Chapter XVIII: The Retirement at Capreæ 418 (10)

The Senate then wished to proceed to a ceremony which was not merely ceremonial, but of deep political significance. Cæsar during his short reign had prevailed on the Senate to take an oath individually that they would ratify all his transactions. It was by virtue of this proceeding that Antonius made his snatch at supreme power. After the murder of the Dictator the Senate was still pledged to the ratification of his acts, and Antonius being in possession of the papers of Cæsar was able to produce Cæsar’s authority for whatever measures he wished to carry and whatever appointments he wished to make. Augustus had reintroduced the same system, and it had been the custom during his reign to renew the oath on the first day of each official year. The Senate’s position was thus reduced from that of a legislative and executive body to that of a purely consultative body; the forms of voting, the forms of the appointment of magistrates might be maintained, senators might be free to express their opinions on questions of policy, or to raise questions and direct the attention of the Emperor to matters requiring his attention, but they were pledged in advance to accept his decision. It is a work of supererogation to enumerate the different magistracies which were combined in the one person of the Emperor, for so long as the Senators took this oath, he was above all magistracies; no power was left to the Senate except that of formally ratifying his decrees. Much the same effect has been secured in English politics by the stringent rules of party Government: members of Parliament do not take an oath to register the decrees of the leaders or leader of their party, but the practical result is the same; whatever may be said in the House of Commons, however violent the debates, the conclusion is foregone, so soon as the Government of the day has declared its intentions; practically no Bill can be introduced without its consent, no discussion held except with its connivance; the majority is pledged to vote as its leaders direct, and the march into the division lobbies is a tedious and superfluous ceremony, an antiquated and exasperating formality. Political purists may deplore such a state of things, but as a practical expedient it is supremely useful. No country was ever yet governed by an undisciplined debating society; the form of discipline may vary, but the discipline must be there.

Tiberius, however, wished to be a constitutional ruler, and to restore to the Senate its independence; he refused to allow it to swear in advance to ratify his transactions. Here again we have a few lines of his speech: “I shall always be like myself, and I shall never change my character so long as I am of sound mind; but for the sake of the precedent the Senate must be cautious not to bind itself to the transactions of any being who might be changed by some misadventure.”

The comment of Tacitus is simply: “He did not, however, gain credit for a constitutional policy in this way. For he had revived the ‘Lex Majestatis,’ etc., etc.”

Deferring for a moment the consideration of the “Lex Majestatis,” which was the special bugbear of Tacitus, we may remark that either he did not realize the significance of the act by which Tiberius formally emancipated the Senate from his own control, in which case we attach little value to his opinions as a constitutional historian, or that he did see, but preferred to ignore, in which case we may dismiss his claim for impartiality. It is quite possible that he states correctly the opinion of some contemporaries of Tiberius, who frequently misunderstood a moderation for which they were not prepared, and who had so long acquiesced in the policy of Augustus that any other was beyond their comprehension; but Tacitus was not bound to a similar dullness, and still less are we bound to share his blindness. The act was one of the first political importance, and no modern historian would dismiss a similar action of a prominent statesman with a comment of seven words. We shall see that in this as in other similar measures, Tiberius was unsuccessful in his attempt to restore the Senatorial Government, but we cannot without gross injustice refuse him credit for making the attempt.

The next statement, “For he had revived the ‘Lex Majestatis,’ etc.,” is simply a lie, for the words would naturally be held to imply that the law in question had fallen into abeyance, and was now recalled to activity. Tacitus himself tells us in the very next sentence, that Augustus had extended the application of this law from deeds to libellous writings; nor was the “revival” of this application anything that we should understand as a revival. The Prætors, on entering office each year, made an official announcement of the sense in which they proposed to interpret the laws during their term of office, and of any modifications which were to be introduced in their procedure. Pompeius Macro, who was one of the Prætors for the year A.D. 15, asked Tiberius whether cases under the “Lex Majestatis” were to be heard. Tiberius replied that the laws must be enforced; he neither made a new law nor revived an old one, nor announced a fresh interpretation of a previous law; he simply announced that the previous practice should be continued, and this in the customary routine of business; it was the duty of Macro the Prætor, not of Tiberius the Princeps, to announce any proposed change in procedure. Tacitus may be right in assuming that it was in the power of Tiberius at this moment to take the sting out of the actions under the “Lex Majestatis,” and that he would have been wise in doing so, but he has totally misrepresented the facts in stating that Tiberius revived the operation of this law.

