At first he would have it understood, that these satirical verses were drawn forth by the resentment of those who were impatient under the discipline of reformation, rather than that they spoke their real sentiments; and he would frequently say, "Let them hate me, so long as they do but approve my conduct." [358] At length, however, his behaviour showed that he was sensible they were too well founded.
(229) LX. A few days after his arrival at Capri, a fisherman coming up to him unexpectedly, when he was desirous of privacy, and presenting him with a large mullet, he ordered the man's face to be scrubbed with the fish; being terrified at the thought of his having been able to creep upon him from the back of the island, over such rugged and steep rocks. The man, while undergoing the punishment, expressing his joy that he had not likewise offered him a large crab which he had also taken, he ordered his face to be farther lacerated with its claws. He put to death one of the pretorian guards, for having stolen a peacock out of his orchard. In one of his journeys, his litter being obstructed by some bushes, he ordered the officer whose duty it was to ride on and examine the road, a centurion of the first cohorts, to be laid on his face upon the ground, and scourged almost to death.
LXI. Soon afterwards, he abandoned himself to every species of cruelty, never wanting occasions of one kind or another, to serve as a pretext. He first fell upon the friends and acquaintance of his mother, then those of his grandsons, and his daughter-in-law, and lastly those of Sejanus; after whose death he became cruel in the extreme. From this it appeared, that he had not been so much instigated by Sejanus, as supplied with occasions of gratifying his savage temper, when he wanted them. Though in a short memoir which he composed of his own life, he had the effrontery to write, "I have punished Sejanus, because I found him bent upon the destruction of the children of my son Germanicus," one of these he put to death, when he began to suspect Sejanus; and another, after he was taken off. It would be tedious to relate all the numerous instances of his cruelty: suffice it to give a few examples, in their different kinds. Not a day passed without the punishment of some person or other, not excepting holidays, or those appropriated to the worship of the gods. Some were tried even on New-Year's-Day. Of many who were condemned, their wives and children shared the same fate; and for those who were sentenced to death, the relations were forbid to put on mourning. Considerable rewards were voted for the prosecutors, and sometimes for the witnesses also. The information of any person, without exception, was taken; and all offences were capital, even speaking (230) a few words, though without any ill intention. A poet was charged with abusing Agamemnon; and a historian [359], for calling Brutus and Cassius "the last of the Romans." The two authors were immediately called to account, and their writings suppressed; though they had been well received some years before, and read in the hearing of Augustus. Some, who were thrown into prison, were not only denied the solace of study, but debarred from all company and conversation. Many persons, when summoned to trial, stabbed themselves at home, to avoid the distress and ignominy of a public condemnation, which they were certain would ensue. Others took poison in the senate house. The wounds were bound up, and all who had not expired, were carried, half-dead, and panting for life, to prison. Those who were put to death, were thrown down the Gemonian stairs, and then dragged into the Tiber. In one day, twenty were treated in this manner; and amongst them women and boys. Because, according to an ancient custom, it was not lawful to strangle virgins, the young girls were first deflowered by the executioner, and afterwards strangled. Those who were desirous to die, were forced to live. For he thought death so slight a punishment, that upon hearing that Carnulius, one of the accused, who was under prosecution, had killed himself, he exclaimed, "Carnulius has escaped me." In calling over his prisoners, when one of them requested the favour of a speedy death, he replied, "You are not yet restored to favour." A man of consular rank writes in his annals, that at table, where he himself was present with a large company, he was suddenly asked aloud by a dwarf who stood by amongst the buffoons, why Paconius, who was under a prosecution for treason, lived so long. Tiberius immediately reprimanded him for his pertness; but wrote to the senate a few days after, to proceed without delay to the punishment of Paconius.
