So Tiberius was forced to consent to the trial. Being, however, a wise and level-headed man, he remitted it to the Senate, the one of the two tribunals which might be expected with greater reason to be enlightened and serene. The other—the quæstio, or, as we should say, the jury—was too closely in contact with public opinion, and not likely to be able to exercise calm judgment in a case in which public opinion was so much excited and prejudiced against the principal defendant. The Senate, on the contrary, was the gravest body in the Republic, and might be expected to rise superior to popular passions in the exercise of its judicial functions. Nevertheless, even in the Senate, the friends of Germanicus and the enemies of Tiberius were to be found in force. Not only this, but a fierce antipathy divided the ancient from the new nobility. During the fifty years which followed the end of the civil wars, many recently ennobled families had entered the Senate. Amongst these, the families of ancient nobility, those whose glory dated back to the grand era of the Republic, at this time formed only a small yet haughty minority, which lived apart, despised the new nobility, and kept aloof as far as possible. Now Piso belonged to one of these ancient families, and to one of the most glorious of them. The constitution of the Senate as the tribunal, meant, therefore, entrusting the decision of the case to the new, upstart nobility, which was full of blind rancour against the haughtiness of the old families.
In any case there was no other tribunal; and between the two evils, Tiberius could only choose the lesser. However, he realised so clearly the gravity of the dangers which surrounded the course of justice, in the midst of so many frenzied passions, in this trial which had been engineered by insensate hatreds and rancours, that when, as president of the Senate, he had to open the sessions, he made a speech, the gist of which Tacitus has preserved for us. Whoever reads it cannot help recognising the spirit of profound wisdom and equity which inspires it. Tiberius explained quite clearly to the Senate that the charge of poisoning levelled against Piso, if true, would be an extremely serious matter. He reminded them, however, that Piso was a prominent man, who had rendered eminent services to the Republic and belonged to one of the most ancient and noble families in Rome. They must, therefore, bring the most serene impartiality to bear on their judgment, forgetting who was the accused, if they found him guilty, forgetting who was the victim, if they found him innocent. However great his affection for Germanicus might be, nothing would induce him to wish for the sacrifice on the latter’s tomb, of an innocent man, for the satisfaction of the insensate mania for revenge which had taken possession of the public.
The speech was a wise and humane one; but what could sober words, even from an Emperor’s mouth, avail when passions are aroused? The Senate allotted two days to the prosecution, three to the defence. There was to be an interval of six days between the two sections of the trial. For two whole days, the accusers talked, reconstructing, as Cicero had done in Verres’s case, the whole history of Piso’s life. They went so far as to accuse him of having misgoverned the previous provinces he had had; they went minutely into the history of his government in Syria, and repeated the fantastic story of the poisoning. Tacitus himself recognised that the charges were very weak, especially the accusation of poisoning, which was the only serious one. Accordingly, the first impression made by the trial was very uncertain. The public was prejudiced in favour of the prosecution; in the Senate there was a strong party hostile to Piso. After all, however, the Senate was a great political body, and many of its members could not but recognise that the charges were slender ones. Everybody felt that the issue depended on Tiberius, who could, according as he showed himself favourable or the reverse, weigh down the scales on the side of acquittal or of conviction. Everybody, therefore, looked towards him, with hope or with anxiety. But Tiberius listened to the prosecution without moving an eyelid, as impassive as a statue, without allowing a glimpse into his secret thoughts on the subject. Could he act otherwise? If he had shown himself favourable to Piso, he would have been accused of shielding the murderers of Germanicus, through hatred of his adopted son or even through actual complicity in the crime. He could not and would not attach himself, however, to the mob which cried for Piso’s head, innocent or guilty. He was too haughty and too serious a man to descend to such baseness. Recognise that public opinion was a force of which account must be taken,—this he was prepared to do; pander to it like a slave, at the cost of honour and justice,—no.
Rarely had a Roman Emperor found himself placed, by the suspicions of the public, by the mad passions of the people, by the perfidious malevolence of the cabals and coteries, in a more difficult position. The six days that elapsed between the prosecution and the defence must have been thorny days for Tiberius. Inasmuch as a nod from him could weigh down the scales, both parties tried to influence him. Piso and his friends worked to induce him and Livia to make up their minds to intervene openly in the Senate on behalf of outraged innocence. The other side endeavoured to frighten him. They accused Tiberius sotto voce of having favoured Piso unjustly in his speech to the Senate, in which he had already assumed the charge of poisoning to be untrue. They circulated the story of the compromising letter in Piso’s possession which the latter threatened to read in the Senate, if Tiberius did not help him. Meanwhile Agrippina was filling Rome with her lamentations and imprecations, and the public agitation was increasing. Cries were heard on every side that Germanicus must be avenged. Piso’s position was tragic. But Tiberius would not depart from the line of conduct, that of impartiality, which he had marked out for himself—hoping, perhaps, that the trial would furnish him sooner or later with an opportunity of preserving justice without laying himself open to suspicions of too debasing a nature. He allowed Livia, however, to interest herself openly in behalf of Plancina against whom also charges were levelled; and Livia’s intervention might be indirectly of service to Piso, as it made it clear, to those who cared to see, that Germanicus’s own grandmother did not believe in the charge of poisoning.
