Of course from the revenue of the provinces had to be deducted the cost of their administration and defence. Provinces, therefore, which needed large forces and constant defence from surrounding barbarians did not pay. Cicero, indeed, asserts that in his time none of the provinces except Asia paid for their expenses. This probably is an exaggeration, but there is no doubt that the loss on some had to be put against the gain on others, and that the balance of the yearly budget was not always on the right side, as, at a later date, we know that Vespasian said that the treasury wanted four hundred million sesterces (about £3,000,000 sterling) to be solvent. The outbreak of the German wars in A.D. 4, and the large forces which it had long been necessary to keep upon the Rhine had caused, if not a deficit, at any rate the near prospect of one. It was just such a crisis as in old times would have justified the levying of a tributum as a special war tax. There were, however, two reasons against Augustus doing this. In the first place, such a tributum would be temporary, and he wanted a permanency; and, in the second place, the citizens had come to view freedom from the tributum as their special privilege, differentiating Italy from the subject provinces, and marking them out as a governing body. True to his policy of avoiding offensive names, while at the same time getting what he wanted, Augustus decided against the tributum. What he did was to create a new department, an army-pay treasury (aes militare), with two præfects of prætorian rank. The money in this treasury was to be devoted to the pay and pensions of the soldiers. He started it with a gift in his own name and that of Tiberius of 170,000,000 sesterces (about £1,500,000), and arranged that the tax which he had contrived soon after the end of the civil wars, the 1 per cent. on goods sold at auctions or by contract, should be paid into it. But this was not sufficient for the purpose, and he had to look round for other means of raising revenue. He did therefore what a late Chancellor of the Exchequer did for us—he imposed death duties: 5 per cent. on all legacies except those from the nearest relatives. This avoided the offensiveness of depriving the people of Italy of a valued privilege, while it in fact brought them financially almost in a line with the provinces. For those who paid tributum did not pay vicesima, and vice versâ. Still the tax offended a powerful class and met with much resistance. The practice of leaving large legacies to friends, as an acknowledgment of services rendered, was common in Italy, and the tax therefore fell heavily upon the rich. In A.D. 13 a determined move was made in the Senate to obtain its abolition. Augustus sent a written communication to the Senate, pointing out that the money was necessary, but asking them to contrive some other method of raising it. The Senators declined to formulate any plan, and only answered that they were ready to submit to anything else. Thereupon Augustus proposed a tributum or tax on land and houses. Confronted with this alternative the Senate at once withdrew from opposition. It was a case of financial necessity, and it must not be supposed that Augustus wished to lower the prestige of Italy or the value of the citizenship. That was one of the points in which he reversed the policy of Iulius, who had been lavish in bestowing the citizenship, and seems to have had visions of a uniform Empire united in privilege as in government. Augustus, on the other hand, was even ultra-conservative and ultra-Roman in this respect. He made constant difficulties about granting the citizenship. In answer to Tiberius, who begged it for some favourite Greek, he insisted upon only granting it if the man appeared personally and convinced him of the soundness of his claim. Even Livia met with a refusal in behalf of some Gaul. The Emperor offered to grant the man immunity from tribute, saying that he cared less about a loss to his treasury than for vulgarising the citizenship.
Declining health and strength.
Though Augustus shewed in this transaction all his old tact and statesmanship with no failure either in determination or power of finesse, yet he was growing visibly feebler in body. He gave up attending social functions; and it was too much for him to appear any longer at meetings of the Senate. Accordingly, instead of the half-yearly committee of twenty-five members who used to be appointed to prepare measures for the House, a sort of inner cabinet of twenty members appointed for a year—with any members of his family whom he chose—met at his house and often round the couch on which he was reclining, and their decisions were given the force of a Senatus-consultum. His interest, however, in every detail was as keen as ever. For instance, we have a letter from him to Livia, written at the end of A.D. 11, as to the advisability of allowing Claudius (the future Emperor) to appear in Rome during the ceremonies connected with the consulship of his brother Germanicus. Claudius (now twenty-one) was reported to be deformed and half-witted, and his mother Antonia herself described him as scarcely human (monstrum hominis). The letter is worth reading, partly because it is the only complete one (at any rate, of any length) which we possess, and partly because it illustrates the care which Augustus took to keep up the prestige of the imperial family, to avoid, above all things, incurring popular ridicule, and his attention to minute details:—
“I have consulted with Tiberius, as you desired me to do, my dear Livia, as to what is to be done about your grandson (Claudius) Tiberius. We entirely agree in thinking that we must settle once for all what line we are to take in regard to him. For if he is sound and, to use a common expression, has all his wits about him, what possible reason can there be for our doubting that he ought to be promoted through the same grades and steps as his brother? But if we find that he is deficient, and so deranged in mind and body as to be unfit for society, we must not give people accustomed to scoff and sneer at such things a handle for casting ridicule both on him and on us. The fact is that we shall always be in a state of agitation if we stop to consider every detail as it occurs, without having made up our minds whether to think him capable of holding offices or not. On the present occasion, however, in regard to the point on which you consult me, I do not object to his having charge of the triclinium of the priests at the games of Mars if he will submit to receive instructions from his relative, the son of Silanus, to prevent his doing anything to make people stare or laugh. We agree that he is not to be in the imperial box at the Circus. For he will be in full view of everybody and be conspicuous. We agree that he is not to go to the Alban Mount or to be in Rome on the days of the Latin festival. For if he is good enough to be in his brother’s train to the mountain, why should he not be honorary city prefect? Those are the decisions at which we arrived, my dear Livia, and we wish them to be settled once for all to prevent our wavering between hope and fear. You are at liberty, if you choose, to give Antonia this part of my letter to read.”
