Chapter XVIII: The Retirement at Capreæ 418 (11)

Tiberius made his arrangements without taking the ladies into consideration. There was one member of the family whom he may have been glad to please, the beautiful Antonia, the widow of his brother Drusus and the mother of Germanicus. It is to the credit of this lady that her name is never mentioned in the list of intriguers; she escapes both praise and censure, though her persistent determination to live in retirement as a widow might have attracted the attention of those who found so much to admire in the “impenetrable chastity” of Agrippina. Perhaps the fortress of her virtue was less frequently assailed by those storms, assaults, blockades, and circumvallations which, we may presume, rendered the epithet no hyperbole in the case of her daughter-in-law.

The affairs of the East needed a comprehensive survey. Achaia and Macedonia had recently passed into the Emperor’s hands; the Senatorial Government had been defective in Bithynia; several of the Greek cities on the Ægæan had suffered severely in a disastrous earthquake; Cappadocia was being organized as a province; there were dynastic troubles in Armenia; the Parthians were showing signs of restlessness; the native princes on the Syrian frontier were also unsettled by questions of succession; Judæa was more than usually unquiet. Germanicus was therefore despatched to the East with proconsular powers, which gave him an authority higher than that of all proconsuls or governors in their own provinces, and with a commission to settle all differences on the spot according to his own judgment. So large a share of power had never been entrusted to any one except Augustus and Pompeius. On a previous occasion when the same services were required, Augustus had himself visited the East and conducted the business in person, but he was then a younger man than Tiberius was now, and he was able to leave behind him in the person of Mæcenas a more experienced, or at least more trustworthy, statesman than any who were within reach of Tiberius. Drusus, though a good soldier, had not shown statesmanlike qualities.

At the same time a new Governor was required for Syria, the richest of the Imperial Provinces, for its capital, Antioch, was the second city of the Empire, the emporium where East met West. To this post Tiberius appointed Gnæus Piso. Gnæus Piso belonged to a family which had long maintained its opposition to the Cæsars, although the last wife of Julius Cæsar, Calpurnia, had been a daughter of the house. Republican ideals were still cherished in this, one of the most ancient and noble of Roman families. The efforts of Tiberius to restore the Senate had not had a happy influence upon the two leading members of this house; one brother, Lucius, threatened to retire from public business altogether, disgusted with the obsequiousness of the Senate; the other, Gnæus, had distinguished himself by an aggressive outspokenness which threatened to breed unnecessary difficulties. Lucius was the Prætor who had refused to allow Urgulania to avoid paying her just debts, and for this reason it is improbable that Gnæus was in the confidence of Livia. He had rendered himself undesirable at Rome, but Tiberius had no doubt of his integrity, and thought that if he were honourably withdrawn for a time from the centre of affairs, public business would march more smoothly. Tiberius in fact was beginning to learn that it was not altogether wise to revive the pretensions of the old families.

Unfortunately Tiberius did not foresee the possibility of friction between Germanicus and Piso; still less did he take into account the results of the juxtaposition of two such explosive fireships as Agrippina and Plancina the wife of Piso; and he forgot that Plancina was among the devoted friends of Livia, who had a long-standing personal interest in the affairs of Syria and its adjacent principalities. It was the scene of her first diplomatic triumphs, the place where she had cemented by the interchange of presents a friendship with that worthy pater-familias Herod the Great, whose posterity shared with Jerusalem the honour of being a meeting point of the intrigues of the Jews of all nations.

The story of the events which followed is so obviously coloured by the partisanship of the chief actors that much of it must be far from the truth. It is not, for instance, easy to believe that Piso, having no authority outside his own province, would follow Germanicus to Athens, where Germanicus had authority, and take a pleasure in reversing his compliments to the Athenians. There is no inherent improbability in the action ascribed to Piso inside his own province, where he practically refused to recognize the proconsular power of Germanicus, but he could hardly with safety have followed the footsteps of Germanicus eastwards, loudly proclaiming his insubordination in places where he had no more right to express an opinion than a private citizen; had he done so, a swift Liburnian galley would have brought his letters of recall. Idle stories of this kind probably took their origin at a later period, and were communicated with mistaken zeal to Agrippina by her sympathizing friends.

At first all went well with Germanicus, and his commission bore the appearance of a holiday progress. He met his brother Drusus at Nicopolis, the city which had been built to commemorate the victory off the promontory of Actium, and they celebrated the glorious event in company; he then went to Athens, and up the Ægæan into the Euxine, redressing grievances and visiting holy places. In the course of the tour Agrippina’s youngest daughter Julia was born at Lesbos, destined afterwards to marry M. Vinicius, the friend of Paterculus. On the return journey southwards Germanicus met the convoy of Piso at Rhodes on its way to Syria, where, the historian tells us, that Germanicus, though well aware of the persecution of Piso, saved his ship from destruction in a storm. Germanicus made his way from thence to Armenia and the frontiers of the Empire, where he conducted his negotiations with success. Meanwhile Piso hurried on his way to Syria, and at once began to make favour with the army and the residents. His indulgences to the troops were such that the soldiers called him “father of the legions”; while Plancina, to the horror of Agrippina, forgetting the limitations of her sex, took part in drills and parades.

