the number of legions implicated far larger, more than double that
of the Pannonian legions, but the ambition of the mutineers was not
confined to obtaining a redress of grievances; they proposed to annex
the Empire. “The State is in our hands,” they said; “it is increased by
our victories; the Emperor takes his title from his armies.” A vision
of plundering Gaul, marching upon Rome, and setting up an Emperor of
their own, floated before the eyes of the ringleaders. On the Rhine,
as in Pannonia, the agitation was engineered by the recruits, chiefly
enfranchized slaves recently drawn from the capital. The men who
had fought under Drusus and Tiberius were hardly conscious of their
own grievances; military discipline had numbed their intelligence;
they knew of nothing else, and they were well content to exchange
the peaceful but laborious routine of the camp for the hardships of
campaigns among the forests and morasses of Germany, where the enemy
was less terrible than the gloom of primeval trees and the treachery
of bogs and estuaries. They were, however, only too willing to listen
when cleverer men than themselves told them they had grievances. The
fidelity of the most loyal troops and of the most trusted servants can
seldom long resist the voice of the tempter, who deplores the injustice
with which they are treated. The idlers of Rome, swept into the ranks
from the street corners and the open air amusements of the great city,
awoke from dreams of plunder and licence to the stern realities of the
centurion’s stick and the heavy fatigue of a Roman camp. They had no
fighting, but they had drill, and digging and building in plenty; few
of them had ever before done an honest stroke of work. To the veterans,
life on the frontier had become somewhat dull, and though they would
quickly have discovered the worthlessness of their new associates on
active service, they could not resist the fascinations of jokes and
stories and songs picked up from the professional buffoons of the Roman
theatres.
There were two armies on the Rhine frontier: the Lower Army, under
Aulus Cæcina, quartered between the region of the Lippe and the
neighbourhood of Cologne, the Upper Army, under Silius, about the gorge
of the Rhine. The mutiny broke out in the Lower Army; the Upper Army
waited to see the result before moving on its own account. Germanicus,
as proconsul, was at the time conducting the census of Gaul in the
regions of the Meuse and Moselle. Fortunately, the lower army was
divided; it was composed of four legions, the twenty-first, the fifth,
the first, and the twentieth; the two former began the mutiny. Cæcina
was with them when it broke out.
The scenes of the Pannonian mutiny were repeated. Centurions were
beaten and killed, Cæcina was powerless to interpose, and in fact
seems at first to have lost his head. He surrendered to the soldiers
a centurion who had taken refuge at his tribunal. Another centurion
at the same time fought his way through the mob; he was Cassius
Chærea, destined some twenty years later to rid Rome of Caligula.
Rejecting the authority of their officers, the mutineers took the whole
organization of the camp into their own hands; there was no suspension
of discipline, but perfect order, a fact which increased the gravity of
the situation as indicating a settled purpose and skilled ringleaders.
Germanicus left his civil duties to repress the mutineers if possible.
He was received sullenly in the camp. Some of the men, seizing his hand
under the pretext of kissing it, pressed his fingers into their mouths
that he might feel the absence of their teeth; others pointed at their
limbs bent with old age.
Germanicus on this occasion, as at the few other times when we get a
fair view of him, showed himself a man of courage, resource, and strict
uprightness. Before addressing the mutineers, he insisted that they
should group themselves in the customary divisions, company by company,
battalion by battalion, hoping thus to restore the habit of obedience,
but he was disappointed. His first question as to the causes of the
mutiny raised a storm. Men stripped to show the scars of wounds, the
weals raised by the centurions’ sticks; eager protests were shouted
against the prices paid for discharges, the smallness of the pay; the
different labours of the camp were mentioned in detail, the digging of
fortifications, the collection of fodder, timber, firewood. The most
serious outcry was that of the veterans demanding immediate discharge;
the immediate payment of the legacy of Augustus was also demanded, and
then voices were heard offering to follow Germanicus if he would claim
the Empire.
