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TIBERIUS CAESAR

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TIBERIUS

O/ESAR

BY G P BAKER

Author of "Sulla, the Fortunate^*

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NEW YORK
DODD-MEAD & COMPANY

MCMXXIX

BY l&gt;tHH, MUAl&gt; ANM* &lt; OMI*ASV, I

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GVLIELMO
GARTHWAITIO
DVNELMIAE
BARONETTO
EQVITI COR
ONAE BELGICAE
PTVM E ST
QVI VT GRATIAS PATRIAE
SVAE AGAT SALVTEMQVE
COMMVNEM CIVITATIS
ADIUVET STVDIA HISTORIAE
GVBERNATIONIS ORIGIN IS
OVE ET AVCTVS DIGNITATIS
v REGIAE FOVET.

PREFACE

The reign of Tiberius, the second of the Roman em
perors, was a political battlefield on which great issues
.were lost and won. More were lost than were won, . . ,
They were issues not altogether unrelated to those that
trouble us today.

The story of Tiberius does not afford any direct his
torical parallel with our own time. Its parallel if it is
to have one lies a generation or two ahead of us. It jithe.
tale of what happened to a Dictatorship when it was at
last established. * , * The Dictatorship established by
Gaius Julius Caesar is the only one that ever permanently
endured. It lasted, in effect ? for eighteen hundred years*
No Greek Dictatorship was ever permanent* It is only
the successors of Gesar who give us any illustration of
what is likely to happen to a Dictatorship which per
manently establishes itself. * . . And we see it neces
sarily transformed by degrees into a monarchy.

Tiberius was an active agent in giving the temporary
rule of Caesar,, and the hazardous principatc of Augustus,
permanence as a reality hardly again to be shaken*
" The nature of monarchy is not to be found by study
ing it exclusively in its later forms. We must wrestle
with its problems while it was still new and fluid, and
was being gradually given form by the impact of events.
We need to apprehend what precise kind of force causes
monarchy to become hereditary rather than elective or
co-optative; what kind of necessity gives it perma-

vll

VU1

PREFACE

nence; we need to see it in its first stages, gathering those
features which afterwards seem, through their f amil^
iarity, to be natural to it, but which were, of course,
acquired or rather battered into it.

For this Roman monarchy which began with the
Dictatorship of Cassar or, we may truly say, with the
tribuneship of Gaius Gracchus, through the Dictator
ship of Sulla was the origin of modern European
monarchy. Its direct succession lasted until in 1453 the
Turks overthrew it. Its succession through the Holy
Roman Empire endured into the days of Napoleon. Its
derivatives, spreading through Marbod and Irmin,
founded the monarchies of England, France, Spain,
Russia and Scandinavia. Before Caesar, Northern Europe
was ruled by chieftains such as still survive at the head
of the Scottish clans.

A concrete story is always better than a theoretical
dissertation. The reader can see for himself the current
and whirlpool of events. The real truth is after all never
entirely theoretical; more than half of it is a story which,
since mankind has written it, must perforce stand in
all its arbitrariness as the first part of the book whicli
we today have to continue, and later ages have to finish,*,
in accordance with the indicated plot* . , . If anyone
should complain that the story of Tibcidus leaves a good
deal unfinished and undecided, K may be reminded that
it is part of a serial story which is continued in our next.

But the interest of Tiberius is not exclusively polit
ical. He has always been, and he remains, the greatest
psychological problem in history. He is Hamlet and
Lear and Othello rolled into one; and he is more than

PREFACE ix

this. We have a mass of evidence about Tiberius that
for nearly nineteen hundred years baffled any attempt
to understand him. We can easily construct two men
out of the material, both of which are perfectly cred
ible: one, a gruff, upright soldier-statesman, austere,
just, capable; the other, a monster of cruelty and wick
edness. It is when we have to consider him as he was, as
one man, that the trouble begins. Some of the evidence
can be read in more ways than one. . . Hence, there
probably always will be room for a certain amount of
divergence of opinion concerning the real truth. . . .
In that great library of perfectly frank confessions
which doubtless exists in heaven, we shall find some
reading which ought to compensate us for arduous per
severance in a sometimes trying world.

A good many things in this book are today, however,
matters of course. It is no longer necessary to argue the
question of the main moral accusations brought against
Tiberius or of his general character. There have been
a very large number of far worse men; and the modern
student of Tacitus and Suetonius is much more disposed
to lose himself in admiration of die most brilliant par
tisan pamphlet and the most amusing collection of gossip
ever written in Latin than to congratulate those authors
on the cold impartiality of their picture.

And as regards the story apart from its function
as a portion of the history of politics if we can let it
strike home to our own minds,, so that we thoroughly
grasp the nature of the lesson it implies^ we shall at any
rate make certain that whatsoever may happen to us,
no such deadlock shall chance to modern civilisation*

x PREFACE

^.^^^^..v^^&gt;^^&gt;^-^lv^-^-^s^.^^&gt;-^-^^

The noble legend of Jonah enshrines the eternal truth
that the chief office of prophecy is not to anticipate the
future, but to make sure that we shall not anticipate
it. The truly successful prophet is a false prophet.

G. P. B.
Elmer, Sussex,
1928.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

PREFACE vii

I THE TRIUMPH or AUGUSTUS i

II THE CAUSES AND RESULTS OF THE WORLD-
STATE . , . 26

III THE CONQUEST OF GERMANY 50

IV THE SURVIVAL OF JULIA S THIRD HUSBAND . . 74
V THE REVOLT OF THE NORTH 99

VI TIBERIUS QESAR . 124

VII THE MILITARY MUTINIES

VIII GERMANICUS

IX JULIA S DAUGHTER 197

X Tim ADVBNT or THIS TUSCAN . . , . ,221

XI Tim ENTANGLEMENT OF JULIA S CHILDREN:

AND THE FALL OF THE TUSCAN .... 246"

XU THE OLD MAN ov CAPRI ....... 270

XIII Tim LEGACY OF TIBERIUS

INDEX

ILLUSTRATION

Family Portrait: Augustus, Livia, Tiberius and Julia

Frontispiece

MAPS AND DIAGRAMS

The World as Known to the Romans 26

The Rhine Frontier 5

The Illyrian Frontier 9**

Genealogy of the Imperial House of Caesar . . .220

CHAPTER I

THE TRIUMPH OF AUGUSTUS

ON the 1 3th of August, in the year 29 B.C., a car,
drawn by four horses abreast, stood in the Italian sun
shine just outside Rome. On the right-hand and the left-
hand horses rode two young boys of fourteen and thir
teen years old. One was the nephew of Augustus, the
son of his sister Octavia Marcus Marcellus. The other
was his step-son, Tiberius Claudius Nero. ... So Ti
berius enters upon the stage of history to what effect,
there may have been speculation in the minds of on
lookers, even then.

They were part of a tremendous procession which The
early that day and for three whole days began to urge n m
its slow length along from the Campus Martins, through
the Triumphal Gate, round the Palatine Hill, and up the
Sacred Way, flashing with gold and with silver, ablaze
with rich oriental colour, fluttering with streamers-
headed by ranks of stately senators, in purple-edged
mantle$&gt; followed up by trumpeters sounding their
yards of brass rolling cars filled with trophies white,
garlanded oxen, golden-horned, and the guilds of
priests carrying the sacred vessels- stalwart Illyrians,
swarthy Egyptians, fair-haired Gauls scarlet-clad
lictors with fasces wreathed in laurel bands of musi
cians and singers in slow, measured march, with stately

TIBERIUS CAESAR

pauses, massed ranks of glittering legionaries, bronzed
with Egyptian suns and Cilician winds, among whom
were borne the gilded military eagles. . . . And, at the
front of these, standing in his four-horsed triumphal
car, followed by the magistrates of the republic, the
slender figure, pale bleak face, wistful eyes and almost
girlish lips of Gaius Julius Ciassar Octavianus, the deli
cate main-spring of all this might. It was the Triumph
of Augustus.

Its . There was never another such Triumph as that of

Augustus. 1 It was the golden dawn of a new age, after
the stormy night of twenty years of civil war, during
which the breath of great men had been blown, away
upon the blast. . . Antony and Cleopatra would
have been borne in chains in that procession, had they
not seen to it that this should never be. The ship-prows
of Actium, piled on their cars, and the modelled image
of a queen, replaced the man and the woman who had
fled from the struggle. And if any ghosts walked at
mid-day in that procession, they were the ghosts of
Brutus and Cassius, and Marcus Cato, and the sons of
Pompeius and the grandsons of Sulla, wearing spiritual
chains of defeat. And last of all, perhaps, invisible yet
ever present, the vast wraith of Caesar die Dictator,
who had planned and organized and directed and
brought to pass all the series of events which ended
with the Triumph of Augustus. But all had gone, and
Octavianus remained. It was he who rolled, behind
the high-stepping milk-white horses, through crowded
streets and packed Forum, past Vesta, past Castor, past

1 It lasted three days* first the lllyrian procession, then that for the ioa-
fight at Actium, then, grandest of all, the Egyptian procession.

THE TRIUMPH OF AUGUSTUS 3

the bankers offices that lined the Forum, past the tem
ple of Saturn, to the Clivus Capitolinus, and the high-
set fane of Dios Pater on the Capitoline Hill. ... As
the procession began to enter the Porta Triumphalis Its
it passed the building, still in course of erection, which
a few years later Augustus was to dedicate to the dear
memory of Marcellus. ... As it swerved round the
temple of Saturn to breast the Clivus Capitolinus, it
passed the spot where, later yet, was to rise the Trium
phal Arch of Tiberius.

When, clad in his purple tunic patterned over with
flowers, and his gold-embroidered robe, Octavianus had
dropped his bough of laurel upon the statue of the god;
when the sacring was done, and the gifts devoted such
gifts as no man before had given the fun of the fair

began. The circuses and the theatres were open, the he

r . t i it- i New World

actors professional and amateur the charioteers and

the gladiators were ready; and the new world dawned.

Augustus as he became two years later must have
been glad when the shows were over, and men could
return to the serious, interesting business of life. He

never cared much for the merely decorative. It must
have given him pleasure when he superintended the

; closing of the temple of Janus. The Roman world was

tgt peace. He can hardly have failed to inspect the doors of
of Janus with curiosity. If the hinges had been kept

toiled, the Romans had certainly shown an optimism
unequalled in human history. But the doors, whether
oiled or rusty, were drawn to; and men could walk

TIBERIUS C^SAR

round the temple, and gaze upon something that the
grandfathers of their grandfathers had never seen a
closed temple of Janus. War for the time being was
ended.

A wave of hope and aspiration for the future was
arising. When in 27 B. c. Augustus began in ear
nest to shape the constitutional outline of the monarchy,
his thoughts were already dwelling upon the young
The Troy Marcellus as the possible successor who should follow
2 him. It was in this year that he celebrated the Troy
Game, that ancient festival of the Roman youth which
was believed to go back to the days of ./Eneas. The two
youths chosen to lead it were Marcus Marcellus and
Tiberius Claudius Nero.

In this same year, moreover, Augustus mentioned to
Virgil that he would appreciate some expression of his
powers. The great poet, with sympathetic imagination,
understood the thoughts that were in the mind of Au
gustus. The work which he devised for him was nothing
less than the JEneid, that banner of Roman patriotism
and Roman faith. . . . Into the fifth book he intro
duced a description of this very Troy Game itself, 1 which

3 2Eneid v. 54^603. He draws a vivid picture of the ride-past of the
youths, crowned with garlands, their necks clasped with torques of gold (the
"twisted gold" famous in northern poetry, centuries later,) There were
three parties, led by young Priam, by Atys (ancestor of the Atii from whom
the maternal grandfather of Augustus was descended) and by lulus (from whom
came the Julians of his maternal grandmother s family.) The three parties
each divide into two groups, which charge and retreat, and ride in intersecting
circles, and finally blend again and ride in harmony, a kind of mounted mili
tary dance which, it is easy to see, might be extremely graceful, and inade&gt; for
its perfect success, great demands upon the boyish leaders who conducted it.

THE TRIUMPH OF AUGUSTUS 5

Marcellus and Tiberius captained imaginatively dis
guised as a description o the occasion on which JEneas vir ^
first held it in Italy; and through the tears of remem- describes
brance and hope for the future which their sons evoked Ga me roy
in the exiled Troians, he expressed those same feelings as
men felt them in this similar dawn of new days.

It was, of course, Virgil himself who imposed this
touching symbolism upon, the Troy Game held in the
year in which Octavianus became Augustus; but his
quick and half -prophetic sympathy expressed feelings
which were real enough, and which certainly dwelt in
the heart of Augustus. Such a re-founding, not only
of the State, but of great families out of which alone
a state can be built, was his deep ambition. . . . The
choice of the leaders for the celebration of the Troy
Game always bore a peculiar meaning. The appoint- Marcellus
ment of Marcellus and Tiberius was equivalent to their Tiberius
selection as the two most promising young men of their
day, of whom Augustus had the highest hopes, and for
whom he marked out the greatest careers. . . . The tale
told in this book is the story of what came of these hopes,
and those careers,

Tiberius was the step-son of Augustus. He had been
four years old when the divorce between his mother
Livia Drusilla, and his father Tiberius Claudius Nero
had been effected, Augustus had married Livia with such
promptitude that her second son, Nero Claudius Dru- Augustus
*sus, was born after her re-marriage. There was, natu-
rally, talk on this theme; and the suspicion th^t Drusus

TIBERIUS OESAR

was Augustus s own son could hardly remain perma
nently unknown to Tiberius as he grew older. The sur
mise, whether right or not, seemed to gain in likelihood
from the fondness which Augustus always showed for
Drusus,

Besides his very unusual name, this somewhat ques
tionable paternity and the special affection of Augustus,
Drusus differed in a marked way from Tiberius in tem
perament and character. He had gifts of outward charm
and facile accomplishment which might, indeed, have
come from his mother s family, the men of which were
Drusus distinguished by their high standard of manners and in
telligence, but which might as easily have belonged to a
son of Augustus. On the other hand ? Drusus showed an
ability which perhaps rose above the normal level of
the Octavii, among whom Augustus stood out as art
astonishing exception. All the undoubted descendants
of Augustus were more or less fools of the true Octa-
vian stamp. . . . Finally, Drusus certainly did carry
the hereditary bad luck of the Liviaa men- 1 . . Be
tween these neatly balanced scales of probability^ the
paternity of Drusus will always remain uncertain.

Tiberius himself ran true to type. He was nine ytaw
Youth ^ w ken kk * at kcr ^ ie &lt;i and he was scat to his mother,
* . atl d so passed under the care of Augustus, Nine years

i erms

emphasize the characteristics he had by nature and by
descent. The lonely little boy who went from the human

Lrw however, was not of genuint Uvian Druibn descent. Her fih*r was
a Claudius adopted into the Livian gem, None the lew, the ill luck of tit? i)ri
haunted the name; and out of all those who in &lt;ma way or another came m bw
it, few escaped violent or unfortunate deaths* Th reader will liml four &lt;ii#ctt)i
persons named Drusus m the present volume, and may judge for himwlf,

THE TRIUMPH OF AUGUSTUS 7

f**"**^****-**^-^ ^,^^^^^&gt;*&*^*^^-^+^&lt;^&gt;4r*^ ^^^ **&lt;^****^****^~~**~***i*^****~^

companionship of perhaps a commonplace father to
that large, brilliant and by comparison inhuman world
in which Livia and Augustus reigned was just old enough
to feel the import of the change. He met his difficulties
with the same sort of unbending, almost morose courage
which in later life he habitually showed.

There were very obvious reasons why Augustus could
not take charge of all the duties of his new ward towards
the elder Tiberius. The nine-year-old boy had the
strength of character to face an audience and himself to
deliver the funeral oration for his father. The effort may
not have been a masterpiece; but a boy of nine who can
give any kind of public address on a formal occasion is
very much out of the common run* He superintended
his father s funeral games. Augustus and Livia saw to it

that he had the money to do it well , * - And this He

. ; , - i r i becomes

power of carrying out, without excess or detect, the a war( j
work Augustus gave him to do, was the means by
which he rose first to fame, and then to empire.

Though the first contact between Tiberius and
Augustus was thus attended by that touch of the awk
ward which never quite left their relationship, we have
no ground for thinking of Augustus as anything but
the most conscientious of step-fathers. The young Ti
berius received a sound education in all the subjects
literary, legal and military appropriate to his future
career. He was physically a fine youth, delicate of fea
ture, white of skin, with the thickness of hair at the
back of his head which was hereditary with the Clau-
dians* He was sensitive, as most highly-bred men are*
. . He would have registered a rose-leaf under twelve

8 TIBERIUS CAESAR

mattresses as swiftly as any princess In a fairy tale, , , ,
Physical sensitiveness can be commanded by training,
and Tiberius grew up a robust man. The sensitiveness
of mind which goes with it is harder to manage, and he
scarcely received the kind of education which made the
best of him in that respect: he remained shy, a little

His gauche, with the fastidiousness which shows itself in

Character * . i* 1-1 r

apparently inconsistent ways, as a dislike or sentiment,

an appreciation of poetry, an intolerance of fools, a
sympathy with simplicity; he distinguished so accurately
between those oppositcs which men habitually confuse,
that he puzzled his critics. He knew the difference be
tween courage and swagger, or between candour and
impertinence, and never made a mistake about them.
He put out few f eclex-s for sympathy, and repelled rather
than, welcomed advances. He was difficult to know. He
guarded himself with some care; and those who did not
care to penetrate the barrier, he allowed to remain out
side.

Tiberius had a spiritual Capri in his mind from the
first, He retired to his fastness at* the least provocation-
He had a very strong sense of justice, an impartiality
which had no respect for persons-* not even for him
self. Therefore in turn he was exceptionally quick to
discern injustice to himself, and before it he withdrew
into aloofness* - * * These arc the strange tricks which
sensitiveness plays with the soul of man*

Solid capacity, grounded on industry and good sense
rather than on brillianceremoteness and individual
ism acuteness of perception and impersonality of jtuig*

THE TRIUMPH OF AUGUSTUS

ment made him a good leader of men. To those who met
him on this ground he was a cool, impartial, deliberate
man, seeing things sanely and seeing them whole; just,
exacting, an accurate judge, a generous but somewhat
disagreeable chief; the kind of man who would give his
shirt but not his sympathy. It was a character useful
rather than decorative.

None of the oddities of Fate has been stranger than
that which has overtaken the name Nero. It was the
name of one of the greatest families of the noble Clau- The
dian house. Its repute was never tarnished by those who ^^
legitimately held it. The fame of Gaius Claudius Nero, Claudian
who made that great march to the Metaurus which erones
meant the downfall of Hasdrubal and the ultimate de
feat of Hannibal, never died out. But all the fame of
the Nerones has been overlaid and hidden by the infamy
of a man who was not a Nero, nor a Claudius at all,
the emperor "Nero", whose true name was Lucius Domi-
tius Ahenobarbus. And nothing that any man can now
do will put that injustice right, nor restore to the family
of Nero the honour of which it has been robbed by a
Domitius* The emperor Nero was no Nero. But Tibe
rius was a Nero; he bore the name of right; in his veins
flowed the blood of the consul who outwitted Hannibal
and defeated HasdrubaL And he too was a soldier and
a statesman, touched with that intense and vivid charac
ter which haunted the Claudian name.

TIBERIUS OESAR

Augustus

His

earlier

marriages

Wise as Augustus was, there was a streak of shallow-
ness in him. He owed to it his power and his prestige.
Because of it he could endure a corresponding streak
of shallowness in mankind at large, and could speak
and feel with other men on their own ground without
effort, and could manage them and make them werk
together. He expanded with the growth of his fortunes:
but for all his increase in wisdom, he still lacked those
last virtues which spring of ripe human quality, long
in maturing, and bred in very old families. . . . lie
never pretended to like Tiberius. Himself a man who
loved crowds, and conversation, and was spacious
rather than deep, he did not sympathize with the nar
rower, deeper, more complex and eccentric character
of his step-son. He viewed with some astonishment and
repulsion the slow, brooding intelligence, the reticence,
the fastidiousness, which always seemed to fall into the
interstices of his own mind, and with an unaccountable
accuracy to miss meeting it point to point.

Livia was the third wife of Augustus. The first had
hardly counted; if he had ever lived with her the episode
was short, and had left little trace behind, His second
marriage, with Scribonia, had been a much more serious
affair; but still it had been for the most part a diplo
matic marriage. L. Scribonius Libo was the father-in-law
and chief supporter of Sextus Pompcius, in the old clays
of the civil wars. Augustus he had been only Octa-
vianus then had married his sister Scribonia in order
to prevent young Pompeius from drifting into t!ic arms

THE TRIUMPH OF AUGUSTUS n

of Marcus Antonius. A year later the necessity was over;
and with a promptitude which must be counted against
him, he divorced her on the very day on which was born
his only child, Julia of whom we shall hear in detail
before the career of Tiberius is over. Under such cir- Birth
cumstances as these Julia was conceived and brought

into the world.

His marriage with Livia had been his real marriage
that with which his heart (and he had a heart) went;
certainly that with which went his tastes, sympathies
and personal affections. It was a genuine grief to Au
gustus that his marriage with Livia was childless. That
was the point where his luck, otherwise inexhaustible,
gave out. He would have liked to see a son of Livia and
himself growing up to able and vigorous manhood to
succeed him in the principatc. But none was ever born.

Livia was a great lady of the old aristocratic stamp.
She was a famous beauty, and a woman of dominating
fharacter. The great women of the aristocracy lasted
longer than the great men: and Livia, who had only Livia
the mild and protected court of Augustus as a circle
for her activities, was strong enough to have fought her
way through the fierce competition of the late republi
can age when Cresar was in his prime. In imperial Rome
she dominated the social world as an eagle among the
chickens. Under her vigorous rule, the fast and free life
of the republican age went definitely out of fashion.
She and Augustus set the example of a simple and faith
ful married life, undisturbed by scandal or agitation,
between two people who consulted one another s feel
ings, and took trouble to work in harmony together.

TIBERIUS CAESAR

Attitude

Augustus

towards

his

step-sons

Livia was of course powerful enough to have forced
her two sons to the front. How far she exercised her
power is one of the unsolved problems of history. If
she relied on the normal course of events to work for
them, she judged well; but some of that cool reason
ableness and moderation of temper which surrounded
Augustus himself like a soothing atmosphere, may have
extended itself to Livia and quieted her energy. It was
natural enough that Julia should take the first place in
the thoughts of Augustus. Livia does not seem to have
fought against this natural preference. Augustus re-
ponded to her restraint with an equal consideration for
her own affections. Though he hardly cared for Tiberius,
he was sincerely fond of Drusus, and to both he was
carefully just, and even generous. It is not improbable
that he recognized their importance as a second string
to his bow. If Julia died, they would be amongst his
nearest heirs. It says much for the court of Augustus
that for many years we can trace no savage intrigue, no
desperate competition between the child of Scribonia
and the children of Livia. It was, indeed, hard for any
thing savage or desperate to subsist near Augustus. He
dissolved all human emotions into quiet and rational
terms.

Julia was thus a person of importance. Round her
revolved all the plans for the future which Augustus
had in mind, plans by no means a matter of barren
ambition, but involving the fate of a great civiliza
tion, t , , There was, indeed, no possibility of a woman

Main THE TRIUMPH OF AUGUSTUS 13

reigning in succession to Augustus; for whosoever

u* stepped into his shoes would need to be head of that

x9great military guild which controlled the Roman world;

but it was almost sure that her husband and her chil-

would reign.

Julia herself must have been acutely conscious of this
side of the case. She would have been more than mortal Julia
if her thoughts had not dwelt a good deal upon her own
sex and its significance. . . . She was ten years old in
year of Augustus triumph. She was twelve when
the Troy Game was held. She was only fourteen when
Augustus formally adopted Marcellus as his heir and

successor, and gave him Julia as the sign and seal of his Her

t , - marriage

elevation. to Marcus

All this was too early and sweet a spring to last. . , . Marcellus
Augustus, of course, may have had his reasons, which we

tXcannot now divine. The handsome young bridegroom,

the son of Octavia, and the charming and clever young

bride, the daughter of Augustus, were first cousins. Julia

Aiad been very carefully brought up. But the atmos-

k^phere was not quite healthy. Whatsoever the reasons of

Augustus, the event seems to have been forced too early.

fj Both the young people had a dangerous touch of pre
cocity. All the brilliance of Marcellus cannot conceal
the fact that Augustus* choice of a successor was an
extraordinarily hazardous one, a gamble with fortune.
Not only was Marcellus quite tmtried, but there was
nothing in his immediate ancestry to give any especial
hope that he would be a remarkable man. Though the
remoter Marcclli had produced many individuals of
great ability, this was no reliable foundation on which

i 4 TIBERIUS CAESAR

to build, . * . It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that
a very great deal of domestic sentiment perhaps too
much entered into the proceedings of Augustus.

The golden dream lasted two years. Then, in spite of
Death of all the medical skill of the day, Marcellus died, and at
s i xteen Julia was kf* a vejt T youthful widow. It was
a great upset: but more of a family than of a political
disaster. Augustus himself delivered the funeral oration.
When the tactful Virgil read aloud his lines in praise of
the young Marcellus, Octavia fainted. It was all very
distressing. The succession to the principate, however,
was a matter which would be fought out by grimmer
methods than marriages and faintings. The angular
Tiberius entered upon his first public office, the quxs-
torship, this year.

vnr

There is something characteristic and appropriate in
the earliest work of Tiberius: it was mainly legal. He
practised with success as an advocate in the imperial
court, and before the Senate. He received two special

commissionerships which he seems to have conducted
steps i i i

of Tiberius with equal success; one was an inquiry into the grain

supply; the other an inspection of the slave-prisons.
Reports had been received that the proprietors of these
prisons were in the habit of kidnapping and detaining
free persons, and also that they gave refuge to military
deserters. ... All of which, no doubt, was extremely
dull, compared with the career of Marcellus: but prob
ably Tiberius enjoyed it. It was the kind of work in
which he would have been interested* He also had his

THE TRIUMPH OF AUGUSTUS 15

first experience of military service in Spain, where the
reduction of the Cantabrians was in progress. . . .
While he was away in Spain, Augustus decided upon a
fresh marriage for Julia: and the husband he selected for
her was in rather remarkable contrast with Marcellus,
namely, the man who, next to himself, was the great
est Roman then alive: Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa, the
victor of Actium, Agrippa was of the same age as Au- B. C. 21
gustus a vigorous man of forty- two; a stout country Carried
squire l rather than a man of fashion. . . . What Julia to .
thought of it we have no means of knowing.

There was, no doubt, a very real difficulty in decid
ing upon any husband for Julia. The choice of Agrippa
was not in all ways ill-judged. 2 He was strong enough
and able enough to have formed an admirable successor
to Augustus, had the necessity ever arisen. He was more
over a trustworthy man: and he might well have over- Character

Agrippa

1 "Vir rusticati proprior quam dcliciis" Plin. N. II. XXV. 26.

2 Agrippa was one of the friends of Augustus" youth. He was of obscure
descent, and ashamed of his common name "Vipsanius," which to a modern ear
sounds distinguished enough. He was one of the most forceful characters of the
age he lived in. He was not a man of creative genius, but he supplied exactly that
element of vigorous promptitude and iron nerve which was perhaps lacking
in Augustus himself. His two great sea-victories at Naulochus and Actium
were decisive battles. He won them, noc by generalship alone, but by his policy
in naval architecture. His interest in architecture went beyond ships. The Pan
theon was built under his direction, besides many other great works. He com
pleted the great Survey of the World begun by Caesar the Dictator, and from
it had the great map made which, cut in marble, stood in the Porticus Pollse
on the eastern side of the Campus Martius, towards the Pincian Hill. The
Vistula was included in this map, a useful milestone in the progress of geo
graphical knowledge. Agrippa stood in the direct tradition of those great en
gineering soldiers who were the glory of Rome, and in his strong character and
practical Interests was a very typical Roman. Grim as he was, he seems to have
been a man of some taste and education.

There is a story- which sounds apocryphal that Maecenas told Augustus that
Agrippa had become too powerful, and must either be co-opted into the sue-
cession or put out of the way.

1 6 TIBERIUS CAESAR

awed and impressed a very young girl who was slightly
intoxicated with her own position and excited with the
memory of Marcellus. The deep streak of weakness in
Julia scarcely showed while she was in the strong hands
of Agrippa. And he was no laggard as a husband. Julia,
a long-nosed, large-eyed creature developed into a
Roman matron with five children. Her two elder sons,
Lucius and Gaius, were unmistakably the true heirs of
Augustus. There were also two daughters, Julia and
Agrippina. Of the latter we shall hear a good deal more
in due course.

The weakness of Julia s second marriage lay in the
dangerous diversity of the elements which went to
make it. In order that he might marry her, Agrippa s
marriage with the young sister of Marcellus had been
dissolved. Experience does not bear out the idea that hu
man beings can be adequately matched in this cold-
Julia s blooded way. The children illustrated, as they grew
children U p y the instability of the blend ; Lucius, Gaius and Julia
seemed to reproduce their mother without any touch of
their father, while Agrippina followed her father alone
in a certain tight-bound obstinacy, and cold strength of
temperament; and the youngest, Agrippa Postumus,
combined to an alarming extent the selected weaknesses
of both his parents. . . . There can have been just as
little of a blend in their ordinary every-day relation
ships. The busy soldier and administrator could not pos
sibly have discovered much common ground with his
young wife. He was of the same age as her father. His
memories, his work, his interests were all widely diverse
from Julia s. He was much away. The Spanish and II-

THE TRIUMPH OF AUGUSTUS 17

_ _ _ ^ ,- ~ ir_j&gt;rr^- j^^jr jr _y -*- JT-J- ^~-j^^*~ JP~ -ir- j- j~^-.^r-^*r -f -T~ ^~ -jr jr ,*- -j- j- j~~r~ -*r- jr *- f .f rf*- 4

lyrian campaigns absorbed his attention and his time.
. . . Julia, as she developed under all these influences,
without any of those quietening satisfactions which
come of an equal companionship in marriage, grew
into a very striking personality poles apart from her
husband. She was a very beautiful woman, with a wit
that was famous. Her position gave her wide social op
portunities. Before many years had gone, it was ru
moured that she took full advantage of them, and found
ample means of obtaining the equal companionship
which she could not expect from her husband. . . .

It would have been unreasonable for Augustus to
feel surprise. Julia had been awakened and stimulated
and excited at a very early age. Her natural ardour of
temperament, in some respects over-excited and in some Julia s
too much repressed, was certain to grow a little dis~
torted. . * . Augustus, a man of the world, may have
felt that the results of his policy were worth the risk,
and he may have been prepared to look steadfastly away
from some of the consequences, as long as the outward
conventions were observed. ... If so, he considerably
over-rated his power to set a limit to Julia s proceedings,
once she was tinleashcd.

In the mean time the career of Tiberius proceeded
on its dry and decorous way. His natural gift for get
ting through that unpopular thing, work, was steadily
developing; and no man with a taste for work is ever
unocciTpied, even though he may be unrewarded. He j n the
accompanied Augustus in a prolonged tour in the east. East

1 8 TIBERIUS OESAR

Augustus entrusted him with important missions. It
was he who received the lost standards, taken by the
Parthians from Crassus at the disaster of Carrhae, which

May i^th Augustus, by a little unspectacular negotiation, ex
tracted from the Parthian Sultan. . . . The recovery
of these standards was counted among the great achieve
ments of Augustus. It was Tiberius also who, with hum
drum efficiency, settled the Armenian question. The
Armenians had applied for a new King, whom Tiberius
duly conducted to the spot and duly crowned; return
ing without a battle and without bloodshed, a de
pressing fact which did not escape adverse comment
in Rome.

The date of Tiberius marriage is unknown, but it
must have taken place about this time. It was strictly
dull and decorous, in fact, it was an ordinary happy
marriage of no interest to anyone save the parties con
cerned. Tiberius had for several years been engaged

Marriage^ to Vipsania, the daughter of Agrippa by a former mar-

of Tiberius - i *r*t r T\

to Agrip- nage. The marriage of Drusus was more impressive.

pa s He married Antonia, the daughter of the triumvir and

of Octavia, Augustus 5 sister, and he thus became the
nephew of Augustus. Although both were political mar
riages, they seem to have turned out well. The one
would give the robust Agrippa a natural interest in his
son-in-law: and the excellent military training which
Tiberius undoubtedly received seems to indicate some
such interest. The qualities of Tiberius as a soldier were
sound rather than brilliant, and were very much in the
tradition of Agrippa, If Vipsania resembled her robust

1 Vipsania has some additional interest as the granddaughter of T,
Atticus, Cicero s friend and correspondent.

THE TRIUMPH OF AUGUSTUS 19

father and her gentle, cultured grandfather, she must
have been an ideal wife for a complex, introspective
man such as Tiberius: and the reluctance with which
he parted from her in later years seems to show that he
was attached to her by more than nominal bonds.

But the marriage of Drusus had about it that quality
which frequently belongs to acts of favouritism: it
was both more flattering in its personal aspect, and per-
haps ultimately much less profitable to him. To marry Antonia
the niece of Augustus brought Drusus right into the
innermost circle of the imperial family; and it is ob
vious that Attgustus watched with care over the for-
tiTnes of their children, intervening, more than once,
to secure their interests even at the expense of Tiberius.
The latter raised no objection, even when the bias be
came somewhat noticeable: but he might be excused
for some feeling of bitterness at the continual prefer
ence given to qualities which (as he must have known)
were largely superficial. . . .

Drusus was a model husband. The strict moral tone
of the court of Augustus had no better exemplar than
he; and he certainly added to his prestige by a domestic
virtue which was equally admirable in the eyes of Livia
and Augustus, and in those of the army* The people
in all ages take a sentimental interest in the virtues of
their rulers* Whether the children of Drusus quite real
ized the hopes of Augustus is another and a more de
batable matter,

TiberiiB und Vipsania had one son, who was named
Dtusxis after his uncle, and who grew up a square-toed
youth., to end with the ill-luck of all the Drusi ? as we

TIBERIUS CAESAR

Promotion

Tiberius

and

Drusus

Reasons
for their
promo
tion

shall see in due course. For it was over these children
that, in the height of his power, Tiberius was to stumble
and fall. They formed at once the romance and the
tragedy of the story.

The fairness of Augustus, and possibly his caution,
which Livia was near at hand to stimulate took care
to provide Tiberius and Drusus with that ample edu
cation in government which the public magistracies
gave. Drusus, of course, could obtain almost any favour
he liked: while the adequacy of Tiberius could extort it
for himself. . * . They were both of them, though
for opposite reasons, the kind of young man whom it
is desirable to employ in serious work at as early an
age as possible. Tiberius in particular had the peculiar
and unusual gift which in all ages causes some men
to be looked upon as fore-fated, Men of Destiny
namely, the gift for reaching his end through any set
of circumstances. There were no circumstances, ap
parently, that could succeed in bringing him permanent
personal happiness* But there was none, however ad
verse, however hopeless, that did not in some strange
way serve his end. . . , Life, for him, was one of those
acrostics which, whether they are read up or down or
across, read the same*

If Augustus had had no other reason, lie might not
improbably have employed and promoted Tiberius in
the hope that by satisfying his passion for work he
would divert him from ambition. The plan would have
been well devised, Tiberius possessed the artist s interest

THE TRIUMPH OF AUGUSTUS 21

in the process rather than in the result; he had a dry,
unsympathetic satisfaction in a piece of work well
done; he enjoyed it for its own sake. Work, with men of
this type, is a drug which renders them unconscious of
the call of personal ambition. To keep Tiberius busy
would provide the heirs of Augustus with an invaluable
servant, and would keep the stage clear for them. . . .
Hence all things conspired to push him forward along
the path.

Tiberius was twenty-two years old when he held the
prxtorship: a grown man, rapidly maturing. It was in
the year after his prsetorship that the event occurred
which, to a large extent, decided the direction in which
his interests would, for the rest of his life, always lie.
The conquest of Gaul by Caesar the Dictator had given
the North a peculiar, an almost romantic interest: it Gaul
had extended the Roman frontier up to the Rhine and
the borders of Germany, and given the Rhine some of
the attraction which always belongs to wild, half-
conquered hardly-held new lands, the fascination that
South Africa and Texas and Arizona have had in mod
ern times, when men held a difficult and unexplored
frontier by the armed hand* The most interesting prob
lems of the contemporary Roman world lay along the
Rhine and the coasts of the North Sea. To the more civ
ilized type of Roman the social life and the immemorial
civilization of the East offered a more sympathetic
perhaps a less wholesome interest, but it was to the
far northern frontier that the eyes of those who loved
adventure and novelty were turned.

In 1 6 B. c. the Sicambrian tribesmen of the middle

22 TIBERIUS CAESAR

Rhine organized, with the help of the Tencteri and the
Usipetes, a typical frontier raid of a highly sporting na
ture. They crossed the river and drove a plundering raid
right into the heart of the Roman province. There was
hard fighting and rough riding; they captured an eagle
of the Fifth Legion, and raised a hornet s nest of excite
ment. Augustus took so serious a view of the situation
that he went to Gaul in person, taking Tiberius with
him. And in Gaul Augustus remained four years.

Tiberius had been in Asia, and had served in Spain,
but this was his first sight ofthe world beyond the Alps.
He looked upon those vast mountains which Caesar had
crossed and re-crossed, and over which Hannibal had
transported his elephants; he saw the immense rivers
and forests of Gaul, its tribes and hill-top cities, its florid
Tiberius barbaric life, its tawny moustached horsemen, huge dogs
In GaSf SUS an d vast spaces. The presence of Augustus quietened
the hornet s nest. The Sicambri and their friends were
pursued back across the Rhine by Roman troops and
Gaulish scouts, and matters were restored, after a
breathless interval, to the normal.

There was opportunity for Tiberius to look about
him and to acquire a little first-hand experience. It is
not likely that any preference which he himself may
have expressed would weigh with Augustus ; but the ro
mantic nature of Drusus, charmed with the wild and
healthy barbarism of the border, was more probably the
reason why Augustus retained his step-sons with him
in Gaul. Drusus was too young to be given a command
of importance. Tiberius, therefore, a dour and reli
able youth, was entrusted with the governorship of

THE TRIUMPH OF AUGUSTUS 23

r-,^.^ ^ f ^-^ ^*-^ ^^-^- ^*^- ^^^^-^-^&lt;.^^- ^ ^* *v^-^--^ ^*f^-^-^*^^-^*^^-^ ^-^ *f ^ ** ^ ^ 4

the Three Gauls, 1 and with a certain amount of re
sponsibility for his brother. With Tiberius to look after
him, Drusus could drink in adventure and romance to
his heart s content: and, to judge by subsequent events,
he drank his fill. It was a heady draught: but it does not
seem to have affected Tiberius.

The four years which Augustus spent in Gaul were of
extraordinary importance. Whether the great raid of
the Sicambri were the cause, or merely the occasion, he
took in hand the great task of revising and reorganizing
the northern frontier of Rome. Some important stra
tegic adjustments of the frontier were carried out. After
a year as governor, Tiberius was transferred, with Dru
sus, to a post in which they could gain experience on
active service. They were given the command of the B. c. 15
expeditionary forces which entered and reduced Rxtia
and Vindelicia. There was severe fighting in the course
of the operations, including a naval battle on the Lake
of Constance.

Tiberius was himself a very young man to be en
trusted with a high command. If there were any quiet
malice in the promotion, he stolidly survived it. He fell
into no traps, and made no mistakes. He had, after all,
but to hold his tongue and to consult the experience of
the professional soldiers who knew the frontier as if it
were their own garden. By the time that the operations
were over, he had passed that most severe of tests, the
judgment of a professional army. He had not precisely

1 1, e,, the three divisions of the imperial province, excluding Southern Gaul.

24 TIBERIUS OESAR

won its love. Drusus was personally far more popular
with the troops. But Tiberius had won its respect.

The conquest o Raetia and Vindelicia (together with
that of Noricum, which was carried out by the Pan-
nonian army) brought the entire northern slopes of the
Alps into Roman hands, and allowed the frontier to be
r . . so continued that there was direct communication be-

of Tiberius

tween the Rhine and the Danube armies. A troublesome
source of minor danger, which, under certain circum
stances, might have grown to serious dimensions, was
removed; and the whole frontier was shifted clear from
too great proximity to Italy. Strategic roads were sur
veyed and begun, so that access from Italy should be
made rapid and easy.

Such steps as these which permanently influenced
the history of Europe are not taken without very seri
ous discussion and investigation, nor without consulting
the commander who is entrusted with their execution.
Tiberius must have become well acquainted with the
detailed reasons which led to the annexation of Rssetia
and Vindelicia, and to the preparation of the new lines
of communication. Nothing could have been more fit
ting than that the destined successor of Augustus should
have full knowledge of the military policy involved.
His But that Tiberius was this destined successor can only

position j iaye occurrec j to ^ m j n( j s O f men as a remo te and

somewhat improbable contingency* . . . The man
marked out by all the probabilities was the vigorous
soldier who at this time had the decisive voice in every
military question, Agrippa. . . , And after Agrippa,
the lives of no less than three of his sons stood between

THE TRIUMPH OF AUGUSTUS

Tiberius and the principate. . . . Nothing but a singu
lar series of events could bring him into the position of
a likely candidate; and over and above this, there was
the question whether Augustus, whose decision was final,
would even then accept him as such.

A certain doubt and suspicion, from which he could
never free himself, hovered about the attitude of Au
gustus towards his elder step -son. He watched and
superintended Tiberius during these years with great
care. ... It brought its own compensation. The very
closeness with which he scrutinized the actions of Ti
berius impressed him with a reluctant sense of approval.
, . . On Tiberius lay the direct responsibility for seeing
that the military measures taken were adequate, and
were carried out with due attention to economy. . . .
These were tasks in which Augustus was particularly
exacting, and in which all the qualities of Tiberius
showed at their best. He was good at the patient collec
tion of intelligence and the rigid checking of accounts.
His governorship of Gaul terminated not for military
but for political reasons. . . . For now the first of the
very improbable series of events came to pass, and the Death of
strange adventures of Tiberius began. ^f np pa

xn
In the year i z B. c, Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa died.

CHAPTER II

THE CAUSES AND RESULTS OF THE
WORLD-STATE

THE death of Agrippa had effects which troubled many
men and many things. It involved changes in the for
tunes of Tiberius. Augustus had never been one of those
quences ru ^ rs whose government is remote and solitary. He was
c* . , perhaps a great individual, but he was no individualist.
death 1 *" He lived in an atmosphere of committees and discus
sions. He had started his career as one of a triumvirate,
and something of the triumvir always clung to
him. . . . Augustus looked about him for another
Agrippa.

There was, no doubt, some real difficulty in treating
Tiberius with warm human feeling. He did not thaw to
the pale geniality of Augustus; and Augustus did not
possess the closer warmth which might have melted the
reserve of his step-son. Yet Tiberius was indicated as the
man who would naturally step into the place of
Agrippa. Neither could Augustus stoop to those minor
arts of ingratiation by which an inferior might have
pretended to a warmth which he did not feel He had
the right to ask that any such placating pretences
should be shown towards him, rather than by him. , . ,
Tiberius went home somewhat in the spirit of a mule

who bitterly recognizes his own useful virtues.

CAUSES AND RESULTS 27

That he had done well was undisputed. In the preced- Tiberius
ing year he had received the honour of the consulship B. C. 13
though with no one more important than Publius Quin- ^ aet&lt; 29 ^
tilius Varus (of whom we shall hear again) as a col
league. He thus took rank as a consular, and entered the
small but select company of those who had held the
highest magistracy in the State, . . . Something else,
perhaps more significant, was in the wind. Julia was
once more a widow, and Augustus was revolving in his
mind some of the deep considerations of policy which
sprang from that fact.

Augustus had a great deal to think of. Being the man
he was, he probably took advice, and if we knew of
whom he took it we should be wiser than we are. He
was certainly influenced by Livia, whether he knew it
or not. It took him a year to make up his mind. A year
was none too long a time in which to review the mo
mentous project he had begun to entertain.

To follow the thoughts of Augustus, we may survey
the considerations that weighed with him. He stood in a
position to which no modern man has attained. Even Augustus
though we see, as through a glass darkly, the gigantic
possibility of the political union of the world, it is yet
so far ahead of us that it enters very slightly into our
practical decisions. But Augustus confronted the fact
accomplished. The world he knew, all the world he
knew of, was in actual fact united in one polity; and
he himself was its head. He saw as a reality what we can
see only as a perhaps impossible ideal: and here he pos-

TIBERIUS CAESAR

The
World-
State

Position
of the
Monarchy

sessed an experience so far beyond ours that only by
imaginative sympathy can we fully apprehend the as
tonishing truth. . . . And, as in all such cases, a meas
ure of sobering disillusionment followed the fact. He
could not romance idealistically about a beautiful
dream, for it was no ideal dream. It was a very prosaic
matter of fiscal account-keeping, assessments, judicial
appeals, and all the rest of the drudgery which lies be
hind the more decorative aspects of government.

Augustus was not directly responsible for his own ex
istence as supreme head of the world-state. He had been
cast up to it by forces far beyond his own creation or
control. Had he shrunk from the task presented to him,
it was one which would have fallen in due course to
Marcus Antonius, a possibility from which any dis
cerning mind might justifiably recoil. The question was
merely of the person who should occupy a post which
the logic of events had created: and if the issue were
narrowed to this, Augustus had ample reason for enter
taining a private conviction that the logic of events had
also chosen the best man for the post. . . . These
doubts being accordingly dismissed, all that remained
was to decide the most suitable means of rendering this
great monarchical control stable; for once it began to
rock on its foundations, it would rack to pieces the
world it controlled. The emperor did not conduct the
processes of civilization. He merely regulated them, se
cured their peace and harmonized their action, . * .
Peace, order and justice were the necessities which
pressed upon the head of the Roman world, The most
careful calculations of Augustus could have no objec-

CAUSES AND RESULTS 29

tive other than the maintenance of these benefits. Man
kind asked for nothing more.

His power and position were based on his ability to
give men these gifts. If he failed, the forces which had
made him would unmake him with ruthless certainty.
He was no free agent no despot ruling a crushed peo
ple by the Cossack. Those enormous forces of civiliza
tion its torrential energies of industry and economic
management, so easy to control while he consulted their
course would sweep him to death and limbo if he
sought to fight against them. He depended upon public
opinion and upon the support of those who trusted
him. His range of discretion was thus limited and def
inite. He could, by ignorance or stupidity, wreck civili
zation; but it could even more easily wreck him. He
depended upon an intelligent reciprocity. By a process
of identifying his own interests with those of the world
at large, he could secure both. . . . Perhaps he never
distinguished them. A pilot needs no metaphysical dis
tinctions between his own benefit and that of his ship.
The identity of interest is too obvious to question, and
distinctions are too subtle to be troubled about.

The stability of the principate was thus no mere ques- Its *

r 1 1 Til- i - - stability

tion or personal ambition. It had its roots deep in im- important
personal ground, and the personal and impersonal con
siderations were twined too tight to be unravelled.

ill

The causes of the world-state over which Augustus
ruled lay in quite general laws which operate at all
times and in all places. Human industry, together with

3 o .TIBERIUS GffiSAR

its natural complement, .commerce (for industry

exist and develop ojqlj? twougn the exchange of -prod
ucts between menXjBBB*F i jl % r ^ nt tendency to spread
outward, and trjgMfpff^ ? itself in successive expanding
rings. Its exp^^^^teaks down- the old isolated units
of society ancJ *JgSu&es the formation of larger units. There
Causes i s no point at - which this process of expansion can, be ^
World- stopped. The development of commerce is- a force oc-
State cupying in the relationship of human life somewhat of ;

the same position wh||h jn the relationship ,of&lt;--iner
matter is occupied by cpe forcesfcof gravity and c|feil%
cal affinity: and it is equally irresistible. Men can control
and manipulate the oft set of forces, -just as they" ca
the other; but in neith^case^an^they get away*frorli

the forces themselves. . f -. . Henc^m- every age and in

* &lt; , j * &gt; ^ -

every country we see the same" prcu^ess^ steadily at work;
industry implies commeree,/and coinrnerce implies a
supersession of the small units &gt; of social life, and ^heir

reunion in progressively larger units until the whole of
human society has been integrated into a single unit.

The world-state is the natural result.

No human creation., however good, exactly fulfils the
theoretical intention of its designers. A perfect thing,
however small, would instantly become eternal, in
destructible and unchangeable. The flaw in all things
Itg mortal is the starting point of the process by which

limita- they are transcended. Hence, there were many obvious
Uons defects in the world-state ruled by the Romans. It was

not absolutely a world-state. The Romans had not ex
plored the whole habitable globe, still less annexed it.
They were not even aware of its size, nor that it, was a

CAUSES AND RESULTS 3 j

globe; though a few elderly philosophers. In the seclu
sion* of their lecture rooms,, could produce recondite
scientific evidence to show- thaj: the earth had a more
or less spherical shape. . . . $l.ft(j$ the Romans had
really" done was to unite in one political state all the
various accessible human groups which belonged to a
certain sort of,* industrial type,, . . . This was a rough-
and-ready 6$t of world-state: it served its practical
ends;, and we, looking back upon it, can See that it
formed; the indispensable basis, for the subsequent proc-
ed^dNPfcy which it was broken up and reconstructed on
ifew lines a reconstruction still in progress. . . . And,
t, surveying tlfc course of history, as far as we
- might conclude that the evolution of so-
0t consist of the slow growth of one single
ut irt the cremation and destruction of a series
of ^o^iH&iiiSj each an advance upon the last, each cm-
bodyfhg sonic element which its predecessors had been

3.11110 OJ pDDJOJ

There remained, then, outside the circle of the world-
state of Augustus day, a ring of peoples who did not
belong to it. In the east there was the Parthian state, and-
behind it a doubtful and unknown region which might
or might not possess importance. North eastward were
thcf tribes of the Danube hinterland, fierce and warlike Peoples"
races, backed by the dim cloud of Scythia, an alto- L

gethcr incalculable factor, since the numbers of the Tlie
o * i i r i 11- Parthians

dcythuins, the extent or their country, and their cus
toms" and capacities were unascertainablc. Northward

32 TIBERIUS OESAR

lay the Germans; and behind the Germans the more
formidable fighting tribes of the Suabians; and behincf
these in turn, dim in the recesses of the north, men more
fierce and formidable still, the Angle, the Saxon, an4
the Langobard. \

There are intents and curiosities in the minds of

men which seem intuitive rather than rational. These

tribes of the north drew the attention of the Romans

as no others did. . . ^ The interest was partly romantic.

II. The mere personality of the men of the north attracted

3! he a fascinated attention. The atmosphere they dwelt in

Germans - *,.,*, -i ^ i- i/- i i

was equally a matter for wonder. Cxsar himselt had
felt its lure. He had passed a tradition on to his succes
sors: the legend of the dark and endless Hercynian
wood, its elks, its aurochs, its fair-haired fighting cham
pions, and the half -enchanted blue-eyed kings of the
north.

For strategic reasons, the Parthian was not a serious
daftger to Roman dominion. His approach was so
hemmed in by the Arabian desert, the Tigris and the
Euphrates, apd the Armenian mountains, that he could
attack only along a limited and defensible front. The
Scythian was partly a myth, mixed up with the old
stories of the Cimmerians and the Amazons. 1 But the
German was a real danger. It was a familiar fact of
common knowledge that for hundreds of years, at least,
the civilization of the south of Europe had walked in
peril of the fighting men of the north. Little as the

1 Any modern text-book will tell the reader that we know more than this;
but the description in the text is an attempt to paint the picture that an in
telligent Roman saw. The long pause in the ethnic movement from Asia had un
doubtedly made the possibility of an Asiatic invasion seem very remote.

CAUSES AND RESULTS 33

Roman might know of the Phrygian, the Achsean and
the Dorian, he knew only too well the tale of the battle
of the Allia, the siege of the Capitol," the cackling of
the sacred geese, and "Woe to the vanquished!" The
Cimbrian terror was not forgotten in the age of Augus
tus. The conquest of Gaul had been ^carried out partly
to prevent a repetition of those days when the two im
mense hosts of the Cimbri and the Teutones were strik
ing, over hundreds of miles, at the eastern and the west
ern gates of the Alps; and wlien Marius and his famous Reality

"mules" stood as the sole safvatlon of SCttembling world. the
^ i --/-&gt;* *%*/ - German

On the other hand, the Germans re||y stood outside danger

the Roman economic polity, which was compact of
social groiips of approximately a similar type, all of
them advanced in industry and commerce: while the
German lingered in an earlier stage of culture. To bring
him within the Roman dominion would be a doubtful
experiment. It was impossible to judge whether he could
be civilized, and turned into a man living the same kind
of life as the Roman. The case was not analogous with
the cases of Gaul and Spain, which had for long cen
turies, before the Roman appeared upon the scene, been
slowly permeated by Greek and Semitic civilization.
. . * To conquer Germany might saddle the empire
with an acquisition which could not be assimilated,
but might remain for ever alien and a centre of dis-
ruptivc forces, . And the serious problem remained,
whether Germany could, in actual fact, be conquered.
- . . Germany did not wither and pale before contact
with the civilised South. She flourished on it. . . * Ger
mans were not like Polynesians, dying out before the

TIBERIUS OESAR

white man s drink and diseases. The Germans were an
expanding race. . . . All these difficulties confronted
the Roman world-state.

The

Northern
Frontier
problem

Problem
of

internal
strength

The military problems of the defence of the world-
state thus centred on the European frontier-line, not
on the eastern, nor the African. The main doubt for
Augustus was whether he could adequately defend the
Roman dominion from the intrusion of a totally dif
ferent and inferior type of culture, whose home was
in Northern Europe, and whose heart was somewhere
up in the Cimbric peninsula and the adjacent islands.

Behind the military problem which involved a great
fortified frontier line from the North Sea to the Euxine,
and armies to man it lay an even more serious problem
on which all decisions respecting the former must ulti
mately depend: namely, the inward strength of the Ro
man dominion. Both in a military and in a political
sense, Rome was as strong as ever she had been. The deep
doubt, which had first called the empire into being, was
whether Mediterranean civilization was sufficiently
strong in the economic sense. The military and the po
litical power alike were ultimately founded on the eco
nomic soundness of Mediterranean civilization, its
capacities, that is, for producing wealth and transmut
ing it into human life. . . . This doubt had haunted
men since the days of Scipio Aemilianus and Tiberius
Gracchus. Much of the wealth produced was consumed
in luxury rather than in the creation of life. It produced
a small number of unimportant rich men instead of a

CAUSES AND RESULTS 35

large number of important poor men. But even the
wealth itself began to be a matter for care and caution.
It was no longer possible to ignore consequences, and
to let things run as they would. . . . The careful stew
ardship of Augustus, his attempts to enforce economy,
to set an example of moderation in personal habits, to
use wealth rightly, for good ends, these were ulti
mately rooted in a sense of their necessity. He was no
ardent idealist battling for a moral cause. He approached
the subject rather as a business man who attempts to
reduce costs, to economize on his unproductive expen
diture, and to get more value for money. . . . Later
ages were frank on the subject. They pointed out that
the Roman dominion was ceasing to produce men: that
Germany produced men on a bigger and more abundant
scale. . . .