LXII. Exasperated by information he received respecting the death of his son Drusus, he carried his cruelty still farther. He imagined that he had died of a disease occasioned (231) by his intemperance; but finding that he had been poisoned by the contrivance of his wife Livilla [360] and Sejanus, he spared no one from torture and death. He was so entirely occupied with the examination of this affair, for whole days together, that, upon being informed that the person in whose house he had lodged at Rhodes, and whom he had by a friendly letter invited to Rome, was arrived, he ordered him immediately to be put to the torture, as a party concerned in the enquiry. Upon finding his mistake, he commanded him to be put to death, that he might not publish the injury done him. The place of execution is still shown at Capri, where he ordered those who were condemned to die, after long and exquisite tortures, to be thrown, before his eyes, from a precipice into the sea. There a party of soldiers belonging to the fleet waited for them, and broke their bones with poles and oars, lest they should have any life left in them. Among various kinds of torture invented by him, one was, to induce people to drink a large quantity of wine, and then to tie up their members with harp-strings, thus tormenting them at once by the tightness of the ligature, and the stoppage of their urine. Had not death prevented him, and Thrasyllus, designedly, as some say, prevailed with him to defer some of his cruelties, in hopes of longer life, it is believed that he would have destroyed many more: and not have spared even the rest of his grandchildren: for he was jealous of Caius, and hated Tiberius as having been conceived in adultery. This conjecture is indeed highly probable; for he used often to say, "Happy Priam, who survived all his children!" [361]
LXIII. Amidst these enormities, in how much fear and apprehension, as well as odium and detestation, he lived, is evident from many indications. He forbade the soothsayers to be consulted in private, and without some witnesses being present. He attempted to suppress the oracles in the neighbourhood of the city; but being terrified by the divine authority of the (232) Praenestine Lots [362], he abandoned the design. For though they were sealed up in a box, and carried to home, yet they were not to be found in it, until it was returned to the temple. More than one person of consular rank, appointed governors of provinces, he never ventured to dismiss to their respective destinations, but kept them until several years after, when he nominated their successors, while they still remained present with him. In the meantime, they bore the title of their office; and he frequently gave them orders, which they took care to have executed by their deputies and assistants.
LXIV. He never removed his daughter-in-law, or grandsons [363], after their condemnation, to any place, but in fetters and in a covered litter, with a guard to hinder all who met them on the road, and travellers, from stopping to gaze at them.
LXV. After Sejanus had plotted against him, though he saw that his birth-day was solemnly kept by the public, and divine honours paid to golden images of him in every quarter, yet it was with difficulty at last, and more by artifice than his imperial power, that he accomplished his death. In the first place, to remove him from about his person, under the pretext of doing him honour, he made him his colleague in his fifth consulship; which, although then absent from the city, he took upon him for that purpose, long after his preceding consulship. Then, having flattered him with the hope of an alliance by marriage with one of his own kindred, and the prospect of the tribunitian authority, he suddenly, while Sejanus little expected it, charged him with treason, in an abject and pitiful address to the senate; in which, among other things, he begged them "to send one of the consuls, to conduct himself, a poor solitary old man, with a guard of soldiers, into their presence." Still distrustful, however, and apprehensive of an insurrection, he ordered his grandson, Drusus, whom he still kept in confinement at Rome, to be set at liberty, and if occasion required, to head the troops. He had likewise ships in readiness to transport him to any of the legions to which he might consider it expedient to make his escape. Meanwhile, he was upon the (233) watch, from the summit of a lofty cliff, for the signals which he had ordered to be made if any thing occurred, lest the messengers should be tardy. Even when he had quite foiled the conspiracy of Sejanus, he was still haunted as much as ever with fears and apprehensions, insomuch that he never once stirred out of the Villa Jovis for nine months after.
LXVI. To the extreme anxiety of mind which he now experienced, he had the mortification to find superadded the most poignant reproaches from all quarters. Those who were condemned to die, heaped upon him the most opprobrious language in his presence, or by hand-bills scattered in the senators' seats in the theatre. These produced different effects: sometimes he wished, out of shame, to have all smothered and concealed; at other times he would disregard what was said, and publish it himself. To this accumulation of scandal and open sarcasm, there is to be subjoined a letter from Artabanus, king of the Parthians, in which he upbraids him with his parricides, murders, cowardice, and lewdness, and advises him to satisfy the furious rage of his own people, which he had so justly excited, by putting an end to his life without delay.
