The Reign of Tiberius, Out of the First Six Annals of TacitusWith His Account of Germany, and Life of Agricola (page 3)

inveterate love to the Caesarian general, were still prevalent.”

Domitius Celer, one in intimate credit with Piso, argued on the contrary, “that the present event must by all means be improved; it was Piso and not Sentius who had commission to govern Syria; upon him, were conferred the jurisdiction of Praetor, and the badges of magistracy, and with him the legions were instructed: so that if acts of hostility were by his opponents attempted, with how much better warrant could he avow assuming arms in his own right and defence, who was thus vested with the authority of general, and acted under special orders from the Emperor. Rumours too were to be neglected, and left to perish with time: in truth to the sallies and violence of recent hate the innocent were often unequal: but were he once possessed of the army, and had well augmented his forces, many things, not to be foreseen, would from fortune derive success. Are we then preposterously hastening to arrive at Rome with the ashes of Germanicus, that you may there fall, unheard and undefended, a victim to the wailings of Agrippina, a prey to the passionate populace governed by the first impressions of rumour? Livia, it is true, is your confederate; Tiberius is your friend; but both secretly: and indeed none will more pompously bewail the violent fate of Germanicus, than such as for it do most sincerely rejoice.”

Piso of himself prompt to violent pursuits, was with no great labour persuaded into this opinion, and, in a letter transmitted to Tiberius, accused Germanicus “of luxury and pride: that for himself, he had been expulsed, to leave room for dangerous designs against the State, and now resumed, with his former faith and loyalty, the care of the army.” In the meantime he put Domitius on board a galley, and ordered him to avoid appearing upon the coasts or amongst the isles, but, through the main sea, to sail to Syria. The deserters, who from all quarters were flocking to him in crowds, he formed into companies, and armed all the retainers to the camp; then sailing over to the continent, intercepted a regiment of recruits, upon their march into Syria; and wrote to the small kings of Cilicia to assist him with present succours: nor was the younger Piso slow in prosecuting all the measures of war, though to adventure a war had been against his sentiments and advice.

As they coasted Lycia and Pamphilia, they encountered the ships which carried Agrippina, with hostile spirit on each side, and each at first prepared for combat; but as equal dread of one another possessed both, proceeded not further than mutual contumelies. Vibius Marsus particularly summoned Piso, as a criminal, to Rome, there to make his defence: he answered with derision “that when the Praetor, who was to sit upon poisonings, had assigned a day to the accusers and the accused, he would attend.” Domitius, the while, landing at Laodicea, a city of Syria, would have proceeded to the winter quarters of the sixth legion, which he believed to be the most prone to engage in novel attempts, but was prevented by Pacuvius, its commander. Sentius represented this by letter to Piso, and warned him, “at his peril to infect the camp by ministers of corruption; or to assail the province of war;” and drew into a body such as he knew loved Germanicus, or such as were averse to his foes: upon them he inculcated with much ardour, that Piso was with open arms attacking the majesty of the Prince, and invading the Roman State; and then marched at the head of a puissant body, equipped for battle and resolute to engage.

Neither failed Piso, though his enterprises had thus far miscarried, to apply the securest remedies to his present perplexities; and therefore seized a castle of Cilicia strongly fortified, its name Celendris: for, to the auxiliary Cilicians, sent him by the petty kings, he had joined his body of deserters, as also the recruits lately intercepted, with all his own and Plancina’s slaves; and thus in number and bulk had of the whole composed a legion. To them he thus harangued: “I who am the lieutenant of Caesar, am yet violently excluded from the province which to me Caesar has committed: not excluded by the legions (for by their invitation I am arrived), but by Sentius, who thus disguises under feigned crimes against me, his own animosity and personal hate: but with confidence you may stand in battle, where the opposite army, upon the sight of Piso, a commander lately by themselves styled their _Father_, will certainly refuse to fight; they know too, that were right to decide it, I am the stronger; and of no mean puissance in a trial at arms.” He then arrayed his men without the fortifications, on a hill steep and craggy, for all the rest was begirt by the sea: against them stood the veterans regularly embattled, and supported with a body of reserve; so that here appeared the force of men, there only the terror and stubbornness of situation. On Piso’s side was no spirit, nor hope, nor even weapons save those of rustics, for instant necessity hastily acquired. As soon as they came to blows, the issue was no longer doubtful than while the Roman cohorts struggled up the steep: the Cilicians then fled, and shut themselves up in the castle.

Piso having the while attempted in vain to storm the fleet, which rode at a small distance, as soon as he returned, presented himself upon the walls; where, by a succession of passionate complaints and entreaties, now bemoaning in agonies the bitterness of his lot, then calling and cajolling every particular soldier by his name, and by rewards tempting all, he laboured to excite a sedition; and thus much had already effected, that the Eagle-bearer of the sixth legion revolted to him with his Eagle. This alarmed Sentius, and instantly he commanded the cornets and trumpets to sound, a mound to be raised, the ladders placed, and the bravest men to mount, and others to pour from the engines volleys of darts and stones, and flaming torches. The obstinacy of Piso was at last vanquished; and he desired “that upon delivering his arms he might remain in the castle till the Emperor’s pleasure, to whom he would commit the government of Syria, were known;” conditions which were not accepted; nor was aught granted him save ships and a passport to Rome.

After the illness of Germanicus grew current there, and all its circumstances, like rumours magnified by distance, were related with many aggravations; sadness seized the people; they burned with indignation, and even poured out in plaints the anguish of their souls. “For this,” they said, “he had been banished to the extremities of the Empire, for this the province of Syria was committed to Piso, and these the fruits of Livia’s mysterious conferences with Plancina: truly had our fathers spoken concerning his father Drusus; that the possessors of rule beheld with an evil eye the popular spirit of their sons; nor for aught else were they sacrificed, but for their equal treatment of the Roman People, and studying to restore the popular state.” These lamentations of the populace were, upon the tidings of his death, so inflamed, that, without staying for an edict from the magistrates, without a decree of Senate, they by general consent assumed a vacation; the public courts were deserted, private houses shut up, prevalent everywhere were the symptoms of woe, heavy groans, dismal silence; the whole a scene of real sorrow, and nothing devised for form or show; and, though they forbore not to bear the exterior marks and habiliments of mourning; in their souls they mourned still deeper. Accidentally some merchants from Syria, who had left Germanicus still alive, brought more joyful news of his condition: these were instantly believed, and instantly proclaimed: each, as fast as they met, informed others, who forthwith conveyed their light information with improvements and accumulated joy to more, and all flew with exultation through the city; and, to pay their thanks and vows, burst open the temple doors: the night too heightened their credulity, and affirmation was bolder in the dark. Nor did Tiberius restrain the course of these fictions, but left them to vanish with time: hence with more bitterness they afterwards grieved for him, as if anew snatched from them.

Honours were invented and decreed to Germanicus, various as the affections and genius of the particular Senators who proposed them: “that his name should be sung in the Salian hymns; curule chairs placed for him amongst the priests of Augustus, and over these chairs oaken crowns hung; his statue in ivory precede in the Cercensian games; none but one of the Julian race be, in the room of Germanicus, created flamen or augur:” triumphal arches were added; one at Rome; one upon the banks of the Rhine; one upon Mount Amanus, in Syria; with inscriptions of his exploits, and a testimony subjoined, “that he died for the Commonwealth:” a sepulchre at Antioch, where his corpse was burnt; a tribunal at Epidaphne, the place where he ended his life. The multitude of statues, the many places where divine honours were appointed to be paid him, would not be easily recounted. They would have also decreed him, as to one of the masters of eloquence, a golden shield, signal in bulk as in metal; but Tiberius offered to dedicate one himself, such as was usual and of a like size with others; for that eloquence was not measured by fortune; and it was sufficient glory, if he were ranked with ancient writers. The battalion called after the name of the Junii was now, by the equestrian order, entitled the battalion of Germanicus, and a rule made that, on every fifteenth of July, these troops should follow, as their standard, the effigies of Germanicus: of these honours many continue; some were instantly omitted, or by time are utterly obliterated.

In the height of this public sorrow, Livia, sister to Germanicus, and married to Drusus, was delivered of male twins: an event even in middling families, rare and acceptable, and to Tiberius such mighty matter of joy, that he could not refrain boasting to the fathers, “that to no Roman of the same eminence, before him, were never two children born at a birth:” for to his own glory he turned all things, even things fortuitous. But to the people, at such a sad conjuncture, it brought fresh anguish; as they feared that the family of Drusus thus increased, would press heavy upon that of Germanicus.

The same year the lubricity of women was by the Senate restrained with severe laws; and it was provided, “that no woman should become venal, if her father, grandfather or husband, were Roman knights.” For Vistilia, a lady born of a Praetorian family, had before the Aediles published herself a prostitute; upon a custom allowed by our ancestors, who thought that prostitutes were by thus avowing their infamy, sufficiently punished. Titidius Labeo too was questioned, that in the manifest guilt of his wife, he had neglected the punishment prescribed by the law; but he alleged that the sixty days allowed for consultation were not elapsed; and it was deemed sufficient to proceed against Vistilia, who was banished to the Isle of Seriphos. Measures were also taken for exterminating the solemnities of the Jews and Egyptians; and by decree of Senate four thousand descendants of franchised slaves, all defiled with that superstition, but of proper strength and age, were to be transported to Sardinia; to restrain the Sardinian robbers; and if, through the malignity of the climate, they perished, despicable would be the loss: the rest were doomed to depart Italy, unless by a stated day they renounced their profane rites.

After this Tiberius represented that, to supply the place of Occia, who had presided seven and fifty years with the highest sanctimony over the Vestals, another virgin was to be chosen; and thanked Fonteius Agrippa and Asinius Pollio, that by offering their daughters, they contended in good offices towards the Commonwealth. Pollio’s daughter was preferred; for nothing else but that her mother had ever continued in the same wedlock: for Agrippa, by a divorce, had impaired the credit of his house: upon her who was postponed, Tiberius, in consolation, bestowed for her fortune a thousand great sestertia. [Footnote: L8300.]

As the people murmured at the severe dearth of corn, he settled grain at a price certain to the buyer, and undertook to pay fourteenpence a measure to the seller: neither yet would he accept the name of _Father of his Country_, a title offered him before, and for these bounties, now again; nay, he sharply rebuked such as styled these provisions of his, _divine occupations_, and him, _Lord_: hence freedom of speech became cramped and insecure, under such a Prince; one who dreaded liberty, and abhorred flattery.

I find in the writers of those times, some of them Senators, that in the Senate were read letters from Adgandestrius, prince of the Cattans, undertaking to despatch Arminius, if in order to it poison were sent him; and an answer returned, “that not by frauds and blows in the dark, but armed and in the face of the sun, the Roman People took vengeance on their foes.” In this Tiberius gained equal glory with our ancient captains, who rejected and disclosed a plot to poison King Pyrrhus. Arminius however, who upon the departure of the Romans and expulsion of Maroboduus, aimed at royalty, became thence engaged in a struggle against the liberty of his country; and, in defence of their liberty, his countrymen took arms against him: so that, while with various fortune he contended with them, he fell by the treachery of his own kindred: the deliverer of Germany without doubt he was; one who assailed the Roman power, not like other kings and leaders, in its first elements, but in its highest pride and elevation; one sometimes beaten in battle, but never conquered in war: thirty-seven years he lived; twelve he commanded; and, amongst these barbarous nations, his memory is still celebrated in their songs; but his name unknown in the annals of the Greeks, who only admire their own national exploits and renown; nor even amongst the Romans does this great captain bear much distinction, while, overlooking instances of modern prowess and glory, we only delight to magnify men and feats of old.

BOOK III

A.D. 20-22.

Agrippina, notwithstanding the roughness of winter, pursuing without intermission her boisterous voyage, put in at the Island Corcyra, [Footnote: Corfu.] situate over against the coasts of Calabria. Here to settle her spirit, she spent a few days, violent in her grief, and a stranger to patience. Her arrival being the while divulged, all the particular friends to her family, mostly men of the sword, many who had served under Germanicus, and even many strangers from the neighbouring towns, some in officiousness towards the Emperor, more for company, crowded to the city of Brundusium, the readiest port in her way and the safest landing. As soon as the fleet appeared in the deep, instantly were filled, not the port alone and adjacent shores, but the walls and roofs, and as far as the eye could go; filled with the sorrowing multitude. They were consulting one from one, how they should receive her landing, “whether with universal silence, or with some note of acclamation.” Nor was it manifest which they would do, when the fleet stood slowly in, not as usual with joyful sailors and cheerful oars, but all things impressed with the face of sadness. After she descended from the ship, accompanied with her two infants, carrying in her bosom the melancholy urn, with her eyes cast steadily down; equal and universal were the groans of the beholders: nor could you distinguish relations from strangers, nor the wailings of men from those of women, unless that the new-comers, who were recent in their sallies of grief, exceeded Agrippina’s attendants, wearied out with long lamentations.

