Tacitus: Annals: Book 4 [20]

The Works of Tacitus

tr. by Alfred John Church and William Jackson Brodribb

[1864-1877]

Tacitus: Annals Book 4 [20]

20. Yet there was a merciless confiscation of his property, though not to refund
their money to the provincials, none of whom pressed any demand. But Augustus’s
bounty was wrested from him, and the claims of the imperial exchequer were computed
in detail. This was the first instance on Tiberius’s part of sharp dealing with
the wealth of others. Sosia was banished on the motion of Asinius Gallus, who
had proposed that half her estate should be confiscated, half left to the children.
Marcus Lepidus, on the contrary, was for giving a fourth to the prosecutors,
as the law required, and the remainder to the children. This Lepidus, I am satisfied,
was for that age a wise and high-principled man. Many a cruel suggestion made
by the flattery of others he changed for the better, and yet he did not want
tact, seeing that he always enjoyed an uniform prestige, and also the favour
of Tiberius. This compels me to doubt whether the liking of princes for some
men and their antipathy to others depend, like other contingencies, on a fate
and destiny to which we are born, or, to some degree, on our own plans; so that
it is possible to pursue a course between a defiant independence and a debasing
servility, free from ambition and its perils. Messalinus Cotta, of equally illustrious
ancestry as Lepidus, but wholly different in disposition, proposed that the
Senate should pass a decree providing that even innocent governors who knew
nothing of the delinquencies of others should be punished for their wives’ offences
in the provinces as much as for their own.

21. Proceedings were then taken against Calpurnius Piso, a high-spirited
nobleman. He it was, as I have related, who had exclaimed more than once in
the Senate that he would quit Rome because of the combinations of the informers,
and had dared in defiance of Augusta’s power, to sue Urgulania and summon her
from the emperor’s palace. Tiberius submitted to this at the time not ungraciously,
but the remembrance of it was vividly impressed on a mind which brooded over
its resentments, even though the first impulse of his displeasure had subsided.
Quintus Granius accused Piso of secret treasonable conversation, and added that
he kept poison in his house and wore a dagger whenever he came into the Senate.
This was passed over as too atrocious to be true. He was to be tried on the
other charges, a multitude of which were heaped on him, but his timely death
cut short the trial. Next was taken the case of Cassius Severus’ an exile. A
man of mean origin and a life of crime, but a powerful pleader, he had brought
on himself, by his persistent quarrelsomeness, a decision of the Senate, under
oath, which banished him to Crete. There by the same practices he drew on himself,
fresh odium and revived the old; stripped of his property and outlawed, he wore
out his old age on the rock of Seriphos.

22. About the same time Plautius Silvanus, the praetor, for unknown reasons,
threw his wife Apronia out of a window. When summoned before the emperor by
Lucius Apronius, his father-in-law, he replied incoherently, representing that
he was in a sound sleep and consequently knew nothing, and that his wife had
chosen to destroy herself. Without a moment’s delay Tiberius went to the house
and inspected the chamber, where were seen the marks of her struggling and of
her forcible ejection. He reported this to the Senate, and as soon as judges
had been appointed, Urgulania, the grandmother of Silvanus, sent her grandson
a dagger. This was thought equivalent to a hint from the emperor, because of
the known intimacy between Augusta and Urgulania. The accused tried the steel
in vain, and then allowed his veins to be opened. Shortly afterwards Numantina,
his former wife, was charged with having caused her husband’s insanity by magical
incantations and potions, but she was acquitted.

23. This year at last released Rome from her long contest with the Numidian
Tacfarinas. Former generals, when they thought that their successes were enough
to insure them triumphal distinctions, left the enemy to himself. There were
now in Rome three laurelled statues, and yet Tacfarinas was still ravaging Africa,
strengthened by reinforcements from the Moors, who, under the boyish and careless
rule of Ptolemaeus, Juba’s son, had chosen war in preference to the despotism
of freedmen and slaves. He had the king of the Garamantes to receive his plunder
and to be the partner of his raids, not indeed with a regular army, but with
detachments of light troops whose strength, as they came from a distance, rumour
exaggerated. From the province itself every needy and restless adventurer hurried
to join him, for the emperor, as if not an enemy remained in Africa after the
achievements of Blaesus, had ordered the ninth legion home, and Publius Dolabella,
proconsul that year, had not dared to retain it, because he feared the sovereign’s
orders more than the risks of war.

24. Tacfarinas accordingly spread rumours; that elsewhere also nations were
rending the empire of Rome and that therefore her soldiers were gradually retiring
from Africa, and that the rest might be cut off by a strong effort on the part
of all who loved freedom more than slavery. He thus augmented his force, and
having formed a camp, he besieged the town of Thubuscum. Dolabella meanwhile
collecting all the troops on the spot, raised the siege at his first approach,
by the terror of the Roman name and because the Numidians cannot stand against
the charge of infantry. He then fortified suitable positions, and at the same
time beheaded some chiefs of the Musulamii, who were on the verge of rebellion.
Next, as several expeditions against Tacfarinas had proved the uselessness of
following up the enemy’s desultory movements with the attack of heavy troops
from a single point, he summoned to his aid king Ptolemaeus and his people,
and equipped four columns, under the command of his lieutenants and tribunes.
Marauding parties were also led by picked Moors, Dolabella in person directing
every operation.

