Part 26

Again, we should be mistaken if we attributed to the whole Jewish race distributed throughout the civilized world the same sentiments which prevailed among the bigoted Jews of Jerusalem. Even at Jerusalem, where the introduction of the Roman standards invariably produced a riot, the priests of the Temple accepted the offerings made by the different Roman generals who passed by or occupied the Sacred City; and the omission of a Gentile commander to show this form of respect to the one God was somewhat inconsistently resented. At Alexandria especially free intercourse with men who represented the wisdom of the Egyptians and the Greeks modified the conceptions of orthodox but not bigoted Jews, and the spirituality of Judaism steadily tended to prevail over its ceremonial exclusiveness. Learned Jews enjoyed as wide reputations as other learned men, and were in communication with learned Greeks; Tiberius himself is said to have nicknamed Apion the Greek, to whose anti-judaic treatise Josephus replied, “the rattle of the universe.”

But while on the one hand a reformed and spiritualized Judaism was tending to become the effective religion of the Empire, the debased Judaism was joining hands with the other demoralizing superstitions of the East. No one who has read the Acts of the Apostles and the Epistles of St. Paul attentively can deny that if there were spiritually-minded Jews like the great Apostle, there were also Jews who practised exorcisms and divination, and who studied “curious books.” We know little of the peculiar tenets of the Chaldæans and the Magians, equally little of the Egyptians, except as worshippers of Isis, but we know that fortune-telling and witchcraft were practised by them, no less than dignified inquiries into the laws of nature, so far as their imperfect means of observation permitted. The dividing line between Thrasyllus the “mathematician,” the friend of Tiberius, and those men whom foolish Libo consulted, would have been difficult to draw, science was not to be clear of superstition for many ages, but there were respectable astrologers, genuine, though perhaps mistaken, searchers after truth, alongside of the disreputable charlatans who interpreted dreams and told fortunes and held sway over the dissolute imaginations of needy profligates by means of conjuring tricks and skilfully organized conspiracies with numerous confederates. Even the purest of Jewish sects--if indeed they can be called a sect--the Essenians, laid stress upon their powers of predicting events by means of the stars.

Polytheism was in fact tolerant so long as an enemy had not declared himself; it was no sooner conscious of an enemy than it persecuted, and the persecution was no less a persecution because it was prompted by mixed motives. There may have been good reason for mistrusting the influence of the diviners upon persons of weak mind, for suspecting them of helping to bring about the accomplishment of their predictions by the use of poisons, and of prompting plots in whose success they had a personal interest; but it was also inevitable that the emergence of a new religious attitude should alarm, and that its professors should be subject to attack. In times of popular excitement the monotheists were persecuted by the enlightened rationalists no less than by the orthodox polytheists, and many motives over and above religious intolerance contributed to sharpen the laws against the Jew and the diviner. Not the least of these was the dread of poison, a very lively terror even in modern times, till the accumulations of chemical and medical knowledge restricted the sphere of operations of mysterious drugs; and there may well have been some foundation for the superstitious dread of secret poisoning by which many of the ancients were affected. Not only was the charlatan ready to magnify his own powers, and to ascribe to his spells and incantations deaths from purely natural causes, but the older civilizations of the East had doubtless preserved many secrets of pharmacy which were skilfully used by adepts to impress the imagination of the vulgar.

At this very day the medicine men and women, the Papaloi and Mamaloi of the Black Republic of Hayti, exert a power above the laws by their knowledge and use of poisons, from which even the educated white man cannot escape. Before we condemn the Roman Senate for its intolerance of magicians and its superstitious dread of their powers, we must place ourselves in their position, limit ourselves to their knowledge; and again we must be modest enough to remember that we still consider it necessary to protect the ignorant dupe from the fortune-teller, that the law is not unfrequently called into action in such cases, and that the clients of the spiritualist and diviner of to-day are to be found in all classes, and not exclusively among the poor and ignorant.

While the Senate thus endeavoured to repress alien worships, it continued to protect the sanctity of its own ritual; vestal virgins were appointed in due form, though with increasing difficulty, as the solemn form of marriage necessary for the proper parentage of a vestal had fallen into disfavour. Considerable interest attached to the case of a Senator named Servius Maluginensis, who had a claim to the Proconsulship of Asia, and wished to evade the restrictions which were imposed on him by the fact that he was Flamen Dialis, sublimest priest of Jupiter. The ancient ritual forbade the Flamen Dialis to leave the city for more than a day and a night in succession, and Servius therefore attempted to prove that the ritual was obsolete, and that exceptions had been allowed. The Senate discussed the case with due solemnity, and then referred it to Tiberius, who in his turn remitted it to the College of Pontiffs. Their decision was against Servius, and the Province of Asia fell to the Senator next on the roll.

