The Works of Tacitus
tr. by Alfred John Church and William Jackson Brodribb
[1864-1877]
Tacitus: Annals Book 6 [1]
A.D. 32-37
1. CNEIUS Domitius and Camillus Scribonianus had entered on the consulship when
the emperor, after crossing the channel which divides Capreae from Surrentum,
sailed along Campania, in doubt whether he should enter Rome, or, possibly,
simulating the intention of going thither, because he had resolved otherwise.
He often landed at points in the neighborhood, visited the gardens by the Tiber,
but went back again to the cliffs and to the solitude of the sea shores, in
shame at the vices and profligacies into which he had plunged so unrestrainedly
that in the fashion of a despot he debauched the children of free-born citizens.
It was not merely beauty and a handsome person which he felt as an incentive
to his lust, but the modesty of childhood in some, and noble ancestry in others.
Hitherto unknown terms were then for the first time invented, derived from the
abominations of the place and the endless phases of sensuality. Slaves too were
set over the work of seeking out and procuring, with rewards for the willing,
and threats to the reluctant, and if there was resistance from a relative or
a parent, they used violence and force, and actually indulged their own passions
as if dealing with captives.
2. At Rome meanwhile, in the beginning of the year, as if Livia’s crimes
had just been discovered and not also long ago punished, terrible decrees were
proposed against her very statues and memory, and the property of Sejanus was
to be taken from the exchequer and transferred to the imperial treasury; as
if there was any difference. The motion was being urged with extreme persistency,
in almost the same or with but slightly changed language, by such men as Scipio,
Silanus, and Cassius, when suddenly Togonius Gallus intruding his own obscurity
among illustrious names, was heard with ridicule. He begged the emperor to select
a number of senators, twenty out of whom should be chosen by lot to wear swords
and to defend his person, whenever he entered the Senate House. The man had
actually believed a letter from him in which he asked the protection of one
of the consuls, so that he might go in safety from Capreae to Rome. Tiberius
however, who usually combined jesting and seriousness, thanked the senators
for their goodwill, but asked who could be rejected, who could be chosen? “Were
they always to be the same, or was there to be a succession? Were they to be
men who had held office or youths, private citizens or officials? Then, again,
what a scene would be presented by persons grasping their swords on the threshold
of the Senate House? His life was not of so much worth if it had to be defended
by arms.” This was his answer to Togonius, guarded in its expression, and he
urged nothing beyond the rejection of the motion.
3. Junius Gallio however, who had proposed that the praetorian soldiers,
after having served their campaigns, should acquire the privilege of sitting
in the fourteen rows of the theatre, received a savage censure. Tiberius, just
as if he were face to face with him, asked what he had to do with the soldiers,
who ought to receive the emperor’s orders or his rewards except from the emperor
himself? He had really discovered something which the Divine Augustus had not
foreseen. Or was not one of Sejanus’s satellites rather seeking to sow discord
and sedition, as a means of prompting ignorant minds, under the pretence of
compliment, to ruin military discipline? This was Gallio’s recompense for his
carefully prepared flattery, with immediate expulsion from the Senate, and then
from Italy. And as men complained that he would endure his exile with equanimity,
since he had chosen the famous and lovely island of Lesbos, he was dragged back
to Rome, and confined in the houses of different officials. The emperor in the
same letter crushed Sextius Paconianus, an ex-praetor, to the great joy of the
senators, as he was a daring, mischievous man, who pryed into every person’s
secrets, and had been the chosen instrument of Sejanus in his treacherous designs
against Caius Caesar. When this fact was divulged, there came an outburst of
long-concealed hatreds, and there must have been a sentence of capital punishment,
had he not himself volunteered a disclosure.
