said, upon this occasion. She having frequently urged him to place among
the judges a person who had been made free of the city, he refused her
request, unless she would allow it to be inscribed on the roll, “That the
appointment had been extorted from him by his mother.” Enraged at this,
Livia brought forth from her chapel some letters from Augustus to her,
complaining of the sourness and insolence of Tiberius’s temper, and these
she read. So much was he offended at these letters having been kept so
long, and now produced with so much bitterness against him, that some
considered this incident as one of the causes of his going into
seclusion, if not the principal reason for his so doing. In the (224)
whole years she lived during his retirement, he saw her but once, and
that for a few hours only. When she fell sick shortly afterwards, he was
quite unconcerned about visiting her in her illness; and when she died,
after promising to attend her funeral, he deferred his coming for several
days, so that the corpse was in a state of decay and putrefaction before
the interment; and he then forbad divine honours being paid to her,
pretending that he acted according to her own directions. He likewise
annulled her will, and in a short time ruined all her friends and
acquaintance; not even sparing those to whom, on her death-bed, she had
recommended the care of her funeral, but condemning one of them, a man of
equestrian rank, to the treadmill. [352]
LII. He entertained no paternal affection either for his own son Drusus,
or his adopted son Germanicus. Offended at the vices of the former, who
was of a loose disposition and led a dissolute life, he was not much
affected at his death; but, almost immediately after the funeral, resumed
his attention to business, and prevented the courts from being longer
closed. The ambassadors from the people of Ilium coming rather late to
offer their condolence, he said to them by way of banter, as if the
affair had already faded from his memory, “And I heartily condole with
you on the loss of your renowned countryman, Hector.” He so much
affected to depreciate Germanicus, that he spoke of his achievements as
utterly insignificant, and railed at his most glorious victories as
ruinous to the state; complaining of him also to the senate for going to
Alexandria without his knowledge, upon occasion of a great and sudden
famine at Rome. It was believed that he took care to have him dispatched
by Cneius Piso, his lieutenant in Syria. This person was afterwards
tried for the murder, and would, as was supposed, have produced his
orders, had they not been contained in a private and confidential
dispatch. The following words therefore were posted up in many places,
and frequently shouted in the night: “Give us back our Germanicus.” This
suspicion was afterwards confirmed by the barbarous treatment of his wife
and children.
(225) LIII. His daughter-in-law Agrippina, after the death of her
husband, complaining upon some occasion with more than ordinary freedom,
he took her by the hand, and addressed her in a Greek verse to this
effect: “My dear child, do you think yourself injured, because you are
not empress?” Nor did he ever vouchsafe to speak to her again. Upon her
refusing once at supper to taste some fruit which he presented to her, he
declined inviting her to his table, pretending that she in effect charged
him with a design to poison her; whereas the whole was a contrivance of
his own. He was to offer the fruit, and she to be privately cautioned
against eating what would infallibly cause her death. At last, having
her accused of intending to flee for refuge to the statue of Augustus, or
to the army, he banished her to the island of Pandataria [353]. Upon her
reviling him for it, he caused a centurion to beat out one of her eyes;
and when she resolved to starve herself to death, he ordered her mouth to
be forced open, and meat to be crammed down her throat. But she
persisting in her resolution, and dying soon afterwards, he persecuted
her memory with the basest aspersions, and persuaded the senate to put
her birth-day amongst the number of unlucky days in the calendar. He
likewise took credit for not having caused her to be strangled and her
body cast upon the Gemonian Steps, and suffered a decree of the senate to
pass, thanking him for his clemency, and an offering of gold to be made
to Jupiter Capitolinus on the occasion.
LIV. He had by Germanicus three grandsons, Nero, Drusus, and Caius; and
by his son Drusus one, named Tiberius. Of these, after the loss of his
sons, he commended Nero and Drusus, the two eldest sons of Germanicus, to
the senate; and at their being solemnly introduced into the forum,
distributed money among the people. But when he found that on entering
upon the new year they were included in the public vows for his own
welfare, he told the senate, “that such honours ought not to be conferred
but upon those who had been proved, and were of more advanced years.” By
thus betraying his private feelings towards them, he exposed them to all
sorts of accusations; and after practising many artifices to provoke
(226) them to rail at and abuse him, that he might be furnished with a
pretence to destroy them, he charged them with it in a letter to the
senate; at the same time accusing them, in the bitterest terms, of the
most scandalous vices. Upon their being declared enemies by the senate,
he starved them to death; Nero in the island of Ponza, and Drusus in the
vaults of the Palatium. It is thought by some, that Nero was driven to a
voluntary death by the executioner’s shewing him some halters and hooks,
as if he had been sent to him by order of the senate. Drusus, it is
said, was so rabid with hunger, that he attempted to eat the chaff with
which his mattress was stuffed. The relics of both were so scattered,
that it was with difficulty they were collected.
LV. Besides his old friends and intimate acquaintance, he required the
assistance of twenty of the most eminent persons in the city, as
counsellors in the administration of public affairs. Out of all this
number, scarcely two or three escaped the fury of his savage disposition.
All the rest he destroyed upon one pretence or another; and among them
Aelius Sejanus, whose fall was attended with the ruin of many others. He
had advanced this minister to the highest pitch of grandeur, not so much
from any real regard for him, as that by his base and sinister
contrivances he might ruin the children of Germanicus, and thereby secure
the succession to his own grandson by Drusus.
LVI. He treated with no greater leniency the Greeks in his family, even
those with whom he was most pleased. Having asked one Zeno, upon his
using some far-fetched phrases, “What uncouth dialect is that?” he
replied, “The Doric.” For this answer he banished him to Cinara [354],
suspecting that he taunted him with his former residence at Rhodes, where
the Doric dialect is spoken. It being his custom to start questions at
supper, arising out of what he had been reading in the day, and finding
that Seleucus, the grammarian, used to inquire of his attendants what
authors he was then studying, and so came prepared for his enquiries--he
first turned him out of his family, and then drove him to the extremity
of laying violent hands upon himself.
(227) LVII. His cruel and sullen temper appeared when he was still a
boy; which Theodorus of Gadara [355], his master in rhetoric, first
discovered, and expressed by a very apposite simile, calling him
sometimes, when he chid him, “Mud mixed with blood.” But his disposition
shewed itself still more clearly on his attaining the imperial power, and
even in the beginning of his administration, when he was endeavouring to
gain the popular favour, by affecting moderation. Upon a funeral passing
by, a wag called out to the dead man, “Tell Augustus, that the legacies
he bequeathed to the people are not yet paid.” The man being brought
before him, he ordered that he should receive what was due to him, and
then be led to execution, that he might deliver the message to his father
himself. Not long afterwards, when one Pompey, a Roman knight, persisted
in his opposition to something he proposed in the senate, he threatened
to put him in prison, and told him, “Of a Pompey I shall make a Pompeian
of you;” by a bitter kind of pun playing upon the man’s name, and the
ill-fortune of his party.