Tiberius had despatched two Praetorian cohorts, with directions, that the magistrates of Calabria, Apulia and Campania, should pay their last offices to the memory of his son: upon the shoulders therefore of the Tribunes and Centurions his ashes were borne; before went the ensigns rough and unadorned, with the fasces reversed. As they passed through the colonies, the populace were in black, the knights in purple; and each place, according to its wealth, burnt precious raiment, perfumes and whatever else is used in funeral solemnities: even they whose cities lay remote attended: to the Gods of the dead they slew victims, they erected altars, and with tears and united lamentations, testified their common sorrow. Drusus came as far as Terracina, with Claudius the brother of Germanicus, and those of his children who had been left at Rome. The Consuls Marcus Valerius and Marcus Aurelius (just then entered upon their office), the Senate, and great part of the people, filled the road; a scattered procession, each walking and weeping his own way: in this mourning, flattery had no share; for all knew how real was the joy, how hollow the grief, of Tiberius for the death of Germanicus.

Tiberius and Livia avoided appearing abroad: public lamentation they thought below their grandeur; or perhaps they apprehended that their countenances, examined by all eyes, might show deceitful hearts. That Antonia, mother to the deceased, bore any part in the funeral, I do not find either in the historians or in the city journals: though, besides Agrippina, and Drusus, and Claudius, his other relations are likewise there recorded by name: whether by sickness she was prevented; or whether her soul vanquished by sorrow, could not bear the representation of such a mighty calamity. I would rather believe her constrained by Tiberius and Livia, who left not the palace; and affecting equal affliction with her, would have it seem that, by the example of the mother, the grandmother too and uncle were detained.

The day his remains were reposited in the tomb of Augustus, various were the symptoms of public grief; now the vastness of silence; now the uproar of lamentation; the city in every quarter full of processions; the field of Mars on a blaze of torches: here the soldiers under arms, the magistrates without the insignia, the people by their tribes, all cried in concert that “the Commonwealth was fallen, and henceforth there was no remain of hope;” so openly and boldly that you would have believed they had forgot, who bore sway. But nothing pierced Tiberius more than the ardent affections of the people towards Agrippina, while such titles they gave her as “the ornament of her country, the only blood of Augustus, the single instance of ancient virtue;” and, while applying to heaven, they implored “the continuance of her issue, that they might survive the persecuting and malignant.”

There were those who missed the pomp of a public funeral, and compared with this the superior honours and magnificence bestowed by Augustus on that of Drusus the father of Germanicus; “that he himself had travelled, in the sharpness of winter, as far as Pavia, and thence, continuing by the corpse, had with it entered the city; round his head were placed the images of the Claudii and Julii; he was mourned in the Forum; his encomium pronounced in the Rostras; all sorts of honours, such as were the inventions of our ancestors, or the improvements of their posterity, were heaped upon him. But to Germanicus were denied the ordinary solemnities, and such as were due to every distinguished Roman. In a foreign country indeed, his corpse because of the long journey, was burnt without pomp; but afterwards, it was but just to have supplied the scantiness of the first ceremony by the solemnity of the last: his brother met him but one day’s journey; his uncle not even at the gate. Where were those generous observations of the ancients; the effigies of the dead borne on a bed, hymns composed in memory of their virtue, with the oblations of praise and tears? Where at least were the ceremonies and even outside of sorrow?”

All this was known to Tiberius; and, to suppress the discourses of the populace, he published an edict, “that many illustrious Romans had died for the Commonwealth, but none so vehemently lamented: this however was to the glory of himself and of all men, if a measure were observed. The same things which became private families and small states, became not Princes and an Imperial People: fresh grief indeed required vent and ease by lamentation; but it was now time to recover and fortify their minds. Thus the deified Julius, upon the loss of an only daughter; thus the deified Augustus, upon the hasty death of his grandsons, had both vanquished their sorrow. More ancient examples were unnecessary; how often the Roman People sustained with constancy the slaughter of their armies, the death of their generals, and entire destruction of their noblest families: Princes were mortal; the Commonwealth was eternal: they should therefore resume their several vocations.” And because the Megalesian games were at hand, he added, “that they should even apply to the usual festivities.”

The vacation ended, public affairs were resumed; Drusus departed for the army in Illyricum, and the minds of all men were bent upon seeing vengeance done upon Piso. They repeated their resentments, that while he wandered over the delightful countries of Asia and Greece, he was stifling, by contumacious and deceitful delays, the evidences of his crimes; for it was bruited abroad, that Martina, she who was famous for poisonings, and sent, as I have above related, by Cneius Sentius towards Rome, was suddenly dead at Brundusium; that poison lay concealed in a knot of her hair, but upon her body were found no symptoms of self-murder.

Piso, sending forward his son to Rome, with instructions how to soften the Emperor, proceeded himself to Drusus: him he hoped to find less rigid for the death of a brother, than favourable for the removal of a rival. Tiberius, to make show of a spirit perfectly unbiassed, received the young man graciously, and honoured him with the presents usually bestowed on young noblemen. The answer of Drusus to Piso was, “That if the current rumours were true, he stood in the first place of grief and revenge; but he hoped they were false and chimerical, and that the death of Germanicus would be pernicious to none.” This he declared in public, and avoided all privacy: nor was it doubted but the answer was dictated by Tiberius; when a youth, otherwise easy and unwary, practised thus the wiles and cunning of age.

Piso having crossed the sea of Dalmatia, and left his ships at Ancona, took first the road of Picenum and then the Flaminian way, following the legion which was going from Pannonia to Rome, and thence to garrison in Africa. This too became the subject of popular censure, that he officiously mixed with the soldiers, and courted them in their march and quarters: he therefore, to avoid suspicion; or, because when men are in dread, their conduct wavers, did at Narni embark upon the Nar, and thence sailed into the Tiber. By landing at the burying-place of the Caesars, he heightened the wrath of the populace: besides, he and Plancina came ashore, in open day, in the face of the city who were crowding the banks, and proceeded with gay countenances; he attended by a long band of clients, she by a train of ladies. There were yet other provocations to hatred; the situation of his house, proudly overlooking the Forum, and adorned and illuminated as for a festival; the banquet and rejoicings held in it, and all as public as the place.

The next day Fulcinius Trio arraigned Piso before the Consuls, but was opposed by Vitellius, Veranius, and others, who had accompanied Germanicus: they said, “that in this prosecution Trio had no part; nor did they themselves act as accusers, but only gathered materials, and, as witnesses, produced the last injunctions of Germanicus.” Trio dropped that accusation; but got leave to call in question his former life: and now the Emperor was desired to undertake the trial; a request which the accused did not at all oppose, dreading the inclinations of the people and Senate: he knew Tiberius, on the contrary, resolute in despising popular rumours, and in guilt confederate with his mother: besides that truth and misrepresentations were easiest distinguished by a single judge, but in assemblies odium and envy often prevailed. Tiberius was aware of the weight of the trial, and with what reproaches he was assaulted. Admitting therefore a few confidants, he heard the charge of the accusers, as also the apology of the accused; and left the cause entire to the Senate.

Drusus returned the while from Illyricum; and though the Senate had for the reduction of Maroboduus, and other his exploits the summer before, decreed him the triumph of ovation; he postponed the honour, and privately entered the city. Piso, for his advocates, desired Titus Arruntius, Fulcinius, Asinius Gallus, Eserninus Marcellus, and Sextus Pompeius: but they all framed different excuses; and he had, in their room, Marcus Lepidus, Lucius Piso and Liveneius Regulus. Now earnest were the expectations of all men, “how great would prove the fidelity of the friends of Germanicus; what the assurance of the criminal, what the behaviour of Tiberius; whether he would sufficiently smother, or betray his sentiments.” He never had a more anxious part; neither did the people ever indulge themselves in such secret murmurs against their Emperor, nor harbour in silence severer suspicions.

When the Senate met, Tiberius made a speech full of laboured moderation: “That Piso had been his father’s lieutenant and friend; and lately appointed by himself, at the direction of the Senate, coadjutor to Germanicus in administering the affairs of the East: whether he had there by contumacy and opposition exasperated the young Prince, and exulted over his death, or wickedly procured it, they were then to judge with minds unprejudiced. For, if he who was the lieutenant of my son violated the limits of his commission, cast off obedience to his general, and even rejoiced at his decease and at my affliction; I will detest the man, I will banish him from my house, and for domestic injuries exert domestic revenge; not the revenge of an Emperor. But for you; if his guilt of any man’s death whatsoever is discovered, show your just vengeance, and by it satisfy yourselves, satisfy the children of Germanicus, and us his father and grandmother. Consider too especially, whether he vitiated the discipline and promoted sedition in the army; whether he sought to debauch the affections of the soldiers, and to recover the province by arms: or whether these allegations are not published falsely and with aggravations by the accusers, with whose over-passionate zeal, I am justly offended: for, whither tended the stripping the corpse and exposing it to the eyes and examination of the populace; with what view was it proclaimed even to foreign nations, that his death was the effect of poison; if all this was still doubtful, and remains yet to be tried? It is true I bewail my son, and shall ever bewail him: but neither do I hinder the accused to do what in him lies to manifest his innocence, even at the expense of Germanicus, if aught blamable was in him. From you I entreat the same impartiality: let not the connection of my sorrow with this cause, mislead you to take crimes for proved because they are imputed. For Piso; if the tenderness of kinsmen, if the faith of friends, has furnished him with patrons, let them aid him in his peril, show their utmost eloquence, and exert their best diligence. To the same pains, to the same firmness I exhort the accusers. Thus much we will grant to the memory of Germanicus, that the inquest concerning his death, be held rather here than in the Forum, in the Senate than the common Tribunals. In all the rest, we will descend to the ordinary methods. Let no man in this cause consider Drusus’s tears; let none regard my sorrow, no more than the probable fictions of calumny against us.”

Two days were then appointed for maintaining the charge; six for preparing the defence, and three for making it. Fulcinius began with things stale and impertinent, about the ambition and rapine of Piso in his administration of Spain: things which, though proved, brought him under no penalty, if acquitted of the present charge; nor, though he had been cleared of former faults, could he escape the load of greater enormities. After him Servaeus, Veranius, and Vitellius, all with equal zeal, but Vitellius with great eloquence urged “that Piso, in hatred to Germanicus, and passionate for innovations, had by tolerating general licentiousness, and the oppression of the allies, corrupted the common soldiers to that degree, that by the most profligate he was styled _Father of the Legions_: he had, on the contrary, been outrageous to the best men, above all to the friends and companions of Germanicus; and, at last, by witchcraft and poison destroyed Germanicus himself: hence the infernal charms and immolations practised by him and Plancina: he had then attacked the Commonwealth with open arms; and, before he could be brought to be tried, they were forced to fight and defeat him.”

In every article but one his defence was faltering. For, neither his dangerous intrigues in debauching the soldiery, nor his abandoning the province to the most profligate and rapacious, nor even his insults to Germanicus, were to be denied. He seemed only to wipe off the charge of poison; a charge which in truth was not sufficiently corroborated by the accusers, since they had only to allege, “that at an entertainment of Germanicus, Piso, while he sat above him, with his hands poisoned the meat.” It appeared absurd that amongst so many attending slaves besides his own, in so great a presence, and under the eye of Germanicus, he would attempt it: he himself required that the waiters might be racked, and offered to the rack his own domestics: but the Judges were implacable, implacable from different motives; Tiberius for the war raised in the province; and the Senate could never be convinced that the death of Germanicus was not the effect of fraud. Some moved for the letters written to Piso from Rome; a motion opposed by Tiberius no less than by Piso. From without, at the same time, were heard the cries of the people, “that if he escaped the judgment of the Senate, they would with their own hands destroy him.” They had already dragged his statues to the place from whence malefactors were precipitated, and there had broken them; but by the orders of Tiberius they were rescued and replaced. Piso was put into a litter and carried back by a tribune of a Praetorian cohort; an attendance variously understood, whether as a guard for his safety, or a minister of death.

Plancina was under equal public hatred, but had more secret favour: hence it was doubted how far Tiberius durst proceed against her. For herself; while her husband’s hopes were yet plausible, she professed “she would accompany his fortune, whatever it were, and, if he fell, fall with him.” But when by the secret solicitations of Livia, she had secured her own pardon, she began by degrees to drop her husband, and to make a separate defence. After this fatal warning, he doubted whether he should make any further efforts; but, by the advice of his sons, fortifying his mind, he again entered the Senate: there he found the prosecution renewed, suffered the declared indignation of the Fathers, and saw all things cross and terrible; but nothing so much daunted him as to behold Tiberius, without mercy, without wrath, close, dark, unmovable, and bent against every access of tenderness. When he was brought home, as if he were preparing for his further defence the next day, he wrote somewhat, which he sealed and delivered to his freedman: he then washed and anointed, and took the usual care of his person. Late in the night, his wife leaving the chamber, he ordered the door to be shut; and was found, at break of day, with his throat cut, his sword lying by him.

