Part 14

On withdrawing from public affairs Tiberius decided to live as a private citizen; this he had every right to do. His motive in selecting Rhodes for his place of residence has to do with features in his intellectual inclinations upon which we have not as yet touched. The silly story that Tiberius elected to reside in Rhodes because he could there enjoy unlimited debauchery may be at once dismissed on the ground of inherent absurdity. A man who wishes to conceal his vices does not select a university town, a great commercial town, the house of call for the mercantile service of the world, the spot visited by all officials on their way back to and from the capital, an island where everybody knows everybody else’s business, as the scene of his loathsome excesses; and Rhodes was all these things. Possibly an advantage enjoyed by Rhodes in being free from the direct control of a Roman Proconsul rendered it desirable as a place of residence for a man in the position of Tiberius, who wished to avoid friction with the Roman authorities. Most of the famous cities on the Greek mainland were now in a decayed condition; Corinth alone retained something of its mercantile importance, Athens had become an agreeable place of residence as well as a university town; but the cities on the coast of Asia Minor, Smyrna and Ephesus, and the islands off the coast, Samos and Rhodes, flourished as they had never flourished before. The corn ships from Alexandria frequently touched at Rhodes; she lay in the path between Antioch and Rome, and had become the meeting place between East and West. This gave a special character to her university. Athens was purely Greek, but Rhodes was both Oriental and Greek.

Rhodes, though largely despoiled of its trees, is still among the most agreeable of the Greek islands, and in the days of its luxuriance was particularly beautiful. Tiberius shared that taste for islands which inspires the day dreams of many of our own contemporaries. Men only learn by experience that the secluded charms of a sea-girt residence are balanced by its inconvenience; but the inconvenience of restricted and precarious supplies would not be felt at Rhodes, the island being large enough to be self-dependent, besides being the calling place of shipping: thus Tiberius could look forward to a life spent in the pursuit of congenial and serious studies, in delightful scenery, and in the full stream of the world’s traffic.

The studies which especially attracted Tiberius were then called mathematical--we should now call them scientific--but neither was the science of the ancients our science, nor their mathematics our mathematics. The special branch of science which interested Tiberius was astronomy; but astronomy in his time was merged in astrology, and with astrology were associated other supposed means of predicting the future, that vain preoccupation of mankind. Great skill in judicial astrology was attributed by the ancients to Tiberius, and it is not likely that he escaped the intellectual contagions of his age; but we must be cautious in refusing to concede the possession of a truly scientific temperament to men of his age, or of much later ages, solely because they were credited by their contemporaries with sharing in what we now believe to be frivolous superstitions.

Nearly a century after the death of Tiberius, Apuleius, the compiler and in part author of the famous _Golden Ass_, was accused before a Roman Proconsul of magic, and of having bewitched the somewhat elderly lady who had become his wife; his defence is still extant. There are many interesting points in it, not the least interesting being the inclusion of Moses in a list of eminent magicians; but the most striking features of the apology are the contemptuous way in which Apuleius deals with the current superstitions as to magic, and the indications that he was pursuing research on lines which would now be recognized as scientific--“You say I use mirrors; certainly I do; so did Archimedes. I am studying their influence on light and heat. You say that I have collected strange fishes; yes, I am interested in comparing the structure of their skeletons.” It is strange how old are modern superstitions. Among the charges against Apuleius was one of hypnotism, based upon the fact that a boy had been seen to fall senseless in his presence. Apuleius had no difficulty in proving that the boy was an epileptic. Hypnotism is still uncanny to the non-scientific world.