4. As soon as he named Latinius Latiaris, accuser and accused, both alike
objects of execration, presented a most welcome spectacle. Latiaris, as I have
related, had been foremost in contriving the ruin of Titius Sabinus, and was
now the first to pay the penalty. By way of episode, Haterius Agrippa inveighed
against the consuls of the previous year for now sitting silent after their
threats of impeaching one another. “It must be fear,” he said, “and a guilty
conscience which are acting as a bond of union. But the senators must not keep
back what they have heard.” Regulus replied that he was awaiting the opportunity
for vengeance, and meant to press it in the emperor’s presence. Trio’s answer
was that it was best to efface the memory of rivalries between colleagues, and
of any words uttered in quarrels. When Agrippa still persisted, Sanquinius Maximus,
one of the ex-consuls, implored the Senate not to increase the emperor’s anxieties
by seeking further occasions of bitterness, as he was himself competent to provide
remedies. This secured the safety of Regulus and the postponement of Trio’s
ruin. Haterius was hated all the more. Wan with untimely slumbers and nights
of riot, and not fearing in his indolence even the cruellest of princes, he
yet plotted amid his gluttony and lust the destruction of illustrious men.
5. Several charges were next brought, as soon as the opportunity offered,
against Cotta Messalinus, the author of every unusually cruel proposal, and
consequently, regarded with inveterate hatred. He had spoken, it was said, of
Caius Caesar, as if it were a question whether he was a man, and of an entertainment
at which he was present on Augusta’s birthday with the priests, as a funeral
banquet. In remonstrating too against the influence of Marcus Lepidus and Lucius
Arruntius, with whom he had disputes on many matters, he had added the remark,
“They will have the Senate’s support; I shall have that of my darling Tiberius.”
But the leading men of the State failed to convict him on all the charges. When
they pressed the case, he appealed to the emperor. Soon afterwards, a letter
arrived, in which Tiberius traced the origin of the friendship between himself
and Cotta, enumerated his frequent services, and then requested that words perversely
misrepresented and the freedom of table talk might not be construed into a crime.
6. The beginning of the emperor’s letter seemed very striking. It opened
thus: “May all the gods and goddesses destroy me more miserably than I feel
myself to be daily perishing, if I know at know at this moment what to write
to you, Senators, how to write it, or what, in short, not to write.” So completely
had his crimes and infamies recoiled, as a penalty, on himself. With profound
meaning was it often affirmed by the greatest teacher of philosophy that, could
the minds of tyrants be laid bare, there would be seen gashes and wounds; for,
as the body is lacerated by scourging, so is the spirit by brutality, by lust
and by evil thoughts. Assuredly Tiberius was not saved by his elevation or his
solitude from having to confess the anguish of his heart and his self-inflicted
punishment.
7. Authority was then given to the Senate to decide the case of Caecilianus,
one of its members, the chief witness against Cotta, and it was agreed that
the same penalty should be inflicted as on Aruseius and Sanquinius, the accusers
of Lucius Arruntius. Nothing ever happened to Cotta more to his distinction.
Of noble birth, but beggared by extravagance and infamous for his excesses,
he was now by dignity of his revenge, raised to a level with the stainless virtues
of Arruntius. Quintus Servaeus and Minucius Thermus were next arraigned. Servaeus
was an ex-praetor, and had formerly been a companion of Germanicus; Minucius
was of equestrian rank, and both had enjoyed, though discreetly, the friendship
of Sejanus. Hence they were the more pitied. Tiberius, on the contrary, denounced
them as foremost in crime, and bade Caius Cestius, the elder, tell the Senate
what he had communicated to the emperor by letter. Cestius undertook the prosecution.
