The Works of Tacitus
tr. by Alfred John Church and William Jackson Brodribb
[1864-1877]
Tacitus: Annals Book 6 [40]
40. Quintus Plautius and Sextus Papinius were the next consuls. The fact that
that year Lucius Aruseius was put to death did not strike men as anything horrible,
from their familiarity with evil deeds. But there was a panic when Vibulenus
Agrippa, a Roman knight, as soon as his accusers had finished their case, took
from his robe, in the very Senate-house, a dose of poison, drank it off, and,
as he fell expiring, was hurried away to prison by the prompt hands of lictors,
where the neck of the now lifeless man was crushed with the halter. Even Tigranes,
who had once ruled Armenia and was now impeached, did not escape the punishment
of an ordinary citizen on the strength of his royal title. Caius Galba meanwhile
and the Blaesi perished by a voluntary death; Galba, because a harsh letter
from the emperor forbade him to have a province allotted to him; while, as for
the Blaesi, the priesthoods intended for them during the prosperity of their
house, Tiberius had withheld, when that prosperity was shaken, and now conferred,
as vacant offices, on others. This they understood as a signal of their doom,
and acted on it. Aemilia Lepida too, whose marriage with the younger Drusus
I have already related, who, though she had pursued her husband with ceaseless
accusations, remained unpunished, infamous as she was, as long as her father
Lepidus lived, subsequently fell a victim to the informers for adultery with
a slave. There was no question about her guilt, and so without an attempt at
defence she put an end to her life.
41. At this same time the Clitae, a tribe subject to the Cappadocian Archelaus,
retreated to the heights of Mount Taurus, because they were compelled in Roman
fashion to render an account of their revenue and submit to tribute. There they
defended themselves by means of the nature of the country against the king’s
unwarlike troops, till Marcus Trebellius, whom Vitellius, the governor of Syria,
sent as his lieutenant with four thousand legionaries and some picked auxiliaries,
surrounded with his lines two hills occupied by the barbarians, the lesser of
which was named Cadra, the other Davara. Those who dared to sally out, he reduced
to surrender by the sword, the rest by drought. Tiridates meanwhile, with the
consent of the Parthians, received the submission of Nicephorium, Anthemusias
and the other cities, which having been founded by Macedonians, claim Greek
names, also of the Parthian towns Halus and Artemita. There was a rivalry of
joy among the inhabitants who detested Artabanus, bred as he had been among
the Scythians, for his cruelty, and hoped to find in Tiridates a kindly spirit
from his Roman training.
42. Seleucia, a powerful and fortified city which had never lapsed into barbarism,
but had clung loyally to its founder Seleucus, assumed the most marked tone
of flattery. Three hundred citizens, chosen for wealth or wisdom, form a kind
of senate, and the people have powers of their own. When both act in concert,
they look with contempt on the Parthians; as soon as they are at discord, and
the respective leaders invite aid for themselves against their rivals, the ally
summoned to help a faction crushes them all. This had lately happened in the
reign of Artabanus, who, for his own interest, put the people at the mercy of
the nobles. As a fact, popular government almost amounts to freedom, while the
rule of the few approaches closely to a monarch’s caprice. Seleucia now celebrated
the arrival of Tiridates with all the honours paid to princes of old and all
which modern times, with a more copious inventiveness, have devised. Reproaches
were at the same time heaped on Artabanus, as an Arsacid indeed on his mother’s
side, but as in all else degenerate. Tiridates gave the government of Seleucia
to the people. Soon afterwards, as he was deliberating on what day he should
inaugurate his reign, he received letters from Phraates and Hiero, who held
two very powerful provinces, imploring a brief delay. It was thought best to
wait for men of such commanding influence, and meanwhile Ctesiphon, the seat
of empire, was their chosen destination. But as they postponed their coming
from day to day, the Surena, in the presence of an approving throng, crowned
Tiridates, according to the national usage, with the royal diadem.
43. And now had he instantly made his way to the heart of the country and
to its other tribes, the reluctance of those who wavered, would have been overpowered,
and all to a man would have yielded. By besieging a fortress into which Artabanus
had conveyed his treasure and his concubines, he gave them time to disown their
compact. Phraates and Hiero, with others who had not united in celebrating the
day fixed for the coronation, some from fear, some out of jealousy of Abdageses,
who then ruled the court and the new king, transferred their allegiance to Artabanus.
