The Works of Tacitus
tr. by Alfred John Church and William Jackson Brodribb
[1864-1877]
Tacitus: History Book 1 [1]
1. I BEGIN my work with the time when Servius Galba was consul for the second
time with Titus Vinius for his colleague. Of the former period, the 820 years
dating from the founding of the city, many authors have treated; and while they
had to record the transactions of the Roman people, they wrote with equal eloquence
and freedom. After the conflict at Actium, and when it became essential to peace,
that all power should be centered in one man, these great intellects passed
away. Then too the truthfulness of history was impaired in many ways; at first,
through men’s ignorance of public affairs, which were now wholly strange to
them, then, through their passion for flattery, or, on the other hand, their
hatred of their masters. And so between the enmity of the one and the servility
of the other, neither had any regard for posterity. But while we instinctively
shrink from a writer’s adulation, we lend a ready ear to detraction and spite,
because flattery involves the shameful imputation of servility, whereas malignity
wears the false appearance of honesty. I myself knew nothing of Galba, of Otho,
or of Vitellius, either from benefits or from injuries. I would not deny that
my elevation was begun by Vespasian, augmented by Titus, and still further advanced
by Domitian; but those who profess inviolable truthfulness must speak of all
without partiality and without hatred. I have reserved as an employment for
my old age, should my life be long enough, a subject at once more fruitful and
less anxious in the reign of the Divine Nerva and the empire of Trajan, enjoying
the rare happiness of times, when we may think what we please, and express what
we think.
2. I am entering on the history of a period rich in disasters, frightful
in its wars, torn by civil strife, and even in peace full of horrors. Four emperors
perished by the sword. There were three civil wars; there were more with foreign
enemies; there were often wars that had both characters at once. There was success
in the East, and disaster in the West. There were disturbances in Illyricum;
Gaul wavered in its allegiance; Britain was thoroughly subdued and immediately
abandoned; the tribes of the Suevi and the Sarmatae rose in concert against
us; the Dacians had the glory of inflicting as well as suffering defeat; the
armies of Parthia were all but set in motion by the cheat of a counterfeit Nero.
Now too Italy was prostrated by disasters either entirely novel, or that recurred
only after a long succession of ages; cities in Campania’s richest plains were
swallowed up and overwhelmed; Rome was wasted by conflagrations, its oldest
temples consumed, and the Capitol itself fired by the hands of citizens. Sacred
rites were profaned; there was profligacy in the highest ranks; the sea was
crowded with exiles, and its rocks polluted with bloody deeds. In the capital
there were yet worse horrors. Nobility, wealth, the refusal or the acceptance
of office, were grounds for accusation, and virtue ensured destruction. The
rewards of the informers were no less odious than their crimes; for while some
seized on consulships and priestly offices, as their share of the spoil, others
on procuratorships, and posts of more confidential authority, they robbed and
ruined in every direction amid universal hatred and terror. Slaves were bribed
to turn against their masters, and freedmen to betray their patrons; and those
who had not an enemy were destroyed by friends.
3. Yet the age was not so barren in noble qualities, as not also to exhibit
examples of virtue. Mothers accompanied the flight of their sons; wives followed
their husbands into exile; there were brave kinsmen and faithful sons in law;
there were slaves whose fidelity defied even torture; there were illustrious
men driven to the last necessity, and enduring it with fortitude; there were
closing scenes that equalled the famous deaths of antiquity. Besides the manifold
vicissitudes of human affairs, there were prodigies in heaven and earth, the
warning voices of the thunder, and other intimations of the future, auspicious
or gloomy, doubtful or not to be mistaken. Never surely did more terrible calamities
of the Roman People, or evidence more conclusive, prove that the Gods take no
thought for our happiness, but only for our punishment.
4. I think it proper, however, before I commence my purposed work, to pass
under review the condition of the capital, the temper of the armies, the attitude
of the provinces, and the elements of weakness and strength which existed throughout
the whole empire, that so we may become acquainted, not only with the vicissitudes
and the issues of events, which are often matters of chance, but also with their
relations and their causes. Welcome as the death of Nero had been in the first
burst of joy, yet it had not only roused various emotions in Rome, among the
Senators, the people, or the soldiery of the capital, it had also excited all
the legions and their generals; for now had been divulged that secret of the
empire, that emperors could be made elsewhere than at Rome. The Senators enjoyed
the first exercise of freedom with the less restraint, because the Emperor was
new to power, and absent from the capital. The leading men of the Equestrian
order sympathised most closely with the joy of the Senators. The respectable
portion of the people, which was connected with the great families, as well
as the dependants and freedmen of condemned and banished persons, were high
in hope. The degraded populace, frequenters of the arena and the theatre, the
most worthless of the slaves, and those who having wasted their property were
supported by the infamous excesses of Nero, caught eagerly in their dejection
at every rumour.
