Tacitus · a new plain-English translation from the original language
1| The emperor's household was shaken by Messalina's killing, and a contest broke out among the freedmen over who should choose Claudius a wife — a man who couldn't stand living single and always fell under his wives' thumb. The women burned with no less ambition, each pressing her own noble birth, beauty, and wealth as proof she deserved so great a match. But the real contest was between Lollia Paulina, daughter of the consular Marcus Lollius, and Julia Agrippina, daughter of Germanicus: Pallas backed the one, Callistus the other; while Aelia Paetina, from the Tuberones, had Narcissus in her corner. Claudius himself swung one way, then the other, depending on whose advice he'd heard last, and finally called the rivals into council and ordered each to state his case and give his reasons.
2| Narcissus argued for the old marriage — Claudius already had a daughter by Paetina, Antonia — and said there would be nothing new in his household if his familiar wife came back; she'd hardly view Britannicus and Octavia, so close to her own children, with a stepmother's hatred. Callistus said Paetina had been rejected once already after a long divorce, and if taken back would only grow proud from it; far better to bring in Lollia, who had no children and so no rivalry to fear, and would stand toward the emperor's children simply as a parent. But Pallas praised Agrippina above all for this: she would bring Germanicus's grandson into the household with her — a match truly worthy of imperial fortune. She would join a noble line to the descendants of the Julian and Claudian houses, and keep a woman of proven fertility, still young, from carrying the glory of the Caesars into some other family.
3| These arguments won out, helped along by Agrippina's own seductions. Under the pretext of family closeness she visited her uncle again and again, drawing him in, until — favored above the other candidates and not yet his wife — she already wielded a wife's power. Once sure of the marriage, she began building for bigger things, working to join her son Domitius, born to Gnaeus Ahenobarbus, to Octavia, Claudius's daughter. It could not be done without a crime, since Claudius had already promised Octavia to Lucius Silanus, a young man he'd promoted to popular favor with the splendor of a triumphal decoration and a gladiatorial show he'd sponsored. But nothing looked hard to an emperor whose mind held no judgment and no hatred except what was planted and ordered into it.
4| So Vitellius, hiding his servile tricks behind the title of censor and watching ahead for the next regime, entangled himself in Agrippina's schemes to win her favor, and brought charges against Silanus — whose sister, the striking and forward Junia Calvina, had not long before been Vitellius's own daughter-in-law. That was the seed of the accusation, and he twisted the siblings' affection — not incestuous, only unguarded — into a charge of incest. Claudius lent an ear, readier to accept suspicions against his future son-in-law out of love for his daughter. Silanus, unaware of the plot and by chance praetor that year, was suddenly stripped of his senatorial rank by an edict of Vitellius, even though the senate roll had long since been drawn up and the census closed. Claudius, in that same stroke, called off the betrothal; Silanus had to give up his magistracy, and what remained of the praetorship passed to Eprius Marcellus.
5| In the consulship of Gaius Pompeius and Quintus Veranius, the match between Claudius and Agrippina, already fixed by rumor, was made firmer still by illicit love. Yet they did not dare celebrate a wedding openly — no precedent existed for a niece being brought into her uncle's house; it would count as incest, and there was fear that if the idea were spurned it might blow up into public trouble. The hesitation held until Vitellius took it on himself, by his own methods, to push it through. He asked Claudius outright whether he would bow to the people's demand or the senate's authority; when Claudius answered that he was only one citizen among many and couldn't stand against a general will, Vitellius told him to wait inside the palace. He himself went into the senate house, and claiming the highest matters of state were at stake, begged leave to speak before anyone else, then began: the emperor's crushing labors, carrying the weight of the whole world, needed support, so that free of private cares he could attend to the public good. And what more fitting relief for a censor's mind than to take a wife — a partner in good times and bad, someone to entrust with his innermost thoughts and his young children — a man never given to luxury or pleasure, but one who from his youth had obeyed the laws.
6| After opening with this crowd-pleasing speech, which drew heavy flattery from the senators, he took up the thread again: since everyone urged the emperor to marry, the woman chosen ought to stand out for noble birth, proven motherhood, and moral seriousness. And there was no need to look far — Agrippina outranked all others in the nobility of her blood; she had already proved her fertility, and her character matched. It was, in fact, remarkable that by providence she'd been left a widow to be joined to an emperor who had known only his own marriages. They had all heard from their parents, and seen themselves, wives snatched away to satisfy a Caesar's whims — far from the restraint of the present day. Let a precedent instead be set for how an emperor should take a wife. True, marriage to a brother's daughter was new to Roman custom — but it was standard practice among other peoples, forbidden by no law, and marriages between cousins, long unfamiliar, had become common enough once time normalized them. Custom bends to convenience, and this too would soon be counted among accepted practices.
7| There were no shortage of men ready to burst from the senate house declaring, if Claudius hesitated, that they'd force the matter by violence. A mixed crowd gathered, shouting the same demand in the name of the Roman people. Claudius waited no longer, went out to the forum to meet their congratulations in person, then entered the senate and asked for a decree establishing that marriages between an uncle and a brother's daughter would be lawful from then on as well. Yet genuine enthusiasm for such a marriage came from just one man — the Roman knight Alledius Severus — though most assumed he did it to curry favor with Agrippina. From that point the state turned on its axis and everything obeyed a woman — not through wanton indulgence, the way Messalina had toyed with Roman affairs, but with a tight, almost masculine grip. In public, severity, and often arrogance; nothing indecent at home, unless it served her power. Her greed for gold was boundless, always covered by the excuse that she was laying up reserves for the throne.
8| On the wedding day Silanus took his own life — whether he had held on to some hope of surviving until then, or picked that very day on purpose, to deepen the shame. Calvina, his sister, was driven out of Italy, and Claudius piled on further still by ordering rites drawn from the laws of King Tullus and atonements performed at Diana's grove by the pontiffs — while everyone mocked the fact that penalties and purifications for incest were being dredged up at that particular moment. Agrippina, for her part, not wanting to be known only for cruelty, won a pardon from exile for Annaeus Seneca, along with a praetorship for him — a move she judged would please the public because of his fame as a scholar, and one that would let Domitius grow up under such a teacher, so that mother and son could use his advice in their reach for power, since Seneca was thought loyal to Agrippina in gratitude for her favor and hostile to Claudius from the sting of his injury.
9| It was then decided to delay no further. With enormous promises they got the consul-designate, Mammius Pollio, to propose a motion asking Claudius to betroth Octavia to Domitius — not unreasonable given their ages, and a step that opened the way to bigger things. Pollio spoke in much the same terms Vitellius had used before, and Octavia was betrothed. Now, on top of their earlier bond, Domitius, as her intended and future son-in-law, was made equal to Britannicus in his mother's efforts and by the scheming of those who feared revenge on Messalina's behalf might come through her son.
10| Around this time the envoys the Parthians had sent to request Meherdates, as I mentioned earlier, entered the senate and opened their message like this: they had not come forgetting the treaty, nor breaking away from the house of the Arsacids, but to fetch the son of Vonones, grandson of Phraates, against the rule of Gotarzes, unbearable alike to the nobility and the common people. Already he had exhausted his brothers, his relatives, and those more distantly connected, with killings; pregnant wives and small children were added to the slaughter, while at home he was sluggish and in war unlucky, hiding his cowardice under cruelty. Their friendship with Rome was old and begun as a public matter, and allies who yielded out of respect to a rival power deserved support. Kings sent their children as hostages precisely so that, if they grew weary of rule at home, they had a way back to the emperor and senate — men shaped by Roman customs, giving them a better king to adopt.
