is notorious that Tiberius particularly disliked any form of address
or exaggerated respect which put him on a level with the gods; nor
could Sejanus have openly alluded to the extravagances of Agrippina
without running the risk of incurring a smart rebuff, unless indeed
he were already on such familiar terms with the Emperor that his
previous humiliation of himself was unnecessary. The document has
probably passed through the crucible of Agrippina’s memoirs. The
reply attributed to Tiberius, though not beyond suspicion, has a more
genuine note, and resembles other speeches and documents of the same
author in its general character. The Emperor began with commending
the loyal affection of Sejanus, and, after demanding time for full
consideration, added that whereas other men have to think only of
what is conducive to their own interests, Princes must think before
all things of their reputation; and therefore he did not reply, as it
was simple to do, that Livilla could decide for herself whether she
would take another husband in succession to Drusus or would continue
to live in the same house, that she had her mother and grandmother,
her nearer advisers. He would deal more plainly. In the first place,
there was the question of the animosity of Agrippina, which would
be far more violent if the marriage of Livilla set the house of the
Cæsars at variance. Even as things were, the rivalries of the women
occasionally broke out, and his grandchildren were the victims of these
discords. What if the rivalry were rendered more intense by such a
marriage? “For you are mistaken, Sejanus, if you think that you will
remain in the same rank, and that Livilla, who has been the wife of
Caius Cæsar and then of Drusus, will be content to grow old with a
mere Roman knight. Even though I should permit it, do you think that
it would be allowed by those who have seen her brother, her father,
and our ancestors in the very highest offices? You indeed are willing
to stay in your present station; but those magistrates and nobles who
break through to me against your will, and consult with me on every
question, say without any concealment that you have already long ago
passed beyond the highest Equestrian dignity, and gone far in advance
of the friendship which my father showed you, and in consequence of
their envy of you I too am blamed. But you say Augustus thought about
conferring his daughter’s hand on a Roman knight. Surely we have no
reason to be surprised that when Augustus was distracted by every kind
of anxiety, and foresaw that the man whom he should raise above others
by such a match was immeasurably exalted, he did discuss the claims of
Gaius Proculeius and some others of noted tranquillity of life, and in
no way concerned with the business of the State. And if we are affected
by the hesitation of Augustus, how much stronger an argument is the
fact that he did place her with Marcus Agrippa and then with myself?
In consideration of our friendship, I have not thought it right to
conceal these considerations; however, I will not stand in the way of
what you and Livilla propose. I will omit for the present to refer to
some plans that I have formed, and to tell you the ties by which I
propose to associate you with myself. I will only disclose this, that
there is no position so lofty that it is not deserved by your virtues
and your disposition towards myself; and when the opportunity comes, I
will speak openly in the Senate, or in a public address.”
Even in this letter there are suspicious passages. Tiberius could
hardly have spoken of the magistrates who broke into him against the
will of Sejanus without an admission of weakness, which is almost
incredible, unless we are to assume that he wished to snub Sejanus, an
assumption, however, which is not supported by the conclusion of the
letter. Nor was this letter a public document, preserved in the public
records; if preserved at all, it was among the family papers.
One important hint we get from this letter: its writer or editor ranges
Livilla and her child in opposition to Agrippina and her children,
and saw in the possible marriage with Sejanus a strengthening of the
children of Drusus against the children of Germanicus. A similar
protection had been given thirty-six years previously to the children
of Julia, when Tiberius was made their stepfather. Livilla never
married Sejanus, but her attempt to marry him supplies a clue to
the labyrinth of plots in the Imperial household. If the principle
of heredity was to be recognized, the heirs to the throne were
Livilla’s son, the younger Tiberius, and Agrippina’s sons, the former
representing the Claudians, the latter the Julians, and the situation
was repeated which had existed when Tiberius and his brother had
represented the Claudians, Caius and Lucius Cæsar the Julians.
Livilla, anxious for the safety of her son and eager to promote his
interests, endeavoured to fasten herself to the strongest man in the
State, who would unquestionably on the decease of Tiberius be in
possession of the controlling military power.
According to the accepted story, there was a guilty connexion between
Sejanus and Livilla before the death of her husband, and Sejanus had
divorced his wife at the request of his paramour; the two together had
poisoned Drusus.