A question of even greater importance, partly religious in its character, required the decision of the Senate. Numerous Greek towns, chiefly situated in the islands of the Ægean and along the coasts of Asia Minor, had abused the rights of Sanctuary attached to some of their temples. Not only were the rights of property imperilled by the ready shelter given to runaway slaves, but the concourse of unruly ruffians assembled in these insular Alsatias threatened to disturb the public peace. A sanctuary, if conveniently situated, might easily assume the character of a nest of pirates; the Greek genius for brigandage has always been as remarkable as the Greek gift for preaching morality. An attempt to suppress the sanctuaries led to protests, and deputations from the towns concerned pleaded their cause before the Senate. The arguments used in defence of the sanctuaries are interesting, because they show a sense of continuity of government from the times of Alexander to those of Tiberius. The claims were partly based on mythological grounds, but more effectively on recognitions granted by Alexander, and afterwards by Roman Proconsuls. The maintenance of the sanctuaries was regarded as an honourable distinction, and this aspect of the claims was pressed rather than the material advantages.

The abuse, however, was too alarming to be tolerated. One temple alone, that of Æsculapius at Pergamus, which from other evidence seems to have assumed the character of a school of medicine, retained its privileges; the others were dismissed with honourable compliments, and it was ordered that a copy of the Senatorial decree should be inscribed on brass, and placed in a conspicuous position in the temples concerned. Subsequently other sanctuaries were similarly dealt with. The credit of thus dealing with a serious abuse is ascribed by Suetonius to Tiberius, and it is possible that, though the actual decision was made in the Senate, because the towns involved were in a Senatorial Province, the initiative came from the Emperor himself. If Tiberius was thus severe in correcting a time-honoured abuse, he had been no less liberal in remitting taxation and furnishing relief to numerous cities in the same part of the world, which had suffered severely from an earthquake. In fact, though he was careful to observe the constitutional forms, he kept a watchful eye upon the Senatorial administration, and supplied the necessary stimulation for its corporate conscience.

Reference has already been made to the practice of supplementing the resources of impoverished Senators, and to the severity with which Tiberius treated such cases. The Senate was only too willing to vote public money to provide pensions for its members. Tiberius recognized the obligation, but he insisted that the beneficiary should make out a good case, and be able to demonstrate that his distress was due to misfortune, not to thriftlessness. The case of Hortalus, grandson of Cicero’s rival, Hortensius, affords an illustration both of the severity of Tiberius and of the curiously domestic character of the Senate.

In the year 16 A.D. Hortalus rose in his place in the Senate, having posted his four sons at the door, where they could be seen by all; he then spoke as follows, fixing his eyes alternately on the statue of Hortensius standing among the orators, and that of Augustus:--“It was not by my own will, but at the suggestion of the Prince, that I begot and acknowledged these children, whose number and tender years you behold; and indeed my ancestors had deserved that I should have successors. For I, who owing to the revolutionary times could neither inherit the ancestral property of my house, nor earn money, nor win the affections of the people, nor train myself in eloquence, should have had enough if my poverty had neither shamed nor burdened others. At the command of the Emperor I married a wife. Behold the stock and progeny of all those consuls and dictators. I do not say this to disparage anybody else, but to win your compassion. The offices that you confer, Cæsar, will be at your service while you reign; meanwhile defend the great-grandchildren of Quintus Hortensius, the children fostered by the sainted Augustus, from want.” In spite of the mendacity of this statement--for on the father’s side, at any rate, the family of Hortensius could only claim the credit of two consulships and no dictatorships--the appeal was heard with favour by the Senate, till Tiberius intervened with these words:--“If all the poverty-stricken begin to come here and demand money for their children, the applicants will never be satiated, and the public purse will run dry. And indeed it was certainly never contemplated by our ancestors when they allowed Senators to leave the matter in hand, and move amendments for the public benefit, that we should endeavour to increase our private fortunes in this place in such a manner as to render the Senate and the Princes unpopular, whether they granted or refused the largess. This is not a humble request; it is an impudent demand, unseasonable, and unprecedented, to rise when the Senate are assembled for the discussion of other matters, and do violence to the kindness of the Senate by urging the number and age of one’s children, and to pass on the same violence to me, and as it were break open the treasury, which we shall have to supplement by injustice, if we exhaust it in courting popularity. Money was given to you, Hortalus, by the sainted Augustus, but without previous application, and certainly not on the terms that once given it should be always given. Industry will slacken, indolence will gain strength, if men’s hopes and fears are not to depend on themselves, if all are confidently to look for resources from outside, useless to themselves and a burden to us.” Tiberius was clearly in the right, but the authorities whom Tacitus consulted evidently thought that Hortalus had been hardly used, for the narrative is continued:--“Although these and similar words were listened to with favour by those whose custom it is to praise all that falls from the lips of Princes, honourable and dishonourable alike, the majority received them in silence or with subdued murmurs. And Tiberius perceived this, and after a short silence said that he had given Hortalus his answer. However, if the Senate thought well, he would give each of his children of the male sex two hundred thousand sesterces (about £3,000). The rest expressed their thanks. Hortalus was silent, either from consternation or because he retained something of his ancestral nobility even in his indigence. Nor did Tiberius show him any further compassion, although the family of Hortensius fell into disgraceful poverty.”