Germanicus at once jumped from his seat and left the tribunal. The
soldiers endeavoured to force him back, whereupon he drew his sword and
threatened to drive it into his own heart; a wag of the camp offered
him his own sword with the observation that it was sharper. Germanicus
was hurried off by his friends into his tent, and a consultation was
held. Seeing that the fidelity of the Upper Army was insecure, the
danger was such that Germanicus decided to yield; a letter was drawn
up in the name of the Emperor granting a full discharge to men who had
served for twenty years; men who had served for sixteen years were to
be put on the reserve of “flagmen” for another four years; the legacy
of Augustus was to be paid and doubled.
The soldiers demanded an immediate fulfilment of the terms of the
letter, and the tribunes at once set to work to draw up the discharges
in authorized form; the payment of the legacies was to be deferred till
the winter. This, however, did not satisfy the soldiers of the fifth
and twenty-first legions, who insisted on immediate payment, which was
met by the private resources of Germanicus and his friends. The first
and twentieth then asserted their own claims, and were marched back
to their quarters near Cologne, under Cæcina, carrying the treasure
chests of their commander-in-chief between the standards. Germanicus
then went to the upper army and renewed the military oath of the
second, thirteenth, and seventeenth legions without any opposition; the
fourteenth legion showed signs of wavering, and was at once offered the
discharges and the money.
The beginnings of a mutiny among the “flagmen” who were settled on
the Lippe were summarily repressed by the prefect of the camp, who
illegally but wisely executed two of the ringleaders.
Germanicus returned from the Upper Army to Cologne, where the recently
mutinous legions were quartered, and there received the deputation who
had arrived from Rome with the answer to his report. The soldiers,
without waiting to hear the message of the deputation, assumed that it
was unfavourable, and again broke out into mutiny; they attacked and
insulted Plancus, who had come from Rome at the head of the deputation,
and he was with difficulty rescued by Germanicus, and sent away under
an escort of Gallic cavalry.
The advisers of Germanicus, possibly members of the deputation, then
accused him of too great leniency and of imprudence. It would have been
much better for him to have secured his personal safety and that of his
wife and child by remaining with the Upper Army, which was faithful;
and they urged him to send Agrippina and the boy to the Gauls at Trêves.
Agrippina protested that she would not retire, the granddaughter of
Augustus was not going to run away from legionaries, she said. The
affectionate remonstrances of her husband, however, prevailed, and she
started; but when she was seen leaving the camp with an insignificant
escort, taking with her “Little Gaiters,” the pet of the soldiers, and
when it was understood that she was seeking shelter with foreigners,
the temper of the men suddenly changed; they stopped her flight,
they implored Germanicus to let her stay. He skilfully seized the
opportunity, and addressed them in words which were so successful in
reanimating their lost loyalty that he ventured in conclusion to bid
them, as a pledge of their renewed fidelity, to set apart the innocent
from the guilty, and vindicate their military honour. The revulsion
of feeling was so complete that a rough form of trial was at once
instituted. The commander of the first legion presided; each soldier
was placed before him on a platform in turn, and acquitted or condemned
to instant death by the shouts of his companions.
Germanicus then wrote to Cæcina, who was further down the Rhine with
the other two mutinous legions, and said that he was coming to punish
them, unless they previously punished themselves. Cæcina communicated
the tenour of the letter privately to soldiers whom he trusted, and the
camp was purged of its delinquents before the arrival of Germanicus.
The method was rough, a somewhat indiscriminate massacre, but it was
effective.
The troops, now anxious to clear themselves and to appease the spirits
of their slaughtered brethren by sending the enemy to join them in the
world of ghosts, were led across the Rhine, and a series of campaigns
kept them too fully occupied to mutiny for several years.