The first overt act of insubordination on the part of Piso was a neglect to forward some cohorts to Germanicus in Armenia. On the return of Germanicus he met Piso, and an attempt to adjust their mutual differences was rendered ineffective by the mischievous offices of friends. Germanicus himself was inclined to take a lenient view, but he was influenced by the suggestions of those who told him exaggerated stories about Piso and his sons and Plancina. A private conference was held, but the two men left it open enemies. After this Piso publicly resented all honours paid to Germanicus, and Plancina was particularly annoyed because her somewhat lucrative protégé Vonones, a former aspirant to the Parthian crown, was removed by Germanicus at the request of the Parthians to a safer distance from the frontier.

Germanicus finding that the best part of his work was accomplished, and that life in Syria was not pleasant, made a tour in Egypt, going up the Nile as far as Elephantine and Syene, then the limit of Roman rule. It is pleasing to find him visiting the same sights that attract the modern traveller, over whom he had an advantage in that the priests were able to read the inscriptions for him.

In visiting Egypt, Germanicus inadvertently broke a decree of Augustus, which forbade any Roman Senator or Equestrian to enter that private domain of the Emperor without special permission. Tiberius had written to bring this to his notice, but the letter arrived too late.

On returning from his holiday tour in Egypt, Germanicus found that all his arrangements in Syria had been reversed by Piso, his disposition of the legions had been changed, and his formal alliances with the cities modified. Stormy scenes followed, and Piso decided to leave Syria, so says our narrative; but the more probable order of events is that Piso was ordered by Germanicus to withdraw, and was at Seleucia on his way home when news reached him of the illness of Germanicus. We are not told the nature of this illness. Agrippina and possibly Germanicus himself jumped to the conclusion that poison and spells were the cause of the sickness. Horrible things were found in the house; fragments of human remains embedded in the floors and walls; bits of parchment covered with spells; leaden tablets inscribed with the name of Germanicus, and other mystic apparatus with which it was customary to consign the spirit of an enemy to the shades. The illness seems to have been a lingering one. Piso hovered off the coast, approaching or withdrawing as the symptoms were declared to be better or worse. In the end Germanicus died. Agrippina and her friends were so fully persuaded that he had been the victim of poison or witchcraft, that they exposed his body naked in the market place at Antioch, confident that the flames of the funeral pyre would fail to devour his heart, for it was well known that the heart of a man who had been poisoned was incombustible. When the ceremony was over, Agrippina gathered up the ashes and started with her youngest children for Rome.

Meanwhile the Senators and other officials who had been in the train of Germanicus treated the Province of Syria as though it were vacant, and appointed Gnæus Sentius, one of their number, Governor in the place of Piso. There was no time to send to Rome for orders. Germanicus had cashiered Piso, but had died before appointing his successor, and it was necessary that there should be some one in authority, in case Piso returned and attempted to resume the government of Syria.

Piso had travelled on his homeward journey as far as Cos, when the news of the death of Germanicus reached him. He made thanksgiving offerings to the gods, and Plancina, who had recently lost a sister, threw off her mourning. Consultations were held as to the best course to pursue. Marcus Piso, the younger of his two sons, urged his father to return to Rome. So far he had done nothing unpardonable, but an attempt to resume the government of the province meant nothing less than civil war. Other and less prudent friends advised Piso not to recognize the appointment of Sentius, and to rely on his popularity with the legions. Tacitus puts into the mouth of these advisers the following astounding statement, which he probably found in those memoirs of Agrippina which are not evidence: “You have the complicity of Livia, the favour of Cæsar though hidden, and none mourn more loudly for Germanicus than those who are best pleased at his death.”

Piso and Plancina proved to have miscalculated the affection of the legions, and an attempt to recover Syria by force was defeated by Sentius, who gave the unhappy candidate for power ships and a safe conduct to Rome.

Agrippina meanwhile had traversed the seas and arrived at Brundisium with the vase containing her husband’s ashes early in the year 20 A.D. The illness and death of Germanicus had excited much feeling in the city and Italy, though we are not bound to believe in the dark suggestions of the historian that the populace had assumed the complicity of Tiberius in his nephew’s death. The widow made the best of her affliction, and contrived to give the procession to the Mausoleum of Augustus, in which her husband’s ashes were deposited, the aspect of a public demonstration in favour of the Julian race. Neither Tiberius himself, nor Livia, nor even the mother of Germanicus, were present at this ceremony. Doubtless they had sufficient reasons, but their absence unfortunately favoured the credulity of those who at a later time listened to the lamentations of Agrippina, and her passionate assertions that her husband had been done to death with the connivance of his own kith and kin.

Piso returned slowly to Rome. He sent his son ahead with letters to Tiberius, in which he represented himself as the aggrieved party, and accused Germanicus of debauchery and arrogance; he sought on his way an interview with Drusus, who had returned to Illyria after his brother’s funeral. Drusus received him coldly, and dismissed him with words so politic that they were thought to have been suggested by a cooler head. The day after he arrived in Rome, Fulcinius Trio, the prosecutor of Scribonius Libo, took the first formal steps in a process against him.

