himself; it was no sooner conscious of an enemy than it persecuted,
and the persecution was no less a persecution because it was prompted
by mixed motives. There may have been good reason for mistrusting the
influence of the diviners upon persons of weak mind, for suspecting
them of helping to bring about the accomplishment of their predictions
by the use of poisons, and of prompting plots in whose success they had
a personal interest; but it was also inevitable that the emergence of a
new religious attitude should alarm, and that its professors should be
subject to attack. In times of popular excitement the monotheists were
persecuted by the enlightened rationalists no less than by the orthodox
polytheists, and many motives over and above religious intolerance
contributed to sharpen the laws against the Jew and the diviner. Not
the least of these was the dread of poison, a very lively terror
even in modern times, till the accumulations of chemical and medical
knowledge restricted the sphere of operations of mysterious drugs; and
there may well have been some foundation for the superstitious dread of
secret poisoning by which many of the ancients were affected. Not only
was the charlatan ready to magnify his own powers, and to ascribe to
his spells and incantations deaths from purely natural causes, but the
older civilizations of the East had doubtless preserved many secrets of
pharmacy which were skilfully used by adepts to impress the imagination
of the vulgar.
At this very day the medicine men and women, the Papaloi and Mamaloi
of the Black Republic of Hayti, exert a power above the laws by their
knowledge and use of poisons, from which even the educated white man
cannot escape. Before we condemn the Roman Senate for its intolerance
of magicians and its superstitious dread of their powers, we must place
ourselves in their position, limit ourselves to their knowledge; and
again we must be modest enough to remember that we still consider it
necessary to protect the ignorant dupe from the fortune-teller, that
the law is not unfrequently called into action in such cases, and that
the clients of the spiritualist and diviner of to-day are to be found
in all classes, and not exclusively among the poor and ignorant.
While the Senate thus endeavoured to repress alien worships, it
continued to protect the sanctity of its own ritual; vestal virgins
were appointed in due form, though with increasing difficulty, as
the solemn form of marriage necessary for the proper parentage of a
vestal had fallen into disfavour. Considerable interest attached to the
case of a Senator named Servius Maluginensis, who had a claim to the
Proconsulship of Asia, and wished to evade the restrictions which were
imposed on him by the fact that he was Flamen Dialis, sublimest priest
of Jupiter. The ancient ritual forbade the Flamen Dialis to leave
the city for more than a day and a night in succession, and Servius
therefore attempted to prove that the ritual was obsolete, and that
exceptions had been allowed. The Senate discussed the case with due
solemnity, and then referred it to Tiberius, who in his turn remitted
it to the College of Pontiffs. Their decision was against Servius, and
the Province of Asia fell to the Senator next on the roll.
A question of even greater importance, partly religious in its
character, required the decision of the Senate. Numerous Greek towns,
chiefly situated in the islands of the Ægean and along the coasts
of Asia Minor, had abused the rights of Sanctuary attached to some
of their temples. Not only were the rights of property imperilled
by the ready shelter given to runaway slaves, but the concourse of
unruly ruffians assembled in these insular Alsatias threatened to
disturb the public peace. A sanctuary, if conveniently situated,
might easily assume the character of a nest of pirates; the Greek
genius for brigandage has always been as remarkable as the Greek
gift for preaching morality. An attempt to suppress the sanctuaries
led to protests, and deputations from the towns concerned pleaded
their cause before the Senate. The arguments used in defence of the
sanctuaries are interesting, because they show a sense of continuity of
government from the times of Alexander to those of Tiberius. The claims
were partly based on mythological grounds, but more effectively on
recognitions granted by Alexander, and afterwards by Roman Proconsuls.
The maintenance of the sanctuaries was regarded as an honourable
distinction, and this aspect of the claims was pressed rather than the
material advantages.
