The Works of Tacitus
tr. by Alfred John Church and William Jackson Brodribb
[1864-1877]
Tacitus: Annals Book 1 [1]
A.D. 14, 15
1. ROME at the beginning was ruled by kings. Freedom and the consulship were
established by Lucius Brutus. Dictatorships were held for a temporary crisis.
The power of the decemvirs did not last beyond two years, nor was the consular
jurisdiction of the military tribunes of long duration. The despotisms of Cinna
and Sulla were brief; the rule of Pompeius and of Crassus soon yielded before
Caesar; the arms of Lepidus and Antonius before Augustus; who, when the world
was wearied by civil strife, subjected it to empire under the title of "Prince."
But the successes and reverses of the old Roman people have been recorded by
famous historians; and fine intellects were not wanting to describe the times
of Augustus, till growing sycophancy scared them away. The histories of Tiberius,
Caius, Claudius, and Nero, while they were in power, were falsified through
terror, and after their death were written under the irritation of a recent
hatred. Hence my purpose is to relate a few facts about Augustus - more particularly
his last acts, then the reign of Tiberius, and all which follows, without either
bitterness or partiality, from any motives to which I am far removed.
2. When after the destruction of Brutus and Cassius there was no longer any
army of the Commonwealth, when Pompeius was crushed in Sicily, and when, with
Lepidus pushed aside and Antonius slain, even the Julian faction had only Caesar
left to lead it, then, dropping the title of triumvir, and giving out that he
was a Consul, and was satisfied with a tribune's authority for the protection
of the people, Augustus won over the soldiers with gifts, the populace with
cheap corn, and all men with the sweets of repose, and so grew greater by degrees,
while he concentrated in himself the functions of the Senate, the magistrates,
and the laws. He was wholly unopposed, for the boldest spirits had fallen in
battle, or in the proscription, while the remaining nobles, the readier they
were to be slaves, were raised the higher by wealth and promotion, so that,
aggrandised by revolution, they preferred the safety of the present to the dangerous
past. Nor did the provinces dislike that condition of affairs, for they distrusted
the government of the Senate and the people, because of the rivalries between
the leading men and the rapacity of the officials, while the protection of the
laws was unavailing, as they were continually deranged by violence, intrigue,
and finally by corruption.
3. Augustus meanwhile, as supports to his despotism, raised to the pontificate
and curule aedileship Claudius Marcellus, his sister's son, while a mere stripling,
and Marcus Agrippa, of humble birth, a good soldier, and one who had shared
his victory, to two consecutive consulships, and as Marcellus soon afterwards
died, he also accepted him as his son-in-law. Tiberius Nero and Claudius Drusus,
his stepsons, he honoured with imperial tides, although his own family was as
yet undiminished. For he had admitted the children of Agrippa, Caius and Lucius,
into the house of the Caesars; and before they had yet laid aside the dress
of boyhood he had most fervently desired, with an outward show of reluctance,
that they should be entitled "princes of the youth," and be consuls-elect. When
Agrippa died, and Lucius Caesar as he was on his way to our armies in Spain,
and Caius while returning from Armenia, still suffering from a wound, were prematurely
cut off by destiny, or by their step-mother Livia's treachery, Drusus too having
long been dead, Nero remained alone of the stepsons, and in him everything tended
to centre. He was adopted as a son, as a colleague in empire and a partner in
the tribunitian power, and paraded through all the armies, no longer through
his mother's secret intrigues, but at her open suggestion. For she had gained
such a hold on the aged Augustus that he drove out as an exile into the island
of Planasia, his only grandson, Agrippa Postumus, who, though devoid of worthy
qualities, and having only the brute courage of physical strength, had not been
convicted of any gross offence. And yet Augustus had appointed Germanicus, Drusus's
offspring, to the command of eight legions on the Rhine, and required Tiberius
to adopt him, although Tiberius had a son, now a young man, in his house; but
he did it that he might have several safeguards to rest on. He had no war at
the time on his hands except against the Germans, which was rather to wipe out
the disgrace of the loss of Quintilius Varus and his army than out of an ambition
to extend the empire, or for any adequate recompense. At home all was tranquil,
and there were magistrates with the same titles; there was a younger generation,
sprung up since the victory of Actium, and even many of the older men had been
born during the civil wars. How few were left who had seen the republic!