5. The soldiery of the capital, who were imbued with the spirit of an old
allegiance to the Caesars, and who had been led to desert Nero by intrigues
and influences from without rather than by their own feelings, were inclined
for change, when they found that the donative promised in Galba’s name was withheld,
and reflected that for great services and great rewards there was not the same
room in peace as in war, and that the favour of an emperor created by the legions
must be already preoccupied. They were further excited by the treason of Nymphidius
Sabinus, their prefect, who himself aimed at the throne. Nymphidius indeed perished
in the attempt, but, though the head of the mutiny was thus removed, there yet
remained in many of the soldiers the consciousness of guilt. There were even
men who talked in angry terms of the feebleness and avarice of Galba. The strictness
once so commended, and celebrated in the praises of the army, was galling to
troops who rebelled against the old discipline, and who had been accustomed
by fourteen years’ service under Nero to love the vices of their emperors, as
much as they had once respected their virtues. To all this was added Galba’s
own expression, “I choose my soldiers, I do not buy them,” noble words for the
commonwealth, but fraught with peril for himself. His other acts were not after
this pattern.
6. Titus Vinius and Cornelius Laco, one the most worthless, the other the
most spiritless of mankind, were ruining the weak old Emperor, who had to bear
the odium of such crimes and the scorn felt for such cowardice. Galba’s progress
had been slow and blood-stained. Cingonius Varro, consul elect, and Petronius
Turpilianus, a man of consular rank, were put to death; the former as an accomplice
of Nymphidius, the latter as one of Nero’s generals. Both had perished without
hearing or defence, like innocent men. His entry into the capital, made after
the slaughter of thousands of unarmed soldiers, was most ill-omened, and was
terrible even to the executioners. As he brought into the city his Spanish legion,
while that which Nero had levied from the fleet still remained, Rome was full
of strange troops. There were also many detachments from Germany, Britain, and
Illyria, selected by Nero, and sent on by him to the Caspian passes, for service
in the expedition which he was preparing against the Albani, but afterwards
recalled to crush the insurrection of Vindex. Here there were vast materials
for a revolution, without indeed a decided bias towards any one man, but ready
to a daring hand.
7. In this conjuncture it happened that tidings of the deaths of Fonteius
Capito and Clodius Macer reached the capital. Macer was executed in Africa,
where he was undoubtedly fomenting sedition, by Trebonius Garutianus the procurator,
who acted on Galba’s authority; Capito fell in Germany, while he was making
similar attempts, by the hands of Cornelius Aquinus and Fabius Valens, legates
of legions, who did not wait for an order. There were however some who believed
that Capito, though foully stained with avarice and profligacy, had yet abstained
from all thought of revolution, that this was a treacherous accusation invented
by the commanders themselves, who had urged him to take up arms, when they found
themselves unable to prevail, and that Galba had approved of the deed, either
from weakness of character, or to avoid investigation into the circumstances
of acts which could not be altered. Both executions, however, were unfavourably
regarded; indeed, when a ruler once becomes unpopular, all his acts, be they
good or bad, tell against him. The freedmen in their excessive power were now
putting up everything for sale; the slaves caught with greedy hands at immediate
gain, and, reflecting on their master’s age, hastened to be rich. The new court
had the same abuses as the old, abuses as grievous as ever, but not so readily
excused. Even the age of Galba caused ridicule and disgust among those whose
associations were with the youth of Nero, and who were accustomed, as is the
fashion of the vulgar, to value their emperors by the beauty and grace of their
persons.
8. Such, as far as one can speak of so vast a multitude, was the state of
feeling at Rome. Among the provinces, Spain was under the government of Cluvius
Rufus, an eloquent man, who had all the accomplishments of civil life, but who
was without experience in war. Gaul, besides remembering Vindex, was bound to
Galba by the recently conceded privileges of citizenship, and by the diminution
of its future tribute. Those Gallic states, however, which were nearest to the
armies of Germany, had not been treated with the same respect, and had even
in some cases been deprived of their territory; and these were reckoning the
gains of others and their own losses with equal indignation. The armies of Germany
were at once alarmed and angry, a most dangerous temper when allied with such
strength; while elated by their recent victory, they feared because they might
seem to have supported an unsuccessful party. They had been slow to revolt from
Nero, and Verginius had not immediately declared for Galba; it was doubtful
whether he had himself wished to be emperor, but all agreed that the empire
had been offered to him by the soldiery. Again, the execution of Capito was
a subject of indignation, even with those who could not complain of its injustice.
They had no leader, for Verginius had been withdrawn on the pretext of his friendship
with the Emperor. That he was not sent back, and that he was even impeached,
they regarded as an accusation against themselves.
9. The army of Upper Germany despised their legate, Hordeonius Flaccus, who,
disabled by age and lameness, had no strength of character and no authority;
even when the soldiery were quiet, he could not control them, much more in their
fits of frenzy were they irritated by the very feebleness of his restraint.
The legions of Lower Germany had long been without any general of consular rank,
until, by the appointment of Galba, Aulus Vitellius took the command. He was
son of that Vitellius who was censor and three times consul; this was thought
sufficient recommendation. In the army of Britain there was no angry feeling;
indeed no troops behaved more blamelessly throughout all the troubles of these
civil wars, either because they were far away and separated by the ocean from
the rest of the empire, or because continual warfare had taught them to concentrate
their hatred on the enemy. Illyricum too was quiet, though the legions drawn
from that province by Nero had, while lingering in Italy, sent deputations to
Verginius. But separated as these armies were by long distances, a thing of
all others the most favourable for keeping troops to their duty, they could
neither communicate their vices, nor combine their strength.
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