LVIII. About the same time, when the praetor consulted him, whether it
was his pleasure that the tribunals should take cognizance of accusations
of treason, he replied, “The laws ought to be put in execution;” and he
did put them in execution most severely. Some person had taken off the
head of Augustus from one of his statues, and replaced it by another
[356]. The matter was brought before the senate, and because the case
was not clear, the witnesses were put to the torture. The party accused
being found guilty, and condemned, this kind of proceeding was carried so
far, that it became capital for a man to beat his slave, or change his
clothes, near the statue of Augustus; to carry his head stamped upon the
coin, or cut in the stone of a ring, into a necessary house, or the
stews; or to reflect upon anything that had been either said or done by
him. In fine, a person was condemned to death, for suffering some
honours to be decreed to him in the colony where he lived, upon the same
day on which they had formerly been decreed to Augustus.
(228) LIX. He was besides guilty of many barbarous actions, under the
pretence of strictness and reformation of manners, but more to gratify
his own savage disposition. Some verses were published, which displayed
the present calamities of his reign, and anticipated the future. [357]
Asper et immitis, breviter vis omnia dicam?
Dispeream si te mater amare potest.
Non es eques, quare? non sunt tibi millia centum?
Omnia si quaeras, et Rhodos exsilium est.
Aurea mutasti Saturni saecula, Caesar:
Incolumi nam te, ferrea semper erunt.
Fastidit vinum, quia jam sit it iste cruorem:
Tam bibit hunc avide, quam bibit ante merum.
Adspice felicem sibi, non tibi, Romule, Sullam:
Et Marium, si vis, adspice, sed reducem.
Nec non Antoni civilia bella moventis
Nec semel infectas adspice caeda manus.
Et dic, Roma perit: regnabit sanguine multo,
Ad regnum quisquis venit ab exsilio.
Obdurate wretch! too fierce, too fell to move
The least kind yearnings of a mother’s love!
No knight thou art, as having no estate;
Long suffered’st thou in Rhodes an exile’s fate,
No more the happy Golden Age we see;
The Iron’s come, and sure to last with thee.
Instead of wine he thirsted for before,
He wallows now in floods of human gore.
Reflect, ye Romans, on the dreadful times,
Made such by Marius, and by Sylla’s crimes.
Reflect how Antony’s ambitious rage
Twice scar’d with horror a distracted age,
And say, Alas! Rome’s blood in streams will flow,
When banish’d miscreants rule this world below.
At first he would have it understood, that these satirical verses were
drawn forth by the resentment of those who were impatient under the
discipline of reformation, rather than that they spoke their real
sentiments; and he would frequently say, “Let them hate me, so long as
they do but approve my conduct.” [358] At length, however, his behaviour
showed that he was sensible they were too well founded.
(229) LX. A few days after his arrival at Capri, a fisherman coming up
to him unexpectedly, when he was desirous of privacy, and presenting him
with a large mullet, he ordered the man’s face to be scrubbed with the
fish; being terrified at the thought of his having been able to creep
upon him from the back of the island, over such rugged and steep rocks.
The man, while undergoing the punishment, expressing his joy that he had
not likewise offered him a large crab which he had also taken, he ordered
his face to be farther lacerated with its claws. He put to death one of
the pretorian guards, for having stolen a peacock out of his orchard. In
one of his journeys, his litter being obstructed by some bushes, he
ordered the officer whose duty it was to ride on and examine the road, a
centurion of the first cohorts, to be laid on his face upon the ground,
and scourged almost to death.
LXI. Soon afterwards, he abandoned himself to every species of cruelty,
never wanting occasions of one kind or another, to serve as a pretext.
He first fell upon the friends and acquaintance of his mother, then those
of his grandsons, and his daughter-in-law, and lastly those of Sejanus;
after whose death he became cruel in the extreme. From this it appeared,
that he had not been so much instigated by Sejanus, as supplied with
occasions of gratifying his savage temper, when he wanted them. Though
in a short memoir which he composed of his own life, he had the
effrontery to write, “I have punished Sejanus, because I found him bent
upon the destruction of the children of my son Germanicus,” one of these
he put to death, when he began to suspect Sejanus; and another, after he
was taken off. It would be tedious to relate all the numerous instances
of his cruelty: suffice it to give a few examples, in their different
kinds. Not a day passed without the punishment of some person or other,
not excepting holidays, or those appropriated to the worship of the gods.
Some were tried even on New-Year’s-Day. Of many who were condemned,
their wives and children shared the same fate; and for those who were
sentenced to death, the relations were forbid to put on mourning.
Considerable rewards were voted for the prosecutors, and sometimes for
the witnesses also. The information of any person, without exception,
was taken; and all offences were capital, even speaking (230) a few
words, though without any ill intention. A poet was charged with abusing
Agamemnon; and a historian [359], for calling Brutus and Cassius “the
last of the Romans.” The two authors were immediately called to account,
and their writings suppressed; though they had been well received some
years before, and read in the hearing of Augustus. Some, who were thrown
into prison, were not only denied the solace of study, but debarred from
all company and conversation. Many persons, when summoned to trial,
stabbed themselves at home, to avoid the distress and ignominy of a
public condemnation, which they were certain would ensue. Others took
poison in the senate house. The wounds were bound up, and all who had
not expired, were carried, half-dead, and panting for life, to prison.
Those who were put to death, were thrown down the Gemonian stairs, and
then dragged into the Tiber. In one day, twenty were treated in this
manner; and amongst them women and boys. Because, according to an
ancient custom, it was not lawful to strangle virgins, the young girls
were first deflowered by the executioner, and afterwards strangled.
Those who were desirous to die, were forced to live. For he thought
death so slight a punishment, that upon hearing that Carnulius, one of
the accused, who was under prosecution, had killed himself, he exclaimed,
“Carnulius has escaped me.” In calling over his prisoners, when one of
them requested the favour of a speedy death, he replied, “You are not yet
restored to favour.” A man of consular rank writes in his annals, that
at table, where he himself was present with a large company, he was
suddenly asked aloud by a dwarf who stood by amongst the buffoons, why
Paconius, who was under a prosecution for treason, lived so long.
