Chapter XVIII: The Retirement at Capreæ 418 (9)

In A.D. 25, eleven years after the accession of Tiberius, a deputation arrived from further Spain with the request that leave might be given to build a shrine in honour of Tiberius and his mother, as had been done in Asia. “On this occasion Cæsar, who was at other times also firm in rejecting honours of this kind, and thought some answer should be given to those who accused him by public rumour of ambitious inclinations, made a speech to the following effect:--‘I know, Conscript Fathers, that many have noted a want of consistency in my conduct, because on a recent occasion I failed to oppose the cities of Asia when preferring an identical petition. Therefore I will at once declare my defence of my former silence, and of the line which I propose to adopt in the future. Whereas the sainted Augustus did not forbid a temple to be built to himself and the city of Rome at Pergamus, I, for whom all his acts and words are like a law, followed a precedent, already sanctioned, the more readily because veneration of the Senate was united with the devotion to be paid to myself. However, although there may be an excuse for a solitary acceptance of such honours, it would be presumptuous and arrogant in me to consent to being worshipped in divine form all over the provinces; and indeed the honour paid to Augustus will disappear if it is made cheap by promiscuous flattery of this kind. I both protest to you, Conscript Fathers, and I wish posterity to be mindful, that I am a man, and hold purely human responsibilities, and that I have enough, if I worthily hold the first position in the State; posterity will give enough, and more than enough, to my memory if men believe me to have been worthy of my ancestors, careful of your concerns, firm in danger, and not fearful of contracting unpopularity in defence of the public welfare. So shall I have temples in your minds, so the finest and most lasting statues. For those memorials which are built of stone are despised as mere tombs if the judgment of posterity proves adverse. Therefore I implore the allies, the citizens, and the gods themselves, the latter to grant me to the end of my life a calm intelligence and understanding of human and divine law; the former, that whenever I may leave the stage, they may pursue my deeds and the fame of my name with praise and kindly memories.’ And he persisted afterwards, even in private conversation, in his contempt of such adoration of himself. This some interpreted as moderation, many as a sign of mistrust of himself, some as an indication of a degenerate spirit; for, said they, the best of men aim at the highest honours; thus among the Greeks Hercules and Liber, among ourselves Quirinus, had been added to the number of the gods. Augustus had done better in setting his hopes higher. Princes have everything else in this life; the one thing they should compass with avidity is a lasting memory of themselves. For the contempt of fame means the contempt of virtue.”

It is impossible not to admire the consummate art with which the effect of a really noble statement of Tiberius is wiped away, and the picture of a man devoid of sound ambition substituted. The ingenuity with which Tacitus puts in the mouths of presumed contemporaries his own perversion of the facts, and concludes his chapter with a concise damnation, is equally admirable. To us there is, however, something tragic in the fact that subsequent events and the arts of a supreme master of style were to rob Tiberius even of the modest fame for which he prayed.

Tiberius had hardly settled down to business when the threatened mutiny of the legions in the Illyrian quarter broke out, accompanied by an even more serious disturbance among the armies of the Rhine. These events throw much light on the condition of the Roman army at the time, and upon the characters of Agrippina and Germanicus. The latter, though a far more formidable rival than Agrippa Postumus, had been invested with Proconsular power at the request of Tiberius on his accession. Previously he had only been a legate, a lieutenant-general in command of the troops on the German frontier; he was now Governor of Gaul as well. It is not customary, for usurpers who have recently mounted rickety thrones to add to the powers of those whose rivalry they have good reason to anticipate. The Proconsulate of Gaul had on a well-known occasion been the stepping-stone to the Empire. Tiberius clearly had no mistrust of the loyalty of Germanicus, and at this period could afford to smile at the restless impetuosity of Agrippina, pattern of matrons.

XII

The Mutinies in Pannonia and on the Rhine

We have seen that when Augustus died Tiberius was on his way to Illyria, because the temper of the three legions who garrisoned the recently conquered districts towards the Danube had given cause for anxiety. The death of one Emperor and the accession of another occasioned a relaxation of discipline, both events, in accordance with Roman custom, being observed by a suspension of ordinary business.

The Pannonian army had been reinforced largely from Rome itself; it had been necessary to revive in a stringent form the obligation to military service, and even to impress slaves. Among the men thus unwillingly driven into the ranks were several used to the clubs and street factions of the capital, quick-witted, ready-tongued, of the class that are known to our own soldiers and sailors as “lawyers.”

Service in these regions had no mitigations, there was little or no loot, and since serious operations had ceased, little excitement; the long holiday and cessation of the ordinary routine gave the camp agitators their opportunity. Three legions were concerned, the eighth, the ninth, and the fifteenth. The first open act of mutiny was an attempt to combine all three in one. This failed, owing to the mutual jealousies of the legions, neither of the three being willing to be enrolled under the name of one of the others, and a compromise was effected by uniting the legions locally, but retaining their separate organization. The rapid and dramatic account of Tacitus, in which only the most picturesque incidents are recorded and grouped together for effect, conceals the fact that this was a very serious step, for the legions were not quartered together, and must have marched some distance in order to unite. This event, which Tacitus places at the beginning of his summary, can only have taken place after the officers had lost the control of their men, unless we are to credit these officers, who knew that there was much disaffection, and had already reported it to Rome, with such blind folly as to have united troops ready to mutiny.