All cases of poisoning are inherently suspect, and it is by no means
incredible that Drusus was not really poisoned, and that the guilty
intimacy of Livilla with Sejanus previous to the death of her husband
was surmised at a later period when her subsequent conduct had given
colour to such a story. According to the narrative supplied to us,
Sejanus cannot have been under fifty when this intimacy began, and was
probably nearer sixty; Livilla cannot have been less than five and
thirty. If the story is true, they were certainly a mature couple of
lovers.
It is at least as probable that on the death of Drusus Livilla
endeavoured to enlist Sejanus in the cause of her son, and was prepared
to marry him, he being only too ready to strengthen his position by
such a match, as that Livilla had allowed a violent passion for a
sexagenarian to tempt her into infidelity to her husband and actual
crime. Again, Sejanus himself is never accused of plotting against
Tiberius; had his heart been set upon the throne, he would not have
waited for the Emperor’s death, whom in the ordinary course of nature
he was not likely to survive long. At the period when the Emperor
finally retired to Capreæ, and when he was moving from one villa to
another in Campania, the roof of a grotto in which the party were
dining suddenly fell in. Sejanus protected the Emperor’s person at the
risk of his own life. Had he been impatient for the succession, he
would have contrived that a happy accident should open the way to the
realization of his ambition.
So far as the records go, we are at liberty to believe that Sejanus
made friends with the two probable successors and their supporters
in the Imperial family, the elder of whom was Drusus the son of
Germanicus; the younger, Tiberius the grandson of the Emperor. By so
doing he incurred the enmity of Agrippina and her younger son Nero.
He was restrained by no scruples of policy, no ties of kindred, from
driving the latter to desperation, and doubtless had many private
insults to avenge. He possibly considered it his duty to the Emperor to
protect him against the consequences of a pardonable weakness, which
Agrippina had hitherto abused, and believed himself to be doing a
signal service by eliminating from the Imperial circle such a dangerous
conspirator; and he was, unfortunately for himself, so unwise as to use
other than straightforward means to secure his ends. Meanwhile, as we
have seen, he practically held the regency, he promoted and rewarded
at will; he held a court at Rome, and it was generally understood that
honours and emoluments were to be obtained exclusively by courting
Sejanus. Some of the Senate fell in gladly with the new order, the
majority secretly opposed it, and many were bitterly hostile, though
restrained from showing their hostility by fear of Tiberius or respect
for his long services.
In the year 29 A.D., soon after the death of the aged Livia, a letter
came to the Senate from Tiberius charging Agrippina and her son with
various offences, and demanding that they should be formally accused
and the matter then referred to himself. At this point there is a gap
in the Annals of Tacitus. We do not know what the steps were in the
process, or what evidence was brought against the guilty. We gather
from other sources that Agrippina was banished to the island of
Pandateria, and her son to another island, in which he killed himself
after a considerable interval, possibly at the suggestion of his
guards. Agrippina disappears from history ‘semper atrox,’ for on her
way into exile she was so abusive that the centurion in charge of the
party was obliged to impose restraint by force, and in the struggle
which ensued the lady lost an eye. The historians are silent as to
the previous damage suffered by the centurion. Nor did she abandon
her contumacious attitude on arriving at Pandateria. It was necessary
to feed her by force, and, in spite of the well-intentioned efforts
of her attendants, she is said to have succeeded two years later in
dying of starvation. Agrippina was not a woman of any real strength of
character; had she honestly revered her husband’s memory, and followed
his example, she would not have continued the Julian feud and handed it
down to two more generations. It is impossible not to feel some respect
for so stout and so reckless a hater, and nobody has ever disputed her
claim to certain domestic virtues which were lamentably absent from
other ladies of her family, and were certainly sufficiently advertised
by herself and her admirers; but in her maternal solicitude she was
more pushing than wise, and the evil of her example influenced her
children more than the good. The mother of Caligula, the grandmother
of Nero, was certainly not fortunate in the traditions which she
transmitted to her posterity, and if Nero really did poison his
half-brother Britannicus, with the connivance of his mother, the cup
may be said to have been mixed by his grandmother.