The policy of Augustus was to make no more new
conquests. It was a sound policy from more than one
point of view. The Roman dominion already included
practically the whole of the groups which conformed
to the economic standard. To go further, and to in
clude groups belonging to a diff erent type, would be to
imperil the unity of the State, unless, indeed, there further
were separate and important reasons of another nature extending
for including them* In addition to this, it was only
groups conforming to the economic standard which
repaid the expenses of conquest. Egypt had far more
than repaid the outlay involved. Gaul, which at first
barely came under the standard, had repaid it, and was
destined, in the long run, to prove a most valuable ac
quisition, But the conquest of groups which stood defi-

3 6 TIBERIUS CAESAR

nitely apart from the standard meant the expenditure
of money which could never by any possibility be re
couped. Hence further additions to the Roman do
minion meant, as a rule, a dead loss: a prospect which no
statesman enjoys. Such a loss could be justified only
by special reasons. The annexation of Rxtia and Vinde-
licia meant much unproductive expenditure: but it was
urgent for military reasons. It added to the safety of
the frontier.

The attitude of the Roman government to the out
lying peoples of Northern Europe was thus, in general,
an exclusive one. Augustus would have preferred to
leave them alone. He was not free to leave them entirely
alone; he could not restrict himself to a benevolent neu
trality. When King Marbod, full of enthusiasm for the
wonderful pattern of statecraft and civilization which
he saw exhibited in the Roman world, began to found
his own great central European realm, Augustus Was
Relation not at liberty to look on with benevolent sympathy,
empire an( ^ t ^ en ? when the process of building was sufficiently
to the advanced, annex the improvements* For the improve
ments of Marbod included a military establishment
which might have enabled him to carry out a respecta
ble amount of annexation himself. . . , The problem
of the outlying peoples had thus a tendency to become
locked in a vicious circle. They could neither be ab
sorbed nor allowed to improve themselves. Their grad
ual rise in economic level, through long contact with
southern civilization, could not be prevented; and when,
four hundred years after Augustus, the economic level
of the world-state was accidentally lowered to a point

CAUSES AND RESULTS 37

at which the two cultures met on something like equal
terms, the result was the disruption of the world-state,
and a chaos which ended in its reconstruction on totally
different lines.

* vi

We may now turn to a different aspect of the situa
tion, and ask ourselves to what degree the world-state
was a blessing to those who were supposed to enjoy its
advantages.

That it involved many disadvantages is obvious
enough. No man can look upon the degeneration and
collapse of the independent Greek cities without a mel- Disadvan-
ancholy sense that something was lost to the world which J?| es f
could hardly be replaced. We cannot pretend that the state
human level of Mediterranean civilization was higher
under the Roman world-state than it had been in the
days of the fighting, trading, manufacturing City-States
with their tremendous output of art, literature and
philosophy. But we may easily exaggerate the extent
of the difference; and we may even more easily mis
state its nature. Most of the mischief was done under
the rule of the City-States themselves. TJieir cut-throat
strife destroyed far more precious human flower than
was ever suppressed by the Roman emperors. ... A
large part of the splendour of the earlier age was decora
tive. The material of art is not always found most
abundantly in the ages of human happiness and wis
dom. Homer would have found Antoninus Pius poorer
stuff than Achilles for the purpose of an epic; but it
does not follow that mankind was either better or hap-

3 8 TIBERIUS CAESAR

r ^-^,- _r *-,*-*-*- i&lt;- i i- - *- ^^^^.^^ .^^^ ^^"^ v^^ 1 "^^-^-^ -^^

pier in the days o Achilles. . . * The dreams of man
kind hover with pleasant regret over its fierce and ro
mantic youth. It may be well that they should: but men
would never have fought their way so determinedly
out of those troublesome glories if they had not thought
that there were better things ahead.

The peace and unity which descended upon the Medi
terranean world with the accession of Augustus were
like the superimposition of a new form of conscious-
moral ness u P n men - ^e l atter had struggled through ter-
effect rible and tragic days; they seemed to emerge meaner and
poorer than they entered; but this was a seeming rather
than a reality. In the dawn of the new era they saw
themselves as they were, and not as they had seemed
gigantic and heroic shadows in the gloom. Virgil and
Livius wrote the story of the heroic shadows; Horace
and Propertius, looking upon the actual world around
them, were sad and satiric.

The sadness which accompanied that blinding light
of peace and leisure penetrated to deeper levels than the
Augustan poets revealed. In every class, and every por
tion of the Roman dominion, there was an awakening of
thoughts; which challenged, questioned and inquired
into life. If the Augustan age ranks in this respect lower
than the great era of Greek thought, it is largely be
cause the movement which began under Augustus was
wider, more diffused, less dramatically staged, less com
pletely represented by a few picturesque personalities
or a few coherent and systematic theories. It was less
an intellectual movement than the Greek, and there
fore it was less easy to formulate. * . . Merely to live

CAUSES AND RESULTS 39

in a world-state which is practically conterminous with
civilization has a certain degree of effect upon the in
tellectual quality of a man, much as addressing a public
meeting has. An element of cosiness and intimacy went
out of human thought with the disappearance of those
small independent states which had been like large fam
ilies, full of the stinging spice of highly personal quar
rels. Something larger, barer, bleaker, yet, if anything,
more fundamental, replaced it: something that resem
bled the mind of Augustus himself. . . . Men were
partly waiting, partly seeking, for explanations of a
problem so immense that they did not altogether know
what it was. . . . There is, in the Augustan age, none
of that quick neat presentment of the question, and that
definite (even if not conclusive) answer, which make
Greek thought so bracing an intellectual stimulus. . . .
Some time had to pass before, out of the tangle of
things, men began to recognize what questions the world
had asked, what answers had been given, and which
was the question and which the answer.

The age of Augustus brought together a variety of
men, of traditions, of thoughts, of temperaments, of
social experiences, such as no previous age had ever
known: it brought into contact things which had never
touched before; it faced men at large with the novel
task, not of deducing from a neat coherent first prin
ciple a rational explanation of the universe, but of sort
ing and rationalizing a vast jumble, and of reducing it *? isillu ~

. -, * ^ tit t sionment

to simplicity. They accepted the task with a strange

40 TIBERIUS CAESAR

sense of humility, even of humiliation. This sense of
being humbled is perhaps the secret of the whole process.
The confidence with which the Greeks had attacked
the problem of life had gone. A general feeling, which
was sometimes a conviction of sin, and sometimes a
profound scepticism, burdened the thinker. It was as if
some great and varied party, most of them strangers to
one another, had made difficult and perilous journeys to
meet together; and they had met, and with infinitely
varied reasons and for infinitely varied motives, they
all realized that what they had hoped to see was not
there. . . . This vague and baffling sense of some in
definite frustration underlay the Augustan age.

But this was the beginning, not the end of the proc
ess. The spiritual activity of the age began to express
itself in a multitude of ways. Two or three of these
claim our attention. The Greek influence was directly
responsible for the philosophical method of approach.
Epicur- Epicureanism appealed to those who found it sympa
thetic. Lucretius expressed an attitude which found
many followers, especially amongst the wealthy men
who, from their practical experience in the handling
of land and money I realized with force to how small a
degree any spiritual power intervened in the affairs of
mankind, how much depended upon intelligence and
good sense, and how little the jresults of human life
satisfied the hunger of the heart JThis had its political
consequences. It effectually preserved those who held
it from any long views or profound policy. The permea
tion of the wealthier classes with a materialistic phil
osophy profoundly affected the evolution of the Ro-

eanistn

CAUSES AND RESULTS 41

man world. It ensured that when if ever the call
should come, they would not be able to meet it. And
in fact the call, long afterwards, did come and they
were not able to meet it. They had made comfort and
safety their gods: they had no clue to guide them when
these gods departed.

But there were men of a tougher material than these.
Stoicism, in the form it took during the Roman imperial
period, was a composite product, a Greek philosophic Stoicism
theory applied to the task of justifying and systematiz
ing a traditional Roman attitude of mind. The philoso
phy of the Stoa was the refuge of men who saw in the
pleasures of life no reward for its burdens, and who were
so conscious of its tragedy, its disappointment and its
lack of fulfilment, that they set themselves the task of
living rightly without reward. As an ascetic theory of
life, it produced a type of man which never fails to
leave its mark upon the world, the man who cares
nothing for personal consequences.

All philosophical principles of action have a common
fault. They are intellectual systems, and therefore are
based upon only a portion of the total nature of a nor-
mal human being. An intellectual theory can never be Philosophy
an adequate guide to action because while it can guide
the action, it can never provide a sufficient objective.
There consequently never was any likelihood that the
majority of men would turn to these philosophic forms
of thought for help and guidance: nor did any states
man ever expect them to do so. But principles of con
duct are important to the statesman for a very obvious
reason, to wit, that the conduct of mankind at large

TIBERIUS OESAR

Theory of

religious

toleration

Religious
policy of
the world*
state

is the very material of the art with which he deals, and
that therefore whatsoever affects this conduct deeply
and extensively must enter into his calculations. ... A
statesman such as Augustus has a variety of interests
in the question. He will prefer the principles of conduct
to be of a widely accepted nature; it is convenient to
rely upon the uniformity of large numbers of men.
He will not, however, desire them to be too uniformly
accepted. No secular statesman altogether relishes great
rigid orthodoxies so united and disciplined that the priest
wields more power than he does himself. A prudent
ruler smiles upon a certain amount of convenient di
versity of opinion. . . , Even a degree of the odium
theologicum is not to him unpleasant. He will betray a
benevolent interest in minorities.

These were the views which Augustus actually did
entertain, if we judge him by his actions. They were
views more or less traditional among Roman states
men. He merely systematized and regulated the old
policy of toleration of all local religions, and took steps
to give this tolerated diversity a measure of common
ground in the worship of the deified emperors and the
genius of the Roman people. ... He had not, how
ever, travelled far beyond the old-fashioned conception
of religion as practically a gentile or at least a local
affair, so naturally entwined with the processes of
the secular life, that it might be defined as a traditional
method of political control It presented itself to Augus
tus as a question of a certain dtual, a certain ceremo
nialism, by which elementary moral duties of a social
nature were commemorated and emphasized. Anything

CAUSES AND RESULTS 43

more than this would class as philosophy. . . . Ancient
religion, as it was known in the age of Augustus, had in
fact separated into mere philosophy and mere ritualism.
The religion which he probably anticipated as distin
guishing the world-state would only be this ceremo
nialism applied to the purpose of celebrating the moral Narrowness
duties appropriate to the Great Political State. conception

Augustus and his circle missed, in this matter, truths
of extraordinary importance and magnitude. The ar
rival of the world-state, with its tremendous organiza
tion of administration and law, its power of unification
and consolidation, was to be paralleled by the advent of
a no less tremendous world-faith, striking down roots
right into the deepest and most obscure motives of
men, with an apparatus of passion and thought and as
piration before which the philosophy and ceremonialism The worid-
of the old traditional religion would pale and wither, proceeds
The plenitude of ideas which was scattered among men * ev ive
by the free intercourse of the day fell on fertile soil. It religion
accustomed men to the presence of a richness and fecun
dity of appeal. The eastern faiths were the missionaries
of this process, With their disturbing emotionalism they
opened a new view of religion to the European. It slowly
became impossible for vigorous minds to rest content
with conceptions which touched only a restricted area
of their human nature. Men began to expect concep- The Asiatic
tions both rich in content and unified in principle. The mfluence
image of a vast secular organization, infinitely varied
in its parts and in its functions, yet harmonized into

TIBERIUS CAESAR

The new
religious
movements
politi
cally
dangerous

one gigantic whole, irresistibly suggested the image of
a faith which had a similar variety and unity.

Augustus had to expel the Egyptian propagandists
from Rome. He did not approve of their methods. . . .
The troiible was that the very existence of the world-
state seemed to create in men an attitude of mind which
rendered them dissatisfied with the crude doctrines and
shallow formalism of traditional Roman religion. . . .
The German threatened the empire with military in
vasion. The Asiatic threatened it with a spiritual inva
sion. . . . The essential feature of the case was that the
citizens of a world-state were conscious of moral re
quirements on a correspondingly vast scale: and the gov
ernment was uncomfortably conscious that this new
sort of aspiration tended to weaken its hold on its sub
jects. . . . Nevertheless the mere fact of the world-
state implied that men were brought into new relation
ships which could not be satisfactorily conducted on
the old principles. The situation was still in its earlier
stages. It had not yet developed to its maturity.

Let us return for a moment to the thoughts of Augus
tus.

To maintain the stability of the central power of the
world-state involved, therefore, several considerations.
It ought to be hereditary; not because of any theoreti
cal, beauty in the principle of hereditary succession, but
because it was safer, and would exclude strife among
ambitious candidates. The bare idea that the principate
was open to competition would bring upon the scene

CAUSES AND RESULTS 45

**** ~ ~ ^*^l*^*~-~ ^"~** **+*^ ~"~- -~" ^^^.* &gt;^.^ &gt;JV* -^N^.^^.^^^.^.^&gt;&gt;^~^.^ &lt; ^^.^^^&gt;^

just those possibilities of intrigue and violence which
Augustus wished to exclude. His successor ought to be Qualifica-
a soldier, and, above all, he should be a man capable Augustus
of understanding and controlling the new forces which success or
threatened to alter the incidence of power and to dis
solve the old discipline. To fulfil both these conditions
he should be a man of high aristocratic descent, trained
in traditional sympathy with the old Roman institu
tions, and aware of their peculiar significance.

We are apt to speak and think too much as if the
imperial family of the Csesars were a reality. It was not
a reality: it was a legal fiction based upon continuous
adoption. Gaius Julius Caesar, the Dictator, the con
queror of Gaul, was the last male of his house. Not one
of the early emperors had more than the remotest con- The
nection with the family of Cassar. Augustus was an ^*Jg* ry
Octavius, adopted by his grand-uncle; Tiberius was a Caesar"
Claudius Nero; Caligula the son of a Vipsanius Agrippa
who had married the daughter of an Octavius; Claudius
was a second Claudius Nero; "Nero" was a Domitius
Ahenobarbus who had married a Claudian daughter.
When, therefore, we speak of "Qesar" we speak in a
merely technical sense. After Gaius Julius, the family
of Caesar was extinct.

But this fictitious and imaginary imperial house of
Cxsar was not meaningless: above all, it was most cer
tainly not the creation of self-seeking men trying to
attach to themselves a credit they did not possess in
their own right. It had far more serious meaning than
this. It was an instrument by which the emperors at
tempted to keep control of the succession to the empire.

4 6 TIBERIUS OESAR

Gaius Julius, it is clear, thought long and deeply over
the problem of monarchy, and would have been glad
enough, for political reasons, to found a dynasty. For
with all his intelligence, he could not invent any other
method of putting the monarchy outside competition.
He did not wish to see each reign prefaced by a civil
war; yet that would have been the result of leaving the
monarchy purely elective.

The trouble was due to two distinct causes. The em
peror was at the head of what was practically a military
guild. We know from familiar facts what usually oc
curred when the monarchy had to tindergo a process
of election. The quadruple war of Galba, Otho, Vitellius
and Vespasian after the death of Nero; the struggle be-
tween Albinus, Niger and Severus after the death of
monarchy Commodus, the later contests of the Illyrian emperors,
show that Csesar s foresight was accurate. The army
had a tendency to split into three parties, corresponding
to its three principal divisions on the Rhine, the Danube
and the Euphrates. It could not be trusted with the task
of peaceably electing its head. Every body of men, when
it has to undertake such a task has a natural tendency
to carry it out on lines dictated by its normal functions.
A corporation of bankers who need to elect a chief will
certainly turn a disputed election into a financial strug
gle. An army will as certainly turn it into a military
struggle: and civil war is the death knell of civil gov
ernment.

In addition to this difficulty, inherent in a military
guild as such, there was a second diffictilty. The first sign
of serious dissension in the army over the election of its

CAUSES AND RESULTS 47

^ *^^^* &gt; "&gt;^ **^^

head would have released all the forces which, among
the senatorial party representing the old oligarchy, were
but waiting their chance to regain power and influence.
The position of a third party intervening in a struggle
is always an advantageous one. Two or three disputed
elections would have thrown power back into the hands
of the senatorial party, and wiped out the principate. The

The reality of this danger is attested by the distinct Senator . ial
t &lt; i . iio opposition

rapprochement between the principate and the Senate

after the death of Nero, and the attempt of the Senate,
a hundred years later, to regain power ran attempt
only terminated at the accession of Diocletian.

Hence one of the main points of imperial policy was
to avoid the necessity of elections. Here the ghosts of one
or two social weaknesses haunted the scene. In the noble
old days of large, robust and continuous families there
would have been no difficulty in establishing a dynasty
and securing stability in the succession to the princi
pate. But Rome had come down to the days of small
and incalculable families, when for some reason the
wisest man might have a fool for a son, and the most
robust man a weakling; and the trouble seemed to be
to produce any children at all.

The natural resort, therefore, was to that strange
combination of the gentile and the political principle
which we see in the imperial house of Csesar, the main
tenance of a family by the expedient of adoption. By
this means the x-eigning princeps could exercise a real
control over the succession: he could nominate and co-
opt the man who was to follow him. The imperial Csesars Co ~ P ta * lve

* monarchy

were themselves a species of guild rather than a family.

48 TIBERIUS CAESAR

Augustus ended by adopting Tiberius, his step-son; Ti
berius adopted Germanicus, his nephew; the claims of
Gaius were derived partly from being the great-
grandson of Augustus and the son of Germanicus, and
partly from being the heir of Tiberius; those of Nero,
from being the great-grandson of Augustus sister, and
the grandson of Germanicus through his mother. These
will seem to us, no doubt, claims of remarkable tenuity,
if we regard them as examples of hereditary succession;
but the accession of emperors on these hereditary claims
was nothing more than a last resort when the more seri
ous expedient of adoption had broken down.

The tragedy, the ultimate failure of the Csesars, was
due to the fact that it did break down. It we glance
back at the foregoing catalogue, we shall see that Ti
berius alone came to the supreme power by formal and
explicit adoption. There must be some reason for this
abrupt termination of the process; and there is such
a reason. We shall come to it in its due place.

Now, Lucius and Gaius Caesar, Julia s sons, were very
young. They were not yet out of boyhood. It would
be very unsafe to predict their future as a matter of
course. Their succession, their adequacy to the succes
sion, was no matter of course. A hundred accidents
might prevent their succession* Augustus himself might
die, leaving them too young to hold their own. They
themselves might die. They might not prove able in

Problems any case to grapple with the difficulties of government.

Augustus Had Agrippa lived, the case would have been changed;
but as it was, all considerations pointed to the wisdom of
marrying Julia again to a man who could be trusted

CAUSES AND RESULTS 49

to do his duty as step-father to the two young heirs of
the empire, and who could be relied upon, if need arose,
to step into the shoes of Augustus and carry on the task
of government with firmness and competence.

Only one man fulfilled all the conditions, and that
man was Tiberius.

CHAPTER III

THE CONQUEST OF GERMANY

Circum
stances
point to
Tiberius

The views
of Julia

IF circumstances pointed to Tiberius as the predestined
husband for Julia, it was certainly not Augustus who
had brought them about. It is probable that he thor
oughly disliked them. But the Logic of Events was at
work. Tiberius, even if disagreeable, was trustworthy;
he was a soldier; and he was discreet. Part of the dis
like which Augustus felt for him may have been based
on the almost unconscious hostility that one clever man
naturally feels for another. Even Augustus may have
been unable to exclude the uncomfortable feeling that
behind the silence, the seriousness and the discretion
of Tiberius lay a brain as astute as his own. Exactly
how far he could be trusted was, of course, an unan
swerable question, on which it was useless to speculate.
All that could be said was that Tiberius deserved to
be trusted, and had given some proof of his good faith.
This had to suffice.

The personal problem for Augustus was even more
delicate. He was proposing to give his only daughter to
a man by no means distinguished for the more endearing
human qualities. The experiment might or might not
be successful ... At this point Julia herself, that
alert dove of twenty-seven, fluttered into the fray. She
had grown so accustomed to finding herself married

RH I NU

FRO N

THE CONQUEST OF GERMANY 51

to the most important man of her father s circle, first
to Marcellus and then to Agrippa, that she seemed to
feel that some kind of droit du seignetw gave her a claim
upon the hand of Tiberius: his heart she was no doubt
confident of taking by assault. . . . Augustus, there
fore, at last made his suggestion. He crffered Tiberius
the opportunity of divorcing Vipsania and of marrying
Julia: and in doing this he may have admired his own
generosity.

If so, he might have saved himself the trouble. It
was Tiberius himself who raised the objections. He
had no desire to divorce Vipsania or to marry Julia. The
suggestion, however, was equivalent to a command.
. . . We do not know precisely what kind of pressure
was brought to bear upon Tiberius, nor what arguments Vipsania
were put before him. Some of the most convincing
apparently came from Julia: and when Julia laid her
self out to enchant, we have every reason to believe that
she could be very enchanting indeed. . . . Even Ti
berius thawed before Julia s sunshine. ... It is certain
that he had no wish to marry Julia : but it is certain that
he did.

He married Julia in the year 1 1 B. c. in the thirty-first Marriage
year of his age: one of the principal captives borne in Tiberius
her triumphal procession.

In the considerations of Augustus there was one more
factor. The project for the maniage of Tiberius in-
\ volved his recall from the Rhine frontier. It was neces
sary to replace him. The opening was the opportunity

TIBERIUS OESAR

Drusus
succeeds
to the
Rhine
command

Plan

Drusus

for which Drusus had been waiting. He obtained the
succession to the command which Tiberius vacated.

Augustus was no doubt willing to grant Drusus any
favour within his power; but the decision to give him,
the Rhine command was one of more than usual im
portance. Tiberius was all his life opposed to gratuitous
military operations beyond the Rhine, and he never
willingly countenanced them. Drusus was the represen
tative of a different school of military opinion, which
must have been more influential than we are now able
to trace. He was eager to attempt the conquest of
Germany, The marriage of Tiberius to Julia thus in
volved not only a change in the Rhine command, but a
change in the military policy of the empire. Drusus went
to Gaul with full powers and with authorization to
achieve the dream of his life. The army received him
with enthusiasm.

The project which Drusus laid before Augustus would
appear to have been a scheme to penetrate to the Elbe
Valley, and to make it the new frontier in place of
the Rhine. . . . This plan, if successfully carried out,
would have several results: it would remove the con
stant threat of German invasion: it would shorten the
actual length of frontier: and it would envelope the
tribes of Central Europe in such a way that their power
to make themselves dangerous would be greatly reduced.
Augustus was swayed by these arguments. . . . Much
depended on the "if"; for it still had to be demonstrated
that the plan was practicable. It is true that it was no,
more difficult in itself than Caesar s project for the con
quest of Gaul; but then, Drusus was not Cxsar; and

THE CONQUEST OF GERMANY 53

Cassar had other motives for the conquest of Gaul. . . .
It may have struck Augustus, as, by inference, we
may guess that it struck Tiberius, that it was by no
means wise to dwell too much on the remembrance of
Csesar, for his other motives had been political. . . .
Augustus and perhaps Tiberius possibly saw that the The
conqueror of Germany, like the conqueror of Gaul, with
would come before his fellow-countrymen with a pres- Cs&sar
tige which would secure his supremacy. * . . Augustus
seems to have consented. Whether Tiberius also agreed
is very doubtful.

Trust and hostility were strangely mingled in the
policy of Augustus towards Tiberius. Having three years
before made Tiberius Governor of the Three Gauls in
the spirit of one who uses the most trustworthy and
adequate instrument to his hand, he yet would not leave
him to his own discretion. Augustus had remained to
watch, to check, and to assist. Tiberius was intelligent
enough to appreciate the very real help rendered him
by the presence of Augustus, which must have made
his task easier and his work more perfect; but he can
hardly have relished the hint of paternalism, the sense
of subordination, which, like a stone in a shoe, is an
irritant out of all proportion to its magnitude. ... In
contact with the chiefs of the Rhine army, the emperor
no doubt heard all that they had to say. During those
years the slow pressure was brought to bear upon him
which in the end persuaded him to accept the military
program laid before him through Drusus. . . . And given
when victory was won, and Drusus went to the Rhine ? fr f e

. ! * hand

authorized to put that program into force, Augustus

TIBERIUS CAESAR

Political

dangers

of the

conquest

Germany

Drusus
on the
Rhine
12 B, C.

underlined, carelessly or unconsciously, the attitude he
had all along displayed. It may have been compliment;
it may have been caution; but he left the field clear for
Drusus in Gaul.

A certain inconsistency marked the conduct of
Augustus in giving way to the persuasion of Drusus
and his party. That the real weight of the arguments
employed made it difficult to resist is possible enough,
We might, indeed, ask ourselves why he did not choose
his favourite Drusus as the husband of Julia, 1 and re
tain Tiberius, who shared his own views on the subject
of Germany, as commander on the Rhine. . . . The
fact remains that he did not adopt this course. He
placed Tiberius in the direct line of succession to the
empire; and then gave Drusus such a position that his
success would endanger the power and prospects of
Julia s husband.

While to Drusus was committed the main work of
conquering Germany and reaching the Elbe, Tiberius
was given the task of bringing the Illyrian frontier up
to the Danube, so that the new frontier might be con
tinuous, a task which he carried out during the years
in which Drusus was conducting the German campaigns.

Drusus took over the command on the Rhine in the
spring of the year 12 B.C. His plans were ready, and
all the preliminary preparation had evidently been made
before his arrival. Just as the history of Gaul begins with

1 But sec ante. pp.

THE CONQUEST OF GERMANY jj

Julius Caesar, so that of Germany begins with Drusus.
It is worth our while, therefore, to have before our
mind s eye some picture of the man who thus stands
at the head of German history. Among the thoughts
that occasionally flit through the mind of an onlooker
is the reflection that both Gaul and Germany seemed,
during the rest of their careers, to bear some strange,
elusive stamp of the Roman soldiers who were first to
tread their soil. The difference between modern France
and modern Germany is the difference between Gaius
Julius Qesar and Nero Claxxdius Drusus.

Drusus was a man of great qualities, and these qual
ities were of a particular type. He was no mere curled
darling. The affection the devotion which was felt
for him by his friends and partisans, the enthusiasm Character
with which they followed him, the intensity with which
they remembered him, all had their source in the won
derful gifts he had for taking his part in the activity
of great organizations. The greatness of Tiberius was
contained within himself, and was expressed in his own
actions; he was a great individual. But Drusus was not
in the same sense of the words a great individual. "We
look in vain for any of the isolated actions, the definite
quotable words, which neatly exemplify his quality. "We
should be left wondering whether his fame were not a
popular delusion, had we not many examples in practi
cal life of this kind of genius. His power was expressed
in his relationships with other men. Not in what he did
himself, but in what he could make other men do, lay
the wonder that his friends adored. Every man felt great
in the presence of Drusus; every man felt the electric

TIBERIUS OESAR

Political
bearings
of the
character
of Drusus

shock that passed when Drusus touched the chain of
association.

This gift is no delusion. It is a very real thing. But it
has its defects: and Tiberius himself was dryly aware
of them. The quiet, unspoken criticism which the si
lence and policy of Tiberius all his life expressed towards
Drusus and his son Germanicus was founded on the
dangerous fact that they did not really lead men but
followed them. The hold of Drusus over the Rhine army
sprang from the aptitude with which he interpreted
and expressed its public opinion. He contributed noth
ing to it. When we meet with this kind of gift in edu
cated and persuasive persons we call them Representative
Men; when we meet it in its coarser and less endearing
form, we label it Demagogism, And Tiberius did not
like it. He himself uncompromisingly acted on the prin
ciple that the duty of a leader is to command that which
is to the common good, however distasteful, not that
which his followers wish him to command.

The qualities which Drusus possessed were thus prac
tically very effective, without involving one spark of
originality or moral power in the man who possessed
them. But clearly there were awkward possibilities about
such gifts. The army might have to decide the formida
ble problem whether it would obey die one type of
man or the other. . And even an army of philoso
phers might have had difficulty in deciding such a point.

The
Frisian
campaign
12 B. C.

The plans which had been prepared were on a great
scale, and contemplated the complete conquest of Ger-

THE CONQUEST OF GERMANY 57

_ ^_ _ c.^^j^ j- ^- jp &gt;jr jr ^f-^f-^f- j~ .i^jr _&- jr jf- &- *r^~ f jr JT-JT -r -f~r -*~-r~r -*~ .*~ -*~ JF *- jf f ~- t

many. It is quite clear, from the proceedings o Drusus,
that the ground had been carefully studied beforehand,
the relationships and relative power of the German
tribes had been taken into account, and a scheme evolved
which was far more scientific and systematic than any
that Qesar the Dictator had put into force in Gaul.

The first year s campaign was directed against the
North Sea coastal districts. It was made in great force.
The preparations included a bridge across the Rhine,
the collection of a great flotilla, and the digging of a
canal to connect the Rhine with the Yssel, sufficiently
deep to float sea-going ships. The engineers who con
structed this canal (the Fossa Drusiana) not only knew
their business, but knew the course of the Yssel and
the topography of Frisia, *

The entry of the legions into Lower Germany was
a most formidable affair. Passing through the canal, the
flotilla descended the Yssel into Lake Flevo, the eastern
portion of what is now the Zuidcr Zee. The Batavians,
always well-disposed towards Rome, did not contest the
passage of the troops; the Frisians submitted. Reaching
the sea through the northerly channel of Lake Flevo, and
passing inside Tcxel, the fleet occupied Borkum at the occupied
mouth of the Ems. Although the Frisians had offered no
resistance, the Bructcri, who controlled the valley of the
Ems, prepared to fight. A sea battle at the mouth of
the Ems, and the advance of the legions by land, re
sulted in the whole of Lower Germany falling into the
hands of the Romans,

The Frisians l were the key of the situation. Their

1 The civilization of Fnsia was of very old standing It had been, perhaps
for hundreds o years, the commercial centre o north-western Europe, and the

y8 TIBERIUS OESAR

commercial interests as marked, though not as ex
tensive as those o the Dutch today not only predis
posed them to peace, but made a friendly relation with
the Romans much more to their profit than a very
doubtful war would have been. Their passivity enabled
Drusus to obtain control of the river-mouths. Once
the coast was in Roman hands, the inland tribes were
cut off from some of their most important resources.

The next year the scene of operations shifted up the

river. Castra Vetcra, the old military station which

dominated the lower Rhine, was made the base. Setting

out from Castra Vetera, Drusus marched xip the valley

of the Lippe, which enters the Rhine almost at right

angles and proceeded to describe a tangent to the coun-

ix. B. C. tr y j lc j iac i secured during the campaign of the previous

Cherusci year. Following the Lippe, he passed behind the sources

reduced of ^ Ems and arr i vc&lt; l on t j ie t&gt; an k s O f the Wcser. This

was the heart of central Germany Westphalia, as it
came to be called in later times and the home of the
tribal group which was the real cexitre of resistance:
the Cherusci.

The Cherusci called up their levy and retreated into
the woods. It was late in the season when the Romans
reached the Weser; supplies were short; so they turned
back without attempting to force a passage. The reduc
tion of the Cherusci was work enough for one cam-
point from which trade and communication radiated. The inland Germans seem
to have been originally emigrants who came by sea: a good deal of help and
support came to them by that channelas the strategy of Drusus would clearly
itnply , ant i the closing of I ? mia must have been a serious blow to them. What
we know nowadays as "gun-runninf?" n no modern invention. The Roman re
ports o the poverty and lack of effective weapons among the inland Germans are
very likely due to such events as the occupation of I risia or to the diplomatic
alienation of their more civilized coastal neighbours*

THE CONQUEST OF GERMANY 59

paign. On their way back, they marched straight into
one of those ingenious woodland traps in the construc
tion of which the Cherusci were expert. It was not
strong enough to hold Roman troops. After hard fight
ing they broke their way through. Drusus took the pre
caution of building an advanced post, Aliso, at the head Alls ?
of the Lippe valley, near the place where the rivers Alme Hshed
and Lippe join. Aliso became one of the most important
means by which the Romans retained their hold on
Germany.

The third year s campaign saw the scene shifted yet
further up the Rhine. It was aimed at the Chatti, the
fierce and formidable fighting men of the Lahn valley.
The campaign against the Chatti was a particularly pun
ishing war; but it completed the reduction of practi
cally the whole of the middle Germany contained by
the Weser, which (with the exception of the land oc- 10 B. c.
cupied by the Saxon tribes of Chauci in the far north-
west) was effectively brought under the control of
Rome.

Augustus graciously gave encouragement. Drusus
with Tiberius, whose Pannonian campaigns were pro
ceeding at the same time was granted the honorary title
of Impcrator. In addition, Drusus received his first Con-
vsulship. So far, all had gone well; but the full justifica
tion of all these honours had still to come, Germany was
not yet conquered*

Drusus and his general staff carried out other work
quite as important as the actual fighting. During these

TIBERIUS CAESAR

The

Rhine

fortified

9 B. C

The Elbe
Campaign

operations the Rhine frontier was securely closed to the
Germans by the foundation of the great chain of forti
fied towns which were to become famous in after ages.
From Leyden and Nimeguen to Bonn (where he built
a bridge) Bingen, Mainz, Spires, Worms and Stras-
burg the towns arose with their connecting web of
strategic highways: and it was under the command of
Drusus that they sprang into being. Cologne stands to
the credit of another: but to Drusus belongs the honour
of being the principal founder of the Rhine cities. As
he began them, so they grew* Fifty fortified posts were
established on the north bank.

And now, with honours already thick upon him, he
moved yet further up the river, and prepared for a
campaign greater still

He set out from Mainz the Moguntiacum which
he had himself founded to serve as a base. Crossing the
upper waters of the Wcser, which now were near at
hand, he struck north for the Elbe itself. The march
was a long one, deep into country where no Roman
army ever before had been. He reached the middle Elbe
somewhere about Magdeburg. He was under instruc
tions not to cross the Elbe, since Augustus thought it
imprudent to raise unnecessarily the apprehensions of
the tribes beyond the riven On the banks he built a
trophy to mark his furthest north, and the establish
ment of the new boundary of the Roman dominion.

There was no poSvSibility of completing in a single
campaign the reduction of the whole of this large and
wild land. Drusus was too prudent a commander to at-

THE CONQUEST OF GERMANY 61

tempt more than he could accomplish. He began his re
turn march. . . . Afterwards, a dark tale was told,
and inauspicious omens were remembered. It was al
leged that a giant woman appeared to him, saying:
"Whither next, insatiable Drusus? Fate allows you no
further. Go back! for the end of your deeds and your
life is at hand." . . . Men like Drusus were not super
stitious, and did not share the beliefs they exploited as a
helpful means of controlling the ignorant. If anything
disturbed his thoughts, it is far more likely to have
been a doubt lest, when so much effort was needed
merely to reach the Elbe, there might be insufficient
power in reserve to make good the conquest.

For all that, the luck of the Drusi fell upon him as
the army returned from the Saal towards the Rhine.
He was thrown from his horse, and his leg was broken.
. . . Whatsoever the cause, the injury mortified. When
the army emerged ixito the circle of civilization it was Accident
carrying with it a dying commander. Drusus

Tiberius was at Ticinum, on the Po, south of Milan,
when the news came. He got to horse and galloped for
the Rhine, Ticinum was on the main post road. By
Laumellium and VercelljE he could cross the mountains
to Vicnnc, whence he could strike the great Rhine road;
and, travelling as he never travelled before or after, he
reached his brother just before Drusus died.

Wolves howled around the camp. Two youths were Death
seen riding through doubtless the Great Twin Bretli- Drusus
ren. There was a sound of women lamenting, and stars
fell from the sky.

62 TIBERIUS CAESAR

Man, though rational, is unreasonable. Some bitter
ness seems to have invaded the mind of Tiberius. He had
lost a brother whom, in his disagreeable way, he loved
and a younger brother who had been his companion
and friend. Younger brothers have a place in the hearts
of the austere legion of elder sons which is not depend
ent on approval or agreement. Tiberius may have de
spised Drusus; he may have resented his habit of stealing
away love and admiration; he may have been fatigued
with the shallowness and insincerity which men at large
adored ; but children and men are children of a larger
growth will weep for the beloved black doll which
they have daily rebuked and placed in the corner. . . .
How can man endure life without the dear objects of
his disapproval?

And there were other things. The feet of Tiberius
were set upon a road which led to an increasing isola
tion. As he rose in fame and importance his companions
became fewer; as he rose farther, they would become
fewer still. If, at last, he should rise to the highest, he
would stand there alone, in a vast loneliness and isola
tion* . . * The passing of Drusus was not softened for
him by his resentment against Drusus, There went, into
the void, a man who was one of the few that inhabited
the world of Tiberius Claudius Nero*

The marriage of Tiberius to Julia had been one of

those experiments which would inevitably increase this

of C Tfter?us scnsc ^ l nc ^ ncss an d isolation. In Augustus, that gift

and Julia of sociability, that need for the presence and person and

THE CONQUEST OF GERMANY 63

intercourse of other human beings, which made him a
successful organizer, was so balanced and steadied by
his other qualities that it appears as a strength. In Julia
the gift bred out pure; and like most pure and uncom-
pensated qualities it was a tragic weakness. She was
faced now with a problem as difficult as any that could
have been presented to her: how to live with a cautious,
reticent, complex man who cared little for conversa
tion and nothing for society, and who was much swayed
by considerations of the cold reasoning intelligence. He
did not naturally love her. Any feeling he had for her
was a fascination which she had herself created, and
which might die away when she flagged. . . . Fate
jested when she drew Tiberius and Julia together; but
Augustus cannot be wholly absolved from folly. If
he shut his eyes to the risk, he paid dearly for it in the
end.

Julia was moreover married to a man who had pre-
occxipations which prevented him from being com
pletely fascinated. Throughout the years in which Dru-
sus held the Rhine command Tiberius held that of the
Illyrian army, a post hardly less important. His ab
sences gave him time to think; and his work ensured
that he should not lose the power of thinking.

Augustus had brought his daughter up very care
fully. He had watched over her, guarded her from

dangerous friends, and produced a model of the sweet
t . i . i / i - i t personal-

domesticated maiden for which a later age, nearer our ity

own, had so consuming a passion. But Julia was some
thing more than a sweet maiden. She was a clever, fas
cinating and witty woman, born for a more strenuotts

6 4

TIBERIUS OESAR

Her

"shadow,"
T, Sem-
pronius
Gracchus

Drawbacks
o being
Julia s
husband

life than Penelope s. Her temperament was one of those
ardent temperaments which burn with an intense flame,
and manifest themselves in an activity to which the
physical and the mental worlds seem to offer a scope
too narrow for their full effect. She had no control over
her energies. Even before the death of Agrippa she had
fallen into the hands of the man whose influence seems
to have begun the mischief, Tiberius Sempronius
Gracchus.

Gracchus accompanied Julia into her new domestic
circle. To marry a wife with a shadow is perhaps not
a pleasant experience, though up to a point it may be
an inspiring one. The imminence of Gracchus in the
background may have combined with the charm of
Julia to inspire Tiberius to hold his own, as he undoubt
edly did during the first period of their life together.
But marriage with Julia had certain drawbacks that
were only visible to her husband. Both the young Mar-
ccllus and the burly Agrippa had come to untimely ends;
and we can hardly feel wonder if Tiberius found him
self confronted by the Hobson s Choice of following
in their footsteps, or of condoning Julia s expanding
passion for polyandry* His not unnatural objection to
either alternative could only appear to Julia as an ex
ample of that lack of sympathy for which he was noto
rious. , . . But she coulcl not maintain licr power of
fascination over a man acute enough to sec whither it
led, and sufficiently interested in other things to decline
resolutely to be led thither. And she did not maintain
it over Tiberius. He cooled rapidly*

Women of Julia s temperament become dangerous

THE CONQUEST OF GERMANY 65

at this point. Tiberius had neither the leisure nor the
necessary disposition to maintain himself against the
competition of an unofficial lover who, by the testimony ^
of his contemporaries, was a gifted man with a tongue Gracchus
which might have been put to better use. Gracchus suc
ceeded admirably in the art of putting Tiberius in the
wrong. Julia was a great deal too conscious of her own
importance and her own charm: Gracchus carefully
fanned the flame of her feelings against her husband.
. . . When a woman in this state of mind is frustrated,
her line of action can be predicted with some certainty.
She will try to turn the tables. Julia proceeded to demon
strate her own virtues, and the satanic wickedness of
her husband, by turning the tables upon him.

She wrote a letter to her father full of complaints and J ulia s

f-ri-i . hT-rt f i i letter

accusations against Tiberius. 1 The terms of this letter to her
have not come down to us; 2 but the gossip of Rome father
(which evidently knew more of the matter than it had
any right to know) alleged that it was drafted by

1 The suggestion that the scandalous chapters of Suetonius were derived from
the memoirs of Julia s daughter Agrippina is well known. But it is conceivable
that their original source was this letter of Julia herself. This hypothesis would
explain far better than any other the subsequent course of events, and the atti
tude of Julia s children towards Tiberius.

2 Tacitus tells us (Ann. I. 53.) that Julia looked down upon Tiberius as
beneath her. This is a somewhat extraordinary allegation. We are left wondering
in what sense to understand it. Ic has been suggested that it was due to her
consciousness of Julian blood. But Julia had no drop of Julian blood in her
veins nearer than her great-grandmother: and even if she had possessed any, it
would not have enabled her to look down upon the aristocratic descent of a
Claudius! ... It is difficult not to interpret Tacitus* remark in the sense that
Julia took up an attitude of moral superiority. . . . But remembering Julia s
subsequent career, we may well ask ourselves on what such an attitude could
have been based, Obviously it must have been founded on some argument at
tributing scandalous misconduct to Tiberius. This letter of Julia s is the first
suggestion of any such charge: and the circumstances under which it was
written arc significant.

TIBERIUS CAESAR

Julia and
Tiberius
cease to
live
together

Prejudice

against

Tiberius

Gracchus. . . . Augustus seems to have put the letter
aside: but it had some kind of effect. His feelings were
no doubt mixed. He wished Julia on the one hand to be
justified; and on the other he did not wish to believe
any serious charge against Tiberius. In this unsatisfac
tory condition the affair remained.

To some extent it did not really matter. Julia had
after all done her duty by producing Lucius and Gaius
Cossar, the heirs of the monarchy. No sons of Tiberius
were in especial request to compete with them. , . .
After his only child by Julia had died in its infancy they
ceased to live together. . * . The daughter of Augustus
was not likely to lack a circle of admirers, friends, flat
terers and sycophants. She could have all she wanted;
and she might indulge in her new excitements without
damaging any serious interests unless the dignity of
Tiberius came under that description, , . Here, too,
he had reason for bitterness. A husband who can con
template without personal humiliation the unfaithful
ness of his wife must have private reasons for content
ment which Tiberius docs not seem to have possessed.
... He saw Vipsama once after their separation and
then he looked after her with a gaze of such intent
emotion that he was never allowed to see her again.

It must have been from this time that the mysterious
prejudice against Tiberius began to spread, that private
knowledge which so many of Julia s circle seemed to
share, but which no one would put into words. "When,
years afterwards, those members of Julia s circle sought

THE CONQUEST OF GERMANY 67

to reveal their treasured knowledge, it proved remark
ably varied and contradictory, not to say incoherent.
. . . But when Julia s own conduct was brought to
light, there was not much doubt about the definite na
ture of the charges in which she was involved. . . .
Tiberixis must have known the facts from the very first.
He kept Julia s secret. It was perhaps difficult, after
all that had happened, to complain to Augustus; nor
could he have expected a sympathetic hearing if he
had done so. ... A repentant and reformed Julia,
converted by the kind exhortations of her father, might
have been even more embarrassing than a wayward
Julia. The real truth was that Tiberius had never wanted
her. Once the mischief was done, and he was married
to her, his tongue was, for his own credit, tied. Augus- Tiberius
tus remained in ignorance of the facts; or if he knew, t ongue
the knowledge came to him in so softened a form that it
may well have seemed to him hardly necessary to in
terfere. His own views respecting the unnecessary seri
ousness and unsociability of Tiberius would have
explained to him any slight differences that might exist.
, . . Life is full of these savage ironies.

vin

The death of Drusus added its full touch of unhap-
piness to these unhappy things, Tiberius conveyed the
body to Rome : and his biographer tells us that he walked
before it on foot, all the way thither. . . . After the
funeral pyre was burnt down, the ashes of Drusus were
laid in the Mausoleum of Augustus. Two commernora- Funeral
tive orations were delivered: one by Tiberius in the Drusua

TIBERIUS OESAR

Augustus
criticizes
Julia s
children

Death of
Drusus a
serious
event

Forum, and the other in the Flaminian. Circus by Augus
tus himself. 1 . . . Augustus, in the course of a warm
eulogy, had one or two remarks to make that may not
have been wholly relished by all his hearers. He prayed
that his grandsons Gaius and Lucius might prove such
men as Drusus. He softened the implied criticism by
expressing the wish that he might, when his time came,,
himself meet a death as glorious: and perhaps his audi
ence realized, with a touch of discomfort, that both
aspirations were equally unlikely.

The honorary title of Germanicns was given to Dru
sus and to his children. At Mainz, which he had founded
and fortified, a cenotaph was erected, and a, triumphal
arch, to perpetuate for ever the deeds of the man who
had founded the province of Germany*

The death of Drusus had consequences deeper and
more permanent than any personal grief it gave. It was
a blow to the party which still hoped for the restora
tion of senatorial government. Drusus, with his habit of
taking the colour of his company, had more or less sin
cerely encouraged this political view* His tendency in
this direction was no doubt over-rated; for although
it was declared that he and Augustus in consequence
disagreed, the wish that it might be so was probably the
father to the thought. No such disagreement was ever
visible, . , - There were issues still deeper and more
lasting, The disappearance of Drusus, which left the
conquest of Germany suspended, half complete, was a
dramatic crisis in the history of Europe* How much

1 Augustus moreover composed the memorial inscription, and wrote a memoir
of Drusus, (Suet, Dii&gt;* Claud, i, j.)

THE CONQUEST OF GERMANY 69

sprang from that unlucky fall from his horse, no man
can fully estimate. The whole course of modern history
would have been changed had he lived to complete his
conquest: and even though, in due time, Othos and
Fredericks might still have found an imperial Roman
crown, it would have come to pass under very different
conditions. . . . Hundreds of years of war, struggle
and human suffering would have been avoided. The
great "Folk- Wandering" might never have taken place:
the Roman empire in the west might never have broken
down; the German emperors would, like the earlier II-
lyrian, have succeeded to office without the long strug
gle which plunged Europe into the dark ages; and the
great heathen power which resided in the Baltic would
have been civilized before it had developed the sea
going sailing ship to the point of perfection which after
wards enabled it, not indeed to conquer Europe, but
very nearly to destroy civilization.

Even at the time, men felt that some great and awful
tragedy had befallen the world. The wisest could not
foresee the results of failing to conquer and Romanize
Germany. It was, indeed, not yet certain whether Ger
many could be subdued. The dispute over the military
problem pursued its long-drawn-out course.

But in fact the death of Drusus meant the passing
of the last man who had both the ability and the en
thusiasm for the task. The means, the man and the
opportunity were never again united.

Tiberius returned to Germany to take over the com- Tiberius
mand. He was once more Governor of the Three Gauls Rhine
and commander of the Rhine Army. Augustus, who had command

TIBERIUS CAESAR

Pacifica
tion of
Germany

German
policy of
Tiberius

left Drusus to his own untrammelled discretion, accom
panied Tiberius. Much remained to be done. The con
quests of Drusus needed to be organized, and the Ger
mans needed to be convinced that they had not won
the war. The Sicambri were still restless, and disposed
to make a bid for fortune. The first necessity was to
quieten these dangerous neighbours. One of the admin
istrative tasks which Tiberius undertook was the trans
planting of forty thousand people to the south side
of the Rhine, where they could be kept under control.

The task of settling the new territories thus devolved,
after all, upon Tiberius. It was a much more delicate
task than that of fighting, and it called for qualities
of tact and sympathy which not every man possessed,
and with which Tiberius is not commonly credited.
That he performed it well is implied by the success
which attended his arrangements. Little trouble was ex
perienced with the Germans until a man of a very dif
ferent stamp took charge of the province.

He made no attempt to force Roman institutions
upon the German tribes. He left the presence of Roman
government and Roman troops to produce their own
effect in spreading a new consciousness of law and peace
among tribes to whom both conceptions had some of
the bright charm of novelty. But he imposed on them
no new taxes and did not subject them to any compul
sory levy for the auxiliary service- There would be time
enough for that when they began to enter into the idea
of Rome, and to feel some pride in the share they could
take in her activities.

Neither then nor at any other time does the person-

THE CONQUEST OF GERMANY 71

ality of the Germans seem to have failed to produce
its proper impression on their conquerors. But to appre
ciate their potentialities was not quite the same thing
as knowing how to handle them. Men of aristocratic
descent seem, by their mental build and mental habits,
to have been more successful than others in dealing with
the Germans/ No one ever handled them more success
fully than Tiberius Claudius Nero. His discernment
may have been the cause of his opposition to the proj
ect of holding Germany by force at all. From the main
drift of his policy, we can see that Tiberius himself
would always have preferred to place reliance upon dip
lomacy rather than xipon force: but since he had been
overborne, he made the best of the situation.

Augustus was drawn nearer to Tiberius after the
death of Drusus. The invariable competence of the elder
brother made him the continual support of Augustus;
everything which Tiberius did was well done. The death
of Maecenas, which happened in the following year,
must have increased Augustus sense that his old col- together
leagues were disappearing from his side. . . . Agrippa
had gone; Maecenas had gone; Drusus, his favourite B c 8
amongst the younger men, had gone. * . . It was, in
deed, some years since Maecenas had played any part
in politics; still, he had dwelt serenely on the outskirts
of the world, pursuing his luxurious, cultivated life, and
it is likely enough that he and Augustus sometimes met.
His place was not easily to be filled.

1 This is illustrated by the loss of Germany in A. D. 9, and the loss of Frisia in
A. D. 28,

TIBERIUS C^SAR

Reasons
for con
ciliating
Tiberius

Tiberius
Consul II.
B. C. 7
Act. 35

But the patience and loyalty of Tiberius had been
dangerously strained. He had too long been put into a
second place in the regard of Augustus; he had too long
been watched, when he should have been trusted; he
had too much been made to feel that the charm and
social virtues of others counted for more than the real
ability and effective work of a shy and silent man. More
men are embittered by a sense of their disadvantage
before superficial accomplishments than by real adver
sity and the cold blast of fortune. . . . His enforced
parting from Vipsania and his marriage to Julia very
clearly deepened this general embittcrment. The loss of
Drusus, though it may not have deepened it, must still
have added emphasis to a position of rapidly growing
isolation from the sympathies of his fellows. . , . Au
gustus, himself sensitive to the loss of friends, struggled
awake into some belated fellow-feeling.

The important services of Tiberius were therefore
recognized by a second consulship in company with a
distinguished colleague^ Gnseus Calpurnius Piso. Augus-
tiis made a serious effort to placate and encourage him.
He may have realized, too, the ominously strained re
lations between Tiberius and Julia., even though he may
not have known the precise reasons for it nor its full
extent. To alienate the clever and able man whom he
had intended to be the defence and the help of Julia s
sons would have been disastrously to defeat his own
ends. He accordingly proposed that Tiberius should re
ceive the tribunician power for a period of five years.

The proposal was one that might well appeal to
Tiberius* because it was a very real and serious political

THE CONQUEST OF GERMANY 73

advancement. The tribunician power was one of the
main constitutional bases on which the authority of
the princeps was founded. Tiberius, in receiving it,
would be lifted a considerable step higher towards the
supreme power in the state, and it would enable him The
to undertake work otherwise impossible to him. The c i an n "
time limit only meant that he was not actually associ- Pwer
ated in the empire and he could not expect that while
Julia s sons lived. . . . Hence the advances of Augus
tus could be taken seriously: and Tiberius accepted the
honour.

It was just at this point that the explosion occurred.

CHAPTER IV

THE SURVIVAL OF JULIA S THIRD HUSBAND

THE relations of Tiberius and Julia, always strained,

reached an abrupt crisis. We do not know its exact na-

Crisis turc , evcn Augustus did not, at that time, know the

relations whole of it: but that it was serious can be seen easily

and a enough from the consequences. Whatsoever it was that

Tiberius happened, Tiberius kept his own counsel, and Julia had

certainly no object to achieve by revealing it. . , .

Very suddenly, very definitely, Tiberius abandoned his

career, resigned his employments, shook the dust of

Rome off his shoes, and departed for Rhodes; and at

Rhodes he remained for seven years.

He could not go without the emperor s consent: but
on what terms that consent was wrung from the aston
ished and reluctant Augustus we can only speculate
and imagine. It is certain that Tiberius did not confide
his real reasons. He applied for leave of absence on the
ground that he was over-strained with the burden of
office, and needed rest. * , . Livia was called in to
help; but Tiberius was immovable before her argu-
mcnts and entreaties, Augustus expressed his own feel
ings publicly to the Senate: he felt that he was being
abandoned by one on whose help he had relied- . . .
Tiberius replied by going on hunger-strike. After four
days, seeing that he was determined, they gave way, As

SURVIVAL OF JULIA S THIRD HUSBAND 75

soon as lie had the necessary permission, he hurried down
to Ostia with very few farewells; and boarded a ship suddenly
without saying a single word to the doubtless much
interested friends who saw him off.

The gossip of Rome never had any doubt that Julia
was at the root of it; 1 but even Roman gossip did not
venture to assert that he was to blame. It knew too
much, perhaps. . . . Tiberius himself, at a later time,
allowed it to be thought that he had taken a considered
and leisurely departure to Rhodes in order to avoid any
appearance of undesirable rivalry with Julia s sons. . . .
No one has ever believed this ingenuous explanation,
which leaves the violence of his exit conspicuously un
explained.

He sailed from Ostia, pumied by the triumphant
hostility of Julia s friends. When he was off Campania,
he heard that Augustxts was ill, and he stopped his jour
ney. It was no doubt Julia s friends who spread the
genial suggestion that he was waiting for the good news
of Augusttis death. The slander is a straw which indi
cates the direction in which the wind was blowing. It
caused him at once to continue his journey direct to
Rhodes.

1 Suetonius: Tib. X. Tac. Ann, I, ?3- The problem to be explained is that
Tiberius went to Rhodes almost immediately after receiving the tnbunician power
for five years, lie would scarcely have accepted the investiture if he had not
intended to remain in office. The change in his plans was very sudden and very
violent. If he had suddenly become aware of Julia s letter to her father, written
in the sense suggested mpr p. 6$ L n,, then at any rate we should have a
possible motive adequate to account for all the facts, which otherwise are
inexplicable*

TIBERIUS CAESAR

Tiberius
settles
in
Rhodes

Occupies
himself
in study

His choice of Rhodes was a recollection of the pleas
ure he had felt on visiting it many years before, during
the progress of Augustus through the eastern provinces.
He settled down very much as any modern soldier or
civil servant would do. He took a small town house, and,
as Suetonius tells us, a country villa not much larger.
He lived very simply, much as his neighbours did. He
adopted the Greek dress, and took part in the social ac
tivities of the island.

Seven years is a long span in the life of a man. Tiber
ius spent his self -imposed retirement chiefly in study. He
was a well-educated man, according to the standard of
his age and social class; reading and writing Greek as
familiarly as his native Latin. He regularly attended the
lectures of the local philosophers ; and during these days
in Rhodes he picked up the interest in astrology which
he retained for the rest of his life. The interest shows
that he had scientific tastes; for astrology however
little store we may now set by it was the astronomical
science of the time, and included the strictly mathemati
cal study which has grown into the modern science of
astronomy. . . He had his doubts concerning the
prophetical aspect of it, but Thrasyllus, under whom he
studied, was a very able man of some intellectual dis
tinction, who became a life-long friend* and the per
sonality of Thrasyllus was sufficient to smooth over any
scepticism that Tiberius felt.