4. Thus the State had been revolutionised, and there was not a vestige left
of the old sound morality. Stript of equality, all looked up to the commands
of a sovereign without the least apprehension for the present, while Augustus
in the vigour of life, could maintain his own position, that of his house, and
the general tranquillity. When in advanced old age, he was worn out by a sickly
frame, and the end was near and new prospects opened, a few spoke in vain of
the blessings of freedom, but most people dreaded and some longed for war. The
popular gossip of the large majority fastened itself variously on their future
masters. "Agrippa was savage, and had been exasperated by insult, and neither
from age nor experience in affairs was equal to so great a burden. Tiberius
Nero was of mature years, and had established his fame in war, but he had the
old arrogance inbred in the Claudian family, and many symptoms of a cruel temper,
though they were repressed, now and then broke out. He had also from earliest
infancy been reared in an imperial house; consulships and triumphs had been
heaped on him in his younger days; even in the years which, on the pretext of
seclusion he spent in exile at Rhodes, he had had no thoughts but of wrath,
hypocrisy, and secret sensuality. There was his mother too with a woman caprice.
They must, it seemed, be subject to a female and to two striplings besides,
who for a while would burden, and some day rend asunder the State."
5. While these and like topics were discussed, the infirmities of Augustus
increased, and some suspected guilt on his wife's part. For a rumour had gone
abroad that a few months before he had sailed to Planasia on a visit to Agrippa,
with the knowledge of some chosen friends, and with one companion, Fabius Maximus;
that many tears were shed on both sides, with expressions of affection, and
that thus there was a hope of the young man being restored to the home of his
grandfather. This, it was said, Maximus had divulged to his wife Marcia, she
again to Livia. All was known to Caesar, and when Maximus soon afterwards died,
by a death some thought to be self-inflicted, there were heard at his funeral
wailings from Marcia, in which she reproached herself for having been the cause
of her husband's destruction. Whatever the fact was, Tiberius as he was just
entering Illyria was summoned home by an urgent letter from his mother, and
it has not been thoroughly ascertained whether at the city of Nola he found
Augustus still breathing or quite lifeless. For Livia had surrounded the house
and its approaches with a strict watch, and favourable bulletins were published
from time to time, till, provision having been made for the demands of the crisis,
one and the same report told men that Augustus was dead and that Tiberius Nero
was master of the State.
6. The first crime of the new reign was the murder of Postumus Agrippa. Though
he was surprised and unarmed, a centurion of the firmest resolution despatched
him with difficulty. Tiberius gave no explanation of the matter to the Senate;
he pretended that there were directions from his father ordering the tribune
in charge of the prisoner not to delay the slaughter of Agrippa, whenever he
should himself have breathed his last. Beyond a doubt, Augustus had often complained
of the young man's character, and had thus succeeded in obtaining the sanction
of a decree of the Senate for his banishment. But he never was hard-hearted
enough to destroy any of his kinsfolk, nor was it credible that death was to
be the sentence of the grandson in order that the stepson might feel secure.
It was more probable that Tiberius and Livia, the one from fear, the other from
a stepmother's enmity, hurried on the destruction of a youth whom they suspected
and hated. When the centurion reported, according to military custom, that he
had executed the command, Tiberius replied that he had not given the command,
and that the act must be justified to the Senate. As soon as Sallustius Crispus
who shared the secret (he had, in fact, sent the written order to the tribune)
knew this, fearing that the charge would be shifted on himself, and that his
peril would be the same whether he uttered fiction or truth, he advised Livia
not to divulge the secrets of her house or the counsels of friends, or any services
performed by the soldiers, nor to let Tiberius weaken the strength of imperial
power by referring everything to the Senate, for "the condition," he said, "of
holding empire is that an account cannot be balanced unless it be rendered to
one person."