The speech which Tacitus puts into the mouth of one Percennius, the arch agitator, a private who had been accustomed to lead a claque in the Roman theatres, and was well versed in the arts by which factions are organized, gives a clear summary of the grievances of the Roman soldier of the period, but will not be intelligible without a little previous explanation.

First comes the question of discharge. A Roman citizen was constitutionally liable to be called out for service between the ages of eighteen and forty-six, but it was held that sixteen years of service, whether continuous or intermittent, exempted a man from further duty. The difficulty of finding recruits had caused the claim to exemption to be ignored, and as the army had become increasingly professional, losing its character of a militia, the men themselves, for lack of other occupation, had helped the authorities to expand the period of service. In order further to swell the numbers of the army, the Romans had anticipated the “garrison” service recently introduced into the English army. Time-expired men were enrolled in companies outside the organization of the legion; they were called flagmen (vexillarii); they could not be called upon to march in a campaign, but they formed a kind of permanent garrison in the countries in which they were employed; they were not a “reserve,” for they could not be called back to the colours, but they relieved the regular soldiers of duties, for which there was a dearth of men; they were also employed as engineers, for we find some of them in the course of this mutiny detached to build roads and bridges near Nauportus.

There was also a grievance of pay. Cæsar had increased the pay of the legionary, and fixed it at nine _aurei_ a year; that is to say, ten asses a day. When this arrangement was made one silver denarius was the equivalent of ten copper asses, and the pay of the Roman soldier was assumed to be one denarius, practically a shilling a day; but since Cæsar’s time the silver denarius had appreciated, and was now worth sixteen asses: the soldiers, however, were still paid ten asses, and not sixteen. Another grievance lay in the fact that the household troops, prætorian guards, who formed the garrison of Italy, received double pay.

The exactions and cruelty of the centurions formed another grievance. The position of the centurion in the Roman army is not quite analogous to anything in our own army, for though there was a distinction between the commissioned and the non-commissioned officer, and the centurion belonged in many respects to the latter class, he had many responsibilities which we, rightly or wrongly, reserve for commissioned officers. The centurion was selected from the ranks, but he commanded a company; he was a sergeant with the duties of a captain, and when he was promoted to the rank of “primipilaris” was so much of a commissioned officer as to be admitted to councils of war. Cæsar had paid especial attention to the centurions, he never misses an opportunity of praising individual centurions in his commentaries, and distinguished service as a centurion opened the way to the highest military and even civil positions. Ventidius Bassus, who had commanded the armies of Antonius in Syria, and had been granted a triumph, began life as a mule-driver, and passed through the rank of centurion to that of General. Before the end of the century a former centurion was to be Emperor. Pontius Pilate, Governor of Judæa, is said to have been a centurion. One of the arts by which the early Emperors kept their hold on the army was the recognition of capable centurions. But though the centurion was in a better position than the English non-commissioned officer, he still had duties which we should consider beneath the dignity of a captain.

With the aid of this short introduction the speech of Percennius should be intelligible without further explanation; it is not probable that we have the genuine speech, but a summary of the soldiers’ grievances put into the mouth of their spokesman.

“Why do we obey like slaves a handful of centurions, and still fewer tribunes? When are we to venture to demand our rights if we do not now approach the new and still tottering Emperor with either entreaties or force? It is through our own fault, through our own want of spirit, that we have gone on for so many years putting up with thirty or forty years’ service, old men as we are, and most of us crippled with wounds. Even after our discharge there is no end to our service; we camp under the flags and suffer the same burdens under another name. And if any man does happen to get out of all these dangers and difficulties with his life, he is dragged off to distant lands, where he is given under the name of a farm a morass or a precipice. The service itself is severe, and poorly paid; body and soul are valued at ten asses a day! Out of this we have to find clothes, arms, tents, buy off the centurions, yes, and pay for our own discharge.[1] The stick, the wounds, the bitter winter, the summer marches, the cruelties of war, or the barrenness of peace are everlasting. We shall never get any comfort till the service is entered on fixed conditions, a denarius a day for pay, sixteen years for a discharge; and we are not to be kept on under the flags, but stay in our camps and get our pension in cash. Do the prætorians face greater dangers than we do? But they get two denarii a day, and return to their homes after sixteen years. We don’t have to patrol the city at night, but we do have to live among savages and look at the enemy out of our very quarters.”

[1] “Vacationes munerum.” The translation in the text
is the accepted one, but the phrase may simply mean
“leave.” The custom of feeing the sergeant for this
purpose has not been unknown in the English army.