The history of the “Lex Majestatis” is not absolutely clear, but it is certain that comparatively early in the Republican period the laws provided for the punishment of a Roman citizen who by his acts diminished the majesty of the Republic: cowardice in the field, premature surrender, dishonourable breaches of faith by which the dignity of the State was impaired, were deeds punishable under this law. Its operation was extended under Augustus to words and actions tending to lower the dignity of private citizens and of the head of the State in whom the majesty of the Republic was centred and personified; to publish disrespectful or libellous statements about the Emperor, to plot against his life, to acquiesce in depreciatory criticism of his actions, were all things which could be brought under the “Lex Majestatis”; it dealt with treason, constructive treason, and ordinary libel. The penalties were severe, but the peculiar aggravation lay in the fact that the informer was rewarded. Similar laws are not unknown to modern States, and are not held to be necessarily detrimental to the body politic; at the same time, they are capable of being abused, and under the rule of Caligula, Nero and Domitian, the “Lex Majestatis” proved to be an engine of tyranny; informers drove a profitable trade, and the confiscations made under the law proved a source of revenue to these spendthrift princes. There is, however, no evidence that the grievance had been felt in the reign of Augustus, and Tiberius is hardly to be blamed for not annulling ancient legislation within six months of his accession, which had as yet caused little inconvenience. If there had been abuses, the remedy lay in the administration rather than in the repeal of the law.

Tacitus had at his disposal the whole body of the transactions of the Senate; if a good case was to be made out against the manner in which the “Lex Majestatis” was worked under Tiberius, all the material was before him; had there been serious abuses, the evidence was accessible. He, however, produces only three cases in the year 15 A.D., which he introduces with the following flourish: “It will be worth while to relate the charges which it was endeavoured to bring against Falanius and Rubrius, equestrians of no particular distinction, so that it may be seen from what beginnings this deadly bane started, with what artful management on the part of Tiberius it crept on, was then repressed, lastly blazed up, and carried everything before it.” Falanius was accused on two charges: he had enrolled a notoriously disreputable actor among the worshippers of Augustus; he had sold a statue of Augustus along with the garden in which it stood. Rubrius was accused of perjury after swearing by the name of Augustus. The charges were dismissed. Tiberius said that Cassius the actor had been included by Livia herself among the actors appointed to give a performance in honour of Augustus; that there was no reason for distinguishing between a statue of Augustus and statues of other gods, which were habitually included in the sale of houses and gardens; that Augustus had not been deified in order that his worship should lead to the ruin of the citizens; and as to oaths taken in his name, they must be treated like oaths taken in the name of Jupiter. He added with characteristic irony: “The gods can protect their own dignity.” These remarks contained in a letter addressed to the Consuls, as soon as the facts came to the Emperor’s ears, stopped the prosecution. The accusers were foolish enough, but it is not easy to see where Tiberius is guilty of encouraging informers in these cases.

The third case was more complicated. Granius Marcellus, the Governor of Bithynia, was accused by two different men at once of two different crimes: his subordinate, Cæpio Crispinus, charged him with extortion in the government of his province; Hispo, a professional informer, according to Tacitus, accused him of defamation of the character of Tiberius, of placing his own statue higher than that of the Cæsars, of cutting the head off a statue of Augustus and replacing it by one of Tiberius. Marcellus was acquitted of the charges brought by Hispo, which came under the “Lex Majestatis”; the charge of extortion was referred to the court appointed to hear such causes. Here again there is absolutely no evidence that Tiberius was inclined to press charges under the “Lex Majestatis”; the evidence is all in the contrary direction, but Tacitus, with an absolutely diabolical ingenuity, contrives to give his story the necessary twist. “Hispo pretended that Marcellus had made libellous speeches about Tiberius, a charge which it was impossible to escape, since the accuser picked out all the most abominable things in the character of the Emperor, and imputed the statement of them to the defendant. For because they were true charges they were believed to have been uttered.” And yet it was precisely on these charges that the man was acquitted. Tacitus, however, succeeded in stating that Tiberius was a man of abominable moral character, that everybody knew it, and in further suggesting that the statements were made in a court of justice with the acquiescence of the audience. It is not likely that the speech of Hispo was preserved, even if the case went so far as to allow him to make one, but the influence of the senatorial record in favour of Tiberius had to be dispelled, and is cleverly dispelled by the suggestion that the calumnies against Tiberius received a quasi-official sanction in the law court; if they were listened to, their truth was so obvious that nobody protested. After recounting the points in Hispo’s indictment, Tacitus continues: “Thereupon he (Tiberius) lost his temper to such an extent, that breaking his usual silence he declared that he would give his opinion on that case openly and on his oath, in order that the other senators might be obliged to do the same.” Tacitus would like us to think that the display of indignation was caused by the charge of defamation, but there were two other and better reasons for wrath. In the first place, extortionate proceedings in the provinces always stirred the wrath of Tiberius; Bithynia was a Senatorial Province; the Senate were still apt to deal leniently with one of their own order, and Tiberius may have detected indications that they were likely to take this line; in the second place, to couple a charge of extortion with a charge of defamation of the Emperor was a bit of sharp practice; the informer hoped to get his reward under the “Lex Majestatis,” because he believed that the man would be condemned on the charge of extortion, and that the prejudice thus created against him would secure his condemnation on both charges. It was an abominable trick, and Tiberius saw through it.

