Annals — Book 3

Tacitus · a new plain-English translation from the original language

1| Agrippina, without a break in her winter voyage, put in at Corcyra, the island facing the Calabrian shore. There she spent a few days composing herself, still wild with grief and unpracticed in bearing it. Meanwhile word of her arrival spread, and everyone close to her, most of the soldiers who had served under Germanicus, and many strangers from the nearby towns besides, rushed to Brundisium—the fastest and safest landing for her—some out of duty to the emperor's house, more simply following the crowd. The moment her fleet was sighted from the open sea, the harbor and the shoreline filled, and so did the walls and rooftops and every point that offered a view, with a grieving crowd asking one another whether they should receive her landing in silence or with some cry. No one was quite sure what the moment called for. Then the ships drew slowly in, the rowing not brisk as usual but everything arranged for sorrow. When Agrippina came ashore with her two children, holding the funeral urn, and fixed her eyes on the ground, one groan rose from everyone alike—you could not tell family from strangers, men's weeping from women's, except that those who had come to meet her, fresh in their grief, outdid Agrippina's own escort, worn down by long mourning.

2| The emperor dispatched two cohorts of the praetorian guard, and directed the magistrates of Calabria, Apulia, and Campania to pay his son's memory every last honor. So the ashes were carried on the shoulders of tribunes and centurions; the standards went ahead unadorned, the fasces reversed. Wherever the procession passed through a colony, the common people wore black and the knights their ceremonial robes, and, according to what each town could afford, burned clothing, incense, and the other customary funeral offerings. Even towns off the route came out to meet it, offering victims and altars to the spirits of the dead, testifying their grief with tears and cries. Drusus, along with his brother Claudius and the children of Germanicus still in Rome, went as far as Terracina to meet it. By then the consuls Marcus Valerius and Marcus Aurelius held office, and they, together with the senate and much of the people, crowded the road in scattered groups, each weeping as feeling moved him; none of it was flattery, for everyone could see Tiberius struggling, and badly, to mask how pleased he was that Germanicus had died.

3| Tiberius and Augusta stayed away from the public eye, judging it beneath their dignity to mourn openly, or else fearing that if every eye searched their faces, the grief would be seen through as false. I find no record, either in the historians or in the daily register of public acts, that Antonia, Germanicus's mother, took any conspicuous part, though Agrippina, Drusus, Claudius, and the rest of the family are named individually. Either illness held her back, or her spirit, broken by grief, could not bear to look the full scale of the disaster in the face. I find it easier to believe that Tiberius and Augusta, who never left the house, kept her there too, so that her grief would match theirs and it would look as though the boy's grandmother and uncle were being held back by the same example as the mother.

4| The day the remains were placed in the tomb of Augustus was by turns a vast silence and a restless burst of wailing. The city's streets were packed, torches blazed across the Field of Mars. There the soldiers stood under arms, the magistrates without their badges of office, and the people, tribe by tribe, cried out that the state had fallen, that nothing was left to hope for—more openly and more boldly than anyone would believe they'd dare say of their rulers. Nothing cut into Tiberius more than the people's passion for Agrippina, whom they called the glory of the country, the last of the blood of Augustus, the one surviving model of the old virtue, turning to the heavens and the gods to pray that her children be kept safe and outlive their enemies.

5| Some complained that there had been no public funeral procession, comparing it with the honor and splendor Augustus had shown Drusus, Germanicus's father. Augustus himself, they recalled, had pushed on through the harshest winter weather all the way to Ticinum, and had not left the body's side even on entering the city; the death-masks of the Claudii and the Julii had ringed the bier; he had been mourned in the Forum, praised from the rostra, and every honor the ancestors had devised, or that later generations could invent, had been heaped on him. But Germanicus had not even received the ordinary honors owed to any nobleman. True, the length of the journey meant his body had to be burned however the foreign land allowed—but all the more reason, they said, to have piled on honors afterward to make up for what chance had denied him at first. His brother had come only a single day's journey to meet him; his uncle not even to the city gate. Where were the old customs now—the effigy laid out on a couch, the verses composed to keep his courage in memory, the eulogies, the tears, or even a show of grief?

6| Tiberius knew what people were saying. To quiet the talk, he issued an edict noting that many distinguished Romans had died for the state, and none had been mourned with such burning devotion. That devotion did credit to him and to everyone—so long as it kept some restraint. What suited ordinary households or ordinary towns, he said, did not suit men who ruled, or a people that ruled an empire. Grief and the comfort that comes from mourning were fitting while the wound was fresh; but now it was time to steady the mind again, as the deified Julius had done after losing his only daughter, and the deified Augustus after losing his grandsons, both burying their sorrow. There was no need to reach for older examples—think how often the Roman people had borne, without breaking, the ruin of armies, the deaths of generals, whole noble families wiped out. Rulers die; the state is eternal. Let the people, he said, return to their ordinary business, and since the Megalesian games were coming up, take up their pleasures again too.

7| So the period of public mourning was lifted and life returned to its business, and Drusus set out for the armies in Illyricum. Everyone's mind was fixed on pursuing Piso for vengeance, and there was constant complaint that he was wandering at leisure through the pleasant country of Asia and Achaea, using arrogant delay and cunning to undermine the proof of his crimes. It had become common knowledge that Martina, the woman notorious for poisoning whom Gnaeus Sentius had sent to Rome as I mentioned, had died suddenly at Brundisium, poison hidden in a knot of her hair, and no marks on her body to show how she had died.

8| Piso, meanwhile, sent his son ahead to Rome with instructions on how to soften the emperor toward him, and himself made for Drusus, hoping to find him not enraged by his brother's death but, with a rival removed, better disposed toward him. Tiberius, wanting to seem impartial, received the young man kindly and, following his usual generosity toward the sons of noble houses, showered him with favors. Drusus told Piso that if the charges being made were true, his own grief came first in this above all others; but he would rather believe them false and groundless, and that Germanicus's death should be the ruin of no one. He said this openly, avoiding any private meeting, and no one doubted Tiberius had coached him—for Drusus, otherwise artless and easygoing in his youth, was showing an old man's cunning.

9| Piso crossed the Adriatic, left his ships at Ancona, and traveled through Picenum and then the Flaminian Way to catch up with a legion being marched from Pannonia to Rome and on to garrison duty in Africa. This stirred rumors, since he was said to have shown himself repeatedly to the soldiers along the march. From Narnia—whether to avoid suspicion, or simply because a frightened man's plans are never settled—he sailed down the Nar and then the Tiber, which only inflamed the public's anger further, since he brought his ship in near the tomb of the Caesars, and, with the riverbank crowded in broad daylight, disembarked with a great train of clients, Plancina with her escort of women, both of them looking pleased with themselves. Adding to the resentment was his house overlooking the Forum, decked out for a celebration, with a banquet and feasting in full view—nothing hidden, given how public the spot was.

10| The next day Fulcinius Trio brought a formal charge against Piso before the consuls. But Vitellius, Veranius, and the others who had accompanied Germanicus objected that Trio had no standing in the case; they were not there as accusers but as witnesses reporting facts and carrying out Germanicus's instructions. Trio gave up that part of the prosecution but won the right to attack Piso's earlier conduct instead, and it was requested that the emperor himself hear the case. Even the accused did not object to this, fearing the passions of the people and the senate; Tiberius, by contrast, was thought strong enough to shrug off rumor, and was, besides, bound up in his mother's involvement—truth, or a version twisted for the worse, could more easily be sorted out by a single judge, while hatred and prejudice carried more weight with a crowd. Tiberius was well aware how heavy the case would be, and how it would drag his own reputation down with it. So, calling in a few of his intimates, he heard the threats of the prosecution and the pleas of the defense, then sent the whole matter, untouched, back to the senate.

11| Meanwhile Drusus, returning from Illyricum, entered the city without the ovation the senate had voted him for recovering Maroboduus and for his achievements the previous summer—the honor was postponed. After this, the defendant asked Lucius Arruntius, Publius Vinicius, Asinius Gallus, Aeserninus Marcellus, and Sextus Pompeius to act as his advocates; when they made various excuses, Manius Lepidus, Lucius Piso, and Livineius Regulus stood by him instead, while the whole city watched intently—how loyal would Germanicus's friends prove, how confident was the defendant, and could Tiberius keep his own feelings sufficiently in check and under control. Never before had the people allowed themselves so much unspoken criticism of their ruler, or such suspicious silence.

