the excessive weight of a road and aqueduct had caused a subsidence of
the foundations of a Senator’s house, and he had applied to the Senate
for compensation; the officials of the Treasury resisted the claim,
but Tiberius ordered the value of the house to be paid to the owner.
Then follows the inevitable comment: “For he was fond of distributing
money in honourable ways, a virtue which he long retained, when he was
abandoning all others.” Even this remark is, however, not sufficiently
damaging for Tacitus, and he carefully provides that his next statement
should be calculated to appeal to a well-known weakness. Propertius
Celer asked to be allowed to retire from the Senatorial Order on
account of insufficiency of means. Tiberius, on ascertaining that his
poverty was inherited, bestowed on him a million sestertii (about
£8,500). So far so good; no senator could object to this, but something
follows: “When others attempted to get the same relief he ordered them
to prove their case to the Senate, harsh even in those things which he
did in due form, through his excessive love of strict procedure. For
this reason the rest preferred silence and poverty to confession and
gratuities.” We shall have to record later on a particularly impudent
attempt on the part of an indigent Senator to extort money for the
relief of his necessities, and shall find that Tiberius had good
reason for insisting that men who claimed the assistance of the Senate
should give a full account of their means and of the causes of their
poverty; but it is easy to see that the severity of Tiberius would
not be popular with the Senate, and that a prejudice could be created
against him by giving an example of his strictness in this matter early
in his reign. Paterculus, more just than Tacitus, praises Tiberius for
the discrimination with which he assisted impoverished Senators.
In the same year there were heavy floods in the Tiber; the lower
regions of the city were inundated, many buildings fell, many lives
were lost. Asinius Gallus, the second husband of Vipsania, moved that
the Sibylline books should be consulted. We are not surprised to hear
that Tiberius rejected the motion “on religious no less than practical
grounds.” It is an interesting illustration of the curious development
of the Italian intellect that these same men who could seriously
propose in their solemn assembly to consult the Roman Mother Shipton in
a case of this kind should form a bold engineering scheme for dealing
with the difficulty. It was suggested, after a committee had reported,
that the tributaries which brought the floods into the Tiber should be
diverted. The scheme was abandoned, as deputations from the inhabitants
of the valleys through which these rivers flowed pointed out that they
would suffer serious loss if it were carried out. There were also
religious obstacles; these rivers were worshipped, and Tiber himself
might object to the proposed diminution of his glorious stream.
We then have a fragment of administration dismissed by Tacitus in
a couple of lines without comment. The provinces of Achaia and
Macedonia begged to be relieved of the expense of the Senatorial
Government and transferred to the Imperial provinces; both of these
provinces had suffered in consequence of the Pannonian war. The
Imperial administration was less expensive than that of the Senate,
not necessarily because the Senatorial Government was corrupt, but
because the honours paid to the Senatorial viceroys and their trains
were expensive; there was the difference between maintaining a court
and paying an official. Adverse comment was in this case impossible,
because when Tacitus was writing, the process of removing the
distinction between Senatorial and Imperial provinces was in progress.
Trajan would hardly have approved of a reactionary comment, such as
Tacitus might have been tempted to make. These provinces were restored
to the Senate by Claudius.
This notice is followed by a statement and comment in the best Tacitean
style: “Drusus (the son of Tiberius) presided at the gladiatorial
shows which he had offered in the names of himself and his brother
Germanicus, although too easily pleased with cheap bloodshed, a thing
which was full of danger to the commonalty, and which his father
is said to have reproved. Different reasons were assigned for the
Emperor’s own absence from the shows; some said that he disliked a
crowd, others alleged his dismal nature and his fear of comparisons,
for Augustus had taken part in these events with affability. I should
be unwilling to believe that an opportunity was deliberately given to
his son of demonstrating his cruelty and exciting unpopularity, though
that was also said.”