11| After they had argued this and more, Claudius began his own speech on the majesty of Rome and the deference of the Parthians, setting himself alongside the deified Augustus, recalling that Augustus too had once been asked for a king by them — passing over Tiberius's precedent, though he too had sent one. He added instructions — Meherdates himself was present — telling him to think not of ruling over slaves but of governing citizens, and to embrace clemency and justice all the more gladly since barbarians knew them so little. Then, turning to the envoys, he praised at length this foster son of Rome, whose restraint up to now had been well tested — yet even so, a king's temperament had to be endured, and frequent changes of ruler served no purpose. Rome, he said, had reached such a fullness of glory that it now wished even foreign nations to have peace. Afterward the task of escorting the young man to the bank of the Euphrates was given to Gaius Cassius, then governor of Syria.
12| In that period Cassius stood out above the rest for his knowledge of the law: military skill goes unlearned in peacetime, and peace levels the diligent and the lazy alike. Yet whatever scope remained without actual war, he kept reviving old discipline, drilling the legions, watching and planning as though an enemy stood right at the gates — behavior that matched his forebears and did honor to the Cassian name, admired even among these foreign tribes. He now summoned the men on whose advice the new king had been sought, and made camp at Zeugma, the point where the river is most easily crossed. Once the leading Parthians and Acbarus, king of the Arabs, had arrived, he warned Meherdates that the fierce impulses of barbarians fade with delay or curdle into treachery: he should press ahead with what he had begun. Acbarus ignored the advice — out of treachery. He kept the young man, who understood nothing and thought his high fortune meant a life of ease, tied up for many days at the town of Edessa. When Carenes called on him, showing how ready things were if he came quickly, Meherdates did not head straight for Mesopotamia but turned aside for Armenia — the worst possible timing, since winter was setting in.
13| Worn out by snow and mountains, as they neared the plains they joined forces with Carenes, crossed the Tigris, and marched through the territory of the Adiabeni, whose king Izates had openly declared himself for Meherdates while secretly, and more genuinely, leaning toward Gotarzes. On the way they took the city of Nineveh, the oldest seat of Assyria, and a fortress famous because it was there that Persian power finally collapsed in the last battle between Darius and Alexander. Meanwhile Gotarzes was at a mountain called Sanbulos, offering vows to the local gods, above all to Hercules, who at a fixed time warns his priests in a dream to set out horses fitted for the hunt near his temple. When the horses' quivers have been loaded with arrows, they wander the woods and return only at night, quivers empty, breathing hard. The god then reveals in a night vision where they ranged through the forest, and wild beasts are found scattered everywhere along the way.
14| Gotarzes, however, with his army not yet strong enough, used the river Corma as a shield, and though goaded by taunts and messages to fight, kept delaying, shifting position, and sending agents to buy the loyalty out from under his enemy. Of these, Izates of Adiabene and then Acbarus of the Arabs withdrew with their forces — fickleness typical of their people, and because experience had taught that barbarians prefer to beg kings from Rome rather than keep them. Meherdates, stripped of his strongest support and suspecting betrayal from the rest, decided — since it was all that was left — to risk everything and settle it in battle. Gotarzes, emboldened now that his enemy's numbers had shrunk, did not refuse the fight. They clashed with great slaughter and an uncertain outcome, until Carenes, having routed those in his path and been carried too far forward, was surrounded from behind by a fresh body of troops. With all hope gone, Meherdates trusted the promises of Parraces, a client of his father's, and was betrayed by his treachery and handed over to the victor. Gotarzes, taunting him as no kinsman, no member of the house of Arsaces, but a foreigner and a Roman, cut off his ears and let him live — a display of his own mercy and a mark of shame for us. Gotarzes then died of illness, and Vonones, at that time ruling the Medes, was summoned to the throne. Nothing memorable, good or bad, is recorded of him: he held a brief, inglorious reign, and Parthian power passed to his son Vologeses.
15| Meanwhile Mithridates of Bosporus, his power gone and himself a wanderer, learned that the Roman commander Didius and the bulk of the army had left, leaving behind in the new kingdom Cotys, still young and untested, and a few cohorts under the Roman knight Julius Aquila. Holding both in contempt, he set out to stir up the local tribes and lure away deserters, and at last, once he had raised an army, pushed the Dandaridae's king off his throne and took it for himself. When this became known, and it looked as if he was about to strike at Bosporus itself, Aquila and Cotys, distrusting their own strength — all the more since Zorsines, king of the Siraci, had resumed hostilities — sought outside help of their own, sending envoys to Eunones, who ruled the Aorsi. There was no difficulty in forming the alliance, since they could point to Roman power standing behind them against the rebel Mithridates. So they agreed: Eunones would fight the cavalry battles, the Romans would take charge of besieging the towns.
16| They then advanced in ordered formation, the Aorsi covering the front and rear, the cohorts and the Bosporans, armed in our fashion, holding the center. The enemy was driven back, and they reached Soza, a town of Dandarica which Mithridates had abandoned because the loyalty of its people was doubtful; it seemed best to leave a garrison there and hold it. From there they pushed on into the country of the Siraci, crossed the river Panda, and surrounded the city of Uspe, set on high ground and fortified with walls and ditches — except that the walls were not stone but wattle and wickerwork with earth packed between, weak against an assault. Towers raised higher than the walls threw the defenders into confusion with torches and spears, and had night not broken off the fighting, the attack begun that day would have taken the city by the day's end.
17| The next day the townspeople sent envoys begging freedom for the free-born; ten thousand slaves they offered up. The victors refused: it was cruel to slaughter men who had surrendered, and hard to guard so vast a number under watch; better they should fall by the law of war. The signal for slaughter was given to the soldiers who had already scaled the walls. The destruction of Uspe struck fear into everyone else: nothing could be counted safe when weapons, fortifications, difficult or elevated ground, rivers, and cities were all being broken through alike. Zorsines weighed for a long time whether to stand by Mithridates in his desperate straits or look to his own ancestral kingdom; when the interest of his people won out, he handed over hostages and prostrated himself before an image of Caesar — a great triumph for the Roman army, which was found to have come within three days' march of the river Don without losing a man and victorious throughout. But on the way back fortune turned: some of the ships sailing home by sea were driven onto the shores of the Tauri, and barbarians surrounded and killed the cohort's commander along with most of the auxiliaries.
18| Meanwhile Mithridates, with no armed force to fall back on, weighed whose mercy he might test. His brother Cotys, once a betrayer and now an enemy, he feared; among the Romans there was no one whose authority could make promises to him count for much. So he turned to Eunones, who bore him no personal grudge and whose friendship with us, newly formed, gave him weight. Dressed and got up as much as possible to suit his present fortune, he entered the palace, threw himself at Eunones' knees, and said: 'Mithridates, hunted by the Romans on land and sea for so many years, stands before you of his own will. Do with me as you please — I am all that is left of the great line of Achaemenes, the one thing my enemies could not take from me.'