I remember to have heard from ancient men, that in the hands of Piso was frequently seen a bundle of writings, which he did not expose, but which, as his friends constantly averred, “contained the letters of Tiberius and his cruel orders towards Germanicus: that he resolved to lay them before the Fathers and to charge the Emperor, but was deluded by the hollow promises of Sejanus: and that neither did Piso die by his own hands, but by those of an express and private executioner.” I dare affirm neither; nor yet ought I to conceal the relations of such as still lived when I was a youth. Tiberius, with an assumed air of sadness, complained to the Senate, that Piso, by that sort of death, had aimed to load him with obloquy; and asked many questions how he had passed his last day, how his last night? The freedman answered to most with prudence, to some in confusion. The Emperor then recited the letter sent him by Piso. It was conceived almost in these words: “Oppressed by a combination of my enemies and the imputation of false crimes; since no place is left here to truth and my innocence; to the Immortal Gods I appeal, that towards you, Caesar, I have lived with sincere faith, nor towards your mother with less reverence. For my sons I implore her protection and yours: my son Cneius had no share in my late management whatever it were, since, all the while, he abode at Rome: and my son Marcus dissuaded me from returning to Syria. Oh that, old as I am, I had yielded to him, rather than he, young as he is, to me! Hence more passionately I pray that innocent as he is, he suffer not in the punishment of my guilt: by a series of services for five-and-forty years, I entreat you; by our former fellowship in the consulship; by the memory of the deified Augustus, your father; by his friendship to me; by mine to you, I entreat you for the life and fortune of my unhappy son. It is the last request I shall ever make you.” Of Plancina he said nothing.

Tiberius, upon this, cleared the young man of any crime as to the civil war: he alleged “the orders of his father, which a son could not disobey.” He likewise bewailed “that noble house, and even the grievous lot of Piso himself, however deserved,” For Plancina he pleaded with shame and guilt, alleging the importunity of his mother; against whom more particularly the secret murmurs of the best people waxed bitter and poignant. “Was it then the tender part of a grandmother to admit to her sight the murderess of her grandson, to be intimate with her, and to snatch her from the vengeance of the Senate? To Germanicus alone was denied what by the laws was granted to every citizen. By Vitellius and Veranius, the cause of that prince was mourned and pleaded: by the Emperor and his mother, Plancina was defended and protected. Henceforth she might pursue her infernal arts so successfully tried, repeat her poisonings, and by her arts and poisons assail Agrippina and her children; and, with the blood of that most miserable house, satiate the worthy grandmother and uncle.” In this mock trial two days were wasted; Tiberius, all the while, animating the sons of Piso to defend their mother: when the pleaders and witnesses had vigorously pushed the charge, and no reply was made, commiseration prevailed over hatred. The Consul Aurelius Cotta was first asked his opinion: for, when the Emperor collected the voices, the magistrates likewise voted. Cotta’s sentence was, “that the name of Piso should be razed from the annals, part of his estate forfeited, part granted to his son Cneius, upon changing that name; his son Marcus be divested of his dignity, and content with fifty thousand great sestertia, [Footnote: L42,000.] be banished for ten years: and to Plancina, at the request of Livia, indemnity should be granted.”

Much of this sentence was abated by the Emperor; particularly that of striking Piso’s name out of the annals, when “that of Marc Anthony, who made war upon his country; that of Julius Antonius, who had by adultery violated the house of Augustus, continued still there.” He also exempted Marcus Piso from the ignominy of degradation, and left him his whole paternal inheritance; for, as I have already often observed, he was to the temptations of money incorruptible, and from the shame of having acquitted Plancina, rendered then more than usually mild. He likewise withstood the motion of Valerius Messalinus, “for erecting a golden statue in the Temple of Mars the Avenger;” and that of Caecina Severus, “for founding an altar to revenge.” “Such monuments as these,” he argued, “were only fit to be raised upon foreign victories; domestic evils were to be buried in sadness.” Messalinus had added, “that to Tiberius, Livia, Antonia, Agrippina and Drusus, public thanks were to be rendered for having revenged the death of Germanicus;” but had omitted to mention Claudius. Messalinus was asked by Lucius Asprenas, in the presence of the Senate, “Whether by design he had omitted him?” and then at last the name of Claudius was subjoined. To me, the more I revolve the events of late or of old, the more of mockery and slipperiness appears in all human wisdom and the transactions of men: for, in popular fame, in the hopes, wishes and veneration of the public, all men were rather destined to the Empire, than he for whom fortune then reserved the sovereignty in the dark.

A few days after, Vitellius, Veranius and Servaeus, were by the Senate preferred to the honours of the Priesthood, at the motion of Tiberius. To Fulcinius he promised his interest and suffrage towards preferment, but advised him “not to embarrass his eloquence by impetuosity.” This was the end of revenging the death of Germanicus; an affair ambiguously related, not by those only who then lived and interested themselves in it, but likewise the following times: so dark and intricate are all the highest transactions; while some hold for certain facts, the most precarious hearsays; others turn facts into falsehood; and both are swallowed and improved by the credulity of posterity. Drusus went now without the city, there to renew the ceremony of the auspices, and presently re-entered in the triumph of _ovation_. A few days after died Vipsania his mother; of all the children of Agrippa, the only one who made a pacific end: the rest manifestly perished, or are believed to have perished, by the sword, poison, or famine.

The qualifying of the Law Papia Poppaea was afterwards proposed; a law which, to enforce those of Julius Caesar, Augustus had made when he was old, for punishing celibacy and enriching the Exchequer. Nor even by this means had marriages and children multiplied, while a passion to live single and childless prevailed: but, in the meantime, the numbers threatened and in danger by it increased daily, while by the glosses and chicane of the impleaders every family was undone. So that, as before the city laboured under the weight of crimes, so now under the pest of laws. From this thought I am led backwards to the first rise of laws, and to open the steps and causes by which we are arrived to the present number and excess; a number infinite and perplexed.

The first race of men, free as yet from every depraved passion, lived without guile and crimes, and therefore without chastisements or restraints; nor was there occasion for rewards, when of their own accord they pursued righteousness: and as they courted nothing contrary to justice, they were debarred from nothing by terrors. But, after they had abandoned their original equality, and from modesty and shame to do evil, proceeded to ambition and violence; lordly dominion was introduced and arbitrary rule, and in many nations grew perpetual. Some, either from the beginning, or after they were surfeited with kings, preferred the sovereignty of laws; which, agreeable to the artless minds of men, were at first short and simple. The laws in most renown were those framed for the Cretans by Minos; for the Spartans by Lycurgus; and afterwards such as Solon delivered to the Athenians, now greater in number and more exquisitely composed. To the Romans justice was administered by Romulus according to his pleasure: after him, Numa managed the people by religious devices and laws divine. Some institutions were made by Tullus Hostilius, some by Ancus Martius; but above all our laws were those founded by Servius Tullius; they were such as even our kings were bound to obey.

Upon the expulsion of Tarquin; the people, for the security of their freedom against the encroachment and factions of the Senate, and for binding the public concord, prepared many ordinances: hence were created the Decemviri, and by them were composed the twelve tables, out of a collection of the most excellent institutions found abroad. The period this of all upright and impartial laws. What laws followed, though sometimes made against crimes and offenders, were yet chiefly made by violence, through the animosity of the two Estates, and for seizing unjustly withholden offices or continuing unjustly in them, or for banishing illustrious patriots, and to other wicked ends. Hence the Gracchi and Saturnini, inflamers of the people; and hence Drusus vying, on behalf of the Senate, in popular concessions with these inflamers; and hence the corrupt promises made to our Italian allies, promises deceitfully made, or, by the interposition of some Tribune, defeated. Neither during the war of Italy, nor during the civil war, was the making of regulations discontinued; many and contradictory were even then made. At last Sylla the Dictator, changing or abolishing the past, added many of his own, and procured some respite in this matter, but not long; for presently followed the turbulent pursuits and proposals of Lepidus, and soon after were the Tribunes restored to their licentious authority of throwing the people into combustions at pleasure. And now laws were not made for the public only, but for particular men particular laws; and corruption abounding in the Commonwealth, the Commonwealth abounded in laws.

Pompey was, now in his third Consulship, chosen to correct the public enormities; and his remedies proved to the State more grievous than its distempers. He made laws such as suited his ambition, and broke them when they thwarted his will; and lost by arms the regulations which by arms he had procured. Henceforward for twenty years discord raged, and there was neither law nor settlement; the most wicked found impunity in the excess of their wickedness; and many virtuous men, in their uprightness met destruction. At length, Augustus Caesar in his sixth Consulship, then confirmed in power without a rival, abolished the orders which during the Triumvirate he had established, and gave us laws proper for peace and a single ruler. These laws had sanctions severer than any heretofore known: as their guardians, informers were appointed, who by the Law Papia Poppaea were encouraged with rewards, to watch such as neglected the privileges annexed to marriage and fatherhood, and consequently could claim no legacy or inheritance, the same, as vacant, belonging to the Roman People, who were the public parent. But these informers struck much deeper: by them the whole city, all Italy, and the Roman citizens in every part of the Empire, were infested and persecuted: numbers were stripped of their entire fortunes, and terror had seized all; when Tiberius, for a check to this evil, chose twenty noblemen, five who were formerly Consuls, five who were formerly Praetors, with ten other Senators, to review that law. By them many of its intricacies were explained, its strictness qualified; and hence some present alleviation was yielded.

Tiberius about this time, to the Senate recommended Nero, one of the sons of Germanicus, now seventeen years of age, and desired “that he might be exempted from executing the office of the Vigintivirate, [Footnote: Officers for distributing the public lands; for regulating the mint, the roads, and the execution of criminals.] and have leave to sue for the Quaestorship five years sooner than the laws directed.” A piece of mockery, this request to all who heard it: but, Tiberius pretended “that the same concessions had been decreed to himself and his brother Drusus, at the request of Augustus.” Nor do I doubt, but there were then such who secretly ridiculed that sort of petitions from Augustus: such policy was however natural to that Prince, while he was but yet laying the foundations of the Imperial power, and while the Republic and its late laws were still fresh in the minds of men: besides, the relation was lighter between Augustus and his wife’s sons, than between a grandfather and his grandsons. To the grant of the Quaestorship was added a seat in the College of Pontiffs; and the first day he entered the Forum in his manly robe, a donative of corn and money was distributed to the populace, who exulted to behold a son of Germanicus now of age. Their joy was soon heightened by his marriage with Julia, the daughter of Drusus. But as these transactions were attended with public applauses; so the intended marriage of the daughter of Sejanus with the son of Claudius was received with popular indignation. By this alliance the nobility of the Claudian house seemed stained; and by it Sejanus, already suspected of aspiring views, was lifted still higher.

At the end of this year died Lucius Volusius and Sallustius Crispus; great and eminent men. The family of Volusius was ancient, but, in the exercise of public offices, rose never higher than the Praetorship; it was he, who honoured it with the Consulship: he was likewise created Censor for modelling the classes of the equestrian order; and first accumulated the wealth which gave that family such immense grandeur. Crispus was born of an equestrian house, great nephew by a sister to Caius Sallustius, the renowned Roman historian, and by him adopted: the way to the great offices was open to him; but, in imitation of Maecenas, he lived without the dignity of Senator, yet outwent in power many who were distinguished with Consulships and triumphs: his manner of living, his dress and daintiness were different from the ways of antiquity; and, in expense and affluence, he bordered rather upon luxury. He possessed however a vigour of spirit equal to great affairs, and exerted the greater promptness for that he hid it in a show of indolence and sloth: he was therefore, in the time of Maecenas, the next in favour, afterwards chief confidant in all the secret counsels of Augustus and Tiberius, and privy and consenting to the order for slaying Agrippa Posthumus. In his old age he preserved with the Prince rather the outside than the vitals of authority: the same had happened to Maecenas. It is the fate of power, which is rarely perpetual; perhaps from satiety on both sides, when Princes have no more to grant, and Ministers no more to crave.

Next followed the Consulship of Tiberius and Drusus; to Tiberius the fourth, to Drusus the second: a Consulship remarkable, for that in it the father and son were colleagues. There was indeed the same fellowship between Tiberius and Germanicus, two years before; but besides the distastes of jealousy in the uncle, the ties of blood were not so near. In the beginning of the year, Tiberius, on pretence of his health, retired to Campania; either already meditating a long and perpetual retirement; or to leave to Drusus, in his father’s absence, the honour of executing the Consulship alone: and there happened a thing which, small in itself, yet as it produced mighty contestation, furnished the young Consul with matter of popular affection. Domitius Corbulo, formerly Praetor, complained to the Senate of Lucius Sylla, a noble youth, “that in the show of gladiators, Sylla would not yield him place.” Age, domestic custom, and the ancient men were for Corbulo: on the other side, Mamercus Scaurus, Lucius Arruntius, and others laboured for their kinsman Sylla: warm speeches were made, and the examples of our ancestors were urged, “who by severe decrees had censured and restrained the irreverence of the youth.” Drusus interposed with arguments proper for calming animosities, and Corbulo had satisfaction made him by Scaurus, who was to Sylla both father-in-law and uncle, and the most copious orator of that age. The same Corbulo, exclaiming against “the condition of most of the roads through Italy, that through the fraud of the undertakers and negligence of the overseers, they were broken and unpassable;” undertook of his own accord the cure of that abuse; an undertaking which he executed not so much to the advantage of the public as to the ruin of many private men in their fortunes and reputation, by his violent mulcts and unjust judgments and forfeitures.