Confidence in Tiberius.
Perhaps the voice is the voice of Tiberius, but the courtesy and well-bred style are all Augustus’s. By this time the influence of Tiberius was well established, and Augustus treats him as a successor who has a right to be consulted on all family matters and important State affairs. Since his return from Rhodes Tiberius had done eminent service to the State both on the Rhine and in Illyricum. In appointing Varus to Germany Augustus had made a mistake which he seldom committed. He had nearly always picked good men, but P. Quintilius Varus had not only been extortionate in his former province, but was neither energetic nor prudent; and his experience among the unwarlike inhabitants of Syria was not a good preparation for dealing with the brave and warlike Germans. Tiberius knew him well, having been his colleague in the consulship of B.C. 13, and would certainly not have appointed him. It was to Tiberius that the Emperor then turned to retrieve the disaster and confront the almost more serious dangers in Illyricum. And if he found him trustworthy in the field, this letter shows how much confidence he felt in him at home. It was a common report that Augustus knew and disliked his character. The lackeys of the palace gave out that he had on one occasion exclaimed, “Unhappy people of Rome who will some day be the victims of those slow grinders!” And in a speech to the Senate some expressions used by him were taken to convey an apology for his reserved and sullen manners, and an acknowledgment, therefore, of his mistrust or dislike. But it is abundantly plain that in these last years he not only trusted his military abilities, but felt a sincere affection for himself. In earlier times, before the retreat to Rhodes, the short notes written to him (parts of which are preserved by Suetonius[313]) are playful and intimate; and though he was vexed at his retirement and answered a suggestion of return by a message bidding him “dismiss all concern for his relatives, whom he had abandoned with such excessive eagerness,”[314] yet the fragments preserved of the Emperor’s letters to him in these later times breathe not only admiration, but warm affection. “Goodbye, Tiberius, most delightful of men! Success to you in the field, you who serve the Muses as well as me! Most delightful of men, and, as I hope to be happy, bravest of heroes and steadiest of generals!” And again: “How splendidly managed are your summer quarters! I am decidedly of opinion that, in the face of so many untoward circumstances and such demoralisation of the troops, no one could have borne himself with greater prudence than you are doing! The officers now at Rome who have served with you all confess that the verse might have been written for you, ‘One man by vigilance restored the State.’” Once more: “Whenever anything occurs that calls for more than usually earnest thought or that stirs my spleen, what I miss most, by heaven, is my dear Tiberius, and that passage of Homer always occurs to me—
“‘If he but follow, e’en from burning fire
We both shall back return, so wise is he!’”
And in the midst of his laborious campaign the Emperor writes to him anxiously: “When I hear or read that you are worn out by the protracted nature of your labours, heaven confound me if I do not shudder in every limb; and I beseech you to spare yourself, lest if we hear of your being ill your mother and I should expire and the Roman people run the risk of losing their empire. It doesn’t matter a bit whether I am well or not as long as you are not well. I pray the gods to preserve you to us and to suffer you to be well now and always, unless they abhor the Roman people.”
These letters seem sufficiently to refute the idle stories of the gêne that his presence was to Augustus, of his being a wet blanket to cheerful conversation, and a makeshift with which the Emperor was forced to put up in default of better heirs. Nor did Tiberius fall short in respect and loyal service. After his adoption in A.D. 4, he immediately accepted the position of a son under the patria potestas, abstained from manumissions and other acts of a man who was sui iuris, and apparently transferred his residence to the palace, and seems really to have taken the burden from shoulders no longer strong enough to bear it.