The disgrace of Agrippina and her son Nero brought on the stormy stage
of the family politics Antonia the mother of Germanicus. This aged and
refined lady had carefully abstained from meddling in the feuds which
disturbed the Imperial household. She was now left in charge of the
younger children of Germanicus, of the future Emperor Caligula and his
sisters. Alarmed by the increasing power of the adverse faction, she
began to study the course of public events; she heard that Sejanus
was taking advantage of the Emperor’s retirement to tamper with the
fidelity of the Prætorians; dark hints reached her ears as to the means
by which Agrippina and her son had been entrapped, she feared some
yet more terrible catastrophe, and having collected her information,
she succeeded in getting it transmitted to Tiberius. The Emperor’s
confidence in his trusted friend and servant was shaken; he followed
up the evidence, and came to the conclusion that Antonia was right.
Suetonius quotes an extract from a private diary of Tiberius, in
which he says that he punished Sejanus because he had persecuted the
children of Germanicus. There is no reason to doubt the honesty of this
statement, though the events which followed have rendered it suspect.
The blow must have been a severe one. Not only had Tiberius been
disappointed in a friend, but it was not even certain that he could
resume the reins of power and punish the offender if he wished. It is
the behaviour of Tiberius at this period which has justifiably gained
him credit for proficiency in dissimulation. He did not at once strike;
he first of all tested the temper of the Senate by writing coolly on
the subject of Sejanus, and sometimes expressing disapproval of his
actions, but yet not in such a way as to declare a breach with him.
Careful experiments proved that Sejanus had no real hold on the Senate.
In the same way means were found of testing the Prætorian guards, and
it was satisfactorily ascertained that they obeyed Sejanus simply as
the Emperor’s lieutenant. Tiberius took into his confidence Macro, the
Commander of the cohorts on guard at Capreæ and in the neighbourhood,
and agreed upon a plan of operations with him. Macro went to Rome
with letters to the Senate and Sejanus; the attendance of the latter
at a meeting of the Senate was particularly requested, it was hinted
that unexampled honours were in store for him. When Sejanus went
to the Senate House, Macro went to the camp of the Prætorians. The
proceedings in the Senate House were purposely protracted. A very long
letter was read from Tiberius, the purport of which was for some time
uncertain. Gradually it became evident that it was directed against
Sejanus, and it concluded with a demand for his arrest. Meanwhile
Macro had presented his credentials to the Prætorian guards; Sejanus
was superseded, and Macro appointed Prefect in his place; the soldiers
proceeded to renew their oath of fidelity to the Emperor, coupled with
that of obedience to their new commander. By the time when the ceremony
was over, the Senate had risen, and the body of Sejanus was being
dragged about the streets.
No sooner had it become apparent that Sejanus was disgraced and no
longer enjoyed the favour of the Emperor than the long smouldering
hostility to the upstart broke out into a blaze of fury. Tiberius was
given no time for repentance or consideration; the fallen favourite
was judged and executed on the spot; his two children were similarly
condemned and executed; his friends were sought out and assassinated.
For some hours, if not for some days, there was a veritable reign of
terror at Rome, whose horrors the Emperor in his distant retirement did
not at first surmise, and when informed was powerless to check.
This was the end of the careful restoration of the Senate planned
by Augustus and fostered by Tiberius, an outbreak of violence which
recalled the days of the Gracchi and the proscriptions. Tiberius did
not long remain inactive; order was restored, and judicial prosecutions
took the place of unlicensed murders. To the Emperor himself the
change to law and order brought but little comfort, rather a deeper
depth of despair. The whole story of the plots of Livilla and Sejanus,
as it was then believed, was revealed. Apicata, the divorced wife of
Sejanus, gave possibly tainted evidence of the machinations by which
the death of Drusus, the son of Tiberius, had been brought about.
Tiberius found that he had been the accomplice of the murderer of his
own son, and that in banishing Agrippina and Nero he had played into
the hands of that unnatural son and brother the other Drusus. Many of
his old and intimate friends were implicated with Sejanus; there had
been a conspiracy of silence, if not an active partisanship, and it was
difficult to determine the degrees of guilt. In spite of so many years
of public service and of single-hearted devotion to the interests of
others, Tiberius found that at the age of seventy-two he stood alone in
the world, hated and mistrusted by all.
After the first shock, the vigour of the old man returned; he checked
the indiscriminate persecution of the friends of Sejanus, and he did
his best to secure for them a fair trial. The Empire itself was not
shaken by the blow, the effects of which did not extend beyond the
city of Rome and Italy; but it must have been a grievous wound to his
sensitive nature to discover that his oldest friends did not trust
him, and that even such a tried associate as Asinius Gallus followed
the example of the many weak-minded men who preferred suicide to
facing an inquiry into their conduct. Prosecutions in connection with
the Sejanus conspiracy seem to have continued for four years, but the
order of events is not quite certain. It is not probable that Tiberius
gave orders three years after the event to execute all the prisoners
together without further hearing.