Upon this occasion Caecina Severus proposed, “that no magistrate should go into any province accompanied by his wife.” He introduced this motion with a long preface, “that he lived with his own in perfect concord, by her he had six children; and what he offered to the public he had practised himself, having during forty years’ service left her still behind him, confined to Italy. It was not indeed, without cause, established of old, that women should neither be carried by their husbands into confederate nations nor foreign. A train of women introduced luxury in peace, by their fears retarded war, and made a Roman army resemble, in their march, a mixed host of barbarians. The sex was not tender only and unfit for travel, but, if suffered, cruel, aspiring, and greedy of authority: they even marched amongst the soldiers, and were obeyed by the officers. A woman had lately presided at the exercises of the troops, and at the decursions of the legions. The Senate themselves might remember, that as often as any of the magistrates were charged with plundering the provinces, their wives were always engaged in the guilt. To the ladies, the most profligate in the province applied; by them all affairs were undertaken, by them transacted: at home two distinct courts were kept, and abroad the wife had her distinct train and attendance. The ladies, too, issued distinct orders, but more imperious and better obeyed. Such feminine excesses were formerly restrained by the Oppian, and other laws; but now these restraints were violated, women ruled all things, their families, the Forum, and even the armies.”

This speech was heard by few with approbation, and many proclaimed their dissent; “for, that neither was that the point in debate, nor was Caecina considerable enough to censure so weighty an affair.” He was presently answered by Valerius Messalinus, who was the son of Messala, and inherited a sparkling of his father’s eloquence: “that many rigorous institutions of the ancients were softened and changed for the better: for, neither was Rome now, as of old, beset with wars, nor Italy with hostile provinces; and a few concessions were made to the conveniences of women, who were so far from burdening the provinces, that to their own husbands there they were no burden. As to honours, attendance and expense, they enjoyed them in common with their husbands, who could receive no embarrassment from their company in time of peace. To war indeed we must go equipped and unencumbered; but after the fatigues of war, what was more allowable than the consolations of a wife? But it seemed the wives of some magistrates had given a loose to ambition and avarice. And were the magistrates themselves free from these excesses? were not most of them governed by many exorbitant appetites? did we therefore send none into the provinces? It was added, that the husbands were corrupted by their corrupt wives: and were therefore all single men uncorrupt? The Oppian Laws were once thought necessary, because the exigencies of the State required their severity: they were afterwards relaxed and mollified, because that too was expedient for the State. In vain we covered our own sloth with borrowed names: if the wife broke bounds, the husband ought to bear the blame. It was moreover unjustly judged, for the weak and uxorious spirit of one or a few, to bereave all others of the fellowship of their wives, the natural partners of their prosperity and distress. Besides, the sex, weak by nature, would be left defenceless, exposed to the luxurious bent of their native passions, and a prey to the allurements of adulterers: scarce under the eye and restraint of the husband was the marriage bed preserved inviolate: what must be the consequence, when by an absence of many years, the ties of marriage would be forgot, forgot as it were in a divorce? It became them, therefore, so to cure the evils abroad as not to forget the enormities at Rome.” To this Drusus added somewhat concerning his own wedlock. “Princes,” he said, “were frequently obliged to visit the remote parts of the Empire: how often did the deified Augustus travel to the East, how often to the West, still accompanied with Livia? He himself too had taken a progress to Illyricum, and, if it were expedient, was ready to visit other nations; but not always with an easy spirit, if he were to be torn from his dear wife, her by whom he had so many children.” Thus was Caecina’s motion eluded.

When the Senate met next, they had a letter from Tiberius. In it he affected to chide the fathers, “that upon him they cast all public cares;” and named them M. Lepidus and Junius Blesus, to choose either for Proconsul of Africa. They were then both heard as to this nomination: Lepidus excused himself with earnestness; he pleaded “his bodily frailty, the tender age of his children, and a daughter fit for marriage.” There was another reason too, of which he said nothing; but it was easily understood: Blesus was uncle to Sejanus, and therefore had the prevailing interest. Blesus too made a show of refusing, but not with the like positiveness, and was heard with partiality by the flatterers of power.

The same year the cities of Gaul, stimulated by their excessive debts, began a rebellion. The most vehement incendiaries were Julius Florus and Julius Sacrovir; the first amongst those of Treves, the second amongst the Aeduans. They were both distinguished by their nobility, and by the good services of their ancestors, who thence had acquired of old the right of Roman citizens; a privilege rare in those days, and then only the prize of virtue. When by secret meetings, they had gained those who were most prompt to rebel; with such as were desperate through indigence, or, from guilt of past crimes, forced to commit more; they agreed that Florus should begin the insurrection in Belgia; Sacrovir amongst the neighbouring Gauls. In order to this, they had many consultations and cabals, where they uttered seditious harangues; they urged “their tribute without end, their devouring usury, the pride and cruelty of their Governors: that they had now a glorious opportunity to recover their liberty; for that since the report of the murder of Germanicus, discord had seized the Roman soldiery: they need only consider their own strength and numbers; while Italy was poor and exhausted; the Roman populace weak and unwarlike, the Roman armies destitute of all vigour but that derived from foreigners.”

Scarce one city remained untainted with the seeds of this rebellion; but it first broke at Angiers and Tours. The former were reduced by Acilius Aviola, a legate, with the assistance of a cohort drawn from the garrison at Lyons. Those of Tours were suppressed by the same Aviola, assisted with a detachment sent from the legions, by Visellius Varro, lieutenant- governor of lower Germany. Some of the chiefs of the Gauls had likewise joined him with succours, the better to disguise their defection, and to push it with more effect hereafter. Even Sacrovir was beheld engaged in fight for the Romans, with his head bare, a _demonstration_, he pretended, _of his bravery_; but the prisoners averred, that “he did it to be known to his countrymen, and to escape their darts.”

An account of all this was laid before Tiberius, who slighted it, and by hesitation fostered the war. Florus the while pushed his designs, and tried to debauch a regiment of horse, levied at Treves, and kept under our pay and discipline: he would have engaged them to begin the war, by putting to the sword the Roman merchants; and some few were corrupted, but the body remained in their allegiance. A rabble however, of his own followers and desperate debtors, took arms and were making to the forest of Arden, when the legions sent from both armies by Visellius and Caius Silius, through different routes to intercept them, marred their march: and Julius Indus, one of the same country with Florus, at enmity with him, and therefore more eager to engage him, was despatched forward with a chosen band, and broke the ill-appointed multitude. Florus by lurking from place to place, frustrated the search of the conquerors: but at last, when he saw all the passes beset with soldiers, he fell by his own hands. This was the issue of the insurrection at Treves.

Amongst the Aeduans the revolt was stronger, as much stronger as the state was more opulent; and the forces to suppress it were to be brought from afar. Augustodunum, [Footnote: Autun.] the capital of the nation, was seized by Sacrovir, and in it all the noble youth of Gaul, who were there instructed in the liberal arts. By securing these pledges he aimed to bind in his interest their parents and relations; and at the same time distributed to the young men the arms, which he had caused to be secretly made. He had forty thousand men, the fifth part armed like our legions, the rest with poles, hangers, and other weapons used by hunters. To the number were added such of the slaves as had been appointed to be gladiators; these were covered, after the fashion of the country, with a continued armour of iron; and styled _Crupellarii_; a sort of militia unwieldy at exercising their own weapons, and impenetrable by those of others. These forces were still increased by volunteers from the neighbouring cities, where, though the public body did not hitherto avow the revolt, yet the zeal of particulars was manifest: they had likewise leisure to increase from the contention of the two Roman generals; a contention for some time undecided, while each demanded the command in that war. At length Varro, old and infirm, yielded to the superior vigour of Silius.

Now at Rome, “not only the insurrection of Treves and of the Aeduans, but likewise, that threescore and four cities of Gaul had revolted; that the Germans had joined in the revolt, and that Spain fluctuated;” were reports all believed with the usual aggravations of fame. The best men grieved in sympathy for their country: many from hatred of the present government and thirst of change, rejoiced in their own perils: they inveighed against Tiberius, “that in such a mighty uproar of rebellion, he was only employed in perusing the informations of the State accusers.” They asked, “did he mean to surrender Julius Sacrovir to the Senate, to try him for treason?” They exulted, “that there were at last found men, who would with arms restrain his bloody orders for private murders.” And declared “that even war was a happy change for a most wretched peace.” So much the more for this, Tiberius affected to appear wrapped up in security and unconcern; he neither changed place nor countenance, but behaved himself at that time as at other times; whether from elevation of mind, or whether he had learned that the state of things was not alarming, and only heightened by vulgar representation.

Silius the while sending forward a band of auxiliaries, marched with two legions, and in his march ravaged the villages of the Sequanians, next neighbours to the Aeduans, and their associates in arms. He then advanced towards Augustodunum; a hasty march, the standard-bearers mutually vying in expedition, and the common men breathing ardour and eagerness: they desired, “that no time might be wasted in the usual refreshments, none of their nights in sleep; let them only see and confront the foe: they wanted no more, to be victorious.” Twelve miles from Augustodunum, Sacrovir appeared with his forces upon the plains: in the front he had placed the iron troop; his cohorts in the wings; the half-armed in the rear: he himself, upon a fine horse, attended by the other chiefs, addressed himself to them from rank to rank; he reminded them “of the glorious achievements of the ancient Gauls; of the victorious mischiefs they had brought upon the Romans; of the liberty and renown attending victory; of their redoubled and intolerable servitude, if once more vanquished.”

A short speech; and an unattentive, and disheartened audience! For, the embattled legions approached; and the crowd of townsmen, ill appointed and novices in war, stood astonished, bereft of the present use of eyes and hearing. On the other side, Silius, though he presumed the victory, and thence might have spared exhortations, yet called to his men, “that they might be with reason ashamed that they, the conquerors of Germany, should be thus led against a rabble of Gauls as against an equal enemy: one cohort had newly defeated the rebels of Tours; one regiment of horse, those of Treves; a handful of this very army had routed the Sequanians: the present Aeduans, as they are more abounding in wealth, as they wallow more in voluptuousness, are by so much more soft and unwarlike: this is what you are now to prove, and your task to prevent their escape.” His words were returned with a mighty cry. Instantly the horse surrounded the foe; the foot attacked their front, and the wings were presently routed: the iron band gave some short obstruction, as the bars of their coats withstood the strokes of sword and pike: but the soldiers had recourse to their hatchets and pick-axes; and, as if they had battered a wall, hewed their bodies and armour: others with clubs, and some with forks, beat down the helpless lumps, who as they lay stretched along, without one struggle to rise, were left for dead. Sacrovir fled first to Augustodunum; and thence, fearful of being surrendered, to a neighbouring town, accompanied by his most faithful adherents. There he slew himself; and the rest, one another: having first set the town on fire, by which they were all consumed.

Now at last Tiberius wrote to the Senate about this war, and at once acquainted them with its rise and conclusion, neither aggravating facts nor lessening them; but added “that it was conducted by the fidelity and bravery of his lieutenants, guided by his counsels.” He likewise assigned the reasons why neither he, nor Drusus, went to that war; “that the Empire was an immense body; and it became not the dignity of a Prince, upon the revolt of one or two towns, to desert the capital, whence motion was derived to the whole: but since the alarm was over, he would visit those nations and settle them.” The Senate decreed vows and supplications for his return, with other customary honours. Only Cornelius Dolabella, while he strove to outdo others, fell into ridiculous sycophancy, and moved “that from Campania he should enter Rome in the triumph of ovation.” This occasioned a letter from Tiberius: in it he declared, “he was not so destitute of glory, that after having in his youth subdued the fiercest nations, and enjoyed or slighted so many triumphs, he should now in his old age seek empty honours from a short progress about the suburbs of Rome.”

Caius Sulpitius and Decimus Haterius were the following Consuls. Their year was exempt from disturbances abroad; but at home some severe blow was apprehended against luxury, which prevailed monstrously in all things that create a profusion of money. But as the more pernicious articles of expense were covered by concealing their prices; therefore from the excesses of the table, which were become the common subject of daily animadversion, apprehensions were raised of some rigid correction from a Prince, who observed himself the ancient parsimony. For, Caius Bibulus having begun the complaint, the other Aediles took it up, and argued “that the sumptuary laws were despised; the pomp and expense of plate and entertainments, in spite of restraints, increased daily, and by moderate penalties were not to be stopped.” This grievance thus represented to the Senate, was by them referred entire to the Emperor. Tiberius having long weighed with himself whether such an abandoned propensity to prodigality could be stemmed; whether the stemming it would not bring heavier evils upon the public; how dishonourable it would be to attempt what could not be effected, or at least effected by the disgrace of the nobility, and by the subjecting illustrious men to infamous punishments; wrote at last to the Senate in this manner:

“In other matters, Conscript Fathers, perhaps it might be more expedient for you to consult me in the Senate; and for me to declare there, what I judge for the public weal: but in the debate of this affair, it was best that my eyes were withdrawn; lest, while you marked the countenances and terror of particulars charged with scandalous luxury, I too should have observed them, and, as it were, caught them in it. Had the vigilant Aediles first asked counsel of me, I know not whether I should not have advised them rather to have passed by potent and inveterate corruptions, than only make it manifest, what enormities are an overmatch for us: but they in truth have done their duty, as I would have all other magistrates fulfil theirs. But for myself, it is neither commendable to be silent; nor does it belong to my station to speak out; since I neither bear the character of an Aedile, nor of a Praetor, nor of a Consul: something still greater and higher is required of a Prince. Every one is ready to assume to himself the credit of whatever is well done, while upon the Prince alone are thrown the miscarriages of all. But what is it, that I am first to prohibit, what excess retrench to the ancient standard? Am I to begin with that of our country seats, spacious without bounds; and with the number of domestics, a number distributed into nations in private families? or with the quantity of plate, silver, and gold? or with the pictures, and works, and statues of brass, the wonders of art? or with the gorgeous vestments, promiscuously worn by men and women? or with what is peculiar to the women, those precious stones, for the purchase of which our corn is carried into foreign and hostile nations.

