Annals — Book 4

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

1| In the consulship of Gaius Asinius and Gaius Antistius, Tiberius entered his ninth year of settled rule and a flourishing house — he counted even Germanicus's death among his successes — when fortune suddenly began to turn savage, either through his own cruelty or by handing others the means to be cruel. The start and the cause lay with Aelius Sejanus, commander of the praetorian cohorts, whose rise to power I have already noted. Now I will lay out his origins, his character, and the crime by which he set about seizing mastery of the state. He was born at Vulsinii, son of Seius Strabo, a Roman knight, and in his early youth attached himself to Gaius Caesar, grandson of the deified Augustus — rumor had it he sold his body to the rich, dissolute Apicius. Later he bound Tiberius to him by every kind of skill, until he had made himself the one man Tiberius trusted and left unguarded while remaining dark to everyone else — not so much through his own cleverness, since he was later brought down by the same arts, but through the gods' anger at Rome, which rose and fell together with him. He had a body that could bear hard labor and a mind that dared anything; he concealed his own affairs and accused others of theirs; he mixed flattery with arrogance; in public he wore a studied modesty, but inside him burned an overriding hunger to seize power, and to feed it he was sometimes lavish and self-indulgent, more often hardworking and watchful — qualities no less dangerous when put to work securing a throne.

2| At first he stretched the modest power of his office by gathering the cohorts, scattered through the city, into one camp, so they would take orders together and, through their numbers, strength, and visible unity, gain confidence in themselves while striking fear into everyone else. His pretext was that troops spread out grew undisciplined; that if some sudden crisis broke out, help would come faster if they were massed together; and that they would behave better once their camp stood apart from the city's temptations. Once the camp was built, he crept little by little into the soldiers' hearts, visiting them, greeting them by name, and personally choosing the centurions and tribunes. Nor did he stay out of senatorial politics, decorating his own clients with offices and provinces — Tiberius indulged him, going so far as to call him, not only in private talk but before the senate and people, his partner in labor, and letting his statues be honored in theaters and forums and set up among the legions' headquarters.

3| But the house of the Caesars was full — a grown son, adult grandsons — and this held back what Sejanus wanted; since seizing so many at once by force was unsafe, treachery called for spacing the crimes out. He settled on a more hidden path, starting with Drusus, against whom his anger was freshest. Drusus, unable to bear a rival and quick-tempered, had once in a quarrel raised his hand against Sejanus and struck him in the face when Sejanus pushed back. So, weighing every option, the readiest course seemed to be turning to Drusus's wife, Livia — sister of Germanicus, plain as a girl but growing strikingly beautiful. Pretending to burn with love, Sejanus seduced her into adultery, and once he had won that first disgrace — a woman who has lost her honor will refuse nothing else — he pushed her on toward hopes of marriage, a share in the throne, and her husband's murder. And she, whose great-uncle was Augustus, whose father-in-law was Tiberius, who had children by Drusus, defiled herself and her ancestors and descendants alike with a small-town adulterer, trading an honorable, secure present for a shameful, uncertain future. Eudemus, Livia's friend and physician, was brought into the secret, his profession giving him constant access to her privacy. Sejanus drove his wife Apicata from his house — the mother of his three children — so that he would not fall under suspicion with his mistress. But the sheer scale of the crime brought fear, delay, and shifting plans.

4| Meanwhile, at the year's start, Drusus, son of Germanicus, put on the toga of manhood, and the senate renewed for him the honors it had voted his brother Nero. The emperor added a speech full of praise for his own son, for showing such loyal goodwill toward his brother's children — for though it is hard for power and harmony to occupy the same ground, Drusus was thought fair to the young men, or at least not hostile. Next came the old, often-postponed plan for the emperor to travel to the provinces. He pleaded the great number of veterans and the need to fill the legions through fresh levies, since volunteers were scarce, and those who did come showed less courage and discipline, since it was mostly the poor and homeless who enlisted willingly. He then ran quickly through the number of legions and which provinces they guarded — a survey I think worth repeating here: what Roman forces stood under arms at that time, which kings were allies, and how much narrower the empire's reach was then than now.

5| Italy was guarded on both seas by two fleets, at Misenum and at Ravenna, and the nearby coast of Gaul by beaked warships that Augustus, after capturing them at Actium, had sent with strong crews to the town of Forum Julii. But the chief strength lay along the Rhine — eight legions, the shared bulwark against Germans and Gauls. Spain, only recently subdued, held three. The Moors had been given to King Juba as a gift of the Roman people. The rest of Africa was held by two legions, Egypt by an equal number; then, starting from Syria all the way to the Euphrates, an enormous sweep of territory was held in check by four legions, with the peoples on its borders — the Iberians, the Albanians, and other kings — protected by our greatness against foreign powers. Thrace was in the hands of Rhoemetalces and the children of Cotys; along the Danube two legions held Pannonia, two held Moesia, and the same number were stationed in Dalmatia — positioned, by the lay of the land, behind those others, so that if Italy needed sudden help they were not far off, though the city itself was garrisoned by troops closer at hand: three urban cohorts, nine praetorian, recruited mostly from Etruria and Umbria or from old Latium and Rome's oldest colonies. In the useful provinces, allied triremes, cavalry wings, and auxiliary cohorts filled out the forces, not much weaker in strength than the legions — but their exact numbers are impossible to pin down, since they shifted from place to place as need demanded, growing and shrinking by turns.

6| I think it fitting to survey the other parts of the state as well, and how they were run down to that point, since it was that year which began Tiberius's rule turning for the worse. Up to then, public business, and most private matters too, were handled before the senate; leading men were free to speak, and Tiberius himself checked those who slid into flattery; he awarded honors weighing a man's ancestry, his record in war, and his distinguished skills at home, so that it was clear enough no better choices existed. Consuls kept their proper standing, praetors kept theirs; even the lesser magistrates exercised real authority; and the laws worked well, except where charges of treason were involved. Grain and tax revenue and the rest of the public income were managed by companies of Roman knights. Tiberius entrusted his own affairs to the most respected men, and sometimes to lesser-known ones chosen by reputation, and once taken on they kept the post indefinitely, so that many grew old in the same job. The common people did suffer under sharp grain shortages, but none of this was the emperor's fault — indeed he worked against poor harvests and rough seas as hard as money and effort could manage. He also took care that the provinces should not be shaken by new burdens, and that they should bear the old ones without governors' greed or cruelty: there was no flogging, no confiscation of property. Caesar owned few estates in Italy, his household slaves were modest, his personal staff limited to a handful of freedmen; and if he ever had a dispute with a private citizen, it went to the courts, by the law.

7| All of this he held to — not warmly, for he was harsh and generally feared, but he held to it nonetheless — until Drusus's death turned things around. While Drusus lived, these things stayed in place, because Sejanus, with his power still growing, wanted to be known for good advice, and because he feared an avenger who did not hide his hatred, complaining openly that with his own son alive, another man should be called the emperor's helper. "And how much further is there to go before he's called colleague outright? The first hopes of seizing power are the hard part — once you've made that step, allies and helpers appear on their own. Already the prefect has built himself a camp unbidden, and put the soldiers in his own hand; his image is set up among the monuments of Pompey; his grandchildren will share blood with the family of the Drusi. After that, we'll have to pray he stays content with restraint." Such words he threw out often, and not just to a few — and even his private talk was betrayed, once his wife had been corrupted.

8| Sejanus, deciding it was time to act, chose a poison that would creep in gradually and mimic a natural illness. It was given to Drusus by the eunuch Lygdus, as became known eight years later. Yet through every day of Drusus's sickness Tiberius went into the Senate as usual—whether fearless, or simply to display strength of mind—and even after his son died, before he was buried. He found the consuls sitting in the ordinary seats as a show of mourning and reminded them of the dignity of their office and place, and when the Senate broke into tears, he steadied them, mastering his own grief, with a continuous speech: he was well aware, he said, that he could be criticized for facing the Senate's eyes so soon after such fresh sorrow—most mourners could barely bear the comfort of relatives, could barely stand to see daylight—and he did not condemn them for that weakness; but he himself had sought stronger consolation in the embrace of the state. Then, pitying Augusta's great age, his grandsons' youth, and his own declining years, he asked that Germanicus's children be brought in, the only comfort left for present troubles. The consuls went out, steadied the boys with encouraging words, and brought them before Caesar. Taking hold of them, he said: 'Conscript fathers, I gave these boys, now bereft of their father, to their uncle, and begged him, though he had a son of his own, to cherish and raise them as his own blood, and to shape them for himself and for posterity. Now that Drusus has been taken, I turn my prayers to you, and before gods and country I appeal to you: take up these great-grandsons of Augustus, born of the most distinguished ancestors, guide and raise them, fill my place and yours. Nero and Drusus, these boys stand to you in place of parents. You were born such that your virtues and failings belong to the state.'

9| This was heard with a great outpouring of tears, and then with prayers of good omen; and if he had stopped there, he would have filled his listeners' hearts with pity and admiration for him. But he returned to his empty, endlessly mocked theme—of restoring the republic, of the consuls or someone else taking up its government—and by doing so he stripped credibility even from what was true and honorable in his words. The same honors decreed for Germanicus's memory were voted for Drusus, with many more added, as later flattery tends to do. The funeral procession was made especially splendid by the parade of ancestral images—Aeneas, who founded the Julian house, every king of Alba, and Romulus, the city's own founder; after them came the Sabine nobility, Attus Clausus, and the long train of Claudian likenesses.