The connection of thought is not quite obvious, for if the gladiatorial
shows were popular, and they certainly were popular, how could Drusus
incur unpopularity by presiding? There is unhappily no evidence that
the populace of Rome ever objected to bloodshed in the arena, and the
president at these shows would be more likely to make himself disliked
by checking than by permitting or encouraging the slaughter. Nor
again is it easy to see the force of the phrase, “although too easily
pleased with cheap bloodshed,” unless there is a reference implied to
the pleasure which Drusus was said to have taken in the executions
of the mutineers in Pannonia, an inexpensive pleasure compared with
that afforded by the fights of trained gladiators; the word “although”
suggests that Drusus could get his bloodshed more cheaply than by
giving gladiatorial shows.
Again, if Drusus was wrong in patronizing these shows, how could
Tiberius also be wrong in refusing to be present? As a matter of fact,
one of the many points in the character of Tiberius which commands our
respect is his aversion to the disgusting spectacles of all kinds in
which the Roman people delighted. But considerations of this kind did
not weigh with Tacitus; he was not interested in being consistent;
he found in the memoirs adverse interpretations of the conduct of
Tiberius, and he impartially repeated them, though they were in
contradiction with his previous condemnation of Drusus.
A riot in the theatre was the next event of importance. We shall have
on a later occasion to discuss the position of the theatres at some
length. It is enough to record that on the present occasion opinions
were given in the Senate to the effect that the Prætors should be
allowed to flog actors. A tribune interposed his veto according to an
old constitutional practice, and was roundly abused by Asinius Gallus
for doing so. “Tiberius preserved silence, for he conceded to the
Senate such phantoms of liberty.” However, the veto of the tribune was
allowed, “because the sainted Augustus had once declared that actors
were exempt from the rods, and it was a matter of conscience with
Tiberius not to infringe his utterances.” The further proceedings in
the Senate on this occasion throw a curious light on the manners of the
time. It was decreed that Senators should not enter the houses of the
pantomimists, that the Equestrians should not attend them when they
went out, that they should not give performances except in the theatre,
and that the Prætors should have power to punish the extravagance of
the spectators with banishment.
Then the Spaniards were allowed to build a temple to Augustus at
Tarragona, thus setting an example to all the provinces. The people of
Tarragona had not hitherto been fortunate in their worship of Augustus;
they had set up an altar to him in his lifetime, and soon afterwards
announced to him radiantly that a palm had grown from it. “It is easy
to see that you do not often sacrifice,” the old man had remarked.
Petitions were presented against the tax of one per cent. on auctions.
Tiberius declared in an edict that the military chest depended on that
source of income, and added that the burden of the army was too great
for the State unless the soldiers served for twenty years; thus the
reduction to sixteen years demanded by the mutineers was set aside.
The two concluding chapters of the first book of the _Annals_ are also
remarkable in their unfairness or want of perspicacity; and yet the
grievances suggested by them have been alluded to again and again by
historians of repute without criticism and as real grievances, for it
is the melancholy fate of most students of Tacitus to lose all sense of
consistency.
“Poppæus Sabinus was continued in the governorship of Moesia, Achaia
and Macedonia being added to the province. This too was one of the
ways of Tiberius, to prolong the periods of office and to keep most of
the officials in command of the same armies or at the head of the same
jurisdictions to the ends of their lives. Various reasons are given.
Some said that through mere distaste for fresh exertion he treated
appointments once made as eternal, others that he was envious and
wanted few to enjoy power; some think that selections were a matter of
serious anxiety to him because he was cunning; he had little regard
for eminent virtues, and again he disliked vices; he feared danger to
himself from worthy men, public disgrace from bad men. At length he
went so far in this kind of dilatoriness that he assigned provinces to
some men, whom he did not intend to leave the city.”
