The Works of Tacitus
tr. by Alfred John Church and William Jackson Brodribb
[1864-1877]
Tacitus: Annals Book 4 [40]
40. Tiberius, in reply, after praising the loyal sentiments of Sejanus and briefly
enumerating the favours he had bestowed on him, asked time for impartial consideration,
adding that while other men’s plans depended on their ideas of their own interest,
princes, who had to regulate their chief actions by public opinion, were in
a different position. “Hence,” he said, “I do not take refuge in an answer which
it would be easy to return, that Livia can herself decide whether she considers
that, after Drusus, she ought again to marry or rather to endure life in the
same home, and that she has in her mother and grandmother counsellors nearer
and dearer to her. I will deal more frankly. First, as to the enmity of Agrippina,
I maintain that it will blaze out more fiercely if Livia’s marriage rends, so
to say, the house of the Caesars into two factions. Even as it is, feminine
jealousies break out, and my grandsons are torn asunder by the strife. What
will happen if the rivalry is rendered more intense by such a marriage? For
you are mistaken, Sejanus, if you think that you will then remain in the same
position, and that Livia, who has been the wife of Caius Caesar and afterwards
of Drusus, will have the inclination to pass her old age with a mere Roman knight.
Though I might allow it, do you imagine it would be tolerated by those who have
seen her brother, her father, and our ancestors in the highest offices of state?
You indeed desire to keep within your station; but those magistrates and nobles
who intrude on you against your wishes and consult you on all matters, openly
give out that you have long overstepped the rank of a knight and gone far beyond
my father’s friendships, and from their dislike of you they also condemn me.
But, you say, Augustus had thoughts of giving his daughter to a Roman knight.
Is it surprising that, with so many distracting cares, foreseeing too the immense
elevation to which a man would be raised above others by such an alliance, he
talked of Caius Proculeius and certain persons of singularly quiet life, wholly
free from political entanglements? Still, if the hesitation of Augustus is to
influence us, how much stronger is the fact that he bestowed his daughter on
Marcus Agrippa, then on myself. All this, as a friend, I have stated without
reserve, but I will not oppose your plans or those of Livia. My own earnest
thoughts and the ties with which I am still purposing to unite you to myself,
I shall for the present forbear to explain. This only I will declare, that nothing
is too grand to be deserved by your merits and your goodwill towards me. When
an opportunity presents itself, either in the Senate, or in a popular assembly,
I shall not be silent.”
41. Sejanus, no longer thinking of his marriage but filled with a deeper
alarm, rejoined by deprecating the whispers of suspicion, popular rumour and
the gathering storm of odium. That he might not impair his influence by closing
his doors on the throngs of his many visitors or strengthen the hands of accusers
by admitting them, he made it his aim to induce Tiberius to live in some charming
spot at a distance from Rome. In this he foresaw several advantages. Access
to the emperor would be under his own control, and letters, for the most part
being conveyed by soldiers, would pass through his hands. Caesar too, who was
already in the decline of life, would soon, when enervated by retirement, more
readily transfer to him the functions of empire; envy towards himself would
be lessened when there was an end to his crowded levies and the reality of power
would be increased by the removal of its empty show. So he began to declaim
against the laborious life of the capital, the bustling crowds and streaming
multitudes, while he praised repose and solitude, with their freedom from vexations
and misunderstandings, and their special opportunities for the study of the
highest questions.
42. It happened that the trial at this time of Votienus Montanus, a popular
wit, convinced the hesitating Tiberius that he ought to shun all assemblies
of the Senate, where speeches, often true and offensive, were flung in his very
face. Votienus was charged with insulting expressions towards the emperor, and
while the witness, Aemilius, a military man, in his eagerness to prove the case,
repeated the whole story and amid angry clamour struggled on with loud assertion,
Tiberius heard the reproaches by which he was assailed in secret, and was so
deeply impressed that he exclaimed that he would clear himself either at once
or on a legal inquiry, and the entreaties of friends, with the flattery of the
whole assembly, hardly restored his composure. As for Votienus, he suffered
the penalty of treason; but the emperor, clinging all the more obstinately to
the harshness with which he had been reproached in regard to accused persons,
punished Aquilia with exile for the crime of adultery with Varius Ligur, although
Lentulus Gaetulicus, the consul-elect, had proposed that she should be sentenced
under the Julian law. He next struck off Apidius Merula from the register of
the Senate for not having sworn obedience to the legislation of the Divine Augustus.