10| For the death of Drusus, I have relied on the sources that are most numerous and carry the most trust. But a rumor circulating at the time should not go unmentioned, so persistent that it still has not died out. It was said that Sejanus, having corrupted Livia into crime, had also bound the eunuch Lygdus to himself through seduction, since Lygdus, young and handsome, was dear to his master and among his chief attendants; and that once the accomplices had settled the place and time for the poisoning, Sejanus grew so bold as to reverse the plot, secretly accusing Drusus of poisoning his own father and warning Tiberius to avoid the first cup offered him by his son at a banquet. Taken in by this trick, the old man, once at the feast, took the cup handed to him and passed it to Drusus—who, unaware, drank it down like a young man, which only deepened the suspicion: it seemed Drusus, from fear and shame, had inflicted on himself the death he had set for his father.

11| These stories, circulated widely and backed by no reliable authority, could easily be refuted, beyond the fact that no named source vouches for them. What man of even ordinary sense—let alone Tiberius, seasoned by such great affairs—would offer his son death unheard, and with his own hand, leaving no room to reconsider? Surely he would have tortured the one who administered the poison, sought out who was behind it, applied to his only son—never before charged with any crime—the same hesitation and delay he showed even toward strangers. But because Sejanus was regarded as the inventor of every crime, and because of the emperor's excessive fondness for him and everyone else's hatred of them both, even the most fantastic and monstrous tales were believed—rumor is always more savage about the deaths of rulers. In any case, the true sequence of the crime was betrayed by Apicata, Sejanus's wife, and brought fully to light under torture of Eudemus and Lygdus. No writer, however hostile to Tiberius, ever laid this charge against him, though they hunted down and pressed every other accusation. My reason for reporting and refuting the rumor is to set a clear example against believing false reports, and to ask those into whose hands this work may come not to prefer sensational, incredible stories, eagerly seized on, over the truth that has not been twisted into a marvel.

12| Meanwhile, as Tiberius praised his son from the Rostra, the Senate and people put on the look and words of mourning more out of pretense than genuine feeling, and secretly rejoiced that the house of Germanicus was reviving. This growing favor, together with his mother Agrippina's poorly hidden hope, hastened its own ruin. For when Sejanus saw that Drusus's death went unavenged on the killers and stirred no public grief, emboldened by crime and encouraged by his early success, he began turning over in his mind how to destroy Germanicus's children, whose succession was beyond doubt. Poison could not be spread among all three—the guards' loyalty was excellent and Agrippina's virtue impenetrable. So he attacked her defiance instead, stirred up Augusta's old hatred of her and Livia's fresh complicity, urging them to charge before Caesar that, proud of her fertility and backed by popular support, she was reaching for power. These charges were pressed by cunning accusers, among them Julius Postumus, who through his affair with Mutilia Prisca—close to the emperor's mother and well suited to Sejanus's schemes—had influence, since Prisca's standing with Augusta made the old woman, naturally anxious about her own power, hostile to her daughter-in-law. Agrippina's closest friends, too, were drawn in and goaded, through poisonous talk, to inflame her already proud spirit further.

13| Tiberius, meanwhile, never let up his attention to affairs, treating business as consolation, handling citizens' legal claims and the petitions of allied peoples. On his motion the Senate decreed that the cities of Cibyra in Asia and Aegium in Achaea, damaged by earthquake, be relieved with a three-year tax remission. Vibius Serenus, proconsul of Farther Spain, was convicted of public violence for the brutality of his conduct and deported to the island of Amorgos. Carsidius Sacerdos, charged with supplying grain to the enemy Tacfarinas, was acquitted, as was Gaius Gracchus on the same charge. Gracchus, still an infant, had been carried into exile by his father Sempronius to the island of Cercina. Growing up there among exiles with no education in the liberal arts, he later supported himself trading cheap goods across Africa and Sicily; even so he did not escape the dangers that come with great birth. Had Aelius Lamia and Lucius Apronius, who governed Africa, not protected him though innocent, he would have been swept away by the notoriety of his ill-fated family and his father's misfortunes.

14| That same year also brought embassies from Greek cities: the Samians petitioning that the ancient right of asylum at the temple of Juno be confirmed, and the Coans the same for the temple of Aesculapius. The Samians rested their case on a decree of the Amphictyonic Council, which had been the chief authority in all matters at the time the Greeks were founding cities across Asia and controlling the coast. The Coans' claim to antiquity was no less strong, and they had an added merit from local history: they had once sheltered Roman citizens in the temple of Aesculapius when, on King Mithridates's orders, Romans were being slaughtered across every island and city of Asia. After various complaints from the praetors, often raised and often ignored, Caesar finally brought before the Senate the matter of the actors' unruliness: much seditious behavior in public and shameful conduct in private homes was being attempted by them; the old Oscan farce, once a trivial amusement for the common people, had grown so scandalous and violent that it needed to be curbed by the Senate's authority. The actors were then expelled from Italy.

15| That same year brought Tiberius another grief, the death of one of Drusus's twin sons, and no less the death of a friend. That friend was Lucilius Longus, who had shared every sorrow and joy with him and was the only senator to accompany him into exile on Rhodes. So, although he was a new man, the Senate voted him a censor's funeral and a statue in the Forum of Augustus at public expense—the Senate still handling all such matters at that time, so much so that Lucilius Capito, procurator of Asia, had to answer charges brought by the province itself, with Tiberius firmly declaring that he had granted Capito authority only over slaves and the imperial household's finances; if Capito had usurped a praetor's power and used soldiers, he had disregarded his instructions in doing so—let the allies be heard. So the defendant, his case examined, was condemned. In gratitude for this act of justice, and because the previous year vengeance had been taken on Gaius Silanus as well, the cities of Asia voted to build a temple to Tiberius, his mother, and the Senate; and permission to build it was granted. Nero gave thanks to the Senate and to his grandfather for this, to the delighted approval of listeners who, remembering Germanicus so recently, felt they were seeing and hearing him again. The young man had a modesty and bearing worthy of a future ruler, made all the more appealing by the well-known hatred Sejanus bore him, which put him in danger.

16| Around the same time, Caesar addressed the senate about choosing a new priest of Jupiter (flamen Dialis) to replace the dead Servius Maluginensis, and at the same time proposed a new law. The old custom was that three patricians born of parents married by the ancient confarreatio rite be nominated together, and one chosen from them. But that pool no longer existed as it once had, since the practice of confarreate marriage had either lapsed or survived only among a few families. He gave several reasons for this — chiefly the carelessness of men and women alike — and added that the ceremony itself was burdensome, which people deliberately avoided; besides, whoever won the priesthood, and the woman who married into the flamen's household, passed out of their father's legal control. So the problem needed fixing, either by senatorial decree or by law, just as Augustus had adapted certain harsh old customs to present needs. After the religious questions had been examined, it was decided to leave the office of the priesthood itself untouched, but a law was passed that the flamen's wife should be under her husband's authority only for sacred purposes, and in everything else hold the ordinary legal status of women. Maluginensis's son was appointed to succeed his father. And to raise the standing of priesthoods and make people more willing to take them on, it was decreed that the Vestal Cornelia, chosen to replace Scantia, receive two million sesterces, and that whenever Augusta entered the theater she should sit among the Vestal Virgins.

17| In the consulship of Cornelius Cethegus and Visellius Varro, the priests, and other priesthoods following their lead, when making vows for the emperor's safety, commended Nero and Drusus too to the same gods — not so much from affection for the young men as from flattery, which in corrupt times is dangerous whether withheld or excessive. Tiberius had never been kind to Germanicus's family, and now he was pained and impatient to see young men set on a level with his own old age. He summoned the priests and asked whether they had done this at Agrippina's request or under her threats. They denied it, though he only mildly rebuked them, since many of them were his own relatives or leading men of the state. But in the senate he warned, in a speech, that no one in future should puff up the restless minds of young men with premature honors and make them arrogant. Sejanus kept pressing the point, complaining that the state was split as if by civil war: there were people, he said, who called themselves partisans of Agrippina, and unless checked there would be more; the only remedy for the growing discord was to strike down one or two of the most eager ringleaders.

18| For this reason he went after Gaius Silius and Titius Sabinus. Friendship with Germanicus was dangerous for both, but especially for Silius, who had commanded a huge army for seven years, won triumphal honors in Germany, and crushed Sacrovir's rebellion — the greater his fall, the more fear it would spread among others. Most people believed his offense was made worse by his own lack of restraint, since he boasted endlessly that his soldiers had stayed loyal while others slid into mutiny, and that Tiberius's power would not have survived if those legions too had wanted change. Caesar thought this talk was undermining his own position, and that he could never repay a service so large. Favors are welcome only as long as they seem repayable; once they far outrun gratitude, they are repaid with hatred instead.