The frequent change of Governors, Generals, and other officials had
been the curse of the Republican Government. Again and again it had
been necessary, when serious work was to be done, to lengthen the
limited terms of office allowed by the old senatorial constitution; the
old arrangements had not been made in the interests of the provincials
or the administration of public business, but so that the members of
the oligarchy at Rome might share and share alike in the plunder of
the conquered countries, and that no single one of them should acquire
sufficient money or power to set himself above the laws. When the
old arrangements were rigorously carried out, no Roman Governor had
more than a transitory glance of the province which he occupied; he
himself and the train by which he was attended devoted their energies
to making as much as they could in the short time at their disposal;
the evil had been pointed out again and again; and as Tacitus has
himself told us, the burden even of the reformed senatorial government
was such that two impoverished provinces begged to be relieved of it.
The policy of Tiberius was the only sound one for the provinces, and
the sole objection to it was an objection which he, if he had been
a suspicious ruler, might have felt to be a strong one. There was a
danger that the men who stayed in their provinces long enough to feel
their strength might be tempted to set up an independent government.
This danger Tiberius preferred to risk, and that he did so acquits him
of the charge conveyed in the insinuation that he was jealous of the
enjoyment of power by a number of persons. Eventually, as we shall see
later on, he made the Governors of provinces Secretaries of State for
the countries which they governed; they did not leave Rome, but were
the channels through which the business of the provinces was conducted
at Rome. The language which Tacitus here uses is not the language of an
experienced official working under Trajan with the records of a century
of the Empire behind him, but the language of a reactionary of the
reign of Tiberius. The breed of Romans who could see nothing in greater
Rome but a field for plundering in the name of governing never quite
died out; even in Trajan’s reign there were probably more aspirants
than offices, and many discontented men, who thought that there were
not sufficient opportunities of promotion. Tiberius certainly was
careful in his selection of the great officials, but his caution was
in the interests of the unhappy provincials. There were doubtless many
noble Romans in his day who believed themselves to be possessed of the
eminent virtues necessary to a provincial governor, but who somehow
failed to secure promotion.
Tacitus on this occasion, as on many others, skilfully substitutes
contemporary comment for contemporary evidence. All that he really
tells us is that some of the contemporaries of Tiberius disliked his
policy; what he wishes to tell us is that the government of Tiberius
was radically bad, and that his contemporaries were right in saying so.
The last chapter deals with the elections of the Consuls, a subject
which Tacitus professes to find obscure. The reality of election by the
Comitia Centuriata had already been abolished; it had become a mere
form, and nobody noticed its abolition; Augustus practically appointed
the Consuls; Tiberius seems to have wished the Senate to elect them,
but found that there were practical difficulties. After mentioning
various ways in which Tiberius secured the election of his own
candidates, Tacitus says: “Generally he discoursed to the effect that
those men only were candidates whose names he had given to the Consuls,
but that others were at liberty to stand if they had confidence in
their own influence or deserts. This was plausible enough in words,
but meaningless or insidious in fact, and the more it was involved in
the appearance of liberty, likely to break out into the more deadly
slavery.”
This imposing malediction ends the book. As a matter of fact the
Consular Office was by this time purely ornamental.
XIV
The Case of Scribonius Libo
Enough has been said in the previous chapter to show the bias under
which Tacitus wrote, and the dexterity with which he substituted
inferences and insinuations for evidence. It must, however, be conceded
to Tacitus that the operation of the “Lex Majestatis” was attended by
many and serious evils; for those evils Tiberius and the men of his
time were not responsible. The period was one of transition in most
departments of social organization, and especially in all matters
connected with the administration of justice. Under the Republic every
head of a great family was in theory, and even in practice, a skilled
lawyer; there was no legal profession. The Prætors who presided in the
law courts were not specially trained judges; any Senator might become
a Prætor, and preside in one of the law courts for his year of office;
similarly any Senator might be called upon to take his place as a
juryman, and give his verdict after listening to the evidence and the
speeches of counsel. In course of time the Equestrian Order shared this
duty with Senators.
