The Works of Tacitus
tr. by Alfred John Church and William Jackson Brodribb
[1864-1877]
Tacitus: Annals Book 3 [50]
50. Marcus Lepidus spoke against the sentence as follows: – “Senators, if we
look to the single fact of the infamous utterance with which Lutorius has polluted
his own mind and the ears of the public, neither dungeon nor halter nor tortures
fit for a slave would be punishment enough for him. But though vice and wicked
deeds have no limit, penalties and correctives are moderated by the clemency
of the sovereign and by the precedents of your ancestors and yourselves. Folly
differs from wickedness; evil words from evil deeds, and thus there is room
for a sentence by which this offence may not go unpunished, while we shall have
no cause to regret either leniency or severity. Often have I heard our emperor
complain when any one has anticipated his mercy by a self-inflicted death. Lutorius’s
life is still safe; if spared, he will be no danger to the State; if put to
death, he will be no warning to others. His productions are as empty and ephemeral
as they are replete with folly. Nothing serious or alarming is to be apprehended
from the man who is the betrayer of his own shame and works on the imaginations
not of men but of silly women. However, let him leave Rome, lose his property,
and be outlawed. That is my proposal, just as though he were convicted under
the law of treason.”
51. Only one of the ex-consuls, Rubellius Blandus, supported Lepidus. The
rest voted with Agrippa. Priscus was dragged off to prison and instantly put
to death. Of this Tiberius complained to the Senate with his usual ambiguity,
extolling their loyalty in so sharply avenging the very slightest insults to
the sovereign, though he deprecated such hasty punishment of mere words, praising
Lepidus and not censuring Agrippa. So the Senate passed a resolution that their
decrees should not be registered in the treasury till nine days had expired,
and so much respite was to be given to condemned persons. Still the Senate had
not liberty to alter their purpose, and lapse of time never softened Tiberius.
52. Caius Sulpicius and Didius Haterius were the next consuls. It was a year
free from commotions abroad, while at home stringent legislation was apprehended
against the luxury which had reached boundless excess in everything on which
wealth is lavished. Some expenses, though very serious, were generally kept
secret by a concealment of the real prices; but the costly preparations for
gluttony and dissipation were the theme of incessant talk, and had suggested
a fear that a prince who clung to oldfashioned frugality would be too stern
in his reforms. In fact, when the aedile Caius Bibulus broached the topic, all
his colleagues had pointed out that the sumptuary laws were disregarded, that
prohibited prices for household articles were every day on the increase, and
that moderate measures could not stop the evil. The Senate on being consulted
had, without handling the matter, referred it to the emperor. Tiberius, after
long considering whether such reckless tastes could be repressed, whether the
repression of them would not be still more hurtful to the State, also, how undignified
it would be to meddle with what he could not succeed in, or what, if effected,
would necessitate the disgrace and infamy of men of distinction, at last addressed
a letter to the Senate to the following purport:-
53. Perhaps in any other matter, Senators, it would be more convenient that
I should be consulted in your presence, and then state what I think to be for
the public good. In this debate it was better that my eyes should not be on
you, for while you were noting the anxious faces of individual senators charged
with shameful luxury, I too myself might observe them and, as it were, detect
them. Had those energetic men, our aediles, first taken counsel with me, I do
not know whether I should not have advised them to let alone vices so strong
and so matured, rather than merely attain the result of publishing what are
the corruptions with which we cannot cope. They however have certainly done
their duty, as I would wish all other officials likewise to fulfil their parts.
For myself, it is neither seemly to keep silence nor is it easy to speak my
mind, as I do not hold the office of aedile, praetor, or consul. Something greater
and loftier is expected of a prince, and while everybody takes to himself the
credit of right policy, one alone has to bear the odium of every person’s failures.
For what am I first to begin with restraining and cutting down to the old standard?
The vast dimensions of country houses? The number of slaves of every nationality?
The masses of silver and gold? The marvels in bronze and painting? The apparel
worn indiscriminately by both sexes, or that peculiar luxury of women which,
for the sake of jewels, diverts our wealth to strange or hostile nations?
54. I am not unaware that people at entertainments and social gatherings
condemn all this and demand some restriction. But if a law were to be passed
and a penalty imposed, those very same persons will cry out that the State is
revolutionised, that ruin is plotted against all our most brilliant fashion,
that not a citizen is safe from incrimination. Yet as even bodily disorders
of long standing and growth can be checked only by sharp and painful treatment,
so the fever of a diseased mind, itself polluted and a pollution to others,
can be quenched only by remedies as strong as the passions which inflame it.
Of the many laws devised by our ancestors, of the many passed by the Divine
Augustus, the first have been forgotten, while his (all the more to our disgrace)
have become obsolete through contempt, and this has made luxury bolder than
ever. The truth is, that when one craves something not yet forbidden, there
is a fear that it may be forbidden; but when people once transgress prohibitions
with impunity, there is no longer any fear or any shame. Why then in old times
was economy in the ascendant? Because every one practised self-control; because
we were all members of one city. Nor even afterwards had we the same temptations,
while our dominion was confined to Italy. Victories over the foreigner taught
us how to waste the substance of others; victories over ourselves, how to squander
our own. What a paltry matter is this of which the aediles are reminding us!