Rhodes was a pleasant enough place in which to spend
a voluntary retreat. It was an active commercial centre,
near the great cities of Asia; it was in touch with Alex
andria; it lay almost in the centre of a world fermenting

SURVIVAL OF JULIA S THIRD HUSBAND 77

with a new intellectual life far removed from the politi
cal struggles of Rome or the fierce life of the Rhine
frontier. . . . Tiberius was in Rhodes when, south
east over the sea, Jesus the son of David was born at
Bethlehem in Judaea. . . . Tiberius did not look up from
his studies and his thoughts. No star guided him and
Thrasyllus across the sea.

Since he was among people who had no interest in
the political and personal rivalries of Rome, the stories
that are preserved concerning the life of Tiberius in
Rhodes are to some extent free from political colouring.
The personality of Tiberius, when we catch a glimpse Tlberius
of it stripped of its official vestments, is interesting. He private
had the natural republicanism which was deeply bred
in the old Roman aristocracy. We see him walking, un
attended and without ceremony, exchanging courtesies
on perfectly equal terms with those he meets. We see
him deciding to visit the sick, 1 an intention which it is
worth while to remember when we are reading the story
of his later life: and we see his intention misunderstood
so that Tiberius, on leaving his house to carry out his
mission, finds the sick assembled carefully classified
according to their medical cards in a convenient por
tico for his inspection. We see him astonished at this
unexpected sight: and then, recovering himself, pro
ceeding to apologize personally to all the unfortunate
patients in turn for the trouble inflicted upon them. We

1 "We arc not told the precise purpose for which Tiberius undertook these
visits. It does not seem unreasonable to suggest that a man o the type of
Tiberius would, even if his first object were sympathetic and charitable, probably
combine with it a little useful medical study. There may be some connection
between this story and the military ambulance service which Tiberius organized
in Illyria some years later. Veil. Pat. I. cxiv. See post p. 104.

7 8 TIBERIUS C&SAR

see him taking part in the very characteristic local phil
osophical debate. . . . His connection with this institu
tion gave rise to the only occasion on which he
remembered and exercised his dormant official author
ity, , . . Some excitable Greek lost his head, and
Tiberius, when he ventured to intervene with an expres
sion of his own views on the subject under discussion,
was included within the scope o a picturesque wealth of
language which broke up the orderliness of the pro
ceedings as effectually as the remarks of Mr. Brown of
Calaveras broke up those of a more modern society of a
similar kind. . . * Tiberius retired to assume his au
thority and summon his servants, and the offending
philosopher was stored away in gaol for purposes of
quiet meditation, a pleasing side-light upon the phil
osophical societies of the day!

But that which Tiberius concealed, Julia herself gave

- , away. After his retirement to Rhodes, her descent was
Scandal -11*. * 1 t t

df Julia s rapid and disastrous. Augustus was the last person who

conduct became acquainted with the truth. Long before he had
heard the first hints which reached him, the conduct of
Julia had become the richest and most outrageous scan
dal of the day* It was something which would have been
talked of, had she been an ordinary person: that she was
the daughter of Augustus gave it an unparalleled con-
spicuousness.

It could not possibly have continued indefinitely at
the pitch it at last reached, and we can only wonder

SURVIVAL OF JULIA S THIRD HUSBAND 79

whether Julia herself realized as much, or whether she
was intoxicated into a species of madness. . . . Livia
Augusta was suspected of conveying the first hints which
set the emperor inquiring. He had the power to enforce
answers to his questions: and the answers to his questions Augustus
led to stern examination which finally unravelled the
whole facts. They could hardly have been blacker or
more tangled had they been deliberately invented. To
Augustus they were a shock from which he never per
fectly recovered.

At least five men of high rank were involved in the
scandal of Julia s conduct: Julus Antonius, the son
of the triumvir, whom Augustus had pardoned and re
ceived with full forgetfulness of .any enmity he may
have borne towards his father: an Appius Claudius: a
Scipio: the Gracchus who had been the beginning of the
mischief: a certain Quintius Crispinus: and other per- rev ei a -
sons of less degree for Julia had been strikingly gen- tions
erous. . . . Moreover, the most notorious of the scan
dals had been public, and had taken place, not only in
the Forum, but actually in the rostra, the elevated plat
form from which speakers addressed the Assembly. . . .
The participants were probably drunk: but the proba
bility was an added scandal. . . . And Augustus had
other aspects of the case to consider, besides the scandal
ousness of the proceedings. To what extent were these
men actuated by political motives? What were they
really doing? ... Of this side of the matter we know
less. If Augustus gained any serious information, he kept
it to himself. . , * Julus Antonius killed himself rather

TIBERIUS CAESAR

Wrath

Augustus

Julia
sent to
Pandataria
a B. C.

than face the consequences. Phoebe, Julia s confidential
freedwoman, hanged herself. Everyone concerned was
arrested.

The wrath of Augustus was terrible. He was a man
who lost his temper with difficulty. He had none of that
easy anger of the choleric man who can rapidly rid him
self of the incubus of wrath. He was a cold, equable
man, who took anger as if it were a sickness and was
helpless in its grip. . . . Julia must have known well
that there was no forgiveness. She had discredited her
father. He could have tolerated a little harmless im
morality. He was no plaster saint himself. But he could
not tolerate what she had done. He even thought of
inflicting on her the capital penalty. When he heard of
Phoebe s suicide, he remarked: "I would rather have been
Phoebe s father!" Julia did not take the hint.

As Rome already knew all, and a good deal more
than all, there was to know, he addressed a message to
the Senate setting out the facts, and communicating
to it the penalties he intended to inflict on those con
cerned. It was read in his absence by a quaestor* For a
long time he would sec no one.

Julia s lovers were executed or exiled. Julia herself
was sent a close prisoner to the isle of Pandataria: and
that was the end of Julia s career.

Tiberius, when lie heard the news of this serious busi
ness which included, as one of its minor features, the
service of a writ of divorce upon Julia in his name
wrote to intervene, and did his best to bring about some

SURVIVAL OF JULIA S THIRD HUSBAND 81

kind of reconciliation between his wife and her father.
His efforts were useless. Augustus would listen to noth
ing: nor did he ever, at any time, listen to attempts to
palliate or excuse the conduct of Julia. All that Tiberius
could do was to confirm to her all gifts that he had made Futile
to her in the past. How large these may have been we Mention

have no means of knowing: but a man does not usually *

. r .7. , -, t i Tiberius

economize in girts to a wiie who is an emperor s daugh
ter, so it is a fair surmise that they amounted to a
reasonably great sum. ... It is not recorded, in any
case, that he got any thanks from Julia, . . .

Her imprisonment at Pandataria was rigorous. She
was not allowed wine, nor any form of luxury. A child
was born to her after her removal thither, but Augustus
refused to allow it to be recognized or reared. . . . No
man was permitted to visit her without his express per
mission, and even then only after the most searching
examination into his identity, which included the regis
tration of his physical markings. Two men who formed
a plan to rescue her were caught and executed. One of
her freedmen was found in Augustus bed-room with a o/state
knife. . . . She was as closely held as any state-prisoner
in the Bastille. . . . Some of these precautions suggest
that Augustus believed in the existence of a conspiracy
which had employed her as an instrument. Pandataria
was a pleasaiiter place of imprisonment than the Bastille,
but it was quite as secure. Not until five years later was
this severity relaxed; and that was after Tiberius had
returned to Rome.

The ramifications of the scandal of Julia spread some
what wide, and went deep. They affected Tiberius far

82 TIBERIUS CAESAR

away in Rhodes, There was now 110 especial reason for
him to continue in retirement. Moreover, his five years
enjoyment of the tribunician power was expiring and
with it expired the personal immunity which it con
ferred. He requested permission to visit his relatives,
giving, in support of his application, the reason that
young Gaius and Lucius Cxsar were now grown up,
and that it was unnecessary for him to avoid rivalry
with them now that rivalry was out of the question.
But he had not yet done with Julia and her friends.
Augustus refused the request. Livia obtained for him
the status of a Icgatus, and fortified with this rank,
which gave him a legal position and legal protection, he
remained in Rhodes, less willingly than before*

So far, therefore, from Tiberius gaining any advan
tage, it proved that the downfall of Julia was to be the
Effect starting point of fresh trouble for him, The legend that

Ji?, on . he was an abominable person, who had in some inde-
Tibcnus 11 i * -

imabie way been her enemy, and was continuing to

be the enemy of the young Cxsars, grew, involved itself
into ever-growing magnitude, and spread until his pleas
ant sojourn in Rhodes was changed into a difficult exile.
Augustus, having made the young Cxsars his heirs and
prospective successors, had no alternative but to consult
their wishes. . - Tiberius behaved with the txtmost
discretion. He avoided society, in order to prevent ill-
natured gossip and misunderstandings: but every person
of official importance who went to the cast, drifted to
Rhodes to call upon him, and it was impossible, without
giving offence, to decline their visits.

SURVIVAL OF JULIA S THIRD HUSBAND 83

r^~^^^^^^^^"^^^~~^^~~~^

The cause of these difficulties became still more clear
when Gaius Caesar, who had received an appointment
to Asia, passed through Samos. Tiberius did not fail to
cross to Samos to pay a visit of courtesy. His reception
was not encouraging. Gaius was accompanied by his His
tutor, Marcus Lollius, whom Tiberius had superseded

as Governor of Gaul after the raid of the Sicambri when J ulia s
the eagle of the Fifth Legion was lost. Lollius made him
self as unpleasant as possible. He had ample oppor
tunities, and he poisoned the mind of young Gaius with
those undefined slanders against Tiberius which were
now the stock-in-trade of Julia s friends.

It is easy to understand that Tiberius had never en
tertained any passionate admiration for the long-nosed
progeny of the long-nosed Julia, who took after their
Octavian mother much more than after their grim Vip-
sanian father. He must have known perfectly well that Caesars
his young step -sons were never likely to develop into
anything but commonplace men, Augustus himself had
begun to perceive the fact. . . . But their very stu
pidity made them all the more dangerous. They already
wielded an immense influence, without brains or char
acter to guide them; and nothing is more dangerous than
a fool in power. . . . When a definite charge was
brought that Tiberitis had received a visit from some
centurions on leave, and through them had sent mes
sages of a suspicious and seditious character to various
friends, -Augustus referred the accusation to him for
reply. Tiberius vehemently demanded that someone
he did not care of what rank should be sent to observe

8 4

TIBERIUS CLESAR

Tiberius
requests
permission
to return

Corres
pondence
with
Augustus

his words and actions. Augustus did not feel disposed
to pay anyone a salary for so idle a task as this, and the
observer was not sent.

Tiberius went to the length of giving up his riding
exercise and his practice with arms, and of wearing ex
clusively the Greek civilian dress. But nothing that he
could do would stop the rise of the flood. At Ninies l
his statues were thrown down, Augustus himself began
to be included in the stream of hatred and slander. The
culminating point was reached when at a dinner party
at which Gaius C&sar was present, one of the guests,
Cassius Patavinus, arose and expressed his readiness and
willingness to stick a knife into Augustus, and finally
offered to go to Rhodes and bring back the head of Ti
berius if Gaius would only give the word. 2 . . . This
drove Tiberius to write a letter of indignant remon
strance that such things should be said, and of earnest
request that he might be allowed to return to Rome.

Augustus himself, who had never wanted Tiberius
to leave Rome, was willing enough. * . . He wrote back
in a very friendly, and slightly bantering spirit, bidding
Tiberius (who was forty-two) not to be swept off his
feet by the ardour of youth. It was good enough if
they could prevent people from doing evil, since it was
impossible to prevent them speaking it . . . All the
same, he visited Cassius with a sentence of banishment
of the less severe sort.

But although Augustus did not miss much of these

1 Not in his old province of ihc Three OauU* but m southern* Senatorial
Gaul. The fact is worth noting sti indicative of the current.

-Sutfumun; D/V. /!//# 1,1. 7V// XI1L These two storien ueem to refer to the
same incident.

SURVIVAL OF JULIA S THIRD HUSBAND 85

things and their significance, he did not feel at liberty
to grant the request of Tiberius without the consent of
Gaius Caesar ; and the matter would have fallen through
but for a further series of events which once again
changed the face of affairs.

Lucius Caesar died at Marseilles on his way into Spain,
and one of the hopes of Aiigustus disappeared. Death of

i-ni i 111 i 111 Lucius

The emperor bore the blow with a good deal more Caesar
fortitude than he might once have shown. But he was A * D&gt; 2 *
sixty-five. He could not hope to last more than a few
years longer; and now the prospect of the succession had
dwindled to one grandchild, Gaius Cxsar, a very young,
quite inexperienced, and totally untried man, whose
promise did not altogether arouse the enthusiasm of
beholders, and who was none too robust in either body or
mind. Was it possible that Gaius could sustain the weight
of an empire which had taken all the diplomacy of
Augustus, all the worldly wisdom of Maecenas, and all
the energy of Agrippa to win? and which had needed
all their united strength, helped by the young abilities
of Tiberius and Drusus, to maintain? It seemed very of .
improbable. He would need very powerful backing if Caesar
he were to do it; such backing as he might have received
from the man whose head was to have been brought
back from Rhodes. . . . There, at any rate, dwelt a
man who had something of Agrippa s energy and of
Augustus* diplomacy: a man tried, and not found want
ing. It was impossible to ignore the slow successive steps
by which Tiberius approached supreme power.

TIBERIUS OESAR

He had made no effort to take it, nor to hasten the
conclusion which he foresaw. . . . He had, indeed,
actually left the field free to the young Caesars, and had
removed himself from any rivalry or suspicion of rivalry
with them; and even though his purpose in so doing
may have been to allow them to demonstrate their own
uselessness, still he had acted legitimately and with dis
cretion, and had refrained from exercising any influ
ence upon the result. Augustus had thus none of the
reasons which might have made him hesitate. He was
Augustus willing to accept the help and promote the power of
the UrS ^ ie one man w ^ rea % possessed the force of character
return to succeed him in the principate. He could not avoid
Tiberius ^ 1C inevitable trend of events* He never liked Tiberius.
Even at the end he still regretted the necessity that Ti
berius should follow him, and made that expression
of sympathy, in part humorous, in part wondering,
and in part sorrowful, for the unfortunate Romans
who would be ground in the slow jaws of that strong and
deliberate man.

Augustus referred the question to young Gaius Caesar.
As it chanced, Gaius had fallen out with Marcus Lollius.
Confronted with the question, undisturbed by the in-

Gaius fluence of Lollius, Gaius could only assure his grand-
consents r t iiti i . i / m.
lather that he had no objection to the return of Ti
berius, on condition that he took no part in politics.

Tiberius, without enthusiasm or concession, returned.
He had left Rome a man of thirty-six; he came back a

SURVIVAL OF JULIA S THIRD HUSBAND 87

man of forty-three. With disappointment and sup
pressed wrath heavy in his heart, with isolation widen
ing around him, he had passed that great meridian, the
age of forty, when for every man the process of spiritual
evolution stops, and he goes on thenceforward working
out to the end a character that has become fixed and
unalterable.

This change had come to Tiberius. It was a more
mature, more decisive man who came back from study- T

J in Kome
ing the stars at Rhodes to the politics and wars of Rome. A. D. 2

He felt that he could afford to wait. He settled down
to do so, and for two years confined himself to his own
private affairs. Then events, perhaps not wholly un
foreseen, began to happen rapidly. Gaius Caesar, who
had been wounded in Armenia, died in Lycia.

The death of Gaius entirely altered the balance of
affairs in Rome. It was followed by the removal of Julia
from Pandataria, She was permitted to live at Rhegium, ^ e ? th of
on the Straits of Messina, and was allowed the liberty Caesar
of the city, but was forbidden to leave it. She could do A D 4
no more harm to her sons; and Augustus softened some
what. Most of his private hopes and ambitions had now
gone. The one remaining son of Julia, Agrippa Pos-
tumus, should have his chance; but what kind of man
w^uld he prove to be?

^The strongest and wisest man cannot struggle against
fate. /Whatsoever Augustus himself could do, he had
successfully done; but some issues were determined by
a power greater than his own. Tiberius moved towards
power almost automatically. The eldest son of Drusus,

88 TIBERIUS OESAR

^ J ^ *^* * * n ~^ J ^"^^"^^ J ^^^^~^^^ *** ** ""- * + *r*i

the young Germanicus, 1 was nineteen years old, a very
promising young man, who showed signs of fulfilling
the hopes that had been entertained of his father. But
he was still untried. The only son of Tiberius, named
Drusus after his uncle, was about the same age: a youth
much less attractive. ... It seemed as if the imperial
stage were to be occupied by descendants of the house
of Claudius Nero.

In succession to Gaius and Lucius Caesar, Augustus
adopted Agrippa Postumus and Tiberius as his heirs,

Tiberius t h e former, because he was the surviving male represen-
adopted by . t t r i- r * &gt; tttt,

Augustus tative, through Julia, or Augustus own blood; the lat
ter, because he was the only man who was competent to
bear the burden of empire. He had no enthusiasm con
cerning either of them. Of Tiberius, he said frankly that
he did it for the good of the State. The difference in
his feelings was perhaps represented by a difference in
the legal process by which the adoption was carried out.
Lucius and Gaius he had taken to be his sons by the
quaint intimate ceremony of the permy and the balance,
buying them from their father by the archaic form of
private sale. Agrippa and Tiberius, who were grown
men, he adopted by the more formal procedure in the
curia. . . . Yet for all that, Augustus did not break
his heart over Gaius and Lucius. Since the scandal of
Julia, he had seen the truth without any more rosy
illusions.

It began to be clear enough, also, who would step
into the shoes of Augustus. . . Tiberius took up his

3 This is the only name by which we know him; but ic waa of course a family
title of honour rather than a personal name. He was bom May 14, u, c. ly.
(Furneaux: littrod* p, 173. Note jr.)

SURVIVAL OF JULIA S THIRD HUSBAND 89

new duties with grim and impassive efficiency. ... At
the age of forty-five he divested himself of his status
as head of the family of Claudius Nero, and assumed
that of a son of the house of C&lt;esar. Tiberius Caesar he
was henceforth in the eye of the law. ... As part of
the conditions on which he was adopted by Augustus,
he in turn adopted his nephew Germanicus as his son
and heir.

Agrippa Postumus soon betrayed faults that dismissed
him from the reckoning. His tastes were degenerate; os umus
his temper violent. He was Julia s youngest child, born
after his father s death, and during the reign of Grac
chus as her lover. . . . He grew worse and worse. At
last it became clear that he was mentally defective. The
episode of Agrippa s adoption as a possible heir to the
principate was at length terminated by strong meas
ures on the part of Augustus himself. Agrippa was sent
away to the island of Planasia, and a decree of the Senate
was obtained to make his confinement perpetual.
Agrippa was insane.

This was the end of the hopes of Augustus. He could
hardly endure mention, of Agrippa and Julia. . . .

So the descendants of Scribonia passed off the stage, and
the descendants of Livia occupied it.

And yet not quite. Although Augustus policy of
dynastic marriages had produced nothing but results
wholly evil and fruitless, he could not learn from experi
ence. He was impelled to make one more anxious at
tempt to circumvent destiny and to contrive that his
own descendants should one day sit in his seat. . . .

TIBERIUS CAESAR

Marriage

Agrippina

and

Germanicus

Tiberius
returns
to the
Rhine
command
A. B. 4

While Tiberius was preoccupied with the German cam
paigns, Augustus arranged the marriage of Agrippina,
Julia s daughter, to Germanicus; and in so doing he
planted one of the most deadly of the dragon s teeth that
in due time were to ripen to calamitous harvest.

The marriage possessed points of ostensible merits
that seemed to justify it. Agrippina was by far the best
and ablest of the children of Julia. . . . She was about
nineteen years old, and untouched by any of the scan
dals that had blackened her mother s name, . . . Since
omniscience is not one of the attributes of humanity,
Tiberius raised no objection.

It was after his adoption by Augustus that Tiberius
entered upon his second and greatest career as a soldier.
He once more took over the command on the Rhine;
and after long years of quiescence the Rhine Army wel
comed with joy a trusted commander who was also the
destined successor of Augustus*

Tiberius became available for employment on the
Rhine at a particularly opportune moment. The events
of the next few years indicate that serious and extensive
designs were on foot among the military chiefs. His anx
iety to get away from Rhodes may have been due much
more to his knowledge that such plans were being dis
cussed,, than to any fear of personal violence from the
friends of Julia, 1 The two blank years which had elapsed
since his return were none too long for the discussions
and preparations which would have been necessary, A

CliaucX and Cherusci were "out" thac ytar, and remained out-

SURVIVAL OF JULIA S THIRD HUSBAND

great military machine such as the Roman army in
Augustus 5 day cannot be put into action without the
most careful preparation, and is certainly never put into
action without serious cause, . . . What was contem
plated now was a question not of mere punitive raid
ing, but of completing the work which Drusus had
begun for the rectification of the northern frontier, a
task of great magnitude.

Tiberius had had no share in the decisions which he
was appointed to execute. The political reasons that
lay behind the military activity were reported and ar
gued by the men who were in touch with affairs in the
north; for these reasons involved the whole problem of
an Elbe frontier as against a Rhine frontier, a con
troversy in which we definitely know the side taken by
Augustus and Tiberius. Both were opposed to adven
tures beyond the Rhine: both were doubtful of the
possibility and even of the expedience of a conquest of
Germany. Their view had been overborne by Drusus German

war

and the Rhine army; and now Augustus was faced with projected
the results of a policy which Drusus had been success
ful in forcing upon him. He was compelled to accept
and to act upon advice the necessity of which, in the
circumstances, he could not deny, though he would
have preferred to avoid the circumstances that created
the necessity.

A commander of sufficient prestige and experience
had, however, been lacking. ... It was therefore
doubly convenient for Augustus a prudent and eco
nomical financier who had to find the money that at
this point Tiberius became available. Not only had Ti-

92 TIBERIUS OESAR

berius the ability and the status required for such a
but he shared the views of Augustus, and would ensure
that they were not forgotten.

vin

The root of the matter was that the Germans, once
aroused to the necessity of exercising some degree of
intelligence upon the problem of their own situation,
were picking up ideas and methods with something of
the industrious rapidity which the Japanese showed some
nineteen hundred years later. The danger of the Elbe
Changes policy had always been that it involved shaking the

*? Germans out of the comfortable sleep of their ancient

Germany M - . r t i - i

tnbai institutions, and out or local separation and petty

jealousies into larger views. This danger was being real
ized to an alarming degree,

It arose as the children who had seen the armies of
Tiberius and Drusus grew to manhood. Among the
young hostages who had been sent to Rome after the
reduction of Rxtia, Vindclicia and Noricurn was a child
named Marbod, of the royal blood of the SuabL His in-
Mar-bod tclligence and personality had interested Augustus, and
the boy had received the education of a Roman of his
own class. On his return home, he had proceeded to
put into practice some of the knowledge he had gained.
. * . What he had acquired was a knowledge of the
theory and methods of political organization*

We arc so accustomed to the political conception of
social organization that it is difficult to put ourselves
imaginatively into the position of men to whom these
things came as novel and revolutionary ideas. They

SURVIVAL OF JULIA S THIRD HUSBAND 93

struck a German of the first century much as the anal
ogous conceptions of modern European society struck
an oriental of the nineteenth. By their aid society might
be refounded and remodelled, and a people which had
dropped behind in the march of progress might be pro
tected from absorption by the competitors who had ex
ploited to better purpose the lessons of experience. . . .
And they aroused the same kind of opposition from ad
herents of the old established order which similar novel
ideas in all ages provoke; and with the same justifica
tion.

Marbod was the first of the kings of the north to ex- Power
periment with the political conception of social organ- Marbod
ization, as distinguished from the old tribal system. He
was not to be the last. His success was at first consider
able. He already held a supremacy over the Suabian
Marcomanni of the upper Elbe; and from this starting
point he began the creation of a great kingdom centred
in that very ancient Bohemian land which was one of
the oldest centres of civilization in northern Europe.
Its southern frontier rested on the Danube from the
Raab, where Regensburg stands today 3 to the borders of
modern Hungary, and it stretched for some indefinite
but considerable distance inland.

The size of this kingdom of Marbod was less impor
tant than the principles it embodied. He organized and
disciplined, as nearly on the Roman model as was prac
ticable, an army of some seventy-five thousand men,
horse and foot. Marbod had moreover an accurate un
derstanding of the means by which he could establish his
realm as a genuine and permanent reality. He did not

TIBERIUS OESAR

Military
impor
tance o
MarbocTs
power

intend It to be a romantic adventure,, but a sober enter
prise conducted on the strictest business principles. His
army was a defensive army. He had sat at the feet of
Augustus, 3 and had gathered some shrewd ideas con
cerning the functions of war and the significance of
peace.

Had the kingdom of Marbod been sufficiently far
from the Roman frontier, it might have interested the
Roman observer as an instance of the civilizing effect
of Roman example upon a lower culture. . . . Unfor
tunately it lay, as the military chiefs at once noted, in a
position particularly awkward in its relation both to
Pannonia and to the new province of Germany. The es
sential facts about it were first that it lay in the upper
part of the Elbe valley, so that the project of extending
the Roman frontier to the Elbe, and carrying it thence
to the Danube, must either be abandoned, or brought
about at the expense of Marbod; and secondly* that it
jutted out as a salient into the midst of the Roman fron
tier, and unless driven in it would command both Ger
many and Pannonia. . . * The military chiefs were no
doubt prepared to grant the peaceable intentions of
Marbod, and his good faith; but they had their own
professional duties to attend to, which included the sup-
passion of dangerous military threats against the
Roman frontier. , , Marbod could not possibly guar
antee the character or the policy of his successors. . . .
The military chiefs had probably no great difficulty in
demonstrating the irresistible force of these contentions*
Augustus and Tiberius, little as they wished for ad-

1 Compare Sueiomui: T)lv* Attfr XXV, 4.

SURVIVAL OF JULIA S THIRD HUSBAND 9 y

ventures in the north, could scarcely hold out against
them.

The main outline of the plans which were decided
upon seems to have been determined by the view that Polit .^ al
the principal difficulty in dealing with Marbod lay in tions
possible revolt in Germany or along the Danube. Either
the Germans or the Pannonians or both might seize
the advantageous moment afforded by the diversion of
Roman troops against Marbod. Tiberius, therefore, as a
preliminary move, took up the Rhine command.

He crossed the Weser in force in A. D. 4 and reduced
the Cheruscan tribes dwelling between the Weser and Reduction
the Elbe. The intention seems to have been to take up cherusci
matters exactly where Drusus had left them. The prin- A - D - 4
cipal strategic conceptions followed by Drusus were
repeated with some differences of detail. But a more
powerful intelligence was at work. The Cherusci were
the strongest and most dangerous of the German peo
ples bordering upon the Weser. Their subjugation par
alysed the German resistance, and at the same time ful
filled the purpose of blocking communication up the
Elbe. "Tiberius did not return to the Rhine. He wintered
at Aliso, the advanced post which Drusus had founded.
It was the first time that a Roman army had wintered
north of the Rhine.

His second German campaign was the most remark
able ever carried out by a Roman commander. He The Chauci
entered the basin of the lower Elbe, and reached a limit
not to be touched again until the days of Charles the

5)6 TIBERIUS CAESAR

Great, seven hundred and fifty years later. The Chauci,
(who reappear In later history as members of the great
confederation of Saxon tribes) were reduced; the
Langobardi, the future conquerors of Italy, submitted.
A fleet acted in co-operation with the army. The mouth
of the Weser had been the limit of the naval operations
of Drusus, sixteen years earlier. Tiberius entered the
Elbe mouth and brought up supplies by sea for his
land army. The fleet even passed the Elbe and touched
the Cimbric peninsula Jutland as we now call it. The
Tiberius tribes north of the Elbe sent their envoys to declare their
2? the friendly feelings Charudes and Cimbri of the far
North, and Semnones, the "Swxfe" whom the Angles
in later times fought. ... Of the Angles we hear
nothing.

The fierce and irrepressible romanticism of the north,
which in later ages was to fling the votaries over wider
seas than Tiberius ever sailed, peeps out in one story of
that campaign. An aged champion sonic earlier
Starkad -came over the Elbe alone in his boat, for the
express purpose of shaking Tiberius by the hand. He
shook it, and retired . . . As a symbol of many things
that might fill many volumes, the talc has its interest.

Tiberius was not, however, engaged in a conquest of
Germany; his two German campaigns in A. ix 4 and
A* D. 5 were cautionary demonstrations in force. As
such, they achieved their aim* The tribes of the far
north were evidently impressed without being seriously
alarmed: they welcomed in a sporting spirit an interest-

SURVIVAL OF JULIA S THIRD HUSBAND 97

ing visitor whom they did not really expect to stay, and
they remained indifferent spectators of the more serious
war which now developed.

The preparation for the operations against Marbod
far transcended those for the German campaigns.

Twelve legions, with auxiliaries, were intended to be The .

. . campaign

employed. Tiberius advanced from Carnuntum, near against
modern Vienna, while Gnseus Sentius Saturninus, start- Marbod
ing from Mainz, led the German divisions up the val
ley of the Main, whence, striking eastward through the
Hercynian Wood, he entered the borders of Marbod s
territory, to effect his junction with the Pannonian
troops of Tiberius. Such movements as these argue a
much better acquaintance with the geography of cen
tral Europe than the fashionable writers of Rome were
able to transmit to later ages.

The operations were countermanded before they had
developed. Not Germany but Illyria revolted. The
temptation had been too great to resist. The legions
were away, and were presumably well occupied in the
war against Marbod. An order that the Pannonians and
Dalmatians should send contingents to the war was the
excuse that started the trouble. Revolt spread, and
Rome was involved in a war at the very gates of Italy
itself.

The Illyrian. revolt was just too early for its own suc
cess. Tiberius was not yet hopelessly committed to his
campaign. Marbod, ever prudent, was perfectly^will-
ing to listen to proposals for accommodation. 1 He agreed

1 There seems to be no evidence to connect Marbod with, the Illyrian revolt,
and it is possible that he had nothing whatever to do with it. ... If so, he
was singularly fortunate in the event. It is certainly remarkable that it should

TIBERIUS CAESAR

Abrupt
end of
the
campaign

to the terms which Tiberius offered. The legions were
withdrawn. Saturninus hastened back to the Rhine,
there to keep watch, while Tiberius made the best of his
way to the seat of trouble in Pannonia.

Marbod was destined never to fall to Roman arms.
He was to play his experiment out to the end, and to
suffer the fate which so often befalls pioneers.

have chanced at a moment so convenient to him, and at a moment when he
had so much interest in creating unrest among his near neighbours. The two
years of the Gorman campaigns afforded ample time for propaganda. Had Mar-
bod ken a modern statesman, historians might have taken a severer view of the
probabilities, if only became they arc more intimately acquainted with the
motives and habits of their contemporaries.

THE ILLYRIAN
F R O N T I E

ApolloniQ

. jcale.

* p s to &lt;

English Miles

CHAPTER V

THE REVOLT OF THE NORTH

THE Illyrian rising was a matter before which even
Marbod sank into insignificance. The Pannonians had
for more than a generation been trained in Roman disci
pline. Their leaders had in many cases a Roman educa
tion, and even some literary culture. The rising was
therefore planned on a scale, and with an intelligence. Revolt
which made it formidable. And, as Velleius tells us,
never did any people translate its plans into action with
more vigour. The Romans were caught unprepared.
They were dealing with a race which, two hundred and
fifty years later, was to give a succession of famous mili
tary emperors to Rome: and the ancestors of Claudius
Gothicus, Aurelian, Probus, Diocletian and Maximian
were worthy of their descendants.

The Roman citizens scattered on business or official
duty throughout Illyria were massacred in detail. A
body of troops stationed in a remote part of the coun
try was isolated and had fallen long before help could
reach it. Three armies took the field; of which one was
given the task of clearing up the country, while another
entered Macedonia, and the third advanced on Italy by
the line Nauportum-Tergeste.

Now Tergeste was but a short distance from Aquil- A larm
eia; and once there, the Illyrians would be on the Italy

TOO TIBERIUS CAESAR

straight high-road into Italy. The panic that fell upon
Italy left no one unaffected. Even Augustus was dis
turbed. He was overheard to say in the Senate that un
less adequate steps were taken, the enemy might be in
sight of Rome in ten days 3 time. The remark seems to
have been repeated from mouth to mouth. Men knew
that it was true.

Panic will lend men wings and wisdom. The outburst
of patriotic service which followed might have touched
a heart of stone. Levies were held, veterans recalled to
the standards; men and women not liable to military
service were compelled to send freedmen to join up.
Germanicus was given the command. The new elements
were more distinguished perhaps for fervent zeal than
for military training; but at least the will was there.
Augustus left for Ariminum, to be near the seat of
danger.

The Illyrian revolt was not quite so simultaneous nor
so unanimous as it appeared to a Roman observer. It had
its anatomy. The first rising was in Dalmatia, where
Bato, the chief of the Desidiates, led the way by march
ing on Salonse, the great coastal port. He failed to take
the town, and was badly wounded by a sling-stone; but
The his lieutenants entered Macedonia and won a battle at

5^ t Apollonia, south of Dyrrachium. As soon as the cam-
armies paign was thoroughly on foot, others rose in turn under
Pinnes. The revolt fell so naturally into organized sec
tions, each of which pursued a strategic plan of its own,
that it is clear that the proceedings must have been con-

THE REVOLT OF THE NORTH 101

certed beforehand. The Pannonian tribe of the Breuci,
under another Bato, were the third centre of revolt.
They marched on Sirmium, the great fortress of eastern
Pannonia, near the junction of the Save and Danube.
Pinnes advanced upon Italy.

While Salonae continued successfully to hold out
against Bato Dalmaticus, Aulus Csecina Severus, the leg
ate of Mcesia, made a dash to hold Sirmium. In a fierce
battle fought beneath its walls the Pannonians were de
feated, and the town saved. Tiberius was already on the
march from the north, dispatching the legate of Illyri-
cum, M. Valerius Messallinus, ahead, and following with
the main body.

Bato Dalmaticus was the real heart and soul of the
revolt. Wounded as he was, he hurried north to meet
Messalinus. At the first contact the latter was defeated.
He had but one legion the twentieth and that at
half -strength. Although isolated and surrounded by the
enemy, he managed to trap them into an ambuscade
with such effect that he broke up a force five times his
own numbers.

Tiberius now arrived on the scene with the legions, in
time to throw himself between the enemy and Italy. By
prudent and cautious operations he pressed back the in- masked 1 S
surgent armies. They retreated south-eastward down * rom
the valley of the Save. Bato Dalmaticus thus effected a
junction with Bato Breucianus, and the united armies
took up a position on a mountain named Alma, near
Sirmium. They were kept there by the skirmishing cav
alry of King Rhcemetalces the Thracian, who was act
ing with Cascina; but Cascina himself could do nothing

IO2

TIBERIUS CESAR

effective against them. Tiberius was short of supplies
owing to his rapid march south, and the Dacians and
Sarmatians were raiding Mcesia; the season was more
over late for military operations; so Cxcina withdrew
into Mcesia, while Tiberius retreated upon Siscia. He
was wise. The winter was a very severe one. At Siscia
Tiberius remained through the winter, preparing for
next year s campaign.

Campaign
&gt;f A. D. 7

Caecina

enters

Pannonia

In the spring, Germanicus and the Italian levies, dis
patched by Augustus, arrived to relieve the legions of
duty at Siscia. 1 Germanicus was entrusted with the
command of the expeditionary force which was to enter
Dalmatia. Meanwhile, the Mcesian army, strengthened
with detachments of the Syrian troops, and with a pow
erful force of Thracian cavalry, advanced up the valley
of the Drave. Its first contact with the two Batos was
disastrous. The camp was surprised, the Thracian cav
alry, which lay outside the ramparts, was stampeded,
and the auxiliary troops were driven off the field. The
legionaries themselves began to waver. But discipline
and tradition kept them steady, and in spite of the loss
of many of their officers they charged home and wrested
victory from what seemed foredoomed defeat.

When the junction of the Moesian army with the
army of Tiberius was effected, the latter found himself
in control of the largest Roman force that had been as-

1 At least, so it is to be presumed. It is not very probable that an improvised
levy of veterans and freedmen would be given the difficult task of undertaHng
military operations against the hill-fortresses of Dalmatia.

THE REVOLT OF THE NORTH 103

sembled since the time of the civil wars. It must have
been a hundred and fifty thousand strong. The insur
gents recognized that they could not hope to meet this
force in the field with any chance of success. Their pol
icy was to avoid pitched battles: and their mobility en-
abled them to reduce the Pannonian section of the war

to a difficult business of raiding and harrying. The Tlberlus
Romans were obliged to adapt themselves to these tac
tics, and to disperse their forces to control the raiding
parties.

The competence of Tiberius as a soldier could have
endured no more searching test than this trial of his
ability to command a really great army in the circum- The
stances of a difficult and distracting war, the nearest
modern parallel of which is perhaps the South African
War of 1899-1902. There was no scope for spectacular
display. It was the sort of war which needed a sound and
trained professional soldier with a gift for infinite
drudgery. . . . During these Illyrian campaigns, which
were the supreme military achievement of Tiberius, we
obtain one of the most vivid side-lights upon his person
ality,

G. Velleius Paterculus, a soldier who became a his
torian as many soldiers have become, both before and
after his day served through the Illyrian and German
campaigns under Tiberius, and left record of them.
The dithyrambs of Velleius have the advantage of be
ing founded on personal experience, as against the mere
hearsay of Tacitus and Suetonius; and Velleius is very
dithyrambic indeed.

We see once more, though in very different circum-

io 4 TIBERIUS OESAR

Tiberius stances, the sober and prosaic man who visited the sick
commander *& Rhodes. Not one man of any rank, says Velleius, with
pardonable fervour, fell sick without having his welfare
attended to as carefully as if Tiberius had nothing else
to do. A horsed ambulance was ready for those who
needed it. The private carriage of Tiberius was pressed
into the service. Velleius records with pride that he him
self rode in it. The personal physicians of Tiberius, his
kitchen, his own bathing equipment, all were freely
employed for the benefit of the sick. . . * Tiberius,
alone of commanders, invariably travelled austerely on
horse-back: he sat at table, when entertaining guests,
instead of reclining* All of which Velleius thinks most
pleasant as an experience, and remarkable for the kind
ness it showed.

Tiberius did not criticize those who took a different
view of their responsibilities. He had, in matters of
general discipline, that very great virtue in high com
manders a conveniently blind eye. He frequently ad
vised, occasionally reproved, but rarely punished. . . *
And this is a description which we meet, in one form
or another, in all ages of the world s history; it is a
portrait of the good officer.

Velleius bears testimony to another aspect also of
the character of Tiberius. He was careful of the lives
of his men. As a commander, his steady principle was
safety first.

Gennamcus "f^^ keayy WO rk of Germanicus and the mountain

Dalmatia expedition provided the main results of the year s cam-

THE REVOLT OF THE NORTH 105

paigning. Dalmatia, the seat of the revolt, was gradu
ally reduced. The Dalmatian mountain-fortresses were
of great strength, well defended and well supplied. Their
capture was an arduous task. At Rsetinium the defend
ers set fire to the town in the hope of involving the
Romans in its destruction. . . . Famine, naturally
enough, began to spread throughout Illyricum. The land
was being left uncultivated. Pestilence inevitably fol
lowed, and division of opinion began. Many of the
insurgents wished to surrender. They were restrained by
threats. A chief named Scenobardus, who had offered
to surrender to Manius Ennius, the commander at Sis-
cia* was so far intimidated that he withdrew his offer.
. . . Famine seems to have prevailed even in Italy. . . . Famine
When, in the following spring, the important fortress
of Arduba fell, there was a struggle within the walls
between those who wished to surrender and those who
refused all compromise. The former were defeated;
and the women of the victorious party celebrated their
triumph by leaping with their children into the flames
that destroyed Arduba."

The famine forced the issue. Pinnes and Bato Breuci-
anus were driven to hazard a battle; and since the issue
could hardly be in doubt, Bato Breucianus insured him- Battle
self beforehand by entering into negotiations with B at hinus
Tiberius. The arrangement made was that he should Aug. ard.
surrender Pinnes, and in return should be confirmed in
his position as chief of the Breuci. . . . The great bat
tle of the Bathinus decided the fate of the Illyrian revolt.

Germanicus himself was the messenger who carried
the happy news to Augustus at Ariminum. . . . Augus-

106 TIBERIUS CJESAH

tus at length felt free to return to Rome, where his
arrival was celebrated with enthusiasm.

But Bato Dalmaticus was of tougher metal, and he
brought swift vengeance with him to Pannonia. Bato
Breucianus, doubtful of his own position with his sub
ject tribes, set out on a round of visits to take hostages
from them for his own security. Bato Dalmaticus heard
the news and set a trap for the traitor. Caught, kid
napped and brought to trial before an open-air court
of Dalmatian fighting-men, Bato Breucianus was con
demned to death, and the sentence was carried out on
the spot. The Pannonians were stimulated to make an
other rising against the Romans. The legate Silvanus de
feated the Breuci, and brought other tribes to submission
by peaceable persuasion, until Bato Dalmaticus gave up
the task and retired home. Harried by Silvanus, the
Pannonians submitted. Nothing was left of the Pan-
nonian revolt save a few desperate men who still kept
to the hills.

Dalmatia remained: and it was the task of Tiberius

to clear up the war in Dalmatia. Upon his arrival he

Reduction found the troops in a restless mood, tired of the war,

fotmaria and much more anxious to finish it off at any cost than

A. D. 9 to see it drag on further. He therefore divided his forces.

One corps was placed under Silvanus, another under

Marcus Lepidus; the third, Tiberius commanded in

person.

Velleius * has left us a graphic though brief record of

ilL cxv. This Lepidus is to be carefully distinguished from Manius Aemilius
Lepidus,

THE REVOLT OF THE NORTH 107

the sweeping movement conducted by M. Lepidus,
"through the midst of tribes who were as yet uninflu
enced and unweakened by the reverses of war, and
therefore still ardent and aggressive; after struggles in
which he had to contend against the difficulties of the
country and the resistance of the enemy, and after in
flicting heavy punishment on those who opposed him,
by the devastation of fields, burning of houses, and
slaying of inhabitants." The powerful tribes of Peristae
and Desidiates, in their almost impregnable strongholds
among the narrow mountain ravines expert fighters
all were at last reduced, though only by a process of
very nearly exterminating them. . . . Silvanus also is
recorded as having performed his work with success.

The corps of Tiberius and Germanicus took up the
more difficult task of running Bato Dalmaticus to earth. Pursuit
He was now "on the run," and the pursuit led them Dalmaticus
over the whole country. He finally went to ground in
the fortress of Andetrium, not far from Salonae. It
was a little difficult to distinguish between besiegers and
besieged. Andetrium was built upon a rocky height,
hard of access and encircled with deep ravines and
mountain torrents. The town was well supplied, whereas
the communications of Tiberius were precarious. He
was in some doubt as to the prudent course to follow.

Bato, however, was by now feeling the strain. He
sent to inquire after possible terms of surrender. The
inquiry convinced Tiberius that the situation of those
inside the fortress must be at least as uncomfortable as ^
his own. He determined to assault.

The storming party climbed the mountain while

ro8

TIBERIUS OESAR

Siege

Andetrium

Bato

surrenders
to
Tiberius

Tiberius, from a convenient perch, superintended the
reserves. The defenders rolled down stones with great
effect, but the storming party went on climbing until
it got to hand-strokes. In the sub-serial struggle which
ensued a skull-dragging contest of the most deter
mined description Tiberius fed in his reserves with
such judgment that the defenders at last grew ex
hausted. Just as they had reached the right point of
exhaustion, they were attacked in the rear by crag-
climbers who had worked round the mountain paths
during the battle. They could not retreat into the for
tress. They fled, and were hunted down in detail among
the woods and rocks. The exasperated legionaries gave
no quarter.

Bato finally sent his son Sceuas to Tiberius, with an
undertaking to surrender if his life were spared. Tiberius
pledged his word. Bato came in during the night, and
on the following day was brought before him. Bato
asked nothing for himself. . . * He does not seem to
have placed much reliance upon the promise made to
him. But he spoke at length on behalf of his people,
which would appear to have been the object of his sur
render. Finally, he held out his head to receive the exe
cutioner s stroke.

Tiberius only asked him why his people had revolted,
and had fought so desperately against the Romans.

"It is your own doing," he replied. "To guard your
flocks you Romans send not shepherds, nor even dogs,
but wolves." *

x This phrase seems to have stuck in the mind of Tiberius, and may have
been the origin of his dry message to the governor of Egypt, years later: "I want
my sheep shorn, not flayed."

THE REVOLT OF THE NORTH 109

Tiberius sent him to Ravenna, where he dwelt until
he died.

The Illyrian revolt was over. It had been a singularly
expensive war. Very little booty was taken during the
campaigns; there was very little to take; while the cost
of maintaining the troops was immense. About fifteen
legions and a large number of auxiliary troops had been
employed. Some people thought it the hardest war
fought by the Romans since the war of Hannibal; and
though all comparisons of this kind are easy to make
and difficult to sustain, there may be a certain truth in
it. ... Never, at least, were so many honours be
stowed. Tiberius was granted a triumph; he and Ger-
manicus were saluted with the title Imperator, and
besides other honours had two triumphal arches erected
to them in Pannonia. Augustus would not allow more.
Most of the divisional generals Lepidus and Messalinus
among them received the triumphal ornaments. . . .
But the triumph of Tiberius was not destined to be cele
brated just yet.

The secondary effects of such catastrophes as the
Illyrian war are often more serious than the primary.
The repercussion of the events set going by Bato Dal-
maticus went echoing through the northern frontiers
of Rome, and did not die down until, many years later, Effects
Septimius Severus died at York; perhaps they have not J^ 1 ^
died out yet. "While the revolt was at its height, and Revolt
Tiberius was fully occupied in dealing with it, a deci
sion fraught with the most momentous consequences

no TIBERIUS OESAR

was taken at Rome. Publius Qulntilius Varus was ap
pointed to the governorship of Germany, and sent to
the Rhine commissioned to begin the task of Roman
izing the Germans.

The instructions of Varus seem to have authorized

him to introduce into Germany such arrangements as

would bring the new dependency up to the normal

standard of a Roman province. It was, to say the least,

a dangerous decision to make while the Illyrian revolt

itself due to a premature attempt to lift the province to

Change the normal level of taxation was still undecided. The

Policy drain on the resources of the imperial fisc certainly re-

|? quired that every possible expedient should be employed

Germany H . . i u r i u j

to raise taxation wheresoever it could saieiy be imposed;

but no money so acquired could compensate for the
danger involved.

The appointment of Varus meant a departure from
the principles which had hitherto marked the dealings
of Augustus with the Germans, and a reversal of the
policy of Tiberius, who had been responsible for the
settlement of the province after the death of Drusus.
On its personal side, moreover, it was an extraordinary
Quintilitis ^P 56 f judgment. Varus was no soldier; and he was
Varus given the most important and difficult military com
mand in the empire. He was an easy-going man, none
too sound on the side of honesty; 1 somewhat of a block
head and somewhat of a shark; and he was sent to man
age men who, whatever their virtues might be, were

1 He had been governor of Syria; and it was said of him that when he ar
rived there Syria was rich and he was poor, and when he left it, Syria was
poor and he was rich.

THE REVOLT OF THE NORTH in

then, as they are today, singularly astute, prompt and
ruthless, and swift to resent the presence of a man whom
they did not respect. . . * They seem, after a slight
pause, to have welcomed him with sinister pleasure and
false smiles. The conversations which precede a conspir
acy were at once set on foot. The opportunity was too
good to miss.

The head of this movement was Irmin, one of the
younger chiefs of the Cherusci.

VII

Irmin was of the same generation and apparently
of the same age as Marbod; and like the young Suabian Irmin
he was deeply influenced by the new ideas which con
tact with Rome was spreading throughout Germany.
But he was a very different type of man, and perhaps
a more typical German. He did not share the cautious
temperament of Marbod. He was more of a fighting
man and more of an intriguer, thinking and acting with
a stronger sense of nationality, viewing matters from
a less purely political and more distinctly gentile stand
point, and more interested than Marbod in preserving
German independence and German tradition. The only
common ground he shared with Marbod was a disposi
tion to turn to new methods. His father-in-law, Seges-
tes, was irreconcilably opposed to him, and firmly up
held the principle of friendship with Rome; but the
motive of Segestes seems to have been the wish to keep
the old tribal system intact, and to avoid the risk of its
destruction by war. Irmin was prepared, like Marbod,

ii2 TIBERIUS OESAR

to adopt a new system inspired by Roman models, and
to sacrifice the old system in order to preserve the liv
ing reality of independence.

I the conquest o Germany by Drusus did nothing
else, it destroyed the prestige of the old tribal system
Movement which had failed to withstand him in the field, and it
Germany impelled the younger men to learn the political con
ceptions which seemed to create so infinitely more pow
erful a social organism. Marbod represented one form
of the new movement. He would have been willing to
found a new state without regard for the gentile link.
Irmin represented another form. He wished to found
a political state while still recognizing and preserving
the gentile link; that is to say, he was feeling his way
towards the principle of nationality.

Both Irmin and Marbod were men who adventured
boldly along new paths. The paths were to prove longer
than they thought; many a generation was to pass be
fore the ideas which they mooted became established,
and were proved sound in practice; far worse and
weaker men succeeded where they failed; but their es
pecial interest to us is that they stand at the distant
fountain head of a process which transformed the old
local tribalism of northern Europe into the nationalism
of today.

The efforts of the conspirators to lull Varus into a
false sense of security were admirably successful. They
judged their man well, and indulged his personal vanity
and official pride to the full of its appetite. He proceeded

THE REVOLT OF THE NORTH 113

to civilize the conquered barbarians with a firm hand. f Ctlon
He assessed the province for taxation; his judicial de- Varus
cisions as governor ignored local usage and tribal law,
to the fury and stupefaction of men who, knowing no
other law, thought that they were being denied the
benefit of law altogether; and the conspirators saw to
it that neither party should be disillusioned. It took two
years to bring the mass of the Germans to the breaking
point; but by that time Irmin and his friends had not
only the Cherusci, but the fighting Chatti, the Marsr
and the Bructeri ready to leave the mark as soon as the
word should be given. It was necessary to hasten, for
the Ulyrian revolt was dying slowly out, and before long
the legions would once more be free.

The governor s summer progress brought him, with
three legions, to quarters on the Weser, somewhere up
near Minden. The principal conspirators were present
in his camp, on the best of terms with him, and con
stantly dining at his table. Their conversation gave him
a conviction of security against which the warnings of
others were in vain. The summer was late when, in ac- Pla * s
cordance with his regular program, he made ready Conspira-
for his return to the Rhine. There was no difficulty tors
before him. His line of communication with Aliso, at
the head of the valley of the Lippe, secured his line of
march; and from Aliso the way was easy to Castra
Vetera. The conspirators had their plan ready. At the
last moment before he started a message was brought
that a tribe, well off the line of march, had risen. An
experienced soldier might have scented danger. Not so
Varus. He was persuaded that he could make a Circuit

ii 4 TIBERIUS OESAR

to Include this rising on his way home. He was definitely
warned by Segestes, the Cheruscan chief. Varus dis
missed the warning. He had confidence in his friends.
Having now made sure that he should have no ex
cuse whatever in the event of mishap, he set out on his
march.

The calculations of the conspirators worked out to
perfection. All the preparations had been made. They
accompanied Varus sufficiently far upon his way to
make certain that he was walking into the trap. Then
they excused themselves upon the ground that they
had better collect their own levies in order to give him
support. Even then Varus does not seem to have sus
pected their good faith. Their levies were as a matter of
fact close at hand. The word was passed. While the
The auxiliary troops garrisoning the tribal districts were

^ n massacred by a simultaneous concerted rising, the main
A. D. 9 body of the Germans pressed after Varus.

At some point between the Ems and the Lippe, north
east of Aliso, the legions, engaged on their wild-goose
chase, were struggling through a rough and trackless
country of hill and forest and marsh, where, encum
bered with a heavy baggage train and many non-
combatants, including women and children, they were
obliged to cut their way forward, felling the great for
est trees, laying down roads, bridging ravines as they
went. The column of route, disordered and strung out
by this necessity, straggled still more when bad weather
broke in violent gale and rain; the ground became a
slippery quagmire; falling branches added to the con
fusion.

THE REVOLT OF THE NORTH 115

^^^^^^^^^^ ^^ ^-^ ^ ^^^^ ^^^^ ^^^^

And now the Germans,, expected as friends, fell upon
them as foes. The attack came from all sides. Familiar
with the ground, the Germans had no difficulty in strik
ing where they would, at first with missile weapons,
and then, encouraged by the feeble resistance, hand to
hand. The column was hopelessly disordered by the
first unexpected attack. It was never adequately pulled
together. The legionaries, the non-combatants and the
wagons were inextricably mixed; and the legionaries
were in no position to concentrate against their assail
ants.

It was just such a march as General Braddock (a far
abler soldier than Publius Quintilius Varus) found too M
much for him. The best place possible, considering the of
circumstances, was chosen for a camp that night, and
an effort was made to get the column into proper or
der. In the morning most of the wagons were either
burned or abandoned, together with all baggage that
was not absolutely indispensable. The second day s march
was therefore begun in more promising circumstances.
The column forced its way temporarily out of the
forest-land into open country. It was necessary, how
ever, to fight a way through another forest; and here
the worst losses were incurred. The troops were penned
into narrow ground where any kind of concerted man
oeuvring was difficult. The column marched all night,
for in the morning it was still advancing. A fresh down
pour of rain and a high gale came with the dawn. Pro
gress became impossible; even foot-hold was difficult.
Rain-drenched weapons could scarcely be handled; the
bulPs-hide shields of the legionaries were soaked, with

TIBERIUS CAESAR

Disaster

Teutoberg

Destruc
tion
of the
Roman
Army

Germany
lost

consequences that can easily be guessed. Few positions
could be more pitiable than that of Italians lost in a
North European forest in such weather. The Germans
naturally suffered much less, and could choose their
ground. Their numbers also had greatly increased. The
news of success and the prospect of plunder were bring
ing up all who had at first hung back. . . . The legion
aries made an attempt to dig an entrenchment. It was
destined never to be finished. The end was clearly enough
at hand. Varus, wounded and hopeless, killed himself.
His principal officers followed his example, rather than
fall alive into the hands of the Germans. Vala Numo-
nius, the prefect of the cavalry, abandoned the column
with all his remaining men, and left the infantry to
their own resources. He was probably himself wounded,
for he died during his march to the Rhine, but his troop
ers made good their escape.

The exhausted survivors, thus abandoned, and with
out leaders, gave up the struggle. Many were butchered
without resistance; some fell on their own weapons;
a few were captured. Twenty thousand men, and three
legionary eagles (those of the XVIIth, XVIIIth and
XlXth legions) were lost in the so-called "Battle of
Teutoberg." Only the cavalry and a small number of
foot-soldiers escaped and reached the Roman lines. The
whole of the lands between the Rhine and the Elbe,
which Drusus had with such difficulty and at such ex
pense conquered, was lost by the Romans.