12| On the day the Senate met, Tiberius gave a carefully measured speech. Piso, he said, had been his father's governor and friend, and he himself, on the Senate's authority, had appointed him to assist Germanicus in managing affairs in the East. Whether Piso had provoked the young man there by defiance and quarrels, and then rejoiced at his death, or had actually murdered him — that was for unbiased minds to judge. 'If a governor overstepped the bounds of duty and threw off obedience to his commander, and then rejoiced at that commander's death and my grief, I will hate him for it, shut him out of my house, and avenge a private wrong without using my power as emperor. But if a crime is uncovered — a crime that would demand justice no matter who the victim was — then you, indeed, owe Germanicus's children and us, his parents, a fair reckoning. At the same time, weigh this: did Piso mishandle the army in turmoil and sedition, buy the soldiers' loyalty through favoritism, try to retake the province by force? Or have his accusers inflated these charges beyond the truth — accusers whose excessive zeal I rightly resent? What was the point of stripping the body bare and exposing it to the crowd's eyes, of spreading the rumor, even among foreigners, that he'd been poisoned, if the facts are still uncertain and need investigating? I mourn my son — I will always mourn him. But I will not stop the defendant from presenting everything that might support his innocence, or expose any wrong Germanicus himself may have done. And I ask you not to take the charges as already proven simply because they touch my grief. If any of you are his advocates by blood or loyalty, help him in his danger, each with whatever skill and diligence you have. I urge the same effort, the same persistence, on his accusers. The one privilege we will grant Germanicus beyond the law is this: that his death is examined in the Senate house rather than the forum, before the Senate rather than ordinary judges. Everything else should proceed with equal restraint. Let no one weigh Drusus's tears, or my own grief, or any slanders invented against us.'

13| Two days were then set for laying out the charges, and after a six-day pause, three days for the defense. Fulcinius opened with old, weak material — that Piso had governed Spain greedily and corruptly. Even if the defendant cleared himself of the recent charges, this old business proved nothing against him; and if he were convicted on the graver counts, it hardly needed defending either way. After him came Servaeus, Veranius, and Vitellius, all pressing the case with matching zeal, Vitellius with real eloquence. They charged that out of hatred for Germanicus and a hunger for revolution, Piso had corrupted the common soldiers through unchecked license and abuses against the allies, until the worst of them hailed him as 'father of the legions'; that against the best men, especially Germanicus's companions and friends, he had turned savage; that finally he had destroyed Germanicus himself with curses and poison; that he and Plancina had performed unspeakable sacrifices and offerings; that he had made war on the state, and only after being defeated in battle could he be brought to trial at all.

14| On the rest, the defense faltered. Piso could not deny buying the soldiers' favor, nor that he'd let the province fall prey to the worst men, nor even the insults against his commander. Only the poison charge did he seem to clear — and even the accusers hadn't pressed it very hard. They claimed that at a banquet of Germanicus's, with Piso reclining above him, the food had been tainted by Piso's own hands. But it seemed absurd that he'd dare such a thing among strangers' slaves, with so many onlookers, right in front of Germanicus himself. The defendant offered up his household and demanded his servants be put to torture. But the judges were implacable, each for a different reason: Tiberius because war had been brought on the province, the Senate because it could never quite believe Germanicus had died without foul play. Both sides had wanted to write letters of protest, which Tiberius refused no less firmly than Piso did. Meanwhile the crowd's voices could be heard outside the Senate house: they would not hold back their hands if he escaped the Senate's judgment. They had already dragged Piso's statues toward the Gemonian Stairs and were tearing them apart, until the emperor ordered them protected and put back. So Piso was placed in a litter and escorted home by a tribune of the praetorian cohort — though rumor differed on whether the man went along to guard his safety or to see him dead.

15| Plancina drew the same hostility, but far greater favor, so it was unclear how far Tiberius's power over her actually reached. As long as Piso had some hope, she promised to share his fortune, whatever it turned out to be, and to join him even in death if it came to that. But once she secured a pardon through Livia's private pleading, she began, little by little, to separate herself from her husband and split off her own defense. When Piso realized this spelled his ruin — still unsure whether to keep fighting — his sons urged him on, and he steeled himself to return to the Senate. He endured the renewed accusation, the Senate's hostile voices, every hardship and cruelty thrown at him, but nothing frightened him more than the sight of Tiberius: without pity, without anger, closed off and rigid, guarded against any feeling breaking through. Brought home, as if to prepare his defense for the next day, he wrote a few lines, sealed them, and gave them to a freedman. Then he attended to his body as usual. Late in the night, after his wife had left the bedroom, he ordered the doors watched from outside. At daybreak he was found with his throat cut and a sword lying on the floor.

16| I remember hearing from older men that a document was often seen in Piso's hands, one he never made public himself; but his friends used to say it contained letters and instructions from Tiberius concerning Germanicus, and that he meant to produce it before the Senate and accuse the emperor — had he not been tricked by Sejanus with empty promises. They said he hadn't killed himself at all, but that an assassin had been sent in. I can vouch for neither story; but I felt I shouldn't hide what was told by those who lived on into my own youth. Tiberius, his face set in sorrow, told the Senate he understood the suspicion such a death would bring on him, and pressed Piso's freedman with repeated questions about how Piso had spent his last day and night. The man's answers were mostly sensible, some less guarded, and Tiberius then read out a document Piso had written, composed roughly as follows: 'Crushed by a conspiracy of enemies and by hatred born of a false charge, since there is nowhere left for truth and my innocence to be heard, I call the immortal gods to witness that I lived, Caesar, in loyalty to you, and in no less devotion to your mother. I ask you to look after my children — of whom Gnaeus Piso had no part in whatever fortune has befallen me, since he spent this whole time in Rome, while Marcus Piso urged me not to return to Syria. Would that I, the old father, had yielded to my young son, rather than he to me. I beg all the more earnestly that he not pay, innocent, for my wrongdoing. By my forty-five years of loyal service, by the consulship I once shared, as a man trusted by your father the deified Augustus and a friend to you, and asking nothing further, I beg for the safety of my unhappy son.' Of Plancina he added nothing.

17| After this, Tiberius cleared the younger son of the charge of waging war, since as a son he could hardly have refused his father's orders; and he also pitied the family's noble standing and the grave misfortune Piso himself had earned, however deserved. For Plancina he spoke with visible shame and discomfort, citing his mother's pleas on her behalf — pleas that only sharpened the private complaints of every honest man. Was it right, they muttered, that a grandmother should look upon her grandson's murderer, speak with her, snatch her away from the Senate's judgment? That the protection the law gave every citizen should be denied to Germanicus alone? Vitellius and Veranius had voiced grief for Caesar's son; Plancina had been defended by the emperor and his mother. Let her simply turn those poisons and tricks, so successfully tested once, against Agrippina and her children, and let this admirable grandmother and uncle glut themselves on the blood of that most wretched house. Two more days were wasted on this charade of a hearing, with Tiberius pressing Piso's sons to defend their mother. When the accusers and witnesses competed to press their case with no one answering, pity grew stronger than hostility. Aurelius Cotta the consul, asked first for his opinion (for when the emperor presided, the magistrates still performed this duty), moved that Piso's name be struck from the public record, part of his property confiscated, part granted to his son Gnaeus, who should change his first name; that Marcus Piso, stripped of rank, be given five million sesterces and banished for ten years; and that Plancina be granted immunity, in deference to Livia's pleading.

18| Tiberius softened much of this proposal. He would not let Piso's name be struck from the record, since the names of Mark Antony, who had waged war on his own country, and Iullus Antonius, who had violated Augustus's household, still stood. He spared Marcus Piso the disgrace and let him keep his father's property — for Tiberius, as I have often noted, was proof enough against greed, and in this case all the more lenient out of shame at Plancina's acquittal. Two further honors came up next: Valerius Messalinus wanted a golden statue raised inside the Temple of Mars the Avenger, while Caecina Severus called instead for an altar to Vengeance. Tiberius refused them both, insisting that such consecrations belonged only to victories won over foreign enemies — a household's grief, he said, ought to be draped in mourning, not staged for public view. Messalinus had also proposed thanks to Tiberius, Livia, Antonia, Agrippina, and Drusus for avenging Germanicus, but had left out any mention of Claudius. Lucius Asprenas asked him publicly in the Senate whether he'd left Claudius out on purpose — and only then was Claudius's name added. The more I turn over events, recent or old, the more I see how mockingly fortune plays with human affairs. By reputation, by hope, by public reverence, everyone seemed marked out for power sooner than the man fate was quietly holding in reserve to become emperor.

19| A few days later Tiberius proposed to the senate that priesthoods be granted to Vitellius, Veranius, and Servaeus. To Fulcinius he promised support for office, but warned him not to let his eloquence run away into violence. That was the end of the reckoning for Germanicus's death—not just among the men living then, but tossed about by rumor of every kind in the years that followed too. So it is with the greatest events: they stay uncertain, since some take whatever they've heard, however it came to them, as established fact, while others turn the truth into its opposite, and both versions grow with time. Drusus, meanwhile, left the city to renew the auspices and soon returned in an ovation. A few days after that his mother Vipsania died—the only one of all Agrippa's children to die peacefully, since the rest were killed openly by the sword or, it was believed, by poison or starvation.