The gift made by Tiberius was private and personal; he did not make use of the public money for a purpose of which he had expressed strong disapproval. The incident is chiefly interesting as indicating that, in spite of the rude shocks given to the Senatorial system by Julius Cæsar, the body had recovered its evil tradition of assuming that it was at liberty to use the public purse to meet the private necessities of its members. Hortalus was clearly a well-known spendthrift.

The Senate, in fact, tended to become more and more a high court of justice, in which its members and high officials were tried by their peers, the cases being either political or such private cases as had by long tradition fallen to the Senate as the guardian of the morality of the privileged orders. It was tenacious of its privileges, careless of its wider responsibilities. Tiberius treated it with formal respect, and did his best to make it worthy of its opportunities; if he could have avoided interfering with its administration of its own provinces, he would have done so, but he was not prepared to submit the provincials to misgovernment in order to maintain the prestige of the Senate, and the misgovernment of Proconsuls was by no means a thing of the past. Tiberius, like Augustus, supplied himself with an inner Council of the Senate, and it is possible that on most occasions this inner Council represented the whole body; but he did not restrict himself to Senatorial Counsellors, and we are told that, in dealing with provincial questions, he was always careful to provide himself with the expert evidence of men who knew the localities concerned.

Though the Senate could not shake itself free from the traditions of its existence, and always represented the great families of the City of Rome rather than Italy or the Empire, except in so far as it provided the personnel of the Supreme Court of Appeal, it was curiously indifferent to municipal matters. The city was policed by the Prefect of the city, an official appointed by the Emperor, who held office for long periods, and it was guarded by troops commanded by the Emperor. The rank of Senator eventually became little more than an honourable distinction, though from time to time the body possessed sufficient coherence to bid for the power which it had lost, and even for short periods to wield it. The distinction between Senatorial and Imperial Provinces did not last long, the Imperial administration proving better suited to the needs of the Empire.

Many writers infected with the spirit of the nineteenth century have advanced the opinion that the Roman Empire collapsed because the Romans never hit upon representative government. It is curious that Augustus very nearly effected this supreme achievement. He at one time proposed to hold simultaneous elections of the Roman magistrates in all the cities of Italy; the names of the candidates were to be posted up, the votes were to be collected in ballot boxes, which were to be sent to Rome sealed up, and afterwards counted in the city itself. This scheme happily came to nothing, for the strength of the Roman Empire lay in its respect for local government. The Provincial Governors were the supreme umpires in their Provinces, but they did not concern themselves with the details of local administration; the constitutions of Athens, and even Sparta, continued to work even after these towns were included in the Province of Achaia, and similarly throughout the Empire original institutions were left to do their previous work. As we have seen, the Governors of Provinces did not even control the organization by which the Imperial taxes were collected. The local life of the Empire was strong; Antioch and Alexandria, even the new cities of Gaul, bowed reluctantly to Rome, and in course of time the position of the Patriarch of Rome was not to be that of Primate of Christianity till many a battle had been fought, and in fact the Popes never succeeded to the full heritage of the Emperors. The Empire was the bond of union and the peacemaker between an infinite number of self-governing units, it provided a supreme arbitrator, a Supreme Court of Appeal. The Empire, in fact, was peace; it was not a system of local as well as universal administration. The introduction of representative government, the substitution of an Elective Parliament at Rome for the Senate, would have killed the vigorous local governments, and would not have improved the administration of the Empire. Under such rulers as Augustus and Tiberius, the Flavians and the Antonines, the organization of the Roman Empire probably reached the limits of perfectibility; it would not have been improved by collecting deputies from all parts of the world, and expecting them to be responsible for the executive. Representative institutions have not prevented official corruption or no less deadly incompetence, nor has the absence of really free parliaments impeded the advance of some modern nations; those diseases of the body politic from which the Roman Empire is held to have suffered in a special degree, corruption and official formalism, have not been unknown in communities blessed with Houses of Representatives duly elected and accredited. A multitude of counsellors neither protects an Empire from corruption nor ensures wisdom in the conduct of its affairs, while the conscience of any corporate body is notoriously duller than that of each individual of which it is composed. The Roman Emperors were wise in respecting local institutions, and in not imposing a strict system of centralization, for it is unfortunately impossible to retrace our steps, and when once the local life has been killed, it cannot be revived. Decentralization as a matter of mechanical convenience is possible after the central authority has drawn to itself all the prestige of political life, but this is purely administrative decentralization; when once the central government has absorbed the vitality of local political life, it cannot give back that which it has taken away. It was good for the Empire that the Senate should not exclusively attract the ambition of capable men from the Provinces, and on the other hand that the energies of the Emperors should be distributed over a wide area. The Emperors had no time for universal tyranny, and the extravagancies of Caligula, Nero, and Domitian were scarcely felt outside Rome itself; they certainly did nothing to shake the foundations of that fabric which had been so wisely laid by the first two Emperors.

