Characters and events of Roman History

by Guglielmo Ferrero

In brief, here was the hope of using against Tiberius at once the maternal pride and affection of Julia, the tenderness of Augustus, and the popularity of the name of Cæsar, which Caius carried. The people had never greatly loved the name of the Claudii, a haughty line of invincible aristocrats, always hard and overbearing with the poor, always opposed to the democratic party. The party against Tiberius hoped that when to a Claudius there should be opposed a Cæsar, the public spirit would revert to the dazzling splendour of the name.

Now we understand why Augustus had at first objected. The privileges that he had caused to be conceded to Marcellus, to Drusus, to Tiberius, were all of less consequence than those demanded for Caius and had all been justified either by urgent needs of State, or services already rendered; but how could it be tolerated that without any reason, without the slightest necessity, there should be made consul a lad of fourteen, of whom it would be difficult to predict even whether he would become a man of common sense? Moreover Augustus could not so easily bring himself to offend Tiberius, who would not admit that the chief of the Republic should help his enemies offer him so great an affront. How could it be, that while he, amid fatigues and perils in cold and savage regions, was fighting the Germans and holding in subjection the European provinces, that jeunesse dorée of good-for-nothings, cynics, idlers, poets, which infested the new generation, was conniving with his wife to set against him a child of fourteen?—to gain, as it were, sanction from a law that the State would not be safe till by the side of this Claudius should be placed a Cæsar, beardless and inexpert, as if the name of the latter outweighed the genius and experience of the former? And Augustus, the head of the Republic, would he have tolerated such an outrage? Tiberius not only resisted the law but exacted the open disapproval of Augustus; in fact, at the beginning, Augustus stood out against it as Tiberius wished; but difficulties grew by the way and became grave.

Julia and her friends knew how to dispose public opinion ably in their own favour, to intrigue in the Senate, to exploit the increasing unpopularity of the social laws, of the spreading aversion to Tiberius and the admiration for other members of Augustus's family. The proposal to make Caius consul became in a short time so popular for one or another of these reasons, and as the symbol of a future government less severe and traditionalistic, that Augustus felt less and less able to withstand the current. On the other hand, to yield meant mortally to offend Tiberius. Finally, as was his wont, this astute politician thought to extricate himself from the difficulty by a transaction and an expedient. Dion, shortly after having said that Augustus finally yielded to the popular will, adds that, to make Caius more modest, he gave Tiberius the tribunician power for five years and charged him with subduing the revolt in Armenia. Augustus's idea is clear: he was trying to please everybody—the partisans of Caius Cæsar by not opposing the law, and Tiberius, by giving the most splendid compensation, making him his colleague in place of Agrippa.

Unfortunately, Tiberius was not the man to accept this compensation. No honour could make up for the insult Augustus had done him, though yielding but in part to his enemies, because by so doing even Augustus had seemed to think it necessary to set him beside a lad of fourteen; he would go away; they might do as they pleased and charge Caius with directing the war in Germany. Indignant at the timid opportunism of Augustus, disgusted with the wife whom he could neither accuse nor repudiate, Tiberius demanded permission of Augustus to retire to Rodi to private life, saying that he was tired and in need of repose. Naturally Augustus was frightened, begged and pleaded with him to remain, sent his mother Livia to beseech him, but every effort was futile; Tiberius was obstinate, and finally, since Augustus did not permit his departure, he threatened to let himself die of hunger. Augustus still tried to stand firm; one day, two days, three days, he let him fast without giving the required consent. At the end of the fourth day, Augustus had to recognise that Tiberius had serious intent to kill himself, and yielded. The Senate granted him permission to depart; and Tiberius at once started for Ostia, "without saying a word," writes Suetonius, "to those who accompanied him, and kissing but a few."

It would be impossible to decide whether this retaliation of Tiberius's self-love was equal to the offence; and perhaps it is useless to discuss the point. It is certain, however, that the consequences of the departure of Tiberius were weighty. The first result was that the party of the young nobility, the party averse to the laws of the year 18, found itself master of the field; perhaps because the opposing party lost with Tiberius its most authoritative leader; perhaps because Augustus, irritated against Tiberius, inclined still more toward the contrary party; perhaps because public opinion judged severely the departure of Tiberius, who, already little admired, became decidedly unpopular. Julia and her friends triumphed, and not content with having conquered, wished to domineer; shortly afterward they obtained the concession of the same privileges as those granted to Caius for his younger brother Lucius. At the same time, Augustus prepared to make Caius and Lucius his two future collaborators in place of Tiberius; Ovid set his hand to a book still more scandalous and subversive than the Amores, the Ars Amandi; public indulgence covered with its protection all those accused on grounds of the laws of the year 18; and finally, the two boys, Caius and Lucius, became popular, like great personages, all over Italy. There have been found in different cities of the peninsula inscriptions in their honour, one of which, very long and curious, is at Pisa; it is full of absurd eulogies of the two lads, who had as yet done nothing, good or bad. Italy must have been tired enough of a too conservative government, which had lasted twenty-five years, of an Empire reconquered by traditional ideas, if, in order to protest, it lionised the two young sons of Agrippa in ways that contradicted every idea and sentiment of Roman tradition.

