Contrasted with this furious punishment of a political enemy and his adherents is the curious patience of the Senate at a later date in submitting to the excesses of a Caligula or a Nero. Only seven years later Caligula succeeded his great-uncle. He apparently lost his reason soon after he ascended the throne; he persecuted the Senate in every possible way, he confiscated money, he dishonoured nobly born women, he fined and executed, he even poured contempt, for he made his horse Consul, and having sent for the trembling Senators in the middle of the night, had them conducted to a dark room, where they were relieved to find that nothing worse awaited them than the performance of a pas seul by the Emperor. Caligula was eventually assassinated, but not by the Senate, who punished his murderer; they had submitted to his caprices for more than two years. Nero, though sane, was scarcely less extravagant in his treatment of the leading men at Rome, but, as has been before observed, both Caligula and Nero are spoken of with less abhorrence than Tiberius.
It would seem that the Senators paid rather a heavy price for their outbreak, and that a reign of spies and informers actually did set in after the first disturbances, which followed the fall of Sejanus, had been quelled. If Tiberius became suspicious, if he became apprehensive for his personal safety, if he no longer interfered to stop trivial charges and prevent unjust confiscations, if the liberty of allusive libel was cut short, the Senate had given him very good reason for mistrusting them individually and collectively. At the same time the aristocratic party were smarting under a defeat; they had murdered Sejanus and his posterity, and cut off the greater number of his friends, but they had not succeeded in changing the constitution of the Empire, nor had they shaken the power of the Emperor, who mounted guard over them with his cohorts of Prætorians at the gates of Rome. The city itself was more or less under martial law, for the part which the populace had taken in hunting down the adherents of Sejanus had been a vivid reminder of previous disastrous events in the history of the capital. The very insecurity of the succession—for Caligula was barely of age, and not in good health, while the young Tiberius was little more than a child—impelled the aged Emperor to keep a tight hand upon the public order, lest his death, an event probably near at hand, should involve the State in civil war. Of those members of the Imperial family who had known Augustus, Antonia and her son Claudius alone survived; the former had always abstained from interference in politics, and the latter was considered to be disqualified from appearance in any public capacity. Nor had any of the numerous marriages of the daughters and granddaughters of the immediate successors of Augustus brought into the world any man of such striking ability that he seemed worthy to govern.
A strange destiny pursued Tiberius; he could not retire, he could not shake off that servitude which was imposed upon him by the needs of the Roman people. As he had been compelled to return from Rhodes and share the burden of Augustus, so now he was compelled, if not to return from Capreæ, yet to feel that upon him, and upon him alone, still rested the responsibility for preserving the peace of the civilized world.
Meanwhile the diaries were steadily written up; every case of apparent persecution was faithfully recorded. Nor were the obscenities scribbled on the walls or slily hinted at by the popular actors omitted from the record, and of such there was a plentiful supply, for though Tiberius had never been popular, and though his appearance in the streets of Rome had terrified rather than pleased, the commonalty was insulted by his absence. Undisguised contempt for the applause of the multitude stirs a bitterer hatred than active oppression, for so strange are the freaks of vanity that there are a large number of human beings who are happier in being harried and driven than in not attracting notice.
XVIII
The Retirement at Capreæ
The life of a public man at Rome was conducted on lines which must have rendered the transaction even of private business a matter of difficulty, and must have caused serious inconvenience to one upon whom the burden fell of conducting the correspondence of the whole Empire. The Emperor, equally with other men of eminence, was expected to live largely in public; his day began with the dawn, when the crowd of private clients and public courtiers assembled to greet him in the hall of his house; the procession to the Senate House or the Forum followed, when the great man was expected to recognize acquaintances whom he met, and even to submit to being kissed by them, a practice which Tiberius had the courage to forbid in his own case. After the business of the Curia or the Courts was finished, the same solemn procession restored the Emperor to his house. A respite was allowed in the noonday heat; then followed the visits of friends, and the great meal of the day, which might be in itself of the nature of a public function, and an occasion for the informal transaction of business; after a short period of relaxation the secretaries came, and letters were written till late into the night. On the numerous occasions on which there was a public holiday the Emperor was expected to take part in the shows and processions, and a holiday for others was a hard day’s work for the chief of the State. To escape unnecessary inroads upon his time, and to secure for himself a fair portion of leisure, Tiberius decided to live away from Rome, where it seemed to him that his presence was no longer indispensable. The state of his health also suggested retirement. In spite of a somewhat strict self-imposed regimen, Tiberius seems to have suffered from a form of eczema, which disfigured his countenance, and practically made it impossible for him to appear in public. The Romans were particularly sensitive on the subject of their personal appearance, and the Roman mob was by no means considerate of the feelings of those who were afflicted with any deformity. The tall figure of the Emperor was now bowed with age, his once handsome face disfigured with blotches and sores and the unguents used as palliatives of a malady probably aggravated by the pestilential and dusty air of the crowded city. Under these untoward circumstances Tiberius did what any other man would have done who was suffering as he suffered: he looked for some spot healthily situated not far from Rome, close enough to the great lines of communication to enable him to correspond freely with all parts of the world, but sufficiently removed from the beaten track to relieve him of the throng of unwelcome and importunate visitors. After trying various country houses in Campania he fixed upon the island of Capreæ as the ideal residence. Those who have seen the island have no hesitation in commending the Emperor’s taste.
Apart from its inaccessibility and the beauty of its surroundings, Capreæ had this further attraction for Tiberius, that its elevated rocks afforded ideal opportunities for the prosecution of his favourite pursuit, for the Emperor was, as we have seen, an astronomer. It would be rash to affirm that Tiberius in his astronomical research was free from the taint of superstition with which that branch of natural science was at that time infected, and indeed the fact that he is said to have built twelve villas on the island, which he named after the twelve planets, and inhabited at different periods, suggests that he was a believer in the influences of the stars, or possibly had a superstitious faith that places thus dedicated would be more favourable to his observations at different seasons of the year. It is, however, significant of the character of the intellect of Tiberius that he fastened upon the one branch of science which even in those days was tolerably exact, for though the real nature of the movements of the heavenly bodies was unknown to the ancients, their observations were accurate so far as they went; eclipses and occultations could be predicted with a near approach to accuracy, and though the vulgar were still terrified by the temporary disappearances of the sun or moon, to the educated such events were, though mysterious, part of the orderly laws by which the universe seemed to be governed.
Tiberius himself was believed to be an adept in astrology, and stories of his prescience have been handed down, based not improbably upon really successful calculations, by which the future movements of the planets were foretold. One of these stories is palpably absurd. It is said that Tiberius predicted the future reign of Galba by quoting a Greek verse to the effect that he too would have a share of the Empire, but the story is also told of Augustus, and under circumstances which involve no power of prediction, but simply a promise made by a kindly potentate to an attractive child in the presence of his parents.
The companions whom Tiberius took to share his retirement were such men as a man with literary and scientific tastes would naturally select; his old friend and companion Thrasyllus the “mathematician” was one; there were also professors of literature; for the purposes of public business a small staff of Equestrians and freedmen. The few Senators who were invited to attend were private friends, a fact which caused displeasure in high circles at Rome, where it was not understood, or if understood was resented, that one object of the Emperor’s retirement was to avoid the distractions of an official court and the trammels of etiquette.