The Empresses of Rome

by Joseph McCabe

But the interference of Livia annoyed Tiberius, and the ten years that follow are full of differences between mother and son. The Emperor’s resentment of his mother’s share in public affairs had begun with his reign. Livia had proposed to erect a statue to the memory of Octavian. Tiberius interfered, and referred her to the Senate for permission. She then proposed to give a commemoratory banquet to the Senators and their wives. Tiberius restricted her to the wives, and entertained the Senators himself. He reduced her escort, frowned on the public honours that were paid to her, and resented her interference in public affairs. On one occasion her friend Urgulania was summoned for debt, and, presuming on her intimacy with the Empress, treated the process with contempt. Livia asked Tiberius to quash the proceedings, and he deliberately lingered so much on his way to the Forum that the case was allowed to proceed.

These are a few of the stories which illustrate the want of harmony between them. For this Livia was largely to blame. It was not unnatural that she, who had been so often and so profitably consulted by Octavian, should expect a larger power under the young Emperor, but she failed to take discreet account of the extreme sensitiveness of Tiberius. If a story given in Suetonius is correct, she so far lost her discretion in one of their quarrels as to produce old letters in which Octavian had made bitter reflections on the defects of Tiberius. The fault was not wholly on her side, however. Tiberius was jealous when he contrasted the honour and respect paid to her with the general feeling of reserve and distrust toward himself, and he pleaded the old-fashioned idea of woman’s sphere as a pretext to restrain her. He grumbled when he one day found her directing the extinction of a fire, as she had done more than once in Octavian’s time, and he was seriously angry when he found that she had placed her name before his on a public inscription.

But we may leave these lesser matters and come to the next tragedy in the Imperial chronicle, the shadow of which darkened Livia’s closing years. She had retired from the palace to the house which she had inherited from her first husband, Tiberius Nero. Here she remained a saddened and helpless spectator of the coming disaster. Tiberius, whom she saw only once more before she died, had become a peevish and gloomy old man. His tall spare frame was bent, his head bald, his face, which had always been disfigured with pimples, now hideous with eczema, or concealed with bandages. His large melancholy eyes so startled people that they believed he could see in the dark. Astrologers and students of the occult gathered about him in the palace he had built on the Palatine, and the way lay open for adventurers.

The two chief aspirants for power were Agrippina, the widow of Germanicus, and Sejanus, Tiberius’s favourite general. Julia’s younger daughter seems to have concentrated in her person all the masculinity of her family. “Implacable,” as Tacitus says, proud, and ambitious, she added to the gloom that was deepening on the Palatine. Merivale calls her the “she-wolf.” It seems probable that she sought marriage with the aged Tiberius in order to secure power for herself or her son. The only son of the Emperor had been poisoned by Sejanus, as we shall see presently, and her son had a plausible title to inherit the purple. The authorities tell us that Tiberius one day found her in tears, and was entreated, when he asked the reason, to find her a husband. She thought it expedient to forget the supposed share of Tiberius in the death of her husband.

Her innocent manœuvres were met, however, by the sinister intrigues of Sejanus, one of the most unscrupulous characters we have yet encountered. Under a cloak of friendliness he was countering her schemes and ruining her house. He had seduced her daughter Livilla, the wife of Tiberius’s son Drusus, and had, with her connivance, poisoned the young prince, and kept the secret from the Emperor for many years. It is said that he then made proposals to Agrippina to unite their ambitions, and, when these were rejected, he determined to destroy her and secure the supreme power for himself. He put his great ability astutely at the service of the Emperor, and once had the good fortune to save his life, by arching his herculean body over Tiberius when the roof of a cave fell on them. It is probable that he inflamed the resentment of Tiberius against his mother, and then used the estrangement to increase the unpopularity of the Emperor. Scurrilous libels on “the ungrateful son” were current in Rome. These are sometimes attributed to writers in the service of Livia, but it would be a natural part of the scheme of Sejanus to spread them. On one occasion a noble lady, Appuleia Varilia, was charged by the Senate with accusing Tiberius and Livia of incest. Tiberius consulted his mother, and declared to the Senate that they wished to treat the libel with contemptuous indifference.

To Sejanus also we must, on the authority of Tacitus, attribute a plot against Agrippina, which other writers assign to Tiberius or to Livia. At a banquet in the palace it was noticed that Agrippina, pale and sullen, passed all the dishes untouched. Tiberius at length invited her to eat a fine apple which he chose. Under the eyes of all she handed it to a servant to throw away, and Tiberius not unnaturally complained of her unjust suspicions. Tacitus, who gives the most credible version of the story, says that the agents of Sejanus had warned her that she was to be poisoned at the banquet, so that she would act in a way that the Emperor would resent.

Tiberius, weary of the violent passions of the capital, now lived chiefly in Campania. It is not improbable that his disfigurement made him sensitive. Rome would not spare the feelings of so unpopular a ruler. It is not at all clear that he shrank from his Imperial duties—Suetonius expressly says that he thought it possible to rule better from the provinces—or that he wished to indulge in the wild debauches which some attribute to him. Probably Sejanus, to secure more power for himself, persuaded him that he could best discharge his duties from a provincial seat.

At this juncture, in the year 29, saddened by the estrangement from her son, by his helpless surrender to an unscrupulous adventurer, and by the increasing degeneration of Rome, Livia died. She had, by sober living—Pliny adds, by the constant chewing of a sweetmeat containing a certain medicinal root, and by the use of Pucinian wine—attained the great age of eighty-six. She had seen her husband dispel the long horrors of civil war, refresh the Empire, and adorn Rome; and she had felt the gloom and chill of a coming tragedy in her later years. Few of the Empresses have been so differently estimated as Livia. Merivale regards her as “a memorable example of successful artifice, having obtained in succession, by craft if not by crime, every object she could desire in the career of female ambition.” He adds: “But she had long survived every genuine attachment she may at any time have inspired, nor has a single voice been raised by posterity to supply the want of honest eulogium in her own day.”[6]

The more concentrated research of the biographer has often to reverse the verdict of the historian, and in this case it must acquit Livia of either craft or vice. It is a singular error to say that Livia had no “honest eulogium” in her own day. The Roman Senate is exposed to the disdain of historians for its obsequiousness to the reigning Emperor, yet, at the death of Livia, it sought to honour her memory in spite of the resentment of Tiberius. The Emperor had refused to go to Rome, either to see her before death or to attend her funeral. He gave to Rome an example of silent indifference. Yet he had to use his authority to prevent the Senate from decreeing divine honours to Livia, building an arch to her memory, and declaring her “mother of her country.” Dio remarks that the Senators were moved to do these things out of sincere gratitude and respect. Few of the less wealthy members of the Senate had not profited by her generosity. Their children had been educated, and their daughters had received dowries, from her purse. Her generosity is recognized by all the authorities. Her humanity is made plain by the contents of this chapter.

The adverse estimate of Livia’s character is chiefly based on the “Annals” of Tacitus, and it has long been recognized that Tacitus drew his account largely from the memoirs of the younger Agrippina, daughter of the woman who hated Livia. Yet Tacitus adds, when he has recorded the death of Livia: “From this moment the government of Tiberius became a sheer oppressive despotism. While Augusta lived one avenue of escape remained open, for the Emperor was habitually deferent toward his mother, and Sejanus dared not thwart her parental authority; but when this curb was removed, there was nothing to check their further career.”[7]