The Works of Tacitus

tr. by Alfred John Church and William Jackson Brodribb

[1864-1877]


Tacitus: Annals Book 3 [20]

20. That same year Tacfarinas who had been defeated, as I have related, by Camillus
in the previous summer, renewed hostilities in Africa, first by mere desultory
raids, so swift as to be unpunished; next, by destroying villages and carrying
off plunder wholesale. Finally, he hemmed in a Roman cohort near the river Pagyda.
The position was commanded by Decrius, a soldier energetic in action and experienced
in war, who regarded the siege as a disgrace. Cheering on his men to offer battle
in the open plain, he drew up his line in front of his intrenchments. At the
first shock, the cohort was driven back, upon which he threw himself fearlessly
amid the missiles in the path of the fugitives and cried shame on the standard-bearers
for letting Roman soldiers show their backs to a rabble of deserters. At the
same moment he was covered with wounds, and though pierced through the eye,
he resolutely faced the enemy and ceased not to fight till he fell deserted
by his men.

21. On receiving this information, Lucius Apronius, successor to Camillus,
alarmed more by the dishonour of his own men than by the glory of the enemy,
ventured on a deed quite exceptional at that time and derived from old tradition.
He flogged to death every tenth man drawn by lot from the disgraced cohort.
So beneficial was this rigour that a detachment of veterans, numbering not more
than five hundred, routed those same troops of Tacfarinas on their attacking
a fortress named Thala. In this engagement Rufus Helvius, a common soldier,
won the honour of saving a citizen’s life, and was rewarded by Apronius with
a neck-chain and a spear. To these the emperor added the civic crown, complaining,
but without anger, that Apronius had not used his right as proconsul to bestow
this further distinction. Tacfarinas, however, finding that the Numidians were
cowed and had a horror of siege-operations, pursued a desultory warfare, retreating
when he was pressed, and then again hanging on his enemy’s rear. While the barbarian
continued these tactics, he could safely insult the baffled and exhausted Romans.
But when he marched away towards the coast and, hampered with booty, fixed himself
in a regular camp, Caesianus was despatched by his father Apronius with some
cavalry and auxiliary infantry, reinforced by the most active of the legionaries,
and, after a successful battle with the Numidians, drove them into the desert.

22. At Rome meanwhile Lepida, who beside the glory of being one of the Aemilii
was the great-granddaughter of Lucius Sulla and Cneius Pompeius, was accused
of pretending to be a mother by Publius Quirinus, a rich and childless man.
Then, too, there were charges of adulteries, of poisonings, and of inquiries
made through astrologers concerning the imperial house. The accused was defended
by her brother Manius Lepidus. Quirinus by his relentless enmity even after
his divorce, had procured for her some sympathy, infamous and guilty as she
was. One could not easily perceive the emperor’s feelings at her trial; so effectually
did he interchange and blend the outward signs of resentment and compassion.
He first begged the Senate not to deal with the charges of treason, and subsequently
induced Marcus Servilius, an ex-consul, to divulge what he had seemingly wished
to suppress. He also handed over to the consuls Lepida’s slaves, who were in
military custody, but would not allow them to be examined by torture on matters
referring to his own family. Drusus too, the consul-elect, he released from
the necessity of having to speak first to the question. Some thought this a
gracious act, done to save the rest of the Senators from a compulsory assent,
while others ascribed it to malignity, on the ground that he would have yielded
only where there was a necessity of condemning.

23. On the days of the games which interrupted the trial, Lepida went into
the theatre with some ladies of rank, and as she appealed with piteous wailings
to her ancestors and to that very Pompey, the public buildings and statues of
whom stood there before their eyes, she roused such sympathy that people burst
into tears and shouted, without ceasing, savage curses on Quirinus, “to whose
childless old-age and miserably obscure family, one once destined to be the
wife of Lucius Caesar and the daughter-in-law of the Divine Augustus was being
sacrificed.” Then, by the torture of the slaves, her infamies were brought to
light, and a motion of Rubellius Blandus was carried which outlawed her. Drusus
supported him, though others had proposed a milder sentence. Subsequently, Scaurus,
who had had daughter by her, obtained as a concession that her property should
not be confiscated. Then at last Tiberius declared that he had himself too ascertained
from the slaves of Publius Quirinus that Lepida had attempted their master’s
life by poison.

24. It was some compensation for the misfortunes of great houses (for within
a short interval the Calpurnii had lost Piso and the Aemilii Lepida) that Decimus
Silanus was now restored to the Junian family. I will briefly relate his downfall.
Though the Divine Augustus in his public life enjoyed unshaken prosperity, he
was unfortunate at home from the profligacy of his daughter and granddaughter,
both of whom he banished from Rome, and punished their paramours with death
or exile. Calling, as he did, a vice so habitual among men and women by the
awful name of sacrilege and treason, he went far beyond the indulgent spirit
of our ancestors, beyond indeed his own legislation. But I will relate the deaths
of others with the remaining events of that time, if after finishing the work
I have now proposed to myself, I prolong my life for further labours. Decimus
Silanus, the paramour of the granddaughter of Augustus, though the only severity
he experienced was exclusion from the emperor’s friendship, saw clearly that
it meant exile; and it was not till Tiberius’s reign that he ventured to appeal
to the Senate and to the prince, in reliance on the influence of his brother
Marcus Silanus, who was conspicuous both for his distinguished rank and eloquence.
But Tiberius, when Silanus thanked him, replied in the Senate’s presence, “that
he too rejoiced at the brother’s return from his long foreign tour, and that
this was justly allowable, inasmuch as he had been banished not by a decree
of the Senate or under any law. Still, personally,” he said, “he felt towards
him his father’s resentment in all its force, and the return of Silanus had
not cancelled the intentions of Augustus.” Silanus after this lived at Rome
without attaining office.

