Part 23

On the day of the meeting of the Senate Libo was carried in a litter to the doors, either pretending illness or worn out with anxiety and vexation; he leaned on his brother, and appealed to Tiberius by word and gesture, who for his part preserved the immobility proper to his position. In due time the Emperor read the declarations aloud and the names of their authors, in such a way as not to indicate his own opinion. By this time Trio was not the only accuser; Catus was there, Fonteius Agrippa and Vibius Serenus, Senators of repute, all anxiously offering information, and wrangling between themselves as to which of them was to have the honour of making the speech for the prosecution. Libo had no defender. At last Vibius was allowed to state the charges; there seemed to be little reason for alarm in them. Among other things Libo had asked his diviners whether he should have enough money to cover the Appian Way with coin from Rome to Brindisi.

But in spite of such abundant evidence of folly, the audience were horror stricken when a book was produced, written in Libo’s own hand, in which the names of the Emperor and leading Senators were found with strange and occult marks appended. This gentleman, who wanted to converse with the dead, was, if a fool, a dangerous fool. It was decided to question his slaves; but as they could not legally bear evidence against their master, it was necessary to transfer them to another owner, and a remand was granted in order that this might be done. This skilful evasion of the law of evidence is attributed by Tacitus to the cunning inventiveness of Tiberius; but it is not probable that the Romans had waited so long to discover a solution of a frequently recurring difficulty. Libo went home, entrusting his last entreaties to the Emperor to the care of a relative. A guard was set round his house; the soldiers were even heard and seen in the outer hall. Libo ordered himself a magnificent dinner, but even in the midst of the sumptuous repast his craven spirit gave way; he handed a sword to his slaves and implored them to kill him. In the confusion that ensued the lights were overturned, and the miserable man succeeded in taking his own life in the funereal darkness. As soon as his death was made known the soldiers departed.

In spite of the suicide of the delinquent the case was continued on the following day; but Tiberius took an oath that he would have asked for the culprit’s life, even though proved guilty, had he not anticipated the sentence. Libo’s goods were divided between his accusers, and extraordinary prætorships were given to such of them as were of senatorial rank. Various Senators then proposed measures indicating their opinion that the case had been a very grave one. Libo’s image was no longer to be included among the family busts; no Scribonius was ever again to be called Drusus; a public thanksgiving was to be held; gifts were to be offered to Jupiter, Mars and Concord; the day on which Libo killed himself was to be a holiday for ever. Decrees of the Senate were also passed, expelling “mathematicians” and magians from Italy; two of their number were summarily executed.

Tacitus stigmatizes all these proposals, so strangely disproportionate to the event as it appears to us, as acts of adulation to Tiberius; but after all Tiberius was not the only person concerned, nor indeed chiefly concerned. There is no evidence of a plot against Tiberius more than against the other Senators, whose names were included in the mysterious notebook.

As a matter of fact, on this occasion as on many subsequent occasions, the Senators lost their heads; they, and not Tiberius, were responsible for the excesses of the sentence and the subsequent transactions. The fear of magic was strong upon them, as their subsequent action in driving the practisers of magic arts from Italy demonstrates. They did not succeed in doing so, and similar equally futile senatorial decrees recur again and again. These solemn rulers of the world behaved like little children in their terror of the black art; they believed in incantations, divinations, signs and wonders, spells and imprecations far more strongly than they did in the precepts of the Stoic and the Epicurean. Here and there we find one of the ancients superior to the prevailing superstitions, but only here and there; and in the Roman palaces, no less than at the court of Louis XIV., the plotter and the poisoner were hand in hand with the crafty charlatans, or self-deceived miracle workers, who haunted the private apartments of men and women of rank.

Tiberius could not have resisted the panic of the Senate on this occasion, even if he had had the opportunity; we shall find magic a couple of years later playing an important part in a more notable prosecution.

Libo was evidently a profligate fool, and not likely to have been implicated in a serious plot; but it is not impertinent to ask where Tacitus got his detailed information; the case is hardly mentioned by other authors. The scene of the suicide is graphic, the authority whom Tacitus uses is clearly in sympathy with Libo. Now Libo was, as we have seen, related to the Julians, and it is at least probable that a version of the story was supplied by a correspondent to Agrippina, who was at the time in Germany, and so became incorporated in the memoirs which she handed down to her daughter, who again used it in the memoirs which Tacitus tells us that he saw.

The two “mathematicians” who were summarily punished suffered different penalties: Pituarius was thrown from the Tarpeian rock, Marcius was proceeded against “in the manner of our forefathers”; the trumpet was sounded, calling the centuries to the Campus Martius, the unhappy man was then bound to a stake, and beaten with rods till he was dead, after which his head was cut off; these privileges he enjoyed as being a Roman citizen infected with a foreign superstition. It is to be hoped that he really was a charlatan, and not a genuine man of science, who paid the common penalty for being in advance of his age.

XV

Germanicus and Piso

The death of Germanicus occupies a larger space in the annals of Tacitus than the actual importance of the event would seem to require. The space given to the transactions in the East by which it was preceded, and the trial of Piso by which it was followed, amounts to nearly a sixth part of the books dealing with the reign of Tiberius; or perhaps it would be more correct to say that the aspects of the premature death of Germanicus, which were really important, receive small attention in comparison with those which were less important.