25. Soon afterwards news came that the Numidians had fixed their tents and
encamped near a half-demolished fortress, by name Auzea, to which they had themselves
formerly set fire, and on the position of which they relied, as it was inclosed
by vast forests. Immediately the light infantry and cavalry, without knowing
whither they were being led, were hurried along at quick march. Day dawned,
and with the sound of trumpets and fierce shouts, they were on the half-asleep
barbarians, whose horses were tethered or roaming over distant pastures. On
the Roman side, the infantry was in close array, the cavalry in its squadrons,
everything prepared for an engagement, while the enemy, utterly surprised, without
arms, order, or plan, were seized, slaughtered, or captured like cattle. The
infuriated soldiers, remembering their hardships and how often the longed-for
conflict had been eluded, sated themselves to a man with vengeance and bloodshed.
The word went through the companies that all were to aim at securing Tacfarinas,
whom, after so many battles, they knew well, as there would be no rest from
war except by the destruction of the enemy’s leader. Tacfarinas, his guards
slain round him, his son a prisoner, and the Romans bursting on him from every
side, rushed on the darts, and by a death which was not unavenged, escaped captivity.

26. This ended the war. Dolabella asked for triumphal distinctions, but was
refused by Tiberius, out of compliment to Sejanus, the glory of whose uncle
Blaesus he did not wish to be forgotten. But this did not make Blaesus more
famous, while the refusal of the honour heightened Dolabella’s renown. He had,
in fact, with a smaller army, brought back with him illustrious prisoners and
the fame of having slain the enemy’s leader and terminated the war. In his train
were envoys from the Garamantes, a rare spectacle in Rome. The nation, in its
terror at the destruction of Tacfarinas, and innocent of any guilty intention,
had sent them to crave pardon of the Roman people. And now that this war had
proved the zealous loyalty of Ptolemaeus, a custom of antiquity was revived,
and one of the Senators was sent to present him with an ivory sceptre and an
embroidered robe, gifts anciently bestowed by the Senate, and to confer on him
the titles of king, ally, and friend.

27. The same summer, the germs of a slave war in Italy were crushed by a
fortunate accident. The originator of the movement was Titus Curtisius, once
a soldier of the praetorian guard. First, by secret meetings at Brundisium and
the neighbouring towns, then by placards publicly exhibited, he incited the
rural and savage slave-population of the remote forests to assert their freedom.
By divine providence, three vessels came to land for the use of those who traversed
that sea. In the same part of the country too was Curtius Lupus, the quaestor,
who, according to ancient precedent, had had the charge of the “woodland pastures”
assigned to him. Putting in motion a force of marines, he broke up the seditious
combination in its very first beginnings. The emperor at once sent Staius, a
tribune, with a strong detachment, by whom the ringleader himself, with his
most daring followers, were brought prisoners to Rome where men already trembled
at the vast scale of the slave-establishments, in which there was an immense
growth, while the freeborn populace daily decreased.

28. That same consulship witnessed a horrible instance of misery and brutality.
A father as defendant, a son as prosecutor, (Vibius Serenus was the name of
both) were brought before the Senate; the father, dragged from exile in filth
and squalor now stood in irons, while the son pleaded for his guilt. With studious
elegance of dress and cheerful looks, the youth, at once accuser and witness,
alleged a plot against the emperor and that men had been sent to Gaul to excite
rebellion, further adding that Caecilius Cornutus, an ex-praetor, had furnished
money. Cornutus, weary of anxiety and feeling that peril was equivalent to ruin,
hastened to destroy himself. But the accused with fearless spirit, looked his
son in the face, shook his chains, and appealed to the vengeance of the gods,
with a prayer that they would restore him to his exile, where he might live
far away from such practices, and that, as for his son, punishment might sooner
or later overtake him. He protested too that Cornutus was innocent and that
his terror was groundless, as would easily be perceived, if other names were
given up; for he never would have plotted the emperor’s murder and a revolution
with only one confederate.

29. Upon this the prosecutor named Cneius Lentulus and Seius Tubero, to the
great confusion of the emperor, at finding a hostile rebellion and disturbance
of the public peace charged on two leading men in the state, his own intimate
friends, the first of whom was in extreme old age and the second in very feeble
health. They were, however, at once acquitted. As for the father, his slaves
were examined by torture, and the result was unfavourable to the accuser. The
man, maddened by remorse, and terror-stricken by the popular voice, which menaced
him with the dungeon, the rock, or a parricide’s doom, fled from Rome. He was
dragged back from Ravenna, and forced to go through the prosecution, during
which Tiberius did not disguise the old grudge he bore the exile Serenus. For
after Libo’s conviction, Serenus had sent the emperor a letter, upbraiding him
for not having rewarded his special zeal in that trial, with further hints more
insolent than could be safely trusted to the easily offended ears of a despot.
All this Tiberius revived eight years later, charging on him various misconduct
during that interval, even though the examination by torture, owing to the obstinacy
of the slaves, had contradicted his guilt.

Next: Book 4 [30]