The conclusion of the narrative of Tacitus is no less ingenious; he says: “There even then remained some traces of expiring liberty. Therefore Gnæus Piso said, ‘In what place will you give your opinion, Cæsar? If first, I shall have something to follow; if last, I am afraid I may inadvertently differ from you.’ Thoroughly alarmed by these words, and penitent because of the imprudence of his outburst, he allowed the accused to be acquitted of the charges of ‘Majestas.’ The case of extortion was referred to the assessors.”

As these are the only three cases tried under the law of “Majestas” in the first twelve months of the reign of Tiberius, we must admit that he marched very slowly to that tragic wickedness to which Tacitus refers, and by means of an art which is so artful, as to be to our eyes absolutely invisible.

It is further to be remembered that there was formal documentary evidence of the charges, and of their subsequent dismissal, but no evidence can have been forthcoming as to the Emperor’s burst of temper, or the acquiescence of the audience in the supposed revelation of his wickedness except tradition and private memoirs. The remark of Gnæus Piso was to the point, but it is evidence of the weakness of the Senate, not of the tyranny of Tiberius.

Tiberius having thus summarily quashed three cases under the “Lex Majestatis,” and sent a senatorial oppressor of a province to be dealt with by the constitutional court, may have offended those surviving heirs of the old senatorial tradition to whom the restoration of the Senate implied the restoration of the abuses of the senatorial administration, but he had done nothing tyrannical. The narrative of Tacitus proceeds, however, as if Tiberius had waded knee deep in blood, and triumphed in the perversion of justice: “Not satiated with the processes in the Senate he used to attend the courts, sitting at the end of the tribunal, in order not to remove the Prætor from his official seat.” There is no question about the fact; Augustus used in the same unofficial fashion to attend the courts and watch the administration of justice, acting in this respect like any other Senator, but the skilful use of the words “not satiated” gives a sinister significance to an innocent statement.

The administration of justice was not above suspicion in the Roman Law Courts, and the presence of Tiberius among the jury secured a fair hearing. As Tacitus himself says, “Many decisions were given in his presence contrary to the bribes and solicitations of influential men,” and then follows the customary Tacitean comment, “But while the interests of truth were being looked after liberty was corrupted.” If liberty means the sacred right of senatorial juries and powerful men to secure maladministration of justice by means of bribes and private influence, we can hardly blame Tiberius for “corrupting” such liberty, and may be excused for not seeing any excessive adulation in the remarks which Paterculus makes in reference to the same procedure, “Confidence in the Courts of Law was restored.” “With what dignity does he (Tiberius) attentively listen to cases as a senator and juryman, not as Princeps and Cæsar!”

By insisting on an impartial administration of justice, Tiberius made enemies among those who were interested in the contrary practice, and there is no doubt that many a senator relieved his feelings by recording instances of such tyranny in his private diary. It is all a question of point of view; our point of view does not allow us to stigmatize a man as a tyrant who steadily worked for the purity of the law courts.

The next recorded transaction in the Senate was of a different nature; 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.

But in spite of such abundant evidence of folly, the audience were horror stricken when a book was produced, written in Libo’s own hand, in which the names of the Emperor and leading Senators were found with strange and occult marks appended. This gentleman, who wanted to converse with the dead, was, if a fool, a dangerous fool. It was decided to question his slaves; but as they could not legally bear evidence against their master, it was necessary to transfer them to another owner, and a remand was granted in order that this might be done. This skilful evasion of the law of evidence is attributed by Tacitus to the cunning inventiveness of Tiberius; but it is not probable that the Romans had waited so long to discover a solution of a frequently recurring difficulty. Libo went home, entrusting his last entreaties to the Emperor to the care of a relative. A guard was set round his house; the soldiers were even heard and seen in the outer hall. Libo ordered himself a magnificent dinner, but even in the midst of the sumptuous repast his craven spirit gave way; he handed a sword to his slaves and implored them to kill him. In the confusion that ensued the lights were overturned, and the miserable man succeeded in taking his own life in the funereal darkness. As soon as his death was made known the soldiers departed.