Tiberius immediately reprimanded him for his pertness; but wrote to the
senate a few days after, to proceed without delay to the punishment of
Paconius.
LXII. Exasperated by information he received respecting the death of his
son Drusus, he carried his cruelty still farther. He imagined that he
had died of a disease occasioned (231) by his intemperance; but finding
that he had been poisoned by the contrivance of his wife Livilla [360]
and Sejanus, he spared no one from torture and death. He was so entirely
occupied with the examination of this affair, for whole days together,
that, upon being informed that the person in whose house he had lodged at
Rhodes, and whom he had by a friendly letter invited to Rome, was
arrived, he ordered him immediately to be put to the torture, as a party
concerned in the enquiry. Upon finding his mistake, he commanded him to
be put to death, that he might not publish the injury done him. The
place of execution is still shown at Capri, where he ordered those who
were condemned to die, after long and exquisite tortures, to be thrown,
before his eyes, from a precipice into the sea. There a party of
soldiers belonging to the fleet waited for them, and broke their bones
with poles and oars, lest they should have any life left in them. Among
various kinds of torture invented by him, one was, to induce people to
drink a large quantity of wine, and then to tie up their members with
harp-strings, thus tormenting them at once by the tightness of the
ligature, and the stoppage of their urine. Had not death prevented him,
and Thrasyllus, designedly, as some say, prevailed with him to defer some
of his cruelties, in hopes of longer life, it is believed that he would
have destroyed many more: and not have spared even the rest of his
grandchildren: for he was jealous of Caius, and hated Tiberius as having
been conceived in adultery. This conjecture is indeed highly probable;
for he used often to say, “Happy Priam, who survived all his children!”
[361]
LXIII. Amidst these enormities, in how much fear and apprehension, as
well as odium and detestation, he lived, is evident from many
indications. He forbade the soothsayers to be consulted in private, and
without some witnesses being present. He attempted to suppress the
oracles in the neighbourhood of the city; but being terrified by the
divine authority of the (232) Praenestine Lots [362], he abandoned the
design. For though they were sealed up in a box, and carried to home,
yet they were not to be found in it, until it was returned to the temple.
More than one person of consular rank, appointed governors of provinces,
he never ventured to dismiss to their respective destinations, but kept
them until several years after, when he nominated their successors, while
they still remained present with him. In the meantime, they bore the
title of their office; and he frequently gave them orders, which they
took care to have executed by their deputies and assistants.
LXIV. He never removed his daughter-in-law, or grandsons [363], after
their condemnation, to any place, but in fetters and in a covered litter,
with a guard to hinder all who met them on the road, and travellers, from
stopping to gaze at them.
LXV. After Sejanus had plotted against him, though he saw that his
birth-day was solemnly kept by the public, and divine honours paid to
golden images of him in every quarter, yet it was with difficulty at
last, and more by artifice than his imperial power, that he accomplished
his death. In the first place, to remove him from about his person,
under the pretext of doing him honour, he made him his colleague in his
fifth consulship; which, although then absent from the city, he took upon
him for that purpose, long after his preceding consulship. Then, having
flattered him with the hope of an alliance by marriage with one of his
own kindred, and the prospect of the tribunitian authority, he suddenly,
while Sejanus little expected it, charged him with treason, in an abject
and pitiful address to the senate; in which, among other things, he
begged them “to send one of the consuls, to conduct himself, a poor
solitary old man, with a guard of soldiers, into their presence.” Still
distrustful, however, and apprehensive of an insurrection, he ordered his
grandson, Drusus, whom he still kept in confinement at Rome, to be set at
liberty, and if occasion required, to head the troops. He had likewise
ships in readiness to transport him to any of the legions to which he
might consider it expedient to make his escape. Meanwhile, he was upon
the (233) watch, from the summit of a lofty cliff, for the signals which
he had ordered to be made if any thing occurred, lest the messengers
should be tardy. Even when he had quite foiled the conspiracy of
Sejanus, he was still haunted as much as ever with fears and
apprehensions, insomuch that he never once stirred out of the Villa Jovis
for nine months after.
LXVI. To the extreme anxiety of mind which he now experienced, he had
the mortification to find superadded the most poignant reproaches from
all quarters. Those who were condemned to die, heaped upon him the most
opprobrious language in his presence, or by hand-bills scattered in the
senators’ seats in the theatre. These produced different effects:
sometimes he wished, out of shame, to have all smothered and concealed;
at other times he would disregard what was said, and publish it himself.
To this accumulation of scandal and open sarcasm, there is to be
subjoined a letter from Artabanus, king of the Parthians, in which he
upbraids him with his parricides, murders, cowardice, and lewdness, and
advises him to satisfy the furious rage of his own people, which he had
so justly excited, by putting an end to his life without delay.
LXVII. At last, being quite weary of himself, he acknowledged his
extreme misery, in a letter to the senate, which begun thus: “What to
write to you, Conscript Fathers, or how to write, or what not to write at
this time, may all the gods and goddesses pour upon my head a more
terrible vengeance than that under which I feel myself daily sinking, if
I can tell.” Some are of opinion that he had a foreknowledge of those
things, from his skill in the science of divination, and perceived long
before what misery and infamy would at last come upon him; and that for
this reason, at the beginning of his reign, he had absolutely refused the
title of the “Father of his Country,” and the proposal of the senate to
swear to his acts; lest he should afterwards, to his greater shame, be
found unequal to such extraordinary honours. This, indeed, may be justly
inferred from the speeches which he made upon both those occasions; as
when he says, “I shall ever be the same, and shall never change my
conduct, so long as I retain my senses; but to avoid giving a bad
precedent to posterity, the senate ought to beware of binding themselves
to the acts of (234) any person whatever, who might by some accident or
other be induced to alter them.” And again: “If ye should at any time
entertain a jealousy of my conduct, and my entire affection for you,
which heaven prevent by putting a period to my days, rather than I should
live to see such an alteration in your opinion of me, the title of Father
will add no honour to me, but be a reproach to you, for your rashness in
conferring it upon me, or inconstancy in altering your opinion of me.”