20| That same year Tacfarinas, whom I mentioned as driven back by Camillus the previous summer, renewed the war in Africa. At first he raided at random, too quick to be caught and punished; then he began destroying villages and hauling off heavy plunder; finally he laid siege to a Roman cohort not far from the river Pagyda. In command of the fort was Decrius, a vigorous man, seasoned by military service, who judged that siege a disgrace. He rallied his soldiers and drew up his line in front of the camp to force an open fight. At the first clash the cohort was driven back; Decrius rushed forward among the weapons to meet the fleeing men, shouting at the standard-bearers that it was shameful for Roman soldiers to turn their backs to a rabble of deserters. He took wound after wound, and even with an eye pierced through, he kept his face turned toward the enemy and would not quit the fight until his own men abandoned him and he fell.

21| When Lucius Apronius—who had succeeded Camillus—learned of this, he was troubled less by the enemy's glory than by his own men's disgrace. Reviving a harsh punishment rare in that age, drawn from old tradition, he had every tenth man of the disgraced cohort chosen by lot and clubbed to death. The severity paid off: a unit of veterans, no more than five hundred strong, routed that same force of Tacfarinas's men when they attacked a garrison called Thala. In that battle the common soldier Helvius Rufus won the honor of having saved a citizen's life, and Apronius rewarded him with neck-chains and a spear. Tiberius added the civic crown, complaining—more in disappointment than anger—that Apronius had not already granted it himself by right of his proconsular authority. But Tacfarinas, with his Numidians shaken and unwilling to face another siege, scattered the war instead, retreating wherever the Romans pressed and then doubling back behind them. As long as he kept to that method, he mocked the frustrated and exhausted Romans with impunity. But once he turned toward the coast, weighed down with plunder and tied to a fixed camp, Apronius Caesianus—sent by his father with cavalry and auxiliary cohorts, reinforced with the fastest men from the legions—won a victory over the Numidians and drove them into the desert.

22| At Rome, meanwhile, Lepida—who beyond the distinction of the Aemilii could claim Lucius Sulla and Gnaeus Pompey as great-grandfathers—was charged with having faked a pregnancy by Publius Quirinius, a rich and childless man. Charges of adultery and poisoning were added, along with consulting Chaldean astrologers against the imperial house, while her brother Manius Lepidus defended her. Quirinius, still bitter after their divorce, had helped stir up pity for her despite her disgrace and guilt. It was hard for anyone to read the emperor's mind in that trial—so thoroughly did he mix and shift the signs of anger and mercy. At first he asked the senate not to pursue the treason charges; then he induced Marcus Servilius, an ex-consul, and other witnesses to bring forward the very evidence he had seemed to want set aside. He also transferred Lepida's slaves, who were being held under military guard, to the consuls, and would not allow them to be tortured for questioning about anything touching his own household. He even excused Drusus, the consul-designate, from having to give his opinion first, so the others would not feel bound to agree with him—some called this considerate, others read it as cruelty, since Drusus, they said, would not have shrunk from the duty of voting to condemn her.

23| During the games, which had interrupted the trial, Lepida entered the theater with women of high rank and, weeping and wailing, invoked her ancestors and Pompey himself, whose monuments and statues stood in plain view. She moved the crowd to such pity that they burst into tears and cried out curses against Quirinius, whose old age and childlessness and obscure family, they shouted, had once been given a bride once destined for Lucius Caesar and a daughter-in-law for the deified Augustus. Then torture of her slaves brought her crimes to light, and the senate voted for Rubellius Blandus's motion, which barred her from fire and water. Drusus supported this, though others had proposed milder terms. Later Scaurus, who had had a daughter by her, was granted an exemption from confiscation of her property. Only then did Tiberius reveal that he too had learned, from Publius Quirinius's own slaves, that Lepida had sought to poison him.

24| These misfortunes among great houses—for not long before, the Calpurnii had lost Piso and the Aemilii had lost Lepida—were offset by the restoration of Decimus Silanus of the Junian family. Let me recall his case briefly. Augustus's fortune, so strong in matters of state, was unlucky at home, on account of the shameless conduct of his daughter and granddaughter, whom he banished from the city, punishing their lovers with death or exile. By dressing what was, among men and women alike, a common failing with the grave names of violated religion and treason, he went beyond both the mercy of his ancestors and his own laws. I will recount the fates of others alongside the rest of that period's events, if I live long enough, amid my many labors, to complete what I have set out to do. Decimus Silanus had been the lover of Augustus's granddaughter, and though the punishment went no further than exclusion from the emperor's friendship, he understood this to mean exile was being urged on him. Only once Tiberius was in power did he dare, through the influence of his brother Marcus Silanus—outstanding for both his noble birth and eloquence—petition the senate and the emperor. But Tiberius, when Silanus offered thanks before the assembled senators, replied that he too was glad his brother had returned from his long travels abroad, and that this was rightfully permitted since he had been banished by neither senatorial decree nor law—yet as far as he himself was concerned, his father's grievances against him stood unchanged, and Silanus's return did nothing to undo what Augustus had wished. After this Silanus lived on in the city but never attained office.

25| The senate next took up the question of easing the Papia Poppaea law, which the elder Augustus had established after the Julian statutes to sharpen the penalties on the unmarried and swell the treasury. Yet marriages and the raising of children did not grow more common—childlessness was too deeply entrenched—while the number of people at risk kept climbing, since every household was being undermined by the twisted interpretations of informers. Where once it had been vice that caused suffering, now it was the law itself. This calls for a deeper account of the origins of law and the paths by which we arrived at this endless mass and variety of statutes.

26| The earliest people on earth lived without any wicked desire, without shame, without crime, and so without punishment or coercion. Rewards were unnecessary, since decent behavior came naturally; and since they wanted nothing against custom, nothing needed to be forbidden through fear. But once equality was cast off and ambition and force crept in to replace restraint and shame, absolute rule arose, and among many peoples it lasted forever. Some peoples chose laws from the start, others only once they had grown weary of kings. These first laws were simple, suited to unsophisticated minds; the most famous were those of Crete, given by Minos, those of Sparta, given by Lycurgus, and later, more elaborate and more numerous, those Solon drew up for Athens. Among us, Romulus ruled as he pleased; then Numa bound the people with religious observance and divine law, and Tullus and Ancus added a few provisions of their own. But it was Servius Tullius who stood out above all as lawgiver—laws that even kings had to obey.

27| After Tarquin was driven out, the people, resisting the factions of the senators, took many measures to protect their freedom and secure harmony: decemvirs were appointed, and drawing together whatever was best from anywhere, they compiled the Twelve Tables, the final word in equal justice. The laws that followed, though sometimes aimed against wrongdoers for actual crimes, were more often passed by force to settle conflicts between the classes, to seize forbidden offices, to drive out prominent men, or for other corrupt ends. From this came the Gracchi and Saturninus, agitators of the common people, and Drusus, no less lavish a spender though acting in the senate's name; allies were bribed with hope or cheated by having their appeals blocked. Not even the Italian war, and soon after the civil war, stopped the passage of many contradictory measures—until the dictator Sulla, abolishing or reworking earlier laws and adding a great many of his own, brought only a brief calm to the business. Almost at once came the turbulent proposals of Lepidus, and not long after tribunes regained the license to stir up the people however they pleased. And now laws were being passed not just for the public good but against individuals by name, and it was precisely when the state was most corrupt that laws were most numerous.

28| Then Gnaeus Pompey, chosen consul for a third term to reform public morals, proved a harsher remedy than the disease, and became both the author and the destroyer of his own laws—losing by arms what he defended by arms. From then on came twenty years of unbroken discord: no custom, no law survived. The worst crimes went unpunished, and many honest acts brought ruin. Finally, in his sixth consulship, Augustus Caesar, secure in power, abolished the measures he had ordered as triumvir and gave us the laws we live by in peace under an emperor. From that point the chains grew tighter: watchers were set over us, and the Papian-Poppaean law used rewards to enforce it—so that if people neglected the privileges of parenthood, the state, as everyone's universal parent, would seize whatever was left unclaimed. But the law reached deeper than that. It gripped the city, Italy, and every citizen anywhere, and it wrecked the fortunes of many. Terror hung over everyone until Tiberius, to fix the problem, had the senate draw by lot five ex-consuls, five ex-praetors, and an equal number from the rest of the senate. Before this panel many people got release from the law's snares—a modest relief, for the moment.