Tiberius could not study astronomy or any other branch of science in his own day without being suspected of magic and divination; the things were almost mutually convertible terms, but the ancients had made considerable advances in the direction of the applied sciences, and had found out many working hypotheses, which were strictly scientific so far as the then sources of information allowed, even though further researches have proved them to be untenable. We should do injustice to Tiberius if we believed, as his contemporaries were ready to believe, that he spent his time at Rhodes in casting the horoscopes of himself and all other persons in whose destiny he had reason to be interested; but at the same time we must admit that the dividing line between science and pure charlatanry scarcely existed in those days, and that men such as Simon Magus and Elymas the Sorcerer frequently mistook the nature of their own proficiencies. Along with much sound astronomical knowledge, and with many equally sound results of experimental research, the East sent through various channels to the West a strange farrago of religion and so-called magical arts in which the esoteric learning of the Magicians, the Chaldeans, the Jews, the Greeks, the Egyptians, and even the Brahmins, was monstrously mixed up with popular superstitions and wilful imposture. The strong common sense which Tiberius exhibited in his public actions at a later time forbids us to believe that he lost his head at this period in hazardous and illusory speculations. We know that he took his place as an ordinary citizen of a free Greek town, and joined in the debates of its assembly, that he attended the lectures of the professors, and that his chosen associate was Thrasyllus, “a mathematician.” There is a pleasant story to the effect that Tiberius once went to a schoolmaster at Rhodes who called himself Diogenes, and was used to lecture on Sabbath days, asking for the honour of a special audience. Diogenes did not even admit him, but sent a verbal message by a dirty little slave boy, bidding him come back on the seventh day. Tiberius took no notice of the rudeness at the time, but when, after he had become Emperor, he was told that Diogenes was waiting outside his door at Rome in order to convey his congratulations, he sent out to tell him to come back in seven years.

For some time Tiberius lived contentedly in his retreat; he was visited by all men of any distinction, who were passing on their way between Rome and the East; he maintained a friendly correspondence with Augustus, and doubtless concluded that he was at liberty to do what Horace had so repeatedly urged upon his friends, “to live to himself.” But this life of moral introspection and scientific investigation was not allowed to last; Tiberius was rudely waked out of his dream, and learned that men who have once held a great position in the world cannot abdicate. Sinister influences were at work; not only did his own life seem to be in danger, but there were signs that the government of Augustus was itself in peril.

VIII

The Return of Tiberius

During the first five years of his residence at Rhodes, Tiberius, though he abstained from public business, was still the second person in the Empire, and still protected by the awe-inspiring atmosphere which hung round a Roman Tribune. He was, indeed, obliged to reside in the interior of the island in order to avoid the interruption caused by throngs of unwelcome visitors, who were anxious to pay their court to the great personage. Suetonius has two stories of his residence at Rhodes, which show him in no unamiable light. Tiberius once, in drawing up his programme for the day, had happened to say that he proposed to visit all the sick persons in the city. Zealous attendants immediately went out, and ordered all the invalids of the town to be taken into a public portico, and arranged according to the nature of their maladies. Tiberius was taken by surprise and considerably embarrassed, but recovered himself, spoke to each one, and apologized for the mistake individually, even to the humblest. On one occasion only he used his official position; when he was attending a disputation at the University the wrangling one day became so fierce that a heated professor made a violent personal attack upon Tiberius, as unfairly supporting his opponent. Tiberius quietly withdrew, and returned in official splendour with his train, summoned the intemperate professor in due legal form, and sent him to prison to meditate upon the enormity of provoking a breach of the Roman peace.

At the end of the five years Tiberius might well think that he could return to Rome without being suspected of a wish to exercise political influence, so plainly had he shown his indifference to public life. He had left his son at Rome, and there were others to whom he was attached; there were the three children of his brother Drusus, with their charming mother Antonia; and in spite of their awkward mutual relations, he had a genuine affection for Augustus. The family entanglements had been straightened out; Julia was in exile; the young Cæsars were beginning to take their part in public affairs. Surely their stepfather could live in dignified retirement at Rome, ready to advise and help, when counsel and assistance were demanded of him, but otherwise unmolested and unobserved.

This, however, was not to be. Augustus himself had acquiesced in the departure of Tiberius, if not before, certainly after the revelation of the intemperance of Julia, and was not improbably touched by the consideration which Tiberius had shown for his personal difficulties in the matter. But Livia had been bitterly disappointed; all her schemes had come to nothing just at the moment when the victory seemed to have been won, and her son had been declared heir-apparent, as far as the constitutional forms of Rome permitted. Consequently when Tiberius wrote, expressing an intention of returning to Rome and his wish to see his relatives, further declaring his determination to acquiesce in whatever arrangements Augustus might be disposed to make for the advancement of the young Cæsars, and pointing to his voluntary retirement as irrefutable evidence of the fact that he wished to stand out of their way, he received an exceedingly unamiable answer, and was told that he need not concern himself about the affairs of relatives, whom he had been so very ready to abandon. We are not told whether this letter was written by Livia or by Augustus; but it was surely written at the instance of Livia. No man was more willing to forgive and to forget than the Emperor; his whole life had been a record of successful conciliation of declared enemies; both by policy and inclination he was averse to the maintenance of personal feuds. Livia, too, may have seen in the stiffness of Tiberius a reason for advancing the young Cæsars, over whom, as more pliable, she hoped to secure influence.