LXVIII. In person he was large and robust; of a stature somewhat above
the common size; broad in the shoulders and chest, and proportionable in
the rest of his frame. He used his left hand more readily and with more
force than his right; and his joints were so strong, that he could bore a
fresh, sound apple through with his finger, and wound the head of a boy,
or even a young man, with a fillip. He was of a fair complexion, and
wore his hair so long behind, that it covered his neck, which was
observed to be a mark of distinction affected by the family. He had a
handsome face, but it was often full of pimples. His eyes, which were
large, had a wonderful faculty of seeing in the night-time, and in the
dark, for a short time only, and immediately after awaking from sleep;
but they soon grew dim again. He walked with his neck stiff and upright:
generally with a frowning countenance, being for the most part silent:
when he spoke to those about him, it was very slowly, and usually
accompanied with a slight gesticulation of his fingers. All which, being
repulsive habits and signs of arrogance, were remarked by Augustus, who
often endeavoured to excuse them to the senate and people, declaring that
“they were natural defects, which proceeded from no viciousness of mind.”
He enjoyed a good state of health, without interruption, almost during
the whole period of his rule; though, from the thirtieth year of his age,
he treated it himself according to his own discretion, without any
medical assistance.
LXIX. In regard to the gods, and matters of religion, he discovered much
indifference; being greatly addicted to astrology, and fully persuaded
that all things were governed by fate. Yet he was extremely afraid of
lightning, and when the sky was in a disturbed state, always wore a
laurel crown on his head; because it is supposed that the leaf of that
tree is never touched by the lightning.
(235) LXX. He applied himself with great diligence to the liberal arts,
both Greek and Latin. In his Latin style, he affected to imitate Messala
Corvinus [364], a venerable man, to whom he had paid much respect in his
own early years. But he rendered his style obscure by excessive
affectation and abstruseness, so that he was thought to speak better
extempore, than in a premeditated discourse. He composed likewise a
lyric ode, under the title of “A Lamentation upon the death of Lucius
Caesar;” and also some Greek poems, in imitation of Euphorion, Rhianus,
and Parthenius [365]. These poets he greatly admired, and placed their
works and statues in the public libraries, amongst the eminent authors of
antiquity. On this account, most of the learned men of the time vied
with each other in publishing observations upon them, which they
addressed to him. His principal study, however, was the history of the
fabulous ages, inquiring even into its trifling details in a ridiculous
manner; for he used to try the grammarians, a class of men which, as I
have already observed, he much affected, with such questions as these:
“Who was Hecuba’s mother? What name did Achilles assume among the
virgins? What was it that the Sirens used to sing?” And the first day
that he entered the senate-house, after the death of Augustus, as if he
intended to pay respect at once to his father’s memory and to the gods,
he made an offering of frankincense and wine, but without any music, in
imitation of Minos, upon the death of his son.
LXXI. Though he was ready and conversant with the Greek tongue, yet he
did not use it everywhere; but chiefly he avoided it in the senate-house,
insomuch that having occasion to employ the word monopolium (monopoly),
he first begged pardon for being obliged to adopt a foreign word. And
when, in a decree of the senate, the word emblaema (emblem) was read, he
proposed to have it changed, and that a Latin word should be substituted
in its room; or, if no proper one could be found, to express the thing by
circumlocution. A soldier (236) who was examined as a witness upon a
trial, in Greek [366], he would not allow to reply, except in Latin.
LXXII. During the whole time of his seclusion at Capri, twice only he
made an effort to visit Rome. Once he came in a galley as far as the
gardens near the Naumachia, but placed guards along the banks of the
Tiber, to keep off all who should offer to come to meet him. The second
time he travelled on the Appian Way [367], as far as the seventh
mile-stone from the city, but he immediately returned, without entering it,
having only taken a view of the walls at a distance. For what reason he
did not disembark in his first excursion, is uncertain; but in the last,
he was deterred from entering the city by a prodigy. He was in the habit
of diverting himself with a snake, and upon going to feed it with his own
hand, according to custom, he found it devoured by ants: from which he
was advised to beware of the fury of the mob. On this account, returning
in all haste to Campania, he fell ill at Astura [368]; but recovering a
little, went on to Circeii [369]. And to obviate any suspicion of his
being in a bad state of health, he was not only present at the sports in
the camp, but encountered, with javelins, a wild boar, which was let
loose in the arena. Being immediately seized with a pain in the side,
and catching cold upon his over-heating himself in the exercise, he
relapsed into a worse condition than he was before. He held out,
however, for some time; and sailing as far as Misenum [370], omitted
nothing (237) in his usual mode of life, not even in his entertainments,
and other gratifications, partly from an ungovernable appetite, and
partly to conceal his condition. For Charicles, a physician, having
obtained leave of absence, on his rising from table, took his hand to
kiss it; upon which Tiberius, supposing he did it to feel his pulse,
desired him to stay and resume his place, and continued the entertainment
longer than usual. Nor did he omit his usual custom of taking his
station in the centre of the apartment, a lictor standing by him, while
he took leave of each of the party by name.
LXXIII. Meanwhile, finding, upon looking over the acts of the senate,
“that some person under prosecution had been discharged, without being
brought to a hearing,” for he had only written cursorily that they had
been denounced by an informer; he complained in a great rage that he was
treated with contempt, and resolved at all hazards to return to Capri;
not daring to attempt any thing until he found himself in a place of
security. But being detained by storms, and the increasing violence of
his disorder, he died shortly afterwards, at a villa formerly belonging
to Lucullus, in the seventy-eighth year of his age [371], and the
twenty-third of his reign, upon the seventeenth of the calends of April
(16th March), in the consulship of Cneius Acerronius Proculus and Caius
Pontius Niger. Some think that a slow-consuming poison was given him by
Caius [372]. Others say that during the interval of the intermittent
fever with which he happened to be seized, upon asking for food, it was
denied him. Others report, that he was stifled by a pillow thrown upon
him [373], when, on his recovering from a swoon, he called for his ring,
which had been taken from him in the fit. Seneca writes, “That finding
himself dying, he took his signet ring off his finger, and held it a
while, as if he would deliver it to somebody; but put it again upon his
finger, and lay for some time, with his left hand clenched, and without
stirring; when suddenly summoning his attendants, (238) and no one
answering the call, he rose; but his strength failing him, he fell down
at a short distance from his bed.”
LXXIV. Upon his last birth-day, he had brought a full-sized statue of
the Timenian Apollo from Syracuse, a work of exquisite art, intending to
place it in the library of the new temple [374]; but he dreamt that the
god appeared to him in the night, and assured him “that his statue could
not be erected by him.” A few days before he died, the Pharos at Capri
was thrown down by an earthquake. And at Misenum, some embers and live
coals, which were brought in to warm his apartment, went out, and after
being quite cold, burst out into a flame again towards evening, and
continued burning very brightly for several hours.