29| Around the same time Tiberius commended to the senators Nero, one of Germanicus's sons, who had just come of age. He asked that Nero be excused from serving on the board of twenty and be allowed to seek the quaestorship five years earlier than the law permitted—not without some mockery from those listening. Tiberius pointed out that he and his brother had received the same honors when Augustus asked for them. But I would not doubt that even then there were people who mocked such requests behind closed doors. Still, these were only the first steps toward greatness for members of the imperial family, and the old custom carried more weight in people's eyes—since a stepfather's bond with his stepsons is looser than a grandfather's with his grandson. Nero was also given a priesthood, and on the day he first entered the forum, a cash gift was distributed to a plebs delighted to see Germanicus's line now grown to manhood. Joy increased further with Nero's marriage to Julia, daughter of Drusus. Yet however well that news was received, people took badly the news that Sejanus was to be father-in-law to Claudius's son. It seemed to taint the family's nobility and to raise Sejanus—already suspected of overreaching ambition—even higher still.

30| At the end of the year two distinguished men died: Lucius Volusius and Sallustius Crispus. Volusius came from an old family that had never risen past the praetorship; he himself brought it the consulship, and also held the censorial power of choosing the panels of jurors from the equestrian order—he was the first to build the immense wealth on which that house later throve. Crispus came from equestrian stock; Gaius Sallustius, the celebrated historian of Rome, had adopted his sister's grandson and passed on his name. Though the way to public honors lay open before him, Crispus, in imitation of Maecenas, held no senatorial rank yet outdid many men of consular and triumphal distinction in influence. He differed from the old style in his refinement and elegance, leaning toward luxury in his wealth and extravagance. Yet underneath he had a vigor of mind equal to great affairs—sharper, in fact, for the show he made of sleep and idleness. So while Maecenas lived he ranked next to him; afterward he became foremost, the man on whom the emperors' secrets rested, and he shared knowledge of the killing of Postumus Agrippa. In his later years he kept the appearance of the emperor's friendship more than its substance—the same thing that had happened to Maecenas. Perhaps lasting power is rarely granted by fate, or perhaps satiety sets in—on the givers' side once they have given everything, or on the receivers' side once nothing is left to want.

31| Next came Tiberius's fourth consulship and Drusus's second, notable because father and son held it together. Three years earlier Germanicus had shared the honor with Tiberius, but that had pleased his uncle less, and the bond of nature was not as close. At the start of that year Tiberius withdrew to Campania, ostensibly to strengthen his health, but really beginning to prepare for a long, continuous absence—perhaps also so that, with his father removed, Drusus could fill the duties of the consulship alone. By chance a small matter grew into a major contest and gave the young man material for winning favor. Domitius Corbulo, an ex-praetor, complained to the senate about Lucius Sulla, a young noble, for not yielding him a seat at the gladiatorial games. On Corbulo's side stood his age, ancestral custom, and the support of the older senators; against him stood Mamercus Scaurus, Lucius Arruntius, and other relatives of Sulla. They argued back and forth, citing precedents of ancestors who had punished youthful disrespect with harsh decrees, until Drusus spoke words fit to calm tempers. Corbulo was satisfied through the mediation of Mamercus, who was both Sulla's uncle and stepfather and the most eloquent speaker of his generation. This same Corbulo then loudly complained that most of the roads throughout Italy were broken and impassable through the fraud of contractors and the negligence of officials, and he eagerly took charge of fixing the problem—a task that did less public good than it did harm to many, whose property and reputation suffered ruin through fines and forced auctions.

32| Not long after, Tiberius sent a letter to the senate reporting that Africa was again disturbed by an incursion of Tacfarinas, and that the senators should choose, by their own judgment, a proconsul experienced in warfare, physically strong, and equal to the task. Sextus Pompeius seized on this as an opening to pursue his grudge against Marcus Lepidus, attacking him as lazy, poor, a disgrace to his ancestors, and for that reason unfit even for the governorship of Asia that had fallen to him by lot. The senate opposed him, holding that Lepidus was gentle rather than idle, that his father's poverty and the unblemished nobility he had maintained deserved honor rather than disgrace. So he was sent to Asia, and as for Africa, it was decreed that Caesar should choose who would be given the command.

33| Amid this, Severus Caecina proposed that no magistrate assigned to a province should be accompanied by his wife. He first recalled at length that his own wife had lived in harmony with him and borne him six children, yet he had kept at home, confined within Italy, the very policy he now urged in public—even though he himself had completed forty years of service across many provinces. It was not for nothing, he said, that it had once been decided women should not be dragged among allies or foreign peoples: a company of women brings luxury that delays peace and fear that delays war, and turns a Roman column into something resembling a barbarian march. The female sex was not only weak and unequal to hardship, but, given free rein, cruel, ambitious, and greedy for power; women paraded among the soldiers and had centurions at their beck and call; recently one had even presided over the exercises of the cohorts and the marching drills of the legions. Let the senators themselves recall how often, when men were charged with extortion, more accusations were brought against their wives. It was to wives that the worst of the provincials attached themselves at once; through wives business was undertaken and settled; two people were courted on their outings, there were two seats of authority, and the more stubborn and uncontrollable orders were a woman's—women once bound by the Oppian and other laws, now freed from those chains, ruling homes, the forum, and now even armies.

34| Only a few applauded this speech; most objected—that the matter had not been raised for debate, and that Caecina was no fit judge of so weighty a question. Then Valerius Messalinus, son of Messala and gifted with something of his father's eloquence, replied that much of the old harshness had changed for the better and the happier. Rome was no longer besieged by wars, he said, nor were the provinces hostile as before. A few concessions were made to women's needs that did not burden even their husbands' households, much less the allies; everything else women shared with their husbands, and none of it hindered peace. Wars, of course, must be waged by men in fighting trim—but on returning from hardship, what comfort was more honorable than a wife's? True, some women had slipped into ambition or greed—but were not many magistrates themselves prone to various vices? That was no reason to send no one to a province at all. Husbands were often corrupted by their wives' wickedness—did that mean all unmarried men stayed honest? The Oppian laws had once been thought necessary, suited to the needs of the state at that time; later they were relaxed and softened because it proved expedient. It was pointless to dress up our own laxity under other names: if a woman overstepped the bounds, the fault lay with the man. Besides, because of the weak character of one or two women, it was wrong to strip all husbands of their partnership in good times and bad. And the sex, naturally frail, would be abandoned to its own extravagance and to the desires of others if left unguarded. Marriages were scarcely kept intact even under a husband's watchful eye—what would happen if, for years on end, they were effectively dissolved by separation? Rome should counter the sins that happened elsewhere by remembering the scandals of its own city. Drusus added a few words about his own marriage: for men in the imperial family must often travel to distant parts of the empire. How many times had the deified Augustus journeyed east and west with Livia at his side! He himself had gone to Illyricum, and would go to other peoples too if it served the purpose—though not always gladly, if he had to be torn from a dearly loved wife, the mother of so many children they shared. In this way Caecina's proposal was turned aside.

35| At the senate's next meeting Tiberius, in a letter that obliquely rebuked the senators for shifting every burden of decision onto the emperor, named Manius Lepidus and Junius Blaesus as candidates from whom a proconsul for Africa should be chosen. Both men then spoke: Lepidus excused himself more insistently, pleading poor health, the age of his children, and a daughter of marriageable age—though it was understood, even in what he left unsaid, that Blaesus was Sejanus's uncle and thereby too powerful a rival. Blaesus answered with the appearance of declining too, but with less conviction, and he was helped along by the united chorus of flatterers.

36| Next came something that had long festered in private complaints, now finally aired. The worst sort of people had gotten away with abusing and slandering decent men, simply by snatching up an image of the emperor. Even freedmen and slaves had taken to threatening their patrons or masters, voice and fist alike, and being feared for it. So the senator Gaius Cestius spoke up: emperors, he said, were indeed like gods, but even the gods listen only to just prayers from suppliants; no one should be allowed to flee to the Capitol or any other temple in the city and use that refuge as cover for crimes. The laws, he said, had been abolished and turned completely upside down, since in the Forum itself, on the very threshold of the senate house, Annia Rufilla — whom he had had convicted of fraud before a judge — had hurled abuse and threats at him, and he did not dare seek justice because she held up an image of the emperor against him. Others around him raised similar complaints, some even worse, and they begged Drusus to make an example by punishing her, until he finally had her brought in, convicted, and held in public custody.

37| Also punished, on the emperor's initiative and by decree of the senate, were the Roman knights Considius Aequus and Caelius Cursor, for having brought trumped-up treason charges against the praetor Magius Caecilianus. Both punishments were credited to Drusus's good influence: moving as he did through the city, among its gatherings and conversations, he was said to soften his father's harsher instincts. Nor was the young man's taste for pleasure held too much against him. Better, people said, that he throw himself into that — spend his days on building projects and his nights at dinner parties — than live alone, cut off from every pleasure, cultivating gloomy sleeplessness and dark suspicions.