The story of this famous trial is so narrated by Tacitus as to convey the impression that there was a serious miscarriage of justice, and that the oppressors of Germanicus were protected by the influence of Livia and Tiberius; but, as usual, the narrative, wherever it depends upon accessible documentary evidence, does not support such a view of the case.

Accusers and accused alike pressed Tiberius to hear the case himself, knowing “that he was impervious to the influence of rumour,” and fearing the excitability of a large court. Tiberius, after hearing the evidence, referred the whole case to the Senate. Five of the most respected men in Rome refused to act as counsel for the defence. Among the three who did eventually defend Piso was Marcus Lepidus, whom we have already seen in possession of the full confidence of the Emperor. On the day of the trial Tiberius opened the proceedings in the Senate; he said that Piso had been a trusted officer and friend of Augustus, that he had himself assigned him as an assistant to Germanicus in the administration of the East with the authority of the Senate. It was the duty of the court to decide without prejudice whether he had exasperated the young man by insubordination and opposition and rejoiced over his death, or had killed him with malice and aforethought, “for if the subordinate officer exceeded the limits of his office, if he refused to pay proper respect to his superior, and rejoiced over his death, and my sorrow, I shall hate him, and shall exclude him from my house, and punish his enmity as a private matter, not with the power I hold as Princeps. But if it is discovered that a crime in bringing about the death of any man requires punishment, then do you confer upon the children of Germanicus and us his relatives our proper consolation. And at the same time you must carefully consider this point, whether Piso handled the armies in an insubordinate and seditious fashion, whether he tampered disloyally with the affections of the soldiers, whether he attempted to recover the province by force of arms, or have the accusers exaggerated these charges? I may say that I have good reason to be annoyed with their exercise of partisanship. For was it proper to strip the body, to expose it to the eager scrutiny of the eyes of the vulgar, and even to allow statements to spread among foreigners that he had been poisoned, if this was still uncertain and a subject of inquiry? I mourn for the loss of my son, and always shall mourn, but I do not prevent the accused from advancing every fact by which his innocence may be supported, or his guilt extenuated if there was any provocation on the part of Germanicus; and I implore you not to take accusations for proved facts, because the case touches me nearly personally. I beg those who have been led by the ties of kindred or faithful friendship to act as counsel for the defendant, to help him in his danger as far as their eloquence and diligence allows; and I invite the prosecution to similar efforts and similar firmness. In one point only we raise Germanicus above the law, viz., in trying the case in the Senate House rather than in the forum, before the Senate and not before a jury. Let everything else be handled with a like moderation. I would have no one pay regard to the tears of Drusus and my own sorrow, nor to any fictitious charges made against us.”

Such a speech was doubtless disappointing to Agrippina, who had already in her own mind condemned Piso and the amazonian Plancina without benefit of clergy; she knew Germanicus had been poisoned, and bewitched; she knew how it had all been done by means of a celebrated poisoner named Martina, who had been fetched from the East to give evidence, and had died mysteriously at Brundisium on the way. Had not the poison been found after her death tied up in her hair? What further evidence was wanting? And why did the woman die so conveniently for the purposes of those who wished to shield the enemies of Germanicus? The poor lady had troubles enough, left a widow with a family of six young children, marked out for the enmity of a malignant and all powerful grandmother-in-law, but her inclination to regard herself as the victim of persistent ill-usage is not evidence; and though her contemporaries would have had no difficulty in believing in the effects of witchcraft, the case against Piso is rendered weak to us by the introduction of this element; and the more so that the prosecution was not able to prove the use of poison, or even to suggest a favourable opportunity for its administration.

As the case proceeded it became quite clear that the charge of poisoning could not be sustained, but that Piso had been guilty of serious political offences. Meanwhile there was considerable agitation among the people, to whom the sensational side of the trial alone appealed, and who threatened violence if the murderer of Germanicus escaped by the votes of the Senate. This at least we are told by Tacitus, though here again it is more than probable that the public excitement existed chiefly in the imagination of Agrippina, who always saw herself playing the part of injured heroine to a sympathetic audience of the Roman people. Riots were not dreaded at Rome since the police of the city had been organized and the Prætorian guards placed in barracks.

As the case became exclusively political, Plancina naturally dropped out of it; “machinations of Livia,” shrieked Agrippina, and Tacitus has repeated the shriek.

The case had an abrupt and tragic termination. Piso, seeing that the hostile evidence steadily accumulated, and that Tiberius preserved an absolutely impartial and judicial attitude, killed himself, leaving a letter to Tiberius, from which the following extract has been preserved: “Crushed by a conspiracy of my private enemies, and the hatefulness of a false accusation, inasmuch as no opportunity is left for the truth and the establishment of my innocence, I call heaven to witness, Cæsar, that I have lived loyally to you, and dutifully to your mother; and I implore you to take charge of my children, of whom Gnæus Piso was certainly not concerned in my fortunes whatever may have been their character, for he spent the whole time at Rome, and Marcus Piso dissuaded me from returning to Syria. And I wish that I had rather given way to the counsels of my young son than he to those of his aged father. I beg the more earnestly that his innocence may not pay the penalty of my perversity. I beg for the safety of my unhappy son in the name of forty-five years of loyal duty, of a consulship shared with yourself, of the confidence placed in me by Augustus, of the friendship with yourself, and as a last request.” He made no mention of his wife in this dying petition. Tiberius exempted Marcus Piso from any complicity in the charges brought against his father, and also spoke on behalf of Plancina. A two days’ inquiry was held into her conduct, but to the disgust of Agrippina she was acquitted. Her escape was attributed to the influence of Livia.