19| Silius's wife was Sosia Galla, hated by the emperor for her closeness to Agrippina. It was decided to strike at them and put off Sabinus for a later time. The consul Varro was set on them, using his father's old feud as cover while doing Sejanus's dirty work under his own disgrace. Silius, on trial, asked for a short delay until the accuser had left his consulship; Caesar opposed it — magistrates, he said, regularly summoned private citizens to court on their own days in office, and the consul's authority, on whose vigilance the state's welfare depended, must not be weakened. It was typical of Tiberius to dress up freshly invented crimes in old-fashioned language. So, with great show of principle — as if this were an ordinary lawsuit against Silius, or Varro were an ordinary consul, or this an ordinary case of state — the senators were compelled to proceed while the accused stayed silent, or, if he tried to defend himself, made no secret of whose anger was crushing him. His knowledge of Sacrovir's revolt, long concealed, his victory tainted by greed, and his wife as his accomplice — these were the charges brought. There was no doubt they really amounted to extortion, but the whole case was tried as treason, and Silius forestalled his certain condemnation by taking his own life.

20| Still, his property was savagely pursued — not to repay the provincials, none of whom claimed anything back, but to strip away Augustus's earlier gift to him, with everything owed to the treasury counted out item by item. This was the first time Tiberius showed such careful attention to other people's money. Sosia was driven into exile on the motion of Asinius Gallus, who proposed that part of her property be confiscated and part left to her children. Manius Lepidus, against this, proposed that a quarter go to the accusers, as the law required, and the rest be left to the children. I find that this Lepidus was a serious and wise man for his time, since he steered many matters away from others' vicious flattery toward something better — yet he lacked nothing in balance either, since he kept steady standing and favor with Tiberius throughout. This makes me wonder whether the rise of some men in an emperor's favor and the fall of others is a matter of fate and the luck of birth, as with everything else, or whether there is something in our own judgment, and room to walk a path between reckless defiance and degrading submission, free of both ambition and danger. Messalinus Cotta, of no less noble birth but of a very different temper, proposed that a senatorial decree provide that governors, though innocent themselves and unaware of a wife's guilt in the provinces, should be punished for their wives' crimes as if for their own.

21| Next came the case of Calpurnius Piso, a noble and hot-tempered man. As I have recorded, he had loudly declared in the senate that he would leave the city because of the accusers' factional plotting, and had dared, in defiance of Augusta's power, to drag Urgulania into court and summon her out of the emperor's own house. Tiberius took this politely at the time, but though the first flash of anger had faded, the memory of it stayed with him as he turned it over in his mind. Quintus Granius accused Piso of treasonous remarks made in private conversation, and added that there was poison in his house and that he wore a sword when he entered the senate house. The sword charge was dismissed as too outlandish to be believed; but on the many other charges piled up against him, he was accepted as a defendant, though the case never ran its course, since he died at a convenient moment. There was also a report concerning the exile Cassius Severus — a man of low birth and vicious life, but a formidable speaker — who through excessive quarrels had gotten himself banished to Crete by a sworn verdict of the senate. There he stirred up fresh hatred by the same behavior as before, added to old grudges, and, stripped of his property and formally denied fire and water, grew old on the rock of Seriphos.

22| Around this time the praetor Plautius Silvanus threw his wife Apronia off a height for reasons never made clear. Dragged before Caesar by his father-in-law Lucius Apronius, he answered in confusion, claiming he had been sound asleep and knew nothing, and that his wife must have taken her own life. Tiberius went at once to the house without hesitation and inspected the bedroom, where signs of a struggle and of the woman being forced were visible. He reported this to the senate. Once judges were assigned, Silvanus's grandmother Urgulania sent her grandson a dagger — a gesture widely believed to have come at the emperor's prompting, given his friendship with Urgulania through Augusta. The accused tried the blade in vain and then had his veins opened instead. Later his first wife, Numantina, was charged with driving her former husband mad through spells and poisons, but was found innocent.

23| That year at last freed the Roman people from the long war against the Numidian Tacfarinas. Earlier commanders, once they judged their achievements enough to earn triumphal honors, had let the enemy go; three laurel-crowned statues already stood in Rome, and still Tacfarinas was ravaging Africa, now reinforced by Moorish auxiliaries who, since Ptolemy son of Juba paid no attention to them in his youth, had traded the king's freedmen and slave-like rule for war instead. He had as a partner and receiver of plunder the king of the Garamantes — not that this king marched with an army, but he sent light raiding parties, whose exploits grew larger the further the news traveled. Men from the province itself, whoever was destitute or violent by nature, rushed to join all the more eagerly, because Caesar, after Blaesus's campaigns, thinking there were no more enemies left in Africa, had ordered the ninth legion withdrawn, and Publius Dolabella, that year's proconsul, had not dared keep it, fearing the emperor's orders more than the uncertainties of war.

24| So Tacfarinas spread the rumor that Rome's power was being torn apart by other nations too, and was gradually withdrawing from Africa, and that the rest could be surrounded if all who preferred freedom to slavery would press the attack together. He built up his forces and, pitching camp, laid siege to the town of Thubuscum. Dolabella, gathering what troops he had, broke the siege on his first approach, aided by the terror of Rome's name and by the fact that the Numidians could not withstand a line of infantry; he then fortified the key positions in the area. At the same time he had the leaders of the Musulamii, who were beginning to revolt, put to death by the axe. Then, since repeated campaigns against Tacfarinas had shown that such an elusive enemy could not be run down by one heavy strike, he called up King Ptolemy with his people and organized four columns, given to legates or tribunes to command; picked bands of Moors led the raiding parties, while he himself stayed on hand to advise them all.

25| Not long after, word came that the Numidians had settled at a half-ruined fort called Auzea, which they themselves had once burned, pitching their huts there and trusting the place because it was ringed by wild forest. At once the light cohorts and cavalry, not told where they were headed, were rushed there at a fast march. They arrived at dawn, trumpets blaring and a fierce shout going up, catching the barbarians half-asleep, their horses hobbled or scattered across distant pastures. On the Roman side the infantry stood massed, the cavalry squadrons in position, everything ready for battle. The enemy, caught wholly unprepared, had no weapons, no order, no plan — they were dragged out, killed, or captured like cattle. The soldiers, furious at the memory of their hardships and at an enemy who had so often dodged the fight they longed for, each glutted himself with vengeance and blood. Word passed through the ranks: everyone should hunt down Tacfarinas, well known from so many battles — there would be no end to the war until their leader was dead. But he, with his bodyguard cut down around him, his son already bound in chains, and Romans closing in from every side, escaped captivity by throwing himself onto their spears and dying — a death, at least, that was not unavenged. That put an end to the fighting.

26| Tiberius refused Dolabella's request for triumphal honors, out of deference to Sejanus, so as not to dim the fame of Blaesus, Sejanus's uncle. But this did nothing to raise Blaesus's standing, and denying Dolabella the honor only sharpened his glory: with a smaller army he had still brought back notable captives, the death of the enemy leader, and the credit for finishing the war. Envoys from the Garamantes also came, a rare sight in Rome — sent by a people shaken by Tacfarinas's death, who, though not implicated in his guilt, wished to make amends to the Roman people. Learning also of Ptolemy's support during the war, Tiberius revived the old custom of honoring him: a senator was sent to present the ivory scepter and embroidered toga, the ancestral gifts, and to hail him as king, ally, and friend.

27| That same summer, the seeds of a slave uprising sprang up in Italy and were crushed only by luck. The instigator was Titus Curtisius, once a soldier in the praetorian cohort. He began with secret gatherings at Brundisium and the towns nearby, then openly posted notices calling the rough, wild slave-gangs of the remote forests to freedom — just as, as if sent by the gods, three warships happened to put in on that coast for the use of travelers. In the same region was the quaestor Cutius Lupus, whose province by old custom included the highland pastures; he mustered a force of marines and broke up the conspiracy just as it was forming. Caesar quickly sent the tribune Staius with a strong detachment, who hauled the ringleader and his boldest followers off to Rome — a city already uneasy over the sheer number of slaves, which kept swelling enormously while the free population shrank by the day.

28| In the same consulship, a grim spectacle of misery and cruelty was brought before the Senate: a father as the accused, his son as the accuser — both named Vibius Serenus. The father, dragged back from exile, filthy and unkempt, and now bound in chains, was set opposite his son, who begged to speak. The young man, groomed and eager-faced, laid out as both informer and witness a plot against the emperor and agents sent to Gaul to stir up rebellion, adding that Caecilius Cornutus, an ex-praetor, had supplied the money — a charge that drove Cornutus, weary of the whole ordeal and treating mere danger as ruin, to hasten his own death. The father, though, faced his son with unbroken spirit, shaking his chains, calling on the avenging gods to give him back his exile, where he could live far from such conduct, and warning that punishment would catch up with his son one day. He insisted Cornutus was innocent, frightened into false confession, and said this would be easy to see if the others named were produced — for he had never planned the emperor's murder and a revolution with only one accomplice.

29| At this the accuser named Gnaeus Lentulus and Seius Tubero — to Caesar's great embarrassment, since these were leading men of the state and his own close friends, Lentulus in extreme old age, Tubero in failing health, now called in as agents of armed uprising and public disorder. Both were cleared at once. As for the father, his slaves were put to torture, and the interrogation went against the accuser. Driven half-mad by his own crime, and terrified by rumors that the mob was threatening him with the Rock or the punishments reserved for parricides, he left Rome. Dragged back from Ravenna, he was forced to press his charge, while Tiberius made no secret of his long-standing hatred for the exile Serenus — for after Libo's condemnation, Serenus had written to Caesar complaining that his own zeal had gone unrewarded, adding remarks bolder than was safe for ears both proud and quick to take offense. Caesar brought these letters up eight years later, in the meantime interpreting Serenus's conduct in various unfavorable ways, even when torturing his stubborn slaves turned up nothing against him.