38| Neither Tiberius nor the informers were slowing down. Ancharius Priscus had charged Caesius Cordus, proconsul of Crete, with extortion, adding a charge of treason for good measure — by now the standard garnish on every prosecution. Tiberius himself dragged Antistius Vetus, a leading man of Macedonia who had just been acquitted of adultery, back before the court to answer for treason, having first berated the jury; he claimed Vetus was politically dangerous and entangled with the schemes of Rhescuporis, at the time when Rhescuporis had killed his brother Cotys and was planning war against Rome. So Vetus was banished — fire and water forbidden him — and confined to an island chosen precisely because it was convenient for neither Macedonia nor Thrace. As for Thrace, its rule had been split between Rhoemetalces and the children of Cotys, whose guardian, since they were still infants, was Trebellenus Rufus; and the country was in turmoil, resentful of our interference, blaming both Rhoemetalces and Trebellenus equally for leaving wrongs against the local people unpunished. The Coelaletae, the Odrusae, and the Dii — strong tribes — took up arms, led by rival chiefs who were too obscure individually to unite the revolt into one serious war. Some stirred up trouble where they stood; others crossed Mount Haemus to rally more distant peoples; but most, and the best organized among them, laid siege to the king and to the city of Philippopolis, founded by Philip of Macedon.

39| When Publius Vellaeus, who commanded the nearest army, learned of this, he sent auxiliary cavalry and light infantry cohorts against the bands who were roaming about plundering or trying to recruit allies, while he himself led the main body of infantry to lift the siege. Everything went well at once: the raiders were cut down, discord broke out among the besiegers, the king made a well-timed sortie, and the legion arrived. It hardly deserves to be called a battle or even a fight — the enemy, half-armed and scattered, were simply slaughtered, without a drop of our own blood spilled.

40| That same year the Gallic states, crushed by debt, began plotting rebellion. The fiercest instigators were Julius Florus among the Treveri and Julius Sacrovir among the Aedui. Both men came from noble families whose ancestors had done Rome good service, and had long ago been granted Roman citizenship — back when that was rare and given only for merit. In secret meetings, recruiting the most reckless men and those whom poverty and fear of exposure pushed hardest toward crime, they divided the work: Florus would stir up the Belgae, Sacrovir the Gauls nearer Rome. So in council-halls and public gatherings they spread seditious talk — about the endless burden of tribute, the crushing rate of interest, the cruelty and arrogance of Roman officials, and the army's discontent since news of Germanicus's death. Now, they said, was the perfect moment to reclaim their freedom, if only they would consider how strong they were compared to an impoverished Italy, an unwarlike city mob, and armies with nothing solid in them except foreign troops.

41| Almost no state was untouched by the seeds of this unrest, but the Andecavi and the Turoni broke out first. The governor Acilius Aviola put down the Andecavi with a cohort he called up from the garrison at Lyon. The Turoni were crushed by legionary troops sent by Visellius Varro, governor of Lower Germany, under the same Aviola, with help from some leading Gauls who lent aid in order to disguise their own disloyalty and reveal it later, at a better moment. Sacrovir too was seen in the fighting, bareheaded, urging men on for Rome — supposedly to show off his courage; but prisoners later claimed he had made himself recognizable on purpose so the rebels would not shoot at him. When Tiberius was consulted about this, he brushed the accusation aside, and by his hesitation let the war grow.

42| Meanwhile Florus pressed on with his plans, trying to win over a cavalry squadron recruited from the Treveri that was trained and disciplined in the Roman style, hoping to start the war by having them massacre Roman traders. A few of the horsemen were corrupted, but most stayed loyal. A different crowd — debtors and dependents — took up arms and made for the forest called the Ardennes, but the legions sent from both directions by Visellius and Gaius Silius blocked their path. Julius Indus, from the same tribe as Florus but his rival and therefore all the more eager to prove himself, was sent ahead with a picked force and scattered the disorganized mob before it could even form. Florus eluded the victors for a while by shifting from one hiding place to another, finally saw soldiers closing off every escape and killed himself. That was the end of the Treveran uprising.

43| Among the Aedui, the trouble grew far worse, in proportion to how much wealthier that state was and how far help was from reaching it. Sacrovir seized Autun, the tribal capital, with armed cohorts, aiming to win over the noblest youth of Gaul — who were studying there in the liberal arts — and through them, as hostages of a kind, their parents and relatives too; at the same time he secretly distributed weapons he had had made for these young men. He had forty thousand men, a fifth of them armed like legionaries, the rest carrying hunting spears, knives, and whatever else served for the chase. To these were added slaves destined for the gladiator schools, covered head to foot in continuous iron armor in the local fashion — men they call crupellarii, clumsy at landing a blow but impossible to wound. This force kept growing as neighboring states, without yet openly joining the cause, sent volunteers one by one; and it was helped further by rivalry among the Roman commanders, each claiming the war for himself. Eventually the aged and failing Varro yielded command to the more vigorous Silius.

44| Meanwhile at Rome, rumor — as rumor does — inflated everything: not just the Treveri and Aedui but sixty-four Gallic states were said to have revolted, the Germans to have joined the cause, Spain to be wavering. The best citizens grieved for the state, but many, out of hatred for the present order and a taste for upheaval, actually welcomed their own danger and mocked Tiberius for wasting his time on informers' petty accusations amid such a crisis. Would Sacrovir, they asked, really be charged with treason before the senate? At last, they said, real men had appeared who would answer bloody letters with weapons. Even a miserable war was better than a miserable peace. Tiberius, all the more deliberately, composed himself into an image of calm — he changed neither his routine nor his expression, going about those days exactly as he always had — whether from sheer depth of will, or because he had learned the danger was modest, less serious than reported.

45| Meanwhile Silius advanced with two legions, sending an auxiliary force ahead to lay waste the villages of the Sequani, who lived on the border nearest the Aedui and were allied in arms with them. He then made straight for Autun in a forced march, his standard-bearers competing with each other, the ordinary soldiers grumbling that they shouldn't have to wait for their usual rest or for nightfall — just let them see the enemy and be seen; that alone would be enough for victory. About twelve miles out, Sacrovir and his forces appeared in open country. He had drawn up his armored men in front, regular cohorts on the wings, and half-armed men in the rear. He himself rode among the front ranks on a fine horse, recalling the old glories of the Gauls and all the defeats they had once inflicted on Rome — how splendid freedom would be if they won, how much harsher slavery if they were beaten again.

46| This speech did not last long, nor did it land well: the legionary line was already closing in, and the townsmen, undisciplined and unused to war, could barely trust their own eyes or ears. Silius, though his confidence in victory left him little need for a speech, still called out that it was shameful for men who had conquered Germany to be marched out against Gauls as if against a real enemy. 'Just one cohort recently crushed the rebel Turoni, one squadron the Treveri, a few troops of this very army routed the Sequani. The richer the Aedui are in money and pleasure, the less fight they have in them — beat them down, and spare the ones who run.' A great shout answered him; the cavalry swept around the flanks, the infantry struck the front, and there was no delay on the wings either. The armored men caused a brief holdup, their metal plates deflecting javelins and swords, but the soldiers grabbed axes and picks and hacked at their armor and bodies as if breaking through a wall; some knocked the helpless, lumbering hulks down with poles and pitchforks, and left them lying there, unable to rise, as good as dead. Sacrovir first made for Autun, then, fearing surrender, fled with his most loyal men to a nearby villa. There he died by his own hand, and the rest by each other's blows; and the villa was set on fire over them, consuming them all.

47| Only then did Tiberius write to the senate about the start and finish of the war. He neither subtracted from nor added to the truth, crediting the governors' loyalty and courage, and his own oversight of the strategy. He also explained why neither he nor Drusus had set out to fight it themselves, extolling the empire's vastness: it would be beneath an emperor's dignity to leave the capital, the seat of government over everything, just because one or two states were in revolt. As it was, he said, now that fear was not driving him, he would go himself to see the situation firsthand and settle it. The senators voted prayers for his safe return, thanksgivings, and other honors. Only Cornelius Dolabella, trying to outdo everyone else, carried his flattery to an absurd extreme, proposing that Tiberius enter the city in an ovation from Campania. A letter from Caesar followed, in which he declared he was not so starved for glory that, after subduing the fiercest nations and either accepting or declining so many triumphs in his youth, he would now, in old age, chase the empty prize of a jaunt through the suburbs.

48| Around the same time he asked the senate that the death of Sulpicius Quirinius be marked with a state funeral. Quirinius had no connection to the old patrician family of the Sulpicii — he came from the town of Lanuvium. But through tireless service and sharp administration he won a consulship under the deified Augustus, then earned triumphal honors by storming the strongholds of the Homonadenses in Cilicia, and was given as an adviser to Gaius Caesar when he governed Armenia. He had also courted Tiberius during his time on Rhodes, a fact Tiberius now revealed to the senate, praising Quirinius's service to him and attacking Marcus Lollius, whom he blamed for corrupting and dividing Gaius Caesar. But most people remembered Quirinius less fondly, recalling the dangers he had brought on Lepida, as I mentioned earlier, and his mean, domineering old age.