The abuse, however, was too alarming to be tolerated. One temple
alone, that of Æsculapius at Pergamus, which from other evidence seems
to have assumed the character of a school of medicine, retained its
privileges; the others were dismissed with honourable compliments,
and it was ordered that a copy of the Senatorial decree should be
inscribed on brass, and placed in a conspicuous position in the
temples concerned. Subsequently other sanctuaries were similarly dealt
with. The credit of thus dealing with a serious abuse is ascribed by
Suetonius to Tiberius, and it is possible that, though the actual
decision was made in the Senate, because the towns involved were in
a Senatorial Province, the initiative came from the Emperor himself.
If Tiberius was thus severe in correcting a time-honoured abuse, he
had been no less liberal in remitting taxation and furnishing relief
to numerous cities in the same part of the world, which had suffered
severely from an earthquake. In fact, though he was careful to observe
the constitutional forms, he kept a watchful eye upon the Senatorial
administration, and supplied the necessary stimulation for its
corporate conscience.
Reference has already been made to the practice of supplementing the
resources of impoverished Senators, and to the severity with which
Tiberius treated such cases. The Senate was only too willing to vote
public money to provide pensions for its members. Tiberius recognized
the obligation, but he insisted that the beneficiary should make out
a good case, and be able to demonstrate that his distress was due to
misfortune, not to thriftlessness. The case of Hortalus, grandson
of Cicero’s rival, Hortensius, affords an illustration both of the
severity of Tiberius and of the curiously domestic character of the
Senate.
In the year 16 A.D. Hortalus rose in his place in the Senate, having
posted his four sons at the door, where they could be seen by all;
he then spoke as follows, fixing his eyes alternately on the statue
of Hortensius standing among the orators, and that of Augustus:--“It
was not by my own will, but at the suggestion of the Prince, that I
begot and acknowledged these children, whose number and tender years
you behold; and indeed my ancestors had deserved that I should have
successors. For I, who owing to the revolutionary times could neither
inherit the ancestral property of my house, nor earn money, nor win
the affections of the people, nor train myself in eloquence, should
have had enough if my poverty had neither shamed nor burdened others.
At the command of the Emperor I married a wife. Behold the stock
and progeny of all those consuls and dictators. I do not say this
to disparage anybody else, but to win your compassion. The offices
that you confer, Cæsar, will be at your service while you reign;
meanwhile defend the great-grandchildren of Quintus Hortensius, the
children fostered by the sainted Augustus, from want.” In spite of
the mendacity of this statement--for on the father’s side, at any
rate, the family of Hortensius could only claim the credit of two
consulships and no dictatorships--the appeal was heard with favour
by the Senate, till Tiberius intervened with these words:--“If all
the poverty-stricken begin to come here and demand money for their
children, the applicants will never be satiated, and the public purse
will run dry. And indeed it was certainly never contemplated by our
ancestors when they allowed Senators to leave the matter in hand, and
move amendments for the public benefit, that we should endeavour to
increase our private fortunes in this place in such a manner as to
render the Senate and the Princes unpopular, whether they granted or
refused the largess. This is not a humble request; it is an impudent
demand, unseasonable, and unprecedented, to rise when the Senate are
assembled for the discussion of other matters, and do violence to the
kindness of the Senate by urging the number and age of one’s children,
and to pass on the same violence to me, and as it were break open the
treasury, which we shall have to supplement by injustice, if we exhaust
it in courting popularity. Money was given to you, Hortalus, by the
sainted Augustus, but without previous application, and certainly
not on the terms that once given it should be always given. Industry
will slacken, indolence will gain strength, if men’s hopes and fears
are not to depend on themselves, if all are confidently to look for
resources from outside, useless to themselves and a burden to us.”
Tiberius was clearly in the right, but the authorities whom Tacitus
consulted evidently thought that Hortalus had been hardly used, for
the narrative is continued:--“Although these and similar words were
listened to with favour by those whose custom it is to praise all that
falls from the lips of Princes, honourable and dishonourable alike,
the majority received them in silence or with subdued murmurs. And
Tiberius perceived this, and after a short silence said that he had
given Hortalus his answer. However, if the Senate thought well, he
would give each of his children of the male sex two hundred thousand
sesterces (about £3,000). The rest expressed their thanks. Hortalus
was silent, either from consternation or because he retained something
of his ancestral nobility even in his indigence. Nor did Tiberius show
him any further compassion, although the family of Hortensius fell into
disgraceful poverty.”