The Senate passed severe sentences upon the sons of Piso, which Tiberius, as usual, considerably modified. Honours and rewards were bestowed on the accusers, but Tiberius, in promising Fulcinius Trio office later on, significantly hinted that he was in danger of spoiling his eloquence by excessive violence. It had been in the power of Tiberius to confiscate the property of Piso, but he bestowed it upon his son Marcus. Tacitus comments in characteristic fashion--“Superior to the temptation of money, as I have often recorded, and the more readily appeased at that time through an uneasy conscience about the acquittal of Plancina.”

There certainly does not seem to have been any miscarriage of justice, for even if Piso was sincere in his protestations of innocence, and really was innocent of the technical offence of waging civil war, his case was never concluded, and he was never condemned. It pleased Agrippina and her friends, and it pleased the sensation mongers of the capital, to see in the case not a political trial, but a demand for vengeance on the murderers of Germanicus. In this demand they were disappointed, for Plancina, the supposed culprit, escaped altogether, Piso died uncondemned by his own hand, and whatsoever punishment fell upon his two sons was inflicted on them as the sons of a man who had been disloyal to the State, not as the sons of the murderer of Germanicus. It was therefore superfluous on the part of two Senators to propose that altars should be erected to Vengeance, and of another that thanks should be returned to certain members of the Imperial family because Germanicus had been avenged.

There is, in fact, absolutely no evidence that Germanicus was murdered, while there is abundant evidence that the relations between him and Piso, both personal and political, were exceedingly unsatisfactory, and that Piso was so injudicious as to endeavour to set aside his authority. Piso was by many years the older man of the two, he had had long experience of public affairs, had enjoyed the confidence of Augustus, and acquiesced very unwillingly in the arrangements which put Germanicus, a much younger man, over his head. It is quite possible that he had private instructions from Tiberius to give Germanicus the benefit of his experience in friendly fashion, and that he interpreted these instructions wrongly, believing them to amount to a declaration of his own independence of Germanicus, and he would be the more ready to believe this because he was touchy on the subject of his own dignity; but that he actually carried authority to thwart and annoy Germanicus is as improbable as that he had instructions to poison him. Tiberius was guilty of a mistake in not anticipating the friction that would necessarily arise between an older man and a younger man when the former was placed in subordination to somewhat indefinite powers wielded by the latter. If the two men had been left to settle their differences alone, there would probably have been little trouble, for Germanicus began with courtesy and forbearance, but the ladies insisted on taking an active part in the quarrel. Agrippina saw Livia written large all over Plancina, with whom she had doubtless enjoyed several preliminary skirmishes at Rome; and Plancina met her on her own field and fought her with her own weapons, for, reprehensible though Plancina’s military performances appeared in the eyes of a pattern Roman matron, Agrippina had herself set the fashion in Germany. The atmosphere of the East was a particularly unwholesome one for two ladies thus mutually breathing out threatenings and slaughters, and listening to tales depreciatory of one another. The East swarmed with sorcerers and necromancers, and supple intriguers of all kinds used to the internecine feuds of the ladies who lived in the palaces of their princes.

The most unfortunate result of the death of Germanicus was that it left Agrippina an embittered and vindictive woman. Even her husband had occasionally deprecated the violence of her temper. Time did nothing to cure her grievances, indeed the legend of her many sorrows seemed to grow steadily as the events receded into the distance, and she handed her quarrel on to her children with its vitality undiminished.

One possible solution of the part played by Piso, and of the difficulty of reconciling it with his last protestation of innocence, is that Plancina was actually in the confidence of Livia, from whom she held such a commission as Livia could give her to make arrangements desired by her patroness. The Oriental princes had learned to rely on secret influence rather than on open negotiations with Tiberius and the Senate; the stern impartiality of the Emperor drove them to subterranean manœuvres, and Livia was by no means disinclined to let it be understood that her influence was paramount. Thus while Piso as Governor of Syria was the properly constituted representative of Tiberius, his wife was the accredited plenipotentiary of the power behind the throne. The charges against Plancina were really charges against Livia, and the case which was hushed up was the case which would have exposed the unauthorized political intrigues of the Empress Dowager. Tiberius could either allow his mother’s interference with State affairs to be a subject of public inquiry, or he could allow Plancina to be tried on the frivolous charge of poisoning with the certainty that she would escape conviction. He preferred the less heroic course, with the result that both he and his mother were credited with having been concerned in a criminal conspiracy against a near relative.