And this was the most dreadful feature of the age, that leading members of the
Senate, some openly, some secretly employed themselves in the very lowest work
of the informer. One could not distinguish between aliens and kinsfolk, between
friends and strangers, or say what was quite recent, or what half-forgotten
from lapse of time. People were incriminated for some casual remark in the forum
or at the dinner-table, for every one was impatient to be the first to mark
his victim, some to screen themselves, most from being, as it were, infected
with the contagion of the malady. Minucius and Servaeus, on being condemned,
went over to the prosecution, and then Julius Africanus with Seius Quadratus
were dragged into the same ruin. Africanus was from the Santones, one of the
states of Gaul; the origin of Quadratus I have not ascertained. Many authors,
I am well aware, have passed over the perils and punishments of a host of persons,
sickened by the multiplicity of them, or fearing that what they had themselves
found wearisome and saddening would be equally fatiguing to their readers. For
myself, I have lighted on many facts worth knowing, though other writers have
not recorded them.
8. A Roman knight, Marcus Terentius, at the crisis when all others had hypocritically
repudiated the friendship of Sejanus, dared, when impeached on that ground,
to cling to it by the following avowal to the Senate: “In my position it is
perhaps less to my advantage to acknowledge than to deny the charge. Still,
whatever is to be the issue of the matter, I shall admit that I was the friend
of Sejanus, that I anxiously sought to be such, and was delighted when I was
successful. I had seen him his father’s colleague in the command of the praetorian
cohorts, and subsequently combining the duties of civil and military life. His
kinsfolk and connections were loaded with honours; intimacy with Sejanus was
in every case a powerful recommendation to the emperor’s friendship. Those,
on the contrary, whom he hated, had to struggle with danger and humiliation.
I take no individual as an instance. All of us who had no part in his last design,
I mean to defend at the peril of myself alone. It was really not Sejanus of
Vulsinii, it was a member of the Claudian and Julian houses, in which he had
taken a position by his marriage-alliance, it was your son-in-law, Caesar, your
partner in the consulship, the man who administered your political functions,
whom we courted. It is not for us to criticise one whom you may raise above
all others, or your motives for so doing. Heaven has intrusted you with the
supreme decision of affairs, and for us is left the glory of obedience. And,
again, we see what takes place before our eyes, who it is on whom you bestow
riches and honours, who are the most powerful to help or to injure. That Sejanus
was such, no one will deny. To explore the prince’s secret thoughts, or any
of his hidden plans, is a forbidden, a dangerous thing, nor does it follow that
one could reach them. “Do not, Senators, think only of Sejanus’s last day, but
of his sixteen years of power. We actually adored a Satrius and a Pomponius.
To be known even to his freedmen and hall-porters was thought something very
grand. What then is my meaning? Is this apology meant to be offered for all
without difference and discrimination? No; it is to be restricted within proper
limits. Let plots against the State, murderous designs against the emperor be
punished. As for friendship and its obligations, the same principle must acquit
both you, Caesar, and us.”
9. The courage of this speech and the fact that there had been found a man
to speak out what was in all people’s thoughts, had such an effect that the
accusers of Terentius were sentenced to banishment or death, their previous
offences being taken into account. Then came a letter from Tiberius against
Sextus Vestilius, an ex-praetor, whom, as a special favourite of his brother
Drusus, the emperor had admitted into his own select circle. His reason for
being displeased with Vestilius was that he had either written an attack on
Caius Caesar as a profligate, or that Tiberius believed a false charge. For
this Vestilius was excluded from the prince’s table. He then tried the knife
with his aged hand, but again bound up his veins, opening them once more however
on having begged for pardon by letter and received a pitiless answer. After
him a host of persons were charged with treason, Annius Pollio, Appius Silanus,
Scaurus Mamercus, Sabinus Calvisius, Vinicianus too, coupled with Pollio, his
father, men all of illustrious descent, some too of the highest political distinction.
The senators were panic-stricken, for how few of their number were not connected
by alliance or by friendship with this multitude of men of rank! Celsus however,
tribune of a city cohort, and now one of the prosecutors, saved Appius and Calvisius
from the peril. The emperor postponed the cases of Pollio, Vinicianus, and Scaurus,
intending to try them himself with the Senate, not however without affixing
some ominous marks to the name of Scaurus.
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