The gift made by Tiberius was private and personal; he did not make
use of the public money for a purpose of which he had expressed strong
disapproval. The incident is chiefly interesting as indicating that,
in spite of the rude shocks given to the Senatorial system by Julius
Cæsar, the body had recovered its evil tradition of assuming that it
was at liberty to use the public purse to meet the private necessities
of its members. Hortalus was clearly a well-known spendthrift.
The Senate, in fact, tended to become more and more a high court of
justice, in which its members and high officials were tried by their
peers, the cases being either political or such private cases as
had by long tradition fallen to the Senate as the guardian of the
morality of the privileged orders. It was tenacious of its privileges,
careless of its wider responsibilities. Tiberius treated it with formal
respect, and did his best to make it worthy of its opportunities; if
he could have avoided interfering with its administration of its own
provinces, he would have done so, but he was not prepared to submit
the provincials to misgovernment in order to maintain the prestige
of the Senate, and the misgovernment of Proconsuls was by no means a
thing of the past. Tiberius, like Augustus, supplied himself with an
inner Council of the Senate, and it is possible that on most occasions
this inner Council represented the whole body; but he did not restrict
himself to Senatorial Counsellors, and we are told that, in dealing
with provincial questions, he was always careful to provide himself
with the expert evidence of men who knew the localities concerned.
Though the Senate could not shake itself free from the traditions
of its existence, and always represented the great families of the
City of Rome rather than Italy or the Empire, except in so far as it
provided the personnel of the Supreme Court of Appeal, it was curiously
indifferent to municipal matters. The city was policed by the Prefect
of the city, an official appointed by the Emperor, who held office for
long periods, and it was guarded by troops commanded by the Emperor.
The rank of Senator eventually became little more than an honourable
distinction, though from time to time the body possessed sufficient
coherence to bid for the power which it had lost, and even for short
periods to wield it. The distinction between Senatorial and Imperial
Provinces did not last long, the Imperial administration proving better
suited to the needs of the Empire.
Many writers infected with the spirit of the nineteenth century have
advanced the opinion that the Roman Empire collapsed because the Romans
never hit upon representative government. It is curious that Augustus
very nearly effected this supreme achievement. He at one time proposed
to hold simultaneous elections of the Roman magistrates in all the
cities of Italy; the names of the candidates were to be posted up, the
votes were to be collected in ballot boxes, which were to be sent to
Rome sealed up, and afterwards counted in the city itself. This scheme
happily came to nothing, for the strength of the Roman Empire lay in
its respect for local government. The Provincial Governors were the
supreme umpires in their Provinces, but they did not concern themselves
with the details of local administration; the constitutions of Athens,
and even Sparta, continued to work even after these towns were included
in the Province of Achaia, and similarly throughout the Empire original
institutions were left to do their previous work. As we have seen,
the Governors of Provinces did not even control the organization by
which the Imperial taxes were collected. The local life of the Empire
was strong; Antioch and Alexandria, even the new cities of Gaul,
bowed reluctantly to Rome, and in course of time the position of the
Patriarch of Rome was not to be that of Primate of Christianity till
many a battle had been fought, and in fact the Popes never succeeded to
the full heritage of the Emperors. The Empire was the bond of union and
the peacemaker between an infinite number of self-governing units, it
provided a supreme arbitrator, a Supreme Court of Appeal. The Empire,
in fact, was peace; it was not a system of local as well as universal
administration. The introduction of representative government, the
substitution of an Elective Parliament at Rome for the Senate, would
have killed the vigorous local governments, and would not have improved
the administration of the Empire. Under such rulers as Augustus and
Tiberius, the Flavians and the Antonines, the organization of the Roman
Empire probably reached the limits of perfectibility; it would not
have been improved by collecting deputies from all parts of the world,
and expecting them to be responsible for the executive. Representative
institutions have not prevented official corruption or no less deadly
incompetence, nor has the absence of really free parliaments impeded
the advance of some modern nations; those diseases of the body politic
from which the Roman Empire is held to have suffered in a special
degree, corruption and official formalism, have not been unknown in
communities blessed with Houses of Representatives duly elected and
accredited. A multitude of counsellors neither protects an Empire from
corruption nor ensures wisdom in the conduct of its affairs, while
the conscience of any corporate body is notoriously duller than that
of each individual of which it is composed. The Roman Emperors were
wise in respecting local institutions, and in not imposing a strict
system of centralization, for it is unfortunately impossible to retrace
our steps, and when once the local life has been killed, it cannot
be revived. Decentralization as a matter of mechanical convenience
is possible after the central authority has drawn to itself all
the prestige of political life, but this is purely administrative
decentralization; when once the central government has absorbed the
vitality of local political life, it cannot give back that which it
has taken away. It was good for the Empire that the Senate should not
exclusively attract the ambition of capable men from the Provinces,
and on the other hand that the energies of the Emperors should be
distributed over a wide area. The Emperors had no time for universal
tyranny, and the extravagancies of Caligula, Nero, and Domitian were
scarcely felt outside Rome itself; they certainly did nothing to shake
the foundations of that fabric which had been so wisely laid by the
first two Emperors.