25. It was next proposed to relax the Papia Poppaea law, which Augustus in
his old age had passed subsequently to the Julian statutes, for yet further
enforcing the penalties on celibacy and for enriching the exchequer. And yet,
marriages and the rearing of children did not become more frequent, so powerful
were the attractions of a childless state. Meanwhile there was an increase in
the number of persons imperilled, for every household was undermined by the
insinuations of informers; and now the country suffered from its laws, as it
had hitherto suffered from its vices. This suggests to me a fuller discussion
of the origin of law and of the methods by which we have arrived at the present
endless multiplicity and variety of our statutes.

26. Mankind in the earliest age lived for a time without a single vicious
impulse, without shame or guilt, and, consequently, without punishment and restraints.
Rewards were not needed when everything right was pursued on its own merits;
and as men desired nothing against morality, they were debarred from nothing
by fear. When however they began to throw off equality, and ambition and violence
usurped the place of self-control and modesty, despotisms grew up and became
perpetual among many nations. Some from the beginning, or when tired of kings,
preferred codes of laws. These were at first simple, while men’s minds were
unsophisticated. The most famous of them were those of the Cretans, framed by
Minos; those of the Spartans, by Lycurgus, and, subsequently, those which Solan
drew up for the Athenians on a more elaborate and extensive scale. Romulus governed
us as he pleased; then Numa united our people by religious ties and a constitution
of divine origin, to which some additions were made by Tullus and Ancus. But
Servius Tullius was our chief legislator, to whose laws even kings were to be
subject.

27. After Tarquin’s expulsion, the people, to check cabals among the Senators,
devised many safeguards for freedom and for the establishment of unity. Decemvirs
were appointed; everything specially admirable elsewhere was adopted, and the
Twelve Tables drawn up, the last specimen of equitable legislation. For subsequent
enactments, though occasionally directed against evildoers for some crime, were
oftener carried by violence amid class dissensions, with a view to obtain honours
not as yet conceded, or to banish distinguished citizens, or for other base
ends. Hence the Gracchi and Saturnini, those popular agitators, and Drusus too,
as flagrant a corrupter in the Senate’s name; hence, the bribing of our allies
by alluring promises and the cheating them by tribunes vetoes. Even the Italian
and then the Civil war did not pass without the enactment of many conflicting
laws, till Lucius Sulla, the Dictator, by the repeal or alteration of past legislation
and by many additions, gave us a brief lull in this process, to be instantly
followed by the seditious proposals of Lepidus, and soon afterwards by the tribunes
recovering their license to excite the people just as they chose. And now bills
were passed, not only for national objects but for individual cases, and laws
were most numerous when the commonwealth was most corrupt.

28. Cneius Pompeius was then for the third time elected consul to reform
public morals, but in applying remedies more terrible than the evils and repealing
the legislation of which he had himself been the author, he lost by arms what
by arms he had been maintaining. Then followed twenty years of continuous strife;
custom or law there was none; the vilest deeds went unpunished, while many noble
acts brought ruin. At last, in his sixth consulship, Caesar Augustus, feeling
his power secure, annulled the decrees of his triumvirate, and gave us a constitution
which might serve us in peace under a monarchy. Henceforth our chains became
more galling, and spies were set over us, stimulated by rewards under the Papia
Poppaea law, so that if men shrank from the privileges of fatherhood, the State,
as universal parent, might possess their ownerless properties. But this espionage
became too searching, and Rome and Italy and Roman citizens everywhere fell
into its clutches. Many men’s fortunes were ruined, and over all there hung
a terror till Tiberius, to provide a remedy, selected by lot five ex-consuls,
five ex-praetors, and five senators, by whom most of the legal knots were disentangled
and some light temporary relief afforded.

29. About this same time he commended to the Senate’s favour, Nero, Germanicus’s
son, who was just entering on manhood, and asked them, not without smiles of
ridicule from his audience, to exempt him from serving as one of the Twenty
Commissioners, and let him be a candidate for quaestorship five years earlier
than the law allowed. His excuse was that a similar decree had been made for
himself and his brother at the request of Augustus. But I cannot doubt that
even then there were some who secretly laughed at such a petition, though the
Caesars were but in the beginning of their grandeur, and ancient usage was more
constantly before men’s eyes, while also the tie between stepfather and stepson
was weaker than that between grandfather and grandchild. The pontificate was
likewise conferred on Nero, and on the day on which he first entered the forum,
a gratuity was given to the city-populace, who greatly rejoiced at seeing a
son of Germanicus now grown to manhood. Their joy was further increased by Nero’s
marriage to Julia, Drusus’s daughter. This news was met with favourable comments,
but it was heard with disgust that Sejanus was to be the father-in-law of the
son of Claudius. The emperor was thought to have polluted the nobility of his
house and to have yet further elevated Sejanus, whom they already suspected
of overweening ambition.


Next: Book 3 [30]