19| Eunones, moved by the man's renown, by the reversal of his fortune, and by an appeal made without any loss of dignity, raised the suppliant up, praising him for choosing the Aorsian people, and his own right hand, as the one to beg mercy from. At the same time he sent envoys and a letter to Caesar to this effect: between commanders of the Roman people and kings of great nations, friendship comes first from likeness of fortune; between himself and Claudius there was, further, a shared victory. The finest end to any war was when it was settled by forgiveness: so nothing had been taken from Zorsines once beaten. As for Mithridates — though he deserved worse — Eunones asked not for power or a throne for him, but only that he not be led in triumph or pay for it with his life.
20| Claudius, though generally gentle toward foreign nobility, hesitated even so over whether it was better to accept the captive on a pledge of safety or to demand him back by force. On one side, resentment at the wrongs done and the urge for revenge pushed him on; on the other it was argued against taking up a war down a road hard to travel, across a hostile sea, with fierce kings and roaming peoples to deal with besides, a land bare of grain, weariness from delay, danger from haste, and, for the victors, modest glory but plenty of disgrace if they were driven back. Better to take what was offered and keep him alive in exile: the longer a man lived stripped of everything, the more punishment it amounted to. Moved by this, Claudius wrote to Eunones that Mithridates had indeed earned the harshest fate, and that he himself lacked no power to carry it out; but their ancestors had set this rule — to meet an enemy's stubbornness with equal severity, and a suppliant's plea with equal generosity, since triumphs are won over peoples and kingdoms still whole.
21| Mithridates was afterward handed over and brought to Rome by Junius Cilo, procurator of Pontus. He was said to have addressed Caesar with more defiance than his situation warranted, and word of what he said spread among the people in these terms: 'I have not been sent back to you — I have returned. Or if you don't believe it, let me go and see.' His face, too, stayed unafraid when he was displayed to the crowd beside the Rostra, ringed by guards. Consular honors were voted to Cilo, praetorian honors to Aquila.
22| In the same year of these consuls, Agrippina, savage in her hatred and furious at Lollia for having competed with her for marriage to the emperor, worked up charges against her and found an accuser to bring up astrologers, magicians, and a consultation of the statue of Clarian Apollo about the emperor's marriage. Claudius then, without hearing the accused, spoke at length before the senate of Lollia's distinguished birth — daughter of the sister of Lucius Volusius, great-niece of Cotta Messalinus, once married to Memmius Regulus (he passed over in careful silence her marriage to Gaius Caesar) — and added that her schemes were dangerous to the state and that the means for further crime must be taken from her: her property should be confiscated and she must leave Italy. So of her once-immense fortune, only five million sesterces remained for her in exile. Calpurnia, a woman of equally high rank, was likewise destroyed, because the emperor had praised her beauty — with no desire behind it, only a chance remark — which was enough to rouse Agrippina's anger, though it stopped short of the worst. A tribune was sent to Lollia to drive her to her death. Cadius Rufus was also condemned, under the extortion law, on the accusation of the people of Bithynia.
23| Narbonese Gaul was granted, in honor of its exceptional respect for the Senate, the right its senators had long claimed: they could visit their own estates without first asking the emperor's leave, the same privilege Sicily enjoyed. Ituraea and Judaea, after the deaths of their kings Sohaemus and Agrippa, were added to the province of Syria. The augury of Safety, dropped for seventy-five years, was revived by decree and set to continue. Caesar also extended the sacred boundary of the city, following the old custom that let those who had extended the empire's borders extend the city's boundary too. Yet no Roman commander, however great the nations he had conquered, had claimed this right except Sulla and the deified Augustus.
24| Historians have told the ambition or glory of kings in this matter in various ways, but it seems worth knowing how the city began and where Romulus set its boundary. It started at the Cattle Market, where we still see the bronze statue of a bull — that animal being the one yoked to the plow — and the furrow marking out the town was drawn to take in the great altar of Hercules. From there, boundary stones went up one after another, tracing the Palatine's base as far as the altar of Consus, on to the Old Curiae, then the shrine of the Lares, and finally into the Roman Forum. The Forum and the Capitol, tradition holds, were added to the city not by Romulus but by Titus Tatius. Later the boundary was widened as Rome's fortune grew. The limits Claudius set at this time are easy enough to learn — they are recorded in the public records.
25| Under the consuls Gaius Antistius and Marcus Suillius, the adoption of Domitius was pushed through by Pallas's influence. Bound to Agrippina as the man who had arranged her marriage, and soon after entangled in an affair with her, he kept urging Claudius to think of the state's welfare, to give Britannicus's young age the support of a grown man's strength: this was how it had worked under the deified Augustus — even with grandsons of his own to lean on, his stepsons had flourished; Tiberius, over and above his own line, had taken up Germanicus. Claudius, he said, should likewise arm himself with a young man ready to share the burdens of government. Won over by this, Claudius set Domitius, three years older, ahead of his own son, and delivered a speech to the Senate repeating what he had heard from his freedman. Those who knew such things noted that no adoption had ever before occurred among the patrician Claudii, who had kept an unbroken line since Attus Clausus.
26| Thanks were duly voted to the emperor, with flattery toward Domitius laid on even thicker, and a law was passed transferring him into the Claudian family under the name Nero. Agrippina too was honored, with the title Augusta added to her name. Once this was done, no one was so lacking in pity as not to feel for Britannicus's plight. Left more and more alone, stripped even of his slave attendants, he turned his stepmother's badly timed courtesies into a joke, seeing through the pretense. People say he was not, in fact, a dull boy — whether that is true, or whether the dangers around him simply won him a reputation never actually tested, is another matter.
27| Meanwhile Agrippina, wanting to display her power to foreign peoples as well, obtained the founding of a colony of veterans in the town of the Ubii, where she herself had been born, naming it after herself. It happened that her grandfather Agrippa had once taken this same tribe under Roman protection when they crossed the Rhine. Around this time Upper Germany was thrown into alarm by the arrival of the Chatti, out raiding. The governor Publius Pomponius sent the Vangiones and Nemetes, backed by allied cavalry, against them, with orders to get ahead of the raiders or to surround them by surprise if they scattered. The soldiers carried out their commander's plan with energy: split into two columns, those who took the left route caught the raiders just back from a recent raid, heavy with plunder and sleep after their carousing, and surrounded them. Their joy was doubled because among the captives freed were some who had been enslaved for forty years, since the disaster of Varus.
28| Those who had gone by the shorter route on the right met the enemy head-on; the enemy dared to give battle and paid for it more heavily still. Laden with plunder and glory, the Romans returned to Mount Taunus, where Pomponius waited with the legions in case the Chatti, eager for revenge, offered the chance of a pitched battle. But fearing they would be caught between the Romans on one side and the Cherusci — their perpetual enemies — on the other, they sent envoys and hostages to Rome instead. Pomponius was awarded triumphal honors — a modest part of the fame he holds with later generations, among whom his glory as a poet stands out more.