LXVII. At last, being quite weary of himself, he acknowledged his extreme misery, in a letter to the senate, which begun thus: "What to write to you, Conscript Fathers, or how to write, or what not to write at this time, may all the gods and goddesses pour upon my head a more terrible vengeance than that under which I feel myself daily sinking, if I can tell." Some are of opinion that he had a foreknowledge of those things, from his skill in the science of divination, and perceived long before what misery and infamy would at last come upon him; and that for this reason, at the beginning of his reign, he had absolutely refused the title of the "Father of his Country," and the proposal of the senate to swear to his acts; lest he should afterwards, to his greater shame, be found unequal to such extraordinary honours. This, indeed, may be justly inferred from the speeches which he made upon both those occasions; as when he says, "I shall ever be the same, and shall never change my conduct, so long as I retain my senses; but to avoid giving a bad precedent to posterity, the senate ought to beware of binding themselves to the acts of (234) any person whatever, who might by some accident or other be induced to alter them." And again: "If ye should at any time entertain a jealousy of my conduct, and my entire affection for you, which heaven prevent by putting a period to my days, rather than I should live to see such an alteration in your opinion of me, the title of Father will add no honour to me, but be a reproach to you, for your rashness in conferring it upon me, or inconstancy in altering your opinion of me."
LXVIII. In person he was large and robust; of a stature somewhat above the common size; broad in the shoulders and chest, and proportionable in the rest of his frame. He used his left hand more readily and with more force than his right; and his joints were so strong, that he could bore a fresh, sound apple through with his finger, and wound the head of a boy, or even a young man, with a fillip. He was of a fair complexion, and wore his hair so long behind, that it covered his neck, which was observed to be a mark of distinction affected by the family. He had a handsome face, but it was often full of pimples. His eyes, which were large, had a wonderful faculty of seeing in the night-time, and in the dark, for a short time only, and immediately after awaking from sleep; but they soon grew dim again. He walked with his neck stiff and upright: generally with a frowning countenance, being for the most part silent: when he spoke to those about him, it was very slowly, and usually accompanied with a slight gesticulation of his fingers. All which, being repulsive habits and signs of arrogance, were remarked by Augustus, who often endeavoured to excuse them to the senate and people, declaring that "they were natural defects, which proceeded from no viciousness of mind." He enjoyed a good state of health, without interruption, almost during the whole period of his rule; though, from the thirtieth year of his age, he treated it himself according to his own discretion, without any medical assistance.
LXIX. In regard to the gods, and matters of religion, he discovered much indifference; being greatly addicted to astrology, and fully persuaded that all things were governed by fate. Yet he was extremely afraid of lightning, and when the sky was in a disturbed state, always wore a laurel crown on his head; because it is supposed that the leaf of that tree is never touched by the lightning.
(235) LXX. He applied himself with great diligence to the liberal arts, both Greek and Latin. In his Latin style, he affected to imitate Messala Corvinus [364], a venerable man, to whom he had paid much respect in his own early years. But he rendered his style obscure by excessive affectation and abstruseness, so that he was thought to speak better extempore, than in a premeditated discourse. He composed likewise a lyric ode, under the title of "A Lamentation upon the death of Lucius Caesar;" and also some Greek poems, in imitation of Euphorion, Rhianus, and Parthenius [365]. These poets he greatly admired, and placed their works and statues in the public libraries, amongst the eminent authors of antiquity. On this account, most of the learned men of the time vied with each other in publishing observations upon them, which they addressed to him. His principal study, however, was the history of the fabulous ages, inquiring even into its trifling details in a ridiculous manner; for he used to try the grammarians, a class of men which, as I have already observed, he much affected, with such questions as these: "Who was Hecuba's mother? What name did Achilles assume among the virgins? What was it that the Sirens used to sing?" And the first day that he entered the senate-house, after the death of Augustus, as if he intended to pay respect at once to his father's memory and to the gods, he made an offering of frankincense and wine, but without any music, in imitation of Minos, upon the death of his son.