This letter changed the position of Tiberius. His retirement was no longer voluntary; he had become an exile, and the difficulties of his situation were only slightly modified by the concession of “a free legation,” a nominal office frequently bestowed upon men of wealth and distinction, who wished to travel with the advantages attached to an official position. Tiberius, in fact, had to learn that there are responsibilities and positions which render abdication impossible; that having once been acting Commander-in-Chief and Prime Minister, he must always be a political personage, a force to be reckoned with; and if this fact was not apparent to him, it was very apparent to the advisers of the young Cæsars, and the worshippers of the rising sun.

During the absence of Tiberius these young men had been carefully put through the training, which had been successful in the case of the stepsons of Augustus. Caius, the elder, was now nineteen years of age, Lucius two or three years younger; there was a third brother, Agrippa, born after his father’s death, and still a child, showing signs of intractability. Like Tiberius and Drusus, they were sent to learn the organization of the Empire and the administration of the Roman Legions. Lucius went to Gaul, on his way to Spain; Caius was sent to the East, and like Tiberius was entrusted with the management of the difficult concerns of the Parthian frontier; he was provided with an adviser in the person of Marcus Lollius.

The habit of scientific veracity is unknown to the Roman historians; any fact is good enough for them, provided it makes good copy, and can be dealt with in a picturesque sentence or neat epigram. They pay little attention to the consecutive order of events, are not always careful to distinguish between persons of the same name, and are rather attracted than otherwise by an opportunity of attributing contradictory qualities to the same person; the time at which a thing was done is of little importance to them, the person by whom it was done of equally little; a good story is to them a good story, and nothing more; if its effect is increased by hanging it on the name of a well known man, they seldom stop to inquire whether he can be justly implicated in the events narrated; consequently it is always agreeable to find their statements corroborated by undesigned coincidences. Paterculus and Suetonius agree in telling us that the last two years of the life of Tiberius at Rhodes were made a burden to him by the sinister influence of Marcus Lollius, but they leave us in some doubt as to who this Marcus Lollius really was, whether he was the same man who was Consul in B.C. 21, and Commander-in-chief in Northern Gaul in B.C. 16, whether the Consul and the General were two different persons, and whether the adviser of Caius Cæsar was not the Consul but his son.

The poet Horace addressed one of his odes and two of his epistles to a Lollius. It has been generally assumed, on the ground of a misunderstood allusion, that the ode was written for the father, and the two letters for the son; comparison of the three shows that they must have been written to the same person, and that that person could not have been Consul in B.C. 21. Letters and ode alike contain advice which Horace could not have addressed even to a man his equal in rank and of his own age without a risk of putting a summary end to any friendship that might have existed between them, still less to a Consular, and possibly a senior. Horace tells us definitely that he was forty-four years of age in the year when Lollius and Lepidus were consuls; the family of Lollius had been hitherto undistinguished; the name appears on no previous occasion in the consular lists, nor had the man himself done anything to suggest him as a fit recipient of premature honours. The legal age for admission to the Consulship was forty-three, and though the law was frequently broken in times of revolution, or in favour of candidates of the Imperial House, Augustus, whose policy was to restore the old as far as it was not incompatible with the new, was not likely to break the law in favour of a man who was not inevitable. It is not likely that Lollius the Consul was one of those young men who were rapidly pushed through the routine of office, because they had claims which could not be disregarded, or because it was necessary to conciliate their families. Horace could not have written, as he did write, to the man who was Consul in B.C. 21.

