Part 20

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

XIII

Tacitus and Tiberius

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

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

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

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

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

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