29| Around the same time Vannius, whom Drusus Caesar had set over the Suebi, was driven from his kingdom. In his early years of rule he had been admired and popular with his own people; but as time went on he turned arrogant, was hated by his neighbors, and was finally undone by quarrels within his own house. The men behind it all: Vibilius, the Hermunduran king, along with Vannius's own nephews, Vangio and Sido. Though pressed repeatedly, Claudius would not use force to settle this quarrel among barbarians, but he did promise Vannius shelter if he lost his throne; he wrote to Palpellius Hister, governor of Pannonia, to station a legion and picked auxiliary troops from the province along the riverbank, both to support the defeated and to intimidate the victors, in case success went to their heads and they disturbed our own peace too. For a huge force was gathering — the Lugii and other peoples — drawn by the rumor of a rich kingdom, which Vannius had built up over thirty years of plunder and tribute. His own strength lay in infantry; his cavalry came from the Sarmatian Iazyges and was too small to match the enemy's numbers, so he decided to hold out in his fortresses and drag out the war.
30| But the Iazyges could not bear a siege, and roaming the open plains nearby they forced a battle, since the Lugii and Hermunduri had already massed there. So Vannius left his forts and was routed in the field, though he won praise even in defeat for fighting hand to hand and taking his wounds facing the enemy. He escaped to the fleet waiting on the Danube; his followers soon joined him and were given land to settle in Pannonia. Vangio and Sido divided the kingdom between them — showing excellent loyalty to Rome, and toward their subjects, whether by their own nature or through the habit of servitude, great affection while they were struggling to gain power, and far greater hatred once they had it.
31| In Britain meanwhile the propraetor Publius Ostorius found trouble waiting for him: the enemy had poured into the territory of our allies with all the more violence because they assumed a new commander, unfamiliar with his army and with winter setting in, would not march against them. Ostorius, knowing that first encounters breed either fear or confidence, moved his light cohorts fast, cut down those who stood and fought, and hunted down the scattered rest — determined they should not regroup, and that an uneasy, untrustworthy peace should give neither commander nor soldier any rest. He set about disarming those he suspected and pinning down the whole region between the rivers Avon and Severn with a chain of camps. The Iceni were the first to refuse this — a strong tribe, never broken in battle, since they had come into alliance with us willingly. On their lead the surrounding peoples chose a battlefield hedged by a rough earthwork with a narrow approach, closed to cavalry. The Roman commander, though he had only allied troops with him and no legionary strength, moved to break through these defenses; he divided his cohorts and put even his cavalry squadrons to work on foot. At the signal they broke through the rampart and threw the enemy, hampered by their own barricade, into confusion. Trapped, and aware of their own rebellion, with no way out, the Britons fought with remarkable, celebrated courage — in that battle the governor's son, Marcus Ostorius, won the honor of saving a citizen's life.
32| The Iceni's defeat steadied those who had been wavering between war and peace, and the army was then led against the Decangi. Their lands were ravaged, plunder taken everywhere, the enemy not daring to meet them in the field, and any attempt to snipe at the marching column from ambush was punished. They had already come within sight of the sea that faces Ireland when unrest among the Brigantes pulled the commander back — he was determined not to start anything new until what he had already gained was secure. Among the Brigantes only a few who had begun to take up arms were killed; the rest were pardoned and settled down. But the Silures could not be changed either by harsh measures or by mercy — they kept fighting, and had to be held down by legionary camps. To bring this about more quickly, a colony of veterans, a strong force of them, was planted at Camulodunum on captured land — a support against rebellion and a place to school the allies in the duties of the law.
33| From there the army moved against the Silures, who, beyond their own natural ferocity, trusted in the strength of Caratacus. Many uncertain turns and many successes had lifted him above every other British commander. Now, superior in cunning about the terrain, though weaker in soldiers, he shifted the war onto the Ordovices, and with those who feared peace with us added to his ranks, he risked one last throw of the dice. He chose ground for the battle where every approach and retreat would favor his own side and work against us — steep mountains on one side, and wherever the slope allowed an easier approach, he piled up stones like a wall. In front ran a river with an uncertain ford, and bands of armed men stood in place along the defenses.
34| Besides this, the tribal leaders went round encouraging their men, steadying their spirits, playing down fear and building up hope with other calls to battle. Caratacus himself darted here and there, declaring that this day, this battle, would mark either the recovery of their freedom or the beginning of eternal slavery; he called on the names of their ancestors who had driven off the dictator Caesar, by whose courage they still lived free of the axe and of tribute, keeping the bodies of their wives and children untouched. As he spoke this and more, the crowd roared approval — every man bound himself by his tribe's own sacred oath never to give way to weapons or wounds.
35| That eagerness stunned the Roman commander. On top of it there was a river in his way, a rampart raised behind it, and steep ridges bristling with defenders — everything about it looked grim. But the soldiers demanded battle, shouting that courage could take anything. The prefects and tribunes said the same, and their words only sharpened the army's fire. So Ostorius scanned the ground for what could be forced and what could not, then led his furious men across the river without much trouble. Once they reached the rampart, the exchange of missiles cost us more wounds and more dead. But when the men locked shields into a testudo, the crude, roughly-piled stone barricade came apart, and the fight turned hand to hand; the Britons fell back onto the ridges. Even there our men broke in — light troops harassing with javelins, heavy infantry advancing in close order — and the British ranks, who wore no breastplates or helmets, were thrown into confusion. If they stood against the auxiliaries they were cut down by the swords and javelins of the legionaries; if they turned on the legionaries, the auxiliaries' long swords and spears finished them. It was a brilliant victory. Caratacus's wife and daughter were captured, and his brothers surrendered.
36| Caratacus himself, since misfortune rarely finds safety, sought protection from Cartimandua, queen of the Brigantes — and was put in chains and handed over to the victors, in the ninth year since the war in Britain began. His fame had by then spread beyond the islands into the neighboring provinces and was talked of even in Italy; people were eager to see the man who had defied our power for so many years. Even in Rome the name Caratacus was no small thing, and Claudius, while building up his own glory, added to that of the man he had beaten. The people were summoned as if to some great spectacle: the praetorian cohorts stood under arms in the plain before their camp. First came the king's petty retainers in procession, displaying the ornaments, torques, and spoils he had won in his foreign wars; then his brothers, his wife, and his daughter; and last of all, Caratacus himself was put on show. The others, out of fear, made degrading pleas — but not Caratacus. Without a bowed head or begging words, he stood before the tribunal and spoke like this.
37| 'If my rank and fortune had been matched by moderation in success, I would have come to this city as a friend, not a captive, and you would not have scorned to receive in peace, by treaty, a man of famous ancestors ruling many nations. As it is, my present state disgraces me, but glorifies you. I had horses, men, weapons, wealth — is it any wonder I was unwilling to lose them? If you Romans mean to rule everyone, does it follow that everyone must accept slavery? Had I been surrendered right after my defeat, no fame would have come of it, neither my ruin nor your victory — my death would have simply sunk into oblivion. But if you let me live, I will be an eternal example of your mercy.' At this Claudius granted pardon to him, his wife, and his brothers. Freed from their chains, they paid the same homage — praise and thanks — to Agrippina, seated in plain view on another platform nearby. It was a strange thing, unheard of among the old customs, for a woman to preside over Roman standards; but she claimed for herself a share in the empire her ancestors had won.