In conclusion, the departure of Tiberius, and the severe judgment the public gave it, still further weakened the conservative party, already for some years in decline, by a natural transformation of the public spirit. Perhaps the party of tradition would have been entirely spent, had not events soon reminded Rome that its spirit was the life of the military order. The departure of Tiberius, the man who represented this spirit, rapidly disorganised the army and the external policy of Rome. Up to that time Augustus had had beside him a powerful helper—first Agrippa, afterwards Tiberius; but then he found himself alone at the head of the Empire, a man already well on in years; and for the first time it appeared that this zealous bureaucrat, this fastidious administrator, this intellectual idler, who could do an enormous amount of work on condition that he be not forced to issue from his study and encounter currents of air too strong for him, was insufficient to direct alone the politics of an immense empire, which required, in addition to the sagacity of the administrator and the ingenuity of the legislator, the resoluteness of the warrior and the man of action.

The State rapidly fell into a stupor. In Germany, where it was necessary to proceed to the ordering of the province, everything was suspended; the people, apparently subdued, were not bound to pay any tribute, and were left to govern themselves solely and entirely by their own laws—a strange anomaly in the history of the Roman conquests, which only the departure of Tiberius can explain. At such a distance, when he was no longer counselled by Tiberius who so well understood German affairs, Augustus trusted no other assistants, fearing lack of zeal and intelligence; distrusting himself also, he dared initiate nothing in the conquered province. The Senate, inert as usual, gave it not a thought. So Germany remained an uncertainty, neither a province nor independent, for fifteen years, a fact wherein is perhaps to be found the real cause of the catastrophe of Varus, which ruined the whole German policy of Rome.

Furthermore, in Pannonia and Dalmatia, when it was known that the most valiant general of Rome was in disgrace at Rodi, the malcontents took fresh courage, reopened an agitation that could but terminate in a revolt, much more dangerous than any preceding. In the Orient, Palestine arose in 4 B.C., on the death of Herod the Great, against his son, Archelaus, and against the Hellenised monarchy, demanding to be made a Roman province like Syria, and a frightful civil war illumined with its sinister glare the cradle of Jesus. The governor of Syria, Quintilius Varus, threw himself into Judea and succeeded in crushing the revolt; but Augustus, unable to bring himself either to give full satisfaction to the Hebrew people or to execute entirely the testament of Herod, decided as usual on a compromise: he divided the ancient kingdom of Herod the Great among three of his sons, and changed Archelaus's title of king to the more modest one of ethnarch. Then new difficulties arose with the Empire of the Parthians. In short, vaguely, in every part of the Empire and beyond its borders, there began to grow the sense that Rome was again weakening; a sense of doubt due to the decadence of the spirit of tradition and of the party representing it; to the new spirit of the new generation; and finally, to the absence of Tiberius, the one capable general of the time, which gradually disorganised even the western armies, the best in the Empire.

This dissolution of the State naturally fed in the traditionalist party the hope of reconquering. Tiberius had sincere friends and admirers, especially among the nobility, less numerous than those of Julia, but more serious, because his merits were real. Many people among the higher classes—even though, like Augustus, they considered the obduracy of Tiberius excessive—thought that Rome no more possessed so many examples of illustrious men as to be able to retire its best general at thirty-seven. Very soon there arose in the circles about Augustus, in the Senate, in the comitia, a bitter contention between Tiberius's friends and his enemies; this was really a struggle between the traditionalist party, which busied itself conserving, together with the traditions of the old Romanism, the military and political power of Rome, and the party of the young nobility, which, without heeding the external dangers, wished to impel habits, ideas, the public spirit, toward the freer, broader forms of the Oriental civilisation, even at the risk of dissolving the State and the army. Julia and Tiberius personify the two parties; between them stands Augustus, who ought to decide, and is more uncertain than ever. Theoretically Augustus always inclined more toward Tiberius, but from disgust at his departure, from solicitude for domestic peace, from his little sympathy with his step-son, he was driven to the opposite party.

In this duel, what was the behaviour and the part of Livia, the mother of Tiberius? The ancient historians tell us nothing; it is, at all events, hardly probable that Livia remained an inactive witness of the long struggle waged to secure the return of Tiberius and his reinstatement in the brilliant position once his. Moreover, Suetonius says that during his entire stay at Rodi, Tiberius communicated with Augustus by means of Livia. At any rate, the party of Tiberius was not long in understanding that he could not re-enter Rome, as long as Julia was popular and most powerful there; that to reopen the gates of Rome to the husband, it was necessary to drive out the wife. This was a difficult enterprise, because Julia was upheld by the party already dominant; she had the affection of Augustus; she was the mother of Caius and Lucius Cæsar, the two hopes of the Republic, whose popularity covered her with a respect and a sympathy that made her almost invulnerable. Tiberius, instead, was unpopular. However, there is no undertaking impossible to party hate. Exasperated by the growing disfavour of public opinion, the party of Tiberius decided on a desperate expedient to which Tiberius himself would not have dared set hand; that is, since Julia had a paramour, to adopt against her the weapon supplied by the lex Julia de adulteriis, made by her father, and so provoke the terrible scandal that until then every one had avoided in fear.