Tiberius the Tyrant

by John Charles Tarver

But while on the one hand a reformed and spiritualized Judaism was tending to become the effective religion of the Empire, the debased Judaism was joining hands with the other demoralizing superstitions of the East. No one who has read the Acts of the Apostles and the Epistles of St. Paul attentively can deny that if there were spiritually-minded Jews like the great Apostle, there were also Jews who practised exorcisms and divination, and who studied “curious books.” We know little of the peculiar tenets of the Chaldæans and the Magians, equally little of the Egyptians, except as worshippers of Isis, but we know that fortune-telling and witchcraft were practised by them, no less than dignified inquiries into the laws of nature, so far as their imperfect means of observation permitted. The dividing line between Thrasyllus the “mathematician,” the friend of Tiberius, and those men whom foolish Libo consulted, would have been difficult to draw, science was not to be clear of superstition for many ages, but there were respectable astrologers, genuine, though perhaps mistaken, searchers after truth, alongside of the disreputable charlatans who interpreted dreams and told fortunes and held sway over the dissolute imaginations of needy profligates by means of conjuring tricks and skilfully organized conspiracies with numerous confederates. Even the purest of Jewish sects—if indeed they can be called a sect—the Essenians, laid stress upon their powers of predicting events by means of the stars.

Polytheism was in fact tolerant so long as an enemy had not declared himself; it was no sooner conscious of an enemy than it persecuted, and the persecution was no less a persecution because it was prompted by mixed motives. There may have been good reason for mistrusting the influence of the diviners upon persons of weak mind, for suspecting them of helping to bring about the accomplishment of their predictions by the use of poisons, and of prompting plots in whose success they had a personal interest; but it was also inevitable that the emergence of a new religious attitude should alarm, and that its professors should be subject to attack. In times of popular excitement the monotheists were persecuted by the enlightened rationalists no less than by the orthodox polytheists, and many motives over and above religious intolerance contributed to sharpen the laws against the Jew and the diviner. Not the least of these was the dread of poison, a very lively terror even in modern times, till the accumulations of chemical and medical knowledge restricted the sphere of operations of mysterious drugs; and there may well have been some foundation for the superstitious dread of secret poisoning by which many of the ancients were affected. Not only was the charlatan ready to magnify his own powers, and to ascribe to his spells and incantations deaths from purely natural causes, but the older civilizations of the East had doubtless preserved many secrets of pharmacy which were skilfully used by adepts to impress the imagination of the vulgar.

At this very day the medicine men and women, the Papaloi and Mamaloi of the Black Republic of Hayti, exert a power above the laws by their knowledge and use of poisons, from which even the educated white man cannot escape. Before we condemn the Roman Senate for its intolerance of magicians and its superstitious dread of their powers, we must place ourselves in their position, limit ourselves to their knowledge; and again we must be modest enough to remember that we still consider it necessary to protect the ignorant dupe from the fortune-teller, that the law is not unfrequently called into action in such cases, and that the clients of the spiritualist and diviner of to-day are to be found in all classes, and not exclusively among the poor and ignorant.

While the Senate thus endeavoured to repress alien worships, it continued to protect the sanctity of its own ritual; vestal virgins were appointed in due form, though with increasing difficulty, as the solemn form of marriage necessary for the proper parentage of a vestal had fallen into disfavour. Considerable interest attached to the case of a Senator named Servius Maluginensis, who had a claim to the Proconsulship of Asia, and wished to evade the restrictions which were imposed on him by the fact that he was Flamen Dialis, sublimest priest of Jupiter. The ancient ritual forbade the Flamen Dialis to leave the city for more than a day and a night in succession, and Servius therefore attempted to prove that the ritual was obsolete, and that exceptions had been allowed. The Senate discussed the case with due solemnity, and then referred it to Tiberius, who in his turn remitted it to the College of Pontiffs. Their decision was against Servius, and the Province of Asia fell to the Senator next on the roll.

A question of even greater importance, partly religious in its character, required the decision of the Senate. Numerous Greek towns, chiefly situated in the islands of the Ægean and along the coasts of Asia Minor, had abused the rights of Sanctuary attached to some of their temples. Not only were the rights of property imperilled by the ready shelter given to runaway slaves, but the concourse of unruly ruffians assembled in these insular Alsatias threatened to disturb the public peace. A sanctuary, if conveniently situated, might easily assume the character of a nest of pirates; the Greek genius for brigandage has always been as remarkable as the Greek gift for preaching morality. An attempt to suppress the sanctuaries led to protests, and deputations from the towns concerned pleaded their cause before the Senate. The arguments used in defence of the sanctuaries are interesting, because they show a sense of continuity of government from the times of Alexander to those of Tiberius. The claims were partly based on mythological grounds, but more effectively on recognitions granted by Alexander, and afterwards by Roman Proconsuls. The maintenance of the sanctuaries was regarded as an honourable distinction, and this aspect of the claims was pressed rather than the material advantages.