In spite of the suicide of the delinquent the case was continued on the following day; but Tiberius took an oath that he would have asked for the culprit’s life, even though proved guilty, had he not anticipated the sentence. Libo’s goods were divided between his accusers, and extraordinary prætorships were given to such of them as were of senatorial rank. Various Senators then proposed measures indicating their opinion that the case had been a very grave one. Libo’s image was no longer to be included among the family busts; no Scribonius was ever again to be called Drusus; a public thanksgiving was to be held; gifts were to be offered to Jupiter, Mars and Concord; the day on which Libo killed himself was to be a holiday for ever. Decrees of the Senate were also passed, expelling “mathematicians” and magians from Italy; two of their number were summarily executed.

Tacitus stigmatizes all these proposals, so strangely disproportionate to the event as it appears to us, as acts of adulation to Tiberius; but after all Tiberius was not the only person concerned, nor indeed chiefly concerned. There is no evidence of a plot against Tiberius more than against the other Senators, whose names were included in the mysterious notebook.

As a matter of fact, on this occasion as on many subsequent occasions, the Senators lost their heads; they, and not Tiberius, were responsible for the excesses of the sentence and the subsequent transactions. The fear of magic was strong upon them, as their subsequent action in driving the practisers of magic arts from Italy demonstrates. They did not succeed in doing so, and similar equally futile senatorial decrees recur again and again. These solemn rulers of the world behaved like little children in their terror of the black art; they believed in incantations, divinations, signs and wonders, spells and imprecations far more strongly than they did in the precepts of the Stoic and the Epicurean. Here and there we find one of the ancients superior to the prevailing superstitions, but only here and there; and in the Roman palaces, no less than at the court of Louis XIV., the plotter and the poisoner were hand in hand with the crafty charlatans, or self-deceived miracle workers, who haunted the private apartments of men and women of rank.

Tiberius could not have resisted the panic of the Senate on this occasion, even if he had had the opportunity; we shall find magic a couple of years later playing an important part in a more notable prosecution.

Libo was evidently a profligate fool, and not likely to have been implicated in a serious plot; but it is not impertinent to ask where Tacitus got his detailed information; the case is hardly mentioned by other authors. The scene of the suicide is graphic, the authority whom Tacitus uses is clearly in sympathy with Libo. Now Libo was, as we have seen, related to the Julians, and it is at least probable that a version of the story was supplied by a correspondent to Agrippina, who was at the time in Germany, and so became incorporated in the memoirs which she handed down to her daughter, who again used it in the memoirs which Tacitus tells us that he saw.

The two “mathematicians” who were summarily punished suffered different penalties: Pituarius was thrown from the Tarpeian rock, Marcius was proceeded against “in the manner of our forefathers”; the trumpet was sounded, calling the centuries to the Campus Martius, the unhappy man was then bound to a stake, and beaten with rods till he was dead, after which his head was cut off; these privileges he enjoyed as being a Roman citizen infected with a foreign superstition. It is to be hoped that he really was a charlatan, and not a genuine man of science, who paid the common penalty for being in advance of his age.

XV

Germanicus and Piso

The death of Germanicus occupies a larger space in the annals of Tacitus than the actual importance of the event would seem to require. The space given to the transactions in the East by which it was preceded, and the trial of Piso by which it was followed, amounts to nearly a sixth part of the books dealing with the reign of Tiberius; or perhaps it would be more correct to say that the aspects of the premature death of Germanicus, which were really important, receive small attention in comparison with those which were less important.

The death of Germanicus opened the way to the long series of plots which rendered the life of Tiberius intolerable, and eventually overwhelmed him in the disastrous events of the year 30 A.D. When Germanicus started for the East in the year 18 A.D., he was the destined successor of Tiberius, with a possible coadjutor in the person of his first cousin Drusus, the two men being legally brothers by the process of adoption. If Tiberius had any personal preference, he unquestionably inclined to Germanicus, to whom he showed every mark of favour, and whose political training he was now completing by sending him to study the Oriental difficulties of the Empire. Drusus at the same time was promoted to his brother’s former position in the West, the still disturbed provinces on the frontiers of the Rhine and Danube being entrusted to his care. Had both these men lived, there would have been no Sejanus, and probably no Caligula. Tiberius himself would have permanently enjoyed for ever the excellent reputation which he won during the first sixteen years of his reign, but an unkind destiny willed it otherwise.

