Tiberius could not have resisted the panic of the Senate on this occasion, even if he had had the opportunity; we shall find magic a couple of years later playing an important part in a more notable prosecution.
Libo was evidently a profligate fool, and not likely to have been implicated in a serious plot; but it is not impertinent to ask where Tacitus got his detailed information; the case is hardly mentioned by other authors. The scene of the suicide is graphic, the authority whom Tacitus uses is clearly in sympathy with Libo. Now Libo was, as we have seen, related to the Julians, and it is at least probable that a version of the story was supplied by a correspondent to Agrippina, who was at the time in Germany, and so became incorporated in the memoirs which she handed down to her daughter, who again used it in the memoirs which Tacitus tells us that he saw.
The two “mathematicians” who were summarily punished suffered different penalties: Pituarius was thrown from the Tarpeian rock, Marcius was proceeded against “in the manner of our forefathers”; the trumpet was sounded, calling the centuries to the Campus Martius, the unhappy man was then bound to a stake, and beaten with rods till he was dead, after which his head was cut off; these privileges he enjoyed as being a Roman citizen infected with a foreign superstition. It is to be hoped that he really was a charlatan, and not a genuine man of science, who paid the common penalty for being in advance of his age.
XV
Germanicus and Piso
The death of Germanicus occupies a larger space in the annals of Tacitus than the actual importance of the event would seem to require. The space given to the transactions in the East by which it was preceded, and the trial of Piso by which it was followed, amounts to nearly a sixth part of the books dealing with the reign of Tiberius; or perhaps it would be more correct to say that the aspects of the premature death of Germanicus, which were really important, receive small attention in comparison with those which were less important.
The death of Germanicus opened the way to the long series of plots which rendered the life of Tiberius intolerable, and eventually overwhelmed him in the disastrous events of the year 30 A.D. When Germanicus started for the East in the year 18 A.D., he was the destined successor of Tiberius, with a possible coadjutor in the person of his first cousin Drusus, the two men being legally brothers by the process of adoption. If Tiberius had any personal preference, he unquestionably inclined to Germanicus, to whom he showed every mark of favour, and whose political training he was now completing by sending him to study the Oriental difficulties of the Empire. Drusus at the same time was promoted to his brother’s former position in the West, the still disturbed provinces on the frontiers of the Rhine and Danube being entrusted to his care. Had both these men lived, there would have been no Sejanus, and probably no Caligula. Tiberius himself would have permanently enjoyed for ever the excellent reputation which he won during the first sixteen years of his reign, but an unkind destiny willed it otherwise.
There was no reason why Tiberius should dislike Germanicus, to whose father, as we have seen, he was attached by an affection remarkable even between brothers, and Germanicus himself had on an occasion, which strongly tested his loyalty, shown that it could stand the test. All the authorities, Paterculus included, speak highly of Germanicus; he was an able general and a lovable man. Drusus was a less attractive character, somewhat rough, severe and passionate, but whatever his weaknesses, he had the merit of being attached to his cousin and nominal elder brother; there is no trace of any jealousy between the two men, and their unity was further cemented by the fact that the sister of Germanicus was the wife of Drusus.
While the three representative men of the Imperial family were thus in harmony, and lived on terms of mutual trust and helpfulness, the case was different with the women. Livia, the widow of Augustus, and Agrippina, the daughter of Julia, were separated by ancient hatreds and fresh causes of offence. If the whole private diary and correspondence of Agrippina had been preserved to us, we should probably be in a position to compare Livia with Madame de Maintenon, as she is exhibited to us in the lively letters of that sturdy little hater, Charlotte Elizabeth, Duchess of Orleans, for the memoirs of Agrippina, filtered through her daughter’s editing, and the mind of a man of letters indicate no want of a proper animosity, no desire to bury old grudges.
Livia did not acquiesce willingly in her diminished glories as dowager; if she had proposed to herself—and there is every reason to suppose that she did so propose—to continue to be the power behind the throne in her son’s reign, as in her husband’s, she was disappointed. While studiously paying every sign of respect to his mother as his mother, and even stretching points in her favour, Tiberius refused to acknowledge her as a politician; such honours as might decorously be paid to the widow of Augustus, such consolations of her affliction as expressions of public sympathy could afford, he readily sanctioned, but he no less resolutely drew the line at the point at which complimentary and consolatory decrees seemed to involve the recognition of a governing Empress Dowager. Few things can have been more distasteful to Livia than the reversion to the Senatorial Constitution attempted by Tiberius. She could no longer inspire “transactions of Cæsar,” to which the Senate was pledged in anticipation, nor was Tiberius inclined to let the foreign policy of Rome slip out of his own hands into that of the Jews and Greeks who enjoyed the confidence of the august lady. A king of Cappadocia, of whom Tiberius disapproved, accepted an invitation from Livia to come to Rome and depend on her influence to win the favour of her son. The result was so disappointing that the aged monarch died of distress of mind; his kingdom was turned into a province. Tiberius would stand no tampering with “native” princes. Nor was Livia allowed to put herself above the laws at Rome. A lady named Urgulania, who was a friend of hers, incurred debts, and was proceeded against in the court of the Prætor Urbanus. She took refuge with Livia, who urged her son to defend the lady’s cause. Tiberius undertook to do so, but by very deliberate walking, and exceptional graciousness to the friends whom he encountered on the way, contrived to arrive too late. Urgulania lost her case, and Livia had to pay her friend’s debt. The Prætor in this case was Lucius Piso. Shortly afterwards this same Urgulania refused to give her evidence in a court of law, and required the officials to take it in her own house, a privilege which belonged to the Vestal virgins. Urgulania was not a Vestal virgin “emerita,” determined to retain the advantages of her previous position with the help of Livia, for we find her later on sending a dagger as a significant hint to a scandalous grandson.