The abuse, however, was too alarming to be tolerated. One temple alone, that of Æsculapius at Pergamus, which from other evidence seems to have assumed the character of a school of medicine, retained its privileges; the others were dismissed with honourable compliments, and it was ordered that a copy of the Senatorial decree should be inscribed on brass, and placed in a conspicuous position in the temples concerned. Subsequently other sanctuaries were similarly dealt with. The credit of thus dealing with a serious abuse is ascribed by Suetonius to Tiberius, and it is possible that, though the actual decision was made in the Senate, because the towns involved were in a Senatorial Province, the initiative came from the Emperor himself. If Tiberius was thus severe in correcting a time-honoured abuse, he had been no less liberal in remitting taxation and furnishing relief to numerous cities in the same part of the world, which had suffered severely from an earthquake. In fact, though he was careful to observe the constitutional forms, he kept a watchful eye upon the Senatorial administration, and supplied the necessary stimulation for its corporate conscience.

Reference has already been made to the practice of supplementing the resources of impoverished Senators, and to the severity with which Tiberius treated such cases. The Senate was only too willing to vote public money to provide pensions for its members. Tiberius recognized the obligation, but he insisted that the beneficiary should make out a good case, and be able to demonstrate that his distress was due to misfortune, not to thriftlessness. The case of Hortalus, grandson of Cicero’s rival, Hortensius, affords an illustration both of the severity of Tiberius and of the curiously domestic character of the Senate.

In the year 16 A.D. Hortalus rose in his place in the Senate, having posted his four sons at the door, where they could be seen by all; he then spoke as follows, fixing his eyes alternately on the statue of Hortensius standing among the orators, and that of Augustus:—“It was not by my own will, but at the suggestion of the Prince, that I begot and acknowledged these children, whose number and tender years you behold; and indeed my ancestors had deserved that I should have successors. For I, who owing to the revolutionary times could neither inherit the ancestral property of my house, nor earn money, nor win the affections of the people, nor train myself in eloquence, should have had enough if my poverty had neither shamed nor burdened others. At the command of the Emperor I married a wife. Behold the stock and progeny of all those consuls and dictators. I do not say this to disparage anybody else, but to win your compassion. The offices that you confer, Cæsar, will be at your service while you reign; meanwhile defend the great-grandchildren of Quintus Hortensius, the children fostered by the sainted Augustus, from want.” In spite of the mendacity of this statement—for on the father’s side, at any rate, the family of Hortensius could only claim the credit of two consulships and no dictatorships—the appeal was heard with favour by the Senate, till Tiberius intervened with these words:—“If all the poverty-stricken begin to come here and demand money for their children, the applicants will never be satiated, and the public purse will run dry. And indeed it was certainly never contemplated by our ancestors when they allowed Senators to leave the matter in hand, and move amendments for the public benefit, that we should endeavour to increase our private fortunes in this place in such a manner as to render the Senate and the Princes unpopular, whether they granted or refused the largess. This is not a humble request; it is an impudent demand, unseasonable, and unprecedented, to rise when the Senate are assembled for the discussion of other matters, and do violence to the kindness of the Senate by urging the number and age of one’s children, and to pass on the same violence to me, and as it were break open the treasury, which we shall have to supplement by injustice, if we exhaust it in courting popularity. Money was given to you, Hortalus, by the sainted Augustus, but without previous application, and certainly not on the terms that once given it should be always given. Industry will slacken, indolence will gain strength, if men’s hopes and fears are not to depend on themselves, if all are confidently to look for resources from outside, useless to themselves and a burden to us.” Tiberius was clearly in the right, but the authorities whom Tacitus consulted evidently thought that Hortalus had been hardly used, for the narrative is continued:—“Although these and similar words were listened to with favour by those whose custom it is to praise all that falls from the lips of Princes, honourable and dishonourable alike, the majority received them in silence or with subdued murmurs. And Tiberius perceived this, and after a short silence said that he had given Hortalus his answer. However, if the Senate thought well, he would give each of his children of the male sex two hundred thousand sesterces (about £3,000). The rest expressed their thanks. Hortalus was silent, either from consternation or because he retained something of his ancestral nobility even in his indigence. Nor did Tiberius show him any further compassion, although the family of Hortensius fell into disgraceful poverty.”

The gift made by Tiberius was private and personal; he did not make use of the public money for a purpose of which he had expressed strong disapproval. The incident is chiefly interesting as indicating that, in spite of the rude shocks given to the Senatorial system by Julius Cæsar, the body had recovered its evil tradition of assuming that it was at liberty to use the public purse to meet the private necessities of its members. Hortalus was clearly a well-known spendthrift.

The Senate, in fact, tended to become more and more a high court of justice, in which its members and high officials were tried by their peers, the cases being either political or such private cases as had by long tradition fallen to the Senate as the guardian of the morality of the privileged orders. It was tenacious of its privileges, careless of its wider responsibilities. Tiberius treated it with formal respect, and did his best to make it worthy of its opportunities; if he could have avoided interfering with its administration of its own provinces, he would have done so, but he was not prepared to submit the provincials to misgovernment in order to maintain the prestige of the Senate, and the misgovernment of Proconsuls was by no means a thing of the past. Tiberius, like Augustus, supplied himself with an inner Council of the Senate, and it is possible that on most occasions this inner Council represented the whole body; but he did not restrict himself to Senatorial Counsellors, and we are told that, in dealing with provincial questions, he was always careful to provide himself with the expert evidence of men who knew the localities concerned.