The tradition repeated by Tacitus, that Piso was in possession of documents which would have established his innocence by demonstrating the complicity of Tiberius and Livia, and that he refrained from producing them on being assured of his safety by Sejanus, is not incompatible with this view of the case. Tiberius would certainly not have been involved, but instructions given by Livia to Plancina may very well have existed, and have led to those reversals of the policy of Germanicus which produced the ultimate quarrel. On this assumption the suicide of Piso becomes intelligible, he could not defend his grave political misconduct without exposing the still graver misconduct of the Empress Dowager, and when he saw that no other means of escape was open to him, he took a course which, to the Romans, did not seem to be devoid of heroism. Tiberius may have been weak in not dismissing his mother to an island, but he was certainly not responsible for the death of Piso, or concerned in a plot to poison Germanicus.

XVI

Tiberius and the Senate

Drusus, the son of Tiberius, died in A.D. 23, under circumstances which it will be more convenient to consider at a later period. From this event Tacitus dates the perversion of Tiberius, forgetting that he has already ascribed to him every unamiable quality except avarice. After enumerating the various legions, and recording their distribution, Tacitus says: “I hope I am not wrong in believing that it is relevant to review the other departments of State as well, to say how they were managed up to that time, since this year marked the beginning of a change for the worse in the Emperor’s administration. Now first, public business and the most important concerns of private men were dealt with before the Senate, and the chief men were allowed to make speeches, and he checked them himself, where they slipped into flattery; and he used to confer office by taking into consideration nobility of descent, brilliance in the field, distinguished service at home, so that it was agreed that there were no men with higher claims. Consuls and Prætors enjoyed their proper dignity, the lesser magistrates also were in the full exercise of their powers, and the laws, with the exception of the “Lex Majestatis,” were well administered. Moreover, the corn supply and tribute, and the rest of the public revenues, were managed by associations of Roman knights. Cæsar entrusted the management of his own affairs to the most distinguished men, to some who were unknown, on hearing of their reputation; and when once he had adopted a man he retained him indefinitely, for most of his officers grew old in the same departments. The commonalty certainly suffered from a dear market, but the Prince was not responsible for that; indeed, he met the failure of crops, or the difficulties of navigation, as far as expense and care could help him. And he took measures that the Provinces should not be disturbed by fresh burdens, and that they should be able to endure the old ones exempt from the avarice or cruelty of officials. There was no such thing as personal outrages or confiscations of property. The estates of Cæsar were few in Italy, his establishments of slaves were modest, his household confined to a few freedmen; and if ever he was at variance with a private person, he resorted to the ordinary processes of law, the ordinary courts. All this he kept up until things were changed by the death of Drusus, not indeed graciously, but with a repellent manner, so that he was generally an object of terror.”

These words, except for the last sentence, differ but little from those employed by Paterculus in enumerating the blessings enjoyed by the Roman people under the sway of Tiberius, though Paterculus does not limit the good administration of the Emperor to the period which ended with the death of Drusus.

It is indeed difficult, when we read the record of the actual transactions of the Senate, to form any other opinion than that advanced by Tacitus in the foregoing summary; even in the case of the “Lex Majestatis” it is the Senate, not Tiberius, who show a tendency to abuse the powers which it conferred, and the rare occasions on which the Emperor himself allows an accusation under this law to be pressed are those on which the strictest republican virtue would have demanded its application, viz., when the misconduct of a provincial governor had impaired the dignity of the State. It is true that this extension of the operation of the “Lex Majestatis” had not been familiar to the Republic, and that the provincials had been held to be protected sufficiently by the laws against extortion, but it might reasonably be held that a Roman magistrate disgraced his country no less by maladministration in the Provinces than by cowardice in the field, or a disgraceful treaty. In fact, this probably was the real grievance which caused the Senatorial Annalists, whose diaries were read by Tacitus, to fill their memoirs with bitter animadversions on the abuse of the “Lex Majestatis,” and the professional advocates who were a terror to delinquent Senators. Incapable or corrupt governors, who might have escaped punishment on some technical plea, if they had been accused formally of extortion, were now confronted with a fuller examination into their conduct under the vaguer charge of having impaired the dignity of the State. Tiberius constituted himself the guardian of the dignity of the State; it was his duty to do so. In upholding the purity of the administration, he was upholding the Empire, but he was also declaring an emphatic negative to the theory that the Roman Senate was at liberty to deal as it pleased with its Provinces. The restoration of the Senate, begun in some degree by Augustus and continued by Tiberius, was attended by this inconvenience, that it revived the pretensions of the survivors of the Oligarchy, and though the majority of the Senate were distinguished rather by an inclination to hand over all their responsibilities to the Emperor than by an uncompromising attitude towards his government, there were a minority who were disgusted because fuller advantage was not taken of the opportunities afforded, and because the liberal policy of the Emperor brought them little nearer to the cherished abuses of the old oligarchical government.

When we reflect that the first six books of the _Annals of Tacitus_ cover a period of twenty-three years, and that he had access to the Senatorial archives no less than to private memoirs, we are astonished at the meagreness of his information. If we remove from these books all that refers to the campaigns in Germany, Thrace, and Africa, all that is concerned with the death of Germanicus, all that has to do with the personal history of the Imperial family, singularly little remains to tell us how the Senate administered the Provinces which had been left to its care, and the two great questions in which statesmen are profoundly interested, the questions of Revenue and Defence, are hardly touched upon.

