At Rome, the while, were sown the sanguinary seeds of executions to be perpetrated even after Tiberius. Laelius Balbus had with high treason charged Acutia, some time the wife of Publius Vitellius; and, as the Senate were, after her condemnation, decreeing a reward to the accuser, the same was obstructed by the interposition of Junius Otho, Tribune of the People: hence their mutual hate, which ended in the exile of Otho. Thereafter Albucilla, who had been married to Satrius Secundus, him that revealed the conspiracy of Sejanus, and herself famous for many amours, was impeached of impious rites devised against the Prince. In the charge were involved, as her associates and adulterers, Cneius Domitius, Vibius Marsus, and Lucius Arruntius. The noble descent of Domitius I have above declared: Marsus too was distinguished by the ancient dignities in his house, and himself illustrious for learning. The minutes, however, transmitted to the Senate imported, "that in the examination of the witnesses, and torture of the slaves, Macro had presided:" neither came these minutes accompanied with any letter from the Emperor against the accused. Hence it was suspected, that, while he was ill, and perhaps without his privacy, the accusations were in great measure forged by Macro, in consequence of his notorious enmity to Arruntius.
Domitius therefore by preparing for his defence, and Marsus by seeming determined to famish, both protracted their lives. Arruntius chose to die; and to the importunity of his friends, urging him to try delays and evasions, he answered, "that the same measures were not alike honourable to all men: his own life was abundantly long; nor had he wherewithal to reproach himself, save that he had submitted to bear thus far an old age loaded with anxieties, exposed to daily dangers, and the cruel sport of power; long hated as he was by Sejanus, now by Macro, always by some reigning minister; hated through no fault of his own, but as one irreconcilable to baseness and the iniquities of power. He might, in truth, outlive and avoid the few and last days of Tiberius: but how escape the youth of his heir? If upon Tiberius at such an age, and after such consummate experience, the violent spirit of unbridled dominion had wrought with such efficacy, as entirely to transport and change him; was it likely that Caligula, he who had scarce outgrown his childhood, a youth ignorant of all things, or nursed and principled in the worst, would follow a course more righteous under the guidance of Macro; the same Macro, who, for destroying Sejanus, was employed as the more wicked of the two, and had since by more mischiefs and cruelties torn and afflicted the Commonweal? For himself; he foresaw a servitude yet more vehement, and therefore withdrew at once from the agonies of past and of impending tyranny." Uttering these words, with the spirit of a prophet, he opened his veins. How wisely Arruntius anticipated death, the following times will terribly demonstrate. For Albucilla; she aimed at her own life, but the blow being impotent, she was by order of Senate dragged to execution in the prison. Against the ministers of her lusts it was decreed, "that Grasidius Sacerdos, formerly Praetor, should be exiled into an island; Pontius Fregellanus be degraded from the Senate; and that upon Laelius Balbus the same penalty be inflicted:" his punishment particularly proved matter of joy, as he was accounted a man of pestilent eloquence, and prompt to attack the innocent.
About the same time, Sextus Papinius of a Consular family, chose on a sudden a frightful end, by a desperate and precipitate fall. The cause was ascribed to his mother, who, after many repulses, had by various allurements and the stimulations of sensuality, urged him to practices and embarrassments from whence, only by dying, he could devise an issue. She was therefore accused in the Senate; and, though in a prostrate posture she embraced the knees of the Fathers, and pleaded "the tenderness and grief of a mother, the imbecility of a woman's spirit under such an affecting calamity;" with other motives of pity in the same doleful strain; she was banished Rome for ten years, till her younger son were past the age of lubricity.