The fate of the prisoners was terrible. Many were
crucified or buried alive, or offered up as blood offer
ings to the dark gods of the German groves. Some were

THE REVOLT OF THE NORTH 117

afterwards ransomed by their friends. Roman discipline
was not mild towards men who allowed themselves to
become prisoners of war, but as an act of grace the
imperial government permitted the ransoms to be paid,
with the proviso that the men concerned should not
return to Italy.

The worst possibilities of the battle of Teutoberg
were avoided. The fall of Varus had left Castra Vetera The
open to the enemy. As soon as he heard the news, Lucius
Nonius Asprenas at Mainz made a rapid march to the
point of danger, and reached it not only in time to save
the town, but also to save Lucius Csedicius who was shut
up in Aliso. Csedicius, in turn, held Aliso until it was
too late for the Germans to gain Castra Vetera before
the arrival of Asprenas. They could not take a fortified
place, and they suffered heavy losses from the archers
who defended Aliso. When at last they realized their
mistake, the lost time could not be made good. But the
diversion drew off most of the German force. A block
ading detachment was left to watch the Romans.

The position of Csedicius, isolated, with many women Caedicius
and children, nearly a hundred miles from the Rhine,
was disquieting. He kept close within the fortifications,
and waited for relief. The blockading force, confident
that he could not hold out indefinitely, waited for him
to make the inevitable break-away. Though the Ger
mans were invisible, their pickets watched the roads.
The supplies gradually diminished and gave out, and no
relieving army appeared, Caedicius was obliged to make

n8 TIBERIUS OESAR

the resolution which the Germans were patiently await
ing.

He spun out the time until the move could be made
under favourable conditions. The garrison was pinched
with hunger before a dark and stormy night afforded
the circumstances required. Then the Roman column
He runs crept forth on its perilous attempt. The troops who
blockade kd t ^ ie Wa 7 anc ^ brought up the rear were greatly out
numbered by the non-combatant civilians and the
women and children in the centre of the column. . . .
They got past the first and the second pickets without
mishap; but when they reached the third, the trouble
began. The women and children, hungry, tired and cold,
and frightened at the dark and at the disappearance of
the soldiers in front of them, 1 lifted up agonized voices
and called for them to come back. The alarm was in
stantly given, and the Germans descended upon them
Stem with Promptitude. Though the historian Dion Cassius
caught does not actually say so, the story necessarily implies
t ^ iat ^ Germans arrived with torches and flares which
enabled them to see what they were doing. All. would
have been lost if they had not immediately rushed for
the baggage the only pay they were ever likely to
get for their trouble. This gave everyone the chance
to bolt into the darkness without being followed.

On realizing the situation of affairs, some genius
among the soldiers possibly Caedicius himself, for the

X A noble story of adventure is evidently lost behind the brief phrases of
Dion Cassius. One would like to know the precise means by which the pickets
were passed! The tales of this escape from Aliso brings a modern man far nearer
to the ancient Roman than all the tales of high politics and full-dress battles
that have come down to vs.

THE REVOLT OF THE NORTH 119

order must have been given by an officer directed the
trumpeter to sound the double-quick-march. The two-
edged ruse was successful. * . . Recognizing the signal,
and convinced that Asprenas himself must be at hand,
the Germans stood to their arms and made no attempt Escape
to follow, while the Roman column rallied to the sound, Romans
and resumed its march. Before the Germans could real
ize the truth, communication had been established with
Castra Vetera; a relief force sent by Asprenas was really
at hand, and the column was struggling safely home. 1
The garrison of Aliso was saved, and the Rhine fron
tier remained intact. The people of Gaul could sleep
in their beds.

The suicide of Varus had been well advised. The
loss of the province of Germany was an indiscretion
which might have been excused, but to throw away
twenty thousand men of a long-service army was a
crime for which, save death, there was no secular ex
piation. For Augustus the blow was doubly severe. All
the efforts he had made frequently against his better Feelings
judgment had been rendered useless, and to the actual Augustus
loss, serious as it was, disgrace was added. He, who had
been so proud of recovering the standards which Cras-
sus had lost at Carrhae, had himself lost three! . . . He
had some kind of nervous breakdown. It was rumoured
that for months the cold, self-contained man cut neither
his hair nor his beard, and had struck his head against

1 One Hopes that Caedicius got an appropriate crown for thisl Asprenas rose to
be Governor of Africa and doubtless deserved it.

120

TIBERIUS CAESAR

Reinforce
ments
rushed to
the
Rhine

Marbod
remains
neutral

a door, crying: "Varus! give back those legions!" . . .
This was only gossip. 1 . . . But Augustus had every
reason for taking it hard. The worst of it was that he
could not absolve himself from blame.

Rome at large, fatigued by its exertions over the II-
lyrian revolt, was somewhat indifferent. It is unlikely
that anyone had money invested in Germany, and
in such cases men are liable to take an optimistic view
of the misfortunes of others. Augustus ordered recruits
to be at once enrolled. They came forward very slowly.
A mixed assortment of reinforcements, including re
tired veterans and ambitious freedmen, was hastily
drafted to the Rhine.

The rapidity of Asprenas and the skill of Csedicius
had, however, saved the day. What the consequences
might have been if, with the legions concentrated in
Illyricum and the revolt barely quelled, the Germans
had broken the Rhine frontier, no man can say. 2 It
was an opportunity such as seldom falls to the lot of
earnest men. . . . But when, the body of Varus having
been mutilated and partly burned by the Germans, his
head was sent to Marbod, the latter dispatched it on to
Augustus, who had it decently buried in the family
tomb. . . . Marbod to some extent held the key of
the situation; and he very definitely Refused to act with
Irmin.

It was, of course, Tiberius (the universal resort in
time of trouble) who was called upon to clear up the

1 Suetonius (Ttiv. Aug. XXill) . Beside, Augustus was notoriously irregular in
his patronage of the barber.

2 Simultaneous action between the Germans and the Illyrians had been the
prospect to fear. (Suetonius Tib. XVII.)

THE REVOLT OF THE NORTH 121,

damage. In the following spring he proceeded to the
Rhine, and spent the year in reorganizing the frontier,
and in restoring the discipline and moral of the army,
He was known as a man of independent judgment, who
consulted his own sense of fitness rather than public
opinion; but he showed, on this occasion, more than
customary interest in the views and opinions of others.
He took the advice of a board of counsellors, whose
recommendations he adopted. . . . On matters of or
dinary military routine he is little likely to have needed
its help. This board had another significance. He was Tiberius
examining into the whole problem of the north-western report
frontier; and the conclusions which he drew, and re- A - D * I0
ported to Augustus, were revealed later.

He was joined, next year, by Germanicus, who was
introduced to the country and the army in which his
father had run that brief but immortal career which
men still vividly remembered. There was a hint of
augury in the advent, at this moment, of Germanicus.
He might be the man destined to carry on to its end
the work of Drusus. . , . Tiberius made a demonstra
tion in force across the Rhine, with the object of creat
ing a moral impression among the tribesmen, and pos
sibly of giving Germanicus a little experience of the
country.

A vivid glimpse of Tiberius as a soldier has survived Campaign
from this campaign. We see him personally inspecting 2* .

i 1 j r i 11 Tiberius

the loads or the transport wagons, to make sure that in Germany
the restrictions he had ordered were observed; cashier- A * Dt IJ
ing the legate of a legion, for sending soldiers across the
Rhine to protect his freedmen on a hunting expedition;

TIBERIUS OESAR

Impending
anges

Rhine
command

sleeping in the open; taking his meals on the ground.
He issued his orders for the day in writing, on the previ
ous evening, and any officer in doubt of their meaning
was invited to consult him personally at any time, night
or day. . . . The good omen in which he placed his
chief reliance was to see his lamp burn out at night as
he worked. . , . He dryly observed that his Claudian
ancestors had found it reliable. ... It was a very
Claudian kind of portent!

But a change of times and days was impending. If
the work of Drusus were to be restored, Tiberius could
not be the man to do it. ... The report he had made
to Augustus on the question of the Rhine was not yet
known: but in any case his work began to lie decisively
elsewhere. The Illyrian war was his last great campaign.
. . . Augustus was rapidly ageing, and began to make
definite preparations for his own departure from the
stage. Germanicus returned to Rome to take up the
consulship, which detained him there throughout A. D.
12. He was then duly qualified to relieve Tiberius of
the command on the Rhine. Early in A. D. 13 he ar
rived to take over the command, and Tiberius, turning
his back for ever upon the northern frontier, left for
Italy, which he was never again to leave.

Germanicus was inactive during his first year in the
commancj - Perhaps he was feeling his way, ascertaining
what he had to deal with, and learning what others had
to teU l^.. _ Perhaps the verdict of Tiberius on
the Rhine problem was having its effect. . . . There is
a hint in the tension of the air that everyone was wait-

THE REVOLT OF THE NORTH 123

ing upon the fragile old statesman, so frail yet so long-
lived, so wonderful and so famous, who was gathering
together his papers and making ready to abandon his
task to younger men.

CHAPTER VI

TIBERIUS C^SAR

TIBERIUS W reached a dividing ridge in his life, and
from this time onward all his rivers began to flow an
other way. His career as a soldier lay definitely behind
him. He was never again to see the sword drawn in war:
never again to see the great mountains or the open road.
Final He came from the disciplined, orderly, open-air life of

2*^ armies and frontiers to the crowded and competitive

Tiberius Hf e of the great metropolis. For many years now his
absence from this latter had been the rule; his presence
in it the exception. ... He cannot have enjoyed the
change. A man who has grown used to the effortless
wheels of command and obedience seldom enjoys the
heavy friction of civil life. To return again to a world
in which the effort of mental readjustment to others is
a continuous unbroken process, without cessation or
holiday, does not make for increased happiness. There
is no reason to suppose that Tiberius was conscious of
any increase.

The prospect of friction was not diminished by the
terms on which Augustus had adopted Tiberius and by
that means co-opted him as his successor in the princi-
pate. Whether the reason were the family sentiment of
Augustus or whether there were deeper reasons, the

stipulation was that Tiberius should pass over his own

124

TIBERIUS CAESAR 125

son Drusus, and adopt Germanicus, who was married
to Julia s daughter. The condition was a hard one. Prospects
Tiberius had accepted it. With that impartiality which future
throughout his life he showed in most things, he never
pushed Drusus unnecessarily forward. . . . But the
plan had its obvious disadvantages. It would direct the
suspicion of enemies and half -friends continually against
Tiberius. If his own anticipations were confirmed, he
would be accused of having created the facts he antici
pated. If ill hap should chance to Germanicus, he would
be accused of complicity. If any wild combination of
circumstances arose to the injury of Germanicus-^and
human life is full of wild combinations of circum-
stances4-the eyes of mankind would instantly be turned
upon Tiberius. All this was certain beforehand. It needed
no preternatural astuteness to foresee it. We shall see
how far this prospect was fulfilled.

During the year of the first consulship of Germani
cus, Augustus gave his formal intimation of the ar
rangements that had been made. He addressed a letter Triumph
to the Senate, recommending Germanicus to its pro- Tiberius
tection, and itself to the protection of Tiberius. This A. D. 12
year, too, the Triumph of Tiberius was celebrated. He
was accompanied by all the divisional generals of his
Illyrian campaigns, who had been awarded the trium
phal ornaments. Augustus and the Senate met him at
the Porta Triumphalis, and Tiberius fell at the feet of
his nominal father before entering the city. It was a
generous triumph. Bato Dalmaticus, after treading that
road which for so many foes of Rome ended in the Tul-
lianum, was dispatched to Ravenna, handsomely pen-

126 TIBERIUS OESAR

sioned, there to meditate over his remarkable discovery
of a man who kept his word. The people were feasted
at a thousand tables. A gratuity of three hundred ses
terces was paid to each of the men who had fought in
the Illyrlan and German wars. ... As a further mark
of thanks Tiberius restored and re-dedicated the temple
of Concord and the temple of Castor and Pollux the
divine Twin Brethren, in the joint names of himself and
his brother Drusus.

"When, after he had surrendered the Rhine command
to Germanicus, Tiberius arrived in Rome, the serious
business was begun. The two principal bases on which
the authority of the princeps was founded were the pro
consular iniperium and the tribunician power. The for
mer gave him his administrative control in the provinces,
while the latter gave him his political power in Rome.
The emperor could delegate his imperium. Augustus
had already done so: but the validity of such a delega
tion of course expired at his own death. He therefore
caused a formal measure to be passed through the Senate
bestowing on Tiberius the full proconsular iniperium,
equal to and co-ordinate with his own. Tiberius was at
the same time invested with the tribunician power for
Process life. By this means it was ensured that the authority of
optation Tiberius should not be affected by the death of Augus
tus. As soon as the latter should pass away, Tiberius
would step forward equipped to take his place. There
would be no real interregnum. . . . Tiberius was also
appointed chairman of the senatorial committee which,
during the last six months of Augustus* life, when he

TIBERIUS OESAR 127

was more or less of an invalid, met at his house and
transacted business in the Senate s name. His first expe
rience of the actual exercise of his future office was
thus acquired under the guidance of Augustus him
self.

It had moreover been arranged that a census, the
periodical scrutiny of qualifications (which was practi
cally the issue of a writ of Quo Warranto to every indi-
vidual in the Roman dominions) should be held by censorial
Augustus and Tiberius conjointly. This gave them the r iew
opportunity of making a thorough review together of
the whole state of the empire, and of every important
person in it. A full account of their conferences, if we
possessed it, would make remarkably interesting read
ing. . . . No emperor ever entered upon power more
carefully coached, more thoroughly trained or more
completely in possession of the counsel of his predeces
sor, than did Tiberius; and yet there hung about the
proceedings of Augustus a vague hint of the same dis
trust which had made him stay in Gaul during the gov
ernorship of Tiberius, though he left it during the
governorship of Drusus. It was never possible to distin
guish between the paternal care and the personal dis
trust of Augustus. To the last it remained baffling and
puzzling.

The census having been held, Tiberius proceeded on Last
his way to Pannonia, where he was to take up the gen- O f
eral command. He never reached it. Augustus had
parted from him at Beneventum, and had then taken the
road to the milder air and sunshine of Campania. Messen-

128

TIBERIUS CAESAR

Death of
Augustus
A. D. 14

Tiberius
assumes
power

gers overtook Tiberius. The emperor was attacked by
dysentery and lay dying. Tiberius raced back to Nola.
Time was all-important. He arrived just in time l to re
ceive the last words of the man who was the first, and re
mained the greatest, of all the Roman emperors.

Augustus was tired. After Tiberius had left him,
he made one of his half -bantering comments. He did not
envy the unlucky Roman people who would have to
deal with that very solid and deliberate man. 2 . . .

He died at Nola on the nineteenth day of August his
own month in the year A. D. 14.

Tiberius acted with promptitude. He was fully
equipped with the power necessary to deal with the sit
uation. He at once, in virtue of his tribunician power,
summoned a meeting of the Senate; in virtue of his pro
consular power he gave the countersign to the Praetorian
guard, and sent out the dispatches communicating the
news to the Army. He acted as though he were already
emperor and princeps and in actual fact he was. He
still had to pass the critical test of gaining the authorita
tive assent and acceptance of the Senate.

Quick as he was, there were foes who were no less
quick. He had acted promptly from instinct: he did not
at first realize the full range of the battle he was about

1 Tne importance of this point is that on it depends the question whether
or not he received any communications from Augustus just before the latter
died. There were various matters which Augustus would probably hold back
until the very last.

2 Subsequent events gave the particular phrase used by Augustus a meaning
which he can never consciously have intended it to bear. His remark was only
the kind of comment which King Charles might have made after an interview
with a particularly dour specimen of the Elect.

TIBERIUS CAESAR 129

to fight. No sooner was Augustus dead, than a ship
had set sail for Planasia to secure possession of Agrippa
Postumus, the only surviving son of Julia. He was at
once slain by his gaoler. . . . When the officer who was
responsible arrived to report his action, Tiberius replied Murder
that no such order had been issued by him, and that the
matter must be referred to the Senate. ... It was the
first of those mysteries of ambiguous and conflicting
evidence which were to haunt his reign. The matter
was never referred to the Senate. Tacitus tells us that
Sallustius Crispus sent the letter which authorized the
deed, and that he now went to Livia and expostulated
with her at the idea of consulting the Senate at all on
such a question. Tacitus does not tell us by whose au
thority Sallustius sent the. order, nor when it was sent;
but he leaves us to imagine that either Livia or Tiberius
was responsible, or that both were. ... In any case,
the matter was allowed to drop, for by degrees the
meaning of the attempt to seize the person of Agrippa
became formidably clear. 1 . . . Suetonius says that it
was not known who really authorized the death of
Agrippa: the officer certainly received a letter, but The
whether it was written by Augustus before his death,
or whether Livia afterwards wrote it in his name, and
whether Tiberius was cognizant of it, were never dis
covered. 2

1 See post, p. 211.

2 The story is told in the text as Tacitus (Ann I, 6.) and Suetonius (Tiberius
XXII) relate it; but it can be "restored" with some probability of achieving
the truth. The officer had a standing order o Augustus, issued to him for his
protection in case of necessity, authorizing him, in the event of attempted res
cue, to slay Agrippa. The officer acted on this order. But when Tiberius, a
legally minded man, was confronted with it, he saw it to be inadequate. An

130

TIBERIUS C^SAR

Death

Julia

Execution

Gracchus

The death of Agrippa removed Julia s last hope of
reigning in the person of one of her sons. There was still
Agrippina; but the reign of Agrippina could never mean
so much to Julia, and it was still too remote a prospect to
have much meaning for her. Julia seems from this time
to have fallen into a decline, Her partisans declared that
Tiberius allowed her to starve to death. The fact seems
to have been that Tiberius steadily and completely ig
nored her existence; and her partisans, although they
inveighed against Tiberius, did not go to the length of
subscribing on Julia s behalf anything more solid than
indignation.

But there was another person, whose existence Ti
berius was far from ignoring. T. Sempronius Gracchus,
the author of more catastrophe than most men can
claim the credit of starting, had been for fourteen years
in exile on the island of Cercina, near the African coast.
He does not seem to have been greatly surprised nor
need we be -that a party of soldiers was not long in

order o Augustus might create rather awkward precedents unless he himself
endorsed it; but as Agrippa had been incarcerated on a commitment by the
Senate, it was doubtful if his own endorsement could give it any legal validity.
Sallustius went to Livia and pointed out that this way of regarding the case
was pure destruction for them all; for their hands would be hopelessly tied
by such a formal legal view. When Augustus obtained the decree of the Senate,
he had never meant it to tie his own hands. Livia, who could answer for the
genuineness of the order, therefore went to Tiberius and insisted on his en
dorsement being given to it. Tiberius was unwilling to accept responsibility for
a deed he had not done and could not legally justify; he was very anxious,
for reasons that appear in the sequel, not to alienate the Senate by disregarding
its constitutional position; so, as the arguments of Sallustius were on their own
ground unanswerable, the matter simply dropped, and the real truth remained
In convenient obscurity. This would fully account for the statements of Tacitus
and those of Suetonius.

TIBERIUS CJESAR 131

arriving from Julia s husband. 1 They found Gracchus
on a cliff , in a not unreasonable state of deep depression
of spirits. He merely requested time to write to his wife;
and then he died with more dignity than he had lived.
We may notice that all three incidents, varying in
the directness with which they were connected with
Tiberius, were somehow related to his marriage with
Julia. These auspices were not to be misleading. That
marriage pursued him. He had done Julia no injury,
and he had received much; but he was to receive much
more, and he was never to be free from the avenging
furies which pursued him with punishment for the
crime of having been Julia s husband.

The funeral of Augustus was the first public appear- Puneral
ance of the new Csesar, It was an occasion of great of
solemnity, on which men at large might well review and usus
sum up their thoughts of a great historic figure and all
that it had meant.

The funeral pyre was in the Campus Martius. The
ashes of Augustus were deposited in the mausoleum he
had built between the Via Flaminia and the Tiber,
north of Rome, and had surrounded with gardens.
Tiberius himself and his son Drusus delivered the
funeral orations. The senate solemnly decreed Augustus
like Julius to be numbered among the gods. His cult

1 Tacitus (Ann. I. 53) is careful to inform us that according to one account
they came from Asprenas, this being of course an insinuation that Tiberius
was trying to hide behind Asprenas. But we may doubt if any husband would
have denied himself the luxury of taking the centre of the stage on such an
occasion as this.

i 3 z TIBERIUS

was officially instituted: temples and priests were au
thorized. . . . This process of deification had been de
signed as a calculated step towards isolating the holders
of the imperial dignity from the common run of men.
It tended to invest them with a more awful prestige,
and to add a degree of moral force to the barriers which
excluded the principate from the political dangers of
open competition. While it did not absolutely fail of
this effect, it did not completely achieve it; and in the
case of Augustus it somewhat overshot its mark. . . .
Political To many men it seemed rather to close a door for ever
effects upon Augustus and his power, and to draw a dividing
line below his name. The immensity of his success was
equivalent to failure. . . . Many men left that mighty
ceremony persuaded that a great episode had come by
natural steps to its due end. There could never be an
other Augustus: there was no man remaining who could
fill his place. . . . Tomorrow the Roman world would
return to the normal, and, strengthened by the care of
its temporary master, would go back to its ancient re
publican constitution.

Not all men thought so, or wished it so; there were
powerful currents of material interest which conflicted
with any such return. But even Tiberius himself went
home impressed with a sense that the mantle of Augus
tus was too great for him to wear. ... It was never
theless his solejnn duty to drape it round his shoulders,
and to lift up his small and unpopular voice in a claim to
the overwhelming laurels and gigantic fasces of that
divine man.

TIBERIUS OESAR 133

The first meeting of the Senate, convoked after the
accession of Tiberius, had been preoccupied exclusively
with business relating to the funeral of Augustus. The
second meeting, held when Augustus was at last defi
nitely out of the way, was the serious field of contest.

The task of Tiberius was to secure his own confirma
tion in the principate. In carrying out this task he f e
worked under definite limitations. He was already, in Senate
gross material fact, the holder of all the powers Augus
tus had wielded; but by the rules of the game which had
been founded by Augustus he was not permitted to
mention the actual fact, nor to invite the Senate openly
to invest him with the supreme power in the state. In
order to carry the matter through in the prescribed
form, with proper respect towards a constitution still
republican in principle, he had to induce the Senate
freely to offer him various titles and privileges, and
even to press them upon him. The consuls had the draft
of a bill ready to lay before the house. It was part of
the etiquette of his position that Tiberius should hesi
tate, decline, and finally deplore the necessity which
forced him to accept its terms.

He evidently felt very much like doing so in earnest.
He faced a senate which was in some ways a little un
certain of itself. He also was a little uncertain of him
self. The death of Augustus was an event of tremendous
magnitude. . . . The prestige of Augustus, his per
sonal influence, coming down from the almost legendary

134

TIBERIUS OESAR

Delicate

questions

involved

Difficulties

before

Tiberius

time of the civil wars, had made him a man apart, sur
rounded with a halo of romantic splendour which over
awed the Roman world. Most men had been born into
a world in which Augustus exercised this magical power;
they had never questioned it; they had taken it as a
matter of course. . . . Even his official deification was
not quite a mere question of policy. It represented an
impression of which all men were acutely aware. . . .

But now a successor to Augustus stood before them,
and they realized that he, at any rate, was no matter
of course. . . . He was about to ask for a ratification
of his claim to the supreme power though no such
phrase as "supreme power" was permissible in anyone s
mouth. How far had they the power to decline? How
far had they the right to decline? How far did they
wish to decline? The whole problem was suddenly
re-opened: and yet they were not sure how far they
could take seriously the conception that it was re
opened.

Tiberius himself understood his difficulties. He cer
tainly had enough sense of humour to feel some embar
rassment at asking for a grant in law of powers which
he already possessed in fact. He had not himself origi
nated this system of masking realities under polite pre
tences. It laid him open to possible rebuffs even to in
sults which he can hardly have enjoyed in prospect.
More than this, he may have felt what every man is
liable to feel in great moments a very real sense of
personal inadequacy. He was a shy and disagreeable man.
No sensitive man in such a moment needs any hypocrisy
to help him to refer to his own unworthiness. He will

TIBERIUS CAESAR 135

do so, if only to disarm criticism in face of the dangers
and difficulties he foresees.

He was aware that a large, if indefinite, party among
the Senators believed in the possibility of a republican
restoration, and even believed that Germanicus, like his
father Drusus, might lend himself to the idea. Julia s
party would not hesitate to wreck a dignity which they
could not enjoy though it was no doing of his that
they could not enjoy it. There were some who were
prepared to plunge the world into a new civil war. . . .
And with all these under-currents he was limited (not
by his own will) to certain indirect methods of request
ing them to offer him freely a supremacy which must
not be named, and which they probably did not wish
to offer anyone, least of all himself.

The debate which followed the introduction of the
bill was more difficult than perhaps even Tiberius had The
anticipated. In opening it, he spoke of the vastness of debate
the empire, and of his want of confidence in himself.
No mind (he said) but that of the Divine Augustus was
capable of dealing with a task so great as the govern
ment of the Roman dominion. Having been himself in
vited to share in the responsibilities and the decisions of
that great man, he had learned by experience how ardu
ous and how precarious was the task of government
that required to satisfy so many diverse needs. A state
which contained so many men of distinction ought not
to place all power in the hands of one man. Government

TIBERIUS OESAR

would be an easier process if it were divided among
several partners.

In all this he was speaking strictly by the book. He
said nothing that was not in a general sense perfectly
true; and probably, up to a certain point beyond which
it was not his province to go, it represented his real
opinion. It provoked the appropriate answer of tears,
prayers, protestations, and a general mental gesture of
vague emotion from the assembled house. Practical busi
ness was then begun.

The will of Augustus, which had been filed, as was
usual, in the custody of the guild of Vestal Virgins,
was brought forward and read. Two thirds of his pri-
The ^ vate fortune were bequeathed to Tiberius. But in ad-
dition to his personal will he had drawn up a political
testament (the Brevarium Imperil) which was now pro
duced. It contained not only a general report on the
state of the empire and the public resources, but a series
of recommendations for the guidance of future states
men, in which Augustus gave certain policies more
definiteness and binding force than could have been
obtained by the mere private expression of his wishes.
He advised restriction in the free admission of provin
cials to Roman citizenship; he laid down the maxim
that the Roman frontiers should not be extended fur
ther; and he counselled the policy of employing men
in the work of the State on the ground of merit alone.

These were very remarkable counsels. They were in
deed rather more than counsels. They were expressions
of opinion which had all the weight of formal and of
ficial declarations. It is very probable that at the first

TIBERIUS OESAR 137

reading of the text their full import did not reach the
minds of all who heard. As we know by familiar modern
experience, it is necessary to possess a copy of such docu
ments and to study the words at leisure, before the
meaning of a carefully drafted instrument can be
grasped. We will leave ourselves for the moment in
the same state of doubt as the Senators, and return to the
T$revariiim Imperil when its significance had perfectly
dawned upon them.

Tiberius then said that although unequal to the bur
den of government in its entirety, he was willing to
undertake the charge of any part that might be en
trusted to him.

Asinius Gallus (the second husband of Vipsania) ex
pressed a hope that in this case Csesar would let them
know which part of the government he desired to have
entrusted to him.

Now the opening gambit of Tiberius had been per
fectly correct: and the correct reply to it was, of course,
that the Senate could not bear to be deprived of the full
benefit of the services of Csesar: and that it implored
him on its knees with tears still to devote himself to the
patriotic defence of the State. The actual answer of
Gallus was therefore rather startling in its impertinence.
It was certainly a breach of courtesy to pretend to take
literally a statement which everyone knew to be a polite
form designed to save the dignity of the Senate.

Tiberius (after a distinct pause) said that it would
not become him, diffident as he was concerning his pow
ers, to select or decline any part of a responsibility
which he would prefer to avoid altogether.

138 TIBERIUS OESAR

Asinius Gattm (seeing that Tiberius was considera
bly offended, and hastening now to take a line rather
closer to that which he ought to have adopted before)
explained that he had not put his question with the
purpose of dividing a government which was indivisi
ble, but in order to convince Caesar out of his own mouth
that the state had but one body and must be governed
by a single mind.

(Lands Augustus and recalls the distinguished career
of Tiberius in civil office.}
k. ^ L. Arruntius spoke similarly.

These ingenious efforts to explain away the offensive
remarks were, however, somewhat spoiled by
Q. Hat- Q. Hateriiis, who inquired how long Qesar would

suffer the state to remain without a head?

This was a downright insult. Tiberius had said noth
ing offensive nothing that in any way departed from
the decorum of the form he was going through: and
the remark of Haterius was an oblique way of imply
ing that Tiberius was in some manner intending to
usurp a position of despotic power which both parties
tacitly agreed did not exist and was not to be mentioned.
Tiberius probably showed that he resented this entirely
uncalled-for insinuation that he proposed to go outside
the recognized and agreed conventions of his office, for
the next speaker, who possibly had intended to be equally
unpleasant, modified his tone without wholly taking
the sting out of his words. ,

Mamercm Scaurus entertained the hope that the
. caurus g enate 5 s p ra y er would not be in vain, since Caesar had

TIBERIUS OESAR 139

not imposed his tribunician veto on the motion of the
consuls.

This recalled the house to the point, although the
reference to the tribunician veto was an unnecessary
gibe. No one supposed that Tiberius was going to de
cline the powers ratified in the bill. Still, Scaurus had
reminded the Senators that the bill was before them. 1

Part of the unpleasantness may have arisen from the
terms of the bill. It certainly differed from the practice
of Augustus in one important respect. No time-limit
was stated in the draft prepared for the Senate s ap
proval. The appointment was neither for life nor for
a fixed term of years, but was left indeterminate. Tibe
rius explained this by the remark that it was to last un
til it might seem right to the Senate to grant an old
man some repose. 2

The bill was passed: and Tiberius stepped formally
into the principate, the first man to succeed peacefully,
with all the normal legal procedure, to an authority
founded amid civil war* This in itself was somewhat of
an achievement.

The achievement may have been none too welcome
to the Senate: for it exercised a little more unpleasant- titles

reader will appreciate that the report of the proceedings given by
Tacitus (Ann. I. 11-13) is a highly condensed summary of a debate that
occupied some time. Still, the gist is his own version, and is not invented by
any modern apologist for Tiberius.

2 1 this hint is possible abdication was seriously intended (and the recep
tion of Tiberius so far had not been encouraging) circumstances ultimately put
it beyond the bounds of possibility, Sulla s prophecy had come true, when he

140 TIBERIUS OESAR

ness before its opportunity was over. The imperial titles
were discussed. This opened up questions of some in
terest and importance. Among these was the question
of Livia.

Livia had always been a woman of dominating per
sonality: somewhat of a lioness, with the faults as well
as the virtues of a lioness. Like most women of her type,
she seems to have cared a great deal more for immediate
and concrete things than for those romantic abstrac
tions, such as glory and honour and posthumous fame,
after which, for some unaccountable reason, men ar
dently strive. She had profoundly influenced the policy
of Augustus but it had been his family and domestic
policy which she influenced, not that which dealt with
matters of general statesmanship. She dealt with per
sons, rather than with principles. It is just because of
this typically feminine materialism that her influence
is hard to trace.

Livia naturally was not eager to lose the power she
had wielded. She was particularly anxious to keep her
position hand upon the career of Tiberius. If Augustus had
shown a vein of paternal distrust for Tiberius, this was
the mother-lode. . . . The maternal feeling of such
a woman as Livia is hardly a form of affection. It may
be a form of passion but it is scarcely a form of love.
Perhaps it is best described as a "craze." It would be
difficult to detect between her and Tiberius any kind
of tenderness. That rosy glow with which modern Eu
rope and still more modern America has surrounded

referred to the young man who would "prevent any future holder of such
power as mine frorq. laying it down again."

TIBERIUS C&SAR 141

the relationship of mother and son, was conspicuously
lacking. Nothing could better illustrate the truth that
the relationship is at root independent of any senti
mental content.

The expedient which Livia had adopted was the plan
of persuading Augustus to create her a perpetual Au
gusta. It would be hard to define, in a way satisfy
ing to a jurist, precisely what constitutional position
an Augusta occupied, or what functions she was sup
posed to fulfil. But Augustus had jjiven her what she
wanted, and his testament included the provision that
Livia should be Augusta whatsoever that might mean
while she lived.

It was this situation which the Senate now surveyed,

T . . r -t ! T*I i r

with some appreciation of its possibilities The title 01 perpetual
Augusta was ratified. Various senators * then proceeded Au ^ usta
to embroider the occasion with a little juridical humour.

Since Augustus had been pater patrice it would be
reasonable to bestow the same title on Tiberius. The
proposal was also made to give Livia the title mater
patrlce. The alternative parens patrice was suggested by
someone who perhaps felt the former to be a little too
daring. Tiberius declined all these suggestions. Finally,
it was proposed to add the title Films/JiiUce * to his own
title, after Ccesar.

It would have been difficult to imply more plainly
that the Senate was inclined to treat the new emperor
with contempt. But the element of personal ridicule
(and it was very certainly present in these proposals)
was not the only aspect to be considered. Such titles

1 1. e. Livia, who became a Julian by adoption.

i 4 2 TIBERIUS OESAR

tended to bring the principate itself into contempt.

The fifty-five-year-old son of Livia did not intend to

Objec- ^ e t j ec j to |^ s a g ec j mo ther s apron-strings; and he could

tlons to - i 1 r i i i o - ir

her not miss the truth of which the Senate itself was aware

position ^at t k e creat i on a perpetual Augusta with these
undefined rights of vague interference was a distinct
threat to the principle of personal monarchy. . . . Livia
was imperilling her relations with her son when she
brought this uncomfortable episode, objectionable both
with respect to principle, and with respect to personal
dignity, upon him. He had a duty towards the office
he held which he was not likely to forget or forego.
Tiberius rejected the whole series of proposals.

He told the house that there must be some limit to
the honours bestowed upon women, 1 and that he in
tended to exercise a similar moderation in his own titles.
He refused to allow a lictor to be appointed to attend
Livia. On a proposal to erect an altar to her he put
his veto.

The meeting concluded by conferring the procon
sular imperium on Germanicus, and by voting a special
delegation to convey it to him 3 together with official
condolences on the death of Augustus.

VII

Tiberius had emerged with success from an ordeal
that might well have shaken the nerve of a weaker man.
He had obtained what he wanted, and had taken the
opportunity to emphasize the principles according to

1 1. e. Honorary titles bestowed on those who fulfilled no actual political
function.

TIBERIUS OESAR 143

which he intended to guide his conduct. ... It would Meaning
have been very easy for the principate of Augustus to
have perished as did the autocracy of Dionysius of Syra
cuse, and for some of the same reasons. If it survived,
it was largely due to the steadiness and patience of the
man who guided it into a haven of legal and constitu
tional precedent which made it a permanent thing. It
was this first accession which counted. The difficulties
ahead (and they were more serious, looking forward
to them, than they seem to us, looking back) could be
grappled with as they came. The first step had been
made. . . . But the undercurrent of hostility, with its
ominous presage, was not to be mistaken.

This hostility showed itself partly because the Senate
was up to this time still imperfectly acquainted with
the man it had elected to treat so lightly. An impression
existed among the Senators that Tiberius was a mere
tool and as such none too well trusted of Augustus;
a somewhat eccentric figure whom Augustus had
adopted as his successor in the absence of a more suitable feeling
candidate. Though doubtless some had an interest in
spreading such an impression, it was one that began to
fade as soon as Senators had enjoyed a little leisure for
reflection. One of the first to see matters in a truer light
was Quintus Haterius.

Haterius seems to have repented of his unpleasantness
with Caesar, and to have hurried off to the Palatine to
apologize. He was, however, rather more ardent in his
repentance than was altogether comfortable to its ob
ject; for he fell on his knees to embrace those of Caesar,
according to the demonstrative but perhaps then new

i 4 4 TIBERIUS C^SAR

custom of the day. Tiberius, in the spirit of an Eng
lishman being kissed by a Frenchman, furiously repudi
ated this servile and new-fangled proceeding; but as
Q- . Haterius had him round the knees, he unfortunately
apologizes came down backwards with a crash. The Praetorians,
seeing Qesar struggling on the ground with a man hang
ing on to him, rushed to the rescue. The life of Haterius
was in danger, and Livia had to be summoned to medi
ate. . . . The Latin language was perhaps inadequate
to express the feelings Tiberius must have experienced;
but as he knew Greek well a much more expressive
tongue for some rhetorical purposes he may have em
ployed that. Haterius doubtless retired feeling life in
deed a heavy burden.

vra

Any doubt and dawning apprehension which the sen
atorial oligarchy entertained with respect to the person
ality of Tiberius became strengthened by a more thor
ough appreciation of the meaning of the Brevarium
Imperil. The opinions of Augustus (even from beyond
the grave) still had the power to influence the views and
the conduct of that large majority of men who had ad
mired him while he lived, and had looked to him for
guidance and leading. The oligarchy had to realize that
the monarchy under which they lived possessed rather
more continuity than they had given it credit for pos
sessing. Though Augustus was dead, his power sur
vived.

It is unnecessary to suppose that the armies were
quicker to appreciate the meaning of the Brevarium

TIBERIUS C^SAR 145

than the Senatorial oligarchy at Rome. Only among the
armies could any action originate. If Augustus had fore
seen, and sought to provide against danger in this re- *]
spect, he would have drawn up just such a document as Brevarium
the Brevarium. He would have added his own endorse
ment to the policies which he knew Tiberius intended
to adopt.

The tendency of the Brevarium Imperii is so peculiar
that it may very well have been drawn up in consulta
tion with Tiberius, and even at his request. It gave the
authority of Augustus to principles which it is clear
enough Tiberius shared. Augustus himself had not al
ways observed them. Their embodiment in a definite
memorandum shows that he had recognized the neces
sity of protecting Tiberius from the suspicions which
might follow a change of policy upon the Rhine. The
provincials whose admission was to be restricted were the
Germans; the frontiers which should not be extended
were the German frontiers; and Augustus clearly con
templated the possibility that his successor might find
himself embarrassed by claims which were not founded
solely upon the fitness of the claimant. . . . He couched
his recommendation in general terms; but general terms
very conveniently include the particular.

The counsels of the Brevarium Imperii summarized,
therefore, in all probability, the report which Tiberius It
had made after his examination of the situation in the a change
North, and they represented a victory over the policy of
of the military chiefs on the Rhine which he had won
in the counsels of the government during the last days
of Augustus* life.

CHAPTER VH

THE MILITARY MUTINIES

MILITARY revolt on the Rhine and the Danube was
prompt. It is not quite clear to a modern observer why
Remarkable the military chiefs found so sudden a difficulty in con-
nature trolling the expression of opinion among the troops un-
xmitinies der their command. The armies knew Tiberius well He
was not likely to be intimidated by mutiny: and he was
even less likely than Augustus to grant demands which
they had not cared to ask of the latter. If they thought
that the accession of a new emperor, conscious of his
newness, was a favourable moment for compelling at
tention to grievances, they showed a political astuteness
which was singularly lacking in their subsequent con
duct.

The mutinies on the Rhine and the Danube deserve
to be described in some detail, not only as part of the
history of the reign of Tiberius, but as an interesting
and almost unique glimpse into the life and personality
of the rank and file of the Roman armies. That luxu
riant almost too luxuriant comedy of character, in
which the common people of all ages far excel their
masters, runs through the story in a rich vein of uncon
scious humour. Tacitus tells a tale which might have
come out of the pages of Charles Lever or Captain Mar-

ryat.

146

THE MILITARY MUTINIES 147

The Pannonian Mutiny was the first to break out. 1
Three Pannonian legions (the VHIth. Augusta, IXth. Pan *onia
Hispana and XVth. Apollinaris) were encamped in
summer quarters together. On hearing of the death
o Augustus their commander, Junius Bla^sus, suspended
the ordinary work of the camp in recognition of the
solemn occasion. During this period of idleness, while
the men had time on their hands, the trouble began.

The first mischief centred round a man named Per-
cennius, whose antecedents are of an interesting nature.
He had formerly been an organizer employed to ar
range and lead theatrical claques. Those party divisions
in the world of sport which, centuries later, showed
themselves in the wars of the Blues and Greens, and the
famous "Nike" sedition at Constantinople, were already
in flourishing existence at Rome. This Percennius was
an expert agitator or publicity-agent whose job in life
had been to organize popular successes or failures. . . .
He had subsequently enlisted in the army. We are not cedents
favoured with the interesting reasons which induced f

i . i i i 111 1 - - Percennius

him to take this rather remarkable step; but it is not
unreasonable to surmise that some benevolent paymaster
had made it worth his while.

This man was soon at work among the troops, who,
during the long unoccupied evenings, had nothing to do

1 As Tacitus informs us {Ann. I. 16) that there was no particular reason
for it except that the death of an emperor seemed to offer an opportunity for
licence, civil war, and all the gains that might accrue, we may deduce that
he felt it urgent to establish an alibi on behalf of his friends.

i 4 8 TIBERIUS CAESAR

but to listen. The more steady and respectable men kept
away; but he soon had a following among the fools and
the bad characters. The speech which Tacitus puts into
his mouth as an example of his methods is exhilarating
in its familiarity. It is to the life just such a speech as
a modern Hyde Park orator might make. It very de
cidedly is not the kind of speech a reputable labour
leader would make. Reading it, we are hardly able to
doubt what Percennius was, or what kind of world he
sprang from. . . . The identity of his possible pay
masters is a question which must be left in the obscurity
that from the first surrounded it.

There were doubtless excellent reasons why Junius
Blsesus did not at once terminate these proceedings by
the arrest of Percennius, and the prompt employment
of the troops in useful occupation. The modernity of
the speeches of Percennius is matched by modernity of
the remarks of Blsesus, when at last he intervened. . . .
"Better dip your hands in my blood than become trait
ors to your emperor." . . . He said, in fact, exactly
what any modern officer would say. Riot and mutiny
interven- (he told them) were not the proper method of bringing
Junius tkeir grievances to Caesar s ears. Never, in the old days,
Blaesus h a&lt; l soldiers pressed such demands upon their command
ers. The beginning of a new reign was not the right time
for adding to the difficulties of their ruler. He invited
them, finally, to appoint a deputation, and to instruct
the delegates in his presence.

The amateur mutineers who were not particularly
intransigeant did not imbrue their hands in the blood
of Blaesus. With remarkable amiability they adopted the

THE MILITARY MUTINIES 149

useful suggestion of a deputation. A tribune, the son of
Blsesus, was chosen to go to Rome to demand, on their
behalf, discharge after sixteen years 3 service. Further in
structions would be sent when this concession had been O f the
granted. mutineers

Nothing could more vividly illustrate the unreality
of the mutiny than this promise of further instruc
tions." These very mild mutineers evidently entertained
the notion that their mutiny would last peaceably for a
long time, and that they could send their demands
when they had thought of them one by one to Rome,
there to be granted by a subdued emperor. They were
so new to mutiny that they did not know what it was,
or how it was conducted.

The efforts of Percennius, however, were cast into
the shade by a more vigorous colleague. While these
things were happening in the summer camp, the troops
at Nauportus broke out, and proceeded to celebrate y i ence
the occasion by looting the villas in the neighbourhood, at
The attempts of their centurions to restrain their ar- au P r us
dour led to high words and then to violence. The par
ticular object of their animus was Aufidienus Ruf us, a
ranker who had risen to the post of commandant of
the camp, in which he combined the modern offices of
adjutant and quartermaster. Aufidienus was a man who,
having worked hard all his life, made others work too.
They seized Aufidienus, loaded him with baggage, and
drove him on before them, asking him facetiously how
he liked heavy loads and long marches. . . . Aufidienus

i jo TIBERIUS CAESAR

was the first of a number of victims among the centu
rions, who illustrate where the friction really arose. If
there were any genuine grievance, it lay in the strict
ness of the discipline, not in the conditions of service.
The arrival of these men in camp destroyed the re
sults achieved by the diplomacy of Blxsus. The example
of looting began to spread. The gentleness of Blsesus 5
methods had been from choice, not from necessity. As
soon as he realized that matters were assuming this more
serious aspect, he adopted vigorous action. The centu
rions and the best of the men were still loyal. The chief
offenders were promptly arrested, flogged and gaoled.
These steps came a little too late. The victims called on
their friends for help, and were instantly released by
force.

Vibulemis The mutiny now began to take a dangerous turn. The
man who was chiefly responsible for the trouble a cer
tain Vibulenus sprang to the front and made a very
emotional Italian speech in which he singled out Blae-
sus for personal denunciation. . . . According to the
statements of Vibulenus, his brother had been dispatched
on business by the mutineers to carry news and messages
to the German legions. This messenger engaged in the
work of the mutiny had been murdered by the gladi
ators of Blaesus.

The outbreak of feeling which followed swept away
the authority of the commander. The mutineers had
the gladiators arrested and thrown into irons, while they
searched for the body of the murdered man. No body
was found; and on the gladiators being examined under
torture, they unanimously denied having murdered any-

THE MILITARY MUTINIES 151

body. Finally, it transpired that the indignant Vibule-
nus had never had a brother, . . . This trifling fact,
however, was of no importance. The mischief had been
done.

For meanwhile, everyone had been committed waist-
deep in active rebellion against authority, in which blood
had been shed. The officers had been driven out of camp,
and their quarters sacked. One the centurion Lucil- The attack
ius * had been murdered. The others found safety in centurions
concealment. Clemens Julius, however, was caught and
retained as a possible spokesman. The episode showed
signs of culminating in general bloodshed, for the
Vlllth. legion Augusta demanded a certain centurion
named Sirpicus, whom the XVth. legion Apollinaris re
fused to surrender. Only the intervention of the IXth.
legion Hispana prevented an armed conflict. . . . Vib-
ulenus had certainly proved a more expert organizer
than Percennius!

While the mutineers had proceeded on their way,
strangely oblivious of any impending consequences, and
apparently forgetful of any world beyond their own,
Tiberius had taken active steps to deal with them. His
son Drusus, with a staff of experienced officers, and two Arrival
cohorts of picked Praetorian guardsmen, as well as some Drusus

1 This was the centurion who was known by the nickname o "Another,
quick! * ("Cedo alteram"}. All centurions carried, as part of the insignia of
their rank, a vine-wood rod, which they were entitled to use upon citizen-
soldiers. Lucilius got his nickname from his habit of breaking rods over the
backs of his men, and calling for Another, quick!" Furneaux, note to Tacitus
Ann I. 23. Ramsay, p. 38, note i.

TIBERIUS CAESAR

German cavalry, set out for Pannonia. His Chief of
Staff was a man of whom we shall shortly hear more
L. Aelius Seianus, son and coadjutor of the prefect of
the Praetorians. The instructions of Drusus were to act
as might seem best in the circumstances.

He arrived to find the summer camp shut and
picketed. Drusus arranged to meet the mutineers in
a public conference. He entered the camp with a small
party; the gates were shut behind him and sentries
placed. He took his place on a tribunal in the centre of
the camp, and the mutineers assembled in a crowded
audience round the platform.

There was much interruption and disorder. As soon
as he had obtained sufficient quiet to allow him to be
heard, he proceeded to read a letter from Tiberius prom
ising to refer their demands to the Senate. In the mean
time (said the letter) he was sending his son in person
to make such concessions as could be granted at once.

The meeting replied that Clemens Julius had charge
The . of their demands: namely, discharge after sixteen years*

Meeting service, with gratuities; pay at one denarius a day: and
veterans to have immediate discharge. . . . Drusus ar
gued that he had no power to grant such demands as
these: they were within the competence only of his fa
ther and the Senate. . . . This especially, it would
seem, the reference to the Senate provoked a storm.
Why had he come, then? Let him consult the Senate
every time a man was punished or sent into the fighting
line. . . . The meeting began to disperse as a mark of
protest.

a debating point of view, the mutineers had

THE MILITARY MUTINIES 153

rather the better of the exchanges. The references made
by Drusus to the Senate were, of course, nonsense; the
Senate had no control over the Army, and no voice in
its administration. The men were not fools: they re
garded this attempt to drag the Senate into the contro
versy as tantamount to a refusal of their demands. . . .
But Drusus and Tiberius were not quite fools either;
and we are left wondering whether the introduction
of the Senate s name may not have had some meaning
which it is now difficult to discern. Was it a hint that
Senatorial intrigue lay behind the mutiny? an ironi
cal promise that those who had stirred up the trouble,
might take a share in stilling it? ... If so, it is clear
that the majority of the men were unaware of any such
influence at work among themselves. . . . The shot
may have reached its mark, however, among individuals
such as Percennius and Vibulenus, and given them some
* uneasy twinges of apprehension. . . . Whatsoever the
intention may have been, we can only guess at it. Yet
some definite meaning it certainly had.

The dispersal of the meeting was accompanied by
some angry show of feeling. Threatening gestures were
made towards members of Drusus 3 staff, and alterca
tion and violence followed. Lentulus, after a heated ex- It:
change of words with the men, found it more prudent violence
to beat a retreat. He was followed by an angry crowd
inquiring sarcastically whither he was going? to the
emperor? or possibly to the Senate? . . . They made
a rush at him, and he had to be rescued, battered and
bleeding, by the Praetorians. . . . Drusus retired to con
sider what steps it was advisable next to take.

154 TIBERIUS CAESAR

There was every prospect that the events of the night
would be serious. A conference evidently took place
in the tent of Drusus. His staff had not accompanied
him, we may be sure, merely for ornamental purposes.
It contained men who were expert judges in military
questions. They may have been able to form a pretty
shrewd estimate of the real inwardness of the situation;
and it is no unreasonable surmise that the reception
given to those peculiar references to the Senate had en
abled them to ascertain how far intrigue was really at
work, and how far the trouble was the product of mere
inconsequent unrest. . . . The resolutions which were
acted upon a few hours later were probably already
taken in substance, when an unexpected event hastened
them to their conclusion.

At about three in the morning the moon, shining in
a clear sky, began to be eclipsed. An effectual distinc-
The Eclipse tion was suddenly created between the educated men
w ^o knew that an eclipse is a natural phenomenon,
and those country-bred men who still lived in that folk-
world in which eclipses are supernatural events. . . .
The folk-philosophers began a clashing of brazen vessels
and a blowing of horns and trumpets brass being well
known the world over as a sovereign remedy against
eclipses. Then shadow came over, and the moon was
swallowed up; and the folk-philosophers knew that the
gods were averting their faces with horror from the
crime of military mutiny.

The eclipse, which in this way produced an unex-

THE MILITARY MUTINIES 155

pected pause and hesitation in the minds of men, was
too good an opportunity to let slip. Action was at once
set going. Drusus sent for Clemens Julius and for all
other reliable men who were known to be trusted by
the troops. They were hastily instructed and were dis
patched as propagandists. They were soon talking with
the pickets;^ the familiar, ever-old, ever-new stuff that
sways the popular mind 3 Who (they asked) were Vibu-
lenus and Percennius? Were they going to set them
selves up in the places of Tiberius and Drusus? ... By
degrees this language told. ... In the morning, the
pickets had quietly left the gates; the standards, which
had been sacrilegiously expelled from their chapel in
the praetorium, were unobtrusively restored to their ac
customed places. The whole situation in camp was rap
idly returning to the normal.

The eclipse lasted until seven o clock in the morning. The
Before that, Drusus had already called a fresh meeting ^ c
for daybreak. He was no orator, but he had the Claud- meeting
ian dignity and self-confidence: a confidence that in
creased as matters took a more and more favourable
turn. He informed the meeting that he was not to be
intimidated by threats; but if they approached him
in the right frame of mind he would forward their
petition to his father with strong recommendation that
it should be granted. . . . The meeting preferred a
deputation. ... A deputation to Tiberius was accord
ingly arranged. It included young Junius Blassus, Lucius

TIBERIUS CAESAR

Arrest and
execution
of

Percennius
and
Vibulenus

The

mutineers
return to
duty

Aponius, one of Drusus staff, and Justus Catonius, a
centurion. The deputation set out for Rome.

At this point some divergence of opinion began to
manifest itself among the advisers of Drusus. Some were
in favour of doing nothing until the deputation should
return trusting, perhaps with wisdom, to the boredom
that comes over men with lapse of time, when they are
not very deeply interested in the results of their wait
ing. . . . Others, equally convinced that the mutiny
had no deep root in genuine grievances, were in favour
of vigorous measures. Drusus finally accepted the advice
of the latter.

The first step was to summon Percennius and Vibu
lenus to his presence. They came and were instantly
arrested and summarily executed. The subordinate agi
tators were then searched for and cut down at sight by
the Praetorians. Others were handed over by the men
themselves. . . . The eclipse was followed by bad
weather. A great storm came up, during which the
troops could scarcely leave their tents, so that they had
no opportunity for discussion, or for working them
selves into any fresh excitement. A general feeling be
gan to spread that luck was against the mutiny. . . .
The Vlllth. legion went back to duty. The XVth. soon
imitated its example. . . . After for some time argu
ing that they ought to wait the return of the deputa
tion, the IXth. decided to make a virtue of necessity,
and also returned to duty. The mutiny was over.

Drusus, seeing that matters were sufficiently forward,
prudently left their own officers to deal with them and
departed for Rome to report.

THE MILITARY MUTINIES 157

The mutiny on the Rhine was, if anything, the more

serious episode of the two. It had broken out later than &lt;
t i TN t . ^ - t oituation

that on the Danube. The whole course of events strongly n the

suggests that the Pannonian mutiny was intended to
stampede the Rhine armies, which were the real strate
gic objective. If any intrigue were afoot to engineer a
new civil war and a march upon Rome, it is clear
enough that the Rhine armies were the instrument which
must be employed.

Germanicus was absent in Gaul The army of the
lower Rhine, under Aulus Qecina Severus, was concen
trated at the old Oppidum Ubiorum the later Colonia
Agrippina and modern Cologne. The army of the Upper
Rhine, commanded by Gams Silius, was at Mainz. It
was Caecina s army that mutinied. The mutineers put
forward demands curiously similar to those of their Pan
nonian friends. The organization in this case was not the
work of isolated agitators such as Vibulenus and Per-
cennius, nor were the mutineers quite such nervous ama
teurs as the Pannonians had been, putting their trust
in other armies more powerful than their own. The
mutiny of Caecina s army was the real heart of the Csecina s
mutiny. Army

The ominous fact was that it was concerted and
general. The mutineers acted with order and with dis
cipline. The officers were attacked and "beaten up." One
was slain at the very feet of Csecina, who was unable to
save him. Germanicus hastened to the camp.

i 5 8 TIBERIUS CAESAR

The interview of Germanicus with the mutineers was
of a very remarkable nature, bearing no resemblance
whatever to the dealings of Junius Blassus with his Pan-
nonian legionaries. Germanicus was warmly welcomed.
The mutineers at first refused to form up in military
order, 1 but after he had reasoned with them he got them
to do as he wished. He then addressed them with a fa
therly rebuke for their conduct. Uproar instantly broke
out. A number urged him to march upon Rome.