For this there are two reasons, apart from the fact that Tacitus was an incompetent historian; one is that Tacitus avowedly interested himself only in recording events which seemed to him striking illustrations of good or bad behaviour, history to him being merely a primer of morals and a collection of examples; the other is that very little business actually was transacted before the Senate.

We may take as an example the case of Cappadocia. This country was annexed by Germanicus, its native rulers were deposed, and it passed from the status of an allied kingdom to that of a province. It might be anticipated that we should have a record of discussions in the Senate as to the terms upon which this new Province was to be added to the Empire, as to whether it was to be Imperial or Senatorial, as to its probable cost and revenue; but we have nothing of the kind, we have not even the innuendo of a grievance based on the fact that Tiberius fixed its tribute at half the usual amount, and treated it as an Imperial Province from the outset. Similarly the Government of Achaia passed into the hands of the Emperor at the request of the Province itself, without any debate in the Senate, so far as we are informed by Tacitus. Africa was a Senatorial Province; the moment that trouble between the Roman inhabitants and a native prince declared itself, the Senate practically threw the whole responsibility on Tiberius by asking him to nominate a Governor. With all its pretensions, and in spite of all the encouragement given to it by Tiberius to assume the position of an advisory council to the Emperor, if not of a representative assembly of the Empire, the Senate reverted more and more to its old position of a domestic council representing the best families at Rome and attending to little beyond their interests.

It was fortunate for the Empire that Tiberius failed in his attempt to restore the Senate, for no tyranny can be worse than that of the direct government of dependencies by an irresponsible debating society, divided into parties more or less organized, which intrigue abroad to further their interests at home, and the Senate itself showed a sounder political insight than the Emperor in refusing to assume responsibilities for which it was eminently unfit.

If, however, the greater political questions are passed over by Tacitus, some of the minor subjects with which the Senate dealt are not uninteresting; it retained the position of guardian of the public morals, or at the least of the morals of those families of whom it was composed or whose members were employed in the government of the city and Empire. Adultery under the Julian laws passed by Augustus was not a sin but a crime, and we accordingly have some cases in which Roman ladies of high rank are arraigned before the Senate along with their paramours.

The number of these cases is not great, and in comparison with similar cases in our own divorce courts remarkably small, from which we may conclude either that the Senate was a lenient censor of morals, or that the standard of morality was high; it is further possible that the Senate was only called upon to intervene when the family of the culprit had failed in its duty.

Actors seem to have been a source of trouble to the fathers of the city, but it is not altogether certain in what the “licence” of actors consisted. At first sight it might appear that they were guilty merely of a laxity of morals which is not uncommonly attributed, with or without justice, to the theatrical profession, and that the decrees prohibiting Senators and Equestrians from public and private intercourse with actors were directed against purely private scandals; but there is also evidence that the stage occupied to some extent the position of the modern press, and that the licence of the actors consisted in public and private derision of eminent men, and in the exhibition of caricatures, which if not dangerous to public order, were at least offensive. The fragments of references made on the stage to Tiberius, preserved by Suetonius, are sufficient to indicate a freedom of criticism which in our own day would be considered intolerable. Our own habits allow our public men to be caricatured weekly in the comic papers in a manner which is not found equally acceptable in Germany, but lenient though we are in such matters, even Englishmen have failed to tolerate the caricatures of eminent statesmen on the stage, and “the Happy Land,” in which three Cabinet Ministers appeared under their own names, and in a very successful counterfeit presentment of their persons, was modified by the then Lord Chamberlain.

The laughter which greets a successful cartoon in _Punch_, and the prompt recognition which greets a happy allusion to current events, do little to shake a government or to disturb public order, but when the representatives of law and order are held up to ridicule by the unmistakeable gestures of a skilled actor in a large theatre, not only is the effectiveness of ridicule enormously increased, but the conflicting sympathies of the spectators provoke an immediate riot. We have seen that among the business transacted by Tiberius and the Senate in the first year of his reign was the discussion of a proposal to restore to the Prætors the right of beating actors, which had been withdrawn from them by Augustus. The reason for this proposal was an increase of turbulence in the theatres, which had resulted in the deaths of several of the spectators, the murder of some soldiers and a centurion, and even of the commander of a prætorian cohort, who had endeavoured to check the abuse of magistrates from the stage, and the consequent disturbance in the audience. An Italian audience was quick to catch even an undesigned allusion to current events, and allusion by gesture never failed to meet with its response; thus the actors became in a way the mouthpieces of public opinion, and the despotism of the ruling powers was tempered by epigrams in flesh and blood, if not in actual words; parties were formed, distinguished actors were supported by men of rank, not merely from admiration of their professional skill, but because they were in some sense a political power. In the year 23 A.D. Tiberius found himself obliged to draw the attention of the Senate to the continued insolence of the actors, and a decree was passed by which they were banished from Italy. The particular form of dramatic exhibition which called down this severity was that known as the Atellan farce, which had long been used for the purposes of political satire by educated men. It had been originally a performance in the Oscan dialect; then what we should call “topical songs” had been introduced in Latin. There had been a period during which the Atellan plays had been considered eminently respectable, and men of rank had taken part in them without losing dignity; but either the character of the performance had degenerated, or the sentence of expulsion was less general than the words of Tacitus would imply, and was restricted to men whom we should not consider professional actors, and who had adopted this way of expressing their criticisms of the government.