This statement of the grievances of the private soldier may not represent the actual words of Percennius, but it is strangely familiar. Protracted service is not at present included among the grievances of the English soldier, but we have already taken one step in a direction which may lead to its inclusion. The Roman Empire shirked the recruiting difficulty, and in the end brought down upon itself countless disasters. If the English Empire follows the same path, it will find itself some day at the same destination. The conditions are strangely similar. By the institution of slavery the whole body of operatives throughout the Roman Empire was exempted from military service, the recruiting ground was artificially restricted. We have no artificial restriction in the English Empire, but the operatives have been allowed gradually to withdraw themselves from even the limited obligation to military service imposed by the ancient regulations of the militia, and they have further been allowed to assume that whatever may happen to other people they are not to be conscious of the burden of taxation; they are practically as free from military service and taxation as the slaves of antiquity.

When these mutinies were eventually suppressed Tiberius found himself unable to confirm the grant of a discharge after sixteen years’ service, and was obliged to fix it at twenty years; he said that the Empire could not stand the change, and deplored, in strangely modern language, the breakdown of the “voluntary system.” The statesmen of his time could not touch the institution of slavery; the demand for a conscription of slaves would have been resisted on every ground of public expediency; there would have been an outcry against interference with private property. We have no institution which forbids us to make soldiers of our intelligent working-men; they can be invited and encouraged to take their share in bearing the burden of defence. The statesman who discovers the best means of bringing them into the recruiting field will have solved the most pressing difficulty of the English Empire.

The result of the orations of Percennius was a general insubordination. Junius Blæsus, who was commander-in-chief, persuaded the excited men with some difficulty to send an orderly deputation to Tiberius to present their grievances, and the soldiers cleverly included his son in the deputation. For a time there was quiet, but the news of the mutiny reached Nauportus, where the “flagmen” were employed in engineering, and they immediately threw off all discipline, plundered the neighbouring villages, and even Nauportus itself. Laden with their booty, they marched to the headquarters of the mutinied legions, but they had not forgotten previously to pay off old scores, they had derided and beaten their centurions, they had seized the commander of their camp, a rigorous martinet who had himself risen from the ranks, piled burdens upon him, and driven him at the head of their column, asking him how he liked it. Blæsus met them with firmness, and arrested the ringleaders, but their appeals to their former fellow soldiers renewed the revolt, the prison was opened, all the prisoners were released, and a man named Vibulenus mounted the shoulders of his comrades, and, standing in front of the tribunal of Blæsus, made an impassioned oration. Addressing the mutineers, he cried: “You have certainly restored these innocent and miserable men to life and light, but who will give my brother back his life? Who will give me back my brother? He was sent to you from the German army on our common concerns, but last night this man, by the hands of those prize-fighters whom he keeps and arms to the ruin of the soldiers, cut his throat. Tell me, Blæsus, where you threw the body. Our enemies even do not grudge us burial. When I have sated my grief with tears and kisses, bid me then to be butchered too, so long as my friends here are allowed to bury those who have been slain for no crime, but because they thought of the good of the legions.”

This pathetic speech naturally redoubled the excitement, and the prize-fighters of Blæsus were seized and bound along with the rest of his slaves, and were likely to have suffered rough treatment, when it was discovered that Vibulenus never had a brother. The wrath of the soldiers was then turned upon the centurions; most of them got off and hid themselves, but one was killed whom the soldiers used to call “Give us another,” because it had been his habit to break his vinestick over the shoulders of his men, and then ask for another, and yet another. The centurions, however, were not all unpopular, and a division of opinion between the eighth and fifteenth legions about a centurion whom the former wished to kill, but the latter to protect, would have ended in a fight, had not the ninth legion intervened.

Though Vibulenus never had a brother, his speech shows that the mutiny was concerted with the legions on the Rhine.

In due time Drusus, the son of Tiberius, arrived from Rome with picked guards, including a detachment of the Germans, who then formed the bodyguard of the Emperor. Ælius Sejanus accompanied him as adviser, though Drusus, being of the age of seven and twenty, could hardly have been considered a youth. He read a letter from Tiberius empowering him to remedy such grievances as could be remedied on the spot, but referring the solution of permanent difficulties to the Senate. Tiberius as Imperator had practically unlimited powers over the army, but either he had not by this time formally accepted the office of Imperator, or he held that such questions as increase of pay and reduction of the years of service were not purely military questions, and must be referred to the civil authority.

The soldiers had listened quietly to Drusus till the reference to the Senate was mentioned; they then again burst into uproar, protesting, with a semblance of reason, that the Senate was only dragged in when it was a question of favours or rewards, the generals imposed punishments and ordered severe labours on their own responsibility. The aged Gnæus Lentulus, an experienced public servant, who had accompanied Drusus, and who was held to influence him in the direction of severity, was nearly killed; stones were thrown at Drusus himself, who with his escort and attendants escaped with difficulty into the permanent camp.

Fortunately that night there was an eclipse, and at the same time stormy weather set in. The excitable superstitious soldiers were frightened by the portent; Drusus skilfully took advantage of their wavering resolution, and by means of clever agents set the individual soldiers against one another, and inspired mutual distrust between the three legions. There was a sudden and violent revulsion of feeling, the ringleaders Percennius and Vibulenus were killed, order was restored, and Drusus returned to Rome. It was left to Tiberius and the Senate to redress the grievances.