There was no reason why Tiberius should dislike Germanicus, to whose father, as we have seen, he was attached by an affection remarkable even between brothers, and Germanicus himself had on an occasion, which strongly tested his loyalty, shown that it could stand the test. All the authorities, Paterculus included, speak highly of Germanicus; he was an able general and a lovable man. Drusus was a less attractive character, somewhat rough, severe and passionate, but whatever his weaknesses, he had the merit of being attached to his cousin and nominal elder brother; there is no trace of any jealousy between the two men, and their unity was further cemented by the fact that the sister of Germanicus was the wife of Drusus.

While the three representative men of the Imperial family were thus in harmony, and lived on terms of mutual trust and helpfulness, the case was different with the women. Livia, the widow of Augustus, and Agrippina, the daughter of Julia, were separated by ancient hatreds and fresh causes of offence. If the whole private diary and correspondence of Agrippina had been preserved to us, we should probably be in a position to compare Livia with Madame de Maintenon, as she is exhibited to us in the lively letters of that sturdy little hater, Charlotte Elizabeth, Duchess of Orleans, for the memoirs of Agrippina, filtered through her daughter’s editing, and the mind of a man of letters indicate no want of a proper animosity, no desire to bury old grudges.

Livia did not acquiesce willingly in her diminished glories as dowager; if she had proposed to herself--and there is every reason to suppose that she did so propose--to continue to be the power behind the throne in her son’s reign, as in her husband’s, she was disappointed. While studiously paying every sign of respect to his mother as his mother, and even stretching points in her favour, Tiberius refused to acknowledge her as a politician; such honours as might decorously be paid to the widow of Augustus, such consolations of her affliction as expressions of public sympathy could afford, he readily sanctioned, but he no less resolutely drew the line at the point at which complimentary and consolatory decrees seemed to involve the recognition of a governing Empress Dowager. Few things can have been more distasteful to Livia than the reversion to the Senatorial Constitution attempted by Tiberius. She could no longer inspire “transactions of Cæsar,” to which the Senate was pledged in anticipation, nor was Tiberius inclined to let the foreign policy of Rome slip out of his own hands into that of the Jews and Greeks who enjoyed the confidence of the august lady. A king of Cappadocia, of whom Tiberius disapproved, accepted an invitation from Livia to come to Rome and depend on her influence to win the favour of her son. The result was so disappointing that the aged monarch died of distress of mind; his kingdom was turned into a province. Tiberius would stand no tampering with “native” princes. Nor was Livia allowed to put herself above the laws at Rome. A lady named Urgulania, who was a friend of hers, incurred debts, and was proceeded against in the court of the Prætor Urbanus. She took refuge with Livia, who urged her son to defend the lady’s cause. Tiberius undertook to do so, but by very deliberate walking, and exceptional graciousness to the friends whom he encountered on the way, contrived to arrive too late. Urgulania lost her case, and Livia had to pay her friend’s debt. The Prætor in this case was Lucius Piso. Shortly afterwards this same Urgulania refused to give her evidence in a court of law, and required the officials to take it in her own house, a privilege which belonged to the Vestal virgins. Urgulania was not a Vestal virgin “emerita,” determined to retain the advantages of her previous position with the help of Livia, for we find her later on sending a dagger as a significant hint to a scandalous grandson.

Tiberius was certainly in a very difficult position with regard to his mother. His natural sense of decorum, and possibly his natural affection, made him shrink from the very appearance of treating her with disrespect; but her domineering tendency, encouraged by years of unquestioned sway during her husband’s lifetime, tempted her to exaggerate the real claims which she had upon his dutiful affection; nor were the ladies of her household backward in regretting the change of circumstances, and in pointing out how different things had been in the lifetime of the sainted Augustus. Delicate as they were in any case, the relations between mother and son were rendered still more susceptible to disagreeable incidents by the presence of the aggrieved Agrippina, to whom mother and son alike were detestable usurpers, enjoying as the result of their nefarious intrigues the inalienable rights of the true Julians. Thus both the belligerent parties were opposed to Tiberius; his mother because he prevented her from continuing to enjoy a power which she had long exercised, his daughter-in-law, stepdaughter and niece, because in her opinion he usurped a power which she ought to have enjoyed, and because she had learned to regard her mother as a saint martyred by the agency of her stepfather in the cause of the Julian dynasty. There was no reason why Livia should like Drusus better than Germanicus; both her grandsons were alike leagued with her undutiful son to keep the shadow of petticoats off the Senate House.