The Works of Tacitus
tr. by Alfred John Church and William Jackson Brodribb
[1864-1877]
Tacitus: Annals Book 14 [20]
20. In Nero’s fourth consulship with Cornelius Cossus for his colleague, a theatrical
entertainment to be repeated every five years was established at Rome in imitation
of the Greek festival. Like all novelties, it was variously canvassed. There
were some who declared that even Cnius Pompeius was censured by the older men
of the day for having set up a fixed and permanent theatre. “Formerly,” they
said, “the games were usually exhibited with hastily erected tiers of benches
and a temporary stage, and the people stood to witness them, that they might
not, by having the chance of sitting down, spend a succession of entire days
in idleness. Let the ancient character of these shows be retained, whenever
the praetors exhibited them, and let no citizen be under the necessity of competing.
As it was, the morality of their fathers, which had by degrees been forgotten,
was utterly subverted by the introduction of a lax tone, so that all which could
suffer or produce corruption was to be seen at Rome, and a degeneracy bred by
foreign tastes was infecting the youth who devoted themselves to athletic sports,
to idle loungings and low intrigues, with the encouragement of the emperor and
Senate, who not only granted licence to vice, but even applied a compulsion
to drive Roman nobles into disgracing themselves on the stage, under the pretence
of being orators and poets. What remained for them but to strip themselves naked,
put on the boxing-glove, and practise such battles instead of the arms of legitimate
warfare? Would justice be promoted, or would they serve on the knights’ commissions
for the honourable office of a judge, because they had listened with critical
sagacity to effeminate strains of music and sweet voices? Night too was given
up to infamy, so that virtue had not a moment left to her, but all the vilest
of that promiscuous throng dared to do in the darkness anything they had lusted
for in the day.”
21. Many people liked this very licence, but they screened it under respectable
names. “Our ancestors,” they said, “were not averse to the attractions of shows
on a scale suited to the wealth of their day, and so they introduced actors
from the Etruscans and horse-races from Thurii. When we had possessed ourselves
of Achaia and Asia, games were exhibited with greater elaboration, and yet no
one at Rome of good family had stooped to the theatrical profession during the
200 years following the triumph of Lucius Mummius, who first displayed this
kind of show in the capital. Besides, even economy had been consulted, when
a permanent edifice was erected for a theatre, in preference to a structure
raised and fitted up yearly at vast expense. Nor would the magistrates, as hitherto,
exhaust their substance, or would the populace have the same motive for demanding
of them the Greek contests, when once the State undertakes the expenditure.
The victories won by orators and poets would furnish a stimulus to genius, and
it could not be a burden for any judge to bestow his attention on graceful pursuits
or on legitimate recreations. It was to mirth rather than to profligacy that
a few nights every five years were devoted, and in these amid such a blaze of
illumination no lawless conduct could be concealed.” This entertainment, it
is true, passed off without any notorious scandal. The enthusiasm too of the
populace was not even slightly kindled, for the pantomimic actors, though permitted
to return to the stage, were excluded from the sacred contests. No one gained
the first prize for eloquence, but it was publicly announced that the emperor
was victorious. Greek dresses, in which most people showed themselves during
this festival, had then gone out of fashion.
22. A comet meantime blazed in the sky, which in popular opinion always portends
revolution to kingdoms. So people began to ask, as if Nero was already dethroned,
who was to be elected. In every one’s mouth was the name of Rubellius Blandus,
who inherited through his mother the high nobility of the Julian family. He
was himself attached to the ideas of our ancestors; his manners were austere,
his home was one of purity and seclusion, and the more he lived in retirement
from fear, the more fame did he acquire. Popular talk was confirmed by an interpretation
put with similar credulity on a flash of lightning. While Nero was reclining
at dinner in his house named Sublaqueum on the Simbruine lake, the table with
the banquet was struck and shattered, and as this happened close to Tibur, from
which town Plautus derived his origin on his father’s side, people believed
him to be the man marked out by divine providence; and he was encouraged by
that numerous class, whose eager and often mistaken ambition it is to attach
themselves prematurely to some new and hazardous cause. This alarmed Nero, and
he wrote a letter to Plautus, bidding “him consider the tranquillity of Rome
and withdraw himself from mischievous gossip. He had ancestral possessions in
Asia, where he might enjoy his youth safely and quietly.” And so thither Plautus
retired with his wife Antistia and a few intimate friends. About the same time
an excessive love of luxurious gratification involved Nero in disgrace and danger.
He had plunged for a swim into the source of the stream which Quintus Marcius
conveyed to Rome, and it was thought that, by thus immersing his person in it,
he had polluted the sacred waters and the sanctity of the spot. A fit of illness
which followed, convinced people of the divine displeasure.
23. Corbulo meanwhile having demolished Artaxata thought that he ought to
avail himself of the recent panic by possessing himself of Tigranocerta, and
either, by destroying it, increase the enemy’s terror, or, by sparing it, win
a name for mercy. Thither he marched his army, with no hostile demonstrations,
lest might cut off all hope of quarter, but still without relaxing his vigilance,
knowing, as he did, the fickle temper of the people, who are as treacherous,
when they have an opportunity, as they are slow to meet danger. The barbarians,
following their individual inclinations, either came to him with entreaties,
or quitted their villages and dispersed into their deserts. Some there were
who hid themselves in caverns with all that they held dearest. The Roman general
accordingly dealt variously with them; he was merciful to suppliants, swift
in pursuit of fugitives, pitiless towards those who had crept into hiding-places,
burning them out after filling up the entrances and exits with brushwood and
bushes. As he was on his march along the frontier of the Mardi, he was incessantly
attacked by that tribe which is trained to guerilla warfare, and defended by
mountains against an invader. Corbulo threw the Iberians on them, ravaged their
country and punished the enemy’s daring at the cost of the blood of the foreigner.