XVII

Sejanus

One of the most trusted public servants of Augustus was a Roman Equestrian named Seius Strabo; he hailed from an Italian, or rather a Tuscan, city, his family having been long settled at Vulsinii, and was thus exposed at Rome to the reproach of being a “new man.” Seius Strabo was content with administrative work, and did not aspire to high senatorial rank. Augustus made him commander of the Prætorian cohorts which formed the garrison of Italy, and afterwards entrusted him with the most important office in his gift, for he made him Governor of Egypt, that valuable appanage of the Roman Emperors upon which the corn supply of the capital depended. Seius married into the Junian gens, the gens of Brutus the Liberator, and his son could in consequence claim affinity through his mother with the most honourable Roman houses. This son was adopted by a member of the Ælian gens, and thus became known as Ælius Sejanus. He married a daughter of Apicius the Epicure, a very wealthy man, but notorious rather than distinguished.

The young Sejanus enjoyed the confidence of Augustus as his father had done. He succeeded him in command of the Prætorians, and was made adviser to Caius Cæsar when he went to the East. In this capacity he did his best to counteract the mischievous counsels of Marcus Lollius, and won the gratitude of Tiberius, which he soon improved into a personal friendship. As Sejanus was made his father’s colleague in B.C. 14, soon afterwards succeeding him in the sole command of the Prætorian guards, he cannot have been much younger than Tiberius, for he would hardly have been associated with his father before he was twenty years of age, and in that case Tiberius would have been his senior by only eight years. Even if we assume that Sejanus became his father’s colleague at the age of sixteen, an age at which young Romans commonly first entered on active service, he would still be only twelve years younger than Tiberius; but it is very improbable that so young a man would have been entrusted with the command of the Prætorians. The question is of some importance, for the language of the historians, perhaps unintentionally, conveys the impression that Sejanus was a comparatively youthful favourite of the Emperor’s, who owed his advancement to a blind partiality, whereas his acquaintance with Tiberius had been almost lifelong, even if we assume that he was little more than a boy when he first commanded the Prætorian guards. It is far more probable that there were only three or four years between the two men, and that the relations between Sejanus and Tiberius were comparable to those between Augustus and Agrippa.

Paterculus, who admired Sejanus, is curiously apologetic about the obscurity of his family. He suggests that it was not so obscure as was generally supposed, and again that obscurity of descent is no bar to admission to the public service; he quotes very ancient examples, and the more modern ones of Marius, Cicero, and Asinius Pollio.

In fact the Revolution, which had broken the political power of the old Roman aristocracy, had been succeeded by a reaction in favour of great names and exalted lineages, which would have given the Senate a new lease of power had that body been capable of effective work. The History of Livy, the Fasti of Ovid, the later books of the Æneid, had all combined to throw a glamour over the great Roman families, and the new world of capable officials recruited from Italy and other parts of the Empire found itself despised at Rome by the futile descendants of legendary ancestors. We are told that the Emperor Caligula was ashamed of his grandfather, Marcus Agrippa, and was offended if reminded of his descent from the ignoble Vipsanian stock. Tiberius himself was evidently inclined to be a formalist in matters affecting the aristocracy, and though he drew his trusted servants from all classes and races, the deference which he paid to the Senate and the old constitutional magistrates, along with his careful observance of the old legal ritual, tended to foster aristocratic pretensions.

To the memoir-writing Senators Sejanus was an upstart, and in spite of the recent precedents of Agrippa and Mæcenas and other capable colleagues of Augustus, the strict aristocracy could see nothing but evil in the “new man.” On the other hand, a large party in the Senate, representatives of the new hierarchy of officials, accepted Sejanus, as Agrippa had been accepted; they followed the lead of Tiberius, and after the death of Drusus in A.D. 23 were prepared to treat Sejanus as the second person in the Empire.