LXXV. The people were so much elated at his death, that when they first
heard the news, they ran up and down the city, some crying out, “Away
with Tiberius to the Tiber;” others exclaiming, “May the earth, the
common mother of mankind, and the infernal gods, allow him no abode in
death, but amongst the wicked.” Others threatened his body with the hook
and the Gemonian stairs, their indignation at his former cruelty being
increased by a recent atrocity. It had been provided by an act of the
senate, that the execution of condemned criminals should always be
deferred until the tenth day after the sentence. Now this fell on the
very day when the news of Tiberius’s death arrived, and in consequence of
which the unhappy men implored a reprieve, for mercy’s sake; but, as
Caius had not yet arrived, and there was no one else to whom application
could be made on their behalf, their guards, apprehensive of violating
the law, strangled them, and threw them down the Gemonian stairs. This
roused the people to a still greater abhorrence of the tyrant’s memory,
since his cruelty continued in use even after he was dead. As soon as
his corpse was begun to be moved from Misenum, many cried out for its
being carried to Atella [375], and being half burnt there (239) in the
amphitheatre. It was, however, brought to Rome, and burnt with the usual
ceremony.
LXXVI. He had made about two years before, duplicates of his will, one
written by his own hand, and the other by that of one of his freedmen;
and both were witnessed by some persons of very mean rank. He appointed
his two grandsons, Caius by Germanicus, and Tiberius by Drusus, joint
heirs to his estate; and upon the death of one of them, the other was to
inherit the whole. He gave likewise many legacies; amongst which were
bequests to the Vestal Virgins, to all the soldiers, and each one of the
people of Rome, and to the magistrates of the several quarters of the
city.
* * * * * *
At the death of Augustus, there had elapsed so long a period from the
overthrow of the republic by Julius Caesar, that few were now living who
had been born under the ancient constitution of the Romans; and the mild
and prosperous administration of Augustus, during forty-four years, had
by this time reconciled the minds of the people to a despotic government.
Tiberius, the adopted son of the former sovereign, was of mature age; and
though he had hitherto lived, for the most part, abstracted from any
concern with public affairs, yet, having been brought up in the family of
Augustus, he was acquainted with his method of government, which, there
was reason to expect, he would render the model of his own. Livia, too,
his mother, and the relict of the late emperor, was still living, a woman
venerable by years, who had long been familiar with the councils of
Augustus, and from her high rank, as well as uncommon affability,
possessed an extensive influence amongst all classes of the people.
Such were the circumstances in favour of Tiberius’s succession at the
demise of Augustus; but there were others of a tendency disadvantageous
to his views. His temper was haughty and reserved: Augustus had often
apologised for the ungraciousness of his manners. He was disobedient to
his mother; and though he had not openly discovered any propensity to
vice, he enjoyed none of those qualities which usually conciliate
popularity. To these considerations it is to be added, that Postumus
Agrippa, the grandson of Augustus by Julia, was living; and if
consanguinity was to be the rule of succession, his right was
indisputably preferable to that of an adopted son. Augustus had sent
this youth into exile a few years before; but, towards the close (240) of
his life, had expressed a design of recalling him, with the view, as was
supposed, of appointing him his successor. The father of young Agrippa
had been greatly beloved by the Romans; and the fate of his mother,
Julia, though she was notorious for her profligacy, had ever been
regarded by them with peculiar sympathy and tenderness. Many, therefore,
attached to the son the partiality entertained for his parents; which was
increased not only by a strong suspicion, but a general surmise, that his
elder brothers, Caius and Lucius, had been violently taken off, to make
way for the succession of Tiberius. That an obstruction was apprehended
to Tiberius’s succession from this quarter, is put beyond all doubt, when
we find that the death of Augustus was industriously kept secret, until
young Agrippa should be removed; who, it is generally agreed, was
dispatched by an order from Livia and Tiberius conjointly, or at least
from the former. Though, by this act, there remained no rival to
Tiberius, yet the consciousness of his own want of pretensions to the
Roman throne, seems to have still rendered him distrustful of the
succession; and that he should have quietly obtained it, without the
voice of the people, the real inclination of the senate, or the support
of the army, can be imputed only to the influence of his mother, and his
own dissimulation. Ardently solicitous to attain the object, yet
affecting a total indifference; artfully prompting the senate to give him
the charge of the government, at the time that he intimated an invincible
reluctance to accept it; his absolutely declining it in perpetuity, but
fixing no time for an abdication; his deceitful insinuation of bodily
infirmities, with hints likewise of approaching old age, that he might
allay in the senate all apprehensions of any great duration of his power,
and repress in his adopted son, Germanicus, the emotions of ambition to
displace him; form altogether a scene of the most insidious policy,
inconsistency, and dissimulation.
In this period died, in the eighty-sixth year of her age, Livia Drusilla,
mother of the emperor, and the relict of Augustus, whom she survived
fifteen years. She was the daughter of L. Drusus Calidianus and married
Tiberius Claudius Nero, by whom she had two sons, Tiberius and Drusus.
The conduct of this lady seems to justify the remark of Caligula, that
“she was an Ulysses in a woman’s dress.” Octavius first saw her as she
fled from the danger which threatened her husband, who had espoused the
cause of Antony; and though she was then pregnant, he resolved to marry
her; whether with her own inclination or not, is left by Tacitus
undetermined. To pave the way for this union, he divorced his wife
Scribonia, and with the approbation of the Augurs, which he could have no
difficulty in obtaining, celebrated (241) his nuptials with Livia. There
ensued from this marriage no issue, though much desired by both parties;
but Livia retained, without interruption, an unbounded ascendancy over
the emperor, whose confidence she abused, while the uxorious husband
little suspected that he was cherishing in his bosom a viper who was to
prove the destruction of his house. She appears to have entertained a
predominant ambition of giving an heir to the Roman empire; and since it
could not be done by any fruit of her marriage with Augustus, she
resolved on accomplishing that end in the person of Tiberius, the eldest
son by her former husband. The plan which she devised for this purpose,
was to exterminate all the male offspring of Augustus by his daughter
Julia, who was married to Agrippa; a stratagem which, when executed,
would procure for Tiberius, through the means of adoption, the eventual
succession to the empire. The cool yet sanguinary policy, and the
patient perseverance of resolution, with which she prosecuted her design,
have seldom been equalled. While the sons of Julia were yet young, and
while there was still a possibility that she herself might have issue by
Augustus, she suspended her project, in the hope, perhaps, that accident
or disease might operate in its favour; but when the natural term of her
constitution had put a period to her hopes of progeny, and when the
grandsons of the emperor were risen to the years of manhood, and had been
adopted by him, she began to carry into execution what she long had
meditated. The first object devoted to destruction was C. Caesar
Agrippa, the eldest of Augustus’s grandsons. This promising youth was
sent to Armenia, upon an expedition against the Persians; and Lollius,
who had been his governor, either accompanied him thither from Rome, or
met him in the East, where he had obtained some appointment. From the
hand of this traitor, perhaps under the pretext of exercising the
authority of a preceptor, but in reality instigated by Livia, the young
prince received a fatal blow, of which he died some time after.