30| When the senators voted that Serenus be punished in the old manner, Tiberius stepped in to soften the outcry this would cause. Asinius Gallus proposed confining him on Gyaros or Donusa instead; Tiberius rejected that too, noting that both islands lacked water, and that a man allowed to live should be given what life requires. So Serenus was sent back to Amorgos. And because Cornutus had died by his own hand, the Senate debated abolishing the rewards paid to accusers whenever someone charged with treason took his own life before the trial was finished. The motion was heading toward passage until Caesar, more bluntly than was his habit, complained openly on behalf of the accusers that the laws would become dead letters and the state would be left on the edge of ruin — better to tear up the laws outright than remove their guardians. And so informers, a breed bred for public ruin and never adequately checked even by punishment, were lured on instead by rewards.

31| Amid so much relentless gloom, a small moment of relief broke through: Caesar, at the pleading of his brother, a senator, pardoned Gaius Cominius, a Roman knight convicted of writing a scurrilous poem against him. This was thought all the more surprising given that Tiberius knew perfectly well what reputation mercy would earn him, yet usually preferred the harsher course. It was not carelessness on his part — everyone knew when an emperor's acts of kindness were sincere and when they were merely staged. In fact Tiberius, ordinarily guarded and seeming to force out his words, spoke more freely and readily whenever he was granting relief. But Publius Suillius, once Germanicus's quaestor, convicted of taking a bribe to influence a judgment, was, on Tiberius's own motion, to be removed to an island, and with such intensity that he swore an oath it was in the state's interest. That harsh judgment, met with resentment at the time, was later turned into praise when Suillius returned — a man the next generation would see grow immensely powerful, venal, and long fortunate, though never honorable, in his friendship with the emperor Claudius. The same penalty was set for the senator Catus Firmius, for having brought false charges of treason against his sister. Catus, as I have already related, had lured Libo into his ruinous scheme and then betrayed him with an accusation. Tiberius, remembering this service, pleaded — under a different pretext — to spare him exile, but did not object to his expulsion from the Senate.

32| I am well aware that much of what I have recorded, and will go on recording, may seem small and trivial to relate. But no one should measure my Annals against the work of those who wrote the ancient history of Rome. They told of great wars, the storming of cities, kings routed and captured, or, when they turned to affairs at home, of consuls clashing with tribunes, land laws and grain laws, the struggles of commoners and nobles — subjects that gave their writing free range. My task, by contrast, is confined and without glory: the peace was undisturbed or only mildly troubled, affairs in the capital were grim, and the emperor showed no interest in extending the empire. Still, it may not be useless to look closely at things that seem trivial at first glance, since great upheavals often arise from just such small beginnings.

33| Every nation and city is governed by the people, by the nobility, or by one man. A constitution chosen and blended from all three is easier to praise than to achieve — and even if achieved, it cannot last long. So just as, in the days when the common people held power, or when the senators did, it was necessary to understand the temper of the masses and how best to manage them, and those who had studied most deeply the character of the Senate and the nobility were reckoned shrewd and wise in their times — so now, with the state transformed and Rome effectively ruled as if by one man alone, it will serve a purpose to gather and hand down these events. For few men can tell, through their own judgment, what is honorable from what is corrupt, or what is useful from what is harmful; most learn from watching what happens to others. Yet however useful such history may be, it offers very little pleasure. The geography of nations, the shifting fortunes of battles, the famous deaths of commanders — these hold a reader's attention and refresh it. What I offer instead is a chain of savage orders, endless prosecutions, false friendships, the ruin of the innocent, and trials that end the same way for the same reasons every time — a wearying sameness that breeds only satiety. And besides, ancient writers rarely faced hostile critics; no one much cares whether you praised the Carthaginian battle line or the Roman one more warmly. But the descendants of the many men who suffered punishment or disgrace under Tiberius's rule are still with us. And even where whole families have died out, you will find people who, because their own habits resemble those of the dead, feel that another's misdeeds are being thrown in their face. Even glory and virtue make enemies, by condemning their opposite from too close at hand. But I return to my subject.

34| In the consulship of Cornelius Cossus and Asinius Agrippa, Cremutius Cordus was put on trial for a charge new and never heard before: that in his published annals, by praising Marcus Brutus, he had called Gaius Cassius the last of the Romans. His accusers were Satrius Secundus and Pinarius Natta, clients of Sejanus. That alone doomed him. Tiberius listened to his defense with a grim face. Cremutius, resolved to end his life, began like this: 'My words are on trial, senators — so innocent am I of deeds. But even these words touch neither the emperor nor the emperor's parent, whom the treason law protects. I am said to have praised Brutus and Cassius. Many have written of their deeds, and no one wrote of them without honor. Titus Livy, a man of the first rank for eloquence and honesty, praised Pompey so highly that Augustus called him a Pompeian — and it did no harm to their friendship. He speaks of Scipio, Afranius, this very Cassius, this very Brutus — never as robbers and assassins, the names now given them — but often as outstanding men. The writings of Asinius Pollio hand down a splendid memory of the same men. Messalla Corvinus used to call Cassius his commander, and both men lived out their lives thick with wealth and honors. When Cicero wrote the book that raised Cato to the skies, what did the dictator Caesar do but answer it with a speech of his own, as if pleading before judges? The letters of Antony, the speeches of Brutus, carry insults against Augustus that are false, yes, but bitter. The verses of Bibaculus and Catullus, packed with abuse of the Caesars, are still read. Yet the deified Julius, the deified Augustus, both bore it and let it stand — whether more from restraint or from wisdom, I could not easily say. What is scorned fades away; get angry, and it looks like an admission.'

35| 'I will not touch the Greeks, whose freedom — indeed whose license — went unpunished, or where someone did take notice, avenged words with words. But it was above all a free and uncontested thing to write of those whom death had removed from hatred or favor. Am I inflaming the people at public meetings toward civil war, with Cassius and Brutus under arms and holding the fields of Philippi? They died seventy years ago. Just as they are still known by their busts, which not even the victor destroyed, so they keep a share of memory among writers. Posterity gives each man his due honor. And if condemnation falls on me, there will be those who remember not only Cassius and Brutus, but me as well.' He then left the senate and ended his life by refusing food. The senators voted that his books be burned by the aediles. But they survived, hidden and later published. All the more reason to laugh at the stupidity of men who think that present power can extinguish the memory of the next age too. On the contrary, persecuted talent only grows in authority. Foreign kings, and all who have used that same cruelty, have won nothing for themselves but disgrace, and for their victims, glory.

36| For the rest, the year was so continuously filled with prosecutions that during the Latin Festival, when Drusus, as prefect of the city, entered the tribunal to take the auspices, Calpurnius Salvianus approached him with a charge against Sextus Marius. Tiberius rebuked him openly for it, and that rebuke was the cause of Salvianus's exile. The people of Cyzicus were publicly charged with neglecting the rites of the deified Augustus, with added charges of violence against Roman citizens. They lost the freedom they had earned in the war against Mithridates, when, besieged, they had driven off the king by their own resolve as much as by Lucullus's relief force. Fonteius Capito, who had governed Asia as proconsul, was acquitted, once it was discovered that the charges against him had been invented by Vibius Serenus. Yet this did Serenus no harm — the public hatred he inspired only made him safer. The more ruthless the prosecutor, the more untouchable he seemed; it was the weak and obscure who paid the penalties.

37| Around this same time, Farther Spain sent envoys to the senate asking to build a temple to Tiberius and his mother, following the example of Asia. On this occasion Tiberius — a man generally firm in spurning honors, and thinking he ought to answer those whose gossip accused him of drifting toward vanity — began a speech of this kind: 'I know, senators, that many have found fault with my consistency, because I did not oppose the same request lately made by the cities of Asia. So I will explain both my earlier silence and what I have decided for the future. Since the deified Augustus did not forbid a temple being raised to himself and to the city of Rome at Pergamum, I, who treat all his acts and words as law, followed a precedent already set, and did so more readily because reverence for the senate was joined to worship of me. But while it may be excused once, to be consecrated in the image of a god throughout every province would be vanity, and arrogance. And the honor paid to Augustus will fade if it is cheapened by being handed out to everyone alike.

38| 'I call you to witness, senators, that I am a mortal, that I perform the duties of a man, and that I am content if I fill the first place among men — and I want posterity to remember this too. They will grant enough and more than enough to my memory if they judge me worthy of my ancestors, careful of your interests, steady in dangers, and unafraid to give offense for the public good. These are the temples I want in your hearts, these the finest and most lasting statues. What is built of stone, if the verdict of later generations turns to hatred, is despised like a tomb. So I pray to our allies, to our citizens, and to the gods themselves: to the gods, that they grant me, to the end of my life, a mind at peace and clear-sighted about human and divine law; to my fellow citizens and allies, that when I am gone, they follow my deeds and the fame of my name with praise and kind memory.' And afterward, even in private conversation, he kept refusing such worship of himself. Some read this as modesty; many, as a lack of confidence; some, as a mean spirit. The best of men, they said, desire the highest things — so Hercules and Bacchus were numbered among the gods by the Greeks, and Quirinus among us. Augustus did better, since he merely hoped for it. Everything else comes at once to an emperor; the one thing he must strive for without end is a good name after death — for to despise fame is to despise virtue itself.