49| At the end of the year an informer went after Clutorius Priscus, a Roman knight who had earlier been rewarded with money by Caesar for a celebrated poem mourning Germanicus's death. The charge: while Drusus lay ill, Clutorius had written a poem for the event of his death too, meaning to profit more handsomely if it happened. Clutorius, in his vanity, had read it aloud at the house of Publius Petronius, in front of Petronius's mother-in-law Vitellia and many other prominent women. Once the informer came forward, the other witnesses were too frightened to testify, and only Vitellia insisted she had heard nothing. But the accusers were believed over her, to Clutorius's ruin, and on the motion of the consul-designate Haterius Agrippa he was sentenced to death.

50| Manius Lepidus rose to answer him: 'Senators, if all we consider is how vile the words were with which Clutorius Priscus fouled his own mind and other men's ears, then prison, the noose — not even the tortures used on slaves — would be punishment enough. But crimes and outrages have no natural limit, so it is the emperor's own restraint, and the precedents set by our ancestors and by ourselves, that temper punishment and correction, and that distinguish idle talk from real crimes, words from deeds. There is room here for a judgment that neither leaves the offense unpunished nor leaves us regretting either our mercy or our severity. I have often heard our emperor complain when someone forestalled his clemency by taking his own life. Clutorius's life still hangs in the balance: sparing him poses no danger to the state, and killing him sets no useful example. His pursuits, however deranged, are empty and worthless; there is nothing serious to fear from a man who betrays his own disgraceful acts not to men of substance but to a circle of foolish women. Still, let him leave the city, forfeit his property, and be barred from fire and water. That is my proposal — the same penalty as under the treason law.'

51| Of the ex-consuls, only Rubellius Blandus sided with Lepidus; the rest followed Agrippa's motion, and Priscus was led to prison and executed at once. Tiberius, in his usual roundabout way, criticized this to the senate — praising the loyalty that struck back so fiercely at even minor injuries to an emperor, yet deprecating such hasty punishment for mere words, praising Lepidus while not condemning Agrippa. As a result the senate decreed that its resolutions should not be filed at the treasury until ten days had passed, giving condemned men that much longer to live. But the senate had lost the freedom to change its mind, and time never softened Tiberius.

52| The consuls that followed were Gaius Sulpicius and Decimus Haterius — a year quiet abroad, but at home marked by suspicion over strict measures against the extravagance that had broken out on all sides, with money squandered on everything. Some expenses, though heavier, were mostly hidden by concealing their true cost; but the lavish spending on food and feasting, endlessly talked about, had raised worries that the emperor, with his old-fashioned frugality, might crack down harshly. When the aedile Gaius Bibulus opened the subject, the other aediles agreed: the sumptuary law was being flouted, the fixed prices on goods were being defied and rising daily, and no modest remedy could stop it. The senate, consulted, referred the whole matter to the emperor. Tiberius weighed it privately many times — whether such runaway appetites could even be checked, whether the crackdown would do the state more harm than the shame of tackling something he could not control, or of pursuing it and only bringing disgrace and infamy on prominent men. In the end he sent the senate a letter to this effect.

53| 'On other matters, senators, it might suit better for me to be questioned face to face and to say what I think serves the state. But on this subject it was better to keep my eyes averted, so that I would not have to watch you singling out, by your stares, the faces and the fear of individuals caught in shameful excess — as if I myself were catching them in the act. If those energetic men, the aediles, had consulted me beforehand, I am not sure I would not have advised leaving well-established, deep-rooted vices alone rather than achieving this: making public just how many disgraceful habits we are powerless to stop. Still, they have done their duty, as I would wish every magistrate to fulfill his own. But for me it is neither honorable to stay silent nor easy to speak out, since I do not hold the office of aedile, praetor, or consul. Something greater and loftier is expected of an emperor: when things go well, each man claims credit for himself, but when one man is resented, everyone else's faults are blamed on him alone. Where should I even begin, to forbid things and drag us back to the old ways? The endless sprawl of country villas? The size and nationality of household staffs? The weight of silver and gold? The marvels in bronze and painting? Clothing worn indiscriminately by men and women alike, and that peculiarly female extravagance — the jewels for which our money is shipped off to foreign, even hostile, nations?

54| 'I am well aware that at dinners and in social circles people denounce all this and call for limits. But if anyone actually passed a law and set penalties, those same people would cry that the state was being overturned, that ruin was being plotted for all the finest citizens, that no one was free of the charge. And yet not even chronic bodily diseases, long established, can be cured except by harsh and painful treatment: a mind both corrupted and corrupting, sick and inflamed, needs remedies no gentler than the passions burning it up. So many laws devised by our ancestors, so many passed by the deified Augustus — the old ones forgotten, the new ones, worse still, openly scorned — have only made extravagance feel safer. If you want something not yet forbidden, you fear it may be; but once you cross a ban without punishment, there is no more fear, no more shame. Why then did frugality once prevail? Because each man restrained himself, because we were citizens of a single city; even the temptations were not the same when our power was confined to Italy. Through foreign conquests we learned to consume what belonged to others; through civil wars, even what was our own. How small a thing is what the aediles are pointing out, compared with everything else — how trivial it should be judged! Yet, by heaven, no one mentions that Italy depends on outside supplies, that the Roman people's life is tossed daily on the uncertainties of sea and storm. If the resources of the provinces do not come to the aid of our masters, our slaves, and our farmland, then I suppose our own woods and our own villas will support us. This is the burden the emperor carries, senators; neglect it, and it will drag the state down completely. For everything else, the cure must come from within: let shame reform us, necessity reform the poor, and satiety reform the rich. If any magistrate can promise the energy and severity needed to confront this, I both praise him and admit I would gladly be relieved of part of my burden. But if men wish only to denounce vice, and then, having won glory for it, create enmities and leave them to me — believe me, senators, I too am not eager for enmities. I take on grave and often unfair ones for the state's sake, and I have every right to decline pointless, empty ones that would do neither you nor me any good.'

55| When Caesar's letter was read out, the aediles were relieved of that particular duty. Extravagance at the table—lavishly indulged for a hundred years, from the end of the Actian war down to the arms that brought Servius Galba to power—gradually died out. It's worth asking why. In the old days, families rich or distinguished by birth slid into ostentation because it was still permitted—commoners, allies, and kings all courted and were courted, and a man was judged more illustrious by name and clientele the more dazzling his wealth, his house, his display. But once savage killings began and a great reputation became a death sentence, the rest turned to wiser habits. At the same time, new men kept entering the Senate from the towns and colonies, even the provinces, and they brought their homegrown frugality with them. Though many of them, through luck or hard work, reached a moneyed old age, the old cast of mind held. But the chief author of this stricter style was Vespasian, himself a man of old-fashioned dress and living. From then on, deference to the emperor and the wish to imitate him did more than any law's penalty or fear. Or perhaps there's simply a kind of cycle built into everything, so that morals turn like the seasons. Not everything was better under our forebears—our own age too has produced much worth admiring and imitating by those who come after. But let this rivalry with our ancestors, at least, stay an honorable one.

56| Tiberius, having won a reputation for restraint by curbing the informers who were closing in, sent a letter to the Senate requesting tribunician power for Drusus. Augustus had invented that title for the pinnacle of power, so as not to take the name of king or dictator and yet still, by some title, tower over every other office. He first made Marcus Agrippa his partner in that power; when Agrippa died, he chose Tiberius Nero, so there would be no doubt about the succession. He believed that this checked other men's improper hopes, and it also showed his confidence both in Nero's restraint and in his own greatness. Following that precedent, Tiberius now advanced Drusus to the summit of power, though while Germanicus still lived he had kept an open choice between the two. But at the start of his letter, having invoked the gods to bless his plans for the state, he gave a modest account of the young man's character, not padded with falsehoods. Drusus had a wife and three children, he said, and had reached the age at which Tiberius himself had once been summoned by the deified Augustus to take up this office. And he was not being rushed into it: only after eight years of proven service, after putting down mutinies and settling wars, was this man—celebrated with a triumph and twice consul—being made a partner in labors he already knew well.

57| The senators had their speeches ready in their minds, which only made the flattery more elaborate. Still, nothing was voted beyond the usual: statues of the imperial family, altars to the gods, temples, arches. Except that Marcus Silanus, treating the consulship itself as beneath him, sought honor for the imperial house instead, proposing that public and private records should date events not by the names of the consuls but by whoever held tribunician power. Quintus Haterius, meanwhile, moved that the day's decrees be inscribed in gold letters in the Senate house—and made himself an old fool's laughingstock, the only reward for such disgusting flattery.