The mutiny was a serious one, not so well organized as the simultaneous mutiny on the Rhine, and not so ambitious in its aims; but the facts as given us ascribe a strange childishness to the Roman legionary. The story of the eclipse is hard to swallow, but there is other evidence to the superstitious character of the legionary; his commanders owed their authority largely to a certain religious awe with which they were surrounded; the standards were worshipped, and the Roman soldier, afraid of little else, was supremely afraid of breaking his military oath.

The mutiny on the Rhine was of a more serious character; not only was the number of legions implicated far larger, more than double that of the Pannonian legions, but the ambition of the mutineers was not confined to obtaining a redress of grievances; they proposed to annex the Empire. “The State is in our hands,” they said; “it is increased by our victories; the Emperor takes his title from his armies.” A vision of plundering Gaul, marching upon Rome, and setting up an Emperor of their own, floated before the eyes of the ringleaders. On the Rhine, as in Pannonia, the agitation was engineered by the recruits, chiefly enfranchized slaves recently drawn from the capital. The men who had fought under Drusus and Tiberius were hardly conscious of their own grievances; military discipline had numbed their intelligence; they knew of nothing else, and they were well content to exchange the peaceful but laborious routine of the camp for the hardships of campaigns among the forests and morasses of Germany, where the enemy was less terrible than the gloom of primeval trees and the treachery of bogs and estuaries. They were, however, only too willing to listen when cleverer men than themselves told them they had grievances. The fidelity of the most loyal troops and of the most trusted servants can seldom long resist the voice of the tempter, who deplores the injustice with which they are treated. The idlers of Rome, swept into the ranks from the street corners and the open air amusements of the great city, awoke from dreams of plunder and licence to the stern realities of the centurion’s stick and the heavy fatigue of a Roman camp. They had no fighting, but they had drill, and digging and building in plenty; few of them had ever before done an honest stroke of work. To the veterans, life on the frontier had become somewhat dull, and though they would quickly have discovered the worthlessness of their new associates on active service, they could not resist the fascinations of jokes and stories and songs picked up from the professional buffoons of the Roman theatres.

There were two armies on the Rhine frontier: the Lower Army, under Aulus Cæcina, quartered between the region of the Lippe and the neighbourhood of Cologne, the Upper Army, under Silius, about the gorge of the Rhine. The mutiny broke out in the Lower Army; the Upper Army waited to see the result before moving on its own account. Germanicus, as proconsul, was at the time conducting the census of Gaul in the regions of the Meuse and Moselle. Fortunately, the lower army was divided; it was composed of four legions, the twenty-first, the fifth, the first, and the twentieth; the two former began the mutiny. Cæcina was with them when it broke out.

The scenes of the Pannonian mutiny were repeated. Centurions were beaten and killed, Cæcina was powerless to interpose, and in fact seems at first to have lost his head. He surrendered to the soldiers a centurion who had taken refuge at his tribunal. Another centurion at the same time fought his way through the mob; he was Cassius Chærea, destined some twenty years later to rid Rome of Caligula. Rejecting the authority of their officers, the mutineers took the whole organization of the camp into their own hands; there was no suspension of discipline, but perfect order, a fact which increased the gravity of the situation as indicating a settled purpose and skilled ringleaders.

Germanicus left his civil duties to repress the mutineers if possible. He was received sullenly in the camp. Some of the men, seizing his hand under the pretext of kissing it, pressed his fingers into their mouths that he might feel the absence of their teeth; others pointed at their limbs bent with old age.

Germanicus on this occasion, as at the few other times when we get a fair view of him, showed himself a man of courage, resource, and strict uprightness. Before addressing the mutineers, he insisted that they should group themselves in the customary divisions, company by company, battalion by battalion, hoping thus to restore the habit of obedience, but he was disappointed. His first question as to the causes of the mutiny raised a storm. Men stripped to show the scars of wounds, the weals raised by the centurions’ sticks; eager protests were shouted against the prices paid for discharges, the smallness of the pay; the different labours of the camp were mentioned in detail, the digging of fortifications, the collection of fodder, timber, firewood. The most serious outcry was that of the veterans demanding immediate discharge; the immediate payment of the legacy of Augustus was also demanded, and then voices were heard offering to follow Germanicus if he would claim the Empire.

Germanicus at once jumped from his seat and left the tribunal. The soldiers endeavoured to force him back, whereupon he drew his sword and threatened to drive it into his own heart; a wag of the camp offered him his own sword with the observation that it was sharper. Germanicus was hurried off by his friends into his tent, and a consultation was held. Seeing that the fidelity of the Upper Army was insecure, the danger was such that Germanicus decided to yield; a letter was drawn up in the name of the Emperor granting a full discharge to men who had served for twenty years; men who had served for sixteen years were to be put on the reserve of “flagmen” for another four years; the legacy of Augustus was to be paid and doubled.

The soldiers demanded an immediate fulfilment of the terms of the letter, and the tribunes at once set to work to draw up the discharges in authorized form; the payment of the legacies was to be deferred till the winter. This, however, did not satisfy the soldiers of the fifth and twenty-first legions, who insisted on immediate payment, which was met by the private resources of Germanicus and his friends. The first and twentieth then asserted their own claims, and were marched back to their quarters near Cologne, under Cæcina, carrying the treasure chests of their commander-in-chief between the standards. Germanicus then went to the upper army and renewed the military oath of the second, thirteenth, and seventeenth legions without any opposition; the fourteenth legion showed signs of wavering, and was at once offered the discharges and the money.