43. Then a hearing was given to embassies from the Lacedaemonians and Messenians
on the question of the temple of Diana in the Marshes. The Lacedaemonians asserted
that it had been dedicated by their ancestors and in their territory, and appealed
to the records of their history and the hymns of poets, but it had been wrested
from, they said, by the arms of the Macedonian Philip, with whom they had fought,
and subsequently restored by the decision of Caius Caesar and Marcus Antonius.
The Messenians, on the contrary, alleged the ancient division of the Peloponnesus
among the descendants of Hercules, in which the territory of Denthelia (where
the temple stood) had fallen to their king. Records of this event still existed,
engraven on stone and ancient bronze. But if they were asked for the testimony
of poetry and of history, they had it, they said, in greater abundance and authenticity.
Philip had not decided arbitrarily, but according to fact, and king Antigonus,
as also the general Mummius, had pronounced the same judgment. Such too had
been the award of the Milesians to whom the arbitration had been publicly entrusted,
and, finally, of Atidius Geminus, the praetor of Achaia. And so the question
was decided in favour of the Messenians. Next the people of Segesta petitioned
for the restoration of the temple of Venus at Mount Eryx, which had fallen to
ruin from its antiquity. They repeated the well-known story of its origin, which
delighted Tiberius. He undertook the work willingly, as being a kinsman of the
goddess. After this was discussed a petition from the city of Massilia, and
sanction given to the precedent of Publius Rutilius, who having been legally
banished from Rome, had been adopted as a citizen by the people of Smyrna. Volcatius
Moschus, also an exile, had been received with a similar privilege by the inhabitants
of Massilia, and had left his property to their community, as being now his
own country.
44. Two men of noble rank died in that year, Cneius Lentulus and Lucius Domitius.
It had been the glory of Lentulus, to say nothing of his consulship and his
triumphal distinctions over the Gaetuli, to have borne poverty with a good grace,
then to have attained great wealth, which had been blamelessly acquired and
was modestly enjoyed. Domitius derived lustre from a father who during the civil
war had been master of the sea, till he united himself to the party of Antonius
and afterwards to that of Caesar. His grandfather had fallen in the battle of
Pharsalia, fighting for the aristocracy. He had himself been chosen to be the
husband of the younger Antonia, daughter of Octavia, and subsequently led an
army across the Elbe, penetrating further into Germany than any Roman before
him. For this achievement he gained triumphal honours. Lucius Antonius too then
died, of a most illustrious but unfortunate family. His father, Julius Antonius,
was capitally punished for adultery with Julia, and the son, when a mere youth,
was banished by Augustus, whose sister’s grandson he was, to the city of Massilia,
where the name of exile might be masked under that of student. Yet honour was
paid him in death, and his bones, by the Senate’s decree, were consigned to
the sepulchre of the Octavii.
45. While the same consuls were in office, an atrocious crime was committed
in Nearer Spain by a peasant of the Termestine tribe. Suddenly attacking the
praetor of the province, Lucius Piso, as he was travelling in all the carelessness
of peace, he killed him with a single wound. He then fled on a swift horse,
and reached a wooded country, where he parted with his steed and eluded pursuit
amid rocky and pathless wilds. But he was soon discovered. The horse was caught
and led through the neighbouring villages, and its owner ascertained. Being
found and put to the torture that he might be forced to reveal his accomplices,
he exclaimed in a loud voice, in the language of his country, that it was in
vain to question him; his comrades might stand by and look on, but that the
most intense agony would not wring the truth from him. Next day, when he was
dragged back to torture, he broke loose from his guards and dashed his head
against a stone with such violence that he instantly fell dead. It was however
believed that Piso was treacherously murdered by the Termestini. Some public
money had been embezzled, and he was pressing for its payment too rigorously
for the patience of barbarians.