“I am not ignorant that at entertainments and in conversation, these excesses are censured, and a regulation is required: and yet if an equal law were made, if equal penalties were prescribed, these very censurers would loudly complain, _that the State was utterly overturned, that snares and destruction were prepared for every illustrious house, that no men could be guiltless, and all men would be the prey of informers_. And yet bodily diseases grown inveterate and strengthened by time, cannot be checked but by medicines rigid and violent: it is the same with the soul: the sick and raging soul, itself corrupted and scattering its corruption, is not to be qualified but by remedies equally strong with its own flaming lusts. So many laws made by our ancestors, so many added by the deified Augustus; the former being lost in oblivion, and (which is more heinous) the latter in contempt, have only served to render luxury more secure. When we covet a thing yet unforbid, we are apt to fear that it may be forbid; but when once we can with impunity and defiance overleap prohibited bounds, there remains afterwards nor fear nor shame. How therefore did parsimony prevail of old? It was because, every one was a law to himself; it was because we were then only masters of one city: nor afterwards, while our dominion was confined only to Italy, had we found the same instigations to voluptuousness. By foreign conquests, we learned to waste the property of others; and in the Civil Wars, to consume our own. What a mighty matter is it that the Aediles remonstrate! how little to be weighed in the balance with others? It is wonderful that nobody represents, that Italy is in constant want of foreign supplies; that the lives of the Roman People are daily at the mercy of uncertain seas and of tempests: were it not for our supports from the provinces; supports, by which the masters, and their slaves, and their estates, are maintained; would our own groves and villas maintain us? This care therefore, Conscript Fathers, is the business of the Prince; and by the neglect of this care, the foundations of the State would be dissolved. The cure of other defects depends upon our own private spirits: some of us, shame will reclaim; necessity will mend the poor; satiety the rich. Or if any of the Magistrates, from a confidence of his own firmness and perseverance, will undertake to stem the progress of so great an evil; he has both my praises, and my acknowledgment, that he discharges me of part of my fatigues: but if such will only impeach corruptions, and when they have gained the glory, would leave upon me the indignation (indignation of their own raising); believe me, Conscript Fathers, I am not fond of bearing resentments: I already suffer many for the Commonwealth; many that are grievous and almost all unjust; and therefore with reason I intreat that I may not be loaded with such as are wantonly and vainly raised, and promise no advantage to you nor to me.”

The Senate, upon reading the Emperor’s letter, released the Aediles from this pursuit: and the luxury of the table which, from the battle of Actium till the revolution made by Galba, flowed, for the space of an hundred years, in all profusion; at last gradually declined. The causes of this change are worth knowing. Formerly the great families, great in nobility or abounding in riches, were carried away with a passion for magnificence: for even then it was allowed to court the good graces of the Roman People, with the favour of kings, and confederate nations; and to be courted by them: so that each was distinguished by the lustre of popularity and dependances, in proportion to his affluence, the splendour of his house, and the figure he made. But after Imperial fury had long raged in the slaughter of the Grandees, and the greatness of reputation was become the sure mark of destruction; the rest grew wiser: besides, new men frequently chosen Senators from the municipal towns, from the colonies, and even from the provinces, brought into the Senate their own domestic parsimony; and though, by fortune or industry, many of them grew wealthy as they grew old, yet their former frugal spirit continued. But above all, Vespasian proved the promoter of thrifty living, being himself the pattern of ancient economy in his person and table: hence the compliance of the public with the manners of the Prince, and an emulation to practise them; an incitement more prevalent than the terrors of laws and all their penalties. Or perhaps all human things go a certain round; and, as in the revolutions of time, there are also vicissitudes in manners: nor indeed have our ancestors excelled us in all things; our own age has produced many excellences worthy of praise and the imitation of posterity. Let us still preserve this strife in virtue with our forefathers.

Tiberius having gained the fame of moderation; because, by rejecting the project for reforming luxury, he had disarmed the growing hopes of the accusers; wrote to the Senate, to desire the _Tribunitial Power_ for Drusus. Augustus had devised this title, as best suiting the unbounded height of his views; while avoiding the odious name of _King_ or _Dictator_, he was yet obliged to use some particular appellation, under it to control all other powers in the State. He afterwards assumed Marcus Agrippa into a fellowship in it; and, upon his death, Tiberius; that none might doubt, who was to be his successor. By this means, he conceived, he should defeat the aspiring views of others: besides, he confided in the moderation of Tiberius, and in the mightiness of his own authority. By his example, Tiberius now advanced Drusus to the supreme Magistracy; whereas, while Germanicus yet lived, he acted without distinction towards both. In the beginning of his letter he besought the Gods “that by his counsels the Republic might prosper,” and then added a modest testimony concerning the qualities and behaviour of the young Prince, without aggravation or false embellishments; “that he had a wife and three children, and was of the same age with himself, when called by the deified Augustus to that office: that Drusus was not now by him adopted a partner in the toils of government, precipitately; but after eight years’ experience made of his qualifications; after seditions suppressed, wars concluded, the honour of triumph, and two Consulships.”

The Senators had foreseen this address; hence they received it with the more elaborate adulation. However, they could devise nothing to decree, but “statues to the two Princes, altars to the Gods, arches,” and other usual honours: only that Marcus Silanus strove to honour the Princes by the disgrace of the Consulship: he proposed “that all records public and private should, for their date, be inscribed no more with the names of the Consuls, but of those who exercised the Tribunitial power.” But Haterius Agrippa, by moving to have “the decrees of that day engraved in letters of gold, and hung up in the Senate,” became an object of derision; for that, as he was an ancient man, he could reap from his most abominable flattery no other fruit but that of infamy.

Tiberius, while he fortified the vitals of his own domination, afforded the Senate a shadow of their ancient jurisdiction; by referring to their examination petitions and claims from the provinces. For there had now prevailed amongst the Greek cities a latitude of instituting sanctuaries at pleasure. Hence the temples were filled with the most profligate fugitive slaves: here debtors found protection against their creditors; and hither were admitted such as were pursued for capital crimes. Nor was any force of Magistracy or laws sufficient to bridle the mad zeal of the people, who confounding the sacred villainies of men with the worship peculiar to the Gods, seditiously defended these profane sanctuaries. It was therefore ordered that these cities should send deputies to represent their claims. Some of the cities voluntarily relinquished the nominal privileges, which they had arbitrarily assumed: many confided in their rights; a confidence grounded on the antiquity of their superstitions, or on the merits of their kind offices to the Roman People. Glorious to the Senate was the appearance of that day, when the grants from our ancestors, the engagements of our confederates, the ordinances of kings, such kings who had reigned as yet independent of the Roman power; and when even the sacred worship of the Gods were now all subjected to their inspection, and their judgment free, as of old, to ratify or abolish with absolute power.

First of all the Ephesians applied. They alleged, that “Diana and Apollo were not, according to the credulity of the vulgar, born at Delos: in their territory flowed the river Cenchris; where also stood the Ortygian Grove: there the big-bellied Latona, leaning upon an olive tree, which even then remained, was delivered of these deities; and thence by their appointment the Grove became sacred. Thither Apollo himself, after his slaughter of the Cyclops, retired for a sanctuary from the wrath of Jupiter: soon after, the victorious Bacchus pardoned the suppliant Amazons, who sought refuge at the altar of Diana: by the concession of Hercules, when he reigned in Lydia, her temple was dignified with an augmentation of immunities; nor during the Persian monarchy were they abridged: they were next maintained by the Macedonians, and then by us.”

The Magnesians next asserted their claim, founded on an establishment of Lucius Scipio, confirmed by another of Sylla: the former after the defeat of Antiochus; the latter after that of Mithridates, having, as a testimony of the faith and bravery of the Magnesians, dignified their temple of the Leucophrynaean Diana with the privileges of an inviolable sanctuary. After them, the Aphrodisians and Stratoniceans produced a grant from Caesar the Dictator, for their early services to his party; and another lately from Augustus, with a commendation inserted, “that with zeal unshaken towards the Roman People, they had borne the irruption of the Parthians.” But these two people adored different deities: Aphrodisium was a city devoted to Venus; that of Stratonicea maintained the worship of Jupiter and of Diana Trivia. Those of Hierocaesarea exhibited claims of higher antiquity, “that they possessed the Persian Diana, and her temple consecrated by King Cyrus.” They likewise pleaded the authorities of Perpenna, Isauricus, and of many more Roman captains, who had allowed the same sacred immunity not to the temple only, but to a precinct two miles round it. Those of Cyprus pleaded right of sanctuary to three of their temples: the most ancient founded by Aerias to the Paphian Venus; another by his son Amathus to the Amathusian Venus; the third to the Salaminian Jupiter by Teucer, the son of Telamon, when he fled from the fury of his father.

The deputies too of other cities were heard. But the Senate tired with so many, and because there was a contention begun amongst particular parties for particular cities; gave power to the Consuls “to search into the validity of their several pretensions, and whether in them no fraud was interwoven;” with orders “to lay the whole matter once more before the Senate.” The Consuls reported that, besides the cities already mentioned, “they had found the temple of AEsculapius at Pergamus to be a genuine sanctuary: the rest claimed upon originals, from the darkness of antiquity, altogether obscure. Smyrna particularly pleaded an oracle of Apollo, in obedience to which they had dedicated a temple to Venus Stratonices; as did the Isle of Tenos an oracular order from the same God, to erect to Neptune a statue and temple. Sardis urged a later authority, namely, a grant from the Great Alexander; and Miletus insisted on one from King Darius: as to the deities of these two cities; one worshipped Diana; the other, Apollo. And Crete too demanded the privilege of sanctuary, to a statue of the deified Augustus.” Hence diverse orders of Senate were made, by which, though great reverence was expressed towards the deities, yet the extent of the sanctuaries was limited; and the several people were enjoined “to hang up in each temple the present decree engraven in brass, as a sacred memorial, and a restraint against their lapsing, under the colour of religion, into the abuses and claims of superstition.”

At the same time, a vehement distemper having seized Livia, obliged the Emperor to hasten his return to Rome; seeing hitherto the mother and son lived in apparent unanimity; or perhaps mutually disguised their hate: for, not long before, Livia, having dedicated a statue to the deified Augustus, near the theatre of Marcellus, had the name of Tiberius inscribed after her own. This he was believed to have resented heinously, as a degrading the dignity of the Prince; but to have buried his resentment under dark dissimulation. Upon this occasion, therefore, the Senate decreed “supplications to the Gods; with the celebration of the greater Roman games, under the direction of the Pontifs, the Augurs, the College of Fifteen, assisted by the College of Seven, and the Fraternity of Augustal Priests.” Lucius Apronius had moved, that “with the rest might preside the company of heralds.” Tiberius opposed it; he distinguished between the jurisdiction of the priests and theirs; “for that at no time had the heralds arrived to so much pre-eminence: but for the Augustal Fraternity, they were therefore added, because they exercised a priesthood peculiar to that family for which the present vows and solemnities were made,” It is no part of my purpose to trace all the votes of particular men, unless they are memorable for integrity, or for notorious infamy: this I conceive to be the principal duty of an historian, that he suppress no instance of virtue; and that by the dread of future infamy and the censures of posterity, men may be deterred from detestable actions and prostitute speeches. In short, such was the abomination of those times, so prevailing the contagion of flattery, that not only the first nobles, whose obnoxious splendour found protection only in obsequiousness; but all who had been Consuls, a great part of such as had been Praetors, and even many of the unregistered Senators, strove for priority in the vileness and excess of their votes. There is a tradition, that Tiberius, as often as he went out of the Senate, was wont to cry out in Greek, _Oh men prepared for bondage!_ Yes, even Tiberius, he who could not bear public liberty, nauseated this prostitute tameness of slaves.

BOOK IV

A.D. 23-28.

When Caius Asinius and Caius Antistius were Consuls, Tiberius was in his ninth year; the State composed, and his family flourishing (for the death of Germanicus he reckoned amongst the incidents of his prosperity) when suddenly fortune began to grow boisterous, and he himself to tyrannise, or to furnish others with the weapons of tyranny. The beginning and cause of this turn arose from Aelius Sejanus, captain of the Praetorian cohorts. Of his power I have above made mention; I shall now explain his original, his manners, and by what black deeds he strove to snatch the sovereignty. He was born at Vulsinii, son to Sejus Strabo, a Roman knight; in his early youth, he was a follower of Caius Caesar (grandson of Augustus) and lay then under the contumely of having for hire exposed himself to the constupration of Apicius; a debauchee wealthy and profuse: next by various artifices he so enchanted Tiberius, that he who to all others was dark and unsearchable, became to Sejanus alone destitute of all restraint and caution: nor did he so much accomplish this by any superior efforts of policy (for at his own stratagems he was vanquished by others) as by the rage of the Gods against the Roman State, to which he proved alike destructive when he flourished and when he fell. His person was hardy and equal to fatigues; his spirit daring but covered; sedulous to disguise his own counsels, dexterous to blacken others; alike fawning and imperious; to appearance exactly modest; but in his heart fostering the lust of domination; and, with this view, engaged at one time in profusion, largesses, and luxury; and again, often laid out in application and vigilance; qualities no less pernicious, when personated by ambition for the acquiring of Empire.