39| Meanwhile Sejanus, made careless by his excess of fortune and further inflamed by a woman's desire — Livia was pressing him about the marriage he had promised — drew up a memorandum to Caesar; for it was then the custom to approach even a ruler who was present by letter. It ran something like this: through the goodwill of the father, Augustus, and then through Tiberius's many marks of favor, he had grown so accustomed to bringing his hopes and wishes to the emperor's ears before he brought them to the gods. He had never prayed for the glitter of honors; like any common soldier, he preferred the watches and the labors spent for the emperor's safety. And yet he had won the finest thing of all — to be thought worthy of a match with Caesar's family. That was where his hope first took root. He had also heard that Augustus, when settling his daughter, had once weighed Roman knights among the candidates — and on that basis he wanted it known: should Livia need a husband, the man he had in mind was a friend content to gain nothing from the match but the honor of the bond itself. He was not trying to shed the duties laid on him; it was enough, he thought, to strengthen his household against the unjust hostility of Agrippina, and that for his children's sake — for himself, he would count it more than enough of a life, that he had lived it out under such an emperor.

40| To this Tiberius, after praising Sejanus's devotion and touching lightly on his own favors toward him, said he would take time, as if for full deliberation, and then added: other men could base their plans simply on what suited themselves, but emperors were in a different position, since their chief actions had to be measured against fame. So he would not take the easy way out by simply saying that Livia herself could decide whether, after Drusus, she should marry again or remain in the same household; she had a mother and a grandmother, closer counselors than he. He would speak more plainly. First, about Agrippina's hostility — it would burn far more fiercely if Livia's marriage were, so to speak, to split the house of the Caesars into factions. Even as things stood, the rivalry of the women broke out, and that discord tore at his grandsons; what would happen if the contest were sharpened by such a marriage? 'For you deceive yourself, Sejanus, if you think you would stay in the same rank, and that Livia, who was wife first to Gaius Caesar, then to Drusus, would be content to grow old beside a Roman knight. Even if I allowed it, do you think the men would tolerate it who have seen her brother, her father, and our ancestors hold the highest commands? You wish to keep yourself within your present station, but the magistrates and leading men who force themselves upon you against your will, and consult you on everything, already say openly that you have long since passed beyond the rank of a knight and far outstripped my father's friendships — and out of envy of you, they attack me as well. But, you say, Augustus considered giving his daughter to a Roman knight. Small wonder, by Hercules, that when torn by every kind of care, and foreseeing the immense rise of whoever he lifted above others by such a match, he once mentioned in conversation men like Gaius Proculeius, men of notably tranquil lives, mixed up in no public business. But if we are to be swayed by Augustus's hesitation, how much stronger is the fact that he settled his daughter first on Marcus Agrippa, then on me? I have not hidden any of this from you, out of friendship. But I will not stand in the way of your own plans or Livia's. What I have turned over in my own mind, and by what further ties I might yet join you to myself, I will leave unsaid for now. This much I will reveal: nothing is too high for such virtues as yours, and for your devotion to me, to deserve — and when the time comes, whether in the senate or before an assembly, I will not stay silent about it.'

41| Sejanus now feared something deeper than the marriage question. He worked to smother the whispers of suspicion, the gossip of the crowd, the resentment building against him. But to avoid crippling his power by barring the constant crowds from his house, or handing his accusers ammunition by admitting them, he took a different tack: he pushed Tiberius toward a life spent far from Rome, in pleasant retreats. He had good reasons of his own. Access to the emperor would run through him, and he would control most of his correspondence, since it would pass by soldiers under his command. And soon enough, with Caesar's old age advancing and softened further by seclusion, the business of empire would slide more easily into Sejanus's hands. His own unpopularity would shrink once the crowds of morning callers were cut off, and stripping away the empty show of power would only increase the real thing. So bit by bit he began to run down the business of the city, the crush of the people, the flood of visitors, praising instead the peace and solitude where irritation and offense had no place and where the important matters got the most attention.

42| Around this time a trial happened to be held involving Votienus Montanus, a man of some renown for his eloquence, and it pushed the already hesitant Tiberius to believe he should avoid the Senate's gatherings and the speeches — often true and weighty — that were hurled at him there in person. Votienus was charged with insulting Caesar. A witness, Aemilius, a military man, in his eagerness to prove the charge, repeated everything in full and, despite the uproar around him, insisted on it with great force. Tiberius had to sit and listen to the insults by which he was being savaged in private. He was so shaken that he cried out he would clear himself at once, or at least during the trial, and it took the pleading of those close to him, and everyone's flattery, to settle his mind. Votienus was condemned under the treason law. Caesar, meanwhile, embraced all the more stubbornly the charge of harshness toward the accused that had been thrown at him: he punished Aquilia with exile for adultery with Varius Ligur — even though the consul-designate Lentulus Gaetulicus had already convicted her under the Julian law — and he struck Apidius Merula from the senatorial rolls for failing to swear the oath to the acts of the deified Augustus.

43| Next, embassies from Sparta and Messene were heard on the question of who owned the temple of Diana Limnatis. The Spartans maintained it had been dedicated by their ancestors on their own soil, backed by the record of their annals and the songs of their poets, but that it had been seized from them by force in their war with Philip of Macedon and later restored by the ruling of Gaius Caesar and Mark Antony. The Messenians countered with the ancient division of the Peloponnese among the descendants of Hercules, arguing that the Denthaliate territory, where the shrine stood, had fallen to their own king; and they pointed to monuments of this carved in stone and old bronze still standing. If it came down to the testimony of poets and annals, they said, theirs were more numerous and more reliable — and Philip had not ruled by power but by truth; King Antigonus had judged the same way, so had the general Mummius; the Milesians, given the arbitration by public agreement, had ruled the same, and finally so had Atidius Geminus, praetor of Achaea. So the case went to the Messenians. The people of Segesta also asked that the temple of Venus on Mount Eryx, fallen into ruin with age, be restored, recalling the well-known story of its origin — a story pleasing to Tiberius. He took up the project gladly, as a kinsman of the goddess. Then the petitions of Marseille were handled, and the precedent of Publius Rutilius was approved: he had been driven out by the laws of Rome and the people of Smyrna had made him one of their own citizens. On that same principle, the exile Vulcacius Moschus had been received as a citizen of Marseille, and had left his property to their state as to his own homeland.

44| Two noblemen died that year, Gnaeus Lentulus and Lucius Domitius. Lentulus, beyond his consulship and his triumphal honors from the war against the Getae, had borne poverty well, then acquired great wealth honestly and held it modestly. Domitius's glory came from his father, who had commanded at sea in the civil war before joining first Antony's side, then Caesar's. His grandfather had died fighting for the optimates at Pharsalus. Domitius himself had been chosen to marry the younger Antonia, daughter of Octavia, and later led an army across the Elbe, penetrating further into Germany than any Roman before him — a feat that won him triumphal honors. Lucius Antonius also died, a man of great but unfortunate lineage. His father, Iullus Antonius, had been put to death for adultery with Julia, and Augustus had sent this son, still very young, the grandson of his own sister, off to live in Marseille, where the pretense of studying abroad disguised what was really exile. Still, he received full funeral honors at his death, and by decree of the Senate his ashes were placed in the tomb of the Octavii.

45| That same year, during the consulship just named, a brutal crime was committed in nearer Spain by a peasant of the Termestine tribe. He attacked the province's governor, Lucius Piso, who was traveling without any thought of danger, taking him by surprise and killing him with a single blow. The killer escaped on a fast horse, and once he reached wooded country he let the horse go and threw off his pursuers on foot across broken, trackless ground. He was not free for long: the horse was caught and led through the nearby villages until its owner was identified. When they found the man and put him to torture to make him name his accomplices, he shouted in his native tongue that the questioning was useless — his companions could stand there and watch, no pain, however great, would ever force the truth out of him. The next day, as he was being dragged back for further questioning, he tore himself free from his guards with such violence that he smashed his head against a rock and died on the spot. Even so, Piso is generally believed to have been killed through a plot of the Termestini, since he had been squeezing them harder than the natives could bear for money embezzled from the public treasury.

46| In the consulship of Lentulus Gaetulicus and Gaius Calvisius, triumphal honors were voted to Poppaeus Sabinus for crushing the Thracian tribes, who lived on high, wild mountains and were all the fiercer for it. The uprising had a cause beyond mere savagery: they refused to submit to the levy, or to hand over their strongest men for our army's service — they were not used to obeying even their own kings except on their own terms, and if they did send auxiliaries, they insisted on their own commanders and would fight only against their neighbors, never anyone else. A rumor had also spread that they would be broken up, mixed with other peoples, and dragged off to scattered lands. But before taking up arms, they sent envoys to recall their friendship and loyalty, promising it would continue if no new burden were placed on them. But if slavery was to be the reward of the conquered, they said, they had iron, and young men, and spirits ready either for freedom or for death. At the same time they pointed to their strongholds set among the cliffs, where they had gathered their parents and wives, and they threatened a war that would be difficult, steep, and bloody.