LXXI. Though he was ready and conversant with the Greek tongue, yet he did not use it everywhere; but chiefly he avoided it in the senate-house, insomuch that having occasion to employ the word monopolium (monopoly), he first begged pardon for being obliged to adopt a foreign word. And when, in a decree of the senate, the word emblaema (emblem) was read, he proposed to have it changed, and that a Latin word should be substituted in its room; or, if no proper one could be found, to express the thing by circumlocution. A soldier (236) who was examined as a witness upon a trial, in Greek [366], he would not allow to reply, except in Latin.
LXXII. During the whole time of his seclusion at Capri, twice only he made an effort to visit Rome. Once he came in a galley as far as the gardens near the Naumachia, but placed guards along the banks of the Tiber, to keep off all who should offer to come to meet him. The second time he travelled on the Appian Way [367], as far as the seventh mile-stone from the city, but he immediately returned, without entering it, having only taken a view of the walls at a distance. For what reason he did not disembark in his first excursion, is uncertain; but in the last, he was deterred from entering the city by a prodigy. He was in the habit of diverting himself with a snake, and upon going to feed it with his own hand, according to custom, he found it devoured by ants: from which he was advised to beware of the fury of the mob. On this account, returning in all haste to Campania, he fell ill at Astura [368]; but recovering a little, went on to Circeii [369]. And to obviate any suspicion of his being in a bad state of health, he was not only present at the sports in the camp, but encountered, with javelins, a wild boar, which was let loose in the arena. Being immediately seized with a pain in the side, and catching cold upon his over-heating himself in the exercise, he relapsed into a worse condition than he was before. He held out, however, for some time; and sailing as far as Misenum [370], omitted nothing (237) in his usual mode of life, not even in his entertainments, and other gratifications, partly from an ungovernable appetite, and partly to conceal his condition. For Charicles, a physician, having obtained leave of absence, on his rising from table, took his hand to kiss it; upon which Tiberius, supposing he did it to feel his pulse, desired him to stay and resume his place, and continued the entertainment longer than usual. Nor did he omit his usual custom of taking his station in the centre of the apartment, a lictor standing by him, while he took leave of each of the party by name.
LXXIII. Meanwhile, finding, upon looking over the acts of the senate, "that some person under prosecution had been discharged, without being brought to a hearing," for he had only written cursorily that they had been denounced by an informer; he complained in a great rage that he was treated with contempt, and resolved at all hazards to return to Capri; not daring to attempt any thing until he found himself in a place of security. But being detained by storms, and the increasing violence of his disorder, he died shortly afterwards, at a villa formerly belonging to Lucullus, in the seventy-eighth year of his age [371], and the twenty-third of his reign, upon the seventeenth of the calends of April (16th March), in the consulship of Cneius Acerronius Proculus and Caius Pontius Niger. Some think that a slow-consuming poison was given him by Caius [372]. Others say that during the interval of the intermittent fever with which he happened to be seized, upon asking for food, it was denied him. Others report, that he was stifled by a pillow thrown upon him [373], when, on his recovering from a swoon, he called for his ring, which had been taken from him in the fit. Seneca writes, "That finding himself dying, he took his signet ring off his finger, and held it a while, as if he would deliver it to somebody; but put it again upon his finger, and lay for some time, with his left hand clenched, and without stirring; when suddenly summoning his attendants, (238) and no one answering the call, he rose; but his strength failing him, he fell down at a short distance from his bed."
LXXIV. Upon his last birth-day, he had brought a full-sized statue of the Timenian Apollo from Syracuse, a work of exquisite art, intending to place it in the library of the new temple [374]; but he dreamt that the god appeared to him in the night, and assured him "that his statue could not be erected by him." A few days before he died, the Pharos at Capri was thrown down by an earthquake. And at Misenum, some embers and live coals, which were brought in to warm his apartment, went out, and after being quite cold, burst out into a flame again towards evening, and continued burning very brightly for several hours.
