Tiberius the Tyrant

by John Charles Tarver

The laughter which greets a successful cartoon in Punch, and the prompt recognition which greets a happy allusion to current events, do little to shake a government or to disturb public order, but when the representatives of law and order are held up to ridicule by the unmistakeable gestures of a skilled actor in a large theatre, not only is the effectiveness of ridicule enormously increased, but the conflicting sympathies of the spectators provoke an immediate riot. We have seen that among the business transacted by Tiberius and the Senate in the first year of his reign was the discussion of a proposal to restore to the Prætors the right of beating actors, which had been withdrawn from them by Augustus. The reason for this proposal was an increase of turbulence in the theatres, which had resulted in the deaths of several of the spectators, the murder of some soldiers and a centurion, and even of the commander of a prætorian cohort, who had endeavoured to check the abuse of magistrates from the stage, and the consequent disturbance in the audience. An Italian audience was quick to catch even an undesigned allusion to current events, and allusion by gesture never failed to meet with its response; thus the actors became in a way the mouthpieces of public opinion, and the despotism of the ruling powers was tempered by epigrams in flesh and blood, if not in actual words; parties were formed, distinguished actors were supported by men of rank, not merely from admiration of their professional skill, but because they were in some sense a political power. In the year 23 A.D. Tiberius found himself obliged to draw the attention of the Senate to the continued insolence of the actors, and a decree was passed by which they were banished from Italy. The particular form of dramatic exhibition which called down this severity was that known as the Atellan farce, which had long been used for the purposes of political satire by educated men. It had been originally a performance in the Oscan dialect; then what we should call “topical songs” had been introduced in Latin. There had been a period during which the Atellan plays had been considered eminently respectable, and men of rank had taken part in them without losing dignity; but either the character of the performance had degenerated, or the sentence of expulsion was less general than the words of Tacitus would imply, and was restricted to men whom we should not consider professional actors, and who had adopted this way of expressing their criticisms of the government.

These performances were given both in public and in private houses. The former might well be restrained as leading to riots; the objection to the latter was undoubtedly the open ridicule of the government; for the Atellan farce, which was originally chiefly spoken, had adopted the procedure of the mimics who acted entirely in dumb show, and it is not difficult to imagine the roars of laughter which would greet the appearance of Tiberius himself and other eminent personages upon the private stages of the Roman nobility.

In penalizing actors Tiberius in fact checked the liberty of the press, and destroyed whatever popularity he had hitherto enjoyed. The Romans were passionately devoted to acting, and never forgave the man who discountenanced their favourite amusement. There was no readier road to popularity at Rome than an exhibition of actors or gladiators. Cæsar and Augustus had both encouraged the taste, and in the later Republican days profusion in giving treats of this kind had been a necessary step in the ladder by which political eminence was reached.

The wisdom of Tiberius in thus checking the expression of popular feeling may be open to question, for we are not in a position to judge how far the passions excited by the actors constituted a real danger to public order, but the line which he took with reference to another kind of legislation is indisputably wise.

Sumptuary laws are a well-known weakness of governments. We are by no means rid of them yet, as is testified by the importance of the temperance party in England. The Pagans of Greece and Italy were no less eager than the Christians of the Middle Ages, or the Puritans of the Reformation, to prescribe for men how they should dress, or how they should eat, and the history of the Roman Senate offers many instances of attempts to enforce moderation of living by stringent laws. The Senate of Tiberius had not forgotten its old traditions; in the year 16 A.D. the subject of increasing luxury had been discussed in the Senate, and the Emperor had evaded action by stating that the matter would be attended to when the period of the Censorship came round. Apparently nothing was done, for in the year 22 A.D. the Ædiles drew the attention of the Senate to the continued and indeed increasing expenditure upon silken robes, household plate, and the pleasures of the table; new laws were demanded, and vigour in administering the old laws. Even on the evidence of Tacitus Tiberius himself was moderate in his household expenditure; Suetonius indeed reproaches him with niggardliness in this matter, saying that he would serve up the remainder of a feast at a second day’s entertainment with the observation “that the part had the same qualities as the whole.” His personal example was entirely in the direction of temperate living, and it was from no want of sympathy with the worthy aspirations of the Senate that he refused to legislate in the matter. Tacitus has preserved for us the letter which he addressed to the Senate on the subject; it is a document sufficiently remarkable to be given in full.