XVII
Sejanus
One of the most trusted public servants of Augustus was a Roman
Equestrian named Seius Strabo; he hailed from an Italian, or rather
a Tuscan, city, his family having been long settled at Vulsinii, and
was thus exposed at Rome to the reproach of being a “new man.” Seius
Strabo was content with administrative work, and did not aspire to high
senatorial rank. Augustus made him commander of the Prætorian cohorts
which formed the garrison of Italy, and afterwards entrusted him with
the most important office in his gift, for he made him Governor of
Egypt, that valuable appanage of the Roman Emperors upon which the corn
supply of the capital depended. Seius married into the Junian gens, the
gens of Brutus the Liberator, and his son could in consequence claim
affinity through his mother with the most honourable Roman houses. This
son was adopted by a member of the Ælian gens, and thus became known
as Ælius Sejanus. He married a daughter of Apicius the Epicure, a very
wealthy man, but notorious rather than distinguished.
The young Sejanus enjoyed the confidence of Augustus as his father
had done. He succeeded him in command of the Prætorians, and was made
adviser to Caius Cæsar when he went to the East. In this capacity he
did his best to counteract the mischievous counsels of Marcus Lollius,
and won the gratitude of Tiberius, which he soon improved into a
personal friendship. As Sejanus was made his father’s colleague in
B.C. 14, soon afterwards succeeding him in the sole command of the
Prætorian guards, he cannot have been much younger than Tiberius, for
he would hardly have been associated with his father before he was
twenty years of age, and in that case Tiberius would have been his
senior by only eight years. Even if we assume that Sejanus became
his father’s colleague at the age of sixteen, an age at which young
Romans commonly first entered on active service, he would still be
only twelve years younger than Tiberius; but it is very improbable
that so young a man would have been entrusted with the command of the
Prætorians. The question is of some importance, for the language of
the historians, perhaps unintentionally, conveys the impression that
Sejanus was a comparatively youthful favourite of the Emperor’s, who
owed his advancement to a blind partiality, whereas his acquaintance
with Tiberius had been almost lifelong, even if we assume that he was
little more than a boy when he first commanded the Prætorian guards. It
is far more probable that there were only three or four years between
the two men, and that the relations between Sejanus and Tiberius were
comparable to those between Augustus and Agrippa.
Paterculus, who admired Sejanus, is curiously apologetic about the
obscurity of his family. He suggests that it was not so obscure as was
generally supposed, and again that obscurity of descent is no bar to
admission to the public service; he quotes very ancient examples, and
the more modern ones of Marius, Cicero, and Asinius Pollio.