The beginnings of a mutiny among the “flagmen” who were settled on the Lippe were summarily repressed by the prefect of the camp, who illegally but wisely executed two of the ringleaders.

Germanicus returned from the Upper Army to Cologne, where the recently mutinous legions were quartered, and there received the deputation who had arrived from Rome with the answer to his report. The soldiers, without waiting to hear the message of the deputation, assumed that it was unfavourable, and again broke out into mutiny; they attacked and insulted Plancus, who had come from Rome at the head of the deputation, and he was with difficulty rescued by Germanicus, and sent away under an escort of Gallic cavalry.

The advisers of Germanicus, possibly members of the deputation, then accused him of too great leniency and of imprudence. It would have been much better for him to have secured his personal safety and that of his wife and child by remaining with the Upper Army, which was faithful; and they urged him to send Agrippina and the boy to the Gauls at Trêves.

Agrippina protested that she would not retire, the granddaughter of Augustus was not going to run away from legionaries, she said. The affectionate remonstrances of her husband, however, prevailed, and she started; but when she was seen leaving the camp with an insignificant escort, taking with her “Little Gaiters,” the pet of the soldiers, and when it was understood that she was seeking shelter with foreigners, the temper of the men suddenly changed; they stopped her flight, they implored Germanicus to let her stay. He skilfully seized the opportunity, and addressed them in words which were so successful in reanimating their lost loyalty that he ventured in conclusion to bid them, as a pledge of their renewed fidelity, to set apart the innocent from the guilty, and vindicate their military honour. The revulsion of feeling was so complete that a rough form of trial was at once instituted. The commander of the first legion presided; each soldier was placed before him on a platform in turn, and acquitted or condemned to instant death by the shouts of his companions.

Germanicus then wrote to Cæcina, who was further down the Rhine with the other two mutinous legions, and said that he was coming to punish them, unless they previously punished themselves. Cæcina communicated the tenour of the letter privately to soldiers whom he trusted, and the camp was purged of its delinquents before the arrival of Germanicus. The method was rough, a somewhat indiscriminate massacre, but it was effective.

The troops, now anxious to clear themselves and to appease the spirits of their slaughtered brethren by sending the enemy to join them in the world of ghosts, were led across the Rhine, and a series of campaigns kept them too fully occupied to mutiny for several years.

Tiberius confirmed the concessions made by Germanicus, and granted them to all the mutinous armies alike, both in Pannonia and on the Rhine, but he adopted twenty years as the fixed period for service in the future. Excessive length of service had probably been confined to or felt as a grievance only in the armies in these comparatively wild regions. There was no lack of recruits for service in Syria or parts of the world where life was agreeable, and there was not the same wastage in the settled parts of the Empire; but central Europe possessed no attractions for the Roman soldier, and desperate expedients had been necessary to keep up the strength of the legions. A mutiny was also threatened in Spain, but it was nipped in the bud by the firmness and tact of Marcus Lepidus, whom we know as one of the possible aspirants to the Empire.

The campaigns which followed extended over five years; they were in every respect a repetition of previous campaigns in the same regions. The Roman soldiers occasionally got into difficulties through ignorance of the country, and especially of the tides; but, in spite of some severe reverses, they more than held their own against the Germans; these latter indeed began to quarrel among themselves. The differences between Arminius and members of his family were taken advantage of by Germanicus; further differences seemed likely to declare themselves between Arminius and Maroboduus. Tiberius returned to his previous policy. Germany had been sufficiently exhausted; the Rhine with a line of outposts must be the frontier. Germanicus was recalled and given the more coveted position of proconsul of the Eastern frontier. Drusus, the son of Tiberius, took his place in Germany.

The authorities consulted by Tacitus, among which are included the memoirs of the younger Agrippina, who was born soon after the mutiny somewhere near Cologne, ascribed the recall of Germanicus to the jealousy of Tiberius. The inconsistency which is involved in giving larger powers and greater responsibility to a dangerous rival does not strike them. There was every precedent for dreading the influence of high official position in the East upon the mind of an ambitious proconsul. Sulla had marched upon Rome from the East; the power of Pompeius was founded upon his victories over Mithridates and the pirates; Antonius had been tempted by his power in the East to grasp at universal dominion; even the young Caius Cæsar had succumbed to Oriental fascinations. Had Tiberius really been in dread of Germanicus, he would have kept him in comparative insignificance at Rome; he certainly would not have put the wealth, the resources, and the armies of the East at his disposal.