LXXV. The people were so much elated at his death, that when they first heard the news, they ran up and down the city, some crying out, "Away with Tiberius to the Tiber;" others exclaiming, "May the earth, the common mother of mankind, and the infernal gods, allow him no abode in death, but amongst the wicked." Others threatened his body with the hook and the Gemonian stairs, their indignation at his former cruelty being increased by a recent atrocity. It had been provided by an act of the senate, that the execution of condemned criminals should always be deferred until the tenth day after the sentence. Now this fell on the very day when the news of Tiberius's death arrived, and in consequence of which the unhappy men implored a reprieve, for mercy's sake; but, as Caius had not yet arrived, and there was no one else to whom application could be made on their behalf, their guards, apprehensive of violating the law, strangled them, and threw them down the Gemonian stairs. This roused the people to a still greater abhorrence of the tyrant's memory, since his cruelty continued in use even after he was dead. As soon as his corpse was begun to be moved from Misenum, many cried out for its being carried to Atella [375], and being half burnt there (239) in the amphitheatre. It was, however, brought to Rome, and burnt with the usual ceremony.
LXXVI. He had made about two years before, duplicates of his will, one written by his own hand, and the other by that of one of his freedmen; and both were witnessed by some persons of very mean rank. He appointed his two grandsons, Caius by Germanicus, and Tiberius by Drusus, joint heirs to his estate; and upon the death of one of them, the other was to inherit the whole. He gave likewise many legacies; amongst which were bequests to the Vestal Virgins, to all the soldiers, and each one of the people of Rome, and to the magistrates of the several quarters of the city.
* * * * * *
At the death of Augustus, there had elapsed so long a period from the overthrow of the republic by Julius Caesar, that few were now living who had been born under the ancient constitution of the Romans; and the mild and prosperous administration of Augustus, during forty-four years, had by this time reconciled the minds of the people to a despotic government. Tiberius, the adopted son of the former sovereign, was of mature age; and though he had hitherto lived, for the most part, abstracted from any concern with public affairs, yet, having been brought up in the family of Augustus, he was acquainted with his method of government, which, there was reason to expect, he would render the model of his own. Livia, too, his mother, and the relict of the late emperor, was still living, a woman venerable by years, who had long been familiar with the councils of Augustus, and from her high rank, as well as uncommon affability, possessed an extensive influence amongst all classes of the people.
Such were the circumstances in favour of Tiberius's succession at the demise of Augustus; but there were others of a tendency disadvantageous to his views. His temper was haughty and reserved: Augustus had often apologised for the ungraciousness of his manners. He was disobedient to his mother; and though he had not openly discovered any propensity to vice, he enjoyed none of those qualities which usually conciliate popularity. To these considerations it is to be added, that Postumus Agrippa, the grandson of Augustus by Julia, was living; and if consanguinity was to be the rule of succession, his right was indisputably preferable to that of an adopted son. Augustus had sent this youth into exile a few years before; but, towards the close (240) of his life, had expressed a design of recalling him, with the view, as was supposed, of appointing him his successor. The father of young Agrippa had been greatly beloved by the Romans; and the fate of his mother, Julia, though she was notorious for her profligacy, had ever been regarded by them with peculiar sympathy and tenderness. Many, therefore, attached to the son the partiality entertained for his parents; which was increased not only by a strong suspicion, but a general surmise, that his elder brothers, Caius and Lucius, had been violently taken off, to make way for the succession of Tiberius. That an obstruction was apprehended to Tiberius's succession from this quarter, is put beyond all doubt, when we find that the death of Augustus was industriously kept secret, until young Agrippa should be removed; who, it is generally agreed, was dispatched by an order from Livia and Tiberius conjointly, or at least from the former. Though, by this act, there remained no rival to Tiberius, yet the consciousness of his own want of pretensions to the Roman throne, seems to have still rendered him distrustful of the succession; and that he should have quietly obtained it, without the voice of the people, the real inclination of the senate, or the support of the army, can be imputed only to the influence of his mother, and his own dissimulation. Ardently solicitous to attain the object, yet affecting a total indifference; artfully prompting the senate to give him the charge of the government, at the time that he intimated an invincible reluctance to accept it; his absolutely declining it in perpetuity, but fixing no time for an abdication; his deceitful insinuation of bodily infirmities, with hints likewise of approaching old age, that he might allay in the senate all apprehensions of any great duration of his power, and repress in his adopted son, Germanicus, the emotions of ambition to displace him; form altogether a scene of the most insidious policy, inconsistency, and dissimulation.
