Tacitus: Annals: Book 13 [10]

The Works of Tacitus

tr. by Alfred John Church and William Jackson Brodribb

[1864-1877]

Tacitus: Annals Book 13 [10]

10. The emperor in the same year asked the Senate for a statue to his father
Domitius, and also that the consular decorations might be conferred on Asconius
Labeo, who had been his guardian. Statues to himself of solid gold and silver
he forbade, in opposition to offers made, and although the Senate passed a vote
that the year should begin with the month of December, in which he was born,
he retained for its commencement, the old sacred associations of the first of
January. Nor would he allow the prosecution of Carinas Celer, a senator, whom
a slave accused, or of Julius Densus, a knight, whose partiality for Britannicus
was construed into a crime.

11. In the year of his consulship with Lucius Antistius, when the magistrates
were swearing obedience to imperial legislation, he forbade his colleague to
extend the oath to his own enactments, for which he was warmly praised by the
senators, in the hope that his youthful spirit, elated with the glory won by
trifles, would follow on to nobler aspirations. Then came an act of mercy to
Plautius Lateranus, who had been degraded from his rank for adultery with Messalina,
and whom he now restored, assuring them of his clemency in a number of speeches
which Seneca, to show the purity of his teaching or to display his genius, published
to the world by the emperor’s mouth.

12. Meanwhile the mother’s influence was gradually weakened, as Nero fell
in love with a freedwoman, Acte by name, and took into his confidence Otho and
Claudius Senecio, two young men of fashion, the first of whom was descended
from a family of consular rank, while Senecio’s father was one of the emperor’s
freedmen. Without the mother’s knowledge, then in spite of her opposition, they
had crept into his favour by debaucheries and equivocal secrets, and even the
prince’s older friends did not thwart him, for here was a girl who without harm
to any one gratified his desires, when he loathed his wife Octavia, high born
as she was, and of approved virtue, either from some fatality, or because vice
is overpoweringly attractive. It was feared too that he might rush into outrages
on noble ladies, were he debarred from this indulgence.

13. Agrippina, however, raved with a woman’s fury about having a freedwoman
for a rival, a slave girl for a daughter-in-law, with like expressions. Nor
would she wait till her son repented or wearied of his passion. The fouler her
reproaches, the more powerfully did they inflame him, till completely mastered
by the strength of his desire, he threw off all respect for his mother, and
put himself under the guidance of Seneca, one of whose friends, Annaeus Serenus,
had veiled the young prince’s intrigue in its beginning by pretending to be
in love with the same woman, and had lent his name as the ostensible giver of
the presents secretly sent by the emperor to the girl. Then Agrippina, changing
her tactics, plied the lad with various blandishments, and even offered the
seclusion of her chamber for the concealment of indulgences which youth and
the highest rank might claim. She went further; she pleaded guilty to an ill-timed
strictness, and handed over to him the abundance of her wealth, which nearly
approached the imperial treasures, and from having been of late extreme in her
restraint of her son, became now, on the other hand, lax to excess. The change
did not escape Nero; his most intimate friends dreaded it, and begged him to
beware of the arts of a woman, was always daring and was now false. It happened
at this time that the emperor after inspecting the apparel in which wives and
mothers of the imperial house had been seen to glitter, selected a jewelled
robe and sent it as a gift to his mother, with the unsparing liberality of one
who was bestowing by preference on her a choice and much coveted present. Agrippina,
however, publicly declared that so far from her wardrobe being furnished by
these gifts, she was really kept out of the remainder, and that her son was
merely dividing with her what he derived wholly from herself.