As to Tiberius; already his body, already his spirits failed him; but his dissimulation failed him not. He exerted the same vigour of mind, the same energy in his looks and discourse; and even sometimes studied to be gay, by it to hide his declension however notorious. So that, after much shifting of places, he settled at the Promontory of Misenum, in a villa of which Lucullus was once Lord. There it was discovered that his end was at hand, by this device. In his train was a physician, his name Charicles, signal in his profession, one, in truth, not employed to govern the Prince's health, but wont however to afford his counsel and skill. Charicles, as if he were departing to attend his own affairs, under the appearance of paying duty and kissing his hands, touched his pulse. But the artifice beguiled not Tiberius; for he instantly ordered the entertainment to be served up; whether incensed, and thence the more smothering his wrath, is uncertain: but, at table he continued beyond his wont, as if he meant that honour only for a farewell to his friend. But for all this Charicles satisfied Macro, "that the flame of life was expiring, and could not outlast two days." Hence the whole court was filled with close consultations, and expresses were despatched to the generals and armies. On the 16th of March, so deep a swoon seized him, that he was believed to have paid the last debt of mortality: insomuch that Caligula, in the midst of a great throng, paying their congratulations, was already appearing abroad, to assume the first offices of sovereignty, when sudden notice came, "that Tiberius had recovered his sight and voice, and, to strengthen his fainting spirits, had called for some refreshment." Hence dread seized all, and the whole concourse about Caligula dispersed, every man resuming false sorrow, or feigning ignorance: he himself was struck speechless, and thus fallen from the highest hopes, waited for present death. Macro continued undismayed, and ordering the apartment to be cleared, caused the feeble old man to be smothered with a weight of coverings. Thus expired Tiberius in the seventy-eighth year of his age.
He was the son of Nero, and on both sides a branch of the Claudian House; though his mother had been ingrafted by adoptions into the Livian, and next into the Julian stock. From his first infancy, his life was chequered by various turns and perils: for, then he followed, like an exile, his proscribed father; and when taken in quality of a step-son into the family of Augustus, he long struggled there with many potent rivals, during the lives of Marcellus and Agrippa; next of the young Caesars, Caius and Lucius. His brother Drusus too eclipsed him, and possessed more eminently the hearts of the Roman People. But above all, his marriage with Julia, most egregiously threatened and distressed him; whether he bore the prostitutions of his wife, or relinquished the daughter of Augustus. Upon his return thereafter from Rhodes, he occupied for twelve years the Prince's family, now bereft of heirs, and nigh four-and-twenty ruled the Roman State. His manners also varied with the several junctures of his fortune: he was well esteemed while yet a private man; and, in discharging public dignities under Augustus, of signal reputation: covert and subdolous in feigning virtue so long as Germanicus and Drusus survived: a mixed character of good and evil during the days of his mother: detestably cruel; but secret in his lewdness, while he loved or feared Sejanus: at last he abandoned himself, at once, to the rage of tyranny and the sway of his lusts: for, he had then conquered all the checks of shame and fear, and thenceforth followed only the bent of his own abominable spirit.
A TREATISE OF THE SITUATION, CUSTOMS, AND PEOPLE OF GERMANY.
The whole of Germany is thus bounded; separated from Gaul, from Rhoetia and Pannonia, by the rivers Rhine and Danube; from Sarmatia and Dacia by mutual fear, or by high mountains: the rest is encompassed by the ocean, which forms huge bays, and comprehends a tract of islands immense in extent: for we have lately known certain nations and kingdoms there, such as the war discovered. The Rhine rising in the Rhoetian Alps from a summit altogether rocky and perpendicular, after a small winding towards the west, is lost in the Northern Ocean. The Danube issues out of the mountain Abnoba, one very high but very easy of ascent, and traversing several nations, falls by six streams into the Euxine Sea; for its seventh channel is absorbed in the Fenns.
The Germans, I am apt to believe, derive their original from no other people; and are nowise mixed with different nations arriving amongst them: since anciently those who went in search of new dwellings, travelled not by land, but were carried in fleets; and into that mighty ocean so boundless, and, as I may call it, so repugnant and forbidding, ships from our world rarely enter. Moreover, besides the dangers from a sea tempestuous, horrid and unknown, who would relinquish Asia, or Africa, or Italy, to repair to Germany, a region hideous and rude, under a rigorous climate, dismal to behold or to manure; {Footnote: To cultivate.} unless the same were his native country? In their old ballads (which amongst them are the only sort of registers and history) they celebrate Tuisto, a God sprung from the earth, and Mannus his son, as the fathers and founders of the nation. To Mannus they assign three sons, after whose names so many people are called; the Ingaevones, dwelling next the ocean; the Herminones, in the middle country; and all the rest, Istaevones. Some, borrowing a warrant from the darkness of antiquity, maintain that the God had more sons, that thence came more denominations of people, the Marsians, Cambrians, Suevians, and Vandalians, and that these are the names truly genuine and original. For the rest, they affirm Germany to be a recent word, lately bestowed: for that those who first passed the Rhine and expulsed the Gauls, and are now named Tungrians, were then called Germans: and thus by degrees the name of a tribe prevailed, not that of the nation; so that by an appellation at first occasioned by terror and conquest, they afterwards chose to be distinguished, and assuming a name lately invented were universally called Germans.