47| Sabinus, while gathering his forces into one body, gave mild answers, and once Pomponius Labeo arrived from Moesia with his legion, and King Rhoemetalces with auxiliaries drawn from loyal tribesmen, he moved against the enemy, now dug in among narrow mountain passes, with the strength now at hand. Some of the bolder ones could be seen on the open hills; the Roman commander advanced his line against them and drove them off without much trouble, the barbarians' losses light thanks to nearby refuges. Then, having fortified a camp on the spot, he seized with a strong force a narrow mountain ridge running level all the way to the next stronghold, which a large body of armed men, disorganized as they were, held. At the same time he sent picked archers against the fiercest of the enemy, who according to their custom were leaping and dancing before the rampart with songs. Shooting from a distance, the archers inflicted many wounds without loss to themselves; but as they moved closer, a sudden sally threw them into confusion, and they were pulled back and covered by a cohort of Sugambri, which the Roman commander, ready for danger and no less fierce with their own war-songs and clashing arms, had drawn up not far off.

48| The camp was then moved nearer the enemy, leaving the Thracians — the loyal ones I mentioned earlier — at the old fortifications, with permission to plunder, burn, and drive off spoils, provided their raiding kept to daylight and they returned safely to camp for the watchful night. At first this was observed. But soon, turned reckless by plunder and grown rich with loot, they abandoned their guard posts, sprawling in the excess of feasting or collapsing in sleep and drink. The enemy, learning of their carelessness, prepared two columns, one to fall on the plunderers, the other to attack the Roman camp — not in hope of taking it, but so that, with everyone absorbed in his own danger amid the shouting and weapons, the noise of the other battle would go unheard. Darkness was chosen on top of this to deepen the terror. Those who tested the legions' rampart were easily beaten back; but the Thracian auxiliaries, terrified by the sudden attack — some camped close to the fortifications, more scattered outside them — were cut down all the more savagely because they were accused of bearing arms as deserters and traitors, in the service of their own enslavement and their country's.

49| The next day Sabinus drew up his army on level ground, in case the barbarians, emboldened by the night's success, dared to give battle. But since they would not come down from their stronghold or the connected hills, he began a siege, using the strongpoints he was already conveniently fortifying; then, digging a ditch and building a rampart, he enclosed a circuit of four miles. Little by little he tightened the blockade to cut off their water and forage, drawing the ring in close around them; and a siege-mound was built from which stones, spears, and fire could now be hurled at the enemy close by. But nothing wore them down like thirst, since the vast crowd of fighters and non-combatants alike had only one spring left to them. At the same time their herds, penned close by as is the barbarian custom, were dying of starvation for lack of fodder; the bodies of men killed by wounds or thirst lay scattered about; and everything was fouled with rot, stench, and contagion.

50| To the chaos was added the worst evil of all: discord. Some wanted to surrender, others to die, or to cut each other down; and some argued against dying unavenged, urging a breakout instead. It wasn't only common men who split into these camps. Among the chiefs, Dinis—old, and long taught by experience the force and the mercy of Rome—argued that laying down arms was the one remedy left for men so beaten, and he was the first to give himself up, with his wife and children, to the victor. Those weak with age or sex followed him, along with those who wanted life more than glory. But the young men were torn between Tarsa and Turesis. Both were resolved to die free rather than live in chains, but Tarsa shouted that they should end it quickly, cutting off hope and fear together, and set the example by driving a sword into his own chest. Others died the same way. Turesis waited through the night with his band, well aware our commander was waiting too. So the sentry posts were reinforced with denser clusters of men. Night fell, black with storm, and the enemy's confused shouting—now roaring, now dead silent—kept the besiegers guessing. Sabinus went around, encouraging the men not to open a gap for the ambushers by reacting to uncertain noise or feigned quiet, but to hold their posts, unmoving, and not waste their weapons on shadows.

51| Meanwhile the barbarians came pouring down in bands, hurling stones by hand at the rampart, and stakes hardened in fire, and hacked logs; and they piled the ditches with brushwood, wattles, and the bodies of the dead. Some brought up bridges and ladders they had built beforehand, set them against the defenses, and grabbed hold of them, trying to tear them down and force their way through against the men resisting hand to hand. The soldiers, in turn, knocked them off with spears, shoved them back with their shields, hurled siege-javelins, and rolled down heaped stones. Hope of victory won already, and greater disgrace if they gave way, fired the Romans; for the barbarians it was their last chance of survival, made sharper by the mothers and wives standing beside many of them, wailing. Night favored boldness in some, fear in others; blows landed blind, wounds came from nowhere; men couldn't tell friend from foe, and voices bouncing off the mountain's folds seemed to come from behind, so everything was thrown into such confusion that the Romans abandoned some defenses they thought had actually been breached. Yet very few of the enemy actually broke through: the rest, once their boldest men had been cut down or wounded, were driven back as daylight came into the topmost part of the fort, where they finally surrendered as a body. The nearest villages surrendered too, on their own initiative; for the rest, the early onset of winter on Mount Haemus, savage as it was, did the work of force or siege for us.

52| Meanwhile in Rome the emperor's household was in turmoil, and the chain of ruin that would end in Agrippina's destruction began: her cousin Claudia Pulchra was put on trial, prosecuted by Domitius Afer. He had just left the praetorship, was of modest standing, and eager to make a name for himself by any crime that would do it. He charged her with adultery, naming Furnius as her lover, and with poisoning the emperor and practicing black magic against him. Agrippina, always fierce, and now inflamed by the danger to her kinswoman, went straight to Tiberius and happened to find him sacrificing to his adoptive father. This gave her an opening: she said it made no sense for the same man to offer victims to the divine Augustus and to persecute his descendants. The divine spirit, she said, had not passed into dumb statues; she herself was his true image, born of his blood, and she understood the danger and was putting on mourning clothes. Pulchra was being used as a pretext; her only real crime was foolishly choosing Agrippina to attach herself to, forgetting what had happened to Sosia, ruined for the very same reason. This outburst drew a rare remark from Tiberius's guarded heart: he rebuked her and warned her, in a line of Greek, that she wasn't wronged simply because she wasn't queen. Pulchra and Furnius were condemned. Afer was now ranked among the foremost orators, his talent made public, and confirmed further when Caesar himself, with real weight, called him eloquent in his own right. Afterward, taking up prosecutions or defending the accused, his reputation for eloquence outran his reputation for character—except that in extreme old age even his eloquence failed him greatly, while his mind, though exhausted, kept its old impatience of silence.

53| Agrippina, still stubborn in her anger and now weighed down by physical illness, was visited by Caesar. She wept long and silently, then began to complain and plead: he should relieve her loneliness, give her a husband; she was still young enough, and a decent woman had no comfort but marriage; there were men in Rome he might think fit to receive Germanicus's widow and children. But Caesar, well aware how much was really being asked of him politically, and not wanting to show open offense or fear, left her without an answer, even though she pressed him. This detail, not recorded by the annalists, I found in the memoirs of Agrippina's daughter—the mother of the emperor Nero—who set down for later generations the story of her own life and the fates of her family.

54| As for Sejanus, he struck the grieving, unguarded Agrippina harder still, sending men who, under the guise of friendship, warned her that poison had been prepared for her and that she should avoid her father-in-law's table. Agrippina, no good at concealment, took her place at the meal beside him, showed no change in face or word, and touched no food at all—until Tiberius noticed, whether by chance or because he'd been told. To test her more sharply, he praised some fruit set before him and, with his own hand, passed it to his daughter-in-law. Agrippina's suspicion grew, and she passed the fruit on to the slaves, untouched. Even so, Tiberius said nothing aloud in front of others, but turned to his mother and said it was no wonder he had decided to deal more harshly with a woman who accused him of poisoning her. From this came a rumor that her destruction was being planned, and that the emperor did not dare do it openly, but was looking for a way to do it in secret.

55| Caesar, meanwhile, to turn public talk elsewhere, attended the Senate often, and for several days heard out the envoys from Asia who were disputing which city should have the honor of building a temple to him. Eleven cities competed, equally ambitious, unequally strong. There was little to distinguish their claims about the antiquity of their line, or their devotion to Rome shown in the wars against Perseus, Aristonicus, and other kings. But Hypaepa and Tralles, along with Laodicea and Magnesia, were passed over as too weak; not even Ilium, though it called Rome's founding city Troy its own parent, could claim more than the glory of old age. Halicarnassus prompted some hesitation: the city claimed that across twelve centuries no tremor had ever toppled its buildings, and that its temple's footing would rest on solid bedrock. Pergamum was thought to have already gained enough, since it had a temple to Augustus there—that was in fact their whole argument. Ephesus and Miletus seemed too taken up already with the worship of Diana and Apollo respectively. So the choice came down to Sardis and Smyrna. The Sardians read out a decree from Etruria, claiming kinship: Tyrrhenus and Lydus, they said, were sons of King Atys, and when their people grew too numerous they split it; Lydus stayed in the family lands, Tyrrhenus was given the task of founding a new home; and from the names of these two leaders came the names of the peoples—one across Asia, the other in Italy—and the wealth of the Lydians grew still further when they sent colonists to Greece, to the land later named for Pelops. They also brought up old letters from Roman commanders, treaties struck with us in the war against Macedon, the richness of their rivers, the mildness of their climate, and the wealth of the lands around them.