Similarly there was no such thing as a professional advocate; every
Senator was bound to plead on behalf of his own clients, and no
Senator could recover fees as an advocate; indeed, advocates were
strictly forbidden to ask for fees. The relation between the advocate
and his client was held to be a personal one, not professional. The
word client still in use reminds us of this relation; we have lost
the corresponding word “patron,” which Tacitus and Suetonius employ
precisely in the technical sense of advocate. Such a system could
not be maintained under the increased complexity of life caused by
the expansion of Rome, and the professional advocate was inevitably
evolved; “patrons” who were noticeably successful in winning their
cases naturally attracted “clients”; and hence we have even in the
Republican period men occupying positions not easily distinguishable
from those of our own barristers, and in virtue of various legal
fictions actually making large fortunes by the exercise of their
profession. Cicero and Hortensius were eminent examples of the
non-professional and yet professional advocate.
The fact that there was no organized and officially recognized body of
men to plead in the law courts caused little inconvenience in private
cases. A man who defended the interests of a friend, or brought an
action in his name, was not in an invidious position, even though
by well known evasions of the law he received a consideration for
his friendly services. Again so long as the senatorial constitution
existed, the prosecution of offenders against the State was an
honourable public duty, and young men took their first step in a
political career by conducting a State prosecution or defending the
delinquent. Such prosecutions were political rather than legal;
they were episodes in a never-ending party struggle; they resembled
the impeachments and attainders of our own parliamentary history.
The introduction of the monarch into the Roman Constitution created
a state of affairs for which the Constitution had not provided; the
position of the head of the Government was not defined; it was only
gradually and by a slow process of development that his person and his
good name were protected from attack. We do not possess the text of
the Julian laws passed in the reign of Augustus, whose object was in
part to protect the first person in the State, and to make offences
against his person and reputation offences against the majesty of the
State; but we know enough of their nature to be certain that Augustus
with all his wisdom found an unhappy solution of a real difficulty.
The Roman Republic was not provided with a Public Prosecutor, nor with
law officers of the Crown, nor could Augustus be provided with such
protectors; he could neither through his agents nor in person bring
actions against offenders under the “Lex Majestatis,” for in such a
case the verdict was a foregone conclusion. In order, therefore, that
such cases should be spontaneously brought before the courts, it was
enacted that the prosecutor, if successful, should receive all or part
of the fine. Men were thus tempted not only to get up cases, but to
provide that the evidence should lead to a confiscation of the goods
of the defendant; the greater the penalty, the greater the reward
of the prosecutor. Speculations in promoting conspiracy and then
informing were the natural result. It is easy at this distance of time
to condemn the system, and easier still to forget the long growth of
habits and prescriptions which have rendered trials for treason and
constructive treason and for libelling the Sovereign almost obsolete in
our own country. In our happy ignorance of the conditions which made
such processes possible and necessary we may be tempted to ask with
surprise why Tiberius, if he were really a wise and moderate man, did
not abolish or amend the “Lex Majestatis.” The hostile writers Tacitus
and Suetonius tell us repeatedly that Tiberius never made use of this
law, or of any law, as a means of filling his treasury. The examples of
prosecutions under this law given by Tacitus almost without exception,
and invariably up to A.D. 30, show Tiberius moderating the zeal of the
prosecutors, and lightening the sentences pronounced by the Senate;
in fact, the abuses of the law are perpetrated by the prosecutors and
the Senate, not by Tiberius; and the Emperor may reasonably have held
that as it was always in his power to check the abuses of the law,
its amendment, a matter of great difficulty, might be left to time,
and that in accordance with Roman custom the desired result would be
achieved better by an accumulation of precedents than by a formal
enactment.
The case of Scribonius Libo is interesting, less as affecting the
character of Tiberius than as throwing a light upon the manners of the
time. Tacitus does not provide us with the formal indictment, nor with
the evidence; he is pleased to think that the case affords a remarkable
illustration of the horrors of the “Lex Majestatis,” and omits or
insinuates at discretion. The case as represented by him seems to have
been rather trivial, and more trivial to us than to the Romans of
that time, because we no longer believe, or believe that we no longer
believe in magic.