Tiberius confirmed the concessions made by Germanicus, and granted
them to all the mutinous armies alike, both in Pannonia and on the
Rhine, but he adopted twenty years as the fixed period for service in
the future. Excessive length of service had probably been confined to
or felt as a grievance only in the armies in these comparatively wild
regions. There was no lack of recruits for service in Syria or parts of
the world where life was agreeable, and there was not the same wastage
in the settled parts of the Empire; but central Europe possessed no
attractions for the Roman soldier, and desperate expedients had been
necessary to keep up the strength of the legions. A mutiny was also
threatened in Spain, but it was nipped in the bud by the firmness and
tact of Marcus Lepidus, whom we know as one of the possible aspirants
to the Empire.
The campaigns which followed extended over five years; they were in
every respect a repetition of previous campaigns in the same regions.
The Roman soldiers occasionally got into difficulties through ignorance
of the country, and especially of the tides; but, in spite of some
severe reverses, they more than held their own against the Germans;
these latter indeed began to quarrel among themselves. The differences
between Arminius and members of his family were taken advantage of by
Germanicus; further differences seemed likely to declare themselves
between Arminius and Maroboduus. Tiberius returned to his previous
policy. Germany had been sufficiently exhausted; the Rhine with a line
of outposts must be the frontier. Germanicus was recalled and given the
more coveted position of proconsul of the Eastern frontier. Drusus, the
son of Tiberius, took his place in Germany.
The authorities consulted by Tacitus, among which are included the
memoirs of the younger Agrippina, who was born soon after the mutiny
somewhere near Cologne, ascribed the recall of Germanicus to the
jealousy of Tiberius. The inconsistency which is involved in giving
larger powers and greater responsibility to a dangerous rival does
not strike them. There was every precedent for dreading the influence
of high official position in the East upon the mind of an ambitious
proconsul. Sulla had marched upon Rome from the East; the power of
Pompeius was founded upon his victories over Mithridates and the
pirates; Antonius had been tempted by his power in the East to grasp
at universal dominion; even the young Caius Cæsar had succumbed to
Oriental fascinations. Had Tiberius really been in dread of Germanicus,
he would have kept him in comparative insignificance at Rome; he
certainly would not have put the wealth, the resources, and the armies
of the East at his disposal.
It was, however, exceedingly desirable to get Agrippina away from the
armies on the Rhine, and Germanicus himself at the time of the mutiny
seems already to have had misgivings as to her influence, for when the
soldiers demanded that she and Caligula should return to the camp, he
granted their demand so far as the boy was concerned, but found an
excuse of an interesting and domestic nature for removing his wife to
a distance. She did not return to the army till the mutiny was finally
suppressed, but before the expected event had happened. Even Tacitus
admits on more than one occasion that Agrippina was a lady of somewhat
excitable temperament, and the virtues to which she laid ostentatious
claim, and which were universally ascribed to her, are not incompatible
with a restless ambition. She was a devoted wife, and even as a widow
maintained a reputation for “impenetrable” chastity. She was the very
pink and pattern of Roman matrons, but there was nothing in this to
prevent her from attempting to push the fortunes of her husband and
children in ways of which the former disapproved. In the last year of
the Rhine campaigns of Germanicus she temporarily took command during
her husband’s absence. Owing to a reverse which had just been sustained
the authorities at headquarters proposed to destroy the bridge across
the Rhine, a measure which would have cut off the retreat of the
Roman legions as effectively as it would have prevented an invasion
of Germans. Agrippina resisted this pusillanimous counsel; she did
more, she took up her position at the end of the bridge and praised
and thanked the legions as they returned. Nobody can fail to admire
the womanly kindness which impelled her to clothe the ragged soldiers
and poultice the wounded, but we may pardon Tiberius for complaining
that she had forgotten her position when she inspected the companies
and stood by the standards, and for seeing something more than an
exaggerated maternal pride in the dress of Caligula and the wish that
he should be called Cæsar, a something more than mere kindness in her
freehanded gifts to the private soldiers.