The second of the two letters included in the collection was certainly written in B.C. 21; the date is fixed by an allusion to the fact that Augustus was at the time away demanding the restoration of the Eagles from the Parthians. The person to whom it was addressed was about to become the companion of some young man of distinction, probably Drusus, for Tiberius was at this time absent with Augustus, and on his return passed under the tutelage of Agrippa, so far as he was not in the hands of Augustus himself. The advice which Horace gives could not be applicable to a man old enough to be Consul, and therefore not in a subordinate position to his charge; but it is strictly applicable to a young man who was to be the companion of another young man, his superior in rank or position. Everything in the letter indicates the youth of Lollius; he was to share in the athletic amusements of his friend; the temptations, which he is to resist, are the temptations of a young man. The advice given is excellent, and might be profitably studied by any young man of the present day, who happens to find himself in a similar situation; some of it is distinctly personal, and tells us what kind of a young man this Lollius was. Horace begins by addressing him as “liberrime Lolli,” “most independent Lollius,” and indicates that one of his dangers is undue sensitiveness to the imputation of servility. He concludes with some general advice not specially applicable to the particular occasion: “In the midst of all you will read the works of learned men, and strictly enquire of them how you may be able to live your life in comfort, whether you are always to be harassed and excited by a sense of poverty, excessive anxiety, and the expectation of but moderate affluence, whether virtue is acquired by learning or given by nature, what dispels care, what puts you on good terms with yourself, what calms and purifies, honour or the pleasures of gain, or the side road, and the path of the unobserved.” We should be at liberty to infer from this that the good qualities of Lollius were balanced by an irritable ambition and a love of money.

The other epistle to Lollius, though he is addressed with mock solemnity in the first line as “most mighty Lollius,” is clearly written to a boy: “while you are spouting Homer at Rome I have read him over again at Præneste.” The recitation of the Homeric poems was an early step in the educational course of the Romans, and preceded the technical course in rhetoric. At the end of the letter Horace says: “Now is the time, boy, to drink in the words of wisdom with a clean heart; present yourself now to the higher influences.” Horace begins with drawing moral lessons from the Homer which he has been reading, and then passes on to general advice: “Don’t wait to enter on the path of virtue, don’t put off your moral discipline, or the time will go by,” “The man who is a slave to cupidity or anxiety cannot enjoy anything,” “Despise sensual pleasures; sensual pleasure is bought with pain and carries a curse,” “The greedy man is always a poor man; fix a limit to your desires,” “The Sicilian tyrants never discovered a worse torture than envy,” “Anger is a short fit of madness; control your temper, it must be slave or despot; bridle it, bind it with chains.”

These might seem to be mere general moralizings, applicable to anybody, but we have already had some of them in the previous letter, and they occur again in the ode addressed to Lollius.

“Lest you should happen to think that the words which I fit to music will perish, I would have you to remember that though Homer stands first, other poets are not unknown. Many heroes have lived and died besides those commemorated by Homer, but their names are lost and their deeds forgotten, because they never found their inspired bard; therefore I will not permit your many virtues, Lollius, to pass unmentioned in my pages. You have an acute intellect, which preserves its balance whether things go well or ill. The man who punishes dishonest avarice, abstaining from money the universal tempter, and is Consul not for one year only, but whenever the good and honest prefer honour to bribes, flings away the gifts of corruption with lofty countenance, and victoriously carries his arms through opposing squadrons. It is not the man with large possessions that you will rightly call happy; he more correctly claims the name who knows how to use the gifts of the gods wisely, and can bear the hardships of poverty and dreads wickedness worse than death; such an one has no fear of dying for the friends he loves or his fatherland.” Even if we admit that the rendering of the tenth and eleventh stanzas of this ode is beset with difficulties, there is no question about the last two with their praise of poverty.

The allusion to the Consulship has tempted commentators to infer that the ode was addressed to Lollius, the father, but it is just as likely, and on other accounts more likely, that the complimentary allusion was made to the son. “Your father is Consul this year; you will be Consul for many years if you abstain from certain temptations.”

In fact, all three poems seem to have been written at about the same time, viz., in the Consulship of the elder Lollius, B.C. 21, whose son was still a boy when he served under Augustus in Spain, his service simply amounting to being present in his father’s company during the campaign.

The situation, in short, seems to have been that Horace was attracted, as other middle-aged men have been attracted, by a spirited, clever, and athletic lad, who seemed to have a great future before him, but whose character was spoiled by three serious defects--a violent temper, restless ambition, cupidity. The attraction was sufficiently mutual to allow Horace to give good advice, which he was careful to present in a complimentary form, but without success, for Paterculus, speaking of the Lollius who was general in Northern Gaul in B.C. 16, and suffered a severe defeat, losing the Eagle of the Fifth Legion, describes him as having been “on all occasions more greedy of money than of acting properly, steeped in vice though a consummate dissembler.” A page or two later he speaks of the misdeeds and death of Marcus Lollius, when acting as adviser of Caius Cæsar in the East.