38| The senators were then summoned and made many grand speeches about the capture of Caratacus, calling it no less glorious than when Publius Scipio displayed Syphax to the Roman people, or Lucius Paulus displayed Perseus, or any of the other kings paraded in chains. Triumphal honors were voted to Ostorius. His fortunes had been good up to that point, but then turned uncertain — whether because, with Caratacus removed, our men relaxed their effort as though the war were finished, or because the enemy, pitying so great a king, burned all the fiercer for revenge. They surrounded the camp prefect and the legionary cohorts left behind to build forts among the Silures. Had help not come quickly from the nearest strongholds, the whole force would have been wiped out under siege; even so the prefect, eight centurions, and the bravest men of the ranks fell. Not long after, they also routed our men out foraging, along with the cavalry sent to relieve them.
39| Ostorius then threw in light-armed cohorts, but even that did not stop the rout until the legions took up the fight; their strength evened the battle, and then turned it in our favor. The enemy escaped with light losses, since night was falling. From then on there were constant clashes, more like raids than battles, fought through woods and marshes as chance or courage dictated — reckless, unplanned, driven by anger or plunder, sometimes ordered, sometimes with the commanders unaware. The Silures fought with special stubbornness, inflamed by a remark of the Roman general's that had gotten around: that just as the Sugambri had once been wiped out or transplanted into Gaul, so the very name of the Silures should be erased. So they ambushed and cut off two auxiliary cohorts that had grown careless while plundering — their prefects' greed was to blame — and by handing out the spoils and prisoners they drew other tribes toward revolt as well. Worn out by the strain of it all, Ostorius died, and the enemy rejoiced, believing that even if no single battle had destroyed him, the war itself had worn down a commander not to be underestimated.
40| When Claudius learned of his governor's death, he sent Aulus Didius to replace him, so the province would not be left without someone in command. Didius hurried, yet still arrived to find matters in disorder — in the meantime a legion commanded by Manlius Valens had suffered defeat, and rumor of it grew in enemy hands, swollen to unsettle the new commander; Didius too played up what reached his ears, reckoning that greater credit would fall to him for restoring order, and a readier excuse if the trouble persisted. The Silures had caused this loss too, and were ranging widely, until Didius's arrival drove them back. But after Caratacus was captured, the man most skilled in warfare was Venutius of the Brigantes — as I mentioned earlier, long loyal and defended by Roman arms while he was married to Queen Cartimandua. Once their marriage broke down, war followed at once, and he turned hostile toward us as well. At first it was only a struggle between the two of them, and Cartimandua, by cunning, captured Venutius's brother and other relatives. Enraged at this, and stung by the disgrace of submitting to a woman's rule, his enemies — strong, chosen fighting men — invaded her kingdom. We had foreseen this, and the cohorts sent to help fought hard; the battle opened uncertainly but ended well for us. A legion under Caesius Nasica fought with similar success, since Didius, weighed down by age and heavy with honors, was content to act through subordinates and simply keep the enemy at bay. I have joined together events that actually stretched over several years under two propraetors, so that, told separately, they would not stick as well in the memory. Now I return to the order of events.
41| In the consulship of Tiberius Claudius, for the fifth time, and Servius Cornelius Orfitus, Nero's coming of age was hastened so that he would appear fit to take up public life. Claudius, glad to yield to the senate's flattery, let Nero enter the consulship in his twentieth year; meanwhile, as consul-designate, he was to hold proconsular power outside the city and be styled Prince of the Youth. A donative was announced to the soldiers and a handout to the people in his name. At the circus games, staged to win over popular favor, Britannicus rode in the boy's toga, Nero in triumphal dress — so the people could see one dressed as a boy and the other with the trappings of command, and read each one's future accordingly. At the same time, any centurions or tribunes who showed sympathy for Britannicus's situation were removed, some on invented pretexts, others under the guise of promotion; even freedmen of unshaken loyalty to him were pushed out on some such excuse. Meeting by chance, Nero greeted Britannicus by name, and Britannicus greeted him back as Domitius. Agrippina seized on this, complaining loudly to her husband that it was the start of open discord: his adoption was being mocked, and what the senate had decreed and the people ordered was being unraveled inside their own household — and unless the malice of those teaching him this were stamped out, it would erupt into public disaster. Stirred by what sounded like real charges, Claudius drove the best of his son's tutors into exile or death, and put him under guardians chosen by his stepmother.
42| Even so, Agrippina did not yet dare to make her final move until Lusius Geta and Rufrius Crispinus were removed from command of the praetorian cohorts — she believed them loyal to the memory of Messalina and bound to her children. So, arguing that the cohorts were split by the rivalry of two commanders and that discipline would be tighter under one, she got her husband to transfer command of the cohorts to Burrus Afranius, a man of excellent military reputation who nonetheless knew exactly whose favor had put him there. Agrippina also raised her own standing higher still: she rode up to the Capitol in a carriage, an honor traditionally reserved for priests and sacred objects, which only deepened the reverence paid to a woman who — daughter of an emperor, sister of one, wife of one, and now mother of one — stood without parallel to this day. Meanwhile Vitellius, her chief champion and a man of enormous influence though very old (so uncertain is the standing of the powerful), was hit with an accusation brought by the senator Junius Lupus, charging him with treason and designs on the throne. Claudius would have given the charge a hearing, but Agrippina, more through threats than pleading, turned him instead to banning the accuser from fire and water. That was as far as Vitellius wanted it taken.
43| Many omens occurred that year. Birds of ill fortune settled on the Capitol; repeated earthquakes brought down houses, and as the panic spread wider, the crowd's own terror trampled anyone too weak to keep up. A grain shortage and the famine that followed were read as omens too. The complaints weren't just muttered in private—when Claudius sat hearing cases, an angry mob surrounded him shouting, and drove him back into the far corner of the forum, pressing hard until a body of soldiers cut a path through the hostile crowd. It was established that the city had food for only fifteen days more, and it was only the gods' great kindness and a mild winter that saved the situation at the last moment. Yet in the old days Italy used to ship supplies to the legions in distant provinces, and it's not that the land has grown less fertile now—it's that we work Africa and Egypt instead, and the life of the Roman people has been staked on ships and chance.
44| That same year a war broke out between the Armenians and the Iberians, and it dragged Parthia and Rome into a very serious conflict of their own. Vologeses ruled the Parthians—his mother was a Greek concubine, and he'd gained the throne with his brothers' consent. Pharasmanes held Iberia by long possession; his brother Mithridates held Armenia, propped up by Roman support. Pharasmanes had a son named Radamistus—tall and striking, physically powerful, trained in his people's warrior skills, and famous among the neighboring peoples. He kept complaining, more loudly and more often than a man hiding his ambition would, that his father clung too fiercely to the small kingdom of Iberia in his old age. So Pharasmanes, worried about this young man—eager for power and backed by popular support—as his own years advanced, steered him toward another goal: he dangled Armenia in front of him, reminding him that he himself had driven out the Parthians and handed it to Mithridates. But force, he said, should wait; treachery would work better against an unsuspecting victim. So Radamistus staged a quarrel with his father, as if he couldn't bear a stepmother's hatred, and went to his uncle. There, treated with great warmth and given the standing of a son, he used it to lure Armenia's leading men into a plot, while Mithridates, oblivious, kept honoring him further.