Agrippina was not an intriguer, she was too boisterous, too
self-confident for intrigue; but she was none the less dangerous: a
woman of rights, conjugal rights, maternal rights, ancestral rights; an
injured woman, the daughter of an injured mother, a woman whose virtues
it is pleasantest to contemplate when exhibited in the bosom of another
man’s family. Tiberius did not take her sufficiently seriously; on the
whole he seems to have been amused by her, only taking action when
action was imperatively necessary. He did not take sufficiently into
account the power for mischief which a good-hearted wrong-headed woman
of this description may become when her grievances have been taken up
by others, and when more subtle intriguers have seen in her a useful
tool.
It was soon after this exhibition of amazonian propensities that
Germanicus was recalled, and doubtless with his own consent. The
sequel indicates that his health had suffered in the arduous campaigns
on the frontier, and he probably welcomed the exchange to a warmer
climate. Tiberius, in recalling him, said that some opportunity of
conquest must be left for Drusus, a remark which has been interpreted
as an indication of jealousy on Drusus’ behalf; but it can also be
interpreted as a humorous compliment to Germanicus himself. There was
no occasion to remind him of the claims of Drusus, for the two cousins
were united by a strong friendship, as we are informed by the same
authorities who envelop us in an atmosphere of hatred, jealousy, envy,
and malice.
The political importance of the mutiny on the Rhine was very great;
it showed that fifty years of settled government had not done away
with the military danger, and that the civil government was still
at the mercy of the armies. Tiberius was less than ever inclined to
reverse the policy of Augustus, and extend the State at the expense of
exaggerating the importance of the soldiers, more than ever disposed to
employ diplomacy rather than force. We shall find him as time goes on
almost as averse to war as the great Elizabeth, and equally in danger
of pursuing peaceful methods too long. He also found it necessary to
revise his conception of the possible Imperial constitution, and to
accept the hereditary principle as inevitable. The Emperor was not to
be above and outside the State; he was to be hereditary stadtholder;
but to this extent the dynastic tendency must be accepted, and not the
least of the responsibilities of the reigning Emperor was to be the
provision for an orderly succession and a capable successor. Hence
we shall find Tiberius following the example of Augustus in training
members of his family for the burden of public duty, and in ensuring
the order of precedence by successive adoptions. It was solely owing
to the loyalty and fine ambition of Germanicus that the mutiny had not
resulted in a civil war.
In theory hereditary succession to official responsibilities is
demonstrably absurd, but in practice there is nothing so satisfactory
as a dynasty. The mutual jealousies and intrigues of aspirants are far
more dangerous to a State than the incompetence of the temporary ruler,
and the qualification of birth, though theoretically ridiculous, has
the merit of being a qualification that everybody can understand. In
the states imagined by philosophers and radical politicians the eminent
virtues of eminent men are always so conspicuous that meritorious
“Amurath to Amurath succeeds” by the will of the people without break
or intermission and in obedience to a law of nature, for, given fair
play, the capable and trustworthy men must always find themselves
at the top of the society which is blessed with their presence; but
in the states which unlearned men know of there is no agreement of
opinion as to what constitutes capacity or trustworthiness or political
virtue, and in a general scramble for power the least scrupulous has
at least an equal chance with the most virtuous. The dynast is in fact
a social necessity, and the larger the area of the State which is
governed in his name, the more necessary his existence. Society is most
secure when the highest position is reserved for those who possess an
indisputable qualification. Men may argue about the particular compound
of meritorious characteristics which they wish to see exemplified in
their ruler, and in the search for the perfect man find anarchy, but
the qualification of birth is not a thing exposed to many varieties of
opinion. Better on the whole the incapable or the overcapable dynast
than an uncertain successor.
Tiberius, by modifying his prejudices on the dynastic question, averted
a catastrophe, which fell upon the Roman Empire as soon as the line
of the Cæsars was extinguished in the person of Nero. Then the armies
of Spain set up one Emperor, and the armies of Gaul another, and the
armies of Syria a third; for two years a reversion to anarchy seemed
inevitable. The perpetual intrigues of jealous ladies ambitious
for their sons or husbands did not contribute to the pleasures of
existence in the Imperial households, but they were less evil than the
disruption of the Empire or the emergence of military adventurers.