14. Some there were who put even a worse meaning on her words. And so Nero,
furious with those who abetted such arrogance in a woman, removed Pallas from
the charge of the business with which he had been entrusted by Claudius, and
in which he acted, so to say, as the controller of the throne. The story went
that as he was departing with a great retinue of attendants, the emperor rather
wittily remarked that Pallas was going to swear himself out of office. Pallas
had in truth stipulated that he should not be questioned for anything he had
done in the past, and that his accounts with the State were to be considered
as balanced. Thereupon, with instant fury, Agrippina rushed into frightful menaces,
sparing not the prince’s ears her solemn protest “that Britannicus was now of
full age, he who was the true and worthy heir of his father’s sovereignty, which
a son, by mere admission and adoption, was abusing in outrages on his mother.
She shrank not from an utter exposure of the wickedness of that ill-starred
house, of her own marriage, to begin with, and of her poisoner’s craft. All
that the gods and she herself had taken care of was that her stepson was yet
alive; with him she would go to the camp, where on one side should be heard
the daughter of Germanicus; on the other, the crippled Burrus and the exile
Seneca, claiming, forsooth, with disfigured hand, and a pedant’s tongue, the
government of the world.” As she spoke, she raised her hand in menace and heaped
insults on him, as she appealed to the deified Claudius, to the infernal shades
of the Silani, and to those many fruitless crimes.

15. Nero was confounded at this, and as the day was near on which Britannicus
would complete his fourteenth year, he reflected, now on the domineering temper
of his mother, and now again on the character of the young prince, which a trifling
circumstance had lately tested, sufficient however to gain for him wide popularity.
During the feast of Saturn, amid other pastimes of his playmates, at a game
of lot drawing for king, the lot fell to Nero, upon which he gave all his other
companions different orders, and such as would not put them to the blush; but
when he told Britannicus to step forward and begin a song, hoping for a laugh
at the expense of a boy who knew nothing of sober, much less of riotous society,
the lad with perfect coolness commenced some verses which hinted at his expulsion
from his father’s house and from supreme power. This procured him pity, which
was the more conspicuous, as night with its merriment had stript off all disguise.
Nero saw the reproach and redoubled his hate. Pressed by Agrippina’s menaces,
having no charge against his brother and not daring openly to order his murder,
he meditated a secret device and directed poison to be prepared through the
agency of Julius Pollio, tribune of one of the praetorian cohorts, who had in
his custody a woman under sentence for poisoning, Locusta by name, with a vast
reputation for crime. That every one about the person of Britannicus should
care nothing for right or honour, had long ago been provided for. He actually
received his first dose of poison from his tutors and passed it off his bowels,
as it was rather weak or so qualified as not at once to prove deadly. But Nero,
impatient at such slow progress in crime, threatened the tribune and ordered
the poisoner to execution for prolonging his anxiety while they were thinking
of the popular talk and planning their own defence. Then they promised that
death should be as sudden as if it were the hurried work of the dagger, and
a rapid poison of previously tested ingredients was prepared close to the emperor’s
chamber.

16. It was customary for the imperial princes to sit during their meals with
other nobles of the same age, in the sight of their kinsfolk, at a table of
their own, furnished somewhat frugally. There Britannicus was dining, and as
what he ate and drank was always tested by the taste of a select attendant,
the following device was contrived, that the usage might not be dropped or the
crime betrayed by the death of both prince and attendant. A cup as yet harmless,
but extremely hot and already tasted, was handed to Britannicus; then, on his
refusing it because of its warmth, poison was poured in with some cold water,
and this so penetrated his entire frame that he lost alike voice and breath.
There was a stir among the company; some, taken by surprise, ran hither and
thither, while those whose discernment was keener, remained motionless, with
their eyes fixed on Nero, who, as he still reclined in seeming unconsciousness,
said that this was a common occurrence, from a periodical epilepsy, with which
Britannicus had been afflicted from his earliest infancy, and that his sight
and senses would gradually return. As for Agrippina, her terror and confusion,
though her countenance struggled to hide it, so visibly appeared, that she was
clearly just as ignorant as was Octavia, Britannicus’s own sister. She saw,
in fact, that she was robbed of her only remaining refuge, and that here was
a precedent for parricide. Even Octavia, notwithstanding her youthful inexperience,
had learnt to hide her grief, her affection, and indeed every emotion.