It was, however, exceedingly desirable to get Agrippina away from the armies on the Rhine, and Germanicus himself at the time of the mutiny seems already to have had misgivings as to her influence, for when the soldiers demanded that she and Caligula should return to the camp, he granted their demand so far as the boy was concerned, but found an excuse of an interesting and domestic nature for removing his wife to a distance. She did not return to the army till the mutiny was finally suppressed, but before the expected event had happened. Even Tacitus admits on more than one occasion that Agrippina was a lady of somewhat excitable temperament, and the virtues to which she laid ostentatious claim, and which were universally ascribed to her, are not incompatible with a restless ambition. She was a devoted wife, and even as a widow maintained a reputation for “impenetrable” chastity. She was the very pink and pattern of Roman matrons, but there was nothing in this to prevent her from attempting to push the fortunes of her husband and children in ways of which the former disapproved. In the last year of the Rhine campaigns of Germanicus she temporarily took command during her husband’s absence. Owing to a reverse which had just been sustained the authorities at headquarters proposed to destroy the bridge across the Rhine, a measure which would have cut off the retreat of the Roman legions as effectively as it would have prevented an invasion of Germans. Agrippina resisted this pusillanimous counsel; she did more, she took up her position at the end of the bridge and praised and thanked the legions as they returned. Nobody can fail to admire the womanly kindness which impelled her to clothe the ragged soldiers and poultice the wounded, but we may pardon Tiberius for complaining that she had forgotten her position when she inspected the companies and stood by the standards, and for seeing something more than an exaggerated maternal pride in the dress of Caligula and the wish that he should be called Cæsar, a something more than mere kindness in her freehanded gifts to the private soldiers.

Agrippina was not an intriguer, she was too boisterous, too self-confident for intrigue; but she was none the less dangerous: a woman of rights, conjugal rights, maternal rights, ancestral rights; an injured woman, the daughter of an injured mother, a woman whose virtues it is pleasantest to contemplate when exhibited in the bosom of another man’s family. Tiberius did not take her sufficiently seriously; on the whole he seems to have been amused by her, only taking action when action was imperatively necessary. He did not take sufficiently into account the power for mischief which a good-hearted wrong-headed woman of this description may become when her grievances have been taken up by others, and when more subtle intriguers have seen in her a useful tool.

It was soon after this exhibition of amazonian propensities that Germanicus was recalled, and doubtless with his own consent. The sequel indicates that his health had suffered in the arduous campaigns on the frontier, and he probably welcomed the exchange to a warmer climate. Tiberius, in recalling him, said that some opportunity of conquest must be left for Drusus, a remark which has been interpreted as an indication of jealousy on Drusus’ behalf; but it can also be interpreted as a humorous compliment to Germanicus himself. There was no occasion to remind him of the claims of Drusus, for the two cousins were united by a strong friendship, as we are informed by the same authorities who envelop us in an atmosphere of hatred, jealousy, envy, and malice.

The political importance of the mutiny on the Rhine was very great; it showed that fifty years of settled government had not done away with the military danger, and that the civil government was still at the mercy of the armies. Tiberius was less than ever inclined to reverse the policy of Augustus, and extend the State at the expense of exaggerating the importance of the soldiers, more than ever disposed to employ diplomacy rather than force. We shall find him as time goes on almost as averse to war as the great Elizabeth, and equally in danger of pursuing peaceful methods too long. He also found it necessary to revise his conception of the possible Imperial constitution, and to accept the hereditary principle as inevitable. The Emperor was not to be above and outside the State; he was to be hereditary stadtholder; but to this extent the dynastic tendency must be accepted, and not the least of the responsibilities of the reigning Emperor was to be the provision for an orderly succession and a capable successor. Hence we shall find Tiberius following the example of Augustus in training members of his family for the burden of public duty, and in ensuring the order of precedence by successive adoptions. It was solely owing to the loyalty and fine ambition of Germanicus that the mutiny had not resulted in a civil war.

In theory hereditary succession to official responsibilities is demonstrably absurd, but in practice there is nothing so satisfactory as a dynasty. The mutual jealousies and intrigues of aspirants are far more dangerous to a State than the incompetence of the temporary ruler, and the qualification of birth, though theoretically ridiculous, has the merit of being a qualification that everybody can understand. In the states imagined by philosophers and radical politicians the eminent virtues of eminent men are always so conspicuous that meritorious “Amurath to Amurath succeeds” by the will of the people without break or intermission and in obedience to a law of nature, for, given fair play, the capable and trustworthy men must always find themselves at the top of the society which is blessed with their presence; but in the states which unlearned men know of there is no agreement of opinion as to what constitutes capacity or trustworthiness or political virtue, and in a general scramble for power the least scrupulous has at least an equal chance with the most virtuous. The dynast is in fact a social necessity, and the larger the area of the State which is governed in his name, the more necessary his existence. Society is most secure when the highest position is reserved for those who possess an indisputable qualification. Men may argue about the particular compound of meritorious characteristics which they wish to see exemplified in their ruler, and in the search for the perfect man find anarchy, but the qualification of birth is not a thing exposed to many varieties of opinion. Better on the whole the incapable or the overcapable dynast than an uncertain successor.

Tiberius, by modifying his prejudices on the dynastic question, averted a catastrophe, which fell upon the Roman Empire as soon as the line of the Cæsars was extinguished in the person of Nero. Then the armies of Spain set up one Emperor, and the armies of Gaul another, and the armies of Syria a third; for two years a reversion to anarchy seemed inevitable. The perpetual intrigues of jealous ladies ambitious for their sons or husbands did not contribute to the pleasures of existence in the Imperial households, but they were less evil than the disruption of the Empire or the emergence of military adventurers. Tiberius sacrificed his domestic comfort to the interests of the State; he did not know that he was at the same time sacrificing his posthumous reputation; he did not divine the existence of the memoirs of Agrippina.