The authority of his command over the guards, which was but moderate before his time, he extended, by gathering into one camp all the Praetorian cohorts then dispersed over the city; that thus united, they might all at once receive his orders, and by continually beholding their own numbers and strength, conceive confidence in themselves and prove a terror to all other men. He pretended, “that the soldiers, while they lived scattered, lived loose and debauched; that when gathered into a body, there could, in any hasty emergency, be more reliance upon their succour; and that when encamped, remote from the allurements of the town, they would in their discipline be more exact and severe.” When the encampment was finished, he began gradually to allure the affections of the soldiers, by all the ways of affability, court, and familiarity: it was he too who chose the Centurions, he who chose the Tribunes. Neither in his pursuits of ambition did the Senate escape him; but by distinguishing his followers in it with offices and provinces, he cultivated power and a party there: for, to all this Tiberius was entirely resigned; and even so passionate for him, that not in conversation only, but in public, in his speeches to the Senate and people, he treated and extolled him, as _the sharer of his burdens_; nay, allowed his effigies to be publicly adored, in the several theatres, in all places of popular convention, and even amongst the Eagles of the legions.

But to his designs were many retardments: the Imperial house was full of Caesars; the Emperor’s son a grown man, and his grandsons of age: and because the cutting them off all at once, was dangerous; the treason he meditated, required a gradation of murders. He however chose the darkest method, and to begin with Drusus; against whom he was transported with a fresh motive of rage. For, Drusus impatient of a rival, and in his temper inflammable, had upon some occasional contest, shaken his fist at Sejanus, and, as he prepared to resist, given him a blow on the face. As he therefore cast about for every expedient of revenge, the readiest seemed to apply to Livia his wife: she was the sister of Germanicus, and from an uncomely person in her childhood, grew afterwards to excel in loveliness. As his passion for this lady was vehement, he tempted her to adultery, and having fulfilled the first iniquity (nor will a woman, who has sacrificed her chastity, stick at any other) he carried her greater lengths, to the views of marriage, a partnership in the Empire, and even the murder of her husband. Thus she, the niece of Augustus, the daughter-in-law of Tiberius, the mother of children by Drusus, defiled herself, her ancestors, and her posterity, with a municipal adulterer; and all to exchange an honourable condition possessed, for pursuits flagitious and uncertain. Into a fellowship in the guilt was assumed Eudemus, physician to Livia; and, under colour of his profession, frequently with her in private. Sejanus too, to avoid the jealousy of the adulteress, discharged from his bed Apicata his wife, her by whom he had three children. But still the mightiness of the iniquity terrified them, and thence created caution, delays, and frequently opposite counsels.

During this, in the beginning of the year, Drusus one of the sons of Germanicus, put on the manly robe; and upon him the Senate conferred the same honours decreed before to his brother Nero. A speech was added by Tiberius with a large encomium upon his son, “that with the tenderness of a father he used the children of his brother.” For, Drusus, however rare it be for power and unanimity to subsist together, was esteemed benevolent, certainly not ill-disposed, towards these youths. Now again was revived by Tiberius the proposal of a progress into the Provinces; a stale proposal, always hollow, but often feigned. He pretended “the multitude of veterans discharged, and thence the necessity of recruiting the armies; that volunteers were wanting, or if already such there were, they were chiefly the necessitous and vagabonds, and destitute of the like modesty and courage.” He likewise cursorily recounted the number of the legions, and what countries they defended: a detail which I think it behoves me also to repeat; that thence may appear what was then the complement of the Roman forces, what kings their confederates, and how much more narrow the limits of the Empire.

Italy was on each side guarded by two fleets; one at Misenum, one at Ravenna; and the coast joining to Gaul, by the galleys taken by Augustus at the battle of Actium, and sent powerfully manned to Forojulium. [Footnote: Frejus.] But the chief strength lay upon the Rhine; they were eight legions, a common guard upon the Germans and the Gauls. The reduction of Spain, lately completed, was maintained by three. Mauritania was possessed by King Juba; a realm which he held as a gift from the Roman People: the rest of Africa by two legions; and Egypt by the like number. Four legions kept in subjection all the mighty range of country, extending from the next limits of Syria, as far as the Euphrates, and bordering upon the Iberians, Albanians, and other Principalities, who by our might are protected against Foreign Powers. Thrace was held by Rhoemetalces, and the sons of Cotys; and both banks of the Danube by four legions; two in Pannonia, two in Moesia. In Dalmatia likewise were placed two; who, by the situation of the country, were at hand to support the former, and had not far to march into Italy, were any sudden succours required there: though Rome too had her peculiar soldiery; three city cohorts, and nine Praetorian, enlisted chiefly out of Etruria and Umbria, or from the ancient Latium and the old Roman colonies. In the several Provinces, besides, were disposed, according to their situation and necessity, the fleets of the several confederates, with their squadrons and battalions; a number of forces not much different from all the rest: but the particular detail would be uncertain; since, according to the exigency of times, they often shifted stations, with numbers sometimes enlarged, sometimes reduced.

It will, I believe, fall in properly here to review also the other parts of the Administration, and by what measures it was hitherto conducted, till with the beginning of this year the Government of Tiberius began to wax worse. First then, all public, and every private business of moment, was determined by the Senate: to the great men he allowed liberty of debate: those who in their debates lapsed into flattery, he checked: in conferring preferments, he was guided by merit, by ancient nobility, renown in war abroad, by civil accomplishments at home; insomuch that it was manifest, his choice could not have been better. There remained to the Consuls, there remained to the Praetors the useful marks of their dignities; to inferior magistrates the independent exercise of their charges; and the laws, where the power of the Prince was not concerned, were in proper force. The tributes, duties, and all public receipts, were directed by companies of Roman knights: the management of his own revenue he committed only to those of the most noted qualifications; mostly known by himself, and to some known by reputation alone: and when once taken, they were continued, without all restriction of term; since most grew old in the same employments. The populace were indeed aggrieved by the dearth of provisions; but without any fault of the Prince: nay, he spared no possible expense nor pains to remedy the effects of barrenness in the earth, and of wrecks at sea. He provided that the Provinces should not be oppressed with new impositions; and that no extortion, or violence should be committed by the magistrates in raising the old: there were no infamous corporal punishments, no confiscations of goods.

The Emperor’s possessions through Italy, were thin; the behaviour of his slaves modest; the freedmen who managed his house, few; and in his disputes with particulars, the courts were open and the law equal. All which restraints he observed, not, in truth, in the ways of complaisance and popularity; but always stern, and for the most part terrible; yet still he retained them, till by the death of Drusus they were abandoned: for, while he lived they continued; because Sejanus, while he was but laying the foundations of his power, studied to recommend himself by good counsels. He then had besides, an avenger to dread, one who disguised not his enmity, but was frequent in his complaints; “that when the son was in his prime, another was called, as coadjutor, to the Government; nay, how little was wanting to his being declared colleague in the Empire? That the first advances to sovereignty are steep and perilous; but, once you are entered, parties and instruments are ready to espouse you. Already a camp for the guards was formed, by the pleasure and authority of the captain: into whose hands the soldiers were delivered: in the theatre of Pompey his statue was beheld: in his grandchildren would be mixed the blood of the Drusi with that of Sejanus. After all this what remained but to supplicate his modesty to rest contented.” Nor was it rarely that he uttered these disgusts, nor to a few; besides, his wife being debauched, all his secrets were betrayed.

Sejanus therefore judging it time to despatch, chose such a poison as by operating gradually, might preserve the appearances of a casual disease. This was administered to Drusus by Lygdus the eunuch, as, eight years after, was learnt. Now during all the days of his illness, Tiberius disclosed no symptoms of anguish (perhaps from ostentation of a firmness of spirit) nay, when he had expired, and while he was yet unburied, he entered the Senate; and finding the Consuls placed upon a common seat, as a testimony of their grief; he admonished them of their dignity and station: and as the Senators burst into tears, he smothered his rising sighs, and, by a speech uttered without hesitation, animated them. “He, in truth, was not ignorant,” he said, “that he might be censured, for having thus in the first throbs of sorrow, beheld the face of the Senate; when most of those who feel the fresh pangs of mourning, can scarce endure the soothings of their kindred, scarce behold the day: neither were such to be condemned of weakness: but for himself, he had more powerful consolations; such as arose from embracing the Commonwealth, and pursuing her welfare.” He then lamented “the extreme age of his mother, the tender years of his grandsons, his own days in declension;” and desired that, “as the only alleviation of the present evils, the children of Germanicus might be introduced.” The Consuls therefore went for them, and having with kind words fortified their young minds, presented them to the Emperor. He took them by the hand and said, “Conscript Fathers, these infants, bereft of their father, I committed to their uncle; and besought him that, though he had issue of his own, he would rear and nourish them no otherwise than as the immediate offspring of his blood; that he would appropriate them as stays to himself and posterity. Drusus being snatched from us, to you I address the same prayers; and in the presence of the Gods, in the face of your country, I adjure you, receive into your protection, take under your tuition the great-grandchildren of Augustus; children, descended from ancestors the most glorious in the State: towards them fulfil your own, fulfil my duty. To you, Nero; to you, Drusus, these Senators are in the stead of a father; and such is the situation of your birth, that on the Commonwealth must light all the good and evil which befalls you.”

All this was heard with much weeping, and followed with propitious prayers and vows: and had he only gone thus far, and in his speech observed a medium, he had left the souls of his hearers full of sympathy and applause. But, by renewing an old project, always chimerical and so often ridiculed, about “restoring the Republic, reinstating it again in the Consuls, or whoever else would undertake the administration;” he forfeited his faith even in assertions which were commendable and sincere. To the memory of Drusus were decreed the same solemnities as to that of Germanicus; with many super-added; agreeably to the genius of flattery, which delights in variety and improvements. Most signal was the lustre of the funeral in a conspicuous procession of images; when at it appeared in a pompous train, Aeneas, father of the Julian race; all the kings of Alba, and Romulus founder of Rome; next the Sabine nobility, Attus Clausus, and his descendants of the Claudian family.

In relating the death of Drusus, I have followed the greatest part of our historians, and the most faithful: I would not however omit a rumour which in those times was so prevailing that it is not extinguished in ours; “that Sejanus having by adultery gained Livia to the murder, had likewise engaged by constupration the affections and concurrence of Lygdus the eunuch; because Lygdus was, for his youth and loveliness, dear to his master, and one of his chief attendants: that when the time and place of poisoning, were by the conspirators concerted; the eunuch carried his boldness so high, as to charge upon Drusus a design of poisoning Tiberius; and secretly warning the Emperor of this, advised him to shun the first draught offered him in the next entertainment at his son’s: that the old man possessed with this fictitious treason, after he had sate down to table, having received the cup delivered it to Drusus, who ignorantly and gaily drank it off: that this heightened the jealousy and apprehensions of Tiberius, as if through fear and shame his son had swallowed the same death, which for his father he had contrived.”

These bruitings of the populace, besides that they are supported by no certain author, may be easily refuted. For, who of common prudence (much less Tiberius so long practised in great affairs) would to his own son, without hearing him, present the mortal bane; with his own hands too, and cutting off for ever all possibility of retraction? Why would he not rather have tortured the minister of the poison? Why not inquired into the author of the poison? Why not observed towards his only son, a son hitherto convicted of no iniquity, that slowness and hesitation, which, even in his proceedings against strangers, was inherent in him? But as Sejanus was reckoned the framer of every wickedness, therefore, from the excessive fondness of Tiberius towards him, and from the hatred of all others towards both, things the most fabulous and direful were believed of them; besides that common fame is ever most fraught with tales of horror upon the departure of Princes: in truth, the plan and process of the murder were first discovered by Apicata, wife of Sejanus, and laid open upon the rack by Eudemus and Lygdus. Nor has any writer appeared so outrageous to charge it upon Tiberius; though in other instances they have sedulously collected and inflamed every action of his. My own purpose in recounting and censuring this rumour, was to blast, by so glaring an example, the credit of groundless tales; and to request of those into whose hands our present undertaking shall come, that they would not prefer hearsays, void of credibility and rashly swallowed, to the narrations of truth not adulterated with romance.

To proceed; whilst Tiberius was pronouncing in public the panegyric of his son, the Senate and People assumed the port and accent of mourners, rather in appearance than cordially; and in their hearts exulted to see the house of Germanicus begin to revive. But this dawn of fortune, and the conduct of Agrippina, ill disguising her hopes, quickened the overthrow of that house. For Sejanus, when he saw the death of Drusus pass unrevenged upon his murderers, and no public lamentation following it; undaunted as he was in villainy since his first efforts had succeeded; cast about in himself, how he might destroy the sons of Germanicus, whose succession to the Empire was now unquestionable. They were three; and, from the distinguished fidelity of their governors, and incorruptible chastity of Agrippina, could not be all circumvented by poison. He therefore chose to attack her another way; to raise alarms from the haughtiness and contumacy of her spirit; to rouse the old hatred of Livia the elder, and the guilty mind of his late accomplice, Livia the younger; that to the Emperor they might represent her “as elated with the credit and renown of her fruitfulness; and that confiding in it, and in the zeal of the populace, she grasped with open arms at the Empire.” The young Livia acted in this engagement by crafty calumniators; amongst whom she had particularly chosen Julius Posthumus, a man every way qualified for her purposes; as he was the adulterer of Mutilia Prisca, and thence a confidant of her grandmother’s; (for over the mind of the Empress, Prisca had powerful influence) and by their means the old woman, in her own nature tender and anxious of power, was rendered utterly irreconcilable to the widow of her grandson. Such too as were nearest the person of Agrippina, were promoted to be continually enraging her tempestuous heart by perverse representations.