7. Meanwhile at Rome people plunged into slavery - consuls, senators, knights.
The higher a man's rank, the more eager his hypocrisy, and his looks the more
carefully studied, so as neither to betray joy at the decease of one emperor
nor sorrow at the rise of another, while he mingled delight and lamentations
with his flattery. Sextus Pompeius and Sextus Apuleius, the consuls, were the
first to swear allegiance to Tiberius Caesar, and in their presence the oath
was taken by Seius Strabo and Caius Turranius, respectively the commander of
the praetorian cohorts and the superintendent of the corn supplies. Then the
Senate, the soldiers and the people did the same. For Tiberius would inaugurate
everything with the consuls, as though the ancient constitution remained, and
he hesitated about being emperor. Even the proclamation by which he summoned
the senators to their chamber, he issued merely with the title of Tribune, which
he had received under Augustus. The wording of the proclamation was brief, and
in a very modest tone. "He would," it said, "provide for the honours due to
his father, and not leave the lifeless body, and this was the only public duty
he now claimed." As soon, however, as Augustus was dead, he had given the watchword
to the praetorian cohorts, as commander-in-chief. He had the guard under arms,
with all the other adjuncts of a court; soldiers attended him to the forum;
soldiers went with him to the Senate House. He sent letters to the different
armies, as though supreme power was now his, and showed hesitation only when
he spoke in the Senate. His chief motive was fear that Germanicus, who had at
his disposal so many legions, such vast auxiliary forces of the allies, and
such wonderful popularity, might prefer the possession to the expectation of
empire. He looked also at public opinion, wishing to have the credit of having
been called and elected by the State rather than of having crept into power
through the intrigues of a wife and a dotard's adoption. It was subsequently
understood that he assumed a wavering attitude, to test likewise the temper
of the nobles. For he would twist a word or a look into a crime and treasure
it up in his memory.
8. On the first day of the Senate he allowed nothing to be discussed but
the funeral of Augustus, whose will, which was brought in by the Vestal Virgins,
named as his heirs Tiberius and Livia. The latter was to be admitted into the
Julian family with the name of Augusta; next in expectation were the grand and
great-grandchildren. In the third place, he had named the chief men of the State,
most of whom he hated, simply out of ostentation and to win credit with posterity.
His legacies were not beyond the scale of a private citizen, except a bequest
of forty-three million five hundred thousand sesterces "to the people and populace
of Rome," of one thousand to every praetorian soldier, and of three hundred
to every man in the legionary cohorts composed of Roman citizens. Next followed
a deliberation about funeral honours. Of these the most imposing were thought
fitting. The procession was to be conducted through "the gate of triumph," on
the motion of Gallus Asinius; the titles of the laws passed, the names of the
nations conquered by Augustus were to be borne in front, on that of Lucius Arruntius.
Messala Valerius further proposed that the oath of allegiance to Tiberius should
be yearly renewed, and when Tiberius asked him whether it was at his bidding
that he had brought forward this motion, he replied that he had proposed it
spontaneously, and that in whatever concerned the State he would use only his
own discretion, even at the risk of offending. This was the only style of adulation
which yet remained. The Senators unanimously exclaimed that the body ought to
be borne on their shoulders to the funeral pile. The emperor left the point
to them with disdainful moderation, he then admonished the people by a proclamation
not to indulge in that tumultuous enthusiasm which had distracted the funeral
of the Divine Julius, or express a wish that Augustus should be burnt in the
Forum instead of in his appointed resting-place in the Campus Martius. On the
day of the funeral soldiers stood round as a guard, amid much ridicule from
those who had either themselves witnessed or who had heard from their parents
of the famous day when slavery was still something fresh, and freedom had been
resought in vain, when the slaying of Caesar, the Dictator, seemed to some the
vilest, to others, the most glorious of deeds. "Now," they said, "an aged sovereign,
whose power had lasted long, who had provided his heirs with abundant means
to coerce the State, requires forsooth the defence of soldiers that his burial
may be undisturbed."
9. Then followed much talk about Augustus himself, and many expressed an
idle wonder that the same day marked the beginning of his assumption of empire
and the close of his life, and, again, that he had ended his days at Nola in
the same house and room as his father Octavius. People extolled too the number
of his consulships, in which he had equalled Valerius Corvus and Caius Marius
combined, the continuance for thirty-seven years of the tribunitian power, the
title of Imperator twenty-one times earned, and his other honours which had
either frequently repeated or were wholly new. Sensible men, however, spoke
variously of his life with praise and censure. Some said "that dutiful feeling
towards a father, and the necessities of the State in which laws had then no
place, drove him into civil war, which can neither be planned nor conducted
on any right principles. He had often yielded to Antonius, while he was taking
vengeance on his father's murderers, often also to Lepidus. When the latter
sank into feeble dotage and the former had been ruined by his profligacy, the
only remedy for his distracted country was the rule of a single man. Yet the
State had been organized under the name neither of a kingdom nor a dictatorship,
but under that of a prince. The ocean and remote rivers were the boundaries
of the empire; the legions, provinces, fleets, all things were linked together;
there was law for the citizens; there was respect shown to the allies. The capital
had been embellished on a grand scale; only in a few instances had he resorted
to force, simply to secure general tranquillity."
Next: Book 1 [10]
![The Remorse of Nero After the Murdering of his Mother. Artist: John William Waterhouse [1878] (Public Domain Image)](/images/rome/nerorem.jpg)