24. Both Corbulo and his army, though suffering no losses in battle, were
becoming exhausted by short supplies and hardships, compelled as they were to
stave off hunger solely by the flesh of cattle. Added to this was scarcity of
water, a burning summer and long marches, all of which were alleviated only
by the general’s patient endurance. He bore indeed the same or even more burdens
than the common soldier. Subsequently, they reached lands under cultivation,
and reaped the crops, and of two fortresses in which the Armenians had fled
for refuge, one was taken by storm; the other, which repulsed the first attack,
was reduced by blockade. Thence the general crossed into the country of the
Tauraunites, where he escaped an unforeseen peril. Near his tent, a barbarian
of no mean rank was discovered with a dagger, who divulged under torture the
whole method of the plot, its contrivance by himself, and his associates. The
men who under a show of friendship planned the treachery, were convicted and
punished. Soon afterwards, Corbulo’s envoys whom he had sent to Tigranocerta,
reported that the city walls were open, and the inhabitants awaiting orders.
They also handed him a gift denoting friendship, a golden crown, which he acknowledged
in complimentary language. Nothing was done to humiliate the city, that remaining
uninjured it might continue to yield a more cheerful obedience.
25. The citadel, however, which had been closed by an intrepid band of youths,
was not stormed without a struggle. They even ventured on an engagement under
the walls, but were driven back within their fortifications and succumbed at
last only to our siege-works and to the swords of furious assailants. The success
was the easier, as the Parthians were distracted by a war with the Hyrcanians,
who had sent to the Roman emperor, imploring alliance, and pointing to the fact
that they were detaining Vologeses as a pledge of amity. When these envoys were
on their way home, Corbulo, to save them from being intercepted by the enemy’s
picquets after their passage of the Euphrates, gave them an escort, and conducted
them to the shores of the Red Sea, whence, avoiding Parthian territory, they
returned to their native possessions.
26. Corbulo too, as Tiridates was entering the Armenian frontier through
Media, sent on Verulanus, his lieutenant-general with the auxiliaries, while
he himself followed with the legions by forced marches, and compelled him to
retreat to a distance and abandon the idea of war. Having harried with fire
and sword all whom he had ascertained to be against us, he began to take possession
of Armenia, when Tigranes arrived, whom Nero had selected to assume the sovereignty.
Though a Cappadocian noble and grandson of king Archelaus, yet, from having
long been a hostage at Rome, he had sunk into servile submissiveness. Nor was
he unanimously welcomed, as some still cherished a liking for the Arsacids.
Most, however, in their hatred of Parthian arrogance preferred a king given
them by Rome. He was supported too with a force of a thousand legionaries, three
allied cohorts and two squadrons of cavalry, that he might the more easily secure
his new kingdom. Parts of Armenia, according to their respective proximities,
were put under the subjection of Pharasmanes, Polemo, Aristobulus, and Antiochus.
Corbulo retired into Syria, which province, as being vacant by the death of
its governor Ummidius, was intrusted to him.
27. One of the famous cities of Asia, Laodicea, was that same year overthrown
by an earthquake, and, without any relief from us, recovered itself by its own
resources. In Italy meanwhile the old town of Puteoli obtained from Nero the
privileges of a colony with an additional name. A further enrolment of veterans
in Tarentum and Antium did but little for those thinly peopled places; for most
scattered themselves in the provinces where they had completed their military
service. Not being accustomed to tie themselves by marriage and rear children,
they left behind them homes without families. For whole legions were no longer
transplanted, as in former days, with tribunes and centurions and soldiers of
every grade, so as to form a state by their unity and mutual attachment, but
strangers to one another from different companies, without a head or any community
of sentiment, were suddenly gathered together, as it might be out of any other
class of human beings, and became a mere crowd rather than a colony.
28. As at the elections for praetors, now generally under the Senate’s control
there was the excitement of a particularly keen competition, the emperor quieted
matters by promoting the three supernumerary candidates to legionary commands.
He also raised the dignity of the Senate, by deciding that all who appealed
from private judges to its house, were to incur the same pecuniary risk as those
who referred their cause to the emperor. Hitherto such an appeal had been perfectly
open, and free from penalty. At the close of the year Vibius Secundus, a Roman
knight, on the accusation of the Moors, was convicted of extortion, and banished
from Italy, contriving through the influence of his brother Vibius Crispus to
escape heavier punishment.
29. In the consulship of Caesonius Paetus and Petronius Turpilianus, a serious
disaster was sustained in Britain, where Aulius Didius, the emperor’s legate,
had merely retained our existing possessions, and his successor Veranius, after
having ravaged the Silures in some trifling raids, was prevented by death from
extending the war. While he lived, he had a great name for manly independence,
though, in his will’s final words, he betrayed a flatterer’s weakness; for,
after heaping adulation on Nero, he added that he should have conquered the
province for him, had he lived for the next two years. Now, however, Britain
was in the hands of Suetonius Paulinus, who in military knowledge and in popular
favour, which allows no one to be without a rival, vied with Corbulo, and aspired
to equal the glory of the recovery of Armenia by the subjugation of Rome’s enemies.
He therefore prepared to attack the island of Mona which had a powerful population
and was a refuge for fugitives. He built flat-bottomed vessels to cope with
the shallows, and uncertain depths of the sea. Thus the infantry crossed, while
the cavalry followed by fording, or, where the water was deep, swam by the side
of their horses.
Leave A Comment