56| The people of Smyrna, for their part, went back to their own antiquity—claiming their city was founded either by Tantalus, son of Jupiter, or by Theseus, himself of divine stock, or by one of the Amazons—but then moved to the ground they trusted most: their service to Rome, having sent a fleet not only for foreign wars but for the war fought on Italian soil itself. Theirs, they insisted, was the very first temple ever raised to the city of Rome—built back in the consulship of Marcus Porcius, at a time when Roman strength, though considerable already, had not yet crested, when Carthage still stood upright and mighty kings still held sway over Asia. They also called Lucius Sulla as their witness: in a moment of extreme danger for his army, worn down by brutal winter and lacking clothing, when this was announced at a public meeting in Smyrna, everyone present stripped the clothes from their own backs and sent them to our legions. Asked to give their judgment, the senators preferred Smyrna over Sardis. Vibius Marsus proposed that an extra legate be appointed, beyond the usual number, to Manius Lepidus, whose province this was, to take charge of building the temple; and since Lepidus himself, out of modesty, declined to choose the man, Valerius Naso, a former praetor, was picked by lot.

57| Amid all this, after long deliberation and repeated postponement, Caesar finally left for Campania, on the pretext of dedicating temples—one to Jupiter at Capua, one to Augustus at Nola—but in truth determined to live far from Rome. For the reason behind his withdrawal, though most writers have traced it to Sejanus's scheming, I find myself, given that he kept up the same seclusion for six more years after Sejanus's death, more often inclined to think the truer explanation lay in the man himself—that he was simply hiding, in remote places, the cruelty and lust his actions would otherwise reveal. Some believed that in his old age he had also grown ashamed of his own appearance: he was extremely thin, stooped and tall, bald on top, his face pitted with sores and often covered in ointments; and on Rhodes he had already grown used to avoiding company and indulging his pleasures in private. It was also said that he had been driven out by his mother's overbearing will—he could not stand sharing power with her, yet could not push her aside either, since he had received that very power as her gift. For Augustus had hesitated over whether to place his sister's grandson Germanicus, praised by everyone, at the head of the state, but had been won over by his wife's pleading, and adopted Germanicus for Tiberius's sake, and Tiberius for his own. Augusta never let him forget it, and kept demanding he pay the debt.

58| The departure was with a small retinue: one ex-consul, Cocceius Nerva, skilled in law; one Roman knight of rank besides Sejanus, Curtius Atticus; the rest men of liberal learning, mostly Greeks, whose conversation was meant to ease his mind. Those skilled in reading the stars claimed that Tiberius had left Rome under a configuration of the heavens that would deny him any return. This proved fatal to many who guessed and spread word that his end was near — they never imagined anything so improbable as that he would willingly stay away from his homeland for eleven years. In time it became clear how thin the line is between art and fraud, and how obscure the truth that cloaks both. That he would never come back to the city was no random guess: as for the rest, they had no idea, since he lived out his final years near the city, by the coast or in the countryside, and often close by its walls.

59| It happened that in those very days a two-edged danger befell Caesar, which idle rumor inflated, and which gave him fresh reason to trust more deeply in Sejanus's friendship and steadiness. They were dining at a villa called the Grotto, between the sea at Amyclae and the Fundanian hills, in a natural cave. Its mouth suddenly collapsed under falling rock, crushing some of the attendants; terror seized everyone and those at the banquet fled. Sejanus, braced on his knees, face, and hands above Caesar, shielded him from the falling stones — and it was in that posture that the soldiers who came to help found him. From that moment his standing grew greater, and though his advice led to ruin, it was heard as coming from a man who cared nothing for himself. He played the judge against the line of Germanicus, planting men to act as accusers and to go hardest after Nero, next in line for succession. Nero, though modest in his youth, often forgot what suited the moment, egged on by freedmen and clients eager to grab power fast, who urged him to show himself bold and confident: the Roman people wanted this, the armies longed for it, and no one would dare oppose it — not against Sejanus, who now mocked equally the old man's patience and the young man's lack of nerve.

60| As Nero listened to talk like this, nothing crooked entered his mind, but sometimes rash and unguarded words slipped out, which the watchers set to spy on him caught, exaggerated, and reported — and since he had no chance to defend himself, new forms of anxiety kept arising. One man would avoid meeting him; another would return his greeting and turn away at once; most broke off conversation half-begun, while Sejanus's supporters stood by, pressing in and sneering. And Tiberius himself was either grim-faced or wore a smile that was plainly false: whether the young man spoke or stayed silent, his silence was a crime, and so was his speech. Not even the night brought safety, since his wife reported his wakeful hours, his sleep, his sighs to her mother Livia, who passed them on to Sejanus. Sejanus also drew Nero's brother Drusus into his schemes, dangling before him the hope of the first place if he could unseat his older, already weakened brother. Drusus's fierce temper, on top of his hunger for power and the ordinary jealousy between brothers, was further inflamed by resentment that their mother Agrippina favored Nero. Yet Sejanus did not cultivate Drusus so warmly that he failed to plant, in him too, the seeds of a future downfall, knowing him headstrong and thus more exposed to treachery.

61| At the year's end two notable men died: Asinius Agrippa, of a family more distinguished than ancient, whose life matched his birth, and Quintus Haterius, of a senatorial house, celebrated for eloquence while he lived — though the monuments of his talent have not lasted as well. He owed his power more to force than to craftsmanship; and just as the careful, labored work of other men gains strength with time, so that ringing, flowing style of Haterius died with him.

62| Marcus Licinius and Lucius Calpurnius were consuls when disaster struck without warning, a blow as costly as any great war — beginning and ending in a single instant. A man named Atilius, a freedman by birth, had begun building an amphitheater at Fidenae to stage a gladiator show, but he laid no solid foundation and bolted the wooden framework together with no proper bracing — the mark of a man who took on the project not from wealth or ambition for local office, but for cheap profit. People eager for such spectacles flocked in — under Tiberius's rule they had been starved of entertainment — men, women, every age, and all the more thickly for the site's closeness to Rome. That made the disaster worse: the packed structure first buckled, then collapsed, spilling inward and outward and dragging down and burying a vast mass of people, both those absorbed in the show and those standing around it. Those killed outright in the first collapse escaped torment, given such a fate; more pitiable were those left alive with part of their bodies torn away, who by day recognized their spouses or children by sight, and by night by their screams and groans. Soon others, drawn by the news, wailed — this one for a brother, that one for a relative, another for parents. Even those whose friends or kin were away for unrelated reasons felt dread all the same; and since it wasn't yet known who exactly had been struck down, the uncertainty spread the fear wider.

63| As they began clearing the wreckage, crowds rushed to embrace and kiss the dead; and often disputes broke out when a disfigured face but matching build or age led different families to claim the same body. Fifty thousand people were maimed or crushed in that disaster. For the future the Senate decreed that no one could put on a gladiator show unless worth at least four hundred thousand sesterces, and that no amphitheater could be built except on ground proven solid. Atilius was driven into exile. In the immediate aftermath of the disaster, the great houses stood open, bandages and doctors were provided everywhere, and for those days the city, despite its grief, resembled the old custom of our ancestors, who after great battles supported the wounded with generosity and care.

64| That disaster had not yet faded from memory when a raging fire struck the city harder than usual, burning out the Caelian Hill. People called it a disastrous year, begun under bad omens with the emperor's decision to stay away — the common view being to blame chance events on someone's fault, had Caesar not stepped in and handed out money in proportion to each person's losses. He was thanked for it in the Senate by leading men, and gained a reputation among the people, since without seeking favor or being pressed by those close to him, he had helped even strangers he sought out on his own with his generosity. Some proposed that the Caelian Hill should thereafter be called the Augustan Hill, since amid the fire raging all around, only the statue of Tiberius, kept in the house of the senator Junius, had remained untouched. The same thing, they said, had once happened to Claudia Quinta, whose statue had twice come through fire unscathed; our forebears afterward consecrated it in the Mother of the Gods' temple. The Claudians, people said, were a sacred house favored by heaven, and since the gods had shown the emperor such regard at this chosen site, a still grander ceremony was owed to it.

65| It would not be out of place to record that this hill was anciently called the Querquetulan, from the name meaning 'oak-grove,' since such woods there were thick and fruitful; later it was renamed the Caelian after Caeles Vibenna, an Etruscan chieftain who, having brought aid, received the site from Tarquinius Priscus — or, as some say, from another of the kings, for the sources disagree on this point. What is not in dispute is that his large forces settled even on the level ground close to the forum, from which the Tuscan Quarter took its name, after these newcomers.

66| But while the concern of leading men and the emperor's generosity had brought comfort against these disasters, the power of the informers grew daily worse and ran unchecked, with no relief in sight. Domitius Afer had seized on Quintilius Varus, a rich man and Caesar's relative — the same Afer who had secured the conviction of Varus's mother, Claudia Pulchra — and no one was surprised that a man so long in debt, and who had put his recent reward to bad use, was gearing up for more crimes. That Publius Dolabella joined him as a partner in the charge was a surprise, since, born of a distinguished family and related to Varus, he was throwing away his own noble name and his own blood. Still, the Senate resisted and voted to wait for the emperor's return — the only refuge available for the moment against these pressing evils.