They found him in Hyrcania, covered with filth and procuring sustenance with
his bow. He was at first alarmed under the impression that treachery was intended,
but when they pledged their honour that they had come to restore to him his
dominion, his spirit revived, and he asked what the sudden change meant. Hiero
then spoke insultingly of the boyish years of Tiridates, hinting that the throne
was not held by an Arsacid, but that a mere empty name was enjoyed by a feeble
creature bred in foreign effeminacy, while the actual power was in the house
of Abdageses.
44. An experienced king, Artabanus knew that men do not necessarily feign
hatred because they are false in friendship. He delayed only while he was raising
auxiliaries in Scythia, and then pushed on in haste, thus anticipating the plots
of enemies and the fickleness of friends. Wishing to attract popular sympathy,
he did not even cast off his miserable garb. He stooped to wiles and to entreaties,
to anything indeed by which he might allure the wavering and confirm the willing.
He was now approaching the neighbourhood of Seleucia with a large force, while
Tiridates, dismayed by the rumour. and then by the king’s presence in person,
was divided in mind, and doubted whether he should march against him or prolong
the war by delay. Those who wished for battle with its prompt decision argued
that ill-arrayed levies fatigued by a long march could not even in heart be
thoroughly united in obedience, traitors and enemies as they had lately been,
to the prince whom now again they were supporting. Abdageses, however, advised
a retreat into Mesopotamia. There, with a river in their front, they might in
the interval summon to their aid the Armenians and Elymaeans and other nations
in their rear, and then, reinforced by allies and troops which would be sent
by the Roman general, they might try the fortune of war. This advice prevailed,
for Abdageses had the chief influence and Tiridates was a coward in the face
of danger. But their retreat resembled a flight. The Arabs made a beginning,
and then the rest went to their homes or to the camp of Artabanus, till Tiridates
returned to Syria with a few followers and thus relieved all from the disgrace
of desertion.
45. That same year Rome suffered from a terrible fire, and part of the circus
near the Aventine hill was burnt, as well as the Aventine quarter itself. This
calamity the emperor turned to his own glory by paying the values of the houses
and blocks of tenements. A hundred million of sesterces was expended in this
munificence, a boon all the more acceptable to the populace, as Tiberius was
rather sparing in building at his private expense. He raised only two structures
even at the public cost, the temple of Augustus and the stage of Pompey’s theatre,
and when these were completed, he did not dedicate them, either out of contempt
for popularity or from his extreme age. Four commissioners, all husbands of
the emperor’s granddaughters- Cneius Domitius, Cassius Longinus, Marcus Vinicius,
Rubellius Blandus- were appointed to assess the damage in each case, and Publius
Petronius was added to their number on the nomination of the consuls. Various
honours were devised and decreed to the emperor such as each man’s ingenuity
suggested. It is a question which of these he rejected or accepted, as the end
of his life was so near. For soon afterwards Tiberius’s last consuls, Cneius
Acerronius and Caius Pontius, entered on office, Macro’s power being now excessive.
Every day the man cultivated more assiduously than ever the favour of Caius
Caesar, which, indeed, he had never neglected, and after the death of Claudia,
who had, as I have related, been married to Caius, he had prompted his wife
Ennia to inveigle the young prince by a pretence of love, and to bind him by
an engagement of marriage, and the lad, provided he could secure the throne,
shrank from no conditions. For though he was of an excitable temper, he had
thoroughly learnt the falsehoods of hypocrisy under the loving care of his grandfather.