The manner of Caius’s death seems to have been carefully kept from the
knowledge of Augustus, who promoted Lollius to the consulship, and made
him governor of a province; but, by his rapacity in this station, he
afterwards incurred the emperor’s displeasure. The true character of
this person had escaped the keen discernment of Horace, as well as the
sagacity of the emperor; for in two epistles addressed to Lollius, he
mentions him as great and accomplished in the superlative degree; maxime
Lolli, liberrime Lolli; so imposing had been the manners and address of
this deceitful courtier.
Lucius, the second son of Julia, was banished into Campania, (242) for
using, as it is said, so litious language against his grandfather. In
the seventh year of his exile Augustus proposed to recall him; but Livia
and Tiberius, dreading the consequences of his being restored to the
emperor’s favour, put in practice the expedient of having him immediately
assassinated. Postumus Agrippa, the third son, incurred the displeasure
of his grandfather in the same way as Lucius, and was confined at
Surrentum, where he remained a prisoner until he was put to death by the
order either of Livia alone, or in conjunction with Tiberius, as was
before observed.
Such was the catastrophe, through the means of Livia, of all the
grandsons of Augustus; and reason justifies the inference, that she who
scruple not to lay violent hands upon those young men, had formerly
practised every artifice that could operate towards rendering them
obnoxious to the emperor. We may even ascribe to her dark intrigues the
dissolute conduct of Julia for the woman who could secretly act as
procuress to her own husband, would feel little restraint upon her mind
against corrupting his daughter, when such an effect might contribute to
answer the purpose which she had in view. But in the ingratitude of
Tiberius, however undutiful and reprehensible in a son towards a parent,
she at last experienced a just retribution for the crimes in which she
had trained him to procure the succession to the empire. To the disgrace
of her sex, she introduced amongst the Romans the horrible practice of
domestic murder, little known before the times when the thirst or
intoxication of unlimited power had vitiated the social affections; and
she transmitted to succeeding ages a pernicious example, by which
immoderate ambition might be gratified, at the expense of every moral
obligation, as well as of humanity.
One of the first victims in the sanguinary reign of the present emperor,
was Germanicus, the son of Drusus, Tiberius’s own brother, and who had
been adopted by his uncle himself. Under any sovereign, of a temper
different from that of Tiberius, this amiable and meritorious prince
would have been held in the highest esteem. At the death of his
grandfather Augustus, he was employed in a war in Germany, where he
greatly distinguished himself by his military achievements; and as soon
as intelligence of that event arrived, the soldiers, by whom he was
extremely beloved, unanimously saluted him emperor. Refusing, however,
to accept this mark of their partiality, he persevered in allegiance to
the government of his uncle, and prosecuted the war with success. Upon
the conclusion of this expedition, he was sent, with the title of emperor
in the East, to repress the seditions of the Armenians, in which he was
equally successful. But the (243) fame which he acquired, served only to
render him an object of jealousy to Tiberius, by whose order he was
secretly poisoned at Daphne, near Antioch, in the thirty-fourth year of
his age. The news of Germanicus’s death was received at Rome with
universal lamentation; and all ranks of the people entertained an
opinion, that, had he survived Tiberius, he would have restored the
freedom of the republic. The love and gratitude of the Romans decreed
many honours to his memory. It was ordered, that his name should be sung
in a solemn procession of the Salii; that crowns of oak, in allusion to
his victories, should be placed upon curule chairs in the hall pertaining
to the priests of Augustus; and that an effigy of him in ivory should be
drawn upon a chariot, preceding the ceremonies of the Circensian games.
Triumphal arches were erected, one at Rome, another on the banks of the
Rhine, and a third upon Mount Amanus in Syria, with inscriptions of his
achievements, and that he died for his services to the republic. [376]
His obsequies were celebrated, not with the display of images and funeral
pomp, but with the recital of his praises and the virtues which rendered
him illustrious. From a resemblance in his personal accomplishments, his
age, the manner of his death, and the vicinity of Daphne to Babylon, many
compared his fate to that of Alexander the Great. He was celebrated for
humanity and benevolence, as well as military talents, and amidst the
toils of war, found leisure to cultivate the arts of literary genius. He
composed two comedies in Greek, some epigrams, and a translation of
Aratus into Latin verse. He married Agrippina, the daughter of M.
Agrippa, by whom he had nine children. This lady, who had accompanied
her husband into the east, carried his ashes to Italy, and accused his
murderer, Piso; who, unable to bear up against the public odium incurred
by that transaction, laid violent hands upon himself. Agrippina was now
nearly in the same predicament with regard to Tiberius, that Ovid had
formerly been in respect of Augustus. He was sensible, that when she
accused Piso, she was not ignorant of the person by whom the perpetrator
of the murder had been instigated; and her presence, therefore, seeming
continually to reproach him with his guilt, he resolved to rid himself of
a person become so obnoxious to his sight, and banished her to the island
of Pandataria, where she died some time afterwards of famine.
But it was not sufficient to gratify this sanguinary tyrant, that he had,
without any cause, cut off both Germanicus and his wife Agrippina: the
distinguished merits and popularity of that prince were yet to be
revenged upon his children; and accordingly he (244) set himself to
invent a pretext for their destruction. After endeavouring in vain, by
various artifices, to provoke the resentment of Nero and Drusus against
him, he had recourse to false accusation, and not only charged them with
seditious designs, to which their tender years were ill adapted, but with
vices of a nature the most scandalous. By a sentence of the senate,
which manifested the extreme servility of that assembly, he procured them
both to be declared open enemies to their country. Nero he banished to
the island of Pontia, where, like his unfortunate mother, he miserably
perished by famine; and Drusus was doomed to the same fate, in the lower
part of the Palatium, after suffering for nine days the violence of
hunger, and having, as is related, devoured part of his bed. The
remaining son, Caius, on account of his vicious disposition, he resolved
to appoint his successor on the throne, that, after his own death, a
comparison might be made in favour of his memory, when the Romans should
be governed by a sovereign yet more vicious and more tyrannical, if
possible, than himself.