67| Caesar, meanwhile, dedicated temples throughout Campania, and though he had ordered by edict that no one disturb his peace, and posted soldiers to keep the local crowds away, he grew so weary of the towns and colonies and everything on the mainland that he withdrew to the island of Capri, separated from the tip of the Sorrentine peninsula by three miles of strait. I am inclined to believe its isolation appealed to him most, since the sea around it has no harbors and only a few landing spots even for small boats, and no one could put in without the guard's knowledge. Its climate is mild in winter, sheltered by a mountain that blocks the harsh winds; in summer it faces the west wind and, with open sea all around, is most pleasant, and it looked out on a beautiful bay before Mount Vesuvius, catching fire, changed the face of the land. Legend has it that Greeks once held it and that the Teleboans lived on Capri. But by then Tiberius had settled into it with twelve villas, each bearing its own name and its own bulk, and just as he had once thrown himself fully into public affairs, he now sank, all the more secretly, into indulgence and ruinous idleness. His readiness to suspect and to believe suspicion still remained, and Sejanus, who had long fed it even while in Rome, stirred it up all the more fiercely, no longer hiding his plots against Agrippina and Nero. Soldiers assigned to watch them reported their messages, their visitors, everything open or secret, as if keeping a chronicle, and agents were planted to push them toward fleeing to the German armies, or toward clasping the deified Augustus's statue amid the crowded forum while calling on Senate and people for help. When they scorned these suggestions, they were charged as though they had been about to act on them.

68| In the consulship of Junius Silanus and Silius Nerva, the year began badly: a distinguished Roman knight, Titius Sabinus, was dragged off to prison for his friendship with Germanicus. He had never stopped honoring Germanicus's wife and children — attending on Agrippina at home, escorting her in public, the last of a crowd of former clients, and so praised by good men and hated by their opposites. Four ex-praetors, Latinius Latiaris, Porcius Cato, Petilius Rufus, and M. Opsius, went after him, hungry for the consulship, which was reachable only through Sejanus — and Sejanus's favor was bought only with crime. They agreed among themselves: Latiaris, who had a slight acquaintance with Sabinus, would set the trap, the others would stand by as witnesses, and then they would launch the prosecution. So Latiaris began with casual talk, then praised Sabinus's loyalty for not deserting a fallen house the way others deserted the friends of the fortunate; he spoke warmly of Germanicus, and pitied Agrippina. Sabinus — for grief softens most men — broke into tears, then complaints, and, growing bolder, loaded blame on Sejanus: his cruelty, his arrogance, his ambitions. He did not even spare Tiberius from abuse. These exchanges, forbidden as they were, created the appearance of close friendship. Soon Sabinus himself sought Latiaris out, came often to his house, and brought his sorrows to him as to his most trusted friend.

69| The men I have named now discussed how to get several witnesses to hear this. The place where they met had to look undisturbed — if men stood outside the door, the sight, the sound, or a chance suspicion might give it away. So three senators wedged themselves into the space between the ceiling and the roof, a hiding place as squalid as the fraud was vile, and pressed their ears to the cracks and gaps. Meanwhile Latiaris found Sabinus in public and, as if he had fresh news to report, drew him home to his bedroom, then piled on old grievances and new fears — there was no shortage of either. Sabinus repeated the same things, at greater length; grief, once it breaks out, grows harder to hold back the longer it has festered. The accusation was then rushed forward: a letter went to the emperor laying out the whole scheme of the trap, to their own shame. The city was never more anxious or fearful, guarding itself even against those closest to it. People avoided meetings and conversations, ears they knew and ears they didn't; even mute, lifeless things — a roof, a wall — were eyed with suspicion.

70| But Tiberius, in a letter of New Year's greetings for the first of January, turned from the customary prayers to attack Sabinus, charging that certain of his own freedmen had been suborned and that he himself had been the target, and demanding, none too subtly, revenge. There was no delay in the decree. Sabinus, condemned, was dragged off, his cloak thrown over his head and his throat gripped tight, straining as much as he could to cry out that this was how the year began, these were the victims falling for Sejanus. Wherever he turned his eyes, wherever his words reached, there was flight and emptiness; streets and forums were abandoned. Some who had already fled back showed themselves again, betraying by that very fear the thing they had been afraid of. What day, after all, was free of punishment, when even profane words were customarily avoided amid prayers and sacrifices, and yet chains and the noose were brought out? Tiberius, no fool, had not walked into such hatred by accident; it was calculated and deliberate, so no one could think anything stopped the new magistrates from opening the prison, just as they opened the shrines and altars. A further letter followed, thanking the senate for having punished a man hostile to the state, adding that his own life was full of anxiety and that he suspected the plots of his enemies — naming no one, yet no one doubted it was aimed at Nero and Agrippina.

71| Were I not committed to keeping each event under its own year, I would gladly leap ahead and tell now the fates that befell Latinius, Opsius, and the other inventors of this outrage — not only after Gaius Caesar took power, but even while Tiberius still lived; for though he had no wish to see the agents of his crimes brought down by others, he often grew sick of them and, once fresh men offered themselves for the same work, crushed the old and now burdensome ones. But I will report these and other punishments of the guilty in their proper time. At this point Asinius Gallus, whose children counted Agrippina as their aunt, proposed that the senate ask the emperor to declare his fears openly and let them be dispelled. Of all his virtues, none did Tiberius prize as highly, in his own estimation, as his gift for concealment; so he took it all the harder to have hidden things forced into the open. But Sejanus smoothed things over — not out of any love for Gallus, but so as to wait for the emperor's own moment, knowing that Tiberius was slow to decide but that once he broke out, he coupled grim words with savage acts. Around this same time Julia died — the granddaughter whom Augustus had convicted of adultery and banished to the island of Trimerus, off the Apulian coast. There she endured twenty years of exile, kept alive by help from Livia, who, having secretly ruined her stepchildren while they flourished, made a public show of pity for them once they had fallen.

72| That same year the Frisii, a people across the Rhine, threw off peace — driven less by any impatience with obedience than by our own greed. Drusus had set them a modest tribute suited to their poor resources: ox-hides, for military use. No one had ever bothered about their thickness or size, until Olennius, a former chief centurion put in charge of the Frisii, chose the hides of wild aurochs as the standard to be accepted. This was hard enough for other peoples, but harder still for the Germans, whose forests breed huge beasts while their own herds at home are modest. First they handed over the cattle themselves, then their fields, and finally their wives and children into slavery. From this came anger and complaints, and when no relief came, they sought the remedy in war. The soldiers stationed to collect the tribute were seized and hanged; Olennius fled their fury and took refuge in a fort called Flevum, where a sizable force of citizen and allied troops guarded the shore of the Ocean.

73| When Lucius Apronius, propraetor of Lower Germany, learned of this, he summoned detachments of the legions from the upper province, along with picked infantry and cavalry auxiliaries, and brought both forces down the Rhine into Frisian territory — by which time the siege of the fort had already been lifted, the rebels having withdrawn to defend their own homes. He then strengthened the nearest causeways across the marshes with earthworks and bridges so his heavier column could cross, and meanwhile, having found fords, ordered the Canninefate cavalry wing and the German infantry serving among his troops to circle around the enemy's rear. But the enemy, already drawn up for battle, routed the allied squadrons and the legionary cavalry sent to their support. Three light cohorts were sent in, then two more, and after a pause a squadron of allied horse — troops strong enough if they had struck together, but arriving piecemeal they gave no steadiness to the men already thrown into confusion and were swept along by the panic of the fleeing. Apronius handed over what remained of the auxiliaries to Cethegus Labeo, commander of the Fifth Legion. Labeo, finding his own men in a doubtful position, was drawn into a crisis and sent word begging for the strength of the legions. The men of the Fifth burst forward ahead of the rest, drove off the enemy in fierce fighting, and brought back the cohorts and cavalry wings exhausted with wounds. The Roman commander made no move to avenge them or to bury the dead, though many tribunes, prefects, and notable centurions had fallen. It was later learned from deserters that nine hundred Romans had been wiped out the next day in a battle drawn out near a grove called the grove of Baduhenna, and that another band of four hundred, having occupied the villa of a former tributary named Cruptorix, killed each other by mutual blows once they feared betrayal.

74| From this the name of the Frisii grew famous among the Germans, while Tiberius suppressed news of the losses so as not to hand anyone a pretext for war. The senate, too, showed no concern over whether the empire's frontiers were being disgraced; an inner dread had seized their minds, for which the remedy sought was flattery. So, although consulted on entirely different matters, they voted an altar to Clemency, an altar to Friendship, and statues of Caesar and Sejanus around them, and begged with repeated pleas that the two would grant them the chance to be seen. Yet neither man came into the city, or even near it; it seemed enough to leave the island and be seen somewhere close to Campania. There the senators, knights, and a great part of the common people came, anxious above all about Sejanus, whose company was harder to obtain and therefore sought all the more through favor-seeking and shared schemes. It was well known that his arrogance grew all the greater from watching that shameful servility on open display; for at Rome people were used to moving about, and in a city so vast no one could tell what business anyone else was on. There, though, men lay about on the field or the shore, enduring night and day alike, at the mercy of his doorkeepers' favor or disdain — until even that was forbidden. And so they returned to the city in fear, those he had not deigned to speak to or even look at, while some who had been too eagerly welcomed felt only dread, for a grim end hung over their ill-fated friendship.

75| For the rest, Tiberius, having formally betrothed his granddaughter Agrippina — Germanicus's daughter — to Gnaeus Domitius in his own presence, ordered the wedding celebrated at Rome. In choosing Domitius he had looked beyond the antiquity of his family to his blood-kinship with the Caesars, for Domitius could claim Octavia as his grandmother and, through her, Augustus as his great-uncle.

← All of Tacitus: The Complete Works of Tacitus