In fact the Revolution, which had broken the political power of the
old Roman aristocracy, had been succeeded by a reaction in favour of
great names and exalted lineages, which would have given the Senate a
new lease of power had that body been capable of effective work. The
History of Livy, the Fasti of Ovid, the later books of the Æneid, had
all combined to throw a glamour over the great Roman families, and the
new world of capable officials recruited from Italy and other parts of
the Empire found itself despised at Rome by the futile descendants of
legendary ancestors. We are told that the Emperor Caligula was ashamed
of his grandfather, Marcus Agrippa, and was offended if reminded
of his descent from the ignoble Vipsanian stock. Tiberius himself
was evidently inclined to be a formalist in matters affecting the
aristocracy, and though he drew his trusted servants from all classes
and races, the deference which he paid to the Senate and the old
constitutional magistrates, along with his careful observance of the
old legal ritual, tended to foster aristocratic pretensions.
To the memoir-writing Senators Sejanus was an upstart, and in spite
of the recent precedents of Agrippa and Mæcenas and other capable
colleagues of Augustus, the strict aristocracy could see nothing but
evil in the “new man.” On the other hand, a large party in the Senate,
representatives of the new hierarchy of officials, accepted Sejanus,
as Agrippa had been accepted; they followed the lead of Tiberius, and
after the death of Drusus in A.D. 23 were prepared to treat Sejanus as
the second person in the Empire.
If Senators of ancient descent were disgusted at the position held
by Sejanus, the family of the Emperor were even more so. Drusus, a
hot-tempered man, is said on one occasion to have struck him, an
incident which may well have occurred when Drusus was a little boy or
petulant youth, and been turned to good account by sensation-loving
writers of memoirs. Agrippina could not contain herself in the
presence of this new oppressor of the children of Germanicus, the
great-grandchildren of the sainted Augustus, and so forth. These
poor innocents were, in her excited imagination, the victims of the
ambitions of Sejanus; that they were not from the moment of their birth
of an age to be entrusted with the conduct of affairs did not enter
into her considerations.
Drusus died after an illness of some duration. Dio tells us that his
constitution had been impaired by intemperance and other excesses,
and there is other evidence that he had been a man of pleasure as
well as a man of business. A speech of his is recorded to the effect
that as long as he paid proper attention to his public duties he
was at liberty to enjoy his leisure as he pleased. He did not share
his father’s taste for literary pursuits or scientific research;
but Dio informs us that Tiberius was really attached to his son,
and insinuations to the contrary are probably derived from tainted
sources, from the private diaries of those to whom it was an axiom
that Tiberius hated those whom he was in duty bound to love, and
loved those only whom he ought to have hated. Even Tacitus, however
unintentionally, supplies evidence that Tiberius was much shaken by
his son’s death, for though he tells us that Tiberius did not allow
the illness or death of Drusus to interfere with the discharge of his
public duties--a piece of stoical conduct quite in accordance with the
character of time-honoured Roman models--he also tells us that the
Emperor spoke at the time of resigning his office to the Consuls or
some other. According to Tacitus, the Emperor also addressed a long
speech to the Senate, in which he deplored the extreme old age of
Livia, and his own declining years still unprovided with grandchildren.
This latter statement was not correct, for Drusus had left a son, a
second Tiberius, unless indeed we are to assume that the Emperor did
not think he was at liberty to count a descendant who was still too
young to be introduced to the Senate. We are further told that Tiberius
then begged that the children of Germanicus, “the one consolation of
his present misfortune,” might be brought into the Senate house, that
the Consuls went out, and after encouraging the lads, placed them in
front of the Emperor. He took them by the hand, and said: “Conscript
Fathers, I entrusted these orphans to the care of their uncle, and
begged him, although he had children of his own, to cherish them as he
would cherish his own blood, and own them, and educate them for himself
and posterity. Now that Drusus has been taken from us, I address my
petition to you, and I implore you, in the presence of our gods and
our country, to adopt, to guide the great-grandchildren of Augustus,
descendants of such a splendid stock, and to fulfil your duty and my
own. These worthy counsellors, Nero and Drusus, will be your parents.
You have been born in such a position that your good or bad conduct is
a matter of public concern.”
The funeral of Drusus was conducted with unusual pomp; the whole line
of the Julians back to Æneas appeared in effigy in the procession, all
the Alban kings, Romulus, the Sabine nobility, Attus Clausus, and the
rest of the famous Claudians. The magnificence of the Imperial family
in both branches was thus emphasized.