Sejanus, the minister in the present reign, imitated with success, for
some time, the hypocrisy of his master; and, had his ambitious temper,
impatient of attaining its object, allowed him to wear the mask for a
longer period, he might have gained the imperial diadem; in the pursuit
of which he was overtaken by that fate which he merited still more by his
cruelties than his perfidy to Tiberius. This man was a native of
Volsinium in Tuscany, and the son of a Roman knight. He had first
insinuated himself into the favour of Caius Caesar, the grandson of
Augustus, after whose death he courted the friendship of Tiberius, and
obtained in a short time his entire confidence, which he improved to the
best advantage. The object which he next pursued, was to gain the
attachment of the senate, and the officers of the army; besides whom,
with a new kind of policy, he endeavoured to secure in his interest every
lady of distinguished connections, by giving secretly to each of them a
promise of marriage, as soon as he should arrive at the sovereignty. The
chief obstacles in his way were the sons and grandsons of Tiberius; and
these he soon sacrificed to his ambition, under various pretences.
Drusus, the eldest of this progeny, having in a fit of passion struck the
favourite, was destined by him to destruction. For this purpose, he had
the presumption to seduce Livia, the wife of Drusus, to whom she had
borne several children; and she consented to marry her adulterer upon the
death of her husband, who was soon after poisoned, through the means of
an eunuch named Lygdus, by order of her and Sejanus.
Drusus was the son of Tiberius by Vipsania, one of Agrippa’s (245)
daughters. He displayed great intrepidity during the war in the
provinces of Illyricum and Pannonia, but appears to have been dissolute
in his morals. Horace is said to have written the Ode in praise of
Drusus at the desire of Augustus; and while the poet celebrates the
military courage of the prince, he insinuates indirectly a salutary
admonition to the cultivation of the civil virtues:
Doctrina sed vim promovet insitam,
Rectique cultus pectora roborant:
Utcunque defecere mores,
Dedecorant bene nata culpae.--Ode iv. 4.
Yet sage instructions to refine the soul
And raise the genius, wondrous aid impart,
Conveying inward, as they purely roll,
Strength to the mind and vigour to the heart:
When morals fail, the stains of vice disgrace
The fairest honours of the noblest race.--Francis.
Upon the death of Drusus, Sejanus openly avowed a desire of marrying the
widowed princess; but Tiberius opposing this measure, and at the same
time recommending Germanicus to the senate as his successor in the
empire, the mind of Sejanus was more than ever inflamed by the united,
and now furious, passions of love and ambition. He therefore urged his
demand with increased importunity; but the emperor still refusing his
consent, and things being not yet ripe for an immediate revolt, Sejanus
thought nothing so favourable for the prosecution of his designs as the
absence of Tiberius from the capital. With this view, under the pretence
of relieving his master from the cares of government, he persuaded him to
retire to a distance from Rome. The emperor, indolent and luxurious,
approved of the proposal, and retired into Campania, leaving to his
ambitious minister the whole direction of the empire. Had Sejanus now
been governed by common prudence and moderation, he might have attained
to the accomplishment of all his wishes; but a natural impetuosity of
temper, and the intoxication of power, precipitated him into measures
which soon effected his destruction. As if entirely emancipated from the
control of a master, he publicly declared himself sovereign of the Roman
empire, and that Tiberius, who had by this time retired to Capri, was
only the dependent prince of that tributary island. He even went so far
in degrading the emperor, as to have him introduced in a ridiculous light
upon the stage. Advice of Sejanus’s proceedings was soon carried to the
emperor at Capri; his indignation was immediately excited; and with a
confidence founded upon an authority exercised for several years, he sent
orders for accusing Sejanus (246) before the senate. This mandate no
sooner arrived, than the audacious minister was deserted by his
adherents; he was in a short time after seized without resistance, and
strangled in prison the same day.
Human nature recoils with horror at the cruelties of this execrable
tyrant, who, having first imbrued his hands in the blood of his own
relations, proceeded to exercise them upon the public with indiscriminate
fury. Neither age nor sex afforded any exemption from his insatiable
thirst for blood. Innocent children were condemned to death, and
butchered in the presence of their parents; virgins, without any imputed
guilt, were sacrificed to a similar destiny; but there being an ancient
custom of not strangling females in that situation, they were first
deflowered by the executioner, and afterwards strangled, as if an
atrocious addition to cruelty could sanction the exercise of it. Fathers
were constrained by violence to witness the death of their own children;
and even the tears of a mother, at the execution of her child, were
punished as a capital offence. Some extraordinary calamities, occasioned
by accident, added to the horrors of the reign. A great number of houses
on Mount Caelius were destroyed by fire; and by the fall of a temporary
building at Fidenae, erected for the purpose of exhibiting public shows,
about twenty thousand persons were either greatly hurt, or crushed to
death in the rains.
By another fire which afterwards broke out, a part of the Circus was
destroyed, with the numerous buildings on Mount Aventine. The only act
of munificence displayed by Tiberius during his reign, was upon the
occasion of those fires, when, to qualify the severity of his government,
he indemnified the most considerable sufferers for the loss they had
sustained.
Through the whole of his life, Tiberius seems to have conducted himself
with a uniform repugnance to nature. Affable on a few occasions, but in
general averse to society, he indulged, from his earliest years, a
moroseness of disposition, which counterfeited the appearance of austere
virtue; and in the decline of life, when it is common to reform from
juvenile indiscretions, he launched forth into excesses, of a kind the
most unnatural and most detestable. Considering the vicious passions
which had ever brooded in his heart, it may seem surprising that he
restrained himself within the bounds of decency during so many years
after his accession; but though utterly destitute of reverence or
affection for his mother, he still felt, during her life, a filial awe
upon his mind: and after her death, he was actuated by a slavish fear of
Sejanus, until at last political necessity absolved him likewise from
this restraint. These checks being both removed, (247) he rioted without
any control, either from sentiment or authority.
Pliny relates, that the art of making glass malleable was actually
discovered under the reign of Tiberius, and that the shop and tools of
the artist were destroyed, lest, by the establishment of this invention,
gold and silver should lose their value. Dion adds, that the author of
the discovery was put to death.
The gloom which darkened the Roman capital during this melancholy period,
shed a baleful influence on the progress of science throughout the
empire, and literature languished during the present reign, in the same
proportion as it had flourished in the preceding. It is doubtful whether
such a change might not have happened in some degree, even had the
government of Tiberius been equally mild with that of his predecessor.