Piso was an energetic man. Confident in the justice of his case, he reappeared in the Senate when, after the lapse of six days, the sessions again began; and defended himself in a clever, energetic, and resolute speech. He seems to have been especially happy in the way in which he shattered the charge of poisoning. He demanded that his own slaves, and those belonging to Germanicus who had been present at the famous banquet at which it was suggested that he had put poison in the dead man’s wine, should be put to the torture. The speech made a lively impression, and would probably have saved Piso, had not serious disorders broken out in Rome while he was speaking in the Senate. An immense popular demonstration invaded the precincts of the Senate, while he was speaking, howling for his execution, and crying that, if the Senate acquitted him, they had serious thoughts of avenging Germanicus by lynching the judges. A section burst into the Forum, overturned the statues, and made as if to drag them away to the Gemoniæ and to break them in pieces. It was found necessary to send Piso to his house with an escort of soldiers, in order to save him from violence.
What was the origin of these demonstrations? Were they the natural explosion of popular passion, fed by the ready credulity of the masses? Were they stirred up by the enemies of Tiberius and Piso, to impress the hesitating section of the Senate? We shall never know. All that is certain is that, by the evening of the day on which these demonstrations took place, nobody in Rome, least of all the accused, was any longer under the delusion that Piso could be acquitted of the charge, however absurd and unjust it might be. The Senate, weakened by so many internal dissensions and by so many civil wars, was no longer a strong enough assembly to dare resist this mad fury on the part of the masses. By evening, Piso had lost all heart and had already made up his mind to give up the struggle. But his sons gathered round him and put into him fresh courage. Renewed efforts were made to induce Tiberius to oppose his authority to the torrent of calumny and insensate hate. Had Tiberius left room for one glimmer of light? or did Piso’s sons and friends delude themselves and delude him? It is certain that next day Piso again plucked up courage and returned to the Senate, where he continued his defence, parrying and countering fresh attacks, with his eyes ever fixed on Tiberius, the man who more than anyone else was persuaded of his innocence, and from whom a word might be so useful to him. Tiberius, however, did not dare pronounce that word. Surrounded as he was by so many enemies and suspicions, not even he—the lord of the world, as the historians call him—felt himself strong enough to engage in open duel with the public opinion of Rome and the majority in the Senate. So, when he perceived that Tiberius himself could not or would not help him, Piso abandoned the struggle. Returning home that evening, he anticipated his certain conviction by committing suicide during the night.
The public had gained their victim, to comfort them in their grief for the premature loss of Germanicus. The enemies of Piso were, however, not content, and proposed that the name of Piso be erased from the fasti, and that the half of his goods be confiscated; that his son Marcus be imprisoned for ten years, only Plancina, out of regard for Livia, being allowed to go unpunished. But Tiberius judged that the blood of Piso was expiation enough for a crime which nobody had committed; and, since the public had had their bloody satisfaction, he intervened openly, and, by virtue of his authority, prevented the erasure of Piso’s name from the fasti, as well as the confiscation of his goods and the condemnation of his son.
The trial of Piso was one of the most savage of all the judicial dramas in Roman history. The trial of Clodius had been a comedy, that of Verres a tragi-comedy, that of Piso was pure tragedy and terrible tragedy. For it was an episode in the gradual extermination of the old and glorious Roman nobility, which was being brought about by the new social forces which, during the years of peace, had grown up under the shadow of the imperial authority. How sad a spectacle are these trials which from time to time recur in history! The penal law ought to be the sacred instrument of justice, which punishes the wrong-doers, and defends and comforts the good citizens. The world is, however, full of wicked passions; and wicked passions find fertile soil in political parties, social classes, and public opinion—that vague power which has come so much to the fore in the last hundred years. These evil passions, from time to time, seize hold of the instruments of justice, and convert them into instruments of torment and persecution for the torture, the defamation, and the extermination of the innocent, for whom there is no way of escape, no refuge, and no pity.
These trials prove one thing,—a truth which perhaps the modern world, in which the power of public opinion has increased so much, ought always to bear in mind. And that is, that the stronger public opinion is in a state, the more necessary it is for that state to have an unperturbed, independent, enlightened judicature, armed with a vigorous and clear doctrine of justice, backed by a powerful government, which can hold its own against the most violent gusts of public opinion, and execute real justice in the teeth of the crooked malevolence of the masses. Otherwise justice can only too easily degenerate into a kind of tragic farce.