In this period died, in the eighty-sixth year of her age, Livia Drusilla, mother of the emperor, and the relict of Augustus, whom she survived fifteen years. She was the daughter of L. Drusus Calidianus and married Tiberius Claudius Nero, by whom she had two sons, Tiberius and Drusus. The conduct of this lady seems to justify the remark of Caligula, that "she was an Ulysses in a woman's dress." Octavius first saw her as she fled from the danger which threatened her husband, who had espoused the cause of Antony; and though she was then pregnant, he resolved to marry her; whether with her own inclination or not, is left by Tacitus undetermined. To pave the way for this union, he divorced his wife Scribonia, and with the approbation of the Augurs, which he could have no difficulty in obtaining, celebrated (241) his nuptials with Livia. There ensued from this marriage no issue, though much desired by both parties; but Livia retained, without interruption, an unbounded ascendancy over the emperor, whose confidence she abused, while the uxorious husband little suspected that he was cherishing in his bosom a viper who was to prove the destruction of his house. She appears to have entertained a predominant ambition of giving an heir to the Roman empire; and since it could not be done by any fruit of her marriage with Augustus, she resolved on accomplishing that end in the person of Tiberius, the eldest son by her former husband. The plan which she devised for this purpose, was to exterminate all the male offspring of Augustus by his daughter Julia, who was married to Agrippa; a stratagem which, when executed, would procure for Tiberius, through the means of adoption, the eventual succession to the empire. The cool yet sanguinary policy, and the patient perseverance of resolution, with which she prosecuted her design, have seldom been equalled. While the sons of Julia were yet young, and while there was still a possibility that she herself might have issue by Augustus, she suspended her project, in the hope, perhaps, that accident or disease might operate in its favour; but when the natural term of her constitution had put a period to her hopes of progeny, and when the grandsons of the emperor were risen to the years of manhood, and had been adopted by him, she began to carry into execution what she long had meditated. The first object devoted to destruction was C. Caesar Agrippa, the eldest of Augustus's grandsons. This promising youth was sent to Armenia, upon an expedition against the Persians; and Lollius, who had been his governor, either accompanied him thither from Rome, or met him in the East, where he had obtained some appointment. From the hand of this traitor, perhaps under the pretext of exercising the authority of a preceptor, but in reality instigated by Livia, the young prince received a fatal blow, of which he died some time after.
The manner of Caius's death seems to have been carefully kept from the knowledge of Augustus, who promoted Lollius to the consulship, and made him governor of a province; but, by his rapacity in this station, he afterwards incurred the emperor's displeasure. The true character of this person had escaped the keen discernment of Horace, as well as the sagacity of the emperor; for in two epistles addressed to Lollius, he mentions him as great and accomplished in the superlative degree; maxime Lolli, liberrime Lolli; so imposing had been the manners and address of this deceitful courtier.
Lucius, the second son of Julia, was banished into Campania, (242) for using, as it is said, so litious language against his grandfather. In the seventh year of his exile Augustus proposed to recall him; but Livia and Tiberius, dreading the consequences of his being restored to the emperor's favour, put in practice the expedient of having him immediately assassinated. Postumus Agrippa, the third son, incurred the displeasure of his grandfather in the same way as Lucius, and was confined at Surrentum, where he remained a prisoner until he was put to death by the order either of Livia alone, or in conjunction with Tiberius, as was before observed.
