was being informed against as having been a friend of
Sejanus, and therefore an enemy of their dear Princeps; who was
away at Capri attending to his duty; and whose ears, now Sejanus
was gone, they might hope to reach with flatteries. You supped
with your friend overnight; did your best to diddle him into
saying something over the wine-cups;--then rose betimes in the
morning to accuse him of saying it: only too often to find that
he, (traitorly wretch!) had risen half an hour earlier and
accused you; so you missed your breakfast for nothing; and
dined (we may hope) in a better world. Thus during the last
years of the reign there was a Terror in Rome: in the senate's
sphere of influence; the senatorial class the sufferers and
inflictors of the suffering. Meanwhile Tiberius in his
retirement was still at his duty; his hold on his provinces
never relaxed. When the condemned appealed to him, the records
show that in nearly every case their sentences were commuted.
Tiberius' enemies were punishing themselves; but the odium of it
has been fastened on Tiberius. He might have interfered, you
say?--What! with Karma? I doubt.
His sane, balanced, moderate character comes out in his own words
again and again: he was a wonderful anomaly in that age. Rome
was filled with slanders against him; and the fulsome senate
implored him to punish the slanderers. "We have not much time to
spare," Tiberius answered; "we need not involve ourselves in
this additional business." "If any man speaks ill of me, I shall
take care so to behave as to be able to give a good accound of my
words and acts, and so confound him. If he speaks ill of me
after that, it will be time enough for me to think about hating
him." Permission was asked to raise a temple to him in Spain;
he refused to grant it, saying that if every emperor was to be
worshiped, the worship of Augustus would lose its meaning. "For
myself, a mere mortal, it is enough for me if I do my duties as a
mortal; I am content if posterity recognises that... This is the
only temple I desire to have raised in my honor,--and this only
in men's hearts."--the senate, in a spasm of flattery, offered to
swear in advance to all his acts. He forbade it, saying in
effect that he was doing and proposed to do his best; but all
things human were liable to change, and he would not have them
endorsing the future acts of one who by the mere failure of his
faculties might do wrong.
In those sayings, I think, you get the man: perhaps a disciple
only, and never actually a Master; perhaps never absolutely sure
of himself, but only of his capacity and determination to do his
duty day by day: his own duty, and not other men's:--never
setting himself on a level with his Teacher; or thinking himself
able, of his own abilities, to run the world, as Augustus had had
the power and the mission to do,--but as probably no man might
have had the power to do in Tiberius' time;--and by virtue of
that faith, that high concentration on duty, carrying the world
(but not Rome) through in spite of Rome, which had become then a
thing incurable, nothing more than an infection and lamentable scab.
He left it altogether in his last years; its atmosphere and
bitterness were too much for him. Form the quiet at Capri he
continued to rule his provinces until the end; ever hoping that
if he did his duty, someone or some spirit might arise in the
senate to do theirs. Tacitus explains his retirement--as Roman
society had explained it when it happened,--thus: Being then
seventy-two years old, Tiberius, whose life up to that time had
been irreproachable and untouched by gossip, went to Capri to
have freedom and privacy for orgies of personal vice. But why
did he not stay at Rome for his orgies: doing at Rome as the
Romans did, and thereby perhaps earning a measure of popularity?
Over the bridge Augustus, western humanity had made the crossing;
but on the further shore, there had to be a sacrifice to the
Fates. Tiberius was the sacrifice. And that sacrifice was not
in vain. We get one glimpse through provincial (and therefore
undiseased) eyes of the empire he built up in the provinces. It
is from Philo Judaeus, a Jewish Theosophist of Alexandria, who
came to Rome in the reign of Caligula, Tiberius' successor.
(Tiberius, it must be said, appointed no successor; there was
none for him to appoint.) Caligula, says Philo,
"....succeeded to an empire that was well organized, tending
everywhere to conceed--north, south, east, and west brought into
friendship; Greeks and barbarians routed, soldiers and civilians
linked together in the bonds of a happy peace."
That was the work of Tiberius.
In the Gospel narrative, Jesus is once made to allude to him;
in the words quoted at the head of this paper: "Render unto
Caesar"--who was Tiberius--"the things which are Caesar's" I
think it is about time it should be done: that the wreath of
honor should at last be laid on the memory of this brave, just,
sane, and merciful man; this silent duty-doer, who would speak
no word in his own defense; this Agent of the Gods, who endured
all those years of crucifixion, that he might build up the Unity
of Mankind.
Says Mr. Baring-Gould:
"In the galleries of Rome, of Naples, Florence, Paris, one sees
the beautiful face of Tiberius, with that intellectual brow and
sensitive mouth, looking pleadingly at the passer-by, as though
seeking for someone who would unlock the secret of his story and
vindicate his much aspersed memory."