These performances were given both in public and in private houses. The former might well be restrained as leading to riots; the objection to the latter was undoubtedly the open ridicule of the government; for the Atellan farce, which was originally chiefly spoken, had adopted the procedure of the mimics who acted entirely in dumb show, and it is not difficult to imagine the roars of laughter which would greet the appearance of Tiberius himself and other eminent personages upon the private stages of the Roman nobility.

In penalizing actors Tiberius in fact checked the liberty of the press, and destroyed whatever popularity he had hitherto enjoyed. The Romans were passionately devoted to acting, and never forgave the man who discountenanced their favourite amusement. There was no readier road to popularity at Rome than an exhibition of actors or gladiators. Cæsar and Augustus had both encouraged the taste, and in the later Republican days profusion in giving treats of this kind had been a necessary step in the ladder by which political eminence was reached.

The wisdom of Tiberius in thus checking the expression of popular feeling may be open to question, for we are not in a position to judge how far the passions excited by the actors constituted a real danger to public order, but the line which he took with reference to another kind of legislation is indisputably wise.

Sumptuary laws are a well-known weakness of governments. We are by no means rid of them yet, as is testified by the importance of the temperance party in England. The Pagans of Greece and Italy were no less eager than the Christians of the Middle Ages, or the Puritans of the Reformation, to prescribe for men how they should dress, or how they should eat, and the history of the Roman Senate offers many instances of attempts to enforce moderation of living by stringent laws. The Senate of Tiberius had not forgotten its old traditions; in the year 16 A.D. the subject of increasing luxury had been discussed in the Senate, and the Emperor had evaded action by stating that the matter would be attended to when the period of the Censorship came round. Apparently nothing was done, for in the year 22 A.D. the Ædiles drew the attention of the Senate to the continued and indeed increasing expenditure upon silken robes, household plate, and the pleasures of the table; new laws were demanded, and vigour in administering the old laws. Even on the evidence of Tacitus Tiberius himself was moderate in his household expenditure; Suetonius indeed reproaches him with niggardliness in this matter, saying that he would serve up the remainder of a feast at a second day’s entertainment with the observation “that the part had the same qualities as the whole.” His personal example was entirely in the direction of temperate living, and it was from no want of sympathy with the worthy aspirations of the Senate that he refused to legislate in the matter. Tacitus has preserved for us the letter which he addressed to the Senate on the subject; it is a document sufficiently remarkable to be given in full.

“Although, Conscript Fathers, it is perhaps more expedient that on all other occasions I should be asked in your presence my opinion of what is good for the State, and reply in the same way, still on the present occasion it was better that my eyes should be withdrawn, for if you should openly note the faces of anxiety of those who were involved in the charge of infamous luxury, I should myself see them, and as it were catch them in the act. If indeed our energetic Ædiles had taken counsel with me beforehand, I am inclined to think that I should have advised them to abstain from interfering with vices so firmly rooted, so vigorous, rather than make it publicly manifest that we are too weak to contend with these abuses. Well--they have done their duty as I should wish other magistrates also to do theirs; I could neither be silent with honour, nor was it expedient that I should be the first to speak, seeing that I am neither Ædile, nor Prætor, nor Consul. Something more, something higher is demanded of the Prince, and whereas each individual earns the reward of his own good actions, upon the Prince alone is visited the odium incurred by the bad actions of all.

“Now what shall I first try to check and to cut down to the ancient measures? The boundless extent of country estates? The numbers of native and alien slaves? The weight of gold and silver plate? The marvellous bronzes and pictures? The rich materials common to male and female dress? Or again those peculiarly feminine forms of luxury owing to which our money is transferred to foreign and even hostile races for the sake of mere stones? I am perfectly well aware that these are things with which fault is found at dinner parties and social entertainments, and that there is a cry for interference; but when a law is passed, penalties are assigned, and those same guardians of the public virtue will not then fail to clamour that the State is being turned upside down, that any magnificent man is threatened with ruin, that every one is liable to prosecution. And yet it is only by severe remedies that long-standing diseases of the body can be checked, and the fever of the mind at once corrupt and corrupting can only be quenched by remedies no less violent than the lusts with which it burns. All the laws which were discovered by our ancestors, all those that were passed by the sainted Augustus, have added confidence to luxury, the former because they have been forgotten, the latter, which is much worse, because they have been abrogated by contempt. For should a man wish to do a thing which has not yet been forbidden, he would be in fear of a prohibition, but if he transgresses a known prohibition, there is no longer any fear, or any sense of shame. Now why did frugal living at one time prevail? Because every man imposed restraint on himself, because we were then the citizens of a single city; there was not even temptation for us when our dominion was confined to Italy. It was through our foreign victories that we learned to waste the property of others, by our civil wars to waste our own. And what a small thing it is to which our attention is called by the Ædiles! What a trifle if it is compared with our other responsibilities! Yes, nobody bethinks himself that Italy is dependent upon external resources, that the sustenance of the Roman people is exposed every day to the uncertainties of the winds and waves!