A melodramatic and rather peculiar scene followed.
It is of course possible that Germanicus was really
The Scene shocked at the suggestion, and felt that there was wis-
Gematricus dom in dissociating himself from it as emphatically as
the circumstances allowed. 2 At any rate, he sprang
down from the platform, drew his sword, raised it high,
and cried that he preferred death to treason. . . . His
friends, who stood conveniently near, hastened to re
s train him from plunging it into his own breast; and
we are certainly not told that they experienced any very
great difficulty in doing so. ... Tacitus himself ad
mits that certain lewd fellows of the baser sort* treated
the episode with a scepticism which causes the historian
surprise and pain. Several voices and even actual per
sons close by derisively recommended Germanicus to
go on and smite; and a soldier, so real that he can be
named Calusidius cynically offered him his own
sword, with the probably quite true remark that it was

1 They wished to receive him as citizens and electors, not as soldiers.

2 The very fact that Germanicus was the legal heir to the empire gave him
a strong interest in discountenancing unconstitutional precedents of this kind.
But there is very little reason to suppose that Agrippina would have been shocked
by such a suggestion.

THE MILITARY MUTINIES 159

sharper. . . . The troops, Tacitus assures us, thought
this remark a most cruel and inhuman one. It certainly
cast a douche of cold water on the emotions of the
meeting. In the pause which ensued, Germanicus was
hurried away to his tent by his friends. ... It was
very sure indeed that he was not going to march upon
Rome.

vra

The situation was (as the panegyrist of Germanicus
truly assures us) very difficult. Every possible course
seemed equally hazardous. That

ff . . . tangled web we weave
When first we practice to deceive"

was proving as tangled for the amateur revolutionists
on the Rhine as for their brethren in Pannonia. After Conces-
discussion, it was resolved to write a letter in the name Slons
of Tiberius, granting to the mutineers discharge after
twenty years service and partial release to men of six
teen yeays service; gratuities to be doubled and paid in
full.

The mutineers had, no doubt, not expected this. Their
understanding was that they were to march on Rome.
Somewhat suspicious, they demanded that these conces
sions should be immediately executed. The tribunes ac
cordingly made out the necessary discharges. The muti
neers were assured that the gratuities would be paid
when the army went into winter quarters. The Vth.
and XXIst. legions declined to accept the assurance.
They refused to move until the money was paid. This
was embarrassing. Germanicus and his staff finally

160 TIBERIUS OESAR

clubbed together and paid the gratuities themselves
a step which must have entertained Tiberius to the depth
of his soul when he heard of it! It is unlikely that they
ever got their money back.

Germanicus now went to meet the Upper Rhine
army. The Ilnd., XHIth. and XVIth. legions promptly
took the oaths of allegiance to the new emperor without

any trouble. The XlVth. legion hesitated a little* so was
The army - . . . -

o Silius at once granted the discharges and gratuities without

remains having asked for them. It must have been much sur
prised at this unexpected windfall; but it did not mu
tiny. Possibly it felt that such a proceeding would be
superfluous.

There was, in fact, no mutiny whatever in the army
of Gaius Silius: and this circumstance made it absolutely
certain that the Rhine mutiny would not succeed.

Tiberius has been adversely criticized for not proceed
ing in person to the seat of trouble. His own explana
tion that he thought he could do more good by remain
ing in Italy and keeping control of the whole situation
was disbelieved at the time and has not received much
credit since; possibly because of its obvious and hum
drum common sense. He had sent Drusus to Pannonia.
To the Rhine he sent a commission headed by Munatius
Plancus. The arrival of the commissioners at Cologne
was the signal for a fresh outburst.

The army of the Lower Rhine seems to have enter
tained some suspicion of the sincerity of Germanicus
and his colleagues, for it had no doubt that the Com-

THE MILITARY MUTINIES 161

missioners from the emperor brought unwelcome de- The
cisions. ... It chased Munatius Plancus, who had to sloners at

seek refuge in the chapel of the standards, where the
standard-bearer Calpurnius protected him. At dawn he
was rescued from his predicament by Germanicus, who
sent off the commissioners with a cavalry escort.

The advent of the commission, however, brought mat
ters to a head. It became necessary for Germanicus
squarely to face the fact that the army of the Upper
Rhine was loyal, and was available for use to put down The quan-
the mutiny of Cxcina s troops. For some time he hesi-
tated. If he himself had had any share in stirring up
or in profiting by the mutiny, he might well pause
with an uneasy conscience before employing force to
suppress the dupes who had been deceived and en
trapped. Agrippina always strong did not wish to
leave him. It may, as Tacitus alleges, have been her
courage; or it may have been her conscience. Nothing
would happen while she remained. At last Germanicus
had to make up his mind. The women and children were
sent away.

Historians, for reasons best known to themselves, have
loved to depict the touching emotions of pride and
shame which stirred the troops when they saw the pro
cession leaving the camp, Agrippina carrying in her
arms the little Gaius ("Caligula" as they had fondly
nicknamed him) much of whose life had been spent
with them in camp: how they fell on their knees to
Germanicus and besought pardon. ... It is certain collapses
that Germanicus did send the women and children away
with careful publicity and pointedness. But the emo
tions of the troops were very different from those al-

1 62 TIBERIUS CAESAR

leged. They recognized that the procession headed by
Agrippina was the first preliminary of the advance of
the legions of Gaius Silius. . . . They threw themselves
in her way and stopped her. . . . Germanicus was glad
enough to escape the necessity imposed upon him. He
spoke to them: a florid Italian speech which carried
conviction to men already convinced of the error of
their ways. They gave in. They did fall upon their knees.
The legions of Silius were not called upon to act. All
was over.

If we need any confirmation of the suspicion that
Germanicus knew rather more about the mutiny than
of appears upon the surface, we may obtain it from the
inquiry subsequent proceedings, which were only too clearly
designed to shield the real ringleaders. The investi
gation into the identity of the guilty parties rapidly
became an amusing farce, though a grim one for
its victims. The alleged ringleaders were passed be
fore a jury of the whole army, and were condemned or
acquitted by a massed tumultuary vote. The army soon
entered into the humour of the occasion, and enjoyed
itself. It i&lt;; highly improbable that this democratic court
condemned the true agents of the mutiny, but very
probable indeed that a large number of unpopular per
sons suffered a fate which they had not deserved.

An investigation was also held, on somewhat similar
lines, into the question of the centurions. . . * "What
soever else might be uncertain, there could be no doubt
that the centurions were in many cases bitterly hated.

THE MILITARY MUTINIES 163

Before the army went back to its normal duties, it was
afforded an opportunity of objecting to any centurion
whose conduct it considered oppressive. The opportu
nity was embraced with ardour; and these two jury
courts of the whole army did something, perhaps, to
smooth over the feelings excited by the mutiny. . . .
No one at any rate could accuse them of being the
packed tribunals of a tyrannical government. Their
chief fault was that they were a little too much the
arbitrary voice of irresponsible democracy.

Such were the external events of the great military
mutinies on the Rhine and the Danube frontiers. There
were certain events not so obvious, but capable of be
ing discerned by their results.

We have no detailed knowledge of the instructions Germanicus
given to the commission which visited the Rhine, nor to i nva( j e
of the communications that may have passed between Germany
Tiberius and Germanicus. We only know that in the
meantime Germanicus had received authority to pro
ceed with the conquest of Germany, in defiance of the
policy of the Brevarmm Imperil. The military chiefs,
as soon as their policy was endorsed from Rome, seemed
to find it singularly easy to restore discipline.

It is very necessary, in view of the subsequent rela
tions between Tiberius and Germanicus, to note the
strong hint implied in these events that Tiberius had
been overborne by the threat of force. . . . Tiberius
had excellent reasons for entertaining profound scepti
cism as to the - good faith of Germanicus. The latter
was, after all, more than an isolated individual. He was
the head of a party Julia s party, for he was married
to Julia s daughter. The senatorial party looked to him

164

TIBERIUS CAESAR

Relations

Tiberius

Germanicus Dishes,

as to a sympathizer; and they presumably knew what
they were about in doing so.

The historical tradition is that Tiberius was jealous
of Germanicus. Such an assertion tells us very little;
for jealousy is a general term covering a large range
of emotions of varied character, from that of the Lord
our God, who is a jealous God, down to the pettiest feel
ings that lurk behind Nottingham lace curtains in the
back streets of a manufacturing town. . . . But the
war between men of the type of Tiberius, and those of
the type of Germanicus, is universal and eternal. Every
man who has fought his way to the front, and has a
solid appreciation of the duties and responsibilities of
leadership, resents the existence of those men who, with
out real ability, seem able to command the enthusiasm
of the world because they flatter it and do what it
embody its own superficial folly and repre
sent its own ignorant desires. . . . And there is such
a thing as political jealousy. Germanicus never gave
Tiberius the stern devotion which Tiberius had given
Augustus, reserving himself free of all interests and
affiliations for the service of his master. The eye of Ti
berius was fixed upon a danger-spot, a centre of political
disaffection.

Tiberius
and the

sions

The principles which Tiberius proposed to uphold
and defend are visible in his attitude to the military
mutineers. The concessions which had actually been
made to the mutineers on the Rhine he immediately,
with his usual sense of justice, extended to the Panno-

THE MILITARY MUTINIES

nian troops. But he steadily refused to endorse them as
permanent changes for the future. Moreover, the de
mands of the men had taken a shape not unknown in
later ages. In order to remedy particular grievances
they demanded changes in the general rules which had
been abused. Tiberius declined. He was willing to see
that the regulations were carried out with justice, but he
would not alter them in the way desired, . . . Instead
of diminishing the length of military service, he actually
increased it. ... It does not appear that the discontent
in the army was deepened by his attitude: in fact, we
hear no more of it. The truth probably was that it was
the maladministration of the rules, not the rules them
selves, that created the discontent.

Here, incidentally, we touch on a very delicate and
curious point in the relations between men and their
governors. It is much easier to alter a rule than to en
sure that it shall be administered with justice and good
sense. A regulation may be changed every time it is
applied unjustly: but if it is never applied justly, no involved
number of changes will make it satisfactory. Tiberius
took his stand on the principle that good administration
is the secret of satisfactory government.

His success and failure as a ruler is a tolerable index
to the amount of truth in this principle. He was not
prepared to shape his actions according to the wishes
of those he governed. . . . The surprise he sprang upon
the Roman world the trap and pitfall he constituted
for many zealous but misguided men the foundation
of the tragedy he was to play out to its finish, were all
alike due to a personality which it is necessary to have

166 TIBERIUS CAESAR

vividly before our eyes before we proceed: and this is
the clue to it.

Augustus had been physically a frail and delicate
man. Nothing is better attested than the physical health
and strength of his successor. Tiberius could crush an
apple in his left hand, and take the skin off a man with
a fillip of his finger, ... At first waking he could
see in the dark, as a cat does, though the power faded
after a few minutes. He was a long-headed, square-
browed, fair-skinned, aquiline man, walking with a
slow stride, holding himself very erect, but with his
head bent and his eyes veiled; silent, deliberate in speech,
with a mordant, rather baffling humour, which some-
The per- times he meant to be baffling; patient, reserved; one of
that the proud eccentric Claudians. This Claudian quality

explains f s fae key to Tiberius. He was an aristocrat to the

finger-tips, full of fastidious likes and dislikes, iron
inhibitions and inexorable tabus.

He had none of the personal tastes of the parvenu.
He never built himself a staircase of solid gold, nor
decorated himself in gorgeous raiment. His habits were
simple to the point of austerity. He was precise, careful,
economical: a man too accustomed to money either to
be intoxicated with it or to neglect it. His mental build
was somewhat similarly restrained. He never used the
title Imperator. He called himself "Augustus" only in
foreign correspondence. He dryly and persistently re
fused the somewhat Pecksniffian title of "Father of his
Country/ He would not allow anyone save men of
servile status to address him as Dominus, Lord. He re-
. mained simply Tiberius Caesar. . . . This tendency to

THE MILITARY MUTINIES 167

snub alike servility and pomp was a marked and per
manent feature in his character. He did not like men
who stood off from him, nor men who ran too quickly
to him. He liked obedience; he disliked servility. He set
little store by the decorative. His attention was fixed
upon the real qualities of things: on brains and character
in a man, on justice and good sense in an action. . . .
And a man such as this is little likely to inquire what
men at large wish him to think or expect him to say.
He was prepared to take the responsibility of leader
ship.

The right to command belongs naturally enough to
a ruler: but much depends on the source from which
he derives it. The problem resolves itself into the ques
tion whether he derives it from the knowledge that his
followers will agree to the command, or from the in
trinsic tightness and wisdom of the command itself. . . .
Tiberius clearly believed that the validity of a command
depended on its own intrinsic rightness.

The view he took of his duties as head of the state
was therefore austere. He treated his subjects as he had His view
treated his Illyrian army that is to say, with real
thought for their practical welfare. He was a good
governor, as he was a good officer. And similarly, he
was not prepared to admit that they knew better than
he what was to the general good. . . . The art of gov
ernment comes by no gift of divination. . . . Digging
the ground or hammering horseshoes gives a man no
more insight into statesmanship than fighting Germans

1 68 TIBERIUS CAESAR

or bridging rivers.? There is only one thing that the or
dinary man can tell his governors and that is, that all
government ought to be based upon justice and directed
to the common good. . . . And who were they, to tell
Tiberius C#sar such a thing as this? Was he some idle
fat man who thought his own glory and prosperity the
purpose of government and the ends of the state? And
when, like Tiberius, a man has been trained through a
long life in all the processes of government, he needs
little kind advice from those who have neither his
knowledge nor his skill.

With a strong and able man, there is validity in this;
for the weakness of the opposite point of view is that
it regards the truth and the right as being, not objec
tive, but dependent on what men feel and imagine. This
last doctrine goes to the weak, the ignorant and the lost,
not with strength and knowledge and rescue, but with
the profession that they may have what they want
power, if they know what it is, and the way home, if
they know where it runs. . . . But a consensus of lost
sheep is seldom much guide to a shepherd.

This sense that his power was a right and a just power
and a wise one underlay all the actions of Tiberius.
His On this ground he defended it against all attacks. He

was never driven to that point at which a selfish and
self-indulgent man finds his sub-conscious mind auto
matically admitting the truth by compromising. There
never came a time when he suggested splitting the dif
ference with his foes. . . . He had none of that secret
doubt as to the abstract Tightness of command which
plagues a modern man.

THE MILITARY MUTINIES 169

On such foundations as these his policy was built. He
faced realities to a far greater extent than Augustus had
ever done. He had not pretended to accept the princi-
pate for a term of years only- One of the last traces
of the old popular government was the election of
magistrates in the assembly of the people. The trans
formation of the ancient party of the Populares into
the imperial military guild made these assemblies a very His
empty show. The candidates were nominated by the reaism
princeps, and the election chiefly consisted in the can
didates expending large sums of money on a more or
less imaginary electoral campaign, the results of which
had been fixed, within narrow limits, beforehand. . . .
Tiberius abolished this by nominating exactly as many
candidates as there were offices to fill: so the result was
absolutely pre-determined, and they could save their
money. The legislative action of the assembly was con
fined to the bestowal of the tribunician power. . . .
These changes made no difference to anyone. They
were merely realism, and their motive was economy.

The old assembly had long been superseded by the
powers which he himself wielded; but the Senate, which
retained its old constitution, he treated with considera
tion, because it was still a reality. He consulted both its
dignity as a House, and the dignity of its individual
members. He declined to test the qualifications of the
candidates for office whom it proposed to him for nomi
nation. Under his government the Senate gained rather
than lost. It established its position as the principal court
of criminal law, subject only to the right of appeal to
the imperial court.

i 7 o TIBERIUS CAESAR

He himself said that the duty of a good shepherd was
The good to shear his sheep, not to flay them. He kept a firm and
formidable hand on the provincial governors. Means of
redress against oppression were made as easy as he could
make them, and prosecutions on this ground were fre
quent. It has been said that this in many cases was shut
ting the stable door after the steed was stolen; but
Tiberius had not invented the system of Roman govern
ment, and was not prepared to suggest a better. He
could only work it as well as it could be worked
and he certainly did so. . . . The provinces under his
control were better governed than those under the
Senate; so much so, that the transfer of a province from
the Senate to the imperial government was equivalent
to a reduction of taxation. He never raised the rate of
taxation. For a short time he actually reduced it. By
careful economy he accumulated immense reserves,
which enabled him to meet unforeseen contingencies,
as we shall see. The provinces flourished; and yet there
had never been a Roman Government which possessed
such reserve sums. . . . The existence of these funds
may have attracted the careful thought of many who
would have liked to handle them.

xra

The testimony to the soundness of Tiberius* gov
ernment is general; and it comes no less from the
evidence of his own actions than from the words of
historians. Like all good government, it was singularly
The unsentimental. It was distinguished by an almost mor-

&lt;Jant realism. He appealed more to his subjects* packets

THE MILITARY MUTINIES 171

than to their hearts. And he can hardly have been un
conscious that he secured the safety of his power by
the methods in which he exercised it. ... From the day
of his second meeting with the Senate he must have
been aware that if he were to hold his own he needed
backing; and he obtained this backing from the im
mense multitude of ordinary people whom his rule bene
fited. Step by step his position grew firmer. It became
at last almost impregnable. But there is no mystery about
the reasons. His policy was to support the small capital-
list, the small farmer the class of men who from the
first had constituted the main strength of the Populares.
And they supported him. ,

But this very fact brought him into collision with
the members of the old Senatorial oligarchy. He was
faced with a coalition of parties which presently we
shall have occasion to inspect with the interest it de
serves. 1

1 Tlie testimony to the character o Tiberius is quite clear and emphatic,
and is sufficiently detailed and illustrated by examples to make it fairly certain
that it is accurate. Dion Cassius LVIL 7-12; Suetonius Tiberius XXVL-XL.

Tiberius himself contributed, as his view of the relations of government and
governed: "No man willingly submits to government. Men accept it as a
regrettable necessity. They take pleasure in getting out of it, and they enjoy
being against the government." (Dion Cass. LVIL 19.) See also Tacitus: An
nals I. 54.

CHAPTER VIII

GERMANICUS

GERMANICUS crossed the Rhine in the early autumn,
and the second attempt to conquer Germany was be^
gun. It was too late in the season for a long campaign,
but he seems to have wished to make the invasion an
accomplished fact forthwith, and to record his right to
the mantle of Drusus. He had excellent excuses for
prompt action. It seemed wise to employ the troops
and to obliterate from their minds the memory of
Invasion the recent troubles.

of His appearance was unexpected. Setting out fromi:

A. D. 14 Castra Vetera, he pushed up the Lippe Valley, the

entrance into western Germany. The Marsi, one of
the four tribes implicated in the attack on Varus, were
surprised, and received very heavy punishment. Their
land was ravaged with fire and sword, and the sanctuary
of their god Tamfana was destroyed. The Marsi called
up their allies. The united forces of the Bructeri from
the north and the Usipetes and Tubantes from the west
joined with the Marsi to catch the Roman force on
the way back. It cut its way through, and reached
Castra Vetera in safety.

Such operations were a preliminary to the serious work
which began in the following year. Two invasions of

172 r

GERMANICUS 173

Germany were designed. They followed though, not in Second
the same order the plans of Drusus. . . . Caecina, with invasion

four legions, marched up the Lippe Valley to hold the f

i % i i x-, Gennany

Marsi and the Cneruscan league. Germamcus started A. D. 15.
from the middle Rhine at the same time, and attacked Part I
the Chatti. He was on his return march when urgent
messages came to him from Segestes, the Cheruscan
chief.

The renewal of the war had found the Germans at
iirst unprepared: but a rapid change soon took place
which a good deal altered the situation. The younger
men, who had all the prestige of the defeat of Varus,
were quickly in command. There was no method of
dealing with the Romans save the over-riding of the

separate tribal unities, and the concentration of power. Changes

1 t * . 1 i ln "* e

Irmin lost no time in re-establishing the great league German

which five years earlier had been successful in expelling Sltuatlon
tie Romans from Germany. He met with determined
_sistance from the elder men. Segestes sent at once for
help from Germanicus. The latter did not fail to re
spond. He reached Segestes in time. He could not, how
ever, maintain him in power; the utmost he could do
was to rescue him personally and to give him a safe ref
uge in GauL This fact alone was a proof that there
were very serious limitations to the protection which
the Romans could afford to their friends. Segestes car
ried off with him two of the eagles which had been lost
when Varus fell, and his own daughter Thusnelda, the
wife of Irmin. They were highly acceptable to Germani
cus. Irmin, however, remained in power, his influence
increased rather than diminished by an episode which

174 TIBERIUS OESAR

attracted the sympathy of his countrymen, and which
did nothing to damage his practical power.

The course of events, therefore, tended continually
to strengthen the German power of resistance. The sit
uation was no longer that with which Drusus had dealt,
Unifka- ^ rapid process of unification was taking place under
the compulsion of necessity; and if the necessity con
tinued long enough, there was every prospect that it
would end by the creation of a German kingdom of
which Irmin would be the natural head: and this would
be a far more difficult problem to grapple with.

Germanicus seems hardly to have possessed the men
tal equipment for dealing with such considerations as
these. There is no sign in any of his actions that he had
political conceptions of a very profound nature. He
seems to have proposed to conquer Germany by military
means alone, without reference to any other considera
tions. . . . Tiberius knew better than this; but it was
not his business to enlighten Germanicus and his friends,
They would not have listened. They would have accused
him as they did of jealousy, and of a wish to prevent
what he could not share. ... It was very much tc
his interest now to permit an experiment which would
end by discrediting a political party opposed to him.

invasion Th e second invasion of the year revived the old plar

Germany of Drusus. A flotilla had been gathered. GermanicuJ

* D T T 5 passed through the Fossa Drusiana, the great canal thai

his father had dug to link the Rhine with the Yssel

and reached the mouth of the Ems. His voyage was pro-

GERMANICUS 175

tected by the parallel march through Frisia o a cavalry
column under Pedo Albinovanus, while further inland
the legions under Csecina made their way through the
Bructerian lands to the upper waters of the Ems. The
three forces met on the Ems, and the lands between the
Ems and the Lippe were ravaged. All the tribes which
belonged to the league which had destroyed Varus had
now had punishment brought home to them.

The spot where Varus had fallen was not far off.
Germanicus went to visit the place. He found it much
as it had been left after the battle, and the scene made
a deep impression upon all who saw it. There was the Visit to
broken ground amid the woods, the half -finished camp eu erg
with its ramparts not fully raised nor its ditches com
pletely dug; everywhere lay the wreckage of the de
stroyed legions, skulls and skeletons, heads that had been
impaled on trees, even the altars raised by the Ger
mans, on which the principal officers captured had been
sacrificed. . . . Survivors of the battle conducted their
comrades over the field, explaining the course of events
and showing the places in which the various episodes had
happened. . . . The ground was cleared, and funeral
honours paid to the fallen. A mound was raised and a
trophy built long since vanished, so that the spot can
not now be found.

Germanicus performed a highly popular act by laying
the first sod of the mound with his own hands.

The luck of that place was not good for Romans;
it still, in some measure, held its malign power. Germani
cus had hard work to rejoin his fleet. The cavalry
column of Albinovanus made it^return march in safety:

176 TIBERIUS OESAR

but Caecina unmasked the main enemy force, which was
hovering on his flank ready to strike at the first favour
able opportunity. . . . The blow fell when he reached
the "Long Bridges," a narrow causeway where the road
Csecina was built across a great marsh. Irmin had already oc-
**Lang cupied the surrounding slopes. It was a situation which
Bridges" needed sound and skilful soldiering; but Cxcina was
an old and an experienced commander, with forty years
service behind him. He dug in while the road was sur
veyed and repaired.

The first struggle was for possession of the causeway.
The Germans diverted into the marsh all the streams
on the surrounding heights, and raised the level of the
water. The Cherusci had the best of the contest under
these trying conditions. The Romans were saved only
by the fall of night. It was a very bad night for them,
"wakeful rather than watchful"; while the Germans
were drinking high, and ready to resume business when
the light came. Qecina saw that he must clear them out
of the marsh, and drive them to the heights, if he were
to get across. As it happened, there was just about
enough space round the edge of the marsh to enable
legionaries to take ground. ,-, . . But when at last he
slept, it was to dream of the gory ghost of Varus calling
him into the marsh, and stretching out horrid hands;
but he would not go, and thrust the hands away.

The serious work which began at day-break opened
with a disastrous muddle. The Vth. and XXIst. legions,
which had been detached as flank guards to clear the
Germans from the causeway, went forward instead,
There was no possibility of recalling them. The trans-

GERMANICUS 177

port train had to be got over the causeway as best it
could be. This was not lost on Irmin. He showed great
restraint in holding back until the transport train was,
as might have been expected, stuck, and a mass of dis
tracted men, bogged vehicles, and wasted orders. Then
he came on, whooping his men forward with "Another
Varus! We have them beaten again!"

The picked Gomitatus cut the column in two, paying The trans-
especial attention to the horses, which were soon slip- tram
ping, throwing their riders, and stampeding over all that
was in their way. Qecina s horse was killed under him,
and he would have been cut off and captured but for
the Homeric struggle waged over him by the men of the
1st. legion, who came pouring to the rescue. . . . The
surviving personnel was extricated, at the price of sac
rificing most of fte transport train, to which the Ger
mans clung with ardour. . . . By nightfall the legions
had won across the causeway and gained firm ground.

Their situation was .not inspiring. Most of their en
trenching tools had been lost, but they managed to
scrape up sufficient of an earthwork to satisfy the army
regulations. There were no tents, and no surgical dress
ings for the wounded: and their rations showed as dis
tinct signs as they did themselves of having been on
German soil. Even heart seemed to have been lost. . . .
"When a horse got loose, and knocked someone down, the
legionaries, their nerves on edge, made for the gates.

But Cxcina was not Varus.

He failed to breast the panic which set in; but he had

moral resources. He laid himself and his forty years serv- k f eps
ice down in the gate- way and defied his men to step

i 7 8 TIBERIUS OESAR

across his prostrate body. . . . He calculated quite cor
rectly. They did not step across him. His officers mean
while went among the men and convinced them that
it was a false alarm. Discipline was restored.

It was none too soon. Qecina collected the men and
proceeded to address them. He did not conceal that
the situation was a serious one. Their only hope was in
their arms and their good sense. He then issued his or
ders, and added some words of manly sentiment of the
usual sort that moves honest and uneducated men. By
mobilizing the available horses, his own and those of
his officers, he improvised a cavalry force out of the
best of his men. He then awaited events.

The Germans had been divided in opinion. Irmin
was in favour of blockading the camp. His kinsman
Yngwe-mar advocated taking it by assault: and finally
this view carried the day. As soon as light came, they
filled in the ditches, cast hurdles over, and scaled the
earthwork, where only a few persons, apparently scream-
The ing for help, were visible. As soon as they were on the

Germany wa jj Qaecina played his cards. The gates were thrown
repulsed 111- - it- i c T

from the open, and the legionaries sallied out in torce. . . . Ir-

camp min, as usual, escaped unhurt; Yngwe-mar got off

severely wounded. Not until nightfall did the victorious

legionaries return from the pursuit, much refreshed

by their day s work.

At Castra Vetera it was already rumoured that the
worst had happened, and that Cascim and his men were
the latest victims of the Germans. It was even proposed

GERMANICUS 179

to break down the bridge over the Rhine as a precaution
against a German surprise. . . . Agrippina did not be
lieve that Csecina was lost, and would not allow the dem
olition of the bridge. It is said that she stood her stand
on it until Cascina s column came struggling home safe
and sound. . . . She distributed clothes to those who
needed them, and looked after the wounded.

Germanicus himself had been none too fortunate. His
ships had gone aground in the Frisian shallows. In order
to lighten them, he landed P. Vitellius with the Ilnd.
and XlVth. legions, who, marching along the beaches. The
were caught by one of those tremendous equinoctial
tides to which the Romans could never accustom them
selves. They reached shore with difficulty, and passed
a miserable night. . . . Rumour reported that the en
tire flotilla, was lost; and its safety was believed in only
when Germanicus and his troops at last arrived to
prove it.

The conquest of Germany was obviously not proceed
ing quite according to plan, These campaigns were of
very doubtful value. They had been merely punitive
expeditions; not one inch of new ground had been per
manently occupied; not a single tribe had been perma
nently reduced. The cost had been great, and the re
sults were nothing.

Tiberius, however, had not yet made up his mind
to intervene. If Germanicus and the Rhine army wished
to prove still more convincingly that they could not

1 80 TIBERIUS CAESAR

conquer Germany, they were at liberty to carry the
experiment to its end. . . . He spoke with praise and
commendation of Germanicus, and the Senate granted
a triumph. Men at large were sufficiently intelligent
to feel some doubt of his sincerity.

Third If the policy of military conquest which Germanicus

O f represented were to be successful, it must be still more

Germany vigorously carried out. The third campaign was care-?
fully prepared and designed on a larger scale. It was in
tended to crush the Cherusci and to carry Roman arms
right up to the Elbe. The Cherusci seem to have had
full information of these intentions, for -they prepared
their resistance with equal care. Gaius Silius opened
the campaign by crossing the middle Rhine with the
object of holding the Chatti. Lower down, Germanicus
started up the Lippe valley from Castra Vetera with six
legions. Furthest down of all, the fleet, increased to a
thousand vessels, made its way through the Fossa Drusi-
ana to the Ems mouth, where it anchored, and landed
its troops. Leaving the ships under guard, the legions
advanced south-eastward, while Germanicus advanced
northward to meet them. They met on the banks oi
the Weser, and found the Cherusci and their allies then
in force to meet them.

The campaign was more than an attempt to conquei
Germany. It had by this time become a political struggle
on which vast issues depended. The conquest of Ger
many meant the supremacy of Germanicus as surel}
as the conquest of Gaul had meant the supremacy oi
Gaius Julius Caesar. Tiberius was watching. He had nc
doubt as to the significance of the conduct at any rat&lt;

GERMANICUS 181

of Agrippina. But it was the success or failure of Ger-
manicus himself that would decide the issue.

The whole history of these campaigns has been
coloured by the political propaganda which was de- Significance
signed to justify them. They were magnified and dis- German
torted into a romance of ardent youth and military War
glory with Agrippina playing the part of the noble
woman in the background dogged and repressed by
the Ogre of Capri. Even over a space of nearly two
thousand* years this propaganda survives in the pages
of Tacitus, and it still reflects upon Germanicus the
same magical glow that it cast upon him for the benefit
of public opinion in Rome. . . . But public opinion
in Rome, with all its faults, was not entirely insensible
to the advantages of the policy of Tiberius, who never
fought a war he could possibly avoid, and never spent
a penny he could possibly save.

The tale of the battle of Idiaviso opens with a dra
matic dialogue between Irmin and his brother Flavus,
who was an officer of auxiliaries in the Roman service.
Standing on opposite banks of the river, they rehearse
the case for Roman civilization or German independ
ence. It ends by the brothers dashing furiously into the
water to reach one another, and being restrained by
their friends. . * . The tale may be true; but it has in
all probability been neatly retouched by a skilled literary
hand well acquainted with the eternal taste of the public
for romantic drama.

The prologue being finished, the heroic pageant be-

TIBERIUS CAESAR

The gins. The Germans had occupied ground on the lower

Maviso slopes of the hills. An open wood protected their rear.

The Cherusci formed the reserve, which was intended

to strike at the crucial point when the battle had de

veloped sufficiently far to reveal it.

The infantry of Germanicus made a frontal assault
on this position. The cavalry, as soon as the battle was
joined, and attention was concentrated with increasing
intensity on the infantry struggle, enveloped the Ger
man flank and turned the position. They drove out the
Germans who were in the wood, while the infantry
drove their own opponents into it. The Cherusci de
scended into this confusion, and were decisively de
feated. The victory of Germanicus was complete, and
his losses were small.

This is at least the program with which the heroic
pageant was intended to conform; but, as often hap
pens, the rehearsal was defective, and it had to be gone
through again. The Germans do not seem to have al
lowed their defeat to be so complete as the program
directed. . * . The wily Irmin got away by hard riding.
The Saxon auxiliaries knew him by sight, and let him
go. Some of the Germans were forced into the Weser;
others, caught between the infantry and the cavalry
attacks in the woods, climbed trees, whence they were
retreat subsequently hunted at leisure. But a considerable body
must have effected a retreat. The pursuit is said to
have lasted many hours, and to have extended over ten
miles, which were marked by the traces of their flight;
from which we may deduce that they retired in fairly
good order.

GERMANICUS 183

Such a belief is confirmed by the events which fol
lowed. The legions had already saluted Tiberius as Im-
perator after their victory, and Germanicus had erected
a trophy, when it became clear that the Germans were
once more in the field. . . . The explanation given is
that the trophy enraged them; but their rage, however
great and however natural, could not by itself have
produced another army in so short a time had their
military defeat been as decisive as we are expected to
believe*

It was necessary for Germanicus to take the offen
sive, and to fight decisive battles. Quick results were of
the first importance to him; he could not wait, or trust
to time. Hence the Germans could choose their own
ground, and could fight on prepared positions. They
selected a position protected by woods and a swamp,
and on the third side by an earthwork.

The main attack of Germanicus was directed against
this earthwork. The assault of the legionaries was re- The
pulsed, and was withdrawn. Javelin men and slingers,
supported by engines, were then employed, and the
position carried by Praetorian guardsmen. The defenders
were caught at the disadvantage so often fatal to Ger
man or Celtic fighting men, packed on a limited front
with insufficient play for their weapons. . * . Never
theless, the heroic pageant remained a failure. The bat
tle was not decisive, and the results required by Ger
manicus were still to seek.

It was only the middle of summer: there was yet
time for further operations: but he began his retreat.
He erected a second trophy, with an inscription relat-

1 84 TIBERIUS CJESAR

ing that the army of Tiberius Caesar, having subdued
the nations between the Rhine and the Elbe, consecrated
this memorial. . . .

The return of the armies was untroubled* But disas
ter overtook the fleet. It set sail in excellent weather*
Soon after it left the mouth of the Ems, however, it was
caught by a hailstorm; a rising sea and violent squalls
followed, which produced a panic amongst the troops.
Their attempts to help the seamen only embarrassed
the latter. The weather worsened. A violent south-
Disaster easterly storm began to drive the ships out to sea and
to the upon the islands. Anchor was cast, and the intention
was evidently to ride out the gale: but at this moment
the tide turned, and on an ebb receding with the wind
the transports dragged their anchors. Many were ship
ping water. Horses and baggage animals, and even mili
tary stores were thrown overboard to lighten the vessels;
but many foundered, and others were driven upon the
Frisian islands. Germanicus himself was separated from
the fleet, and driven north upon the Chaucian shore.
Here he had to stay till the storm blew itself out.
He blamed himself bitterly for the disaster, and his
friends (who seem always to have exercised great in
fluence upon his conduct) had to restrain him from
seeking a penitent and watery grave.

With the good weather, the scattered ships began to
return. The first to arrive were repaired, and sent out
to search for others. Most of the missing men were
rescued. Some had died of starvation and exposure on

GERMANICUS 185

desolate islands; some had been living upon the carcasses
of the baggage animals thrown up by the sea. The tribe
of the Ampsivarii made a search inland, and recovered
many who had been carried off by the Germans. It is
even said that some of the missing men had been blown
right across the sea to Britain, and were sent back by
the British chiefs. They brought back remarkable tales
with them, which the Roman historian justly treats with
doubt.

There was not much ground for enthusiasm over the
results of the great campaign. Some encouragement The
was found in local successes against the Marsi and the
Chatti, and in the recovery of the last of the three eagles fol
that had been lost with Varus. . . . Germanicus saw
to it that the sufferers in the disaster to the fleet should
be compensated for their losses. The expenses involved
could hardly be other than serious.

The time had now come when Tiberius could inter
vene. Germanicus believed or said that he believed
that one more campaign would achieve their objective.
. . . Tiberius evidently took a different view of the
probabilities. In a letter which he wrote about this time
he observed that he himself had always obtained better
results on the Rhine by diplomacy than by arms. . . . Tiberius
He offered Germanicus the consulship for the ensuing mter "
year which, as it would necessitate his presence in
Rome, was equivalent to recall: and Germanicus ac
cepted it with a meekness which suggests that he was
not altogether sorry to be relieved of an impossible po-

venes

TIBERIUS CAESAR

sition. Tiberius took the opportunity to make impor
tant changes. The command of the Rhine armies was
definitely separated from the Governorship of Gaul,
and the two posts were never again held by the same
man. In the year in which Germaiiicus came back from
the Rhine, Drusus took up the Illyrian command.

Germanicus celebrated a magnificent and popular
triumph, on the 2 6th of May, in the year A. D. 17. There
was a feeling that he had fallen from power. Tiberius
had won a great political victory, and had established
himself as tindisputed master of the Roman world. He
was now, for the first time, free from that haunting
threat which had followed him while his adopted son
and intended successor held in his hands the immense
power of the Rhine command.

The failure of the German campaigns was the failure
of the most scientific soldiering which the Roman
armies had ever attempted: and it is curious to note that
these campaigns, so thoroughly planned, so well con
ducted, were unsuccessful, when Csesar s campaigns in
Causes Gaul, the magnificent chaos of an inspired amateur,
failure achieved their end. The causes, however, are not en
tirely mysterious. The Gallic campaigns of Csesar paid
for themselves and yielded a profit over and above. The
German campaigns needed to be paid for out of the
resources of the imperial fisc.

Neither Augustus nor Tiberius were men who con
templated with complacency this tremendous drain on
the treasury without any prospect of return. We need
not be surprised, therefore, if at the first convenien op
portunity the project of conquering the north was

GERMANICUS 187

turned down for good and never resumed. But there
were more reasons than one for such a decision. The
Rhine command, in the hands of Germanicus, had be
come a political danger which might involve the fall
of the principate. Germanicus himself was but the stalk
ing horse of more formidable powers. Tiberius was the
last man to feel it his business to finance an enterprise
intended to give effect at his expense to the tenuous
hereditary claim of Julia s daughter, encouraged by a
senatorial oligarchy which counted upon political profit
by his f alL

But even so, the question always remained whether
the conquest of Germany were practically possible. The
experience of nineteen hundred years seems to show
that the doubts of Tiberius were justified. Even to hold
the Rhine frontier at all is possible only under certain
conditions. The masters of that frontier must possess
either Britain or the alliance of Britain. . . . There is
at least no question whatever that Qesar, the creator of Conquest
the Rhine frontier, recognized the necessity of dealing Germany
with Britain as an integral part of the scheme. It was abandonee
only the intervention of pressing political events which
kept him from completing his plan. That which he
knew, he certainly did not fail to record for the benefit
of those who followed him. Augustus had allowed him
self to be persuaded into a different policy. The inva
sions of Germany by Drusus and Germanicus were there
fore experiments on which important decisions hung.
Their failure proved that Csesar was right. The decision
to recall Germanicus was a reversion to the views of
Cassar. It settled a number of historical consequences

188 TIBERIUS CAESAR

which have deeply influenced the later development of
Europe. The inclusion of Britain in the Roman do
minion, and the exclusion of Germany, went far to
determine the whole subsequent course of European
history.

Tiberius had his own plans. The treaty which he had
made with Marbod at the time of the Illyrian revolt
proved enduring. No military operations against the
Suabian king were ever resumed. They were, indeed,
not necessary, if the policy of an Elbe frontier were
to be abandoned. The policy of Tiberius was to take
advantage of the new situation in Germany, and to
relieve the pressure on the Northern frontier by allow-
German ing free scope on the one hand to the antagonism be-
of liCy tween &* Rhenish 1 and the Suabian elements, and on

Tiberius the other to the internal differences between the old
tribal and the new political parties in each. 2 This policy
was successful. The Germans became involved in a
party strife far too important to allow them to pay
any attention to the Roman frontier. It lasted the
time of Tiberius, who could leave to his successors the
task of completing the designs of Caesar.

vra

The year after the battle of Idiaviso the antagonism
between Irmin and Marbod was fought out. The in-

1 Prankish, as they would have been called in later ages. The Cheruscan
league, though not identical with the later Prankish league, was constructd
of much the same materials.

2 That is to say, those which men like Harald Harf agr in Norway afterwards
encountered.

GERMANICUS 189

fluences which were at work in Germany penetrated
to and affected the far north, and brought about a re
arrangement of forces that went far to decide the re
sult. The Suabian power of Marbod was split by the de
fection of the most formidable of the far northern
tribes, the Semnones and the Langobardi. The divisions
among the Cherusci, which were to have serious results
later on, were illustrated by another split in the ruling
family. Just as Segestes had gone over to the Romans,
so now Yngwe-mar went over to Marbod. But to the
latter the gain was no effective substitute for the loss.
The principles and ideas at work can be seen by the Fal1 of
speeches which Tacitus puts into the mouths of Irmin
and Marbod. The former represented Marbod as a
satellite of Caesar: a minor power whose orbit was de
pendent upon the greater. . . . Marbod contrasted the
moral qualities of his own rule with those of Irmin s:
his own open and honourable war against the Romans
with the hole-and-corner attack upon Varus. But the
hard-bitten war-beasts of the far north turned the scale
against Marbod. He was beaten, and retired south
eastward into his strongholds. He requested the help of
Tiberius. The latter replied that Marbod had scarcely
the right to ask for a gift he had never himself given*
He sent Drusus to Pannonia, however, to watch events.
The young man was best out of the moral atmosphere
of Rome, and it was safer to have the armies under the
command of someone too close for conspiracy or re
volt.

Two years later, a new force appeared upon the scene

i9o TIBERIUS CAESAR

Catualda of the Gotones. 1 He entered the realm of
Marbod, drove him out, and took his palace and the
new trading town which he had founded near it. Mar-
bod wrote a dignified letter to Tiberius, praying for
sanctuary* Tiberius freely granted him permission to
come and go as he would. To the Senate, Tiberius spoke
very differently. Marbod, he said, had been a more seri
ous danger to Rome than Pyrrhus or Antiochus. He
enlarged on the dangerous character of the peoples
ruled by Marbod, and thought that he might congratu
late himself at having put so formidable a foe out of
harm s way.

Irmin fell, this very same year, before his domestic
Assassi- f oeS:&gt; W 1 1O a ll along had fought against the introduction
of political ideas and the principle of political kingship.

Irmin ^ r ^ ^j| ^g ac tors were swept off the stage together.

Marbod was in exile at Ravenna; Irmin falling to the
assassin s sword in Germany; the fate of Germanicus
himself we shall see.

Marbod lived in Ravenna for eighteen years. He was
never restored to his throne. He suffered in Roman eyes
by thus surviving his fame and power. But hari-kari
has never been a familiar custom among the northern
peoples. He had the qualified satisfaction of seeing his
enemy Catualda follow him into similar exile at Forum
Julii. The North sank again into the condition of inter
necine strife and divided counsels from which the policy
of Drusus and Germanicus had temporarily rescued
her. Much water was to flow down the Rhine before

1 It has been suggested that Catualda was a Goth from the Vistula. His
name, however, seems to be "Caedwalh" which we meet with later in the royal
family of Wessex.

GERMANICUS 191

the North grew gradually and naturally into unity. She
has, indeed, not fully acquired it yet. The struggle which
Marbod and Irmin began is still, after many vicissitudes,
proceeding. . . .

The task now was to find some occupation for Ger- Germanicus
manicus which might be a little less harmful than that *^ to
of wielding armies. He could not be allowed to remain
in Rome, a centre for all who saw in him the hope of
an oligarchic restoration.

There was ample work for him to do at a comfort
able distance from Rome. Affairs in the East needed
the presence of a plenipotentiary of high rank and with
full powers. The deposition of Archelaus, the last king
of Cappadocia, and his death in Rome, had decided
Tiberius to make Cappadocia a Roman province. A#ti~
ochus Illrd. of Commagene also died in the same year,
and the country applied for direct Roman government.
There was discontent in Judaea. There were difficulties
with Parthia and with Armenia. Vonones, whom Augus
tus had helped to make King of Parthia, had been driven
out. He had been offered a crown by the Armenians;
and M. Junius Silanus, the legate, had consequently de
tained him in Syria, in order to avoid complications with
the new Parthian King. . . . Most serious of all was
the great earthquake of A. D. 17, which involved twelve
cities and caused widespread damage in Asia Minor.
Tiberius sent 10,000,000 sesterces in relief of the suffer
ing, and as Asia was a senatorial province he arranged A. D. 17

192

TIBERIUS CAESAR

Anger
of his
friends

Gnaeus
Piso as a
counter
weight

to pay the taxes himself to the Senate for five years.
. . . All these matters required attention.

But the convincing nature of the reasons for appoint
ing Germanicus did not reconcile his friends to his de
parture from Rome. They wished him there; Tiberius,
as decisively, did not wish him there. The resentment
they felt, their acute perception of the political reasons
which lay behind the appointment, prove those reasons
to have been only too well grounded. . . . Germanicus
himself, a perhaps too good-natured fellow, does not
seem to have shared these feelings. Whatsoever hap
pened, his own position was secure. . . . He was on
excellent personal terms with his severe and square-toed
cousin Drusus. Most people seem to have been on ex
cellent personal terms with Germanicus. It was a gift
he had.

Tiberius took his precautions. He had no intention
of leaving the friends of Germanicus as free a hand for
political intrigue in the east as they had had upon the
Rhine. Silanus, the legate of Syria, who was a personal
friend of Germanicus, was therefore replaced by a very
different type of man, Gnasus Calpurnius Piso. . . .
Now Piso was in many respects a remarkable personal
ity. He sprang of the very old and august plebeian Cal-
pjirnian house, and he was an excellent illustration of
the fact that the old republican temper was very far
from dead: a rough, proud, unbending man, very
wealthy, very independent, choleric, confident in him
self. That he was transparently honest we may guess
from his general behaviour. His wife Plancina was a
friend of Livia Augusta. . . , This was the man whom

GERMANICUS 193

Tiberius sent to Syria as a counterweight to Germanicus.
He had evidently good cause for reckoning on Piso as
one who would endure no nonsense from elegant young
men and their crowds of interested flatterers.

The visit of Germanicus was the most important occa
sion of state which the east had known for a generation
past. He visited Athens and Lesbos, and was every
where received with ceremony. It was all in great con
trast with life on the Rhine. On the Euphrates he had an
interview with King Artabanus. The King was content
with the importance and elegance of Germanicus, and
the matters at issue were settled without difficulty. . . .
The only difficulty which Germanicus found was, in
deed, with Piso; and here a certain divergence of tone
and mutual lack of sympathy seem to have been empha- Dissension

sized by the antagonism between Agrippina and Plan- ? tweei \
TVT 1 T * JPiso and

cina. JN either Livia Augusta nor any friend of hers was Germanicus

an acceptable person with Julia s daughter. Piso took a
very independent line. A command to lead Syrian troops
into Armenia he simply ignored. Had Germanicus re
ferred the matter to Rome, Tiberius would have been
obliged to control his legate; but Germanicus, possibly
misled by his friends, refrained from this obvious course.
Matters grew somewhat involved. There was a serious
scarcity in Egypt, and Germanicus proceeded thither
to examine the situation in person. By releasing grain
from the government store-houses, he brought down
prices. . . . Wise as this action may have been, he was
probably exceeding his authority, and trenching upon

194 TIBERIUS C^SAR

imperial prerogatives which Augustus had strictly re
served. In view of the definite and well-known prohibi
tion which restrained men of senatorial rank from
entering Egypt without the permission of the emperor,
it was an act of imprudence for him to extend his visit
in order to inspect the famous archaeological wonders.
. . . Piso seized the opportunity to assume that Ger-
manicus had left Asia for good: and when the latter
returned, it was to find that Piso had cancelled his ar
rangements, and was making his own.

The makings of a pretty quarrel were contained in
these events. Germanicus took his stand on the authority
he possessed, and Piso had to give way. He made ready,
though reluctantly, to leave for home. Up to this point,
Illness Piso had a strong case. At Antioch, however, Germani-
Germanicus cus became seriously ill: so seriously, that his friends
soon asserted that he had been poisoned. Piso did not
realize the situation. On hearing the news, he stopped
his voyage at Seleucia, the port of Antioch, and sent
messages of sympathy and inquiry. . . . The answer
he received was a letter from or alleged to be from
Germanicus, renouncing his friendship with Piso, and
commanding him to leave Syria. . . . Piso accordingly
proceeded on his way. Touching at Cos, he heard the
news that Germanicus was dead.

The death of Germanicus was a sensational event
which shook the whole Roman world. The circum-

?* , stances surrounding it constitute one of those historical

death t i * i i T-. i

mysteries which can never be cleared up. From the mo
ment when his illness became serious, Germanicus prac
tically disappears from our view, and we are groping

GERMANICUS 195

in a mist of determined controversy and embittered
propaganda in which we must grasp the truth as best we
can.

The allegations evolved at Antioch were that Ger
manicus, solemnly declaring himself to be poisoned, 1
gave his friends on his deathbed a commission to bring
his murderers to justice. He did not exactly say that
Plancina was the criminal; nor did he in so many words
declare that Livia and Tiberius had procured her to
commit the crime; but he left this to be understood by
inference. And his friends were instructed to take back, The
as the figure round which this cloud of vague accusa- aHegations
tion against Tiberius was to centre, his wife and chil
dren Julia s grandchildren and Julia s daughter.

Such are the allegations.

Gnaeus Calpurnius Piso was an extraordinarily un
likely man to have been guilty of poisoning. He would
have been far likelier to hit an enemy with a stick. The
allegations which were being made at Antioch pene
trated but slowly to his intelligence. At Cos he held a
conference to discuss the situation. Officers who ar-

1 TBe account of the death of Germanicus in Tacitus, Ann. II. 70-73,
including his Last Dying Speech and Pathetic Appeal for Justice, is too much
for anyone over the age of twelve to swallow. Tacitus was not present at the
event. All he tells us is transcribed from the accounts of authorities whose
identity and value are unknown to us, and can only be estimated by internal
evidence. . . . Judging by internal evidence, his chapters 70-72 are copied from
some political pamphlet of an anti-Tiberius and highly seditious nature. A
similar tractate, published today, would land its writers in gaol for criminal
libel. ... It contains not a single definite allegation or plain fact, but is
composed entirely of pathos and innuendo, evidently intended for readers who
would not worry about such a thing as proof. . . . The remarks in the first
part of chapter 73, comparing Germanicus with Alexander the Great, are of the
most unblushing effrontery. With the second half of the chapter Tacitus re
turns to the normal, by the admission that the appearance of the body afforded
no proof that Germanicus had been poisoned.

196 TIBERIUS CESAR

rived from Syria assured him of a welcome if lie re
turned* His son Marcus voted for returning to Rome
as the most prudent course. Domitius Celer reminded
him that he was the legal governor, and that he had the
sympathy of Livia Augusta and of Tiberius, though they
might be circumspect in expressing it. "None/* said
Celer, "so ostentatiously regret the death of Germanicus
as those who are happiest about it." Piso finally adopted
the advice of Domitius.

He wrote to Tiberius stating the opinion that he
had been driven out of Syria to prevent him from in
terfering with seditious designs, and assuring Tiberius
that he resumed his command in the same spirit of
loyalty in which he had hitherto held it. . . * On the
voyage his fleet met the ships that were bearing Agrip-
pina back to Rome. . . . Both parties stood to arms,
but nothing else happened. . . . M. Vibius warned Piso
that he would have to go to Rome to stand his trial.
. . . "Time enough when the praetor sends for me,"
said Piso. ... He did not understand yet.

He reached Syria, to find that Gnaeus Sentius Satur-
ninus, an experienced soldier, had been left in charge.
Piso proceeded to resume his province by force. De
feated in a battle, he had to take another view of the sit-
to nt uation. Saturninus directed him to return to Rome on
Rome parole.

Piso went, still confident that he had done rightly.

Tiberius, in Rome, saw the second wave of unrest
and hostility roll towards him.

CHAPTER IX

JULIA S DAUGHTER

THE arrival of Agrippina at Brundusium was an event
which would have attracted the attention of any gov
ernment in any age. She had stopped for a few days in
the island of Corcyra, "to compose her mind/ before
crossing the narrow sea. . . . The interval, which we Agrippina
may hope fulfilled its purpose, incidentally fulfilled one
or two other purposes which may have been even more
useful.

Tiberius had had some warning of the turn which
the occasion was likely to take. The news of the death
of Germanicus had been treated as an excuse for demon
strations of loyalty so marked as to be a little bewilder
ing. Business in Rome was suspended. The courts were
closed. The Senate heaped memorial honours upon the
heir to the principate. It heaped them so high that when
a proposal was made to dedicate an especially large
golden plaque to Germanicus among those which had
been set up to famous authors, Tiberius began to feel
doubtful. ... He observed that a man s literary style
was not determined by his rank. It was quite sufficient
for Germanicus to be included among the classical au
thors at all. So the plaque was cut down to the usual
size, and Germanicus reigned officially at least among

197

i 9 8 TIBERIUS CAESAR

the classics, where we now have considerable difficulty
in finding him.

If Tiberius had misunderstood the nature of these
demonstrations of grief, another incident might have
made him aware of his error. It was no doubt unfortu
nate that Livilla, the wife of young Drusus, should at
this particular moment have become the mother of
twins. Tiberius was delighted, and for once expanded
into something resembling tactless enthusiasm. 1 He
Signs pointed out to the Senate that never before had twins

Portents been born to a Roman father of similar status. . . . The
Senate must have been exhausted by its previous efforts,
for it apparently did not share the enthusiasm of the
happy grandfather.

The suggestion implied in the words of Tiberius
started a train of thought which it might have been
safer to leave unaroused. That Drusus was now the ob
vious heir to the empire was quite true; but it was a
reminder that would only add to Agrippina s anger. 2
A fault of tact was so rare in the Tiberius of these days,
that we may guess that he, like Piso, had not yet appre-
ciated the full import of what was coming.

Reception ^he delay in Corcyra enabled the forces of Agrippina
dusium to be mobilized. Tiberius, naturally enough, had sent

1 It would seem that Tiberius entertained some special devotion to the Dios
curi; so that* the birth of twins would strike him in the light of a specially
favourable omen. See p. 126 ante. The reference on p. 61 might also be de
rived from Tiberius himself.

2 From Tacitus, Ann. II. 82, 84, we can see that it was the "family of
Germanicus" (i. e., Julia s daughter and grandchildren) who were envisioned as
the injured parties. Germanicus himself was a means to an end.

JULIA S DAUGHTER 199

two cohorts of Praetorians to meet the ashes of Germam-
cus, and had directed the city authorities to accord an
official reception. . . . His representatives found at
Brundusium not only a full assembly of the friends
of Agrippina, but a concourse the presence of which
needed a little more explanation. Officers who had served
under Germanicus of course journeyed thither. Others
turned up out of respect to Cxsar. Others still, who had
no particular motive to go, went because everybody
seemed to be going; a reason which has its power in all
times and at all places. The buildings and approaches
of Brundusium were covered with an immense crowd.
The cue had been passed. Percennius cannot have lacked
surviving colleagues no less eminent in their profes
sion.

Agrippina s carefully staged entry was a highly suc
cessful dramatic performance. "When, slowly, weighed
down with grief, the desolate widow appeared before
the spectators bearing in her hands the funeral urn, and
accompanied by her two young children, the crowd
responded. . . . The note which was struck at Brundu
sium was sustained all the way to Rome.