46. In the consulship of Lentulus Gaetulicus and Caius Calvisius, triumphal
distinctions were decreed to Poppaeus Sabinus, for a crushing defeat of some
Thracian tribes, whose wild life in the highlands of a mountainous country made
them unusually fierce. Besides their natural ferocity, the rebellion had its
origin in their scornful refusal to endure levies and to supply our armies with
their bravest men. Even native princes they would obey only according to their
caprice, and if they sent aid, they used to appoint their own leaders and fight
only against their neighbours. A rumour had then spread itself among them that,
dispersed and mingled with other tribes, they were to be dragged away to distant
countries. Before however they took up arms, they sent envoys with assurances
of their friendship and loyalty, which, they said, would continue, if they were
not tried by any fresh burden. But if they were doomed to slavery as a conquered
people, they had swords and young warriors and a spirit bent on freedom or resigned
to death. As they spoke, they pointed to fortresses amid rocks whither they
had conveyed their parents and their wives, and threatened us with a difficult,
dangerous and sanguinary war.
47. Sabinus meantime, while he was concentrating his troops, returned gentle
answers; but on the arrival of Pomponius Labeo with a legion from Moesia and
of king Rhoemetalces with some reinforcements from his subjects, who had not
thrown off their allegiance, with these and the force he had on the spot, he
advanced on the enemy, who were drawn up in some wooded defiles. Some ventured
to show themselves on the open hills; these the Roman general approached in
fighting order and easily dislodged them, with only a small slaughter of the
barbarians, who had not far to flee. In this position he soon established a
camp, and held with a strong detachment a narrow and unbroken mountain ridge,
stretching as far as the next fortress, which was garrisoned by a large force
of armed soldiers along with some irregulars. Against the boldest of these,
who after the manner of their country were disporting themselves with songs
and dances in front of the rampart, he sent some picked archers, who, discharging
distant volleys, inflicted many wounds without loss to themselves. As they advanced,
a sudden sortie put them to the rout, and they fell back on the support of a
Sugambrian cohort, drawn up at no great distance by the Roman general, ready
for any emergency and as terrible as the foe, with the noise of their war songs
and the clashing of their arms.
48. He then moved his camp near to the enemy, leaving in his former entrenchments
the Thracians who, as I have mentioned, were with us. These had permission to
ravage, burn, and plunder, provided they confined their forays to daylight,
and passed the night securely and vigilantly in their camp. This at first they
strictly observed. Soon they resigned themselves to enjoyment, and, enriched
by plunder, they neglected their guards, and amid feasts and mirth sank down
in the carelessness of the banquet, of sleep and of wine. So the enemy, apprised
of their heedlessness, prepared two detachments, one of which was to attack
the plunderers, the other, to fall on the Roman camp, not with the hope of taking
it, but to hinder the din of the other battle from being heard by our soldiers,
who, with shouts and missiles around them, would be all intent on their own
peril. Night too was chosen for the movement to increase the panic. Those however
who tried to storm the entrenchment of the legions were easily repulsed; the
Thracian auxiliaries were dismayed by the suddenness of the onset, for though
some were lying close to their lines, far more were straggling beyond them,
and the massacre was all the more savage, inasmuch as they were taunted with
being fugitives and traitors and bearing arms for their own and their country’s
enslavement.
49. Next day Sabinus displayed his forces in the plain, on the chance of
the barbarians being encouraged by the night’s success to risk an engagement.
Finding that they did not quit the fortress and the adjoining hills, he began
a siege by means of the works which he had opportunely began to construct; then
he drew a fosse and stockade enclosing an extent of four miles, and by degrees
contracted and narrowed his lines, with the view of cutting off their water
and forage. He also threw up a rampart, from which to discharge stones, darts,
and brands on the enemy, who was now within range. It was thirst however which
chiefly distressed them, for there was only one spring for the use of a vast
multitude of soldiers and non-combatants. Their cattle too, penned up close
to them, after the fashion of barbarians, were dying of want of fodder; near
them lay human bodies which had perished from wounds or thirst, and the whole
place was befouled with rotting carcases and stench and infection. To their
confusion was added the growing misery of discord, some thinking of surrender,
others of destruction by mutual blows. Some there were who suggested a sortie
instead of an unavenged death, and these were all men of spirit, though they
differed in their plans.
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