Drusus Scribonius Libo was a relative, though not a very near relative,
to members of the Julian house. Scribonia, his great-great-aunt,
was the first real wife of Augustus and the mother of Julia; he
was therefore a distant cousin to Agrippina and her brothers. His
grandmother, the niece of this Scribonia, was wife to Sextus Pompeius,
and thus the young man was a descendant of the great Pompeius. Tacitus
speaks of him as a young man at the time of the prosecution, but this
epithet is used by the Roman writers technically of men between the
ages of seventeen and forty-six, and is therefore applied to men past
their callow youth, such as Germanicus and Drusus; and as Libo had
been Prætor, he was certainly old enough to manage his own affairs.
Libo, according to Tacitus, fell into the hands of a Senator named
Firmius Catus, who encouraged him in vicious courses and lent him
money, in order to become fully possessed of his secrets. This same
treacherous adviser stimulated his ambition, and reminded him of the
splendour of his ancestry; he urged him to listen to the promises of
Chaldæans, to consult the mysterious rites of magians and interpreters
of dreams. When Firmius had sufficiently implicated his victim in
doubtful proceedings, he asked for an interview with Tiberius, using
an Equestrian, Flaccus Vescularius, a very intimate friend of the
Emperor’s, as intermediary. Tiberius refused the interview, saying,
according to Tacitus, that he could get any further information through
Flaccus. “Meanwhile” he made Libo prætor, frequently invited him to
dinner, discovered no irritation either by look or word, and “preferred
to know all his deeds and words, although he could have stopped them.”
In other words, the folly of Libo having been brought to the notice
of Tiberius, he paid no very serious attention, and endeavoured
to demonstrate the error of his ways by admitting him to familiar
intercourse, for vague though the historian’s “meanwhile” may be taken
to be, there is no improbability in assuming that the first experiment
of Catus was foiled by the Emperor’s common sense.
The next stage in the proceedings was more exciting. Libo endeavoured
to bribe one Junius to call up the spirits of the dead by means of
incantations. This person, probably a professional necromancer, gave
information to Fulcinius Trio, a professional prosecutor so far as
such a thing existed at the time. “The ability of Trio was well known
among the accusers of those days, and his eager love of notoriety.”
Trio did not allow the grass to grow under his feet; he held a “plump
juicy offender” in his hands, and was determined to make the best of
him; he went to the consuls and demanded a hearing before the Senate.
Libo, for his part, was not idle; on hearing of his peril he put on
mourning and, accompanied by ladies of rank, visited the palaces of
the great, implored his family connexions, demanded the aid of their
voices to encounter his danger; but all refused; their excuses were
different, but fear was the real reason for all. Fear of what? Tacitus
leaves us to infer that Tiberius was the object of dread, but even if
we allow that the historian was correct in assigning fear as the motive
of abstention from assisting Libo, there was another possible cause
of fear. The black art was no laughing matter to the men and women of
those days, and a fashionable gentleman, who was suddenly discovered to
have been engaged in an attempt to raise the dead, was an awe-inspiring
object in spite of his train of aristocratic ladies.
On the day of the meeting of the Senate Libo was carried in a litter
to the doors, either pretending illness or worn out with anxiety and
vexation; he leaned on his brother, and appealed to Tiberius by word
and gesture, who for his part preserved the immobility proper to his
position. In due time the Emperor read the declarations aloud and
the names of their authors, in such a way as not to indicate his own
opinion. By this time Trio was not the only accuser; Catus was there,
Fonteius Agrippa and Vibius Serenus, Senators of repute, all anxiously
offering information, and wrangling between themselves as to which of
them was to have the honour of making the speech for the prosecution.
Libo had no defender. At last Vibius was allowed to state the charges;
there seemed to be little reason for alarm in them. Among other things
Libo had asked his diviners whether he should have enough money to
cover the Appian Way with coin from Rome to Brindisi.