The prodigious fame of the writers of the Augustan age, by repressing
emulation, tended to a general diminution of the efforts of genius for
some time; while the banishment of Ovid, it is probable, and the capital
punishment of a subsequent poet, for censuring the character of
Agamemnon, operated towards the farther discouragement of poetical
exertions. There now existed no circumstance to counterbalance these
disadvantages. Genius no longer found a patron either in the emperor or
his minister; and the gates of the palace were shut against all who
cultivated the elegant pursuits of the Muses. Panders, catamites,
assassins, wretches stained with every crime, were the constant
attendants, as the only fit companions, of the tyrant who now occupied
the throne. We are informed, however, that even this emperor had a taste
for the liberal arts, and that he composed a lyric poem upon the death of
Lucius Caesar, with some Greek poems in imitation of Euphorion, Rhianus,
and Parthenius. But none of these has been transmitted to posterity: and
if we should form an opinion of them upon the principle of Catullus, that
to be a good poet one ought to be a good man, there is little reason to
regret that they have perished.
We meet with no poetical production in this reign; and of prose writers
the number is inconsiderable, as will appear from the following account
of them.----
VELLEIUS PATERCULUS was born of an equestrian family in Campania, and
served as a military tribune under Tiberius, in his expeditions in Gaul
and Germany. He composed an Epitome of the History of Greece and Rome,
with that of other nations of remote antiquity: but of this work there
only remain fragments of the history of Greece and Rome, from the
conquest of Perseus to the seventeenth year of the reign of Tiberius. It
is written in two books, addressed to Marcus Vinicius, who had (248) the
office of consul. Rapid in the narrative, and concise as well as elegant
in style, this production exhibits a pleasing epitome of ancient
transactions, enlivened occasionally with anecdotes, and an expressive
description of characters. In treating of the family of Augustus,
Paterculus is justly liable to the imputation of partiality, which he
incurs still more in the latter period of his history, by the praise
which is lavished on Tiberius and his minister Sejanus. He intimates a
design of giving a more full account of the civil war which followed the
death of Julius Caesar; but this, if he ever accomplished it, has not
been transmitted to posterity. Candid, but decided in his judgment of
motives and actions, if we except his invectives against Pompey, he shows
little propensity to censure; but in awarding praise, he is not equally
parsimonious, and, on some occasions, risks the imputation of hyperbole.
The grace, however, and the apparent sincerity with which it is bestowed,
reconcile us to the compliment. This author concludes his history with a
prayer for the prosperity of the Roman empire.----
VALERIUS MAXIMUS was descended of a Patrician family; but we learn
nothing more concerning him, than that for some time he followed a
military life under Sextus Pompey. He afterwards betook himself to
writing, and has left an account, in nine books, of the memorable
apophthegms and actions of eminent persons; first of the Romans, and
afterwards of foreign nations. The subjects are of various kinds,
political, moral, and natural, ranged into distinct classes. His
transitions from one subject to another are often performed with
gracefulness; and where he offers any remarks, they generally show the
author to be a man of judgment and observation. Valerius Maximus is
chargeable with no affectation of style, but is sometimes deficient in
that purity of language which might be expected in the age of Tiberius,
to whom the work is addressed. What inducement the author had to this
dedication, we know not; but as it is evident from a passage in the ninth
book, that the compliment was paid after the death of Sejanus, and
consequently in the most shameful period of Tiberius’s reign, we cannot
entertain any high opinion of the independent spirit of Valerius Maximus,
who could submit to flatter a tyrant, in the zenith of infamy and
detestation. But we cannot ascribe the cause to any delicate artifice,
of conveying to Tiberius, indirectly, an admonition to reform his
conduct. Such an expedient would have only provoked the severest
resentment from his jealousy.----
PHAEDRUS was a native of Thrace, and was brought to Rome as a slave. He
had the good fortune to come into the service of Augustus, where,
improving his talents by reading, he obtained (249) the favour of the
emperor, and was made one of his freedmen. In the reign of Tiberius, he
translated into Iambic verse the Fables of Aesop. They are divided into
five books, and are not less conspicuous for precision and simplicity of
thought, than for purity and elegance of style; conveying moral
sentiments with unaffected ease and impressive energy. Phaedrus
underwent, for some time, a persecution from Sejanus, who, conscious of
his own delinquency, suspected that he was obliquely satirised in the
commendations bestowed on virtue by the poet. The work of Phaedrus is
one of the latest which have been brought to light since the revival of
learning. It remained in obscurity until two hundred years ago, when it
was discovered in a library at Rheims.----
HYGINUS is said to have been a native of Alexandria, or, according to
others, a Spaniard. He was, like Phaedrus, a freedman of Augustus; but,
though industrious, he seems not to have improved himself so much as his
companion, in the art of composition. He wrote, however, a mythological
history, under the title of Fables, a work called Poeticon Astronomicon,
with a treatise on agriculture, commentaries on Virgil, the lives of
eminent men, and some other productions now lost. His remaining works
are much mutilated, and, if genuine, afford an unfavourable specimen of
his elegance and correctness as a writer.
CELSUS was a physician in the time of Tiberius, and has written eight
books, De Medicina, in which he has collected and digested into order all
that is valuable on the subject, in the Greek and Roman authors. The
professors of Medicine were at that time divided into three sects, viz.,
the Dogmatists, Empirics, and Methodists; the first of whom deviated less
than the others from the plan of Hippocrates; but they were in general
irreconcilable to each other, in respect both of their opinions and
practice. Celsus, with great judgment, has occasionally adopted
particular doctrines from each of them; and whatever he admits into his
system, he not only establishes by the most rational observations, but
confirms by its practical utility. In justness of remark, in force of
argument, in precision and perspicuity, as well as in elegance of
expression, he deservedly occupies the most distinguished rank amongst
the medical writers of antiquity. It appears that Celsus likewise wrote
on agriculture, rhetoric, and military affairs; but of those several
treatises no fragments now remain.
To the writers of this reign we must add APICIUS COELIUS, who has left a
book De Re Coquinaria [of Cookery]. There were three Romans of the name
of Apicius, all remarkable for their (250) gluttony. The first lived in
the time of the Republic, the last in that of Trajan, and the
intermediate Apicius under the emperors Augustus and Tiberius. This man,
as Seneca informs us, wasted on luxurious living, sexcenties sestertium,
a sum equal to 484,375 pounds sterling. Upon examining the state of his
affairs, he found that there remained no more of his estate than centies
sestertium, 80,729l. 3s. 4d., which seeming to him too small to live
upon, he ended his days by poison.