As Tiberius himself has generally been credited with responsibility for
the disasters which accompanied the fall of Sejanus, it is as well to
insist upon the evidence of Dio, who expressly says that Sejanus and
his children were condemned by the Senate, and that Tiberius had only
demanded his arrest. It had been found necessary on a previous occasion
to check the tendency of the Senate to order immediate executions of
persons whom they had condemned, and Tiberius had passed a decree that
an interval of ten days was always to elapse between condemnation in
capital offences and execution, in order that he might be communicated
with, and have an opportunity of revising the sentence. The violence
with which the adherents of Sejanus were persecuted was really a piece
of political vengeance; it was a revival of the old quarrel between the
Senatorial and Equestrian parties. In spite of the favour of Tiberius
the Senatorial party had not gained upon the Equestrians; in fact, as
the business of the Empire increased, the power of the Equestrians had
increased with it. Sejanus was only one of many capable administrators
whose activity and efficiency was in disagreeable contrast with
Senatorial incapacity; the outbreak in which he lost his life was
neither concerted nor foreseen. An opportunity occurred for indulging
an animosity which had hitherto found its expression in private diaries
and drawing-room conspiracies. The way of violence once opened,
self-preservation enforced a continuance in that evil path. After
the first blow had been struck, root and branch work was inevitable.
Sejanus was to leave no avengers behind him.
Contrasted with this furious punishment of a political enemy and his
adherents is the curious patience of the Senate at a later date in
submitting to the excesses of a Caligula or a Nero. Only seven years
later Caligula succeeded his great-uncle. He apparently lost his reason
soon after he ascended the throne; he persecuted the Senate in every
possible way, he confiscated money, he dishonoured nobly born women,
he fined and executed, he even poured contempt, for he made his horse
Consul, and having sent for the trembling Senators in the middle of
the night, had them conducted to a dark room, where they were relieved
to find that nothing worse awaited them than the performance of a _pas
seul_ by the Emperor. Caligula was eventually assassinated, but not
by the Senate, who punished his murderer; they had submitted to his
caprices for more than two years. Nero, though sane, was scarcely less
extravagant in his treatment of the leading men at Rome, but, as has
been before observed, both Caligula and Nero are spoken of with less
abhorrence than Tiberius.
It would seem that the Senators paid rather a heavy price for their
outbreak, and that a reign of spies and informers actually did set in
after the first disturbances, which followed the fall of Sejanus, had
been quelled. If Tiberius became suspicious, if he became apprehensive
for his personal safety, if he no longer interfered to stop trivial
charges and prevent unjust confiscations, if the liberty of allusive
libel was cut short, the Senate had given him very good reason for
mistrusting them individually and collectively. At the same time the
aristocratic party were smarting under a defeat; they had murdered
Sejanus and his posterity, and cut off the greater number of his
friends, but they had not succeeded in changing the constitution of
the Empire, nor had they shaken the power of the Emperor, who mounted
guard over them with his cohorts of Prætorians at the gates of Rome.
The city itself was more or less under martial law, for the part which
the populace had taken in hunting down the adherents of Sejanus had
been a vivid reminder of previous disastrous events in the history of
the capital. The very insecurity of the succession--for Caligula was
barely of age, and not in good health, while the young Tiberius was
little more than a child--impelled the aged Emperor to keep a tight
hand upon the public order, lest his death, an event probably near at
hand, should involve the State in civil war. Of those members of the
Imperial family who had known Augustus, Antonia and her son Claudius
alone survived; the former had always abstained from interference
in politics, and the latter was considered to be disqualified from
appearance in any public capacity. Nor had any of the numerous
marriages of the daughters and granddaughters of the immediate
successors of Augustus brought into the world any man of such striking
ability that he seemed worthy to govern.
A strange destiny pursued Tiberius; he could not retire, he could not
shake off that servitude which was imposed upon him by the needs of the
Roman people. As he had been compelled to return from Rhodes and share
the burden of Augustus, so now he was compelled, if not to return from
Capreæ, yet to feel that upon him, and upon him alone, still rested the
responsibility for preserving the peace of the civilized world.