This year also brought deputations from the Grecian cities; one from the people of Samos; one from those of Cooes; the former to request that the ancient right of Sanctuary in the Temple of Juno might be confirmed; the latter to solicit the same confirmation for that of Aesculapius. The Samians claimed upon a decree of the Council of Amphictyons, the supreme Judicature of Greece, at the time when the Greeks by their cities founded in Asia, possessed the maritime coasts. Nor had they of Cooes a weaker title to antiquity; to which likewise accrued the pretensions of the place to the friendship of Rome: for they had lodged in the Temple of Aesculapius all the Roman citizens there, when by the order of King Mithridates, such were universally butchered throughout all the cities of Asia and the Isles. And now after many complaints from the Praetors, for the most part ineffectual, the Emperor at last made a representation to the Senate, concerning the licentiousness of the players; “that in many instances they raised seditious tumults, and violated the public peace; and, in many, promoted debauchery in private families: that the _Oscan Farce_, formerly only the contemptible delight of the vulgar, was risen to such a prevailing pitch of credit and enormity, that it required the authority of the Senate to check it.” The players therefore were driven out of Italy.

The same year carried off one of the twins of Drusus, and thence afflicted the Emperor with fresh woe; nor with less for the death of a particular friend. It was Lucillius Longus, the inseparable companion of all the traverses of his fortune smiling or sad; and, of all the Senators, the only one who accompanied him in his retirement at Rhodes. For this reason, though but a new man, the Senate decreed him a public funeral; and a statue to be placed, at the expense of the Treasury, in the square of Augustus. For by the Senate, even yet, all affairs were transacted; insomuch that Lucillius Capito, the Emperor’s Comptroller in Asia, was, at the accusation of the Province, brought upon his defence before them: the Emperor too upon this occasion protested with great earnestness, “that from him Lucillius had no authority but over his slaves, and in collecting his domestic rents: that if he had usurped the jurisdiction of Praetor, and employed military force, he had so far violated his orders; they should therefore hear the allegations of the Province.” Thus the accused was upon trial condemned. For this just vengeance, and that inflicted the year before on Caius Silanus, the cities of Asia decreed a temple to Tiberius, and his mother, and the Senate; and obtained leave to build it. For this concession Nero made a speech of thanks to the Senators and his grandfather; a speech which charmed the affections of his hearers, who, as they were full of the memory of Germanicus, fancied it was him they heard, and him they saw. There was also in the youth himself an engaging modesty, and a gracefulness becoming a princely person: ornaments which, by the known hatred that threatened him from Sejanus, became still more dear and adored.

I am aware that most of the transactions which I have already related, or shall hereafter relate, may perhaps appear minute, and too trivial to be remembered. But, none must compare these my annals with the writings of those who compiled the story of the ancient Roman People. They had for their subjects mighty wars, potent cities sacked, great kings routed and taken captive: or if they sometimes reviewed the domestic affairs of Rome, they there found the mutual strife and animosities of the Consuls and Tribunes; the agrarian and frumentary laws, pushed and opposed; and the lasting struggles between the nobles and populace. Large and noble topics these, at home and abroad, and recounted by the old historians with full room and free scope. To me remains a straitened task, and void of glory; steady peace, or short intervals of war; the proceedings at Rome sad and affecting; and a Prince careless of extending the Empire: nor yet will it be without its profit to look minutely into such transactions, as however small at first view, give rise and motion to great events.

For, all nations and cities are governed either by the populace, by the nobility, or by single rulers. As to the frame of a state chosen and compacted out of all these three, it is easier applauded than accomplished; or if accomplished, cannot be of long duration. So that, as during the Republic, either when the power of the people prevailed, or when the Senate bore the chief sway; it was necessary to know the genius of the commonalty, and by what measures they were to be humoured and restrained; and such too who were thoroughly acquainted with the spirit of the Senate and leading men, came to be esteemed skilful in the times, and men of prowess: so now when that establishment is changed, and the present situation such as if one ruled all; it is of advantage to collect and record these later incidents, as matters of public example and instruction; since few can by their own wisdom distinguish between things crooked and upright; few between counsels pernicious and profitable; and since most men are taught by the fate of others. But the present detail, however instructive, yet brings scanty delight. It is by the descriptions and accounts of nations; by the variety of battles; by the brave fall of illustrious captains, that the soul of the reader is engaged and refreshed. For myself, I can only give a sad display of cruel orders, incessant accusations, faithless friendships, the destruction of innocents, and endless trials, all attended with the same issue, death and condemnation: an obvious round of repetition and satiety! Besides that the old historians are rarely censured; nor is any man now concerned whether they chiefly magnify the Roman or Carthaginian armies. But, of many who under Tiberius suffered punishment, or were marked with infamy, the posterity are still subsisting; or if the families themselves are extinct, there are others found, who from a similitude of manners, think that, in reciting the evil doings of others, they themselves are charged: nay, even virtue and a glorious name create foes, as they expose in a light too obvious the opposite characters. But I return to my undertaking.

Whilst Cornelius Cossus and Asinius Agrippa were Consuls, Cremutius Cordus was arraigned for that, “having published annals and in them praised Brutus, he had styled Cassius the last of the Romans:” a new crime, then first created. Satrius Secundus and Pinarius Natta were his accusers; creatures of Sejanus: a mortal omen this to the accused; besides that Tiberius received his defence with a countenance settled into cruelty. He began it on this wise, casting away all hopes of life:

“As to facts, I am so guiltless, Conscript Fathers, that my words only are accused: but neither are any words of mine pointed against the Emperor, or his mother; who are the only persons comprehended in the law concerning violated majesty. It is alleged that I have praised Brutus and Cassius; men whose lives and actions have been compiled by a cloud of writers, and their memory treated by none but with honour. Titus Livius, an historian eminently famous for eloquence and veracity, signalised Pompey with such abundant encomiums, that he was thence by Augustus named Pompeianus; nor did this prejudice their common friendship. Neither Scipio, nor Afranius, nor even this same Cassius, nor this same Brutus, are anywhere mentioned by him as _traitors_ and _parricides_, the common nicknames now bestowed on them; but often, as great and memorable men. The writings of Asinius Pollio have conveyed down the memory of the same men, under honourable characters. Corvinus Messala gloried to have had Cassius for his general: and yet both Pollio and Corvinus became signally powerful in wealth and honours under Augustus. That book of Cicero’s, in which he exalted Cato to the skies; what other animadversion did it draw from Caesar the Dictator, than a written reply, in the same style and equality as if before his judges he had made it? The letters of Marc Anthony; the speeches of Brutus, are full of reproaches, and recriminations against Augustus; false in truth, but urged with signal asperity: the poems of Bibaculus and those of Catullus, stuffed with virulent satires against the Caesars, are still read. But even the deified Julius, even the deified Augustus, bore all these invectives and disdained them; whether with greater moderation or wisdom, I cannot easily say. For, if they are despised, they fade away; if you wax wroth, you seem to avow them to be just.

“Instances from the Greeks I bring none: with them not the freedom only, but even the licentiousness of speech, is unpunished: or if any correction is returned, it is only by revenging words with words. It has been ever allowed, without restriction or rebuke, to pass our judgment upon those whom death has withdrawn from the influence of affection and hate. Are Cassius and Brutus now in arms? do they at present fill with armed troops the fields of Philippi? or do I fire the Roman People, by inflammatory harangues, with the spirit of civil rage? Brutus and Cassius, now above seventy years slain, are still known in their statues, which even the conqueror did not abolish: and as these exhibit their persons, why not the historian their characters? Impartial posterity to every man repays his proper praise: nor will there be wanting such as, if my death is determined, will not only revive the story of Cassius and Brutus, but even my story.” Having thus said he withdrew from the Senate, and ended his life by abstinence. The Fathers condemned the books to be by the Aediles burned; but they still continued concealed and dispersed: hence we may justly mock the stupidity of those, who imagine that they can, by present power, extinguish the lights and memory of succeeding times: for, quite otherwise, the punishment of writers exalts the credit of the writings: nor did ever foreign kings, or any else, reap other fruit from it, than infamy to themselves, and glory to the sufferers.

To proceed; for this whole year there was such an incessant torrent of accusations, that even during the solemnity of the Latin festival, when Drusus for his inauguration, as Governor of Rome, had ascended the Tribunal, he was accosted by Calpurnius Salvianus with a charge against Sextus Marius: a proceeding openly resented by the Emperor, and thence Salvianus was banished. The city of Cyzicus was next accused, “of not observing the established worship of the deified Augustus;” with additional crimes, “of violences committed upon some Roman citizens.” Thus that city lost her liberties; which by her behaviour during the Mithridatic war, she had purchased; having in it sustained a siege; and as much by her own bravery, as by the aid of Lucullus, repulsed the king, But Fonteius Capito, who had as Proconsul governed Asia, was acquitted, upon proof that the crimes brought against him by Vibius Serenus were forged: and yet the forgery drew no penalty upon Serenus: nay, the public hate rendered him the more secure: for, every accuser, the more eager and incessant he was, the more sacred and inviolable he became: the sorry and impotent were surrendered to chastisement.

About the same time, the furthermost Spain besought the Senate by their ambassadors, “that after the example of Asia, they might erect a temple to Tiberius and his mother.” Upon this occasion, the Emperor, always resolute in contemning honours, and now judging it proper to confute those, who exposed him to the popular censure, of having deviated into ambition; spoke in this manner: “I know, Conscript Fathers, that it is generally blamed, and ascribed to a defect of firmness in me, that when the cities of Asia petitioned for this very thing, I withstood them not. I shall therefore now unfold at once the motives of my silence then, and the rules which for the future I am determined to observe. Since the deified Augustus bad not opposed the founding at Pergamus a temple to himself and the city of Rome; I, with whom all his actions and sayings have the force of laws, followed an example already approved; and followed it the more cheerfully, because to the worship bestowed upon me, that of the Senate was annexed. But as the indulging of this, in one instance, will find pardon; so a general latitude of being adored through every province, under the sacred representations of the Deities, would denote a vain spirit; a heart swelled with ambition. The glory too of Augustus will vanish, if by the promiscuous courtship of flattery it comes to be vulgarly prostituted.

“For myself, Conscript Fathers, I am a mortal man; I am confined to the functions of human nature; and if I well supply the principal place amongst you, it suffices me. This I acknowledge to you; and this acknowledgment, I would have posterity to remember. They will do abundant right to my memory, if they believe me to have been worthy of my ancestors; watchful of the Roman state; unmoved in perils, and in maintaining the public interest, fearless of private enmities. These are the temples which in your breasts I would raise; these the fairest portraitures, and such as will endure. As to temples and statues of stone, if the idol adored in them comes to be hated by posterity, they are despised as his sepulchres. Hence it is I here invoke the Gods, that to the end of my life they would grant me a spirit undisturbed, and discerning in duties human and divine: and hence too I here implore our citizens and allies, that whenever my dissolution comes, they would with approbation and benevolent testimonies of remembrance, celebrate my actions and retain the odour of my name.” And thenceforward he persevered in slighting upon all occasions, and even in private conversation, this divine worship of himself. A conduct which was by some ascribed to modesty; by many to a conscious diffidence; by others to degeneracy of spirit. “Since the most sublime amongst men naturally covet the most exalted honours: thus Hercules and Bacchus amongst the Greeks, and with us Romulus, were added to the society of the Gods: Augustus too had chosen the nobler part, and hoped for deification: all the other gratifications of Princes were instantly procured: one only was to be pursued insatiably; the praise and perpetuity of their name. For by contemning fame, the virtues that procure it, are contemned.”

Now Sejanus, intoxicated with excess of fortune, and moreover stimulated by the importunity of Livia, who, with the restless passion of a woman, craved the promised marriage, composed a memorial to the Emperor. For, it was then the custom to apply to him in writing, though he were present. This of Sejanus was thus conceived: “That such had been towards him the benevolence of Augustus; such and so numerous, since, the instances of affection from Tiberius, that he was thence accustomed, without applying to the Gods, to carry his hopes and prayers directly to the Emperors: yet of them he had never sought a blaze of honours: watching and toils like those of common soldiers, for the safeguard of the Prince, had been his choice and ambition. However what was most glorious for him he had attained; to be thought worthy of alliance with the Emperor: hence the source of his present hopes: and, since he had heard that Augustus, in the disposal of his daughter, had not been without thoughts even of some of the Roman knights; he begged that if a husband were sought for Livia, Tiberius would remember his friend; one whose ambition aimed no higher than the pure and disinterested glory of the affinity: for that he would never abandon the burden of his present trust; but hold it sufficient to be, by that means, enabled to support his house against the injurious wrath of Agrippina; and in this he only consulted the security of his children. For himself; his own life would be abundantly long, whenever finally spent in the ministry of such a Prince.”