Germanicus would have had noble obsequies in the
ordinary course of events; but there was skill and sub
tlety in the way in which they were exploited. Every
stage of the route was marked by religious ceremonies
and popular gatherings met to pay the last homage of
grief to Germanicus. At Terracina the delegation from
Rome was waiting, headed by Drusus, bringing with The
him Germanicus 5 brother Claudius (afterwards em- g
peror) and his remaining children. The consuls and abstains

200 TIBERIUS GffiSAR

senate, followed by another immense concourse, accom
panied them. . . , Although the truth became clear,
that a huge and successful effort was being made to cap
ture the occasion in the interests of Agrippina, it was
not possible to change the official part of the ceremony,
which had to proceed to its due conclusion irrespective
of any use that was being made of it. ... By this time,
however, not only Tiberius and Livia, but also Antonia,
the mother of Germanicus, had withdrawn from any
association with the occasion. 1

Germanicus had owed his elevation not to any heredi
tary claim, but to co-optation. It is impossible now to
estimate how far Augustus, by arranging his marriage
of Germanicus and Agrippina, had wisely fortified his
arrangements by engaging in their favour the interests
of the hereditary line through Julia; or how far he had
fatally weakened it by reviving the hopes of candidates
for empire who could never permanently have main
tained themselves. . . . What Tiberius now faced was
a revival, in a new form, of the coalition between the
claimants through Julia, and the senatorial oligarchy,
which he had faced in the first year of his reign. Neither

The party to the coalition was strong enough to act alone.

at issue Together, they might succeed. The influence of Julia s
faction might split the forces of the empire. . . . But
if Agrippina could achieve her ends, the first stage of
the destruction of the principate was in sight; for none
of her sons could have grappled with the task of con
trolling the dominion of Rome. It would have fallen

1 Tacitus (Ann. III. 3 ) surmises that Antonia was intimidated. But Tiberius
had reason to be grateful to Antonia for her loyalty at a moment even more
serious than this. See post p. 263.

JULIA S DAUGHTER 201

naturally into the hands of the oligarchy; and then by
all precedents the destruction of Rome itself would be
at hand.

The day of the funeral saw the climax. . . . Rome
was thronged. It was a city on the verge of revolution.
The Campus Martius was crowded with people who
cried that the republic was lost, and all hope had de
parted. ... It was Agrippina s hour. The enthusiasm
for her was tremendous. She was saluted as the glory of
her country, the only survivor of the race of Augustus,
the model of ancient virtue. These were highly signif
icant forms for enthusiasm whether amateur or pro
fessional to take. . . . Prayers were offered that her
children might be spared to her and might avoid the
snares of their enemies. . . . Placards were posted up:
"Give us back Germanicus": and in the evening, these
words were shouted about the city by people who took
advantage of the dark to remain in the obscurity which
still surrounds their identity.

Tiberius displayed a calm which, if he took these
demonstrations at their face value, is truly remarkable.
. . . Afterwards, even some of those who took part in
them suffered a little from reaction. It was remarked
that it was a comparatively poor funeral. . . . The
share of Tiberius in the occasion was confined to throw
ing a little cold water on the patients who suffered un
der this remarkable delirium over a commonplace
young man and a violent young woman. He issued a

202 TIBERIUS CAESAR

proclamation which, though it never won him inclusion
among the famous authors of Rome, has descended in
some of its phrases to us. * . . "Principes mortales:
rempublicam aeternum esse . . ." it was perhaps his
own profession of faith . . "proin repeterent solen-
nia: et quia ludorum megalesium spectaculum sub erat,
etiam voluptates resumerent." Business as usual was re
sumed.

It remained to be seen whether, in a calmer and
more judicial atmosphere, Agrippina could maintain the
charges she and her allies had thus broadcast. Although
Propaganda no names we re mentioned, it was clear enough that Ti-
Tiberius berius was being accused to the whole Roman world
of having poisoned Germanicus. . . . The charge was
no trifling one. Owing to the circumstances in which
he was placed for which not he but Augustus had
been primarily responsible it was easy to demonstrate
that he had an interest in removing Germanicus. . . .
Agrippina knew, moreover, in all human probability,
that Tiberius had reasons deeper and stronger than any
of a personal nature, for profound hostility, . . .
The conscience of a conspirator is very quick. And if
Agrippina had not systematically and persistently
conspired, then words have no meaning and facts no
sense.

Tiberius became the more dangerous, the cooler he
kept. He might or might not have been the man who
was responsible for the poisoning of Germanicus. But
suppose it became clear that Germanicus had never
been poisoned at all?

JULIA S DAUGHTER 203

The stage was cleared now for the serious business
the trial of Piso.

The case for Agrippina was in the hands of Quintus
Servseus, Publius Vitellius and Quintus Veranius, who
had put it together at Antioch. Vitellius and his col
leagues had requested Sentius Saturninus to send them
from Syria a certain Martina, alleged to be a well-known
poisoner, and a friend of Plancina. Martina, however,
died suddenly at Brundusium on her way to Rome. . . .
Poison was found concealed in a lock of her hair, though
apparently she had not died of poisoning. . . .What
she died of, and what poison was doing in a lock of her
hair, we are not informed; but the instance of Martina
was to prove a good example of the unsatisfactory type
of evidence that was to be brought against Piso.

To Piso, also, the real state of affairs was penetrating The case
by degrees. He sent his son ahead to see Tiberius, who
gave him a reception which showed that he did not
intend to condemn Kso unheard. . . . Piso himself
went to see Drusus in Illyria. Drusus was too prudent
to grant a private interview; but he expressed publicly
his own hope that the stories which were being spread
would prove to be false. . . . On his arrival in Rome,
Piso showed no signs of a guilty conscience. He re
opened his house, and resumed his usual social activities,
much to the indignation of his foes.

Fulcinius Trio, the well known delator, opened the
proceedings by a move of his own. He himself laid

204

TIBERIUS CAESAR

Prelimi
nary
moves

Tiberius
opens the
trial

an information before the consuls against Piso. Against
this, which would have had the effect of a modern block
ing motion, Vitellius and his friends lodged an objection,
which was sustained. Fulcinius then shifted ground,
and put in an indictment of Piso s previous career, ask
ing for a trial in the imperial court, Piso consented to
this course: and had it been carried out, the whole set
of cases against Piso would have been tried in the im
perial court. Tiberius, however, realized that this would
not do, since he was himself practically in the dock
with Piso, and he remitted the case to the senate.

Piso now needed an advocate of senatorial rank. His
search for a suitable defender illustrated old lines of
party cleavage. Among the five senators who refused
to handle his defence were Asinius Gallus and L. Ar-
runtius, whom we have met before. But not all senators
belonged to the oligarchic party. Finally Manius Lepi-
dus, Lucius Piso and Livineius Regulus, who were of
imperial sympathies, offered to undertake his defence
for him.

Tiberius, although he would not touch the case in
his own court, exercised his indisputable right to preside
in the Senate. His opening speech (given at length by
Tacitus) was a model of fairness and judicial temper,
which gives a very high impression of Roman justice.
"No British judge in summing up/ 5 says Professor Ram
say, "could put a case before a jury with more admira
ble precision and impartiality." Trio led off for the
prosecution, but his case was of no importance. He had
never had any purpose in intervening save to get the
trial removed to the imperial court, an object which

JULIA S DAUGHTER

he had failed to achieve. The real business began when
Vitellius rose to speak for the friends of Agrippina*

They did not rely exclusively on the charge of poison
ing. The indictment against Piso was complicated by
further counts of relaxing military discipline, condon
ing illegal actions towards allies of Rome, and injustice
towards innocent men. He had used military force
against an officer representing the state.

The charge of poisoning Germanicus broke down
altogether. It proved a farrago of nonsense which could
not for a moment endure the light of a judicial investi
gation. The allegations were, variously, that bones of
dead men had been found in the house which Ger- The
manicus had occupied, and sheets of lead engraved with
curses which hardly formed a proof that he had been breaks
poisoned; that the condition of the body was consistent
with poison having been administered but here the
evidence conflicted; that Piso had sent emissaries to
watch the symptoms which Germanicus exhibited but
these were only his inquiries of courtesy. It was alleged
that at a dinner, Piso had been seen to mix poison with
the food of Germanicus; but no satisfactory evidence
could be produced.

Had the case against Piso depended entirely upon
the charge of poisoning, he would have got off a free
man; but the political charges were more effective; and
the evidence made them good. That he had sought to
re-enter Syria by military force was indeed unquestion
able. . . . Tiberius maintained his attitude of impar- The
tiality. He would not exercise his power to condone these political
political offences. . . . Livia, less interested in such

zo6 TIBERIUS CAESAR

matters, began to exert her influence to protect Plan-
cina, who accordingly declined responsibility for the
political actions of her husband. . . . Piso began to
see that he was isolated, and he could not rebut the
political charges. He proposed to abandon his defence.
His sons urged him not to give way, and he re-
entered court. But unless Tiberius exercised his power
on behalf of Piso, it was useless to proceed: and too much
lay at stake for Tiberius to go out of his way. The Senate
would almost certainly inflict the heaviest penalty
within its power.

Piso went home without giving any sign of his in
tention. He acted as though he intended to return to
Suicide court the next day. He wrote various letters and mem-
p f iso oranda which, having sealed, he gave to one of his serv

ants; performed his usual toilet and locked the door.
. . . They found him next morning, impetuous and
decisive to the last, with his throat cut vigorously
through and his sword beside him.

To the shocked and astonished Tiberius the news of
Piso s death, and the letters which he had written, were
duly delivered. He felt it somewhat as King Charles felt
the death of Wentworth. He examined the servants
closely as to the circumstances. Satisfied that he could
do nothing there, he read aloud to the Senate the touch
ing and manly appeal of Piso that his son should not
be involved in any sentence passed upon him; and he
now proceeded, since he was set free to do so, to use
his power to see that the appeal should not be fruitless.

JULIA S DAUGHTER 207

Young Marcus Piso was discharged from the political
indictments; as was Plancina also, though Tiberius duly
marked his sense of the difference by informing the Tiberius
Senate that he intervened for Plancina because his his son
mother had asked him to do so. When the sentence upon
Piso was debated, Tiberius vetoed the proposal, which
could harm no one but his son, to erase his name from
the consular fasti; he vetoed any form of sentence that
involved the confiscation of his property; and when
Messalinus and old Qecina proposed, the one to set up a
golden statue of Tiberius in the temple of Mars the
Avenger, and the other an altar to Vengeance, he vetoed
these no less decisively. Victories over foreign foes might
deserve monuments; those over domestic enemies de
served only concealment.

Messalinus and Csecina no doubt expected this veto
upon their motions; for those motions were, of course,
attempts to make the Senate declare, by special resolu
tion, what it could not prove by judicial process that
Germanicus had been murdered. The resolution of Mes
salinus further attempted to involve Tiberius in this
declaration. . . . Defeated in this he had another expe
dient he proposed a vote of thanks to Tiberius, Livia
Augusta, Agrippina and Drusus for their efforts to
avenge the death of Germanicus. . . . This list con
tained (with the significant exception of Agrippina)
only the names of those who had shown very qualified
sympathy with the idea that Germanicus had been mur
dered; and it was a fresh attempt to involve them in an Manoeuvres
acceptance of Agrippina s point of view. L. Asprenas involve
therefore rose to inquire politely if the omission of the Tiberil *s

TIBERIUS OESAR

name of Claudius were intentional. Messalinus accord
ingly was obliged to include it, with the result of con
siderably blunting the point of the resolution. ... Ti
berius quashed this too.

The victory of Tiberius was complete, though it had
been won at the cost of Piso. But Piso had no one but
himself to blame for the indiscretion which had wan
tonly laid him open to charges he need never have in
curred. . . . Since it could not be argued that Tiberius
had intervened to save a guilty accomplice, it was ru
moured that he had had the accomplice murdered in
order to hide the evidence of their connection. . . .
Those who enjoyed the recreation of arguing in a circle
no doubt believed this rumour, which had the singular
advantage of being incapable of answer. . . .

But it is certain that the guilt of Piso and the com
plicity of Tiberius over the death of Germanicus have
never been proved; and that no evidence ever was pro
duced which by any stretch of imagination could be
held to prove them.

The death of Germanicus and the trial of Piso mark
the advance of the tide which had begun with the mili
tary mutinies on the Rhine and the Danube. It was
certainly an advantage to Tiberius that Germanicus
Advantages should be gone; but only because of the relation which
accruing Germanicus bore towards forces whose puppet he was.
Tiberius ... In other respects it made no difference end brought
him no gain, beyond the freedom which he now pos
sessed to make Drusus his heir.

JULIA S DAUGHTER 209

We may measure the importance of the death of
Germanicus by the fury it occasioned. No accusation
that rage could invent or craft could level against Ti
berius was left unhurled: and when proof broke down
and even coherence grew difficult, recourse was had to
those forms of slander which, since they are not ra
tionally couched, cannot well be rationally refuted.
Anger so great must have had a cause: and the cause
was that with Germanicus vanished the one soldier who
had both the rank and the popularity to carry the army
against Tiberius.

Germanicus himself, of course, had never had any
thing to gain by revolution. His succession to the em
pire was assured. But he was very much of a cipher
beside Agrippina, whose interest in the subject has al
ready been touched upon. The danger began with the
coalition between Agrippina with her hereditary claims
and the senatorial party. To this coalition Germanicus
had been indispensable. Like some other ciphers, he mul
tiplied its force by ten. His disappearance meant that
the army would remain an intact bloc, and that Agrip
pina and the oligarchic party must face it with no weap
ons but intrigue and the appeal to public opinion.

There were difficulties in the way of doing this: and
the difficulties are instructive because they sprang from
conditions inherent to the situation. The strength of the Sena-

the principate which Augustus had founded was based t0 ^

t- T t_ T. palty

upon realistic compromise. It was strong, because he

had deliberately founded it on the fantastic peculiarities
of actuality, and not on the neat symmetry of abstract
theory. It was never approved nor sincerely accepted

210 TIBERIUS CAESAR

by a party which created out of their own imaginations
an abstract theory of what the Roman political state
had been, and who sought to restore a republic which,
in the sense they meant, had never existed. . . . There
had indeed once been a republic: but they had forgotten
what it was like in the days of its strength.

If representative institutions have no other advantage
(and they have many) they perform the invaluable
service of constituting an index to public opinion and
the strength of parties. In the absence of such an index
men are liable to gamble on hazards which they would
not otherwise run. Hence, while the power of Tiberius
could be estimated with some approach to accuracy, it
was impossible to guess the real strength of the oligarchy,
which had been slowly recovering itself from the defeat
of the civil wars. The new generation, which did not
directly suffer from the moral impression of defeat, pos
sessed the old political tradition bathed in a romantic
glow which misled them as to its nature.

The deep weakness of the Senatorial opposition lay in
that they had no gift of a political sort to give mankind;
they did not even realize that political power was based
position upon its practical utility to men at large. They were
appealing tacitly for a support for which they could not
pay. The old republican oligarchs had given Rome the
hegemony of the Mediterranean, and had extended one
inter-connected system of commerce and finance over
the whole contemporaneous civilized world. This was
a very practical gift to give men. It had added enor
mously to the potential wealth and prosperity of man
kind. But when they had failed to realize those poten-

JULIA S DAUGHTER 211

italities, tiie principate had outbid them with the gifts
of order, security, equality before the law, and oppor
tunity for the smaller type of enterprise, . . . The po
litical peril of the oligarchy had only come when it
could no longer offer gifts of equal value: its end had
come when it could no longer offer any gifts at all,
but could only talk about some abstract "right" it sup
posed itself to possess.

It forgot that it had not enjoyed power on account
of an abstract right, but because of the concrete bene
fits it could bestow, ... It had, in its day, outbid and
overwhelmed the ancient rule of the aristocracy, which
had rather more claim to talk of "rights" than its suc
cessor. . . . The oligarchy at last, in this strange for-
getfulness, fell into the second childhood which seems
to attend so many political parties which have outlived
their usefulness; and, like a cheap-jack, being no longer
able to sell a sovereign for a shilling, proposed to its audi- 4
ence to sell a shilling for a sovereign. Its audience si
lently melted away.

The reality of the opposition of the senatorial oli
garchy can be appreciated if we trace some of its actions.
Side by side with those great events which were con
nected with the military mutinies, conspiracy had been
at work upon a smaller scale and from a different source.
Particularly serious was the series of events which had
centred round the death of Agrippa Postumus.

The death of Agrippa is usually narrated as if it were
an isolated action unconnected with any other circum-

212

TIBERIUS CESAR

stances. The real facts show it to have been far other
than this. . . . Promptly upon the death of Augustus,
Conspir- an attempt had been made to carry off Agrippa from
Clemens Planasia. A slave in Agrippa s service named Clemens or
ganized an expedition and set sail for the island. His
ship was too slow; Agrippa was slain by his gaoler, and
the expedition consequently came to nothing. . . .
Clemens, foiled in this project, formed another, so pe
culiar that it calls for notice.

He bore some personal resemblance to his master. He
retired therefore to Etruria, let his hair and beard grow,
and began to show himself more or less privately in vari
ous towns, preferably at night, spreading the report that
Agrippa was still alive. . . . This report was believed in
Rome. The pretended Agrippa was welcomed by a great
concourse in Ostia. Tiberius was in some doubt whether
to treat the matter with contempt or not. Finally, he
placed the matter in the hands of Sallustius Crispus,
who kidnapped Clemens by night. 1

Now, it is of little use to maintain, in the teeth of
all probability, that this episode was the creation of a
mere isolated adventurer. Agrippa was the grandson
of Augustus and the brother of Agrippxna; he had at
one time been co-heir with Tiberius of the principate,
and it was arguable that his rights were not extinguished
by the decision of Augustus which excluded him. The
project of Clemens had been to carry him to the Rhine
Army, 2 where, as we know, a mutiny was in progress.
Agrippa would have been a suitable figure-head to lead

1 From this episode and the other referred to on p. 129 f. n. Ante, it would
seem that Sallustius was the head of some kind of special service.
2 Tacitus, Ann* II. 3940,

JULIA S DAUGHTER 213

the march of the Rhine Army upon Rome, if Germani-
cus proved too weak. . . .

The actions of Clemens * could not have been con
ducted upon his own responsibility. They needed money, Its
which he could not possibly have possessed. He certainly backers
had accomplices senators and knights, and even mem
bers of the imperial household who laid the plans and
financed the proceedings. 2 When he was put to the ques
tion, he would reveal nothing. Tiberius is reported to
have asked him how he made himself out to be Agrippa.
. . . "Just as you made yourself out to be Caesar," was
the reply. . . . This kind of thing, disheartening in its
obstinate unreason, was also a definite hint. . . . Tacitus
tells us that the death of Agrippa destroyed Julia s last
hope. . . . This spectre pursued Tiberius. It was the
hereditary claim of Julia and her children who had
been excluded by the principle of co-optation that was
employed against him. . . . When Agrippina, Julia s
daughter, returned to Italy with the ashes of Germani-
cus, it was once more Tiberius whom they attempted
to involve in responsibility for the death of Agrippina s
husband. They could not forgive him.

But the hereditary principle, however strong, was Affiliations
not quite strong enough in the imperial Rome of that the con-
age to explain the whole of these circumstances. An
indefeasible hereditary right to a crown was the inven
tion of much later ages. The crown itself moreover had
hardly been invented in days when Tiberius was labour
ing to govern an empire on the principle that he himself

1 Dion Cassius says that he went to Gaul, and gained many adherents there.
He describes him as marching upon Rome, as a claimant to empire. (LVH. 16. 3.)

2 This is Tacitus* own assertion.

2i 4 TIBERIUS CAESAR

as emperor did not really exist. . . . The impulse
came from men with ulterior motives, who backed the
children of Julia for their own ends. . . . The crown
was coming; but it had not yet come.

Almost simultaneously with this episode extending
down to the time of the battle of Idiaviso and the last
invasion of Germany some very strange details had
come to light. L. Libo Drusus, after having been for
some time under observation, was charged with sorcery:
that is to say, with illegal and suspicious proceedings
which required explanation.

The case The case was a queer one. One of the documents
L. Libo seized was a list of Caesars and Senators with mysterious
Dnisus signs against some of the names. No satisfactory ex
planation was forthcoming as to the meaning of these
signs. Libo himself appeared to be a harmless but ec
centric personage who dabbled in what purported to be
occultism: but the cultivation of occult science hardly
necessitates lists of political persons at least, not with
out explanation, and this (though it ought to have been
easy) was lacking. The construction which would, in
these circumstances, be placed upon such symbols by
a prosaic world trained only in exoteric knowledge,
would be that they were notes in cipher, and that the
cipher, like the names, had a political reference. . . .
Libo himself denied having written the document. Very
strong suspicions were entertained that his household
could give valuable information though perhaps not
on occult science. It was illegal to force slaves to incrimi-

JULIA S DAUGHTER

nate their master. When Tiberius instructed the execu
tive to circumvent this legal difficulty by purchasing
the slaves of Libo individually, Libo slew himself. He
may have so acted in order to save them from the ques
tion; but the whole case was unsatisfactory.

But Libo had connections. He was not an unknown
and unrelated individual. His identity has a certain in
terest* He was the great-grandson of the Pompeian par
tisan, L. Scribonius Libo, whose sister Augustus mar- Connec-
ried; x he was therefore the cousin of Agrippina, and Libo
he was possibly the brother of that L. Scribonius Libo
who was Consul in the year A. D. i 6 the year in which
Clemens was caught. Hence the interest which Tiberius
took in him* 2

Tiberius seems to have come to the conclusion that
Libo was the dupe of men more cunning than himself,
who employed him as a stalking horse: for he remarked
that he would have interceded for him, although the
man was guilty, if he had not destroyed himself. Of
what precisely Libo was guilty never transpired, but
the episode certainly pointed to the existence of under
ground conspiracy and political discontent among the
Senatorial party.

The Senatorial opposition thus tended to take that
most irritating of all forms the secret resistance, the

1 See ante p, 10.

2 Although Tacitus (Ann. IL 2430.) describes the incidents in a way cal
culated to minimize their importance. Suetonius (Tib. XXV.) accepts Libo as a
genuine revolutionary conspirator. That he confuses him with the consul is per
haps a valuable mistake.

zi6

TIBERIUS CAESAR

effects of
Senat
orial
opposi
tion

The

defences

Tiberius

quiet unconquerable hostility of men who had no practi
cal alternative to propose: who did not want things bet
ter, but only wanted them different. . . . Their tactics
were wrecking tactics. . . . Such oppositions, though
not always ineffective, are nearly always an evil. They
never correct the faults of the party in power; they
invite mere repression, and their barrenness gives a show
of justification for ruthless and equally unreasonable
forms of severity. A bad opposition can be almost as
serious an evil as a bad government. Sometimes it cre
ates a bad government. The Senatorial party assuredly
intensified the worst dangers of the military principate.
They poisoned the atmosphere with slander, with treach
ery, with all the elements of doubt and distrust. They
caused men, who were always aware of the precarious-
ness of their position as heads of a military order, to feel
morbidly conscious of it.

Tiberius would not have admitted that they were
seeking to restore a republic. In his view as in that
of Augustus the republic, the political state, still sub
sisted. Their hope was to destroy the principate and
restore the oligarchy. Their methods were cautious and
secret; their advance was always disguised; the only
form in which they never appeared was their own. . . .
Against this opposition Tiberius began to construct his
defence: not, indeed, invisible, but as subtle and as ef
fective. ... In this process the republic, torn between
two forces, was indeed destroyed.

The two main bastions of his defences were the law of
maiestas and the system of delation. Maiestas was any
crime that injured the state the respublica considered

JULIA S DAUGHTER 217

as embodying the common interests of its citizens: it
covered, not alone material injury to the state, but (and
this was of course a logical and necessary extension of
the idea) anything that damaged its prestige and im
paired its authority in the eyes of men. The law of
maiestas, as it developed under Tiberius, grew from this
last conception, and was designed to safeguard the per
son of the princeps as representing the controlling power
of the state.

Certain points are beyond question. It was not a
military law. It was not an arbitrary law. It was ad
ministered by the recognized courts and the conventional
magistrates. It would never have taken the turn it did,
had not Tiberius been driven to seek special powers for
the defence of his office; and he was careful to avoid
any appearance of arbitrariness or despotism in his own
actions; he threw upon the Senate itself the responsi
bility for carrying out the law. . . . But it was cer
tainly not an ordinary law. It gave him the power to
take proceedings before any actual or substantial crime The law
could be proved: derogatory or hostile words or gestures Maiestas
came under maiestas, even if their meaning were oblique
or constructive. A certain sort of political action must
either on principle be left alone, or dealt with in this
way; for if once it is allowed to take concrete or sub
stantial shape, it may be too late to stop it.

The answer of the Senate was, in many cases, to exe
cute the law with such meticulous exactitude as to make
it obnoxious. The Senate was itself subject to the pres
sure of public opinion; it could not refuse Tiberius the
powers he required, nor decline to execute the law. But

2i 8 TIBERIUS OESAR

it could execute it too well, and throw a reflected odium
upon him. To this class of case belongs that of Clutorius
Priscus the poet, who having received praise for a poem
upon the death of Germanicus, ventured, on hearing
that Drusus was ill, to write an obituary poem upon
him too. . . . Drusus recovered, and the poet found
himself charged with constructive -treason. What is
worse, he was executed. . . . Tiberius was away when
Policy t kj[ s happened. On hearing of it, he at once provided that
Senate no such execution should take place without a definite
legal interval during which the sentence might be re
viewed and quashed.

Tradition has done less than justice to the Senate.
. . . Much of what later ages supposed to be servility
was sarcasm.

The system of Delation was the means, and the Dela
tors were the men, whereby this law of maiestas was
put into practical operation.

Delation was not expressly created: it grew. Augus
tus himself was the half -unconscious author of profes-
Delation sional delation. The original delators were no more than
agents who collected information respecting debts due
to the treasury, and supplied it to the officials concerned.
The title at last came to cover all who laid informations
in cases in which the penalty was a fine. Augustus, hav
ing considerable difficulty in enforcing his laws with re
gard to marriage and divorce, offered payment to those
who laid informations on which a court could proceed.
As there was no Public Prosecutor, private enterprise was

JULIA S DAUGHTER 219

the only method available. His action had the result

of turning delation into a recognized profession. A de- Original

lator was a professional private detective, making his of^e***

income out of the commissions paid for a successful Delators

prosecution.

We can form our own judgment concerning the de
sirability of any such system as this. Most systems of
the sort are arguable. It would be quite possible to make
a serious defence of delation. The difficulty, taking time
and place and circumstances into account, was to think
of any other workable method; moreover, those who
deliberately break the law are at any rate taking a sport
ing risk, and must not grumble too much at being
caught. . . . But all we need to keep in mind is that
delation, whatsoever abuses afterwards distinguished
it, was not originally ill-meant. It had an intelligible
principle, and an authorized status.

The turn which Tiberius gave to delation was to ^ hey
add political informations to the list of remunerative a politi-
business done by the profession. He thus engaged on cal force
his side a number of expert investigators who were of
invaluable service; and as their reward depended upon
results, their assistance was free from some of the dif
ficulties by which official detective forces are attended.
He could afford to pay high; for the money, after all,
came out of the defendant s estate. The result was that
all the most skilful delators turned to political work as
their principal stay.

"We need not, of course, expect to find the activities
of the delators either warmly appreciated or fervently Tieir
praised. The views held of their character by the Sena- character

220 TIBERIUS OESAR

Change
in the
nature
of the
struggle

New

elements

imminent

torial party are at any rate a testimony to their profes
sional success. ... It is obvious that, in order to work
at all, some of them must have moved in fairly high
social circles, and must have been men of education.
. . , Domitius Af er, for one, had the same kind of repu
tation as a speaker in court which is possessed by the
more famous modern lawyers. He was perhaps the fin
est orator of his generation.

It was after the events attending the death and fu
neral of Germanicus, and the trial of Piso, that the law
of maiestas and the system of delation began to extend
themselves and become important. The struggle had
shifted from the German frontier to Rome itself. All
danger of a civil war had been removed. The contest
centred now in the capital, and had become a battle of
wits and dexterity silent, concealed, but a war to the
death.

Both parties were equipped for the fray, with all the
material equipments of money and organization which
a political party can need. It was a fight for the pos
session of the world. . . . They appealed to their fol
lowers, the oligarchy with the romantic dream of a
republic which had never been; Tiberius, with his pro
saic principle of good administration.

XII

But meanwhile, something else, which neither of them
had foreseen, was advancing quietly towards them.

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CHAPTER X

THE ADVENT OF THE TUSCAN

THE death of Germanicus created a situation for which
no one was fully prepared. Tiberius was free from a
burden which he had borne, and would no doubt have
continued to bear, without overt complaint, since it
was his duty to bear it; but it was open to him now to
follow the somewhat rusty dictates of his own heart, and
to settle the succession upon his son Drusus. . . . This
very fact contained a trap and a pitfall.

Drusus was Tiberius without the touch of genius.
Something of his grandfather, moreover, the great
Agrippa, mingled with the Claudian blood in Drusus. Drusus
He had a square-toed, undecorative sense of duty; but Younger
his duty, his affection, his robustness and good sense
and he had all these seemed to be built of a less sea
soned timber than those of his father. ... He had
loved and admired his cousin Germanicus; he took up
the task of looking after the welfare of his cousin s chil
dren. But no one really loved Drusus. Even the relations
of Tiberius with his son were qualified by an element
of natural and unintentional disagreeableness.

Where the Vipsanian blood betrayed itself was in a
strain of coarseness foreign to the subtler quality of
Tiberius. . . . Drusus showed signs of suffering from
the opportunities afforded by the imperial dignity of

221

222

TIBERIUS CLESAR

Personality

Drusus

L. Aelius
Seianus

his father. He drank too much for his own good, and
he sometimes revealed the Vipsanius rather than the
Claudius in his cups. . . * Tiberius said, with paternal
candour: "You shall not behave like that while I am
alive to prevent it; and if you are not careful I will see
to it that you have no chance of doing so after I am
dead." . . . Nobody could complain that this was not
plain speaking. . . . What neither of them perhaps
fully appreciated was that the death of Germanicus laid
Drusus open to the attack of forces from which he had
been safe while his cousin lived.

Livia Livilla, the little Livia, to distinguish her from
the Augusta could hardly be expected to develop a
passion for her angular husband, who combined most
of the obvious faults of Tiberius with most of the ob
vious flaws of Agrippa. She was a beautiful, clever and
thoroughly modern woman, with evidently some touch
of that readiness to become the tool of others which her
brother Germanicus displayed. And in this case there
was someone else in the background Seianus. The per
sonality of Seianus is worth dwelling upon in some de
tail.

He was a Tuscan, sprung of that strange, dark and
ancient Etrurian race which seemed to derive many of
its typical characteristics from an older culture than
that of classical Greece and Rome. The Etrurian pos
sessed a start in the virtues and vices of civilization that
the Roman, trained in a later school, never quite recap
tured: his very mind and temperament, like those of
the Jew, were attuned by a remote historical experience
to the life of populous cities and crowded human society.

THE ADVENT OF THE TUSCAN 223

Maecenas had been a Tuscan that very wise man of
the world who never fought nor worked, but, because
he lived in a torrent of talk, ruled the men who did so.
. . . After all, the art of arriving at an understanding
with other men is the whole art of civilization.

Seianus possessed this gift. He had a genius for adapt
ing himself to other men. We may call it genius, for
he successfully adapted himself to the mind of one of
the subtlest, most discerning, and most difficult men
who ever lived Tiberius.

Lucius Aelius Seianus had had, as we might expect,
a brilliant career, and most of it had been intimately
connected with the Augustan house. We may count him
among the earliest of those men who used the military
guild of the Qesars as a ladder to fame and fortune. He Career
was the son of a simple eqnes, Seius Strabo, the com-

mander of the Prastorian Guard during the last years
of Augustus. His mother was a sister of Junius Blxsus.
After serving with young Gaius Caesar in the east, he
had been attached to the staff of Tiberius, to whom he
made himself useful. Seianus became colleague with
his father when Tiberius entered upon the principate.
"We have seen him accompanying Drusus on his mission
to the Pannonian mutineers. When Seius Strabo was
transferred to the governorship of Egypt, Seianus re
ceived the appointment to the sole command of the
Praetorians.

His ability was by no means imaginary. Tiberius evi- His ability
dently found that he could rely upon it. By all the evi-

224 TIBERIUS OESAR

dence, Seianus was a cheering and encouraging person,
who jarred on no man s feelings, but dwelt in a pleasant
atmosphere of inward confidence and outward success.
All the wheels of life revolved swiftly, quietly, ade
quately, on well-oiled bearings, around Seianus. As
Praetorian prefect he had control of the guards on whom
the immediate military power of Caesar depended.

The importance of Seianus, and the convenience of
having a man so astute and so capable at the head of
the Praetorians, can be appreciated when we consider
the circumstances of the first few years of the reign of
Tiberius. His alert watch kept guard over the princeps.
But it was a watch that was attended at first by no very
sensational results. During the first eight years there
were but twelve trials for treason; and in view of the
crises through which Tiberius had passed, and the omens
of trouble that had surrounded him, it is difficult to
excite ourselves over this number. As long as the hopes
of the opposition were still mainly in a military revolt,
we hear little of Seianus.

Tiberius in these days had not lost that sense of re-
Tiberius publican freedom which had peeped out at Rhodes,
compara- * Long before he himself ever thought of giving up
tiveiy* and retiring to Capri, Lucius Piso, after inveighing in

the Senate against the evils of the day, had proposed to
depart to the ends of the earth, and had proceeded to
do so. ... Tiberius was greatly disturbed, and Piso
was soothed by an immediate mobilization of all avail
able friends. . , . This was the Piso who had the hardi
hood to go to law with a lady named Urgulania, a friend
of Livia Augusta. She naturally defied him, and Livia

THE ADVENT OF THE TUSCAN 225

invoked the thunders of empire, in the person of Ti
berius, upon the head of Piso. As a man ought to obey
his mother, even when he is fifty-seven, Tiberius started
for court but with habitual craft he went as a private
citizen! . . . There was still a margin of hope when he
could walk the streets of Rome like anyone else, his
Praetorians hovering in the distance. . . . Matters had
not drifted too far when old Lentulus, a mild and an
cient Senator, on being charged with treason, could
meet the charge merely with laughter. "I am no longer
worthy to live if Lentulus hates me," says Caesar with
satisfaction: and the Senate disperses in perfect love
and harmony. . . .

But all this was perhaps bought with a price, and
the price was paid later on. Part of it was no doubt
due to the unsleeping watch of the Tuscan. Though
his watch might be unsleeping, yet never the less he
began to dream dreams. He had his own methods of O f
keeping in touch with the ebb and flow of opinion. One Seianus
of them was to carry on intimate love affairs with se
lected wives, who furnished much useful information.
He possibly extended this method a little further than
was strictly necessary for his purposes: at any rate, he
included Livilla, the wife of Drusus, in the sphere of
his operations.

An intrigue with Seianus must have been an exhilar
ating experience if he conducted his love-making with
the same skill that he showed in other branches of
activity. Everything connected with it would go un-

226 TIBERIUS OESAR

obtrusively right. A young wife, married to a clumsy
and angular husband, could scarcely fail to be thrilled
by the spectacle of a man as graceful and adequate as
Seianus, who could enchant the day and night and fill
the sky fuller of stars than mortal eye had ever seen
it. And a man like Seianus has the gift of putting
square-toed husbands in the wrong. Drusus played his
part too well for them to fail in theirs.

Seianus The clumsiness of Drusus rendered him unable to

kold his own against such competition. He complained
to his father. Something of an instinctive prejudice
strengthened his perception: the intuitive doubt which
plain men have of those who are too facile and too
clever. This man would be their master. . . . Consid
ering his own history, Tiberius showed a surprising lack
of sympathy. He did not appreciate how should he do
so? the extent of the damage. He had, naturally, a
strong interest in seeing only virtues in the Tuscan. He
had made Seianus and could unmake him. Men do not
usually fear the tools they employ. Seianus, able to ad
just himself to the nooks and corners of any man s mind,
adjusted himself to this view of Tiberius. The Tuscan,
in these days, was perhaps the only person who had a
private key to that secret and secluded world where
sat alone, in his real being, free of all masks and pre
tences, not Tiberius Cassar, but the man Tiberius Clau
dius Nero.

The success of his experiment with Livilla seems to
have revealed new and dazzling possibilities to Seianus.
Not until he had actually made the experiment could

THE ADVENT OF THE TUSCAN 227

the Tuscan have been aware of the extent to which it
was practicable to go. Even if he had entertained hopes
and ambitions before and there is no evidence that he
had they would necessarily have been considerably
qualified by the extreme improbability of success. But
even half-way through his intrigue with Livilla there Posslbili-
must have flashed across him the real and dramatic truth, the Tuscan
By such a means he could what? . . . The answer is,
That which, by the allegation of the historians, he did
do; that which his actions (if circumstantial evidence
be worth anything) show him to have done. He mar
shalled the whole political strife to suit his private ends.
The sheep dog drove shepherd and sheep alike where he
wanted that is, up to a point. There came a point
at which the shepherd, late in the day, awoke, and
asked himself whither he was going. It had not come
yet.

Drusus, though he realized the situation, was quite
unable to deal with it. His warnings, his complaints, his
contentions were ignored. He drifted farther into the
wrong. Once, it is said, he lifted his hand to strike Sei-
anus. But to strike a Tuscan is dangerous, even for a
Roman.

The dissension between Drusus and Seianus was
brought to an end in the ninth year of Tiberius reign *&gt;eath
by the death of Drusus after a short illness. . . . The Drusus
public at large was not so surprised as it might have A- D * 2 3
been. Two years before, Drusus, in the course of his

228 TIBERIUS CAESAR

progress, had held the consulship with no less a colleague
than his father. There were not wanting prognosticators
of evil. It was remembered that P. Quintilius Varus had
held the consulship in B. c. 13. with Tiberius; and every
one knew what had happened to Varus. And Gnaeus
Piso had held the consulship with Tiberius in B. c. 7; and
everyone knew what had happened to Piso* And Ger-
manicus had held the consulship with Tiberius in A. D.
18; and everyone knew what had happened to Ger-
manicus. . . . When Drusus, the fourth man to hold
the consulship with Tiberius, died two years afterwards,
the prognosticators wagged their heads. It was not
healthy to hold a consulship with Tiberius. Who would
be the fifth?

It is possible that Seianus too had observed the singu
lar fate of the consular colleagues of Tiberius. He was
to observe it again, later on, in circumstances even more
interesting to them both.

Severity The blow to the old man was very heavy. The death

blow to of Drusus was but one more example of an embittering

Tiberius [] j uc ] ^ich dogged all his simple human hopes. He
had been obliged to divorce Vipsania to marry Julia,
the root of his greatest troubles. He had been obliged
to pass over Drusus and adopt Germanicus as his heir.
. . . Germanicus had died . . . we have seen in what
circumstances: and now Drusus had been snatched
away. . . . No child of his own would follow him, but
some other person, more or less of a stranger, and more
or less but probably more rather than less indifferent
to the methods and ideals of government which Ti
berius had at heart,

THE ADVENT OF THE TUSCAN 229

The death of Drusus marked a certain stage in the
life and character of Tiberius. He passed it over lightly
to the eye of the outside world, * and refused to inter
rupt the business of government by a long period of of
ficial mourning. But he was never again quite the same
man. The feelings which he repressed gave him a tend
ency to retire somewhat into aloofness. . . . He ap
peared in the Senate as usual, and gently deprecated
marks of mourning. Without condemning those who
acted differently, he had sought consolation (he said)
in his work. . . . He may not have thought the Senate
entitled to exhibit very marked grief; and possibly the
senators felt that, out of mere decency, the less they
felt the more they ought to show.

If Tiberius had had any share in the tragedy of Ger-

manicus, he certainly gave no sign of it now. He had The .

succession

already, with the severe impartiality which he always reverts
showed, decided to adopt the common sense course of Ag
passing over his own grandson, the child of Drusus and sons
Livilla, and to settle the succession on the sons of Ger-
nianicus and Agrippina whose age made them fitter
candidates. They were accordingly now brought in by
the consuls in person, and placed before him. He ad
dressed them in a short speech which reduced the Sena
tors to emotional tears.

1 That he did feel it is shown incidentally by the anecdote given by Sue
tonius (Tib. LII). A deputation of citizens from Ilium offered, rather late in
the day, their condolences. Tiberius underlined things for them by asking them
to accept in turn his condolences for the loss of their late eminent fellow-
citizens, Hector!

2 5 o TIBERIUS C^SAR

He told them that when their father died he had
placed them in the care of their uncle. Now that Drusus
was gone, he prayed the Senate, before their country
and their country s gods, to act as guardian of these
grandchildren of Augustus. "To you, Nero and Drusus,
the senators will take the place of fathers. Born as you
have been born, your good and your ill alike are matters
which concern the state." 1

Agrippina was not mollified. If Tiberius hoped that
his action would in any way form a bridge to better
relations, he was disappointed.

The funeral of Drusus was remarkable for its display
of ancestral portraits. Borne in the procession were those
of ^Eneas and all the Alb an Kings, 2 as well as those of
Attus Clausus and the Sabine ancestors of the Claudian
house.

Another couple also came before the notice of Ti-
Seiaxms berius. Seianus wrote an application for permission to
marry Livilla. He had divorced his wife Apicata, so that
no legal obstacle stood in the way.
widow Tlnis, however, was going a little too far. Tiberius

wrote back in full, warning him that he could not safely
marry Livilla. He would not himself oppose anything
that Seianus intended to do; but also he would not re
veal the plans he had formed for the advancement of
Seianus. Nothing was too good for him, and in due time
he would hear further.

1 Professor Ramsay s translation of Tacitus, Ann. IV. 8.

2 These presumably came through the adoption of Drusus into the Julian
house*

THE ADVENT OF THE TUSCAN 231

This letter certainly possesses a diplomatic quality so
much out of the common as to suggest that it may be
a genuine document. 1 It disturbed and puzzled Seianus,
as it may have been meant to do; nor could a modern
commentator help the Tuscan to unravel its signif-
icance. What precisely was the danger of marrying Li-
villa? The letter seemed to hint that Tiberius proposed
something better for him. In fact, it was so phrased
that it met nearly every possible event. ... It may
have implied no more than that the aristocratic Tibe
rius did not intend to promote his Convenient Instru
ment into the circle of the Augustan family. The Con
venient Instrument retired to think out other ways and
means.

Events were now shaping themselves in such a fash
ion as to fend Tiberius away from Rome.

The Tuscan s plan to marry Livilla, and to become
the step-father of the emperor s children, had quite mis
carried. With the adoption of the children of Germani-
cus as heirs of the empire, the prospect of future power
had passed over to Agrippina.

But casting our eye over the situation in general
there were many factors which might be transferred to
the Tuscan s side of the calculation. Tiberius had learnt
many lessons, but had he learnt the bitterest of all that
of treachery? ... To Seianus, of course, the matter
appeared in a more rosy light than this. He was propos
ing to himself (as he no doubt saw it) nothing worse

* A good deal depends on this; for the letter may be interpreted as a hint
to Seianus that Agrippina and her party stood in his way. We must remember,
however, that so astute a man as Tiberius would hardly leave his own life
the one bar between Seianus and empire!

TIBERIUS CAESAR

Advan- than a very skilful excursion into that realm of high

position intrigue of which Gaius Julius Caesar and Augustus

of the j ia( } k een p^ mas ters. If he could outwit the craft and

penetration of Tiberius, what law could be adduced to

forbid him? . . .

The position of Agrippina was assailable; and if she
and her sons could be destroyed, it might once more be
come possible for the Tuscan to reach the end he had in
view. Tiberius could not be turned against Agrippina
by any direct or simple means. Having made her sons
his heirs, he would stick to what he had done* Inter
mediate stages must be employed. The emperor could
be convinced that the supporters and friends of Agrip
pina in the Senate were politically dangerous. Agrippina
might be persuaded that a campaign against her friends
in the Senate was intended against herself. The breach
might be assiduously widened until it was beyond re
pair. . . . And for all that then came to pass as a re
sult, Tiberius himself would in the eyes of all men be
responsible. , . . Seianus could reflect with gracious
irony on the irrefutable truth that he was, after all,
himself but a Convenient Instrument. . . . There
might yet come a day when he could repudiate the acts
of Tiberius, and stand in the position of one who
brings deliverance to the victims of an unreasoning op
pression.

And these were no idle thoughts. We should err if
we believed that Seianus invented and devised the po-

THE ADVENT OF THE TUSCAN 233

litlcal clash of which he proposed to take advantage.
He used it for his own ends; he used it to discredit Ti
berius and to blacken his name; but he did not cause it.

Agrippina was little more than an ignorant and ar- Weakness
dent woman who never knew that she was caught in Agrippina
a political battle of giants, and used as a weapon in a
strife in which she, certainly, could never be a victor,
because she did not appreciate the essential truth of
the position in which she found herself. She needed only
to be enticed to be a little more what she always was
a little more angry, a little more suspicious, a little more
unreasonable and she would sacrifice, on behalf of
children who needed no sacrifice, since Caesar had made
them his heirs, all the concessions which Caesar had made.
. . . She had already proposed to surrender the empire
into the hands of the senatorial oligarchy. The oligarchy
had welcomed her alliance. It admired the enlightened
patriotism which proposed to sacrifice so much to its
interests. It has commemorated the virtues of one who
consented to be its dupe^ in contrast with the vices of
one who did not. . . / And indeed, in the history of
politics it is usually the dupes whose reputation descends
to us labelled with many virtuesftThose who have had a
more vivid sense of their own interests have suffered a
harder fate.

Although the clash would^have taken place even if Agrippina
Agrippina had never been, yet it was she who became ^ y t^
the occasion of it. ... She could not believe in the parties
sincerity of Tiberius. . . . With her, perhaps, first be
gan that attitude of mind so obsessed with the imagi
nary hypocrisy of Tiberius, that even if he had killed

2 3 4 TIBERIUS GffiSAR

himself as a mark of good f aith, it would have suspected
him of ulterior motives.

vin

The transfer of the centre of contest to Rome itself
was marked in many ways. There had been twelve im
peachments for treason in the first eight years of Ti
berius reign. In the next six years, beginning with that
which saw the death of his son Drusus, there were
twenty. Seianus in this year, advised a precautionary
step which Tiberius adopted. The Praetorian guard, hith
erto scattered in various camps about Rome, was con
centrated into one permanent fortified camp at Rome
itself. . . . This measure had far-reaching effects. The
reasons for it were that it added to the security of the

torians princeps by assuring that adequate military force should
trated always be at hand. It brought with it a possibility which

Rome ^ not become an actuality until many years later

too late for the intelligent diplomatist who first devised
the plan. It put Rome, and the princeps too, at the mercy
of that military force and the man who controlled it.

The coincidence of this concentration of the Prse-
torian guard with the death of Drusus, and the events
which were closely to follow, is circumstantial evi
dence of some value respecting the intentions of Seianus.
Any one link in the chain, taken alone, might be an
accident. All of them, linked together, cannot be an
accident. And by the testimony of the historians who
wrote the history of those times, they were no accident.

From the time of the death of his son, moreover, Ti
berius allowed a good deal of public business to pass

THE ADVENT OF THE TUSCAN 235

through the hands of Seianus before it came to him.
The consuls and magistrates habitually called at his house
for audience every morning, to lay their agenda before
him; and even personal communications were trans
mitted through Seianus. Hence the Tuscan became cog
nizant of all business, and his influence was recognized
as supreme.

The discernment of Tiberius was not at fault. Up
to a certain point, which was not yet in sight, Seianus
was the perfect servant. Exactly how far the discern
ment of Tiberius penetrated ; exactly how far he gauged
the position of that point of peril, is a problem be
yond our power to answer. . . . Which of the two
was the subtler man could only be made evident by
events.

If now Agrippina had accepted the olive branch si- New
lently held out to her,, and had consented to await the *Sf
natural end of the reign of Tiberius, and the natural of the
succession of her sons, this would be the end of the story,
and there would be no more to tell save that they all
lived together happily ever after. . . . But she could
not trust Tiberius. The pressure to prevent her from
doing so was too powerful to resist. The senatorial party
was as deeply interested as the Tuscan in irritating and
inflaming her feelings. Between the two forces she was
swept into a vortex from which there was no return.

Tiberius would never himself have struck down
Agrippina. Her life and that of her sons were his se
curity against such powerful but necessary servants as
the Tuscan. While they lived! he was safe, and Seianus
could without danger be giveii f ull power to deal with

2 3 6 TIBERIUS OESAR

the oligarchy. But if they went, the time would come
when he would have to look to himself.

Tiberius had, in effect, offered Agrippina and her sons

a coalition against the common enemy, the price of

which was to be the succession to the empire. . . . It

soon became clear that they did not accept the offer,

Seianus and that their hostility was increased rather than dimin-

Ieads ished.

So far, therefore, success lay with the Tuscan.

The interests of Tiberius and Seianus thus remained
close enough to be called identical. To track down the
work of Agrippina and her friends was for Tiberius
the readiest means by which he could check the party
which aimed at the destruction of the principate: while
to Seianus it promised the best opportunity of widen
ing the breach between Tiberius and Agrippina. . . .
Gaius Silius belonged to Agrippina s party. Cremutius
Cordus, the historian, belonged to the other, the senato
rial party, the action of which was independent of
Agrippina.

The case of Cremutius is the first important case in
which a "dummy" charge was used to secure a convic
tion, and it is also the first which betrays the methods of
Seianus. Cremutius was accused of having called Brutus
and Cassius the last of the Romans. . . . This was cer
tainly as much constructive sedition as praise of Robes
pierre would have been under a Bourbon monarchy, or
praise of the regicides in the days of Charles the Second.
It was argued (and the defence, if true, was a strong

THE ADVENT OF THE TUSCAN 237

one) that Augustus had heard the book read, and had

raised no objection. . . . Cremutius, however, saw that

he was about to be condemned, and removed himself by Cremutms

voluntarily abstaining from food. . . . The assertion Cordus

is made that the real cause of the action against Cremu-

tius was of a more personal nature. When, three years

previously, the theatre of Pompeius had been burnt

down, Tiberius had especially thanked Seianus for his

activity in dealing with the fire, and a statue of Seianus

was accordingly set up in the restored building, Cremu-

tius had made one of those airy remarks with which

the senatorial party was so free. He had observed that

now, at any rate, he could detect the damage done to

the theatre. . . . But if this is the best that could be

said in defence of Cremutius, even his friends must have

admitted that he was surprisingly lacking in discretion.

The trial of Cremutius Cordus shows that the battle
was now joined.

That it had been joined to some purpose is illustrated
by another trial which took place not long after. The

disposition of Tiberius to retire up the stage had been as ? of
i - it 11^- T - -it Voftenus

sympathetically encouraged by Seianus: and it was still Montanus

further increased by the case of Votienus Montanus,
who was indicted for treasonable slander. Tiberius at
tended court in person to hear the case. Among the wit
nesses was a soldier named Aemilius. The evidence of
Aemilius, particularly detailed and firmly adhered to,
was so scandalous that Tiberius was struck with con
sternation. He cried out that he must clear his character
himself without delay and in that very court. It was
necessary for his friends to soothe his feelings; but even

2 3 8 TIBERIUS C^SAR

the assurances of the entire assembly present did not
content him.

Although the evidence of Aemilius has not been re
corded for our benefit, the nature of his statements is
not difficult to guess. They must have consisted sub
stantially of the charges which have come down to us
in certain notorious chapters of Suetonius; for though
they are ascribed by that writer to the later years when
Tiberius had retired to Capri, we have already seen at
least some ground for thinking that their origin is
traceable to a much earlier time, and that they were
in fact the slanders started by Julia and by her handed
down to Agrippina. ... If this be the case, the feel
ings of Tiberius are comprehensible. They were cer
tainly strong.

The case of Votienus had considerable and serious ef
fect. Tiberius did not treat lightly the statements he
had heard; and if, as Tacitus informs us, he showed
from that time forward greater severity, his indigna
tion must have been directed against Agrippina, for she
was the chief sufferer from his change of mood.

Although we are not now able to trace it with any
Case of certainty, there must be some connection between this
Puichra case ^ Votienus and the case of Claudia Pulchra. The
trail was by this time running very close to Agrippina,
for Claudia was her personal friend. The charges against
Claudia included adultery with one Furnius, and at
tempting the life of Tiberius with poison and incanta
tions, . . . This was a famous and sensational trial in
its day. The prosecution was conducted by the delator

THE ADVENT OF THE TUSCAN 239

Domitlus Afer, who founded his fame as an orator by
his work in court.

How far we are to accept these indictments as rep
resenting the real crimes of Claudia is questionable; the
art of obtaining a conviction upon technical charges,
when the real ones are difficult or undesirable to prove,
is not a purely modern acquirement. They sufficed for
their purposes in the skilled hands of Domitus Afer.
The trial had the effect of bringing Agrippina to the
surface. ^ \

As soon as she knew that the verdict against Claudia
was a certainty, she had an interview with Tiberius.

The interview was a remarkable one.

As the memoirs of Tiberius were never published, the
details more probably come from Agrippina herself. 1

She found him sacrificing to the Divine Augustus,
and she told him that it was inconsistent of him to pay Agripplna s
respect to Augustus and at the same time to persecute ^ i t ^ view
his descendants. The spirit of that divine man had not Tiberius
passed into any image: she was his true image and repre
sentative. Claudia s sole crime had lain in being her
friend.

All this, however true, was hardly tactful. She could
not more neatly have stated the underlying principle
of legitimism, nor have questioned his title more thor-

1 Through the mf moirs of her daughter, the younger Agrippina, the emperor
Nero s mother,

240

TIBERIUS CAESAR

Deadlock

State of
Agrippina s

oughly. Tiberius answered with a quotation from a
Greek play:

(f M.y daughter, have I done you wrong
Because you are not a queen?"

And this was the real issue between them.

She broke down when she heard of the verdict against
Claudia. . . . "Whatever the real crimes of Claudia may
have been, it seems evident that Agrippina felt herself
included in the indictment. Tiberius went to see her.
She asked permission to marry again. He left the room
without replying. What object, after all, could she have
in contemplating a second marriage? It was his turn to
be unable to answer without saying that which was bet
ter left unsaid.

All this defined the breach and increased it. Seianus
took care that nothing should be left undone to preju
dice Agrippina still further. She grew convinced or
acted as if she were convinced that Tiberius was in
tending now to poison her also. When she dined with
him, sh$ pointedly refused to eat. . . . Tiberius would
have been more than human if he had not resented so
clear a hint. The less the implicit accusation corre
sponded to the truth, the more serious a view he must
take of it. If she did not believe it herself, the case was
bad enough. If she did, the case was infinitely worse.
. . . Tiberius was dealing with the sister of Agrippa
Postumus and the mother of Caligula.

Some thoughts and feelings, if entertained, devour
and destroy like living parasites the mind that is their
host* Tiberius might be dealing with a mad- woman

THE ADVENT OF THE TUSCAN 241

but she was one who successfully got nineteen centuries
of posterity upon her side.

He was not unscathed. The wear and tear of these
things told upon him. He was driven still further in
upon himself. But the thunder-bolt which drove him
out of Rome, drove him into his second exile and his
second hermitage, came from another quarter. It came
from Livia Augusta.

Since Livia published no memoirs, we are deprived
of the intimate details real or imaginative which
Agrippina supplied to posterity. Suetonius himself relies
upon "it is said" for his authority. There were plenty
of good reasons why Tiberius should grow restive at
his mother s attempts to keep her control over him.
Livia disliked Seianus, and was opposed to the adoption
of any strong measures against Agrippina. She may
have distrusted, as mothers do, her son s ability to hold
his own with the Tuscan, once Agrippina and her sons
were gone. Tiberius was willing to take the risk, . . .
But the actual and immediate cause of the crisis was
much more characteristic. She wanted a newly-made
citizen placed upon the roll of jurors.

