Meanwhile jealousies and recriminations prevailed between Tiberius and his mother Livia as one party, and Agrippina, the widow of Germanicus and granddaughter of Augustus, as the other. Agrippina was living at Rome with her fatherless children, among whom was a third Drusus, a Nero, and a Caius. Caius, under the name of Caligula, was destined to be the next emperor. Sejanus fostered this quarrel for his own ends. He also encouraged the emperor in his deliberate purpose to make his permanent residence in the island of Capri, which Tiberius did soon after. There the luxurious seclusion of the emperor was guarded with the strictest vigilance; but day by day a regular service of couriers brought dispatches to him from the continent and from Rome. His commands, in turn, were transmitted to the capital city.
Not long afterward Livia, the mother of the emperor and the widow of Augustus,—from whose somewhat officious oversight Tiberius had effected his escape by retiring to Capri,—died at the advanced age of eighty-six, having held for seventy years nearly as much influence as any other personage in the Roman court. She had been also called Julia Augusta, on account of her marriage to Augustus and her admission to the Cæsarian family. She had combined ambition with prudence, great ability with virtue and benevolence. At her obsequies Caius, the youngest of the sons of Germanicus, pronounced the eulogy.
In my sketch of the life of Augustus I have described some of the apartments of Livia’s house, with their ancient beautiful frescoes, which are still to be seen among the ruins on the Palatine Hill. Not far from the beginning of the Appian Way the tourist, after nearly nineteen centuries, also visits, with curiosity and wonder, a columbarium, or great burial vault, so called from the niches in the walls resembling those of dovecotes, in which are believed to repose the ashes of Livia’s numerous attendants, slaves and freedmen, said to be more than a thousand in number. This gives some idea of the opulence in which she lived.
It now remained for the unprincipled Sejanus to get rid of Agrippina,—the widow of Germanicus,—and her children, who caused him great uneasiness. By his exaggerated accusations, Tiberius was induced to send word to the Senate that they must arrest and condemn them. In spite of earnest opposition from the people, this was done. Agrippina was sent into exile in the island of Pandataria, now called Ventotienne, where she is said to have starved herself to death in the year A. D. 33,—the year of Christ’s crucifixion. Her son Nero was sent into another island, called Pontia. Another son, Drusus, was thrown into prison at Rome. All of these afterwards came to miserable deaths as the result of their ill treatment. But another son, Caius by name, was fortunate enough to be looked on with more favor by the emperor and to be kept by his side at the imperial resort in the island of Capri.
Sejanus, seeming now to be in full power, was made consul by the emperor, to serve along with himself. But it was not a great while before the tide turned. Tiberius discovered the utter hollowness and treachery of this man, so that in a time when he least expected it Sejanus was summoned before the Senate at Rome, the charges of the emperor against him were read, and he was thrown into the Mamertine prison. Upon others also, besides Sejanus, the wrath of Tiberius fell.
Then, disappointed by those in whom he had trusted, and embittered by his own successes in tyranny, he began to divert himself at Capri with debasing pleasures. He seemed to have thrown off all the restraint of decency and to have given himself up with his boon companions to the wildest orgies of dissipation and vice. His ancient biographers paint these scenes of his life in the darkest colors. He had broken all the fair promises of his earlier days and, instead of a painstaking ruler, had become a self-indulgent, besotted, and vindictive old man. The most charitable view that can be taken of his life at Capri is that his mind had become weakened by his gloomy suspicions, by his absolute authority and by his uncontrollable appetites.
Milton in his “Paradise Regained,” when he represents Satan as tempting Christ with “all the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them,” represents the former as saying:
“All nations now to Rome obedience pay;
To Rome’s great emperor, whose wide domain,
In ample territory, wealth and power,
Civility of manners, acts and arms
And long renown, thou justly may’st prefer
Before the Parthian....
This emperor hath no son and now is old,
Old and lascivious and from Rome retired
To Capreæ, an island small but strong
On the Campanian shore, with purpose there
His horrid lusts in private to enjoy,
Committing to a wicked favorite
All public cares, and yet of him suspicious,
Hated of all and hating. With what ease,
Endued with regal virtues as thou art,
Appearing and beginning noble deeds,
Might’st thou expel this monster from his throne,
Now made a sty, and, in his place ascending,
A victor people free from servile yoke!”
It was certainly a very subtle form of temptation to suggest to a noble mind, the thought of supplanting a monarch who had become so reprobate and vile.