Tiberius sacrificed his domestic comfort to the interests of the
State; he did not know that he was at the same time sacrificing his
posthumous reputation; he did not divine the existence of the memoirs
of Agrippina.
XIII
Tacitus and Tiberius
To tell the story of the reign of Tiberius by minutely tracking
Tacitus through his manifold inconsistencies and clever insinuations,
though entertaining to the investigator, would prove wearisome to the
reader; but a somewhat careful examination of the Emperor’s methods of
Government during the first year of his administration will spare us
lengthy explanations in dealing with subsequent events.
Tacitus and Suetonius alike seem to have collected their information
from three chief sources, private memoirs, popular rumours, in which
are to be included pasquinades and the topical songs of actors,
and the official record of the transactions of the Senate. The
first two sources of information are obviously not of a trustworthy
character; memoirs are not to be relied on even in these days of rapid
transmission of news and wide publicity. An historian who should essay
to compile the biography of a public man of today, even from the daily
and weekly journals which are filled with personal gossip about those
upon whom the attention of the public is fixed, would find such a
mass of contradictions to deal with that he would abandon his task in
despair; and yet the matter thus afforded to his inspection is day by
day subject to correction. Memoirs written by an irresponsible person
in his private study are even more likely to contain perversions of
fact, to omit, to exaggerate, to represent exclusively the personal
bias of the writer.
It is hardly necessary to add that loose anecdotes and the buffooneries
of actors do not constitute evidence; it is, indeed, difficult to
understand how Suetonius, a presumably grave schoolmaster, could quote
snatches of popular songs as serious history, and repeat the filthy
gossip of the Roman streets.
But the evidence of public documents such as the record of the
transactions of the Senate is unimpeachable; and this evidence,
whenever Tacitus gives it us, is invariably such as to compel us to
believe that Tiberius was a wise and moderate ruler.
So overwhelming is this evidence, that the very creators of the
monstrous figure, which passes for that of Tiberius, had serious
misgivings; whenever they examined the public records, they found
the lustful, rapacious, bloodthirsty tyrant of their imaginations
acting on the strictest lines of constitutional government. How
were they to reconcile their creation with acknowledged and indeed
indisputable facts? It seemed to them that there was a simple way out
of the difficulty, namely, to ascribe to the monster the yet further
monstrosity of deep dissimulation. The fascination of the style of
Tacitus is such that this astounding solution of the difficulty has
been all but universally accepted; but even if we accept it, we have
to ask ourselves whether profound dissimulation of this kind is not a
quality to be desired in a ruler rather than the reverse; whether in
fact the general sum of wickedness in the world would not be diminished
almost to vanishing point, were we to accept as a rule of life the duty
of acting virtuously from motives of profound dissimulation up to the
age of seventy, in order that we may enjoy unbridled licentiousness and
cruelty for the remainder of our lives. This is the practical result
of believing that Tiberius never did a good action except from motives
of profound dissimulation. We shall find ourselves, when we come to
the events of the year A.D. 30, faced with an insoluble problem, which
even the discovery of the missing book of Tacitus might fail to clear
for us; but the only solution of that problem which has as yet been
offered to us is contrary to the known laws of human nature. Men do not
of forethought and design practise virtue for seventy years in order
that they may indulge in vice at a time of life when they are oftenest
incapable of taking exercise except in a bath-chair.
The fable of the dissimulation of Tiberius grew out of two facts, his
naturally reserved nature, and the mysterious tragedy which clouded the
last seven years of his life. Of the nature of that tragedy, and of the
question whether he was not more sinned against than sinning, it will
be more convenient to speak when we reach it in the order of events;
but of the personal characteristics which tempted men to ascribe to
him numerous unamiable qualities, and which gave credence to the cruel
insinuations of his private enemies, it is not inconvenient to speak at
the present moment.