Tiberius objected. Livia argued the point. He at length
agreed, on condition that the new juror s name on the
register should be endorsed as forced upon the emperor
by his mother. At this adroit twist to the old point of
debate, Livia lost her temper. To prove her contention
that Tiberius was a thoroughly disagreeable person who Augusta
could never have achieved anything without her help,

242 TIBERIUS CAESAR

she produced some old letters which Augustus had writ
ten to her. . . . The blow was more devastatingly ef
fective than she can ever have intended it to be. ...
Tiberius beat a retreat. To judge by his subsequent atti
tude to his mother, he felt it as a cruel and humiliating
blow in the back. . * . This, apparently, was all he
could expect in return for the many sacrifices he had
made, and for a devotion to duty which few men had
equalled! ... He may not in these days have been
his old self. He could not at any rate, he did not
laugh it off. He very certainly was not a man on whom
destiny showered her softer rewards!

He hardly saw Livia again. . . . He beat a retreat
not only out of her presence, but out of the presence
of all these people who had pursued him with their
blind rancour, their hopeless malice, and their ignorant
opposition.

He was sixty-seven years old in this year in which he
did the strangest, most mystifying thing of a strange
Tiberius anc j mystifying life. He had dwelt at home so far
throughout his reign. Though he had talked of visiting
the provinces, he had never gone; he had changed his
mind at the last moment as a certain sort of shy, secre
tive man will do, and had remained at his desk and at
the routine of business. Now he set off, ostensibly to
Campania, to consecrate a temple at Capua. He was ac
companied by one senator, M. Cocceius Nerva, grand
father of the emperor Nerva; by Seiamis; and by a
group of astrologers and other inquiring spirits. . . .

THE ADVENT OF THE TUSCAN 243

After consecrating the temple lie visited the island of
Capri, that strange romantic rock which Augustus had
bought of the city of Neapolis, and which towered huge
out of the blue Mediterranean beyond the point of the
Sorrentine peninsula. . . . At Capri he remained.

He biiilt twelve villas on Capri, and there settled in
seclusion. The island was guarded against all unauthor
ized persons. Tiberius had disappeared into the fast
nesses. From that time forward he became a tradition,
a legend; he ceased to be a man amongst men, and grew
to be an invisible power, proving his existence by his
actions, but by nothing else. It was promptly whispered
in Rome that he had gone there in order to wallow in
debauchery: that he had gone to hide from the eyes Tiberius
of men his hideous and crime-ravaged countenance, t o
conscious that it deserved to be hidden. . . . To which
Tiberius made no reply. . . . The world talked, but
silence fell over Capri, where the level waters glittered
around sunlit rocks.

t It is not difficult to understand the feelings which
led him to Capri. And he had his reasons. He left the
field in Rome clear for young Nero, the son of Ger-
manicus and Agrippina, who, free from the repression
of his presence, might perhaps learn the ropes of im
perial rule more easily. Whatsoever there was of good
in the children of Agrippina would have its fair chance
or whatsoever there might be of evil. The removal of
Tiberius was a test.

Such reasons walked hand in hand with those of Sei-
anus. If the Tuscan himself had planned it, the retire
ment of Tiberius to Capri could not more neatly have

244 TIBERIUS OESAR

fitted in with all lie desired. It left the field in Rome
clearer still for him: it left him the mouth-piece of em
pire. . . . Tiberius, after moving up the stage, had
passed off the stage altogether: and Seianus remained
before all men s eyes, the sole speaker and actor thereon.
Signifi- When, by degrees, that prompting voice grew faint
ofws when, at last (from whatsoever cause) it ceased then

retire- Seianus would still remain; the audience would hardly
m notice that the words he spoke were now his own.

All things which arise from the thoughts of men
intellectually powerful have a strange and baffling qual
ity of intricacy, like the moves of an expert chess
player, which at any moment have a hundred shifting
aspects, fulfil a hundred purposes, and can be turned to
a hundred different possible eventualities. This quality
resided in all the simplest actions of Tiberius. It did not
reside in those of Seianus. The retirement to Capri could
have many events for Tiberius. One event exhausted its
possibilities for Seianus. This was the essential weakness
of the Tuscan s position. His position was not ringed
with the infinitely complex defences which Tiberius,
hardly thinking, perhaps never consciously designing,
by mere instinct swept around himself in such pleni
tude.

And while the people of Rome the well-dressed and
the ill-dressed mob alike fancied that Caesar had gone
to Capri to forget the world, the old man of Capri re
membered the world very well. He sat at his desk there,
as he had sat at it in Rome; business went through his
hands as before. Perhaps he could see the perspective of

THE ADVENT OF THE TUSCAN 24*

things better in Capri, free from the disturbing influence
of Rome and the hostility of Romans.

That it was no common moroseness towards man
kind at large that drove him, he proved immediately Tiberius
after his arrival in Capri. A theatre in Campania col
lapsed, with serious loss of life. He returned at once to
Campania to show his practical sympathy, and he made
his personal presence all the more public because his
earlier passage through Campania had been strictly pri
vate. He was always his old and usual self when there
was something useful and practical to do.

active

CHAPTER XI

THE ENTANGLEMENT OF JULIA S CHILDREN:
AND THE FALL OF THE TUSCAN

IF the old man had reckoned that his absence from Rome
would betray young Nero into showing, whether for
good or ill, his true nature, he was right in his calcula
tion. . . . The friends of Agrippina seemed to think
the departure of Csesar a retreat. In the strange freedom
Effect ^ R me ^ey began with confidence to lift up their
of the heads. But Tiberius had left behind him eyes as keen
to Capri n an&lt; ^ as watchful as his own. If Agrippina and her sons
elected to wander from the straight path of rectitude,
the Tuscan was waiting, and he would not miss that
prey.

The tale of the process by which he caught them is a
complex one, with dark interludes wherein the modern
historian can but grope at large. As the Romans them
selves told the story, it began with the delator Latinius
Latiaris and three friends, who wanted the consulship.
Seianus disposed of the necessary patronage, and accord
ingly they directed their attention first to him. It is
evident that they already possessed private information
of a nature which would interest him to the highest de
gree; and the power of patronage held by the Tuscan

246

ENTANGLEMENT OF JULIA S CHILDREN 247

was the means by which he secured this information for
Tiberius and himself. 1

Latiaris and his syndicate which included Fulcinius
Trio were at any rate aware that Titus Sabinus, a
friend and devotee of Agrippina, had important schemes
on foot. As soon as their price was agreed upon, they
set to work upon the case. By suitable advances, Sabinus
was induced to talk; and when he had sufficiently re
vealed his plans, he was induced to commit himself in
the presence of hidden witnesses. The evidence was then
sent to Tiberius, who communicated it to the Senate.

The news of the arrest of Sabinus had some very
strange effects in Rome. The state of panic-stricken dis~ Sabinus
trust and suspicion which immediately followed would
seem to show that a large number of important people
had only too much reason to fear the inquiries of the
delator. An outward show of confidence was restored
only when they began to be conscious that their appre
hensions betrayed them.

The account given by the friends of Sabinus is that
he was charged merely with having expressed out
spoken opinions of Caesar for his cruel and unfeeling
treatment of the unhappy Agrippina. . . . The official
communication which reached the Senate from Capri TheCharg
put a very different complexion upon the matter. Sa
binus was charged with tampering with the servants of
Tiberius, and with conspiracy against his life. . . . Pre
cisely how much Tiberius revealed in his message is

1 In view of the status of the persons concerned it would seem at least
probable that Latiaris and his syndicate did not care to handle the case
without some guarantee for the future, such as the consulship would give

248 TIBERIUS CAESAR

uncertain. It was at least sufficient to secure the immedi
ate condemnation of Sabinus: and in the promptitude
Jan. ist. even the haste with which the execution was dis
patched by the Senate, there is a suggestion that influ
ential persons were very much afraid that Sabinus, for
saken by his friends, might in despair make further
inconvenient revelations on his own account.

Tiberius sent a further message to the Senate. In
returning thanks, he hinted that he still feared danger
to his life; and though he mentioned no names, the allu
sion was evidently to Agrippina and Nero.

But how much did Tiberius know? There must have
been many men who would have given a good deal to
discover that! They found a spokesman in Asinius Gal-
Ius 3 who rose to suggest that Caesar should confide his
grounds of apprehension to the Senate, and allow it to
deal with them. This disingenuous proposal that he
should disclose, to the very persons most concerned, the
full extent of the incriminating evidence in his posses
sion, attracted the angry attention of Tiberius. Seianus
diverted his wrath. There were (at any rate, from the
Tuscan s point of view) more important issues at stake
than the debating points scored by Asinius Callus dur
ing a life and death struggle for empire. 1

The truth would seem to be that Nero and Agrippina
had both been implicated by the evidence obtained. But
to make the real heads of these conspiracies amenable to
mpiieated ^ j^ ^^ extremely difficult* Their devoted friends

1 Asinius, having married a half-sister of Agrippina, was related to the latter,
and therefore presumably an interested party, Asinius seems to have been unable
to cure himself of a certain smartness -which can hardly have commended hir
to a man who loathed smartness in all its forms.

ENTANGLEMENT OF JULIA S CHILDREN 249

were ready to take the risk of acting on their behalf.
Even against Nero the evidence was more circumstantial
than direct. To secure the trial of Agrippina and Nero
it might be necessary to substitute a technical charge
which could be substantiated for the real one which
could not be. But this could never be done while Livia
Augusta was alive. She remained a firm barrier in the
way, and the alienation of Tiberius did not induce her
to change her attitude,

During the tense interval which followed the execu
tion of Sabinus, the relationship of the parties was
strained. It was still impossible to make out how much
Tiberius knew. Nero grew somewhat reckless. He spoke
openly against Tiberius, and took little trouble to con
ceal his embittered hostility. The friends of Caesar treated
Nero with mingled coldness and contempt. There were
not many who cared to show him any degree of cor
diality. Tiberius himself seemed self -conscious, and
avoided noticing the extent to which Nero was cold-
shouldered by his supporters. . . . The matter could
not remain permanently in this condition. The first
event which altered the balance of affairs would see a
violent crisis.

The interesting feature of the day was the glory
and magnitude of the Tuscan. His splendid orb began
to eclipse the sun of Caesar. Which was the sun and
which the satellite became, indeed, a problem li^i^tk
troubled the minds of men. The Senkt^0&d alters- to
Clemency and to Friendship, beside whict stood ~statues

250 TIBERIUS OESAR

of Tiberiiis and Seianus a novel pair of Heavenly
Twins. ... It solemnly requested them to allow them
selves to be more frequently seen. . . . Apparently
they split the difference. Seianus was willing enough to
shine before men; Tiberius did not see the necessity. So
instead of going to Rome, they paid a visit to Campania.
. . . Everyone who could go, hastened to wait upon
them especially upon Seianus. Senators, equites and
The . more common persons camped in the fields and besieged

Campaman - ,_, i T n i-/v t

visit the Tuscan s door. But to get at Seianus was difficult.

He was becoming accessible only to those who were
willing to commit themselves to his cause: and even this
could be effected only by buying or fighting or cajoling
a way through the crowd of competitors* ... If Ti
berius missed any of this, then the less Tiberius he. The
man would have been dull who failed to notice that
the throne of Ccesar was being contested by two groups
of protagonists. Very ordinary persons were able to
perceive it; and many of them thought that Cxsar
would readily fall before the victor. . . Cxsar him
self had become the doubtful, the problematic factor.
He was, after all, a very old man; he was seventy years
of age this year.

Ill

When Livia Augusta died at the age of eighty-six, the
principal difficulties were swept from the path of Sei
anus. The depth of the dissension between her and her
son is visible from his conduct. He did not visit her dur
ing her last illness. After her death, although he expressed
the intention of seeing her, so that they waited several

ENTANGLEMENT OF JULIA S CHILDREN 251

days in anticipation of Ills arrival, he did not come, and
it became necessary to carry out the funeral without Death
further delay. He wrote explaining that he was detained f ivia
by urgent public business. . . . Her funeral oration Augusta
was spoken by her great-grandson Gaius better known
by his nickname of Caligula. . . . Tiberius damped the
expression of extraordinary honour towards the wife of
Augustus. The Senate was refused permission to deify
her; the funeral was quiet; he disregarded her will and
left it unexecuted. . . . The Tuscan must have been
happy to observe that Caesar apparently did not endorse
those views which his mother had held. But precisely
what views Caesar did or did not endorse had become a
problem perilous to guess at.

That the Senate was by no means entirely subservient
to Tiberius is visible in its conduct with respect to Livia.
It did not confine itself merely to the program he
recommended. "While it politely acknowledged the pro
priety of putting public business before private grief,
it proceeded to vote a year s mourning and an arch in
her honour which was a tribute never before paid to
any woman. . . . Tiberius undertook to build the arch
at his own expense. As he never did, the arch was never
erected.

Seianus acted with promptitude: perhaps too great Immediate
promptitude. He began to feel himself in control, and
feelings of this kind are always a dangerous luxury. Ti-
berius was ready to take the step on which such great
issues depended.

252 TIBERIUS OESAR

A message therefore came to the Senate from Capri
Agrippina was charged with insolent language and re
fractory temper; Nero, not with conspiracy, but with
immoral habits. The sensation created by this message
was tremendous. It was increased by the absence of any
hint concerning the action which Tiberius expected the
Senate to take. Like Henry VIII, and for the same rea
sons, he was determined not to shoulder the entire re
sponsibility for these great measures of state: he in
tended the Senate to share it with him. But it kad many
and various reasons for declining to do so, ... He
seemed to be implying that the Senate knew the facts
as well as he did, and needed no information! But no
one could be sure how much he knew; and to assume
the guilt of Nero and Agrippina would be to admit a
knowledge which some did not possess, and which others
would be the last men to admit that they possessed. . . .
Those who were adherents of Agrippina would not
readily allow her to be condemned on technical or
"dummy" charges. . . There were others who were of
Csesar s party; but some of these held Livia s views, and
s ^ ate they implored the House not to support a policy that
Caesar himself might in the end bitterly regret. . . .
When M. Aurelius Cotta, on behalf of Qesar, rose to
move a vote of condemnation, senators took refuge in
agitated disclaimers. . . . The old man had presented
them with a dilemma singularly difficult to face!

A popular demonstration was (as it so often is) the
oaly resort* It came to the rescue by parading with the
images of Nero and Agrippina, and it provided that
useful political, speaker, "A voice," to declare that the

ENTANGLEMENT OF JULIA S CHILDREN

message of Caesar was a forgery. Bills were circulated,
containing what purported to be resolutions against
Seianus moved, or to be moved, by various eminent
senators. The result of this test of public opinion appar
ently proved disappointing. The appeal to public opinion
was, indeed, a forlorn hope. The men whose views might
have mattered were the rank and file of Caesar s own
armies; and they, who could not be captured on the
Rhine and the Danube, could not be swayed from
Rome. . . . Caesar remained unmoved. . . . Seianus,
moreover, was stinging in his retort. He counselled Ti
berius that his complaints were being treated with con
tempt; and he made a damaging reference to the immi
nent appearance of the realities instead of the effigies at
the head of this Revolt of the People. . . . Tiberius
seems to have agreed; for he sent a second message, in
which he demanded that if the Senate felt unable to act, The
it should leave the matter to his discretion. leaves the

Once it was put to the test, the whole position of Jj?.^f to
Agrippina and her supporters proved to be built on
sand. The Senate surrendered, and humbly replied that
it would endorse any action he might take.

Agrippina and Nero were tried, therefore, before
Caesar himself: and as few particulars of the trial have
survived, 1 it was probably held in camera. Among the
charges against Agrippina (which were of course de
nied) was a project of escaping to the army and taking
refuge with it. Gnaetis Lentulus Gaetulicus, the comman-

1 PHto records iliac, ,Avijtlius Haccus was the principal prosecutor.

254 TIBERIUS OESAR

der of the Rhine army, was implicated. He escaped by
one of those bold and manly answers which often went
f down well with Tiberius: he said that he had done noth-
aud Nero ing against Caesar, but if his own life were in peril he
thought he could do a great deal. No further action was
taken against Lentulus. He was popular with the Rhine
army; and after his disclaimer, Tiberius elected to let
well alone.

Agrippina had had a long rope; but this was the end
of it. No lettre de cachet ever swept away a dangerous
conspirator more effectively than the judgment of Qe~
sar swept away Agrippina and Nero. They were re
moved, she to Pandataria and he to Pontia, fettered, and
in closed litters. Their guards prevented any passers-by
from even stopping to look. ... At Pandataria, her
mother s place of imprisonment, the fury of Agrippina
-broke forth. She spoke the whole of her mind on the
subject of Tiberius. But she was in the wrong place for
that. Here, Caesar s word went without question. There
was violence, in which Agrippina lost an eye. 1 When
she went on hunger-strike, she was forcibly fed. Public
opinion thought that the voice might be the voice of
Caesar, but the hand was the hand of Seianus.

Two sons of Germanicus still remained: Drusus and
Gaius, both of them kept under the eye of Tiberius him
self at Capri. Gaius an unbalanced, degenerate, baby-
faced rat was too cunning for Seianus, and survived

1 What actually happened is too uncertain to be described more explicitly than
this. The allegation of Suetonius, that the granddaughter of Augustus was
fbggd by the order of Tiberius until she lost an eye, is a highly sensational
stateaaent to he slipped almost casually into the narrative. Had he told us
tiut she was injured in a struggle with her guards, we could unhesitatingly be-
h.

ENTANGLEMENT OF JULIA S CHILDREN

to become the emperor Caligula. . . . But Drusus,
after first being used as a means of trapping Nero, was
in his due turn caught in the Tuscan s net. Seianus in
toxicated Lepida, the wife of Drusus, as hejhtad intoxi
cated Livilla. On her evidence, Drusus was sent back to
Rome. . . . This was not enough for Seianus. At his
instigation, the consul Cassius Longinus moved the ar-
rest and imprisonment of Drusus: the second of the
name to fall to the Tuscan s wiles. . . . Tiberius sur
veyed young Gaius. His ominous comment was: "He
lives to become the destruction of himself and of other
men."

The obstacles in the way of Seianus were rapidly thin
ning. At this rate, they would soon have disappeared.
The apparent exemption of Gaius was no more than a
respite. A brother of Germanicus still survived Claud
ius: but he was considered to be of defective intelli
gence, and hardly entered seriously into the question of
the succession. He was absorbed in the compilation of a
history in many volumes. The Tuscan was on the verge
of becoming the one man able to take up the mantle of
Cxsar, and the time was at hand.

But what thoughts and calculations were in the mind
of Tiberius at Capri? . . . The Tuscan s work had

been accomplished: the children of Julia, who twice had of ^

11 ri*"LJ Seianus

sought to snatch the principate out ol his hands, were

gone: the senatorial party, whose hope they had been,
was paralysed. He could now at leisure direct his atten-

256 TIBERIUS OESAR

tion to the Tuscan, and survey that remarkable figure
with the interest it deserved.

Seianus stood to Tiberius in a relation not altogether
unlike thadin which the latter had stood to Augustus.
But there were differences worth noting. . . . Seianus
had not quite given Tiberius those guarantees of fidelity
which the latter had given to Augustus. He had never
humbly subordinated himself, nor served those years of
self -repression which Tiberius had served: he had never
retired to Rhodes, nor disinherited his own son for such
adopted heirs as Germanicus and Agrippina. A man
grows cold with age: and the older Tiberius grew, the
less he was likely to relish the strain of lusciousness that
marked the Tuscan. Seianus had bloomed with some of
the quality of a tropical orchid. He was a man who did
not know how to lose himself in his background.

The loyalty of the Tuscan had endured only one kind
of test. There had been a famous example of it. Passing
through Campania on the way to Capri, Cxsar s party
Problems had picnicked in a natural grotto. The place was unsafe,
and during the meal there had been a fall of rock and
a panic. Seianus had knelt over Tiberius and received on
his own shoulders the falling stones which might have
killed his master. Such a proof of devotion was gratify
ing and satisfactory, as far as it went. But how far
did it go? It meant nothing more than that the life of
Tiberius was essential to the Tuscan while heirs to his
power still lived.

The public opinion of Rome cast an instructive light
on the situation. It had no doubt who was the master.
Tiberius was supposed to be hidden in Capri with his

ENTANGLEMENT OF JULIA S CHILDREN 257

orgies * and his astrologers: the man who swayed des
tiny was Seianus. His birthday was publicly observed;
altars were built to him and libations offered: men swore
by the fortune of Seianus as well as by that of Tiberius:
he was in separate and distinct communication with the
Senate and the people. . . . The old man at Capri
might congratulate himself on possessing a distance and
perspective that he would not have had in Rome. The
very absence of Tiberius threw into clear visibility facts
which might otherwise have remained obscure.

There were other alarming features. The Praetorians
were as a matter of course at the beck and call of their
chief. Worse, his influence affected even the private Ominous

fT-ri i i r features

entourage of Caesar. The movements and words ot O f the
Caesar were regularly reported to him: whereas Tiberius situation
had difficulty in acquiring information respecting the
Tuscan. . . . Agrippina was in Pandataria; Nero in
Pontia; and if once the slender cord of communication
were cut, Tiberius in Capri might be as much a prisoner
as they.

The policy of Seianus was now to gain over by
friendly means or by intimidation the party which had
supported Agrippina. The next step if ever he took
it would be to cast upon Tiberius the responsibility
for the action taken against Agrippina, and so to stand
at the head of a coalition of parties before which Tibe
rius would be isolated.

""* " " *" "f*" " "" ""!

x lt is now that we begin to hear of the hideous orgies of CaprL The doubts
entertained on this score by recent critics are well founded. It is unnecessary
to suppose that Tiberius was ahead o the average morality o his age; but
the particular detailed allegations made by Suetonius need not detain us. They
were, in all probability, among the offences for which Agrippina was sent to

258 TIBERIUS CAESAR

To an observer, indeed, it might very well seem that
the position of Tiberius was weaker and more perilous
than it had been at any past time. But the old man knew
what he was about. . . . And perfect quiet and silence
brooded over Capri.

The calculation of times and moments might be con-
First trolled by the occurrence of definite events on which
they depended. The crisis would come with the death
of Agrippina and her sons. Tiberius held hostages for
himself in their persons: for Seianus would never at
tempt to strike him down in face of the prospect that
he might put them in his place. Tiberius thus had every
reason for preventing Agrippina from destroying her
self.

When Nero died in Pontia, the first moves in the
dangerous game began. Tiberius, with a touch of irony,
bestowed the widow of Nero in marriage upon Seianus*
She was his granddaughter the daughter of his son
Drusus. Tiberius resolved to pay Seianus the honour of
holding the consulship in his company. The Tuscan was
therefore sent to Rome to take up office on their joint
behalf. His influence was now all-powerful. His doors
were besieged with callers anxious to register them
selves upon the winning side. He enjoyed the sen
sation of actual supremacy, such as Tiberius had never
wielded, and had never sought to wield. Men referred
to him as the colleague of Tiberius and not with re
gard to the consulship alone. . . . One of the ways of
killing a cat is to choke it with cream.

ENTANGLEMENT OF JULIA S CHILDREN 259

Silence in Capri.

But there a greater and colder and more complex

mind than the Tuscan s had glided into motion and had

begun, like some vast calculating machine, to work out

a subtle and intricate reckoning. Tiberius sat in Capri,

, thinking. But the machine made no sound to betray its

| working. In the roar and hurry of Rome were hope and

j fear, doubt and confidence, feverish energy and wor-

ried forethought; but perfect calm brooded over the

sunlit rocks and turquoise sea of Capri.

Things came about by slow degrees. They made their
next step, perhaps, when Tiberius, after five months,
resigned the consulship. Seianus had to follow suit, and Develop,
two suffecti succeeded in their places. The lead which ^ e ^ e
the old man had now established, he kept to the end. It contest
must have instilled into the heart of the Tuscan just
that faint spirit of doubt which spurs men on to haste
and self -betrayal. In July, Tiberius saw that L. Ful-
cinius Trio was made suffectus. Trio was one of the
party of Seianus. . . . The old man may, in the world s
eye, have seemed irresponsible and capricious, but Sei
anus was probably better informed. There were omens
and portents, some of which, if true, may have been
engineered by Tiberius. . . . Tiberius was certainly ex
pert in that art of testing a guilty conscience which has
always been a supreme art in Rome. . . . He very
gradually shook the Tuscan s nerve.

Although Seianus was now free from the engage
ments involved in holding the consulship, he did not re
turn to Capri. Tiberius said that he himself was coming ^^^ to
to Rome. He next raised Seianus to the pro-consular conspire

z6o TIBERIUS OESAR

power one o the main powers of the principate. Hav
ing thus encouraged him, he deftly undercut the en
couragement by the expedient of bestowing the priest
hood upon Seianus and Gaius Caesar simultaneously.
This casting of the imperial mantle over Gaius a pro
ceeding which mollified Agrippina^ party, and tended
to detach it from the Tuscan was so ominous that
Seianus grew alarmed. He begged permission to return
to Capri to see his bride, who was ill. Tiberius blandly
replied that they were all of them just about to visit
Rome. A little while after came a message to the Senate
in which Seianus was briefly referred to without any
of his titles, and the payment of divine honours to a
living man was prohibited.

This form of moral stream-whipping Jbrought Seianus
to the surface. He grew convinced that unless he leaped
now, he would leap too late. The arrangements were
made. Tiberius was to be assassinated when he came to
Rome. The old man in Capri must have smiled to him
self* He was not going to Rome!

vra

Tiberius had not finished yet. His most enticing ly
was cast last of all. Only one thing was wanting to placfi
Seianus on the throne beside Caesar himself the
nician power, the second main source of imperial
rogative. It was this at which Seianus leaped, and
with which Tiberius struck his line and hooked his fislii

But Tiberius did not after all appear in person to
bestow this final gift on the Tuscan. All this time he
sending message after message to the Senate, or t$*

ENTANGLEMENT OF JULIA S CHILDREN 161

Seianus himself, with the most contradictory news. He
was well; lie was not well; he was never better; he was
at death s door; he succeeded in baffling them all as to
his real state of mind, or the purport of his actions. The
number of people who prudently sat on the fence con
tinually increased* Seianus was never sufficiently
alarmed to retreat, nor sufficiently confident to take
some decisive step. Many men began to avoid meeting
him, or remaining alone in his company.

On October ist. Fulcinius Trio was superseded as
consul suffectus by P. Memmius Regulus, who was not
one of the Tuscan s people. And Tiberius remained still
in Capri.

It was only when Seianus, as soon as affairs were stir
ring one morning, went down to the Senate, that he
met Naevius Sertorius Macro. He knew Macro well Arrival
one of his own Praetorian officers from Capri, attached - m Rome
to the imperial household. It must have been a distinct
surprise to see him. His presence needed at least a word
of explanation. Macro was all courtesy and respect. He
had a smiling whisper for the ear of Seianus. He was in
Rome to see through the business of the day the inves
titure with the tribunician power. The Tuscan under
stood. The great moment had come! Relieved, de
lighted, yet scarcely daring to believe in his own success
until he saw it, he rushed on winged feet into the Sen
ate.

The Senate sat in the temple of Apollo on the Pala
tine. All was duly hallowed in. Macro handed a mes
sage from Caesar to the consul Regulus, and went out
again. The consul rose with the message in his hand:

TIBERIUS OESAR

and the senators, sitting on tenter hooks of nervous
excitement, hardly knew whither to turn their eyes*
Was this message about to give the Tuscan his life s
achievement? Yes, no doubt! Or but the alternative
was unthinkable! It was not possible for Seianus to fall
now. Tiberius himself would fall, if the wrestle came!
Regulus unfolded the message of Tiberius. He knew no
more than others did what it might possibly contain,
and he began to read. ... It was a lengthy document,
written apparently with the fussy circumlocution of
an aged man, but in reality with the astute foresight of
a crafty diplomatist. . . . After its first words, the
more anxious senators began to beam ingratiating smiles
upon the haughty Tuscan. . . . Suddenly they started,
and stopped. ... A second time they hastened to turn
congratulating faces. . . . And a second time the
cloud came and the smiles froze. . . . And while that
letter is reading, let us look out of the eyes of Macro,

The day before, out of the peace and sunshine of
Capri, Qesar had quietly summoned Macro: and there
pE^oeed- Macro stood, facing the grim old man. . . . Tiberius
*8$ J* had invested Macro with the office of Prefect of the
Praetorians in succession to Seianus, and had given him
definite instructions as definite as Sherlock Holmes
could have given a deputy, and very nearly as mystify
ing, What even Macro did not know was that the shat
tering influence of Caesar penetrated into every nook
and cranny. . . * Satritos Secundus, one of the mm in
the ccmfidence of Seianus, had hesitated, doubted, and

ENTANGLEMENT OF JULIA S CHILDREN 263

told tlie secret to Antonia: and Antonla had taken it to
Tiberius, and Tiberius knew.

Armed with his instructions, Macro set out to hold
or to lose the new rank which Caesar had bestowed upon
Mm. He reached Rome at midnight. His first confer
ence was with the consul Regulus. By waiting until
Regulus succeeded Fulcinius Trio, Tiberius had made
sure that there should be a consul in Rome with power
to act, and loyalty to obey the commands of Caesar.
. . . The instructions were that Regulus should con- Instmc-
voke the Senate early in the day at the temple of Apollo.
The earliness of the hour was a specific feature of the
instruction. . . . Regulus carried out his orders ex
actly, not knowing what they might mean. The mes
sages of convocation were dispatched. . . . The next
conference was with Grascinus Laco, the chief of the
cobortes wgilum. It was arranged with Laco that the
approaches of the temple of Apollo should be occupied
by military police, . . . The Praetorians were carefully
excluded from the plan.

This was what had happened the night before. It is
unlikely that SMacro had slept between the time he
visited Regulus soon after midnight, and the time he
met Seianus in the morning. When he left the Senate in
session, he had no doubt never removed the clothes in
which he had ridden from Capri. He could hardly have
had time for more than the hastiest toilet. . . . Finally,
in the brief interval" between the entrance of Seianus
into the Senate, and his own entrance to deliver the
message, fee ha&lt;J executed the last part of his instruc
tions, and the noo&t dangerous*

264 TIBERIUS CAESAR

It is typical of the craft and thoroughness of Tibe
rius that he instructed Macro to test the Praetorian es
cort of Seianus before delivering the letter. Had they
Tbe declined to accept Macro, all would have been lost

riaus but in that case the letter would never have been de-

*seept livered, and the prestige of Tiberius would have been

saved the discredit of a fall. . . . Macro produced his
commission and an authority to distribute a gratuity
to the guards in recognition of their services. . . . This
was the critical moment. All that had gone before, and
all that was to follow after, depended absolutely upon
the way in which the Praetorians took Macro. . , . But
the calculations of Tiberius held good. In the absence
of any counteracting force, the name of Caesar retained
its spell. The escort accepted Macro without demur.
.... He had thereupon given them the order to re
turn to camp. Then after seeing that the military police
had taken their places he had entered the temple, deliv
ered the message, walked out again, and with a word to
Laco had followed the Praetorians.

Seianus was left isolated in the Senate house.

The reading of the letter went on, while the Praeto
rians vanished slowly in the distance. By the time they
Arrest we re out of %each and out of earshot, the message of
Selena Tiberius, after playing to and fro around the subject,
had got to business. It wound up by demanding that ac
tion should be taken against Seianus and his accom
plices. ! |
Men Seianus among them sat stunned. , . . The

ENTANGLEMENT OF JULIA S CHILDREN 265

consul was taking no chances. He called Seianus to stand
forward. . . . The Tuscan had to arouse himself to
realize the situation. He had so lost the habit of receiv
ing commands that he could only inquire in a kind of
stupor: Are you speaking to me?" ... At length he
stood up, and Graecinus Laco, who had entered, went
over to take up a position heside him.

The consul did not adopt the ordinary procedure of
asking the vote of each senator separately, nor did he
move a vote of condemnation to death. He moved a
resolution of imprisonment, put the question to one
senator, and on receiving a vote in favour of the mo
tion, declared it carried. . . . He and the other magis
trates led Seianus out of the house, after which Laco
conducted him to prison. The meeting of the Senate
hurriedly adjourned, while every senator watched with
anxiety for the possible thunder-bolt that would fall.

None fell. The Praetorian camp, with Macro in com
mand, remained closed. Only the populace paraded in
force, to pull down the statues of Seianus and to cheer
his downfall. . . . When the senators had sufficiently Condemna-
ascertained that there was no immediate probability Execution
that the earth would open and swallow them up, they ct - l8th -
emerged from their houses and reassembled. The ad
journed meeting was resumed, and proceeded to con
demn Seianus to death. The sentence was instantly car
ried out. . . . That morning, the Tuscan had been to
all intents the equal and rival of, Caesar. By nightfall
his body had been dragged from the Gemonian stairs
and was floating down the Tiber.

His family was executed with him. The daughter of

266 TIBERIUS OESAR

Seianus, that proud and ruthless man, was an innocent
young girl who protested against being dragged along
by strange and brutal men. Anything she had done, she
said, would be punished enough by a whipping* She did
not know what that world was, into which she had
suddenly fallen. . . . They paused before the fact that
a virgin could not, by Roman law, suffer the capital
penalty. . . . But they could take no risks. The diffi
culty was remedied by the executioner, and the daugh
ter of Seianus was strangled and thrown out upon the
Gemonian stairs. 1 , . . But Nemesis and the furies
were already upon their way.

Csesar at Capri had entertained no enthusiastic illu

sions. He, if anyone, knew how far the whole thing

Anxiety was touch and go. A fleet was waiting to take him to

L- the east if his scheme went wrong. He took his own

post on the highest cliff of the island, to await the news.

. . . "When at last it came through by telegraph, and he

knew that all was well, he returned home, and the ships

were dismissed.

Some of the Tuscan s partisans turned state-evidence.
It did not save them, for those whom they involved, re
taliated. Tiberius referred all charges to the Senate, as
the supreme criminal court.

The charges were serious. P. Vitellius, a prefect of

1 Ttbmus was not responsible for this crime. It was done by a senatorial
esecutioQer, if *ot by senatorial order. (Dion Cassius, LVHI, n, 5, whicfe seems
o&gt; be tbe oogm of diS" "young girls" to whom Suetonius, generalizing a single
e-* refers irk Tib* LX3.)

ENTANGLEMENT OF JULIA S CHILDREN 267

the czrarium m^itare the army financial board was
charged with having undertaken to employ the military
treasury in support of any action Seianus might take.
Sextus Paconianus was alleged to have been chosen by
Seianus to secure the downfall of Gaius Oesar. At least
three friends of Tiberius were implicated. But out of
twenty persons whose names are found in a first rapid
inspection of the record, we find that one quarter were
acquitted. Some of the accused stood their trial, and
defended themselves with considerable freedom of
speech. Others, with the aim of preserving their prop
erty for their children, killed themselves without facing
a trial: for while the estates of men who were judicially
condemned were in all cases confiscated, 1 those of men
who voluntarily died were usually spared.

The investigations into the proceedings of Seianus
and his accomplices were lengthy and complicated.
Many of the accused persons were detained in prison
while the evidence was sifted. Tiberius was determined
that everything should be dragged to light. He insisted
that the Senate should sit regularly and punctually, at
fixed hours. He laid before it all the information he Judicial
obtained. The sentences were passed by the Senate.
"Whatever it may have thought or wished, it had no al
ternative. ... It is an ironical commentary upon his
tory that though the brilliant partisan pamphlet of

1 The pro-party of Seianus himself went, legally* H*to t&e senatorial treasury,
but Tiberius asked that it might be paid into the imperial fisc, His request,
supported by many of the principal senators,, was complied with* Tacitus thought
this a0 exhibition of servility, but as most of the property of Seiasras must
have been derived from imperial grant, it seems reasonable that it should re-
torn to the source from which it came. (Tac. Aw vL 2.)

TIBERIUS OESAR

Tacitus survived, this evidence, over which Tiberius
took so much trouble, has very imperfectly come down
to us. It seems to have been voluminous, and to have
existed in documentary form, filed in the imperial ar
chives, long after Tiberius* day. Many of the accusa
tions against the character of Tiberius himself,, subse
quently recorded as facts by historians, are thought to
have been derived from these very indictments which
Tiberius himself published.

But he had not done with the Tuscan yet.

The events which attended the fall of Seianus had
been harassing enough to try to the utmost the nerve of
a man of seventy-two. The danger, the difficulty, the
intellectual exertion, the nervous strain, the tension of
those moments when all hung in the balance, the un
remitting work and constant concentration all these
must have driven even a robust man to the verge of
exhaustion. And now, on the top of this, fell a fresh
thunder-bolt: news so terrible, that the worst he had
surmised of Seianus seemed a trifle by comparison.

For the revenge of Seianus was singularly complete
and successful. His divorced wife Apicata, whom he had
put away in order to be free to marry Livilla, must

have felt that intoxicated devotion which he seemed able
tQ pro( J uce ^ any woman at w ^ $h e fo^ J^ J^

secrets even the secrets which Livilla shared with him.
She avenged him now, and herself also. She wrote a
letter to Tiberius, and then killed herself. The letter
was duly delivered to Qesar.

ENTANGLEMENT OF JULIA S CHILDREN 269

By this letter of Apicata the truth stood revealed.
Full details were given: details confirmed when the tes
timony of the slaves concerned was taken.

Drusus, the son of Tiberius, had not died a natural
death. He had been poisoned by Seianus and LiviUa.

CHAPTER XII

THE OLD MAN OF CAPM

Tiberius
completely
deceived
by

Seianus

No one ever recorded how Tiberius took it; what hot
and cold fits shook him; what stunning of mind and
blenching of spirit made him still and silent. No one
tells us of any sleepless nights under the gnawing rage
of humiliation and pain; nor of the old man pacing his
bed-chamber, full of awful thoughts and dreadful self-
doubt. . . . If he felt no such emotions, then he was
unlike any other man; for the essence of all was that
he had been fooled fooled, indeed, to the end of his
bent, ... He knew more than we know. He could
look back, where we cannot follow him, and perceive
precisely how far he had been deluded, trapped into
views and actions which we can only guess at now. And
this, by a man over whom he had extended the patroniz
ing faith of a master towards a servant: a man whom,
at root, he despised!

There are some experiences of bitterness which spread
so wide and sink so deep into a man s being, that tl?e
whole structure of it is poisoned and changed, and
seemvto be loosened from its roots in human society.
, . . There is no bitterness so bitter as that which
spring from the experience of treachery. Man is so
made, that it is a spiritual torment to him to know that

270

THE OLD MAN OF CAPRI 271

his friend has taken his confidence, and used it against
him: has accepted his heart, and thrown It away. . . .
This Is multiplied many times when not one man only,
but all men are the traitors. There is no morfe destruc
tive thing in life than to see all men smiling, and to
know that every smile is false: to take every man s
hand, and to know that It is a right hand of falsehood.
, . . But like physical pain, spiritual pain is normally
subject to a law of diminishing returns. The last incre
ments no longer give pain at all. They merely poison
and paralyse: and what at first was a suffering, becomes
transformed into a change of nature. A man learns to of
accept his isolation, his dreadful separation from the treacfacr y
heartening and nourishing fountain of human love and
careless trust; he acquires the art of standing alone, en
closed in a shell of individualism: and he learns to watch,
to guard, to trace with acute observation the course of
the hidden treason: to diagnose It with expert eyes, as
a physician diagnoses the symptoms (invisible to any
ordinary eye) of some malady: to strike, at the appro
priate moment, without ruth or remorse. . . . But to
do this involves the loss of all the typically human quali
ties and happiness. A man so placed and so changed
seems no longer human, as we understand the word: he
has become daemonic: he seems possessed of a spirit other
than the human. And he is.

Weak men die perhaps of broken hearts, as we call
them; or take to drink, and we find them in obscure
taverns, full of a long story of their troubles, in the wild
hope of finding someone yet who will understand, and
will bring them, however casually, the balm of good-

TIBERIUS OESAR

humoured sympathy and a shadowy affection. But
strong men stand fast and become possessed of the
daemon. ... So did Tiberius. ... If we look at his
portrait as an old man, we see in it the full story. It is
lined deep with that dyspepsia which comes of suffering.
Children know that moment when they have wept
themselves into a mood in which food will not nourish
nor drink satisfy. . . . With Tiberius they were in
ward, spiritual tears, shed invisibly and without hope.
He had brushed them away, and dried them, and had
regarded the world again with a determination to hold
his ground. It is an impenetrable, inaccessible eye,
which perceives, but does not tell us what it perceives;
a mouth that almost smiles with the scornful content
of knowledge.

The revelation which followed the death of Seianus
seemed to possess Tiberius with this daemonic quality.
It is always dangerous to challenge a man to do his
worst. It is so easy for him to do it. It seemed as if all
men and all things had conspired together to crush the
lord of the world; and the lord of the world set his back
to the wall and struck back at all men and all things. It
was a quaint logic which made them each other s tyrants
and victims. There must have been something wrong
about it.

Vengeance N O one really knows the fate of Livilla, Some say
she was executed; some, that she killed herself; some,
that she was handed over to Antonia, who was given the
&lt;x&gt;mmission of seeing that Livilla removed herself ade-

THE OLD MAN OF CAPRI 273

quately from the scene. Tiberius was determined to
bring to light the whole story. But it was no longer the
old Tiberius who did so. It was a new and terrifying
man,, owning indeed the outlines of Tiberius, but in
habited by a spirit of remorseless and embittered energy.
The truth was torn out. For whole days on end he
was absorbed in the task of investigation. So completely
was he obsessed by it, that the grim joke was passed
round that when one of his old friends from Rhodes ar
rived, cordially invited by Caesar to visit him at Rome,
Tiberius had forgotten all about the invitation, and
ordered him to be put to the question forthwith, under
the impression that he was another witness whose testi
mony was to be examined. 1 Many stories of his state
of mind at this time have been preserved. 2 "When a cer
tain Carnulus died, Tiberius remarked: "Carnulus has
managed to dodge me." . . . To one who begged for a

1 Suet. Tib. LXIL Dion Cassius also mentions this story. On the mistake
being discovered, Tiberius ordered the man to be executed, in order, Suetonius
carefully explains, to prevent him from publishing to the world the -wrong
done him; but more probably because there was nothing else to do.

2 That Tiberius was suffering under some almost intolerable stress of mind
is clear. His friend M. Aurelius Cotta was involved in the informations. Cotta
had used language disrespectful to the house of Cxsar: he had, among other
things, called Cxsar his dear little old rag doll (i, e., Tiberiolus meus, which
comes to the same thing).

Tiberius roused himself to request the acquittal of Cotta. He wrote that
famous letter which began: "If I know what to write to you just now, or how
to write it, or what not to write, may the gods destroy me with a worse
destruction than that under which I feel myself to be daily perishing." This
is probably one of the most remarkable messages ever sent to a court of law:
and it is obviously not the letter of a normal man. . . . But he could still
write words of robust common sense. He asked the Senate not to construe
in a criminal sense words that were twisted out of their natural meaning, and
had been uttered without evil intent over a dinner table. The case against
Cotta was accordingly dismissed.

Professor Ramsay (Note to Tac, Ann. VI. 15, referring also to Suetonius, Tib*
LXV) thinks that Tiberius was suffering under nervous terrors.

274 TIBERIUS CAESAR

speedy death, he responded: "I have not yet become
your friend/ . . . This was not a Tiberius whom any
one had heard of before. ... He showed no sign of
failing powers or of intellectual decay. He was never
more active nor more energetic. But it was a strange
DemoraE- and daemonic energy that seemed to be siiper-imposed
u P n &k norma * powers. ... He had enough wisdom
to put an immediate stop to an information lodged by
a soldier, and to lay down the rule that no man con
nected with the army was to turn delator.

All the documents went to the Senate. Even denun
ciations of his character and charges against him were
published. He did not care what was published; afl he
was concerned with was that everything should come
out. . , . Fulcinius Trio (who, though he had hitherto
escaped, had a guilty conscience) grew so alarmed at the
possibilities that he killed himself. His heirs found his
will to contain a wrathful denunciation of Tiberius,
who was described as "a senile old man." They tried to
suppress the incriminating document; but the "senile
old man" ordered it to be read aloud, denunciation and
all. No one could understand his motives: and he did
not trouble to explain them.

The death sentences which the Senate passed fell,
however, upon mere agents. The principals Seianus
and Livilla had already gone. Tiberius sought for some
other satisfaction, and he f ound it in observing the case
of Agrippina and her son Drusus.

Tiberius was already aware that Seianus had been de-

THE OLD MAN OF CAPRI

liberately planning to involve and destroy Agrippina *n*possl-
and her sons. He knew now what the whole truth was. reversing

But although the truth stood revealed, it could not,
merely by being revealed, be remedied. Tiberius had no Agrippina
power to extricate himself from the vicious circle. He
could not at this stage apologize to Agrippina and
Drusus, and put them back where they had been. He
could not at any stage have done so. The skill of the
Tuscan had been shown in the way in which he in
duced Agrippina and her sons to give him a complete
and irrefutable justification for his action against them.
... It was this possibility of wiping the children of
Julia, with unimpeachable justice, out of the succession
to the empire, which had led him to contemplate the
removal of Tiberius* son Drusus. ... It was not un
reasonably far-fetched to look upon Agrippina as the
original cause of the whole series of events. . . . Those
who had egged her on were still more guilty but
they were not directly accessible.

Tiberius could not cancel or eradicate the hate which
the children of Julia bore htm. That Seianus had used it fo jf reasons
for his own purposes made no difference. . . . One continuing
thing he could do, however he could drag it to the
light. He wished the world to see the unreasoning, im
placable hatred working in the minds of Julia s chil
dren, that set, persistent obsession that he had hounded
them and persecuted them though he had only de
fended himself against that very conviction on their
part. . . . And it is possible that the mere similarity
of names rivetted the morbid interest of Tiberius. . . .
One Drusus paid for the other Drusus.

276 TIBERIUS OESAR

There might be some queer, involved satisfaction in
such a theme; for when men are pressed beyond their
endurance they find relief in strange forms superficial
likenesses, casual associations of ideas fill the place of real
resemblances and unattainable identities. . . . The Sen
ate was filled with alarm and consternation when Ti
berius reported to it, in full detail, with a kind of grim
satisfaction, the death of Drusus, the son of Germanicus
and Agrippina.

Drusus had weakened. It lasted nine days, during
which he had gnawed the stuffing of his mattress. Tibe
rius scornfully called him a weakling as well as a traitor.
He produced a carefully posted diary compiled by the
gaolers who had watched Drusus die. As if it were some
novel of Zola, it described minutely and elaborately
the stages by which Drusus had starved to death in his
prison; his first fury and terror; how he had abused
Tiberius in detail with, no doubt, all the stock accusa
tions of the friends of Julia and how they had re
plied to him, and beaten him back when he strove to
Death of tear down the bars of his cell; and then how, giving up
hope, he had elaborately and with care called down im
precations on the head of Tiberius, praying that, since
he had murdered his daughter-in-law (Livilla) his
brother s son (Germanicus) and his own grand-children
(the sons of Agrippina) and had deluged his own house
with blood, so he might pay the penalty to his name
and race in the eyes of posterity. The Senate broke up
in disorder, horrified at this story. . . . The old man
may have invented it; but he certainly claimed the

THE OLD MAN OF CAPRI 277

credit of the crime, and it is not for us to reject his
claim. . . . And it had its practical utilities. It under
lined, for the benefit of the Senate, the fact that Qesar
was ready to outbid any man; that he would give meas
ure for measure and blow for blow, and that there was
nothing he would not cap, and no stake he would not
double. . . . Moreover, it disposed of all pretenders and
false claimants. The Senate certainly became clearly
aware that Drusus was dead.

Agrippina was of stronger nerve. Unconquerable to
the last, she retorted by refusing food and starving Voluntary
herself to death, as a demonstration that Tiberius could
not frighten her- 1

But there was no real satisfaction in all these things.
Vengeance is a drug which, like all drugs, will give no
permanent rest or satiety: it is a Tantalus-fruit which
can never be grasped or achieved. It excites the appe
tite which it pretends to allay. Tiberius grew weary.
He was intelligent enough to recognize these truths,
even though he could not place them in the moral
scheme. A certain time after the fall of Seianus he found
the memory intolerable, and even revenge a fatigue
without pleasure. He briefly ordered the execution of
all who were detained in prison in connection with the
conspiracy of Seianus. They apparently numbered
twenty persons.

1 Tiberius tried to disparage her afterwards, but Kis amateurish attempts at
slander (which at any rate prove him to be new to the business) nerer had
any success, and need no attention.

2 7 8 TIBERIUS CAESAR

He had lost everything: nothing remained to him
but victory. And victory was a trifle in comparison
with the things he had lost in achieving it.

From this height of crisis, matters began to subside
slowly towards the normal. The blow which he had
Measures levelled at his foes was followed by a measure which
fte^^ may not have been unconnected with it. Among the
oligarchy legislation of Gaius Julius was a law directed towards
restraining the activities of those financial powers
which had swayed the political destinies of the old re
public. The amount of floating capital which they
might hold was limited by the regulation that a certain
proportion of their property should always be invested
in Italian land. By this means he had prevented the exist-
ente of those vast funds of money and of easily nego
tiable credit which had financed one political revolu
tion after another, and of which he himself had been
glad enough to take advantage. Caesar the Dictator had
meant himself to be the last man who should overthrow
a government by such means.

la view of the activities of the senatorial party during
the reign of Tiberius, we need not be surprised to hear
that this law had been very loosely observed. The posi
tion which Tiberius had hitherto occupied had foeea
far too precarious to allow strong measures in enforce
ment of the law. He could not safely have risked the
consequences* . * . But the situation was rapidly

THE OLD MAN OF CAPRI 279

changing. After the fall of Seianus and the death of
Agrippina, the terrible old man of Capri was no longer
the figure of fun which had patiently borne the in
sults of the Senate and had been hoodwinked by the
Tuscan.

The delators were set to work. The first legal in- J he
formations which they lodged against breakers of the declines
law of Julius were soon fluttering the dove-cotes, The
cases were carried to the Senate. But the senators were
alive to the possible consequences; many of them would
figure in the dock if the informations were systematic
ally laid: and besides, to enforce the law would bring
about a financial crisis. They referred the matter to the
imperial court, and left Tiberius to solve the problem
himself.

He was quite willing to do so, and he had his plan
prepared. It did not meet with universal approval, even
among his friends. His constant adviser, M. Cocceius
Nerva, seems to have been strongly opposed to it. It was
nevertheless authorized. Tiberius informed the Senate
that tjbe law must be enforced, but that eighteen
months* grace would be allowed, during which all ac
counts might be regularized.

The sympathies of Nerva 1 were with the republican
oligarchy; he did not really care for the atmosphere of
the imperial court, though he had served it with perfect

* Nerva was a remarkable man, and one of the great figures of contemporary
politics. Not only was lie very eminent indeed as a jurist, bat Be was minister
of works and aqueducts, and constructed that wonderful tunnd, the Crypta
Neapolitans which connected Puteoli and Naples. It is probable that many
features of the policy of Tiberius in constitutional matters owed much to Nerva.
The political tradition of the family was, however, oligarchic rather than
Caesarian* Perhaps the family has never quite received the credit t deserved.

2&0

TIBERIUS OESAR

Nerva

declines

endorse

the

measures

The

financial

crisis

loyalty for many years. He too perhaps was worn out
and weary with the strain of these years of moral earth
quake and eclipse: a weariness that went beyond mere
resignation and retirement. He resolved to die. Tiberius
was much concerned. He came and sat by Nerva s bed,
and reasoned with him, pointing out how much he him-
self would feel it, and how much it would damage his
reputation in the world s eyes, if his chosen counsellor
took this way of expressing dissent from his financial
policy. But Nerva was not to be diverted from his reso
lution. He declined all food and died.

The financial crisis duly arrived. The process of re
arrangement necessitated by the enforcement of the law
involved the calling-in of loans; debtors had to sell their
estates in order to meet their liabilities; the value of land
fell so that many were ruined. . * . Tiberius advanced
*a hundred million sesterces to the Senate as a loan fund,
out of which it could make advances without interest
to all debtors who could give suitable security. The plan
seems, as far as we can trace it, to have been successful;
and the financial situation was reformed into accord
ance with the law without further disaster.

The struggle against Tiberius was now practically at
an end. The masked war which for nearly twepty years
had been carried on against him was nearing its finish
by the gradual arrest of his principal senatorial oppo
nents; and its conclusion was finally ratified by this ad
ministrative step which suppressed the accumulation of
free capital by which such a war could be financed.

But when we mark the degree to which the later de
cline of the Roman world was brought about by eco-

THE OLD MAN OF CAPRI 281

nomic weakness, and when we consider how far
economic prosperity is produced by plenitude of free
capital, we may wonder whether it was not in these
days that the damage was first done. For it is clear that
a certain rigidity began to appear in the economic con
dition of the empire ; wealth and productivity no longer
expanded with the old vitality; and when, in due time,
the stress came, Roman civilization had insufficient re
sources with which to meet it.

The trouble for Tiberius was the extent of his suc
cess. It seemed difficult to restrain senators from wal
lowing in a desperate and even an inconvenient
humility. They could not sufficiently mark their appre- The

- - r t t - r ^ r i Senate

ciation of the superhuman virtues of Csesar, or of their crushed
own unworthiness. The dawn of a slow smile can be
detected in the old man a smile which, perhaps, be
tokened, in a reawakening sense of humour, a return
to sanity. . . . The tributes which had been cast at his
feet were peculiar. Togonius Gallus proposed that the
senators should themselves form a bodyguard to defend
their be^ved friend and protector when he honoured
them wth his presence: a stroke of humour which
cracked the hard shell of the old man s embittered
gravity. He discussed the matter with elaborate care,
finally deciding that the plan was too comic to be put
into operation. ... It might have led, moreover, to
some regrettable accident. . . . Junius Gallio suggested
that all Praetorian veterans should be created ex officio
equites. Tiberius replied by having him turned out of

282 TIBERIUS OESAR

the Senate, remarking that here, evidently, was another
Seianus, trying to tamper with the guardsmen. . . .
Amid all this, one man s voice had been raised in clear
tones. Marcus Terentius, accused of being a friend of
Seianus, defended himself as a man should. He spoke the
simple words of common sense which, in such circum
stances, ring out almost as brilliant paradox. . . .
Exceptions "Yes," he said, in effect, "I was a friend of Seianus; and
so were you and so was Caesar. . . . Who was I, to in
vestigate the virtues of Oesar s minister? I crawled, as
you all did. It was fame, then, to be known to the hall
porter of Seianus, or to his servants. Let plots be pun
ished and conspiracies suppressed; but as for friendship
with Seianus, the same argument must clear you, me
and Csesar himself."

Tiberius seems to have liked this, for he made it a
case in which "the dog it was that died." , . . The ac
cusers of Terentius received appropriate penalties.
Terentius himself went home a free man. 1

But Tiberius retired still further into remoteness. In
this shifting sand of treachery only one thing remained
true the loyalty of the Praetorian guard. While the
educated, the wealthy and the distinguished could no
longer be trusted, the more elementary instincts of
humanity still ran true to type. Uneducated, undistin
guished men of the poorer classes still earned their

1 Any mental strain under which Tiberius was suffering seems to have pro
duced singularly little effect on him outside political questions, if one tale is
true* The praetor L. Qesianus organized a show of bald-headed men at the
Floralia, which was generally* understood to be an allusion to the baldness of
a certain distinguished person. He also provided five thousand link-boys with
sfeaved heads, to light people hoifce from the theatre at night. . . . The distin*
gmshed person, took no notice. ^

,THE OLD MAN OF CAPRI 283

wages, respected the hand that fed them, and obeyed the
rules. And they preserved this sense of duty and serv
ice towards a hard man who had never flattered them
nor cajoled them. Their reward was not yet: but in due
time it came.