58| Amid all this, Junius Blaesus had his governorship of Africa extended, and Servius Maluginensis, the flamen of Jupiter, asked to be allowed to draw Asia by lot. He argued, against the common belief, that it was in fact a mere rumor that flamens of Jupiter could not leave Italy, and that his rights were no different from those of the flamens of Mars and Quirinus. Besides, he said, if those priests could govern provinces, why should it be forbidden to him? There was no formal decree of the people on the matter, nothing to be found in the books of ceremonies. Pontiffs had often performed the rites of Jupiter's flamen when illness or public duty kept him away. Seventy-five years had passed since the death of Cornelius Merula without a replacement being appointed, and yet the rites had never lapsed. If the office could go unfilled for so many years without any harm to the sacred rites, how much easier to leave it vacant for a single year's proconsulship? The old restriction that kept flamens of Jupiter from provincial commands, he said, had come from private feuds among the pontifices maximi; now, by the gift of the gods, the highest priesthood and the highest civil power were held by the same man, no longer at the mercy of rivalry, hatred, or personal grudges.

59| Against this the augur Lentulus and others argued at length in various directions, and it was finally decided to wait for the opinion of the pontifex maximus. Tiberius put off ruling on the flamen's legal right, but he did trim back the ceremonies that had been voted in honor of Drusus's tribunician power, specifically criticizing the presumption of the motion and the gold lettering as against ancestral custom. A letter of Drusus's was also read aloud, and though it was pitched toward modesty, it was taken as the height of arrogance. Things had sunk so low, people said, that not even a young man granted so great an honor could be bothered to visit the city's gods, enter the Senate, or so much as take the auspices on his own native soil. He was supposedly detained by war, or off wandering the shores and lakes of Campania at the very time. This was the training being given to the future ruler of mankind—the first lesson he was learning from his father's example. An old emperor might reasonably shrink from the sight of his citizens and plead his weary age and past labors as excuse—but what excuse did Drusus have, except arrogance?

60| But Tiberius, while quietly tightening his grip on power, kept up an appearance of old republican forms by referring provincial petitions to the Senate for review. Across the Greek cities, an unchecked, unpunished habit of declaring sanctuaries was spreading fast. Temples were filling up with the worst kind of slaves; debtors sheltered there from their creditors, and men under suspicion of capital crimes found refuge too, under the same protection—and no government was strong enough to check riots by a populace that shielded human crimes as if they were sacred rites. So it was decided that the cities should send their charters and envoys to Rome. Some abandoned claims they had made without real right, doing so of their own accord; many others rested confidently on ancient superstition or on services rendered to Rome. And it made quite a spectacle, that day when the Senate examined the benefactions of their ancestors, the treaties with allies, even the decrees of kings who had held power before Rome's, and the religious claims of the gods themselves—free, as in the old days, to confirm or overturn whatever it liked.

61| First of all came the people of Ephesus, claiming—against the common belief—that Diana and Apollo were not born on Delos. They had, they said, a river called the Cenchrius and a grove called Ortygia, where Latona, heavy with child, leaned against an olive tree still standing there and gave birth to those two gods; the grove had been consecrated at the gods' own command, and there Apollo himself, after killing the Cyclopes, had escaped the wrath of Jupiter. Later Father Liber, victorious in war, had spared the suppliant Amazons who had taken refuge at the altar. The temple's sanctity was further increased, they said, with Hercules's consent when he held power over Lydia, and its rights were not diminished under Persian rule; after that Macedon, and then Rome, had preserved them.

62| Next after them the people of Magnesia rested their case on rulings of Lucius Scipio and Lucius Sulla, the one having driven out Antiochus, the other Mithridates, both of whom had honored the Magnesians' loyalty and courage by making the temple of Diana Leucophryne an inviolable refuge. Then the people of Aphrodisias and Stratonicea produced a grant from the dictator Caesar, in reward for their old service to his cause, along with a recent decree of the deified Augustus praising them for holding firm to Rome, unshaken, through a Parthian invasion. But Aphrodisias upheld the cult of Venus, Stratonicea that of Jupiter and Diana of the Crossroads. The people of Hierocaesarea went further back still, claiming a Persian Diana, whose shrine had been dedicated by King Cyrus himself; and they cited the names of Perpenna, Isauricus, and many other Roman commanders who had granted the same sanctity not just to the temple but to a zone two miles around it. Then came the Cypriots, speaking for three shrines—the oldest founded by Aerias for Venus of Paphos, then by his son Amathus for Venus of Amathus and for Jupiter of Salamis, this last founded by Teucer, fleeing his father Telamon's wrath.

63| Delegations from other cities were heard as well. Worn out by the sheer volume, and because the claims were pressed so competitively, the senators handed the matter to the consuls, letting them examine the legal basis and, if they found anything unjust, refer the case back to the full Senate. Beyond the cities already mentioned, the consuls reported finding a genuine right of sanctuary at Pergamum's temple of Aesculapius; the rest, they said, rested on origins too obscure with age to verify. The people of Smyrna, for instance, cited an oracle of Apollo, on whose command they had dedicated a temple to Venus Stratonicis; the people of Tenos cited a verse from the same god, ordering them to consecrate a statue and shrine of Neptune. The Sardians had a more recent claim: a gift from Alexander the victor. The Milesians relied no less on King Darius. Yet in both cases the actual cult practiced was of Diana or Apollo. The Cretans, too, put in a claim, based on a statue of the deified Augustus. In the end the Senate passed decrees that granted much honor but still set limits, and ordered the cities to fix bronze tablets in the temples themselves, both to preserve the record and to keep them from sliding, under cover of religion, into raw ambition.

64| Around this same time, a grave illness struck Julia Augusta, forcing the emperor to hurry his return to Rome—whether mother and son were still on genuinely good terms, or their hatred was simply well hidden, is another matter. Some time earlier Julia had set up a statue to the deified Augustus by the theater built under Marcellus's name, and on its inscription she'd put her own name before Tiberius's—which he was thought to have taken as an affront to an emperor's dignity, though he kept the grudge buried and said nothing. But now the Senate decreed supplications to the gods and the Great Games, to be conducted jointly by the pontiffs, augurs, and the board of fifteen along with the septemviri and the Augustal brotherhood. Lucius Apronius had proposed that the fetial priests also preside at these games. Caesar spoke against it, drawing a sharp line between the rights of the various priesthoods and citing precedent after precedent: the fetiales, he said, had never held such standing. The Augustales had been added only because that priesthood belonged specifically to the house on whose behalf the vows were being paid.

65| I have not made a practice of recording every senator's opinion unless it stood out for its honor or its notable disgrace — that, I think, is the historian's chief duty: to keep virtues from being passed over in silence, and to make sure that base words and deeds fear infamy with posterity. But those times were so tainted, so filthy with flattery, that not only the leading men of the state — who had to shield their own eminence by servility — but every ex-consul, most of the ex-praetors, and even many junior senators competed to rise and propose the most shameless, extravagant motions. It is recorded that Tiberius, every time he left the Senate house, would say in Greek: 'Men ready-made for slavery!' Evidently even a man who did not want public liberty was sickened by such abject readiness to grovel.

66| From there they moved by degrees from the merely shameful to the openly savage. Gaius Silanus, proconsul of Asia, was charged with extortion by the provincials, and Mamercus Scaurus, an ex-consul, Junius Otho, a praetor, and Bruttedius Niger, an aedile, pounced on him together, accusing him of outraging Augustus's divinity and scorning Tiberius's majesty. Mamercus dredged up old precedents — Lucius Cotta prosecuted by Scipio Africanus, Servius Galba by Cato the Censor, Publius Rutilius by Marcus Scaurus. As if Scipio and Cato were avenging anything like this, or as if that Scaurus were the ancestor whose memory Mamercus, his own great-grandson, was now dishonoring with such shabby work. Junius Otho had once run a schoolroom for a living; later, riding Sejanus's power, he polished up his obscure beginnings with shameless boldness. Bruttedius, a man rich in honest talents who, had he kept to the straight path, was headed for the very top, was driven instead by impatience — determined to outrun first his peers, then his betters, and finally his own hopes. That ambition has ruined many good men too, men who scorn the slow road that comes with safety and rush instead toward a premature success, or toward ruin.