45| Once he'd kept up this show of reconciliation, Radamistus went back to his father and reported what could be managed by treachery, leaving the rest to be finished by force. Meanwhile Pharasmanes invented pretexts for war: he claimed that when he'd fought the king of the Albanians and called on the Romans for help, his brother had opposed him, and that he meant to avenge that wrong by destroying him. At the same time he handed his son a large force. Radamistus, striking suddenly, caught Mithridates off guard, chased him off open ground and pinned him inside the fortress of Gorneas—a place made safe both by its position and by its Roman garrison, commanded by the prefect Caelius Pollio with the centurion Casperius under him. Nothing is more foreign to barbarians than siege engines and the tricks of assault warfare—but that branch of soldiering is exactly what we know best. So Radamistus tried the walls, failed, took losses, and settled into a siege instead. When force got him nowhere, he bought off the prefect's greed, while Casperius protested that an allied king and Armenia, a gift of the Roman people, should not be handed over through crime and money. In the end, since Pollio kept citing the enemy's numbers and Radamistus kept citing his father's orders, a truce was struck and Casperius withdrew—planning that if he couldn't talk Pharasmanes out of the war, he'd report the state of Armenia to Ummidius Quadratus, governor of Syria.
46| Once the centurion had left—as if that had been the only thing restraining him—the prefect began urging Mithridates to make peace, reminding him of the bond between brothers, of Pharasmanes' seniority, and of all their other family ties: that Pharasmanes' daughter was Mithridates' wife, and that Mithridates himself was Radamistus's father-in-law. The Iberians weren't refusing peace, he said, even though they had the stronger hand for now; and Armenian treachery was well known—the fortress, short on supplies, offered no real refuge. Better not to risk uncertain battle when bloodless terms were on offer. Mithridates hesitated, suspicious of the prefect's motives—Pollio had seduced the royal mistress and was known to be for sale to any indulgence. Meanwhile Casperius made his way to Pharasmanes and demanded that the Iberians lift the siege. Pharasmanes gave vague, evasive answers, sometimes softer than others in public, but sent secret messages urging Radamistus to press the assault by any means. The price of the crime went up, and Pollio, bribed in secret, pushed the soldiers to clamor for peace and threaten to abandon the fortress. Under that pressure Mithridates agreed on a day and place for the treaty, and left the fortress.
47| At first Radamistus threw himself into his uncle's arms, feigning devotion, calling him father-in-law and father. He swore an oath that he would use neither sword nor poison against him. Then he led him to a nearby grove, saying a sacrifice had been prepared there so the peace could be sealed with the gods as witnesses. It is the custom of kings, whenever they form an alliance, to clasp right hands and bind their thumbs together, tightening the knot; then, once blood has flowed down into the fingertips, they prick it out with a light cut and each licks the other's blood. This bond is considered especially sacred, as if consecrated by shared blood. But the man fastening the cord that time pretended to stumble, seized Mithridates by the knees and slammed him down onto the ground; in that same instant others burst forward and bound him in chains. He was dragged off in fetters—a disgrace among barbarians—and then, because the common people had grown hardened under harsh rule, he was met with insults and blows besides. Yet there were also those who pitied such a reversal of fortune; and his wife, following with her small children, filled the air with lamentation. They were hidden away in separate, covered wagons while Pharasmanes' orders were sought. For Pharasmanes, desire for the throne outweighed both brother and daughter, and his mind was ready for crime; still, he was careful about appearances, so as not to have him killed in front of him. And Radamistus, as if mindful of his oath, used neither sword nor poison on his sister and uncle—he had them thrown to the ground and smothered under heavy layers of cloth instead. Mithridates' sons, too, were slaughtered, because they had wept over their parents' murder.
48| Word of Mithridates' betrayal reached Quadratus, along with news that his killers now controlled the kingdom; he called a council, laid out what had happened, and asked whether to take action. A few argued that the public honor of Rome demanded it; more argued for playing it safe: any crime committed abroad should be met with satisfaction, they said—seeds of discord among the barbarians were even worth sowing deliberately, since Roman leaders had often stirred up trouble in Armenia under the guise of generosity, precisely to unsettle native minds. Let Radamistus keep his ill-gotten gains, they said, as long as he was hated and disgraced for it—that served Rome's interests better than if he'd won the throne with honor. This view carried the day. Still, so as not to look as if they'd approved the crime, and in case the emperor ordered otherwise, messengers were sent to Pharasmanes demanding that he withdraw from Armenian territory and pull his son out.
49| The procurator of Cappadocia at the time was Julius Paelignus, a man contemptible both for his cowardly spirit and his ridiculous appearance, but a close friend of Claudius from the days when, as a private citizen, he had whiled away his idle life in the company of buffoons. This Paelignus gathered provincial auxiliaries as if he meant to recover Armenia, but instead of plundering the enemy he plundered Rome's allies, until, abandoned by his own men and harassed by the barbarians, he went, defenseless, to Radamistus—and, won over by his gifts, actually urged him to take the royal insignia, and stood by as sponsor and accomplice when he did. When this shameful story got out, and to keep others from being judged by Paelignus's example, the legate Helvidius Priscus was sent with a legion to handle the unsettled situation as the moment required. He crossed the Taurus range promptly and, working more by restraint than by force, had settled most matters when, on his way back to Syria, he was ordered not to give the Parthians a pretext for war.
50| For Vologeses judged that a chance to seize Armenia had fallen into his lap—a land his ancestors had once held, now controlled disgracefully by a foreign king. He gathered his forces and prepared to install his brother Tiridates on the throne, so that no branch of his house would be left without a kingdom. At the Parthian advance the Iberians were driven out without a battle, and the Armenian cities of Artaxata and Tigranocerta submitted. Then a brutal winter, poorly stocked supplies, and the sickness that grew out of both forced Vologeses to abandon what he'd gained for the moment. Radamistus moved back into the now-empty Armenia, more savage than before, treating the people as rebels who would revolt again given the chance. And the Armenians, hardened as they were to servitude, finally lost patience and rose up in arms around the palace.
51| Radamistus had no way out but the speed of his horses, which carried him and his wife away. His wife was pregnant, and somehow endured the first stage of the flight, driven by fear of the enemy and love for her husband; but as the headlong ride went on, and her womb was jolted and her insides shaken, she begged to be allowed an honorable death rather than face the humiliations of captivity. At first he embraced her, tried to lift her spirits, urged her on—admiring her courage one moment, sick with fear that someone might take her if left behind the next. In the end, driven by a violent love and no stranger to crime, he drew his dagger and stabbed her, then hauled her down to the Araxes and gave her over to the current, so that even her corpse would vanish downstream. Then he himself fled headlong on into Iberia, to his father's kingdom. Meanwhile shepherds found Zenobia—that was the woman's name—still breathing, drifting gently in the shallows and clearly alive. Recognizing from her beauty that she was no common woman, they bound her wound, applied rough country remedies, and once they learned her name and story, carried her into the city of Artaxata. From there she was brought, under public care, to Tiridates, who received her kindly and had her treated with the honor due a queen.