What a mere trifle if you look at everything else! No one represents to the
Senate that Italy requires supplies from abroad, and that the very existence
of the people of Rome is daily at the mercy of uncertain waves and storms. And
unless masters, slaves, and estates have the resources of the provinces as their
mainstay, our shrubberies, forsooth, and our country houses will have to support
us. Such, Senators, are the anxieties which the prince has to sustain, and the
neglect of them will be utter ruin to the State. The cure for other evils must
be sought in our own hearts. Let us be led to amendment, the poor by constraint,
the rich by satiety. Or if any of our officials give promise of such energy
and strictness as can stem the corruption, I praise the man, and I confess that
I am relieved of a portion of my burdens. But if they wish to denounce vice,
and when they have gained credit for so doing they arouse resentments and leave
them to me, be assured, Senators, that I too am by no means eager to incur enmities,
and though for the public good I encounter formidable and often unjust enmities,
yet I have a right to decline such as are unmeaning and purposeless and will
be of use neither to myself nor to you.
55. When they had heard the emperor’s letter, the aediles were excused from
so anxious a task, and that luxury of the table which from the close of the
war ended at Actium to the armed revolution in which Servius Galba rose to empire,
had been practised with profuse expenditure, gradually went out of fashion.
It is as well that I should trace the causes of this change. Formerly rich or
highly distinguished noble families often sank into ruin from a passion for
splendour. Even then men were still at liberty to court and be courted by the
city populace, by our allies and by foreign princes, and every one who from
his wealth, his mansion and his establishment was conspicuously grand, gained
too proportionate lustre by his name and his numerous clientele. After the savage
massacres in which greatness of renown was fatal, the survivors turned to wiser
ways. The new men who were often admitted into the Senate from the towns, colonies
and even the provinces, introduced their household thrift, and though many of
them by good luck or energy attained an old age of wealth, still their former
tastes remained. But the chief encourager of strict manners was Vespasian, himself
old-fashioned both in his dress and diet. Henceforth a respectful feeling towards
the prince and a love of emulation proved more efficacious than legal penalties
or terrors. Or possibly there is in all things a kind of cycle, and there may
be moral revolutions just as there are changes of seasons. Nor was everything
better in the past, but our own age too has produced many specimens of excellence
and culture for posterity to imitate. May we still keep up with our ancestors
a rivalry in all that is honourable!
56. Tiberius having gained credit for forbearance by the check he had given
to the growing terror of the informers, wrote a letter to the Senate requesting
the tribunitian power for Drusus. This was a phrase which Augustus devised as
a designation of supremacy, so that without assuming the name of king or dictator
he might have some title to mark his elevation above all other authority. He
then chose Marcus Agrippa to be his associate in this power, and on Agrippa’s
death, Tiberius Nero, that there might be no uncertainty as to the succession.
In this manner he thought to check the perverse ambition of others, while he
had confidence in Nero’s moderation and in his own greatness. Following this
precedent, Tiberius now placed Drusus next to the throne, though while Germanicus
was alive he had maintained an impartial attitude towards the two princes. However
in the beginning of his letter he implored heaven to prosper his plans on behalf
of the State, and then added a few remarks, without falsehood or exaggeration,
on the character of the young prince. He had, he reminded them, a wife and three
children, and his age was the same as that at which he had himself been formerly
summoned by the Divine Augustus to undertake this duty. Nor was it a precipitate
step; it was only after an experience of eight years, after having quelled mutinies
and settled wars, after a triumph and two consulships, that he was adopted as
a partner in trials already familiar to him.
57. The senators had anticipated this message and hence their flattery was
the more elaborate. But they could devise nothing but voting statues of the
two princes, shrines to certain deities, temples, arches and the usual routine,
except that Marcus Silanus sought to honour the princes by a slur on the consulate,
and proposed that on all monuments, public or private, should be inscribed,
to mark the date, the names, not of the consuls, but of those who were holding
the tribunitian power. Quintus Haterius, when he brought forward a motion that
the decrees passed that day should be set up in the Senate House in letters
of gold, was laughed at as an old dotard, who would get nothing but infamy out
of such utterly loathsome sycophancy.
58. Meantime Junius Blaesus received an extension of his government of Africa,
and Servius Maluginensis, the priest of Jupiter, demanded to have Asia allotted
to him. “It was,” he asserted, “a popular error that it was not lawful for the
priests of Jupiter to leave Italy; in fact, his own legal position differed
not from that of the priests of Mars and of Quirinus. If these latter had provinces
allotted to them, why was it forbidden to the priests of Jupiter? There were
no resolutions of the people or anything to be found in the books of ceremonies
on the subject. Pontiffs had often performed the rites to Jupiter when his priest
was hindered by illness or by public duty. For seventy-five years after the
suicide of Cornelius Merula no successor to his office had been appointed; yet
religious rites had not ceased. If during so many years it was possible for
there to be no appointment without any prejudice to religion, with what comparative
ease might he be absent for one year’s proconsulate? That these priests in former
days were prohibited by the pontiff from going into the provinces, was the result
of private feuds. Now, thank heaven, the supreme pontiff was also the supreme
man, and was influenced by no rivalry, hatred or personal feeling.”
59. As the augur Lentulus and others argued on various grounds against this
view, the result was that they awaited the decision of the supreme pontiff.
Tiberius deferred any investigation into the priest’s legal position, but he
modified the ceremonies which had been decreed in honour of Drusus’s tribunitian
power with special censure on the extravagance of the proposed inscription in
gold, so contrary to national usage. Letters also from Drusus were read, which,
though studiously modest in expression, were taken to be extremely supercilious.
“We have fallen so low,” people said, “that even a mere youth who has received
so high an honour does not go as a worshipper to the city’s gods, does not enter
the Senate, does not so much as take the auspices on his country’s soil. There
is a war, forsooth, or he is kept from us in some remote part of the world.
Why, at this very moment, he is on a tour amid the shores and lakes of Campania.
Such is the training of the future ruler of mankind; such the lesson he first
learns from his father’s counsels. An aged emperor may indeed shrink from the
citizen’s gaze, and plead the weariness of declining years and the toils of
the past. But, as for Drusus, what can be his hindrance but pride?”
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