46. This the emperor knew, and he therefore hesitated about bequeathing the
empire, first, between his grandsons. Of these, the son of Drusus was nearest
in blood and natural affection, but he was still in his childhood. Germanicus’s
son was in the vigour of youth and enjoyed the people’s favour, a reason for
having his grandfather’s hatred. Tiberius had even thought of Claudius, as he
was of sedate age and had a taste for liberal culture, but a weak intellect
was against him. If however he were to seek a successor outside of his house,
he feared that the memory of Augustus and the name of the Caesars would become
a laughing-stock and a scorn. It was, in fact, not so much popularity in the
present for which he cared as for glory in the future. Perplexed in mind, exhausted
in body, he soon left to destiny a question to which he was unequal, though
he threw out some hints from which it might be inferred that he foresaw what
was to come. He taunted Macro, in no obscure terms, with forsaking the setting
and looking to the rising sun. Once too when Caius Caesar in a casual conversation
ridiculed Lucius Sulla, he predicted to him that he would have all Sulla’s vices
and none of his virtues. At the same moment he embraced the younger of his two
grandsons with a flood of tears, and, noting the savage face of the other, said,
“You will slay this boy, and will be yourself slain by another.” But even while
his strength was fast failing he gave up none of his debaucheries. In his sufferings
he would simulate health, and was wont to jest at the arts of the physician
and at all who, after the age of thirty, require another man’s advice to distinguish
between what is beneficial or hurtful to their constitutions.
47. At Rome meanwhile were being sown the seeds of bloodshed to come even
after Tiberius’s death. Acutia, formerly the wife of Publius Vitellius, had
been accused of treason by Laelius Balbus. When on her condemnation a reward
was being voted to her prosecutor, Junius Otho, tribune of the people, interposed
his veto. Hence a feud between Vitellius and Otho, ending in Otho’s banishment.
Then Albucilla, notorious for the number of her lovers, who had been married
to Satrius Secundus, the betrayer of the late conspiracy, was charged with irreverence
towards the emperor. With her were involved as her accomplices and paramours
Cneius Domitius, Vibius Marsus and Lucius Arruntius. I have already spoken of
the illustrious rank of Domitius. Marsus too was distinguished by the honours
of his ancestors and by his own attainments. It was, however, stated in the
notes of the proceedings furnished to the Senate that Macro had superintended
the examination of the witnesses and the torture of the slaves, and the fact
that there was no letter from the emperor against the defendants caused a suspicion
that, while he was very feeble and possibly ignorant of the matter, the charge
was to a great extent invented to gratify Macro’s well-known enmity against
Arruntius.
48. And so Domitius and Marsus prolonged their lives, Domitius, preparing
his defence, Marsus, having apparently resolved on starvation. Arruntius, when
his friends advised delay and temporising, replied that “the same conduct was
not becoming in all persons. He had had enough of life, and all he regretted
was that he had endured amid scorn and peril an old age of anxious fears, long
detested by Sejanus, now by Macro, always, indeed, by some powerful minister,
not for any fault, but as a man who could not tolerate gross iniquities. Granted
the possibility of passing safely through the few last days of Tiberius. How
was he to be secure under the youth of the coming sovereign? Was it probable
that, when Tiberius with his long experience of affairs was, under the influence
of absolute power, wholly perverted and changed, Caius Caesar, who had hardly
completed his boyhood, was thoroughly ignorant and bred under the vilest training,
would enter on a better course, with Macro for his guide, who having been selected
for his superior wickedness, to crush Sejanus had by yet more numerous crimes
been the scourge of the State? He now foresaw a still more galling slavery,
and therefore sought to flee alike from the past and from the impending future.”
While he thus spoke like a prophet, he opened his veins. What followed will
be a proof that Arruntius rightly chose death. Albucilla, having stabbed herself
with an ineffectual wound, was by the Senate’s order carried off to prison.
Those who had ministered to her profligacy, Carsidius Sacerdos, an ex-praetor,
and Pontius Fregellanus were sentenced, respectively, to transportation to an
island and to loss of a senator’s rank. A like punishment was adjudged in the
case of Laelius Balbus, and, indeed, with intense satisfaction, as Balbus was
noted for his savage eloquence and his eagerness to assail the innocent.
49. About the same time Sextus Papinius, who belonged to a family of consular
rank, chose a sudden and shocking death, by throwing himself from a height.
The cause was ascribed to his mother who, having been repeatedly repulsed in
her overtures, had at last by her arts and seductions driven him to an extremity
from which he could find no escape but death. She was accordingly put on her
trial before the Senate, and, although she grovelled at the knees of the senators
and long urged a parent’s grief, the greater weakness of a woman’s mind under
such an affliction and other sad and pitiful pleas of the same painful kind,
she was after all banished from Rome for ten years, till her younger son would
have passed the frail period of youth.
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