52| Faustus Sulla and Salvius Otho held the consulship that year, and it was then that Furius Scribonianus went into exile, accused of asking astrologers when the emperor would die. His mother Vibia was dragged into the charge too, as one who could not accept her earlier misfortune - she had already been banished once. Scribonianus's father Camillus had once raised arms in Dalmatia, and Claudius made a show of clemency out of this, sparing an enemy's line a second time. But the exile did not live long afterward: whether he died by accident or by poison, people reported according to what they were already inclined to believe. The senate also passed a decree, savage and useless, expelling astrologers from Italy. In the same session the emperor praised those senators who, hard up for money, resigned their rank voluntarily, and censured those who stayed on and let poverty breed shamelessness.
53| Among other business, Claudius brought before the senate the question of punishing women who took up with slaves. It was decided that a woman who fell into this without her master's knowledge would herself become a slave; if she consented, she would be treated as a freedwoman. Pallas, whom Claudius named as the source of this proposal, was voted the honorary rank of a praetor and fifteen million sesterces, on the motion of the consul-designate Barea Soranus. Cornelius Scipio added that public thanks should be given him, since though descended from the ancient kings of Arcadia he set that noble blood aside for the public good and let himself be counted among the emperor's servants. Claudius declared that Pallas was content with the honor alone and would go on living as poor as before. And so a bronze tablet was set up bearing the senate's decree, in which a freedman worth three hundred million sesterces was showered with praise for his old-fashioned frugality.
54| His brother, known as Felix, showed none of that restraint. He had long held power over Judaea and believed that, backed by such influence, he could commit any crime and get away with it. The Jews had indeed given some appearance of unrest, rising up when they learned of the death of the emperor Claudius was named for, they had refused to obey once Gaius's murder was known, and the fear remained that some emperor might impose the same command; but in truth it was Felix, applying remedies at the wrong moments, who kept fanning the flames of trouble, with Ventidius Cumanus, who held part of the province, his rival in every worst excess. The province was so divided that Cumanus governed the Galileans and Felix the Samaritans, peoples long at odds and now, with less respect for their rulers, less restrained in their hatred. So they raided each other, sent out gangs of bandits, laid ambushes, and now and then fought pitched battles, carrying off the spoils to their procurators. At first the two officials were pleased by this; but as the ruin spread and they threw in troops to stop it, soldiers were killed, and the province would have burst into open war had Quadratus, governor of Syria, not intervened. He wasted no time deciding that the Jews who had risen up and killed soldiers should pay with their heads; Cumanus and Felix tried to stall the process, since Claudius, after hearing the causes of the revolt, had given Quadratus authority to judge the procurators as well. But Quadratus put Felix among the judges, seating him on the tribunal so that accusers would be too intimidated to speak against him; Cumanus alone was condemned for the crimes the two had shared, and quiet returned to the province.
55| Not long after, the wild mountain tribes of Cilicia known as the Clitae, often restless before, now rose again under their leader Troxobore. They seized rugged strongholds in the hills and from there swept down to the coast and the towns, attacking farmers and townspeople and above all merchants and sailors. They besieged the town of Anemurium, and the cavalry sent from Syria to relieve it, under the prefect Curtius Severus, was thrown into disorder, since the rough terrain around suited infantry for fighting but not cavalry. Then Antiochus, king of that region, by flattering the common people and tricking their leader, managed to split the barbarian forces; Troxobore and a few of the chief men were killed, and he settled the rest with clemency.
56| About the same time a tunnel was driven through the mountain separating Lake Fucinus from the river Liris - a project meant to display its own scale to as wide an audience as possible - and a mock sea-fight was mounted on the lake, in the manner of Augustus, who had once staged a lesser version, with lighter vessels, on an artificial pool across the Tiber. Claudius armed triremes and quadriremes and nineteen thousand men, ringing the lake with rafts to prevent escape, while still leaving room enough for the force of the rowing, the skill of the helmsmen, the charges of the ships, and all the usual features of a real battle. On the rafts stood companies and squadrons of the praetorian cohorts, with breastworks in front from which catapults and ballistas could be fired. The rest of the lake was held by marines in decked ships. The banks, the hills, and the mountain peaks were packed like a theater with an enormous crowd, drawn from the nearby towns and even the city itself, some to watch, some out of duty to the emperor. Claudius himself presided in a splendid military cloak, and not far off Agrippina in a cloak of gold thread. The fighters, though condemned men, fought with the spirit of brave soldiers, and after heavy losses those who survived were spared from slaughter.
57| When the spectacle was over, the outlet for the water was opened. It became obvious the work had been done carelessly - the channel had not been cut deep enough to reach the bottom or even the middle of the lake. Time was allowed to dig the tunnels deeper, and to draw the crowds back again a gladiatorial show was staged on the drained lakebed, with bridges laid down for infantry combat. A banquet was even held beside the outflow, and it filled everyone with terror, because the rushing water swept away everything nearby, while people further off were shaken by the crash and roar or had their footing torn from under them. Agrippina used the emperor's fright to accuse Narcissus, the man in charge of the project, of greed and profiteering. He did not stay silent, charging her in turn with a woman's overreaching ambition and inflated hopes.
58| In the consulship of Decimus Junius and Quintus Haterius, the sixteen-year-old Nero married Octavia, Claudius's daughter. To make a name for himself in honorable pursuits and win glory for eloquence, he pleaded the case of the people of Ilium: invoking the Roman line's descent from Troy, Aeneas as forefather of the Julian house, and other tales bordering on legend, he won Ilium exemption from every public burden. The same speaker also won relief for the colony of Bononia, gutted by fire, with a grant of ten million sesterces. Freedom was restored to Rhodes, a status often given and taken away depending on their conduct in foreign wars or their offenses in internal strife; and the people of Apamea, whose land had been shaken by an earthquake, were excused from tribute for five years.
59| Meanwhile Claudius was pushed into ever harsher measures by the scheming of that same Agrippina, who brought down Statilius Taurus, a man made conspicuous by his wealth, because she coveted his gardens. She used Tarquitius Priscus as her accuser. He had served as Taurus's legate when Taurus governed Africa with proconsular power, and on their return he brought a few charges of extortion but relied chiefly on accusations of magical superstitions. Taurus would not endure a lying accuser and the shame of it any longer, and took his own life before the senate could pass judgment. Tarquitius, however, was expelled from the senate house - the senators, out of hatred for the informer, overruled Agrippina's efforts on his behalf.
60| That same year the emperor was heard more than once declaring that decisions made by his procurators should carry the same force as if he himself had made them. And so this would not look like a careless slip, a senate decree confirmed it in fuller and broader terms than before. The deified Augustus had ordered that legal proceedings before the equestrian prefects who governed Egypt should be handled as if their decisions had been made by Roman magistrates; later, in other provinces and largely in Rome itself, powers once belonging to the praetors were granted in the same way. Claudius handed over the whole of this authority - a matter so often fought over by sedition and arms, when the Sempronian laws put the equestrian order in possession of the courts, or later the Servilian laws gave judgment back to the senate, and when Marius and Sulla once made this the chief cause of their wars. But in those days it was rival orders contending, and whichever side won held power in the state's name. Gaius Oppius and Cornelius Balbus were the first men who, through the elder Caesar's resources, could dictate terms of peace and decide matters of war. It is hardly worth mentioning the Matii and Vedii and other once-powerful equestrian names that came after, since Claudius raised freedmen he had put in charge of his household finances to a level equal to himself and to the laws.