XIII

Tacitus and Tiberius

To tell the story of the reign of Tiberius by minutely tracking Tacitus through his manifold inconsistencies and clever insinuations, though entertaining to the investigator, would prove wearisome to the reader; but a somewhat careful examination of the Emperor’s methods of Government during the first year of his administration will spare us lengthy explanations in dealing with subsequent events.

Tacitus and Suetonius alike seem to have collected their information from three chief sources, private memoirs, popular rumours, in which are to be included pasquinades and the topical songs of actors, and the official record of the transactions of the Senate. The first two sources of information are obviously not of a trustworthy character; memoirs are not to be relied on even in these days of rapid transmission of news and wide publicity. An historian who should essay to compile the biography of a public man of today, even from the daily and weekly journals which are filled with personal gossip about those upon whom the attention of the public is fixed, would find such a mass of contradictions to deal with that he would abandon his task in despair; and yet the matter thus afforded to his inspection is day by day subject to correction. Memoirs written by an irresponsible person in his private study are even more likely to contain perversions of fact, to omit, to exaggerate, to represent exclusively the personal bias of the writer.

It is hardly necessary to add that loose anecdotes and the buffooneries of actors do not constitute evidence; it is, indeed, difficult to understand how Suetonius, a presumably grave schoolmaster, could quote snatches of popular songs as serious history, and repeat the filthy gossip of the Roman streets.

But the evidence of public documents such as the record of the transactions of the Senate is unimpeachable; and this evidence, whenever Tacitus gives it us, is invariably such as to compel us to believe that Tiberius was a wise and moderate ruler.

So overwhelming is this evidence, that the very creators of the monstrous figure, which passes for that of Tiberius, had serious misgivings; whenever they examined the public records, they found the lustful, rapacious, bloodthirsty tyrant of their imaginations acting on the strictest lines of constitutional government. How were they to reconcile their creation with acknowledged and indeed indisputable facts? It seemed to them that there was a simple way out of the difficulty, namely, to ascribe to the monster the yet further monstrosity of deep dissimulation. The fascination of the style of Tacitus is such that this astounding solution of the difficulty has been all but universally accepted; but even if we accept it, we have to ask ourselves whether profound dissimulation of this kind is not a quality to be desired in a ruler rather than the reverse; whether in fact the general sum of wickedness in the world would not be diminished almost to vanishing point, were we to accept as a rule of life the duty of acting virtuously from motives of profound dissimulation up to the age of seventy, in order that we may enjoy unbridled licentiousness and cruelty for the remainder of our lives. This is the practical result of believing that Tiberius never did a good action except from motives of profound dissimulation. We shall find ourselves, when we come to the events of the year A.D. 30, faced with an insoluble problem, which even the discovery of the missing book of Tacitus might fail to clear for us; but the only solution of that problem which has as yet been offered to us is contrary to the known laws of human nature. Men do not of forethought and design practise virtue for seventy years in order that they may indulge in vice at a time of life when they are oftenest incapable of taking exercise except in a bath-chair.

The fable of the dissimulation of Tiberius grew out of two facts, his naturally reserved nature, and the mysterious tragedy which clouded the last seven years of his life. Of the nature of that tragedy, and of the question whether he was not more sinned against than sinning, it will be more convenient to speak when we reach it in the order of events; but of the personal characteristics which tempted men to ascribe to him numerous unamiable qualities, and which gave credence to the cruel insinuations of his private enemies, it is not inconvenient to speak at the present moment.