“And should the resources of the Provinces fail to come to the rescue of our landowners, and slaves, and farms, our own forests, forsooth, our own estates will protect us! This is the anxiety, Conscript Fathers, which falls upon the shoulders of the Prince, and if he refuses to attend to this, the State will be dragged down to perdition. For those other difficulties a remedy can be found in our own conduct; may a sense of honour improve ourselves, necessity restrain the poor, satiety the rich. Or if any one of the magistrates holds out a prospect of so much industry, such rigour as to be able to contend with these abuses, I both commend him, and admit that I am thereby relieved of part of my burden. But if they are willing enough to demonstrate abuses, and then, when they have obtained the credit of this action, stir animosities, and hand them over to me, believe me, Conscript Fathers, that I too have no taste for unpopularity; tasks involving serious, and generally unjust, unpopularity I will undertake for the good of the State. I rightly protest against being required to incur trivial and useless causes of offence likely to be profitable neither to myself nor to you.”

The language of Tacitus leaves it uncertain as to whether these words are the actual letter of Tiberius, or only an epitome of the real letter; but the sense, if not the form, is clearly the Emperor’s own. In his view of the inefficiency of sumptuary legislation Tiberius was far in advance of his time; no law can in these matters do for the individual what he refuses to do for himself. Indirectly Tiberius reproaches the Senate for their individual complicity in the offences against which legislation was demanded; he also reproaches those zealous magistrates, the Ædiles, whose business it was to look after the markets and repress extravagant expenditure, for their previous neglect of duty; he also points out that there was an abundance of laws to meet the offence, and an equally abundant neglect of those laws. The constitutional position which Tiberius takes up is also noteworthy; it was not for him to anticipate the action of the ordinary magistrates; on the other hand, the greater cares of the Empire are his, and these domestic concerns can be left to those officials whom the constitution provided for the purpose.

Throughout the letter we detect a profound contempt for the Senate, as being a body ever ready to talk, but never ready to act, and we are therefore prepared to believe that there is some truth in the story which tells us that Tiberius seldom left the Senate House without exclaiming, “Men made for slavery!” We also see that Tiberius was sensitive to public opinion, and was not prepared to face unpopularity except with good reason. The implied warning against the folly of passing laws which it is impossible to enforce shows sound statesmanship; the vice of clamouring for fresh laws in order to check offences which have been already provided for by old ones, and of invoking the aid of legislation in matters where good example and sound conduct on the part of individuals are more effective, is a vice which has survived the Roman Senate.

The result of the debate was fresh energy on the part of the Ædiles, but Tacitus says that it was not until the reign of Vespasian that there was any marked improvement, that Emperor being himself averse to luxury. As, however, Tiberius was no less distinguished by plainness of living, it is more probable that the effect was produced by a general equalizing of fortunes among the well-to-do.

While Tiberius thus refused to take upon himself the responsibilities of the Senate in domestic matters, he was equally little inclined to allow them to throw upon him the burden of administering their own Provinces, and carefully referred deputations from the Senatorial Provinces to the Consuls; he punished a private servant of his own who had the management of his estates in Asia, a Senatorial Province, for attempting to exercise powers other than those of the business agent of a private person.

We may remark that the care of feeding the city, which we should have expected to be in the department of the Senate, was really in the hands of the Emperor, who held Egypt in his own exclusive management for that special purpose; nor was Tiberius a sufficiently enlightened economist not to attempt to control the price of corn.

Another subject which from time to time still taxed the energies of the Senate was the prevalence of alien rites, and especially of all forms of magic and divination.

It has been held that the Senate and people of Rome were particularly free from religious intolerance; their behaviour in this matter has been favourably contrasted with that of Christian governments, and there are many who believe that the Romans never interfered with religious observances till they adopted an attitude of exceptional malignity towards the professors of Christianity. Such a view does not, however, correctly represent the facts of the case. Comparatively early in its history the Roman Senate had proceeded with considerable severity against those who were infected with that strange hysterical epidemic which spread over Europe under the guise of the worship of Bacchus, and in the year 19 A.D. we find the Senate passing decrees to repress Egyptian and Jewish religious rites. According to Suetonius the devotees were ordered to burn their vestments and other religious furniture, while he and Tacitus agree in telling us that four thousand freedmen “infected with that superstition” who were of fitting age for military service were sent off to Sardinia to check brigandage there, “and if they should perish in the unwholesome climate, it was not a serious loss.” “The rest,” according to Tacitus, “were to withdraw from Italy unless they abandoned their profane observances before a fixed date.” The language of Tacitus does not distinguish between Jew and Egyptian so far as religion was concerned, for though he mentions both races, he only alludes to one superstition.

The persecution of Jews on religious grounds is thus anterior to Christianity, and the persecutions were not confined to Jews and Egyptians; Chaldæans were included, and as we have already seen, after the case of feather-headed Scribonius Libo Magians and “mathematicians” were also expelled from Italy.