Such was the catastrophe, through the means of Livia, of all the grandsons of Augustus; and reason justifies the inference, that she who scruple not to lay violent hands upon those young men, had formerly practised every artifice that could operate towards rendering them obnoxious to the emperor. We may even ascribe to her dark intrigues the dissolute conduct of Julia for the woman who could secretly act as procuress to her own husband, would feel little restraint upon her mind against corrupting his daughter, when such an effect might contribute to answer the purpose which she had in view. But in the ingratitude of Tiberius, however undutiful and reprehensible in a son towards a parent, she at last experienced a just retribution for the crimes in which she had trained him to procure the succession to the empire. To the disgrace of her sex, she introduced amongst the Romans the horrible practice of domestic murder, little known before the times when the thirst or intoxication of unlimited power had vitiated the social affections; and she transmitted to succeeding ages a pernicious example, by which immoderate ambition might be gratified, at the expense of every moral obligation, as well as of humanity.
One of the first victims in the sanguinary reign of the present emperor, was Germanicus, the son of Drusus, Tiberius's own brother, and who had been adopted by his uncle himself. Under any sovereign, of a temper different from that of Tiberius, this amiable and meritorious prince would have been held in the highest esteem. At the death of his grandfather Augustus, he was employed in a war in Germany, where he greatly distinguished himself by his military achievements; and as soon as intelligence of that event arrived, the soldiers, by whom he was extremely beloved, unanimously saluted him emperor. Refusing, however, to accept this mark of their partiality, he persevered in allegiance to the government of his uncle, and prosecuted the war with success. Upon the conclusion of this expedition, he was sent, with the title of emperor in the East, to repress the seditions of the Armenians, in which he was equally successful. But the (243) fame which he acquired, served only to render him an object of jealousy to Tiberius, by whose order he was secretly poisoned at Daphne, near Antioch, in the thirty-fourth year of his age. The news of Germanicus's death was received at Rome with universal lamentation; and all ranks of the people entertained an opinion, that, had he survived Tiberius, he would have restored the freedom of the republic. The love and gratitude of the Romans decreed many honours to his memory. It was ordered, that his name should be sung in a solemn procession of the Salii; that crowns of oak, in allusion to his victories, should be placed upon curule chairs in the hall pertaining to the priests of Augustus; and that an effigy of him in ivory should be drawn upon a chariot, preceding the ceremonies of the Circensian games. Triumphal arches were erected, one at Rome, another on the banks of the Rhine, and a third upon Mount Amanus in Syria, with inscriptions of his achievements, and that he died for his services to the republic. [376]
His obsequies were celebrated, not with the display of images and funeral pomp, but with the recital of his praises and the virtues which rendered him illustrious. From a resemblance in his personal accomplishments, his age, the manner of his death, and the vicinity of Daphne to Babylon, many compared his fate to that of Alexander the Great. He was celebrated for humanity and benevolence, as well as military talents, and amidst the toils of war, found leisure to cultivate the arts of literary genius. He composed two comedies in Greek, some epigrams, and a translation of Aratus into Latin verse. He married Agrippina, the daughter of M. Agrippa, by whom he had nine children. This lady, who had accompanied her husband into the east, carried his ashes to Italy, and accused his murderer, Piso; who, unable to bear up against the public odium incurred by that transaction, laid violent hands upon himself. Agrippina was now nearly in the same predicament with regard to Tiberius, that Ovid had formerly been in respect of Augustus. He was sensible, that when she accused Piso, she was not ignorant of the person by whom the perpetrator of the murder had been instigated; and her presence, therefore, seeming continually to reproach him with his guilt, he resolved to rid himself of a person become so obnoxious to his sight, and banished her to the island of Pandataria, where she died some time afterwards of famine.