For a present answer, Tiberius praised the loyalty of Sejanus; recapitulated cursorily the instances of his own favours towards him, and required time, as it were for a thorough deliberation. At last he made this reply: “That all other men were, in their pursuits, guided by the notions of convenience: far different was the lot and situation of Princes, who were in their action to consider chiefly the applause and good liking of the public: he therefore did not delude Sejanus with an obvious and plausible answer; that Livia could herself determine whether, after Drusus, she ought again to marry, or still persist his widow, and that she had a mother and grandmother, nearer relations and more interested to advise. He would deal more candidly with him: and first as to the enmity of Agrippina; it would flame out with fresh fury, if by the marriage of Livia, the family of the Caesars were rent as it were into two contending parties: that even as things stood, the emulation of these ladies broke into frequent sallies, and, by their animosities, his grandsons were instigated different ways. What would be the consequence, if, by such a marriage, the strife were inflamed? For you are deceived, Sejanus, if you think to continue then in the same rank as now; or that Livia, she who was first the wife of the young Caius Caesar, and afterwards the wife of Drusus, will be of a temper to grow old with a husband no higher than a Roman knight: nay, allowing that I suffered you afterwards to remain what you are; do you believe that they who saw her father, they who saw her brother, and the ancestors of our house, covered with the supreme dignities, will ever suffer it? You in truth propose, yourself, to stand still in the same station: but the great magistrates and grandees of the state, those very magistrates and grandees who, in spite of yourself, break in upon you, and in all affairs court you as their oracle, make no secret of maintaining that you have long since exceeded the bounds of the Equestrian Order, and far outgone in power all the confidants of my father; and from their hatred to you, they also censure me. But still, Augustus deliberated about giving his daughter to a Roman knight. Where is the wonder, if perplexed with a crowd of distracting cares, and apprised to what an unbounded height above others he raised whomsoever he dignified with such a match, he talked of Proculeius, and some like him; remarkable for the retiredness of their life, and nowise engaged in the affairs of state? But if we are influenced by the hesitation of Augustus, how much more powerful is the decision; since he bestowed his daughter on Agrippa, and then on me? These are considerations which in friendship I have not withheld: however, neither your own inclinations, nor those of Livia, shall be ever thwarted by me. The secret and constant purposes of my own heart towards you, and with what further ties of affinity, I am contriving to bind you still faster to me; I at present forbear to recount. Thus much only I will declare, that there is nothing so high but those abilities, and your singular zeal and fidelity towards me, may justly claim: as when opportunity presents, either in Senate, or in a popular assembly, I shall not fail to testify.”

In answer to this, Sejanus no longer soliciting the marriage, but filled with higher apprehensions, besought him “to resist the dark suggestions of suspicion; to despise the pratings of the vulgar, nor to admit the hostile breath of envy.” And as he was puzzled about the crowds which incessantly haunted his house; lest by keeping them off he might impair his power; or by encouraging them, furnish a handle for criminal imputations; he came to this result, that he would urge the Emperor out of Rome, to spend his life remote from thence in delightful retirements. From this counsel he foresaw many advantages: upon himself would depend all access to the Emperor; all letters and expresses would, as the soldiers were the carriers, be in great measure under his direction; in a little time, the Prince, now in declining age, and then softened by recess, would more easily transfer upon him the whole charge of the Empire: he should be removed from the multitude of such as to make their court, attended him at Rome; and thence one source of envy would be stopped. So that by discharging the empty phantoms of power, he should augment the essentials. He therefore began by little and little to rail at the hurry of business at Rome, the throng of people, the flock of suitors: he applauded “retirement and quiet; where, while they were separate from irksome fatigues, nor exposed to the discontents and resentments of particulars, all affairs of moment were best despatched.”

Next were heard ambassadors from the Lacedaemonians and Messenians, about the right that each people claimed to the Temple of Diana Limenetis; which the Lacedaemonians asserted to be theirs, “founded in their territory, and dedicated by their ancestors,” and offered as proofs the ancient authority of their annals, and the hymns of the old poets. “It had been in truth taken from them by the superior force of Philip of Macedon, when at war with him; but restored afterwards by the judicial decision of Julius Caesar and Marc Anthony.” The Messenians, on the contrary, pleaded, “the ancient partition of Peloponnesus amongst the descendants of Hercules; whence the territory where the temple stood, had fallen to their king; and the monuments of that allotment still remained, engraven in stone and old tables of brass; but, if the testimony of histories and poets were appealed to; they themselves had the most and the fullest. Nor had Philip, in his decision, acted by power, but from equity: the same afterwards was the adjudgment of King Antigonus; the same that of the Roman commander Mummius. Thus too the Milesians had awarded, they who were by both sides chosen arbitrators: and thus lastly it had been determined by Atidius Geminus, Praetor of Achaia.” The Messenians therefore gained the suit. The citizens also of Segestum applied on behalf of “the Temple of Venus on Mount Eryx; which fallen through age, they desired might be restored.” They represented the story of its origin and antiquity; a well-pleasing flattery to Tiberius; who frankly took upon himself the charge, as kinsman to the Goddess. Then was discussed the petition from the citizens of Marseilles; and what they claimed, according to the precedent of Publius Rutilius, was approved: for Rutilius, though by a law expelled from Rome, had been by those of Smyrna adopted a citizen: and as Volcatius Moschus, another exile, had found at Marseilles the same privilege and reception, he had to their Republic, as to his country, left his estate.

During the same Consuls, a bloody assassination was perpetrated in the nethermost Spain, by a boor in the territory of Termes. By him, Lucius Piso, Governor of the Province, as he travelled careless and unattended, relying on the established peace, was surprised, and despatched at one deadly blow. The assassin however escaped to a forest, by the fleetness of his horse; and there dismissed him: from thence travelling over rocks and pathless places, he baffled his pursuers: but their ignorance of his person was soon removed; for his horse being taken and shown through the neighbouring villages, it was thence learned who was the owner; so that he too was found; but when put to the rack to declare his accomplices, he proclaimed with a mighty and assured voice, in the language of his country, “that in vain they questioned him; his associates might stand safely by and witness his constancy: and that no force of torture could be so exquisite as from him to extort a discovery.” Next day as he was dragged back to the rack, he burst with a vehement effort from his guard, and dashed his head so desperately against a stone, that he instantly expired. Piso is believed to have been assassinated by a plot of the Termestinians; as in exacting the repayment of some money, seized from the public, he acted with more asperity, than a rough people could bear.

In the Consulship of Lentulus Getulicus and Caius Calvisius, the triumphal ensigns were decreed to Poppeus Sabinus for having routed some clans of Thracians, who living wildly on the high mountains, acted thence with the more outrage and contumacy. The ground of their late commotion, not to mention the savage genius of the people, was their scorn and impatience, to have recruits raised amongst them, and all their stoutest men enlisted in our armies; accustomed as they were not even to obey their native kings further than their own humour, nor to aid them with forces but under captains of their own choosing, nor to fight against any enemy but their own borderers. Their discontents too were inflamed by a rumour which then ran current amongst them; that they were to be dispersed into different regions; and exterminated from their own, to be mixed with other nations. But before they took arms and began hostilities, they sent ambassadors to Sabinus, to represent “their past friendship and submission, and that the same should continue, if they were provoked by no fresh impositions: but, if like a people subdued by war, they were doomed to bondage; they had able men and steel, and souls determined upon liberty or death.” The ambassadors at the same time pointed to their strongholds founded upon precipices; and boasted that they had thither conveyed their wives and parents; and threatened a war intricate, hazardous and bloody.

Sabinus amused them with gentle answers till he could draw together his army; while Pomponius Labeo was advancing with a legion from Moesia, and King Rhoemetalces with a body of Thracians who had not renounced their allegiance. With these, and what forces he had of his own, he marched towards the foe, now settled in the passes of the forest: some more bold presented themselves upon the hills: against the last, the Roman general first bent his forces in battle, and without difficulty drove them thence, but with small slaughter of the Barbarians, because of their immediate refuge. Here he straight raised an encampment, and with a stout band took possession of a hill, which extended with an even narrow ridge to the next fortress, which was garrisoned by a great host of armed men and rabble: and as the most resolute were, in the way of the nation, rioting without the fortification in dances and songs, he forthwith despatched against them his select archers. These, while they only poured in volleys of arrows at a distance did thick and extensive execution; but, approaching too near, were by a sudden sally put in disorder. They were however supported by a cohort of the Sigambrians, purposely posted by Sabinus in readiness against an exigency; a people these, equally terrible in the boisterous and mixed uproar of their voices and arms.

He afterwards pitched his camp nearer to the enemy; having in his former entrenchments left the Thracians, whom I have mentioned to have joined us. To them too was permitted “to lay waste, burn, and plunder; on condition that their ravages were confined to the day; and that, at nights, they kept within the camp, secure under guard.” This restriction was at first observed; but, anon lapsing into luxury, and grown opulent in plunder, they neglected their guards, and resigned themselves to gaiety and banquetting, to the intoxication and sloth of wine and sleep. The enemy therefore apprised of their negligence, formed themselves into two bands; one to set upon the plunderers; the other to assault the Roman camp, with no hopes of taking it; but only that the soldiers alarmed with shouts and darts, and all intent upon their own defence, might not hear the din of the other battle: moreover to heighten the terror, it was to be done by night. Those who assailed the lines of the legions were easily repulsed: but, the auxiliary Thracians were terrified with the sudden encounter, as they were utterly unprepared. Part of them lay along the entrenchments; many were roaming abroad; and both were slain with the keener vengeance, as they were upbraided “for fugitives and traitors, who bore arms to establish servitude over their country and themselves.”

Next day Sabinus drew up his army in view of the enemy, on ground equal to both; to try, if elated with their success by night, they would venture a battle: and, when they still kept within the fortress, or on the cluster of hills, he began to begird them with a siege; and strengthening his old lines and adding new, enclosed a circuit of four miles. Then to deprive them of water and forage, he straitened his entrenchment by degrees, and hemmed them in still closer. A bulwark was also raised, whence the enemy now within throw, were annoyed with discharges of stones, darts, and fire. But nothing aggrieved them so vehemently as thirst, whilst only a single fountain remained amongst a huge multitude of armed men and families: their horses too and cattle, penned up with the people, after the barbarous manner of the country, perished for want of provender: amongst the carcasses of beasts lay those of men; some dead of thirst, some of their wounds; a noisome mixture of misery and death; all was foul and tainted with putrefaction, stench, and filthy contamination. To these distresses also accrued another, and of all calamities the most consummate, the calamity of discord: some were disposed to surrender; others proposed present death, and to fall upon one another. There were some too who advised a sally, and to die avenging their deaths. Nor were these last mean men, though dissenting from the rest.

But there was one of their leaders, his name Dinis, a man stricken in years, who, by long experience, acquainted with the power and clemency of the Romans, argued, “that they must lay down their arms, the same being the sole cure for their pressing calamities;” and was the first who submitted, with his wife and children to the conqueror. There followed him all that were weak through sex or age, and such as had a greater passion for life than glory. The young men were parted between Tarsa and Turesis; both determined to fall with liberty: but Tarsa declared earnestly “for instant death; and that by it all hopes and fears were at once to be extinguished;” and setting an example, buried his sword in his breast. Nor were there wanting some who despatched themselves the same way. Turesis and his band stayed for night: of which our General was aware. The guards were therefore strengthened with extraordinary reinforcements: and now with the night, darkness prevailed, its horror heightened by outrageous rain; and the enemy with tumultuous shouts, and by turns with vast silence, alarmed and puzzled the besiegers. Sabinus therefore going round the camp, warned the soldiers, “that they should not be misguided by the deceitful voice of uproar, nor trust to a feigned calm, and thence open an advantage to the enemy, who by these wiles sought it; but keep immovably to their several posts; nor throw their darts at random.”

Just then came the Barbarians, pouring in distinct droves: here, with stones, with wooden javelins hardened in the fire, and with the broken limbs of trees, they battered the palisade: there with hurdles, faggots and dead bodies, they filled the trench: by others, bridges and ladders, both before framed, were planted against the battlements; these they violently grappled and tore, and struggled hand to hand with those who opposed them. The Romans, on the other side, beat them back with their bucklers, drove them down with darts, and hurled upon them great mural stakes and heaps of stones. On both sides were powerful stimulations: on ours the hopes of victory almost gained, if we persisted; and thence the more glaring infamy, if we recoiled: on theirs, the last struggle for their life; most of them, too, inspired with the affecting presence of their mothers and wives, and made desperate by their dolorous wailings. The night was an advantage to the cowardly and the brave; by it, the former became more resolute; by it, the latter hid their fear: blows were dealt, the striker knew not upon whom; and wounds received, the wounded knew not whence: such was the utter indistinction of friend and foe. To heighten the general jumble and blind confusion, the echo from the cavities of the mountain represented to the Romans the shouts of the enemy as behind them: hence in some places they deserted their lines, as believing them already broken and entered: and yet such of the enemy, as broke through, were very few. All the rest, their most resolute champions