61| He then brought before the senate the question of granting tax exemption to the people of Cos, and recalled much of their ancient history: that the island's earliest inhabitants were Argives, or Coeus, father of Latona; that later, with the arrival of Aesculapius, the art of healing was introduced there and became especially renowned among his descendants, and he named each of them and the ages in which they had flourished. He even said that Xenophon, whose medical skill he himself made use of, came from that same family, and asked that, for his sake, the people of Cos be freed from all tribute forever and left to live as a sacred island devoted solely to the service of the god. There is no doubt the Coans could have shown many services and allied victories on Rome's behalf as further grounds; but Claudius, with his usual easy generosity, left what he had granted to one man's request unsupported by any outside reasons.
62| The people of Byzantium were then given a hearing, and while pleading to have their heavy burdens reduced, they went back over their whole history. They began with the treaty they had made with us in the days we fought against the king of Macedon, who for his low birth was nicknamed Pseudophilip; they recalled the troops they had later sent against Antiochus, Perseus, and Aristonicus, and their help in the war against the pirates and for Antony; then what they had offered Sulla, Lucullus, and Pompey; and finally their recent services to the Caesars, since they held a position so useful to generals and armies crossing by land and sea, and so convenient for moving supplies.
63| Where Europe and Asia come closest together, the Greeks founded Byzantium, on the far edge of Europe. When its founders consulted Pythian Apollo about where to build the city, the oracle told them to seek a home opposite the land of the blind. That riddle pointed to Chalcedon: its founders had arrived first, seen the advantages of the site across the water, and chosen the worse one anyway. Byzantium has rich soil and an even richer sea, since the huge shoals of fish that pour out of the Black Sea, startled by the slanting rocks beneath the waves, abandon the curve of the far shore and run straight into these harbors. So the Byzantines grew wealthy at first from the fishing. Later, crushed by the weight of the taxes it brought them, they asked for relief or a cap, and the emperor backed them, noting that they had just come through the exhausting Thracian and Bosporan wars and needed help. So their tribute was suspended for five years.
64| Marcus Asinius and Manius Acilius were consuls that year, and a string of bad omens signaled worse to come. Lightning struck the soldiers' standards along with their tents; a swarm of bees came down to roost on the Capitol's summit; people spoke of a birth that was part human, part beast, and of a piglet born with a hawk's talons for feet. Among the portents was counted the sudden thinning of the magistrates' ranks: within a few months a quaestor, then an aedile, a tribune, a praetor, a consul — all had died. But it was Agrippina who felt the worst dread. She remembered something Claudius had blurted out drunk — that it was his fate to endure his wives' crimes and then punish them — and, afraid of what that meant for her, she decided to act, and quickly. She struck first at Domitia Lepida, for reasons that were entirely about rivalry between women: Lepida, daughter of the younger Antonia, granddaughter of Augustus's sister, was Agrippina's cousin once removed and sister of Agrippina's first husband, Gnaeus, and she believed herself Agrippina's equal in rank. They were not far apart in looks, age, or wealth either, and both were shameless, disgraced, and violent — rivals in vice just as much as in whatever good fortune had given them. The sharpest contest between them was over which of the two, aunt or mother, would have more influence over Nero. Lepida worked on his young mind with flattery and gifts; Agrippina, by contrast, was harsh and threatening — she could give her son the throne, but she could not stand to see him actually rule it.
65| The charges brought against Lepida were that she had used curses against the emperor's wife, and that by failing to control her gangs of slaves in Calabria she was disturbing the peace of Italy. On these grounds her death was ordered, over strong opposition from Narcissus, who by now suspected Agrippina more and more and was said to have told his intimates that his own ruin was certain, whether Britannicus or Nero came to power — but that he owed the emperor so much that he would spend his life in his service. Messalina and Silius had been convicted, he said, and the same grounds for accusation would exist again if Nero were emperor; with Britannicus as successor there would be nothing for the emperor to fear. But now the whole household was being torn apart by a stepmother's plotting, a worse scandal than if he had simply kept quiet about the shamelessness of Claudius's earlier wife. And in fact shamelessness was not even absent now, with Pallas as her lover — proof, if anyone needed it, that she valued nothing, not honor, not modesty, not even her own body, above power. Saying such things again and again, Narcissus embraced Britannicus and prayed that he would come to full manhood as soon as possible, lifting his hands now to the gods, now to the boy himself, begging him to grow up, drive off his father's enemies, and avenge his mother's murderers too.
66| In the midst of this weight of worries Claudius fell ill, and to restore his strength he went to Sinuessa for the mild air and the healthful waters. Agrippina, who had long since made up her mind to the crime and was eager to seize the chance now offered, needed no help finding accomplices. She discussed what kind of poison to use — nothing sudden or violent, in case the act gave itself away, but not something slow and wasting either, in case Claudius, near the end and sensing the trick, turned back toward love for his son. She wanted something exquisite, that would confuse his mind and delay his death. She chose an expert in such things named Locusta, recently convicted of poisoning and kept for a long time as one of the instruments of the regime. This woman's skill produced the poison; it was administered by one of the eunuchs, Halotus, whose job was to bring in the food and taste it first.
67| Everything about it soon became so well known that the historians of the time reported that the poison was mixed into a delicious mushroom dish, and that its effect was not felt at once — whether from his own stupor or from Claudius's drunkenness — since a loosening of his bowels seemed at first to have saved him. Agrippina, terrified, and now fearing the worst, disregarded the disgrace of being caught and turned to the physician Xenophon, whose complicity she had already arranged. He is believed to have pushed a feather smeared with fast-acting poison down Claudius's throat, pretending to help him vomit — well aware that the worst crimes are dangerous to begin but rewarding to finish.
68| Meanwhile the senate was summoned, and the consuls and priests were offering vows for the emperor's recovery, even as he lay already lifeless, covered with blankets and hot compresses, while the arrangements for securing Nero's power were being made. Agrippina, as if overcome with grief and seeking comfort, held Britannicus close, called him his father's living likeness, and by every device she could manage kept him from leaving his room. She also kept hold of his sisters, Antonia and Octavia, and had every entrance sealed with guards. Again and again she put it about that the emperor's health was improving, so that the soldiers would stay hopeful and the favorable moment predicted by the Chaldean astrologers would arrive.
69| Then, at midday on the third day before the Ides of October, the doors of the palace suddenly swung open and Nero came out, with Burrus at his side, to the cohort that stood on guard as usual. There, on a signal from the prefect, he was greeted with cheers and put into a litter. Some, it's said, hesitated, looking back and asking where Britannicus was; but soon, with no one leading them the other way, they fell in with what was offered. Nero was carried into the camp, made a speech fitted to the occasion, and, promising a bonus in the style of his father's generosity, was hailed as emperor. The senate's decree simply confirmed what the soldiers had already decided, and the provinces fell in line just as readily. Claudius was voted divine honors, and his funeral was celebrated with the same solemnity as that of the deified Augustus, Agrippina rivaling the magnificence of her great-grandmother Livia. His will, though, was not read out, so that the people would not be stirred to anger and resentment at seeing the stepson placed ahead of the son.