Meanwhile the diaries were steadily written up; every case of apparent
persecution was faithfully recorded. Nor were the obscenities scribbled
on the walls or slily hinted at by the popular actors omitted from the
record, and of such there was a plentiful supply, for though Tiberius
had never been popular, and though his appearance in the streets of
Rome had terrified rather than pleased, the commonalty was insulted by
his absence. Undisguised contempt for the applause of the multitude
stirs a bitterer hatred than active oppression, for so strange are the
freaks of vanity that there are a large number of human beings who are
happier in being harried and driven than in not attracting notice.
XVIII
The Retirement at Capreæ
The life of a public man at Rome was conducted on lines which must
have rendered the transaction even of private business a matter of
difficulty, and must have caused serious inconvenience to one upon whom
the burden fell of conducting the correspondence of the whole Empire.
The Emperor, equally with other men of eminence, was expected to live
largely in public; his day began with the dawn, when the crowd of
private clients and public courtiers assembled to greet him in the hall
of his house; the procession to the Senate House or the Forum followed,
when the great man was expected to recognize acquaintances whom he met,
and even to submit to being kissed by them, a practice which Tiberius
had the courage to forbid in his own case. After the business of the
Curia or the Courts was finished, the same solemn procession restored
the Emperor to his house. A respite was allowed in the noonday heat;
then followed the visits of friends, and the great meal of the day,
which might be in itself of the nature of a public function, and an
occasion for the informal transaction of business; after a short period
of relaxation the secretaries came, and letters were written till
late into the night. On the numerous occasions on which there was a
public holiday the Emperor was expected to take part in the shows and
processions, and a holiday for others was a hard day’s work for the
chief of the State. To escape unnecessary inroads upon his time, and to
secure for himself a fair portion of leisure, Tiberius decided to live
away from Rome, where it seemed to him that his presence was no longer
indispensable. The state of his health also suggested retirement. In
spite of a somewhat strict self-imposed regimen, Tiberius seems to
have suffered from a form of eczema, which disfigured his countenance,
and practically made it impossible for him to appear in public. The
Romans were particularly sensitive on the subject of their personal
appearance, and the Roman mob was by no means considerate of the
feelings of those who were afflicted with any deformity. The tall
figure of the Emperor was now bowed with age, his once handsome face
disfigured with blotches and sores and the unguents used as palliatives
of a malady probably aggravated by the pestilential and dusty air of
the crowded city. Under these untoward circumstances Tiberius did
what any other man would have done who was suffering as he suffered:
he looked for some spot healthily situated not far from Rome, close
enough to the great lines of communication to enable him to correspond
freely with all parts of the world, but sufficiently removed from the
beaten track to relieve him of the throng of unwelcome and importunate
visitors. After trying various country houses in Campania he fixed
upon the island of Capreæ as the ideal residence. Those who have seen
the island have no hesitation in commending the Emperor’s taste.
Apart from its inaccessibility and the beauty of its surroundings,
Capreæ had this further attraction for Tiberius, that its elevated
rocks afforded ideal opportunities for the prosecution of his favourite
pursuit, for the Emperor was, as we have seen, an astronomer. It
would be rash to affirm that Tiberius in his astronomical research
was free from the taint of superstition with which that branch of
natural science was at that time infected, and indeed the fact that
he is said to have built twelve villas on the island, which he named
after the twelve planets, and inhabited at different periods, suggests
that he was a believer in the influences of the stars, or possibly
had a superstitious faith that places thus dedicated would be more
favourable to his observations at different seasons of the year. It
is, however, significant of the character of the intellect of Tiberius
that he fastened upon the one branch of science which even in those
days was tolerably exact, for though the real nature of the movements
of the heavenly bodies was unknown to the ancients, their observations
were accurate so far as they went; eclipses and occultations could be
predicted with a near approach to accuracy, and though the vulgar were
still terrified by the temporary disappearances of the sun or moon, to
the educated such events were, though mysterious, part of the orderly
laws by which the universe seemed to be governed.
Tiberius himself was believed to be an adept in astrology, and stories
of his prescience have been handed down, based not improbably upon
really successful calculations, by which the future movements of the
planets were foretold. One of these stories is palpably absurd. It is
said that Tiberius predicted the future reign of Galba by quoting a
Greek verse to the effect that he too would have a share of the Empire,
but the story is also told of Augustus, and under circumstances which
involve no power of prediction, but simply a promise made by a kindly
potentate to an attractive child in the presence of his parents.