“Although, Conscript Fathers, it is perhaps more expedient that on all other occasions I should be asked in your presence my opinion of what is good for the State, and reply in the same way, still on the present occasion it was better that my eyes should be withdrawn, for if you should openly note the faces of anxiety of those who were involved in the charge of infamous luxury, I should myself see them, and as it were catch them in the act. If indeed our energetic Ædiles had taken counsel with me beforehand, I am inclined to think that I should have advised them to abstain from interfering with vices so firmly rooted, so vigorous, rather than make it publicly manifest that we are too weak to contend with these abuses. Well—they have done their duty as I should wish other magistrates also to do theirs; I could neither be silent with honour, nor was it expedient that I should be the first to speak, seeing that I am neither Ædile, nor Prætor, nor Consul. Something more, something higher is demanded of the Prince, and whereas each individual earns the reward of his own good actions, upon the Prince alone is visited the odium incurred by the bad actions of all.

“Now what shall I first try to check and to cut down to the ancient measures? The boundless extent of country estates? The numbers of native and alien slaves? The weight of gold and silver plate? The marvellous bronzes and pictures? The rich materials common to male and female dress? Or again those peculiarly feminine forms of luxury owing to which our money is transferred to foreign and even hostile races for the sake of mere stones? I am perfectly well aware that these are things with which fault is found at dinner parties and social entertainments, and that there is a cry for interference; but when a law is passed, penalties are assigned, and those same guardians of the public virtue will not then fail to clamour that the State is being turned upside down, that any magnificent man is threatened with ruin, that every one is liable to prosecution. And yet it is only by severe remedies that long-standing diseases of the body can be checked, and the fever of the mind at once corrupt and corrupting can only be quenched by remedies no less violent than the lusts with which it burns. All the laws which were discovered by our ancestors, all those that were passed by the sainted Augustus, have added confidence to luxury, the former because they have been forgotten, the latter, which is much worse, because they have been abrogated by contempt. For should a man wish to do a thing which has not yet been forbidden, he would be in fear of a prohibition, but if he transgresses a known prohibition, there is no longer any fear, or any sense of shame. Now why did frugal living at one time prevail? Because every man imposed restraint on himself, because we were then the citizens of a single city; there was not even temptation for us when our dominion was confined to Italy. It was through our foreign victories that we learned to waste the property of others, by our civil wars to waste our own. And what a small thing it is to which our attention is called by the Ædiles! What a trifle if it is compared with our other responsibilities! Yes, nobody bethinks himself that Italy is dependent upon external resources, that the sustenance of the Roman people is exposed every day to the uncertainties of the winds and waves!

“And should the resources of the Provinces fail to come to the rescue of our landowners, and slaves, and farms, our own forests, forsooth, our own estates will protect us! This is the anxiety, Conscript Fathers, which falls upon the shoulders of the Prince, and if he refuses to attend to this, the State will be dragged down to perdition. For those other difficulties a remedy can be found in our own conduct; may a sense of honour improve ourselves, necessity restrain the poor, satiety the rich. Or if any one of the magistrates holds out a prospect of so much industry, such rigour as to be able to contend with these abuses, I both commend him, and admit that I am thereby relieved of part of my burden. But if they are willing enough to demonstrate abuses, and then, when they have obtained the credit of this action, stir animosities, and hand them over to me, believe me, Conscript Fathers, that I too have no taste for unpopularity; tasks involving serious, and generally unjust, unpopularity I will undertake for the good of the State. I rightly protest against being required to incur trivial and useless causes of offence likely to be profitable neither to myself nor to you.”

The language of Tacitus leaves it uncertain as to whether these words are the actual letter of Tiberius, or only an epitome of the real letter; but the sense, if not the form, is clearly the Emperor’s own. In his view of the inefficiency of sumptuary legislation Tiberius was far in advance of his time; no law can in these matters do for the individual what he refuses to do for himself. Indirectly Tiberius reproaches the Senate for their individual complicity in the offences against which legislation was demanded; he also reproaches those zealous magistrates, the Ædiles, whose business it was to look after the markets and repress extravagant expenditure, for their previous neglect of duty; he also points out that there was an abundance of laws to meet the offence, and an equally abundant neglect of those laws. The constitutional position which Tiberius takes up is also noteworthy; it was not for him to anticipate the action of the ordinary magistrates; on the other hand, the greater cares of the Empire are his, and these domestic concerns can be left to those officials whom the constitution provided for the purpose.

Throughout the letter we detect a profound contempt for the Senate, as being a body ever ready to talk, but never ready to act, and we are therefore prepared to believe that there is some truth in the story which tells us that Tiberius seldom left the Senate House without exclaiming, “Men made for slavery!” We also see that Tiberius was sensitive to public opinion, and was not prepared to face unpopularity except with good reason. The implied warning against the folly of passing laws which it is impossible to enforce shows sound statesmanship; the vice of clamouring for fresh laws in order to check offences which have been already provided for by old ones, and of invoking the aid of legislation in matters where good example and sound conduct on the part of individuals are more effective, is a vice which has survived the Roman Senate.