The death of Germanicus opened the way to the long series of plots which rendered the life of Tiberius intolerable, and eventually overwhelmed him in the disastrous events of the year 30 A.D. When Germanicus started for the East in the year 18 A.D., he was the destined successor of Tiberius, with a possible coadjutor in the person of his first cousin Drusus, the two men being legally brothers by the process of adoption. If Tiberius had any personal preference, he unquestionably inclined to Germanicus, to whom he showed every mark of favour, and whose political training he was now completing by sending him to study the Oriental difficulties of the Empire. Drusus at the same time was promoted to his brother’s former position in the West, the still disturbed provinces on the frontiers of the Rhine and Danube being entrusted to his care. Had both these men lived, there would have been no Sejanus, and probably no Caligula. Tiberius himself would have permanently enjoyed for ever the excellent reputation which he won during the first sixteen years of his reign, but an unkind destiny willed it otherwise.

There was no reason why Tiberius should dislike Germanicus, to whose father, as we have seen, he was attached by an affection remarkable even between brothers, and Germanicus himself had on an occasion, which strongly tested his loyalty, shown that it could stand the test. All the authorities, Paterculus included, speak highly of Germanicus; he was an able general and a lovable man. Drusus was a less attractive character, somewhat rough, severe and passionate, but whatever his weaknesses, he had the merit of being attached to his cousin and nominal elder brother; there is no trace of any jealousy between the two men, and their unity was further cemented by the fact that the sister of Germanicus was the wife of Drusus.

While the three representative men of the Imperial family were thus in harmony, and lived on terms of mutual trust and helpfulness, the case was different with the women. Livia, the widow of Augustus, and Agrippina, the daughter of Julia, were separated by ancient hatreds and fresh causes of offence. If the whole private diary and correspondence of Agrippina had been preserved to us, we should probably be in a position to compare Livia with Madame de Maintenon, as she is exhibited to us in the lively letters of that sturdy little hater, Charlotte Elizabeth, Duchess of Orleans, for the memoirs of Agrippina, filtered through her daughter’s editing, and the mind of a man of letters indicate no want of a proper animosity, no desire to bury old grudges.

Livia did not acquiesce willingly in her diminished glories as dowager; if she had proposed to herself--and there is every reason to suppose that she did so propose--to continue to be the power behind the throne in her son’s reign, as in her husband’s, she was disappointed. While studiously paying every sign of respect to his mother as his mother, and even stretching points in her favour, Tiberius refused to acknowledge her as a politician; such honours as might decorously be paid to the widow of Augustus, such consolations of her affliction as expressions of public sympathy could afford, he readily sanctioned, but he no less resolutely drew the line at the point at which complimentary and consolatory decrees seemed to involve the recognition of a governing Empress Dowager. Few things can have been more distasteful to Livia than the reversion to the Senatorial Constitution attempted by Tiberius. She could no longer inspire “transactions of Cæsar,” to which the Senate was pledged in anticipation, nor was Tiberius inclined to let the foreign policy of Rome slip out of his own hands into that of the Jews and Greeks who enjoyed the confidence of the august lady. A king of Cappadocia, of whom Tiberius disapproved, accepted an invitation from Livia to come to Rome and depend on her influence to win the favour of her son. The result was so disappointing that the aged monarch died of distress of mind; his kingdom was turned into a province. Tiberius would stand no tampering with “native” princes. Nor was Livia allowed to put herself above the laws at Rome. A lady named Urgulania, who was a friend of hers, incurred debts, and was proceeded against in the court of the Prætor Urbanus. She took refuge with Livia, who urged her son to defend the lady’s cause. Tiberius undertook to do so, but by very deliberate walking, and exceptional graciousness to the friends whom he encountered on the way, contrived to arrive too late. Urgulania lost her case, and Livia had to pay her friend’s debt. The Prætor in this case was Lucius Piso. Shortly afterwards this same Urgulania refused to give her evidence in a court of law, and required the officials to take it in her own house, a privilege which belonged to the Vestal virgins. Urgulania was not a Vestal virgin “emerita,” determined to retain the advantages of her previous position with the help of Livia, for we find her later on sending a dagger as a significant hint to a scandalous grandson.

Tiberius was certainly in a very difficult position with regard to his mother. His natural sense of decorum, and possibly his natural affection, made him shrink from the very appearance of treating her with disrespect; but her domineering tendency, encouraged by years of unquestioned sway during her husband’s lifetime, tempted her to exaggerate the real claims which she had upon his dutiful affection; nor were the ladies of her household backward in regretting the change of circumstances, and in pointing out how different things had been in the lifetime of the sainted Augustus. Delicate as they were in any case, the relations between mother and son were rendered still more susceptible to disagreeable incidents by the presence of the aggrieved Agrippina, to whom mother and son alike were detestable usurpers, enjoying as the result of their nefarious intrigues the inalienable rights of the true Julians. Thus both the belligerent parties were opposed to Tiberius; his mother because he prevented her from continuing to enjoy a power which she had long exercised, his daughter-in-law, stepdaughter and niece, because in her opinion he usurped a power which she ought to have enjoyed, and because she had learned to regard her mother as a saint martyred by the agency of her stepfather in the cause of the Julian dynasty. There was no reason why Livia should like Drusus better than Germanicus; both her grandsons were alike leagued with her undutiful son to keep the shadow of petticoats off the Senate House.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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