17. And so after a brief pause the company resumed its mirth. One and the
same night witnessed Britannicus’s death and funeral, preparations having been
already made for his obsequies, which were on a humble scale. He was however
buried in the Campus Martius, amid storms so violent, that in the popular belief
they portended the wrath of heaven against a crime which many were even inclined
to forgive when they remembered the immemorial feuds of brothers and the impossibility
of a divided throne. It is related by several writers of the period that many
days before the murder, Nero had offered the worst insult to the boyhood of
Britannicus; so that his death could no longer seem a premature or dreadful
event, though it happened at the sacred board, without even a moment for the
embraces of his sisters, hurried on too, as it was, under the eyes of an enemy,
on the sole surviving offspring of the Claudii, the victim first of dishonour,
then of poison. The emperor apologised for the hasty funeral by reminding people
that it was the practice of our ancestors to withdraw from view any grievously
untimely death, and not to dwell on it with panegyrics or display. For himself,
he said, that as he had now lost a brother’s help, his remaining hopes centred
in the State, and all the more tenderness ought to be shown by the Senate and
people towards a prince who was the only survivor of a family born to the highest
greatness.

18. He then enriched his most powerful friends with liberal presents. Some
there were who reproached men of austere professions with having on such an
occasion divided houses and estates among themselves, like so much spoil. It
was the belief of others that a pressure had been put on them by the emperor,
who, conscious as he was of guilt, hoped for merciful consideration if he could
secure the most important men by wholesale bribery. But his mother’s rage no
lavish bounty could allay. She would clasp Octavia to her arms, and have many
a secret interview with her friends; with more than her natural rapacity, she
clutched at money everywhere, seemingly for a reserve, and courteously received
tribunes and centurions. She honoured the names and virtues of the nobles who
still were left, seeking apparently a party and a leader. Of this Nero became
aware, and he ordered the departure of the military guard now kept for the emperor’s
mother, as it had formerly been for the imperial consort, along with some German
troops, added as a further honour. He also gave her a separate establishment,
that throngs of visitors might no longer wait on her, and removed her to what
had been Antonia’s house; and whenever he went there himself, he was surrounded
by a crowd of centurions, and used to leave her after a hurried kiss.

19. Of all things human the most precarious and transitory is a reputation
for power which has no strong support of its own. In a moment Agrippina’s doors
were deserted; there was no one to comfort or to go near her, except a few ladies,
whether out of love or malice was doubtful. One of these was Junia Silana, whom
Messalina had driven from her husband, Caius Silius, as I have already related.
Conspicuous for her birth, her beauty, and her wantonness, she had long been
a special favourite of Agrippina, till after a while there were secret mutual
dislikes, because Sextius Africanus, a noble youth, had been deterred from marrying
Silana by Agrippina, who repeatedly spoke of her as an immodest woman in the
decline of life, not to secure Africanus for herself, but to keep the childless
and wealthy widow out of a husband’s control. Silana having now a prospect of
vengeance, suborned as accusers two of her creatures, Iturius and Calvisius,
not with the old and often-repeated charges about Agrippina’s mourning the death
of Britannicus or publishing the wrongs of Octavia, but with a hint that it
was her purpose to encourage in revolutionary designs Rubellius Plautus, who
his mother’s side was as nearly connected as Nero with the Divine Augustus;
and then, by marrying him and making him emperor, again seize the control of
the State. All this Iturius and Calvisius divulged to Atimetus, a freedman of
Domitia, Nero’s aunt. Exulting in the opportunity, for Agrippina and Domitia
were in bitter rivalry, Atimetus urged Paris, who was himself also a freedman
of Domitia, to go at once and put the charge in the most dreadful form.

Next: Book 13 [20]