67| Gellius Publicola and Marcus Paconius swelled the ranks of the accusers, the one Silanus's quaestor, the other his deputy. There was no doubt the defendant was guilty of cruelty and extortion; but many charges were piled on that would have been dangerous even for an innocent man. Facing so many hostile senators, and the most eloquent men of all Asia handpicked to prosecute him, he had to answer alone, with no skill in public speaking — and fear cripples even a trained eloquence. Tiberius did nothing to restrain himself either, pressing him with voice and expression, questioning him himself over and over, giving him no room to rebut or evade, and often forcing him to confess outright rather than have asked in vain. The state's agent had even bought Silanus's own slaves by formal sale so they could be interrogated under torture. And so that none of his friends could help him in his peril, charges of treason were tacked onto the case — a chain and a compulsion to silence. So, having asked for a few days' delay, he gave up his own defense, and dared to send Caesar a letter mixing resentment with pleading.

68| To make what he was preparing against Silanus seem more excusable by precedent, Tiberius ordered the reading of the deified Augustus's own notes about Volesus Messalla, another proconsul of Asia, and the Senate's decree against him. Then he asked Lucius Piso for his opinion. Piso, after a long preamble on the emperor's clemency, proposed that Silanus be barred from fire and water and banished to the island of Gyarus. The rest agreed, except that Gnaeus Lentulus said Silanus's maternal property, since he was born of Atia, should be set aside and given to his son — and Tiberius agreed.

69| But Cornelius Dolabella, pushing flattery further still, after denouncing Gaius Silanus's character, added that no man of disgraceful, infamous life should be allowed to draw a province by lot at all — the emperor should judge that beforehand. For while the laws punish crimes after the fact, how much milder for the men themselves, and better for the provincials, to prevent the crime in the first place? Against this Caesar spoke: he was not, he said, ignorant of what was said about Silanus, but decisions should not be made on rumor. Many men had governed provinces quite differently from what had been hoped or feared of them; the weight of great responsibility roused some men to better conduct, and dulled others. Nor could an emperor personally know everything, nor was it wise for him to be dragged along by other men's ambitions. Laws are fixed on deeds already done precisely because the future is uncertain. That was the wisdom of the ancestors: punishment should follow crime, not precede it. Do not overturn what was wisely established and has always held good — emperors carry burden and power enough already. Rights shrink every time power swells; and authority should not be used where the law can do the job. The rarer such popular sentiments were from Tiberius, the more gladly they were received. And being, when not driven by his own anger, a shrewd moderator, he added that Gyarus was a harsh island without any comforts, and that out of respect for the Junian family, and for a man who had once held the same rank, they might let him go to Cythnus instead. Silanus's sister Torquata, a Vestal of old-fashioned purity, had also asked for this. The Senate voted accordingly.

70| Afterward the people of Cyrene were heard, and on Ancharius Priscus's prosecution, Caesius Cordus was convicted of extortion. Lucius Ennius, a Roman knight charged with treason for melting down an image of the emperor for ordinary silverware, was not permitted by Caesar to be tried — a decision Ateius Capito openly criticized, as if in the name of free speech: the Senate's right to decide such things, he said, should not be snatched away, nor should so grave a crime go unpunished. Let Tiberius be slow to avenge his own wrongs, but he should not go easy on wrongs done to the state. Tiberius understood these words for what they were, more than for what they said, and kept insisting on the veto. Capito came off worse for the disgrace of it, since a man learned in both human and divine law had disgraced a distinguished public career and the fine arts he practiced at home.

71| A religious question then arose: in which temple should the offering be placed that the Roman knights had vowed, for the recovery of the Augusta's health, to Equestrian Fortune? For though that goddess had many shrines in Rome, none bore that particular title. It was discovered that there was a temple at Antium called by that name, and that all the shrines, temples, and divine images in the towns of Italy fell under Roman law and authority. So the offering was set up at Antium. And since religious matters were under discussion, Caesar brought forward a ruling that had recently been postponed, against Servius Maluginensis, the flamen of Jupiter, and had the pontiffs' decree read aloud: whenever illness struck the flamen of Jupiter, he could be absent, at the chief pontiff's discretion, for more than two nights, provided it fell on no day of public sacrifice and no more than twice a year. What had been settled under Augustus showed clearly enough that a full year's absence, and the running of a province, was not permitted to the flamens of Jupiter. The precedent of Lucius Metellus, chief pontiff, who had kept Aulus Postumius, flamen, from leaving, was also recalled. So the lot for Asia passed to the man next in seniority among the ex-consuls to Maluginensis.

72| Around the same time Lepidus asked the Senate for leave to restore and decorate, at his own expense, the Basilica of Paulus, the monument of the Aemilii. Public generosity of this kind was still customary then; Augustus had not stopped Taurus, Philippus, or Balbus from spending the spoils of war or their own overflowing wealth to adorn the city, for glory with posterity. Following that example, Lepidus, though modest in means, restored his family's ancient honor. But when the Theatre of Pompey burned down by accident, Caesar promised to rebuild it, since no one in Pompey's family had the means to restore it, though the name of Pompey would remain. At the same time he heaped praise on Sejanus, as if it were his effort and vigilance alone that had kept the fire from spreading further; and the senators voted a statue of Sejanus to be placed by Pompey's theater. Not long after, when Caesar honored Junius Blaesus, proconsul of Africa, with the emblems of a triumph, he said he was granting it as an honor to Sejanus, whose uncle Blaesus was. And yet Blaesus's achievements were worthy of such distinction in their own right.

73| For Tacfarinas, though driven back many times, had rebuilt his forces deep in the African interior and grown so arrogant that he sent envoys to Tiberius, demanding land for himself and his army, or else threatening an endless war. They say Caesar was never more stung, on his own behalf and Rome's, than by the thought of a deserter and a bandit making war like a regular enemy. Not even against Spartacus, after so many consular armies had been wiped out and he was burning Italy unavenged — even while the state was reeling under the vast wars of Sertorius and Mithridates — was it ever allowed that he be received under a truce; still less should the pinnacle of Roman glory now be bought off from a bandit like Tacfarinas with peace and a grant of land. He handed the matter to Blaesus: let him lure the rest into hoping they could lay down arms unharmed, but the leader himself must be captured by any means possible. Many did surrender on those terms. The war against Tacfarinas's guerrilla tactics then continued in much the same fashion as before.

74| Tacfarinas' force couldn't match a Roman army in strength, but he was better at raiding — striking in scattered bands, slipping away, and setting ambushes all at once. So three columns were prepared, each on its own line of advance. The legate Cornelius Scipio commanded on the side facing the raids into Leptis and the Garamantes' bolt-holes; on the other flank, so the villages around Cirta would not be plundered unpunished, Blaesus's son led a force of his own. In the center, with picked troops, Blaesus himself set forts and strongpoints at key positions, hemming the enemy in on every side — wherever they turned, some body of Roman soldiers was in front of them, on their flank, and often at their back. Many were cut down or surrounded this way. He then split the army into three and broke it further into smaller units, putting centurions of proven courage in command. And unlike custom, he did not pull his troops back once summer ended or settle them into winter quarters in the old province. Instead, with forts placed as if on the very edge of the war, he used light, fast troops who knew the wasteland to keep hounding Tacfarinas as he shifted camp from place to place, until Tacfarinas' brother was captured and Blaesus turned back — too hastily, though, for the allies' good, since he left behind the very conditions that let the war flare up again. Tiberius, however, treated the campaign as finished, and on that basis let Blaesus be hailed imperator by his legions — the old honor paid to commanders, back when a victorious army's joy and enthusiasm at a war well fought would acclaim them on the spot, with several men holding the title of imperator at once, none ranked above the rest. Augustus too had granted that title to a few men; and now Tiberius granted it to Blaesus — the last time it was ever given.

75| Two distinguished men died that year: Asinius Saloninus, grandson of Marcus Agrippa and Asinius Pollio, brother of Drusus, and marked out to marry into Caesar's family; and Ateius Capito, whom I've mentioned before, who had risen to the front rank in the state through his legal scholarship, though his grandfather had been a Sullan centurion and his father a praetor. Augustus had rushed his consulship through so that he would outrank in seniority Antistius Labeo, who excelled in the same field. That age produced these two ornaments of peace together, but very differently regarded: Labeo's independence was uncompromised, and this brought him greater fame; Capito's compliance was more welcome to those in power. Labeo's reputation grew because the wrong done to him kept him stuck at the praetorship; Capito's ill will grew from envy, because he reached the consulship.

76| And Junia died that year, in the sixty-fourth year after the battle of Philippi — niece of Cato, wife of Gaius Cassius, sister of Marcus Brutus. Her will caused a great stir among the public: though she was enormously wealthy and named nearly every leading man of Rome with proper honor in it, she left out Caesar. Tiberius took this graciously and did not stop her funeral from being conducted with full honors, including a eulogy from the Rostra. The busts of twenty of the most illustrious families were carried before her bier — the Manlii, the Quinctii, and other names of the same nobility. But it was Cassius and Brutus who shone brightest of all, precisely because their images were nowhere to be seen.

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