The silent man is always terrible, and Tiberius was a silent man; even when he spoke, he spoke slowly; his prepared speeches were uttered with deliberation, and it was not always easy to follow their meaning; he was in fact apt to speak above the heads of his audience, and to ascribe to them knowledge and trains of thought which they did not share with himself. His obscurity was the more alarming because it seemed to be premeditated, for when he was unexpectedly stirred by some strong emotion, his words were rapid enough and clear enough and incisive enough to make such of his hearers as had reason to dread his displeasure feel very uncomfortable. Given time for preparation, he studied the statesman’s art of non-committal oratory; he felt his responsibilities, and was so anxious to avoid injudicious expressions as to be sometimes unintelligible. The contrast between this studied reticence and his occasional vigorous invective, or biting sarcasm, was so marked as to suggest perpetually smouldering fires. Sometimes his sense of humour tempted him to an unseemly display, as when the citizens of Troy sent a belated deputation to condole with him on the death of his son, and he returned the compliment by expressing his sympathy with their grief at the loss of an eminent fellow-citizen--Hector. He was contemptuous of the arts by which popularity is gained; conscious of rectitude of purpose, and of a generally benevolent temper towards his immediate attendants and the people of Rome, he never pretended to take pleasure in things for which he had no taste in order to win favour. Simple in his tastes, inexpensive in his pleasures, he reserved his money for great emergencies, and forbore to squander it upon those sumptuous shows in which the Roman crowds delighted. It was this severity of temperament in Tiberius which Augustus endeavoured unsuccessfully to modify, himself a man naturally disposed to bask in the popular favour and genuinely enjoying the lighter side of life. We shall have to record pleasing instances of the benevolent and wise liberality of Tiberius on occasions of great distress, but the common herd is more ready to bestow its affections upon those who share its everyday amusements than upon those who provide relief for its exceptional tribulations; indeed, the man who abstains from the pleasures of others, inevitably, though unwillingly and unconsciously, assumes the position of a censor of morals, for the man who cannot enjoy with others is often unjustly credited, even in private life, with a veiled contempt for the lovers of innocent diversions. Again, seeing events from a point of view which commanded a large horizon, Tiberius did not feel the sting of words or actions which appeared to less large natures necessarily unendurable, and when he forbore to express resentment his silence was construed as an indication not of indifference, but of politic self-restraint. Men do not readily inflict humiliation on themselves by imputing to an enemy unconsciousness of their malice or contempt for its smallness; it is more satisfactory to believe that the wound has been felt, and that the victim is brooding over his revenge. The reserve of Tiberius was the more imposing because his personal appearance was in itself awe-inspiring; the tall, gaunt old man, with his large eyes, his thin lips, his bush of hair, his stooping shoulders, and, as his age increased, his fiery complexion, was a figure calculated to inspire terror, when the revelation of some unexpected meanness, some more than ordinarily unjust interpretation of his actions called forth one of those rare bursts of passion and scorching vituperation. But a man may thus terrify without possessing any propensity to cruelty; mere native superiority is terrifying, and the more so when its possessor is one whose powers are vague and believed to be unlimited.

Tiberius is not the only statesman who has underestimated the damaging effects of unpopularity; within certain limits a statesman cannot afford to be unpopular, and impairs his own usefulness if he raises an irrational prejudice against himself. There are times and occasions when it is the duty of a statesman to face public opinion, and to persist in an unpopular policy, but it is never the duty of a statesman to excite personal animosity; in so far as a public man stirs unnecessary animosities he is a failure, for it is only a rare combination of circumstances that reveals to a community the real worth of a man who has the unfortunate knack of making himself disliked. On the other hand, the worthlessness of many a man who has achieved great popularity by the unconscious flattery of the weaknesses of his fellow citizens, has often escaped notice, because the events by which alone he could be tested never happened to occur in his lifetime, or during his tenure of power.

Conscious of the strictest rectitude of purpose, contemptuous of the judgment of the crowd, equally contemptuous of the small aims and narrow outlook of even the more cultivated Roman Senators, shrewd, practical and intellectual, but not emotional or sentimental, impatient of weakness, intolerant of smallness, Tiberius was not a man to attract sympathy, or to be appreciated beyond the narrow circle of a few intimates, who understood his real aspirations. Augustus was a less noble man and a less intellectual man, but he was able to do work that Tiberius could never have done, because he was more in touch with the men through whom he had to work; where Augustus was guided by a subtle and unconscious sympathy, Tiberius practised the lessons drawn from observation and reason. The result was in most cases the same, but with this difference, that Tiberius ignored those things which are incapable of rational analysis and mathematical expression, Augustus understood them; while Tiberius refused to allow altars to be built in his honour, his sturdy common sense not permitting him to see anything supernatural in his position, Augustus, with a truer instinct, allowed himself to be canonized in his lifetime. Tiberius offended a popular sentiment by his rejection of divine honours; Augustus by his acceptance added not only to his own security, but to the strength of the Empire.

An examination of the political transactions of Tiberius for the year 15 A.D., and of the account which Tacitus gives of them, forms at once a good introduction to the study of subsequent events, and sets in a clear light the policy of the Emperor, the tendencies of the Senate, and the character of the impartiality claimed for himself by the historian.

Augustus had been dead for four months when the Senate met on the first of January to exchange compliments with the Emperor, and to inaugurate the policy of the coming year; the formal business of installing the officials in their chairs was gone through on this occasion, and all the ceremonies handed down from the Republican times were scrupulously observed.

In addition to the routine business, the Senate offered a compliment to Tiberius; they wished him to accept and adopt permanently the title of “Father of his Country,” which they had given to Augustus. Tiberius refused it. Suetonius has preserved a few lines of the speech in which he intimated his refusal: “If, however, you shall at any time find reason to mistrust my character, or my devotion to yourselves--and I pray heaven that death may save me from such a change in your opinion of me before it comes to pass--this title will add nothing to my fame, while it will convict you either of precipitation in conferring it upon me now, or of levity in forming a contrary opinion hereafter.” The concluding sentence suggests a possible touch of irony, but it does not give any ground for the assumption that Tiberius foresaw his own unpopularity, or was conscious of being unworthy of the honour, as is suggested by Suetonius. Tiberius despised the empty compliment; possibly he was irritated by the offer, but the tyrant who would think it worth his while to deprecate a compliment of this kind, because he was conscious of his unworthiness, or deliberately proposed to make himself unworthy, is rare in the annals of tyranny.