Then a silence falls upon Capri.

But far away, at the other end of the Roman world,
events were moving. What happened in Palestine seemed
but a tiny spark compared with the gloom and blaze
of the deeds done in Rome as if, during a volcanic
eruption, someone had lit a candle. But at nineteen hun-
dred years distance the volcano has died to a gleam and ptopliet
a column of smoke, and the candle has grown to a vast
light like morning.

The obscure Jewish prophet, Joshua (whose co
religionists Tiberius had expelled from Rome) began
his career in the year of Agrippina s arrest, the year
before the fall of Seianus; and this year, in which Drusus
and Agrippina died, 1 he came up to Jerusalem preach
ing his remarkable doctrine of the Kingdom of God,
with its even more remarkable rules: "Love you ene
mies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that
hate you, and pray for them that despitef ully use you
and persecute you": and "Take no thought saying,
what shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Where-

1 That is to say, calciiLrting by the years on which the lyth of Nisan ccmH
have fallen on a Friday. This gives the choice of A.D. 27, 30, 33 and 34, aod
the traditionally accepted year is A. D. 33. Mr. Sheringham has recently argued
for A. D. 30; but for the present purpose, which is merely flhtstrative, any
rough, approximation is sufficient.

284

TIBERIUS OESAR

Accused
of

maiestas

Investl-

of tfoe
Procurator

with shall we be clothed? but seek first the Kingdom
of God and his justice, and all these things shall be
added." And the crowd followed the candle.

The procurator (who by tradition was Pontius Pi-
latus) received a deputation of the priests and elders,
bringing this man with them. They wished him to be
dealt with according to Roman law. Pontius uncon
scious that his house had been invaded by the actors
in the world s greatest drama, and that he had been
roped in to play an impromptu part pooh-poohed
this proposal. What had a Roman procurator to do with
the sectarian squabbles of the Jews? They insisted, be
cause this man had preached sedition a Kingdom that
was not Cassar s dominion. Pontius, living in days when
Drusus and Agrippina were dying in their prisons, and
when the delators were on the watch for evidence of
maiestas, may well have rubbed his chin. That allega
tion, no doubt, altered the question. . . *

He accordingly interviewed the stranger. Did he
claim to be a King? . . . Not of this world, answered
Joshua. . . . Some kind of Kong, then? suggested Pon
tius. . . . The word is yours, not mine, said Joshua.
And he added: I was born to testify to the truth. Those
who know the truth know what I am. ... It was then
that Pontius unawares took on a sort of immortality by
his famous question: What is truth? . . . He got n0
answer; for truth cannot be defined in words.

Pontius was puzzled. Evidently there was no sedi
tion about this Jew: and he said as much. But the charge
that the priests insisted on making against Joshua was
that he made himself out to be equal to God, and they

THE OLD MAN OF CAPRI 285

declined to hear of his release. Pontius, disturbed, went
back to interview Joshua afresh. What was his origin?
But Joshua would not say. He left it to Pontius to judge.
Pontius reminded him that he, as procurator, had power
to condemn or acquit. Joshua s answer was: Your power
is from above. You are not responsible save to the source
from which you derive it. . . . Pontius appreciated
this perfectly, and had no doubt as to what he ought
to do: but then the priests would not let him do it. ...
They insisted that anyone who made himself out to
be a King spoke against Csesar. ... So they had their
way.

That story is well known: the career of Joshua, his
betrayal and his death, and his resurrection and glori
fication as the founder of the religious society which
grew and fought its way through opposition and rivalry
until it equalled and then exceeded the empire, and Death
extended its power over lands which had never known Joshua
the laws of the republic or the legions of Csesar. . . .
Not quite so well recognized are the parallels between
the two stories which were being enacted simultaneously
in the west and the east. . . . Within the same three
^or four years both reached their crisis, and determined
the subsequent history of the world.

vin

Seianus and Judas Iscariot walked in the same world.
The south-easterly wind may have blown to Seianus in
Rome the air that Judas had breathed. . . . When we
turn from one story to the other, they illuminate one
another to a high degree. . . . The story of Tiberius

286

TIBERIUS OESAR

Another
philosophy
of
treacliery

was determined by principles which belonged to a
moral world rapidly becoming obsolete; he acted and
thought still as a man trained to a narrow and local
community; he could not deal with the vast tides
which ebbed and flowed around the chair of Csesar. . .
But the story of Joshua the Galilean was governed by
principles belonging to a new world which was just
about to issue its appeal to mankind, and to rise to power
on the response men made to it principles which were
adapted to a universal application. For the master of
Judas knew secrets, wielded a nature and dealt with an
experience beyond the range of the master of Seianus.
Furthermore, his ultimate object and his immediate duty
were also different. . , . About Judas himself we are
left in an enigmatical silence. No express forgiveness
was ever offered Judas. His crime, too, was of an awful
and fundamental nature. But it was permitted to be
successful. It was not contested by any such deep
counter-plot as that which circumvented and over
threw Seianus; it was never visited by any hurricane
of vengeance; it left behind it no such corroding poison
as that which ate into the heart and destroyed the soul
of Tiberius. . . . The Galilean showed no sign of spir
itual injury: he met, checked, transmuted and annihi
lated that poison, as a physician might administer to
himself the antidote to a snake-bite; and he went to
his death, not without some ominous occasional silence,
and some disquieting warning to others, but, in effect,
still cordial, still confident in his firm attachment to
the world of grace and loyalty and vivid life. He had
with that world by another way. His

THE OLD MAN OF CAPRI 287

resources were not exhausted by the failure of human
ity. He was not distorted by other men s evil. He knew
the means by which to neutralize its effect upon the
world and its results upon himself. . . . But these
things were beyond the horizon of Tiberius.

Sunset.

Little remained, save to look over the calm sea of
Capri and to decide, leisurely, about the future. Ti
berius had no enthusiasm on that score. He had seen
the family dissolve round about him; the wreck that
remained was not such as to inspire any man with hope,
and he had none. "The sky can fall when I am gone!" Tiberius
he once remarked. . . . But habit and temperament ^termines
held him from maintaining this mood. He almost auto- Succession
matically fidgetted with the pieces of wreckage, and be- r
gan to place them in speculative order.

His nephew Claudius he seems to have rejected as
out of the reckoning. Claudius was half-witted. That
misjudgment of character which Augustus had dis
played about Tiberius, Tiberius showed towards Clau
dius. The latter was destined to sit in the seat of the
Caesars, and to be by no means the worst or weakest of
his house. Yet the misjudgment was not altogether com
plete. Augustus had been partly right, and so was Ti
berius.

There was his grandson Gemellus, the son of Drusus.
Perhaps Tiberius would have preferred him. He was
neither strong nor clever, and moreover his birth was
suspect in his grandf ather s eyes. He belonged to that

288 TIBERIUS GffiSAR

hateful and horrible time when Seianus was paying
court to Livilla. It was a very moot point whether it
were worth while to place him in a position which he
might not be able to maintain. On the other hand, it
might be even more imprudent to place him where his
competitors had him at their mercy. Tiberius ended by
deciding to give Gemellus a run for his money. Let the
boy sink or swim as he could. The strong probability
was that he would sink. That could be left to prove
itself.

Gains Gaius remained as the likeliest candidate. He was the

Csesar sole surviving son of Germanicus, and the attitude which
Tiberius adopted towards him is in some ways a deci
sive test of the old man s real motives and past actions.
Had the enemies of Tiberius been wholly right, he
would have sent Gaius with some promptitude to join
his mother and his brothers. Far from doing this, he
showed once more the impartiality which had always
marked his views and conduct. He did not like Gaius.
If the boy were the survival of the fittest, it was as
the fittest to survive in an atmosphere of doubt and
suspicion in which nothing sincere could live. . . .
With the cunning of some primitive organism, he had
taken on a protective coloration and had burrowed into
the soil. The old man s terrible eye, straying to and fro,
could still see nothing to fear from Gaius. ... There
the little reptile was, obediently burrowing. . . .

It was a very queer result of the struggle for survival,
that the survivor should be this! Yet so it turned out;
and no argument could more perfectly prove that it
is the nature of the competition which determines the

THE OLD MAN OF CAPRI 289

value of the victory. ... So Gaius was to be the f rait
of all that had been done! It was exceedingly strange!

Tiberius made his will. He was seventy-six years old. Win
Gaius and Gemellus were to be his joint heirs. . . . Tiberius
Rome, obsessed with the purely romantic notion that A - D - 35
Germanicus had belonged to the Golden Age, and that
a son of his would bring it back again, was glad. . . .
These are the embittering fantasies of mankind. What
virtues had Germanicus ever really shown? . . . That
passion for the decorative which fills the heart of man
kind perhaps sincerely prefers the aspect to the sub
stance, the show to the reality: it would always rather
have its gold fairy gold. . . . While the philosopher
will see no reason for quarrelling with this choice, the
moralist occasionally finds some ground for doing so.

Macro saw how the tide set in this evening Kght. The
will of Tiberius meant practically that Gaius would
be his successor: for Gemellus would not count for
much. Macro was prompt to take Gaius in hand. His
wife saw to it that Gaius should be kept amused. . . .
All of which the old man fully appreciated.

"You leave the setting to court the rising sun," he
said. He gibed; but it made no difference to Macro.

Whatsoever adventures Tiberius might meet with
in his personal life, he was little changed in his character
as a ruler. It may be that, as with many another man,
his personal life, his hopes, fears, ambitions, and af-
fections, his sufferings, his triumphs, were much less Tiberius
his own than that official life of business and administra- $

TIBERIUS OESAR

tion in which he was truly himself. The former at least
had a quality of doubtfulness and instability about it-
it changed, varied, crept and paused that is in strik
ing contrast with the well-ballasted even run of his per
sonality as a statesman. ... He had steadily declined
the title of Father of his Country. He remained without
doubt its watchful guardian, always ready to dip his
hand into his pocket to meet emergencies. . . . The
year after he had made his will, a great fire broke out
on the Aventine in Rome, and did great damage in the
poorer quarters. The old man, who had waded unhesi
tatingly through the blood of his political foes, in the
interests of the imperial power, came to the rescue of
the sufferers. Out of his careful and economical ex
chequer he produced another hundred million sesterces.
Strangely enough, as time narrowed, and it became
ever clearer that the days of Tiberius could not have
very long to run, there were those who faced without
pleasure the prospect of his departure. It was Lucius
Arruntius who expressed the apprehensions which the
wiser men entertained. . . . Arruntius was one of the
defendants in a case in which Albucilla, the wife of
Satrius Secundus the delator, was concerned. The Senate
** , regarded the case as unsatisfactory, The documents
which came before it were not endorsed by Tiberius,
aad the Senate doubted whether they were in order,
It was believed that Macro might have put them through
without proper authorization. . . . Arruntius wearied
of these things, and made up his mind to free himself
from the trouble they involved. Before making his exit
the scene, he made a speech to his friends. He ex-

THE OLD MAN OF CAPRI 291

pressed his sense of the hopelessness of the future. There
was little to which they could look forward with any
expectation of improvement, . . . He spoke, of course,
from his own point of view. . . . Tiberius, he thought,
had been demoralized by the possession of supreme
power, and had degenerated from his natural character
into that of a tyrant. . . . This also, of course, was
his own point of view. Tiberius might have seen things
from a somewhat different angle. . . . But Arruntius
was on surer ground when he pointed out that a moral
strain which had warped Tiberius would not be without
effect on Gaius. He preferred not to suffer the days
coming when a worse and weaker man sat in the chair of
Caesar. ... To which, of course, Tiberius might have
replied that they should have thought of that before.

Arruntius was not far wrong; and his words formed,
in some respects, the verdict of the wiser men in the
Senate on the rule of Tiberius. They had elected to go
further; and they were going to fare worse.

Tiberius was certainly failing in health. He had al- Tiberius
ways been a vigorous man, who had never needed a health
doctor; and even thq gradual physical weakness which
began to creep upon him could not master the mental
energy which had been the main source of his strength.
But he needed now to force his energies.

Early in the year A! D. 37 he set out on his travels,
driven by that spirit which sends the dying beast forth
to prospect for the heavenly home firom which it has
dreamt it came. He journeyed slowly along the Via Ap~

TIBERIUS CAESAR

pia towards Rome. That, to all appearance, must be
the place. But the auspices told a different tale. Driven
back by adverse omens, he turned away from the dis
tant prospect of the towers and domes of the eternal
city turned away for ever from it and all that it
implied. . . . He had reigned there; he, the man Ti
berius Claudius Nero, had dwelt there as supreme gov
ernor of the Roman world, very nearly the governor of
all known mankind: and now he was setting his face in
another direction. He was never to see it again. If men
are immortal, and the soul of Tiberius still lives, per
haps on his journey his face is still turned away from
Rome.

He goes He went down to Campania again. At Astura he had

fallen ill, but recovered somewhat, and continued his
journey to Circei. He insisted on attending a military
review which, though he concealed the fact, left him
exhausted afterwards. He went on to Misenum. His
strength was slowly sinking. It was ebbing steadily,
naturally, by degrees. He preserved his austere dignity
to the last. He did not admit his weakness; he held up an
unconquered, disagreeable face; if his head were bloody
(though not so much so as his hands) it was certainly
unbowed. At the villa of Lucullus at Misenum he paused
in order to rest. It was to be a longer rest than he chose
to admit.

He had no regular physician. From time to time he
accepted advice from Charicles, the most famous phy
sician of his day. It was probably not altogether a co
incidence that Charicles was present at Misenum; but
Tiberius would not be doctored. . . . The inf ormation

THE OLD MAN OF CAPRI 293

which could not be obtained by direct means, Charicles
obtained by stratagem. On leaving Caesar, the physician
respectfully took his hand, and was able to judge his
pulse. . . . The old man was too ken to be hood
winked. Recognizing the trick, he ordera^v another
course to be served, and sat at table longer than was his
usual custom. . . . Charicles, however, had learned all Verdict
he needed. He informed Macro that the old man was Charicles
sinking, and could not last more than two days.

Hurried consultations were instantly held. The armies
were at once notified of the impending event* In the
villa of Lucullus, Tiberius slowly sank. He may have
thought of that gallant and adventurous gentleman of
the old republican time, whose millions and whose pro
fusion were still a wonder-tale for the imaginative
credulity of sight-seers. Lucullus had been an artist in the
pyrotechnics of luxury: and what an artist! What fire
works he had made of it! ... Amid those rooms and
corridors Tiberius may have taken his last feeble austere
meals, reflecting over the simple mind which can really
enjoy these childlike things. A great happy baby, this
Lucullus! . . .

Well it was over seventy-seven years since Livia, in
the consulship of Plancus, and the year of the battle of
Philippi, bore the child Tiberius Claudius Nero in that
little house on the Palatine hill: seventy-six since she
carried him in her arms in wild flight from their foes
in the dark days of civil war, when the daughter of Tiberius.
Pompeius Magnus had given him that little cloak which ^^ I6th
was still carefully preserved in Capri. . . . And one
event at last confounds the weak, the strong, the loved,

294 TIBERIUS OESAR

the hated, the good, the bad, the wise man and the fool.
So there, where Lucullus had walked and talked, amid
the splendid gardens, Tiberius died.

The whispers would not let him alone even then. It
ran like wildfire that Macro, seeing the old stalwart re
vive, had smothered him with the bed-clothes: but the
cold smile of Tiberius Caesar could not be broken now.

CHAPTER

THE LEGACY OF TIBERIUS

THE world of Rome, rejoicing to be free from the old
man of Capri, hardly noticed the legacy he left to suc
ceeding ages. It scarcely knew what he had portended,
or what he remitted to them. Part of it was his deliber-
ate deed; but part of it was what men call accident and
fatality and destiny part was scattered episode of iso
lated wreck part a tangled and involved chain of the
logic of events, terribly connected and continuous, co
herent with an awe-inspiring coherence, arresting be
cause there is meaning in it, but not a meaning that was
ever created by, or due to, or enshrined in a human
mind, We see this non-human rationality, and we recoil
from it because we fear to behold a reason and a system
that, alike in the worst things in the world and in the
best, is born of no human ancestry. But it was there;
and from a safe distance we may inspect it and debate
its nature.

The product of that tremendous war between the old The

man and his foes was the principate of Gaius Csesa/, the succ

queer, rickety, abnormal, baby-faced son of Germanicus Tiberius

295

2 9 6 TIBERIUS OESAR

and Agrippina. 1 The world went into holiday to wel
come him as if he had been an angel of heaven. But
Gaius had another name: he was called Caligula. And
Caligula shot his bolt in a meteoric career of crime and
incredible fatuity, and fell to the sword of Cassius
Cheraea. . . . Then they pulled Claudius, the brother of
Germanicus, to light; and he stepped upon the stage with
his voluminous history and his reformed spelling and his
wife Messalina whose name is a proverb and his
f reedmen Pallas and Narcissus, who ruled the world for
Claudius and made themselves the richest men on earth.
. . . And then, unable to find anyone else, they made
way for Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus, whom men
remember as "Nero," the son of Agrippina the younger.
. . . These were the rulers who were the Nemesis of
Rome; these were the men she suffered, because of the
deeds she had done to Tiberius. . . . And as one of their
contemporaries said, men gnawed their tongues for
pain but repented not of the evil. They did not know
what they had done; so they could not repent of it.

There was logic in this. Two results sprang from it.
The failure of Augustus to found a hereditary monarchy
Monarchy O p enec } upon the world all the difficulties and dangers

remains

of government by a military guild with an elective head.

\ * Tiberius seems to have had his doubts when the moment came. He could
not make up his mind to give Gaius his signet ring, and replaced it on his
finger, probably relapsing into unconsciousness. Believing him to be dead, Gams
drew off the ring; and everyone left the room. "While they were acclaiming GahJs,
Tiberius revived, missed the ring, and rose out of bed, but fell upon the floor
and died there. The frantic message that he was still alive scattered the meet
ing like chaff; but when Macro got back to the room, Tiberius was certainly
dead. Macro may probably enough have pulled the clothes off the bed and
covered the body until the attendants caine: which would be quite enough to
start a rumour that he had smothered him. Tac. Ann. VI. 50. Suet. Tib. LXXffiL

THE LEGACY OF TIBERIUS 297

That in which Augustus had failed was never success
fully achieved by any of his successors. . . . And the
oligarchy was compelled in the end to make a compro
mise with the force it had thus doomed to remain a
perpetual danger. . . . Rome hovered between two po
litical principles, neither of which she could completely
accept. She could neither retain her hold upon the prin
ciple of the elective magistrate, nor seize the principle
of the hereditary succession which might have controlled
the military guild. Having fought with so deep and in
tense a bitterness to establish one or the other, she had
as a consequence neither; and she bore the brunt of that
disaster.

The power of the principate was strengthened rather
than weakened. The very fact that its headship re
mained elective ensured on the whole that there should
be none of those minorities, or those long periods of
government by incapable princes, which, under a heredi
tary monarchy, are the opportunities for weakening its
power. By seeking to destroy the empire, the senatorial
oligarchy had rivetted it around their own necks in its
most oppressive and enduring form.

The opposition to the empire, prolonged for genera
tions by the senatorial order, began, after its defeat at
the hands of Tiberius, to drift away from its old stand
points. In its new form it found its most coherent ex- The
pression in the Stoic party. Its association with a philo- tion
sophical, rather than a strictly political theory, marked
a gradual change in its purpose. Stoicism became the

298

TIBERIUS CAESAR

PoHtical
bankruptcy
of iiie
oligarchy

last refuge of the old Roman spirit. The ancient grain-
fas, the ancient equality found their best expression in
Stoicism because Stoicism very happily provided a plat
form on which they might be displayed without the
embarrassment of other old Roman virtues. To be stern,
severe and opposed to tyranny became a luxury which
could be indulged in without the awkward necessity of
producing practical results. The Stoics neither con
quered worlds it was fortunately unnecessary nor
did they demonstrate in any other way the art of gov
ernment which the old Roman spirit had shown. They
did not demonstrate anything except their own virtue.
But in an age, and among a class of men, in which
even the merely decorative virtues were growing rare,
these virtues made their possessors the heads and repre
sentatives of their class. Even to strike a Gbtonic pose
was wonderful in the eyes of men who had forgotten
how to achieve even that much of the Catonic.
" The decadence of a class is always shown in the dis
appearance of its ability to produce practical results.
The power to move men, the power to create, was pass
ing utterly away from the Roman oligarchy. It could
not conceive what it wanted; it could not put before
itself a definite aim or purpose; it could not stand with
men in the market place and tell them what concrete
human good it proposed to bestow upon them. ... It
had nothing to give them. . . . The most ragged Chris
tian could promise the Kingdom of God and eternal
life; the lords of the world could promise nothing.
They did not know what men wanted, because they did
not know what they themselves wanted.

THE LEGACY OF TIBERIUS 299

There are certain well-worn military maxims which
are almost moral proverbs. "Attack is the best defence"
is a principle which holds good in more spheres than
that of war. The economic rulers of the Roman world
never grasped it. They failed because they organized
for safety, for leisure and for comfort; and they left
no margin for the catastrophes which wait upon human
life. A continuous expansion, a continuous vital activity
exploring every possible opportunity for change and im- * ts
provement, is the only condition under which men may failure
safely count upon holding their own. . . . And such
things depend upon the ideal which is continuously held
up before men by the religion in which they believe.
Fetish-worshippers have a habit of waiting for something
to happen by magic. . . . But Stoicism was itself a
negative doctrine a theory of endurance rather than
a theory of action. Its effect was to make men imper
vious to evil, not to make them powerful for good:
and yet suffering is the price men pay for power. No
creed evolved from the philosophical, the intellectual
basis, could give them the power of action. Stoicism
could not do so. And therefore it did not succeed in
restoring to power the republican principle in politics.

But ha3 the Stoics absolutely no gift of a political
sort to give mankind? There is one indirect gift which
perhaps they did succeed in giving: and they gave it
in peculiar circumstances not without an instructive
side to the onlooker. The very fact that the republican Stoicism
opposition took the shape of an ethical theory rather criticism

300

TIBERIUS CAESAR

Difficulties
of

elective
monarchy

than that of an alternative policy subjected the empire
to a moral criticism more useful than any political criti
cism could have been.

A military guild such as the imperial Roman army,
in which ability is the sole road to success, is liable to
develop characteristics of an alarming nature. We can
see the deep, the fatal fault that resulted from its head
ship remaining elective: the atmosphere of internal
competition which issued in continual intrigue and con
spiracy. ... As long as the last of the aristocratic
houses endured, they managed to stave off the worst
of the effects by monopolizing the higher commands.
But even under Augustus and Tiberius there were signs
that this barrier might not last long. The men from
below were already knocking at the door. They brought
with them an atmosphere of fierce, deadly, unrelent
ing, unremitting competition, in which every man s
hand was against his neighbour, and every weapon was
legitimate in the strife. The prize was the supremacy
that placed the whole world in their hands. Men like
Seianus and Macro were a new type.

The master of the Roman world thus needed not only
to struggle with his external foes, and with the external
opposition which questioned his title, but to hold his
position against his own friends. . . . Never for one
moment could such a man as Tiberius sleep, or take his
disport, or lean his weight on any loyalty or any love.
His watch must be more terrible than that of any wise
virgin: a perpetual, wakeful, unvarying distrust. He
could never forget himself or others. . . . And this
watchfulness, inhuman and abnormal (for in every nor-

THE LEGACY OF TIBERIUS 301

mal man s life there must be whole realms he never need
doubt, and many hours in which he can freely forget
that he possesses a back to be stabbed in) could only
end in the spiritual destruction of the men subjected
to it. The wonder is that they were so good.

It was long after the days of Tiberius that this evil
rose to its greatest magnitude; but he was the man who
felt the first force of the tide.

To a less degree the evil ran a considerable way back
into the main body of the army, ceasing only when it
reached the rank and file men who were trained, for
twenty five years of their lives, as no other men, to trust
their backs to their friends in the hour of danger. There
cannot have been an officer of any considerable rank
who did not, in his place and to his degree, share the
watch of Caesar.

Against this, at any rate, as against the cowardly dis
union in their own party, the Stoics set an adamantine
face. In such a world of mutual suspicion and mutual
competition there was something great in the man who
briefly held the doctrine that external circumstances
were of no importance. He declined to watch or to
struggle. He took only moderate and reasonable pre
cautions. He went to death with indifference. . . . The
existence of the Stoic was a silent comment on the
moral tension of Caesar s palace. It did not ultimately Compro-
fail of its effect. When Nero had at last fallen, and mlse
Galba, Otho and Vitellius had followed him in the strug
gle which took place over his body, Vespasian, the sur
vivor, represented a distinct movement towards the
senatorial position. Slowly, a compromise began to work

302

TIBERIUS OESAR

itself out. After Titus had veered towards the Senate
and Domitian had backed away from It, the founda
tion was laid, in the person of Nerva, for an accommo
dation which gave the empire four great rulers in
succession, of a very noteworthy type. They repre
sented a new orientation towards the Stoic: culminating
in M. Annius Verus the emperor "Marcus Aurelius"
whose Stoicism is too obvious to need mention.

But this moral victory of Stoicism was won only at
the moment when it ceased to have any connection with
oligarchic politics of the old sort. Stoicism had no real
connection with any political theory. It could be as
heartily entertained by an absolute monarch as by the
most confirmed republican. But when all had been said
and done, it formed the bridge by which some of the
earlier Roman virtues had been carried over to a new
era.

Robbed of its philosophy, the oligarchy continued to
become less and less of a political power- ... It di
minished, became misty, and its republican principles
dissolved into the intangible atmosphere which never
left Rome.

Destruc
tion of
tlie com
promise

The compromise between the Senate and the em
pire, which was established by Nerva, gave the Roman
world eighty-four years of peace and prosperity. It
was broken up under Commodus; and thenceforward
the contest was renewed on fresh ground. The real
weakness of the Senatorial party disclosed itself by de
grees. While it represented the elements of civil and eco-

THE LEGACY OF TIBERIUS 303

nomic life, its members were unable to maintain the
world in economic prosperity. They could not organize
the production of wealth. Power was torn from them
by fierce and hasty soldiers. The struggle terminated in
the accession of the Illyrian emperors and the political
reorganization of the state as an absolute monarchy, in
which the Senate was practically abolished* . . . But
the military power could not maintain itself when the
economic foundation was crumbling beneath its feet.
The effort only hastened the end. There came a time
when Roman armies were fighting the barbarians of
the north upon no more than level terms. In western
Europe the great military guild at last sank and van- military
ished in the slough of economic collapse. uild

It was only in the last period of this struggle that
the State resorted for help to the new religion which
was the expression of its unity and universality. The pos
sible results which might have followed from the quick
perception and early adoption of the principles of that
religion are illustrated by the wonderful reformation
and restoration which they brought about in the east
ern provinces, where the empire was given another
thousand years of useful life. ... To the west, they
came too late. . . . Men, not being entirely wise nor
completely free, are able to see and to act only when
the force of circumstances lends its driving power. His
tory is the tale of the blindness and the blunders of man
kind far more than (as Edward Gibbon thought) of
its crimes and catastrophes.

Christianity was the survivor of a struggle which in
cluded a number of competitors. The old Roman religion

3 o4 TIBERIUS OESAR

the system we roughly indicate by the general term
"paganism" the old system of local cults and primi
tive customs, roughly and imperfectly universalized by
scheme of a P rocess f identifying the principal figures in its vari-
vaiues ous mythologies, and veneered over with Greek phi-

emerges losophy arid literary tradition this perished with the
oligarchy, leaving only traces of its more elementary
forms in the popular customs of the peasantry. It was,
in its last days, no more than a literary tradition pas
sionately kept, like the love letters of a lost mistress, but
as much a matter of past things and bygone glories. It
belonged, in reality, to the days of the independent
city-states. With their fall, it had ceased to have mean
ing. . . . The Egyptian worships and some of the Asi
atic cults had more vitality. But the worship of Isis re-
nlained too local in conception; its external power of
appeal was limited; its inward philosophical structure
was suited to a type of mind which fell behind and
dropped out of the battle when life became a desperate
fight against odds. . . . Mithraism, in some respects
the closest competitor of Christianity, was the particu
lar cult of the army. It largely perished when the army
dissolved. Many of its adherents of the higher grades
probably fell on the field of battle during the number
less civil wars and frontier struggles of the last days.
The power of Christianity rested, of course, upon its
extraordinary catholicity. It brought into integration
a far larger number of elements than any of its competi
tors. It was a wine-press into which went harvests of
the most diverse intellectual effort, spiritual experience
and social tradition. The result was something which did

THE LEGACY OF TIBERIUS 305

not shield men from pain nor guard them from catas-
trophe, but braced them to action. . . . Anything is survival

possible to men if they will suffer and act. f ^

* 1-1 fittest

The theory that persecution makes men great is a

very doubtful one. Persecution is frequently perhaps
usually successful. The world is strewn with the dust
of unprofitable martyrs. Persecution will wipe out any
thing except the truth. It was the element of truth,
the element of life and vitality, that brought the early
church a mixed, often ragged, sometimes disreputable,
occasionally magnificent army struggling through to
success.

The battle it fought against its external competitors
it carried on also within its own ranks. The form it
finally took was one which gathered together in alli
ance the men who were ready to suffer and prepared to
fight.

The degree, as well as the nature, of the influence
which could be exerted on the Roman state by the
Christian church, was profoundly affected by the struc
ture of the two bodies.

There was but one source from which the organiza
tion of a Christian Church could spring the still un
organized, untapped residuum of population which
had not yet been drawn into the circle of authorized
Roman institutions. The reason why that Church arose
from the humble and the weak, not among the great men Social
of the world, is accordingly clear enough. The social
organization of the upper and middle classes could not anity

3 o6 TIBERIUS CESAR

be converted or twisted or in any way transformed to
suit objects and ideals which it was never designed to
fulfil: there was no means by which any man, or any
minority of men, could effect such a transformation
from within. The men who founded the organizations
of Roman society had seen to that. They had so arranged
its structure that it could only be destroyed it could
never be changed. Hence, when the time came for
change, it could not change, and was therefore destroyed.

This result was not to the benefit of anyone. It put
back the progress of humanity, delayed its march, and
cost it an untold penalty in the destruction of life and
wealth and the frustration of happiness. It did not save
a single valuable interest; it did not subserve even the
lowest ends, let alone the highest.

There was no fresh organization ready to step into
the shoes of the old. The old organization had taken care
to have no rivals. Like an oriental monarch, it had re
moved all its natural successors. The church was not
an organization adapted for the conduct of ordinary
secular life. It was a religious institution alone. It could
not take over the work of the landlords and bankers
and merchants of the Roman world. It could do no
more than nourish and inspire the labours of those
who refounded civilization.

The beginning and the subsequent growth of the
Christi- church conformed to the rules which govern the for-

aruty; .,..._. t

Laws of mation or all great social institutions. It began as the
^ el _ rule is with one man; and that man as we shoulc
opment expect had attributed to him a pedigree which classe

THE LEGACY OF TIBERIUS 307

him with the kings and aristocracies of the world. His
first helpers and successors were and here again the
rules hold good free men accustomed to liberty and to
self -sufficing independence. The organization grew: and
if it grew by the assimilation of men from the lower
and unorganized section of the community, it was only
because the other classes were already bound tight in
the bonds of mutual association so tight, that to get
free of them was almost an impossibility. Even so, there
were recruits from those other classes, who either took
the risk of discovery or anticipated it by boldly sacri
ficing their positions. And pursuing those rules which
govern such institutions the church acted not by col
lecting the views of its servile recruits and striking an
average of opinion and doctrine, but by submitting
them to the training of a discipline determined by
men of a very different stamp. The slave learned not
alone to act, but also to think and to be on the model
of that mighty man who was descended from the Kings
of Judah.

This was something of a nature much more signif
icant than could be shown by any of the class-organiza
tions of the Roman civilization. It went nearer to the Christi-
roots of reality. All the class-organizations of Rome were ^ y ^
by comparison overburdened with mere custom, subject "average
to mere drift were out of control and victimized by opinion"
their own incoherence and inchoateness. . . . None of
them could get free from the dreadful drag that is con
stituted by the necessity of conforming to an average of
pinion.

308

TIBERIUS OESAR

Christi
anity:

its .
derivation

It is worth while to remind ourselves of one particu
lar aspect of the rise of Christianity. In the reign of
Tiberius took place a process which consisted in the
gathering together, in one brief set of principles, handy
and convenient for propaganda, of the whole results
of the social experience of the civilization of the ancient
east a civilization older then than our own is now
and its grafting upon the civilization of the Mediter
ranean. . . . Four thousand years and more of strug
gle, of success, of failure, of hope, of fear, of passionate
aspiration and steady faith, culminating in one brilliant
century as pregnant in its religious significance as the
age of Pericles was in art, or the nineteenth century in
scientific discovery; this human experience was brought
into contact with the Roman world until its vitality be
gan to run through the veins of that world and to change
its nature. . . . Rome had some seven hundred years
of experience, most of it political and legal. Greece had
perhaps four times as much: and its complete form was
artistic and commercial consummated in ideas of ar
tistic expression and intellectual conception. But dbe
east had a longer experience still, and the form into
which she threw it was religious. . . . Now, religious
thought is much the most concentrated form of think
ing possible to the human brain. It gives as nothing
else does a set of values which can determine the rela
tions of all other thoughts. . . . What we need to ap
preciate, before all else, is the vastness of time, the im
mensity of the human experience, which went to fonn

THE LEGACY OF TIBERIUS 309

the set of values that entered the western world under
the name of the Christian faith. . . . "When it con
structed around itself, as a means of expression, a ritual
gathered from the familiar customs of mankind, a the
ology largely taken from Greek philosophy, and a canon
law not free from the influence of Roman jurisprudence,
it transformed all these things and gave them a coher
ence they had never before possessed, by reorientating
them according to one definite scale. . . . Beside this,
the ancient religion of Rome was a trifling thing which
could not hold the attention or the affection of men.

Before the full results of the Christian movement
could affect the Roman dominion, that dominion, as
far as western Europe was concerned, had collapsed into
wreckage, and the Church, whether knowingly or not,
was launched on a fresh pilgrimage to reconstruct an- Social
other and a more comprehensive world. This is not the ^ e
place in which to follow it. Let us return to the legacy Ie p c 7 o

T"U r I, - t/ Tlbenus

ot libenus; for there are yet one or two items in the
account which must be reckoned up.

The struggle between Tiberius and his foes, involving
as it did the destruction of the house of Qesar and the
paralysis of the senatorial oligarchy, influenced the sub
sequent development of the Roman world in ways which
deserve more particular description in detail.

The root problem of that contest was the impossi
bility of discovering any effective reason for halting
in it. Neither moral obligation nor material interest was
sufficient to supply an adequate cause. It was on this

3 io TIBERIUS CAESAR

problem that the Roman polity, like the Greek, came

to grief. To push a social struggle beyond a certain point

is to disrupt or corrupt civilization; but where is this

Problem point? by what means is it to be discovered? and

Struggle w ^at motives can be found to compel men to pause when

they perceive it? A modern man is not free to take up

any attitude of superiority on this question. Our greater

wisdom still remains to be proved.

Civilization is not simply based upon compromise;
it is itself, in its own nature like marriage a compro
mise, continually in being, continually renewed from
hour to hour. On the effective construction and mainte
nance of this compromise depends the continuance of
civilized life. It is easy not to make it; easy to follow
ideas to their extreme logical conclusion; but in that
case both victors and vanquished have lost all and gained
nothing. There must be a "Consent to Lose." In the ab
sence of this amicable arrangement there is no alter
native but to construct society so rigidly that competi
tion is altogether excluded. But it is highly questionabk
whether this cure is not as bad as the disease. Hence we
are confronted by an apparently baffling and insoluble
problem, which can only be circumvented by attack
ing it from a totally different quarter: namely, by turn
ing our attention to the creation of an actual change in
men s minds themselves not a change in the way we
educate ourselves, but a change in the selves we educate.

One of the essential doctrines of Christianity was the

possibility of this change in ourselves. There never was
any question but that the number of men capable of it
is small; but these are the salt of the earth, who preserve

THE LEGACY OF TIBERIUS 311

it from destruction. That we cannot change human na
ture is a principle that few will dispute* But if a certain
number of men cannot empty themselves of the mo
tives and aspirations of the ordinary sensual life, then
we must be prepared to contemplate the possibility
that every civilization ends in a dead-lock.

But in the absence of such a solution the ready resort
is to rigid organization. The defence of the military
emperors forced this rigidity upon Roman life: it slowly
destroyed the vitality of Roman industry and commerce,
and this in turn undermined the foundation on which
the power of the military order was built. . . , To a
certain extent the Roman empire shared this rigidity
with all its fore-runners. The necessity of control forced
upon all of them alike the same tendency to a system
of caste the same isolation of one class from another, Rigid
the sharp division of professions, the system of regu- ^km^t
lated and closed guilds in industry. . . . This question dangerous
is not one of theory. We are not arguing an abstract
case. Control by the central government was forced
upon ancient civilization by the most practical neces
sities; competition, attrition, and the survival of the
strongest left in existence those that heeded the necessity
of control, and wiped out those that neglected it. ...
The Roman state was a victor tottering up to the win
ning post out of a large field of starters.

The danger of such rigidity is that the state which is
so organized can be easily, and sometimes quite sud
denly destroyed. To make a serious breach anywhere in
the fabric is liable to bring the whole structure down
bodily. And this is in fact the fate that befell the civili-

3 i2 TIBERIUS CESAR

zation of later Rome. It never recovered from the catas
trophes of the third century* It could not recover; for a
rigid system of social organization has no generous re
serves of intelligent amateurs. . . . When the Irish and
the English got their first grip on Roman Britain by the
simple expedient of destroying whatsoever they could
reach, and then waiting until the body-politic bled to
death, they were following a method which the Turks
afterwards applied to the Byzantine empire. In both
cases, it succeeded but too well.

The policy of Tiberius upon the Rhine frontier in
fluenced in part, as the story has shown, by the political
struggle was wise as far as it went; but it left many
issues outstanding. . . . The conquest of Britain must
Tiberius have become a fixed intention with the Roman army
chiefs after the recall of Germanicus. The condition
of domestic politics, however, made it necessary that a
generation should pass before such a design could be
realized.

Some ten years after Germanicus left the Rhine, the
Frisians were provoked to revolt, and made good their
independence. It was after this that we can trace the
first beginnings of a movement which was destined to
go far and have vast consequences. The Chauci began
a little raiding. In A. D. 47 they came down to the coasts
of Gaul under a leader named Gannascus, a deserter from
the Roman service and by race a Frisian Canninef ate.
. . . They had found or rediscovered the sea-way
south, which Drusus and Germanicus had so graphically

THE LEGACY OF TIBERIUS 313

demonstrated for their benfit. Gnseus Domitius Corbulo
repressed their piracies, and once more reoccupied Frisia.

It was Corbulo s intention to stop these raids at the
source; but to do this would have meant the crossing
of the Ems, and such a re-opening of the German ques
tion was a matter for the imperial government, which
proceeded to consider the whole subject. The policy of
Drusus and Germanicus, stopped by Tiberius, was now
reversed, and a return made to that of Gaius Julius Cx-
sar. Corbulo was recalled from Frisia, and the northern
bank of the Rhine, although it remained under Roman
supervision, was definitely evacuated. Attention was
turned from inland Germany to the North Sea.

The conquest of Britain marked the next stage of a of onques
change which developed at first very slowly, but after- Britain
wards with increasing rapidity. The raid of the Chauci
in A. D. 47 indicated the start of an era of ship-building
in the north, and the gradual transference of the main
strategic problems from the land to the water. Two
hundred and fifty years later, the Chauci had grown
into those sea-faring Saxons against whom south
eastern Britain was ringed with fortifications as it never
was ringed against the Spaniard and the Frenchman in
later days. . . . Africa had found no answer to the
Roman legionary. Asia had found a partial answer
the mounted bowman. Northern Europe found the com
plete and effective answer the sea-going ship. Britain
became, and for ages remained, the chief advanced base
against the northern fleets the central strategic point
for which they fought, and the possession of which de
termined the seat of power.

3 i4 TIBERIUS C&SAR

The occupation of Britain was thus no casual episode.
It was a serious measure of policy, thoroughly executed
from the first, and permanently maintained. How much
Gaius Julius definitely foresaw, or how far he judged
by the pure instinct of the born strategist, we can never
know; but he was in any case right. "Whatsoever opinions
Signifi- may be entertained respecting the motives which led
Roman government to occupy Britain, one thing

quest of j s certain it gave Rome the secure possession of the
Rhine frontier, which was never wrested from her until
Britain was lost again. On many occasions that frontier
was broken, and Gaul and Spain, and even Africa were
over-run: but as long as Britain was held, the line was
again restored.

The Saxons never won Britain. Not until the Angles
took over the task was the project successfully achieved,
in those days when Theodoric the Ostrogoth was trek
king into Italy with ox and wagon, and the Vandals
were reigning in Africa, and Chlodovech the Frank
was busy trying ineffectually to set up some sort of
minor kingdom along the Rhine. . . . The success of
the Angles none too complete at first, but sufficient
resulted in the unpinning of the whole scheme of de
fence in the western provinces of Rome. The empire
was strong enough to wipe out the Vandals, and to re
conquer Italy from the successors of Theodoric; but
Gaul was never recovered. . . . Chlodovech was a man
Britain inferior to a score of fore-runners who had failed. He
a deter- is not for a moment to be compared with such men as
Irmin and Marbod. Nevertheless, with Britain in Eng-
lish hands he succeeded in founding the Prankish king-

THE LEGACY OF TIBERIUS 315

dom which was to play so great a part in subsequent
history.

To sum up: the reign of Tiberius, and the events
which then took place, determined much subsequent his
tory. That age saw the beginning of a new scheme of
social values in the foundation of the Christian faith;
and though it did not see the conquest of Britain, it saw
the way to it prepared by the definite abandonment of
the attempt to absorb Germany into the Roman world-
state. It was during the reign of Tiberius that the at
tempt to found a stable hereditary or co-optative mon
archy for Rome broke down, so that the monarchy
remained in principle elective. Out of these three ele
ments grew some of the determining forces that have results
moulded the modern civilization in which we live. For General
the first provided the basis of a new and wider civiliza
tion; and the second secured the strategic military po
sition which was to give this new civilization the power
of maintaining itself and of spreading across the globe;
and the third made sure that the old civilization of
Rome should come to a deadlock and perish. . . . These
results cannot quite be called accidental. They grew by
an almost terrifying logic out of the precedent circum
stances, and the relationships of men.

But the failure of Drusus and Germanicus affected
the future almost as profoundly as their success would
have done. They had shaken the North out of its tribal
institutions. . . . Dominance passed into the hands of
barbarian monarchies which had learnt from the Ro-

3 i6

TIBERIUS OESAR

Importance
of

hereditary
succession

mans the art of politics, and which based the beginnings
of the modern national state upon the principle of the
military guild which Gaius Julius Caesar had founded.
The stability and survival of these states was for the
most part due to a very simple advantage they could
rely upon royal families which produced, generation
after generation, men of a sufficient standard of robust
ness and intelligence to do the work of government and
to give it continuity. The whole history of the political
state in Europe, for close upon two thousand years past,
has been intertwined with this problem of the succession
of the head of the state. * , . The house of Theodoric
the Ostrogoth could not maintain its quality, and the
Ostrogothic Kingdom in Italy perished; the Visigoths
of Spain could not maintain it, and the Gothic Kingdom
fell; the Franks struggled up to power on the genetic
virtues of the Merovingians and the Arnulfings; the
English, when the robust Anglian house of Mercia
dwindled, barely survived through the weaker line of
Wessex.

No greater error could be made than to imagine that
this question of succession is artificial or unimportant.
It is a problem on which depends the continuity of the
creative control of the state and that is the actual
identity of the state itself. It first comes before us when
we see the Roman state endeavouring to remodel itself
by the active exercise of creative intelligence; we see that
endeavour repeatedly fail with a gradually decreasing de
gree of failure through the fall of Gaius Gracchus, the
abdication of Sulla, and the assassination of Gaius Julius
Caesar. We can see it take on definite meaning when

THE LEGACY OF TIBERIUS 317

Augustus bends his mind to give continuity to the prin-
cipate; its full significance dawns upon us with the prob
lems of Tiberius and the struggle he waged.

The lives and happiness of hundreds of millions of
human beings have hung upon it; the rise and fall of
States has hung upon it. For if it were nothing else (and
it was often much more) it was the power which con
trolled, or lost control of, the awful forces of party Problem
and interest. Men at large are not their own masters, creative
They are not isolated individuals. They move in vast contro1
bodies, which are not self-determined, but are drawn and
swayed by the tidal forces of opinion and interest. It
is only when the control gives way, and lets these forces
free, that men realize one fact about themselves that
they are swept passively into social and political catas
trophes by forces which they cannot stop, divert, or
change, and before which they, their feelings, their
hopes, their wishes, and all the kindly habits of civiliza
tion, are straws.

THE END

INDEX

Afer, Domitius, 220, 239.

Agrippa, M. Vipsanius, 15, iS, 24, 25.
Postumus, 16, 87, 88, 89, 129, 211.

Agrippina (the elder), 16, 89, 90,
158, 161, 179, 181, 197-205,
209, 231, 235, 238, 239, 248,
252-254, 275.
(the younger), 239 f. n.

Aliso 59, 95, 113=, H-4* **7-

Andetrium, Siege of, 107-108.

Antioch, 194, 195.

Antonia, 18, 200, 263, 272.

Antonius, Marcus (Triumvir), 2, u,

28.
Julus, 79.

Apicata, 230, 268.

Arduba, 105.

Arruntius, Lucius, 138, 204, 290.

Asprenas, Lticms Nonius, 117, 119,
207.

Augustus, Gaius Julius Caesar Octavi-
anus, Triumph, 1-3; created Au
gustus, 3; character, 10, 26; mar
riages, 10-11; his position, 27;
principles, 42; attitude to Tiberius,
53; death, 127-128; funeral, 131;
effect of his death, 132-134; his
will, 136.

Aurelius, Marcus (M. Atmius Verus),
302.

Bathinus, Battle of, 105.
Bato Breucianus, 101-106.

Dalmaticus, 100-109, 125.
Blsesus, Junius (father) 144 et seq.,

158.

(son), 149, 155.
Brevarium Imperit, 136, 137, 144 et

seq., 163.

Britain, 185, 187, 188, 313-315.
Bnicteri, 57, 113, 172, 175.

Casdicius, Lucius, 117-120.

Cascina. (See Severus.)

Caesar, Lucius (son of Julia), 16, 48,

66, 68, 82, 85.
Gaius (Son of Julia), ^6, 48, 66,

68, 82, 84, 86.
Gaius Julius (Dictator), 2, 21, 32,

45&gt; 278, 313.
Gaius (Caligula), 161, 252, 255,

260, 288, 295.
Germanicus, Ti. Claudius, 255, 287,

296.
Tiberius. (See Nero, Tiberius

Claudius.)
Calusidius, 158.
Capri, 243.

Carrhse, Standards of, 18, 120.
Castra Vetera, 58, 113, 117, 172, 178,

1 80.

Catualda, 190, 191.
Celer, Domitius, 196.
Chatti, The, 59, 113, 173, 180, 185.
Charicles (Physician), 292.
Chauci, The, 59, 90, 96, 312, 313.
Cherusci, The, 58, 90, 95, 113, 173,

180.

Christianity, 43, 303, 311.
Claudia Pulchra, 238.
Clemens, 212-213.

Julius, 151, 152, 154.
Cologne, (Colonia Agrippina), 60, 157.
Corbulo, Gn. Domitius, 313,
Cordus, Cremutius, 236.
Cotta, M. Aurelius, 252.
Cnspus, Sallustius, 129, 212.

Dalmatia, 100-108.
Delation, 216-218.
Drave, River, 102.
Drusus, L. Libo, 214.
319

INDEX

Nero Claudius, 5; marriage to An-
tonia, 1 8, 19; succeeds to Rhine
command, 52, 54; character,
55-56; founder of Rhine Cities
60; death, 61; funeral, 67-68;
consequences of his death, 68-

(son of Germanicus), 230, 252, 276.

(son of Tiberius), 19, 88, 124-125,
151-156, 189, 198, 203, 218,
221, 226, 227, 228, 230.

Economic Prosperity of Rome, 34, 36-

37, 280-281, 303.
Egypt, 35, 193-194-
Elbe, 60, 95-96, 1 80.
Ems, 57, 114, *74&gt; I 75&gt; 180, 184.
Epicureanism, 40.

Financial Crisis, A. D. 33 279-281.
Fossa Drusiana, 57, I74 l8 -
Frisia, 57, 312.

Gallus, Asinius, 137, 204, 248.

Gannascus, 312.

Gaul, 21, 33, 35, 186, 212.

Gemellus, Tiberius, 287.

Germanicus, 56, 88; adopted by
Tiberius, 89; marriage to
Agrippina, 90, 100, 102, 121,
125, 135, 157; relations with
Tiberius, 163; German cam
paigns, 173-188; visit to Asia
and death, 191-209, 228, 289.

Germany, 22, 56, 69, 90, 95-98, no,
ii2, 121, 145, 186, 188.

Germans, 32, 34, 70, 71, 92.

Gracchus T. Sempronius, 64, 79, 130.
Gaius Sempronius, viii.

Haterius, Q., 138, 143-144.

Idiaviso, Battle of, 181, 183.
Illyria, 99.

Illyrian Emperors, 69, 99, 303.
Irmin, viii; in, 173 et seq., 176, 181,
188-190.

Janus, Temple of, 3.

Joshua (Jewish Prophet), 285-287.

Julia (daughter of Augustus), birth,
u, 12, 16-17, 50; marriage to
Tiberius, 51, 63; letter to
Augustus, 65; relations with
Tiberius, 74; scandal of her
conduct, 78; exiled to Panda-
taria, 80; imprisonment, 81;
removed to Rhegium, 87;
death, 130, 163.

Laco, Grascinus, 263, 265.

Langobardi, 32, 96-189.

Latinius Latiaris, 246.

Lentulus Gsetulicus, Gn. Cornelius,

253.
Lepidus, Manius Aernilius, 106, 204.

Marcus Aemilius, 106, 107, 109.
Libo, L. Scribonius, 10, 215.

L. Scribonius, 215.
Lippe, 58, 113, 114, 172, 175-
Livia (Augusta), 5, 6, 10; character,
n, 129, 140, 144, 205, 206,
241, 249, 250-251.
(Livilla), 198, 222, 225, 231, 272,
Lollius, Marcus, 83, 86.

Macro, Naevius Sertorius, 261, 289,

296.

Maiestas, 216.

Maecenas, G. Cilnius, 71, 223.
Marbod, viii; 36, 92-94, 97-? s &gt; II]C &gt;

120, 188, 191.
Marcellus, M. Claudius, rides in

Triumph of Augustus, i; in

the Troy Game, 4; marries

Julia, 13; dies 14.
Marius, Gaius, 33.
Marsi, 113, 172, 185.
Martina, 203.
Messalinus, M. Valerius, 101, 109,

207.

Military Guild, 46, 300.
Monarchy, derivation, vii; 29, 44-46;

principle of election, 46-47;

principle of co-optation, 47,

296, 297, 3I5-3I7-

INDEX

321

Montanus, Votienus, 237.

Nauportus, 99, 149.

Nero, (Emperor) L. Domitius Aheno-

barbus, 19, 2.96* 301.
G. Claudius, 9.
T. Claudius (father) 5.

(son. Emperor) nature of his
story. vii; a psychological
problem, viii; early history, i-
y; early career, 14; marriage to
Vipsania, 18; rise, 20; mar
riage to Julia, 51; retires to
Rhodes, 75; unofficial personal
ity, 77; adopted, by Augustus,
88; succeeds to principate, 128;
accepted by Senate, 133 et
seq.; importance of his acces
sion, 142 et seq.; his principles
and character as a man, 7-9;
as a soldier, 103-104, 121-122;
as a ruler, 164 et seq.
(son of Germanicus), 230, 243,

248.

Nerva, M. Cocceius, 242, 279.
(Emperor), 302.

Pannonia, 99.

Parthians, 31, 32, 191.

Patavinus, Cassius, 84.

Percennius, 147-156, 157.

Phoebe (Julia s freedwoman) 80.

Pilatus, Pontius, 284-285.

Pinnes, 100, 105.

Piso, Gn. Calpurnius, 72, 192-208,

228.

Marcus, 196, 203, 206, 207.
Lucius, 204, 224.

Plancina, 192, 206, 207.

Plancus, Munatius, 160.

Praetorian Guard, 128, 151, 152, 153,
156, 1183, 223; concentrated
in Rome, 234; they remain
faithful to Tiberius, 264, 282.

Priscus, Clutorius, 218.

Rastia, 23, 24, 36.

Regulus, G. Memmius, 261, 263, 265.

Livineius, 204*.

Rhine frontier, 23, 24, 51, 91-94, 121-
122, 187,

cities, founded by Drusus, 60.
Rhcemetalces, King, 101.
Rufus, Aufidienus, 149.

Sabinus, Titus, 247.

Satrius, Secundus, 262, 290.

Saturninus, G. Sentius, 97, 196, 203.

Save, River, 101.

Saxons, 96, 182. (See CbancL}

Scaurus, Mamercus, 138.

S cenobar dus, 105.

Scenas (son of Bato Dalmaticus), 108.

Scribonia (wife of Augustus), 10.

Scianus, L. Aelius, 152, 222; his

methods, 225; conflict "with

Drusus, 226; his designs, 230;

his downfall, 255-269.
Segestes, in, 114, 173.
Selencia (Port of Antioch), 194.
Semnones, The, 96, 189.
Servasus, Q., 203.
Severus, Aulus Csecina, 101, 157, 173,

175-179* 207.
Septimius, 109.
Sicambri, The, 21, 70.
Silanus, M. Junius, 191, 192.
Silius, Gaius, 157, 160, 162, 180.
Sirmium, 101.
Siscia, 1 02, 105.
Stoics, The, 41, 297.
Strabo, Seius, 223.
Suabi, The, 93, 188, 189.
Sulla, L. Cornelius (Dictator), viii;

139-

Tergeste, 99.

Teutoberg, Battle of, 114-117.

Thrasyllus (Astrologer), 76, 77.

Thusnelda, 173.

Trio, L. Fulcinius, 203, 204, 247, 259,

261, 274.
Troy, Game, 5.

322 INDEX

Varus, P. Quintilius, 27, no, 119, Weser, 58, 95-, 180.

120, 175, 176, 185, 228. ^ World-State, 27; causes, 29; advantages
Veranius, Q., 203. and disadvantages, 37; moral

Vibulenus, 150-156, 157. effect, 38-39; disillusionment,

Vindelkia, 23, 24, 36. 9-40; religious problem, 42-

Vipsania (wife of Tiberius), 18-19, 44.

51, 66.

Virgil, 4-5, 14. Yngwe-mar, 178, 189.

Vitellius, P., 179, 203, 205, 266. Yssel, 57, 174-

1 02 072