But it was not sufficient to gratify this sanguinary tyrant, that he had, without any cause, cut off both Germanicus and his wife Agrippina: the distinguished merits and popularity of that prince were yet to be revenged upon his children; and accordingly he (244) set himself to invent a pretext for their destruction. After endeavouring in vain, by various artifices, to provoke the resentment of Nero and Drusus against him, he had recourse to false accusation, and not only charged them with seditious designs, to which their tender years were ill adapted, but with vices of a nature the most scandalous. By a sentence of the senate, which manifested the extreme servility of that assembly, he procured them both to be declared open enemies to their country. Nero he banished to the island of Pontia, where, like his unfortunate mother, he miserably perished by famine; and Drusus was doomed to the same fate, in the lower part of the Palatium, after suffering for nine days the violence of hunger, and having, as is related, devoured part of his bed. The remaining son, Caius, on account of his vicious disposition, he resolved to appoint his successor on the throne, that, after his own death, a comparison might be made in favour of his memory, when the Romans should be governed by a sovereign yet more vicious and more tyrannical, if possible, than himself.
Sejanus, the minister in the present reign, imitated with success, for some time, the hypocrisy of his master; and, had his ambitious temper, impatient of attaining its object, allowed him to wear the mask for a longer period, he might have gained the imperial diadem; in the pursuit of which he was overtaken by that fate which he merited still more by his cruelties than his perfidy to Tiberius. This man was a native of Volsinium in Tuscany, and the son of a Roman knight. He had first insinuated himself into the favour of Caius Caesar, the grandson of Augustus, after whose death he courted the friendship of Tiberius, and obtained in a short time his entire confidence, which he improved to the best advantage. The object which he next pursued, was to gain the attachment of the senate, and the officers of the army; besides whom, with a new kind of policy, he endeavoured to secure in his interest every lady of distinguished connections, by giving secretly to each of them a promise of marriage, as soon as he should arrive at the sovereignty. The chief obstacles in his way were the sons and grandsons of Tiberius; and these he soon sacrificed to his ambition, under various pretences. Drusus, the eldest of this progeny, having in a fit of passion struck the favourite, was destined by him to destruction. For this purpose, he had the presumption to seduce Livia, the wife of Drusus, to whom she had borne several children; and she consented to marry her adulterer upon the death of her husband, who was soon after poisoned, through the means of an eunuch named Lygdus, by order of her and Sejanus.
Drusus was the son of Tiberius by Vipsania, one of Agrippa's (245) daughters. He displayed great intrepidity during the war in the provinces of Illyricum and Pannonia, but appears to have been dissolute in his morals. Horace is said to have written the Ode in praise of Drusus at the desire of Augustus; and while the poet celebrates the military courage of the prince, he insinuates indirectly a salutary admonition to the cultivation of the civil virtues:
Doctrina sed vim promovet insitam,Rectique cultus pectora roborant:Utcunque defecere mores,Dedecorant bene nata culpae.—Ode iv. 4.
Yet sage instructions to refine the soulAnd raise the genius, wondrous aid impart,Conveying inward, as they purely roll,Strength to the mind and vigour to the heart:When morals fail, the stains of vice disgraceThe fairest honours of the noblest race.—Francis.
Upon the death of Drusus, Sejanus openly avowed a desire of marrying the widowed princess; but Tiberius opposing this measure, and at the same time recommending Germanicus to the senate as his successor in the empire, the mind of Sejanus was more than ever inflamed by the united, and now furious, passions of love and ambition. He therefore urged his demand with increased importunity; but the emperor still refusing his consent, and things being not yet ripe for an immediate revolt, Sejanus thought nothing so favourable for the prosecution of his designs as the absence of Tiberius from the capital. With this view, under the pretence of relieving his master from the cares of government, he persuaded him to retire to a distance from Rome. The emperor, indolent and luxurious, approved of the proposal, and retired into Campania, leaving to his ambitious minister the whole direction of the empire. Had Sejanus now been governed by common prudence and moderation, he might have attained to the accomplishment of all his wishes; but a natural impetuosity of temper, and the intoxication of power, precipitated him into measures which soon effected his destruction. As if entirely emancipated from the control of a master, he publicly declared himself sovereign of the Roman empire, and that Tiberius, who had by this time retired to Capri, was only the dependent prince of that tributary island. He even went so far in degrading the emperor, as to have him introduced in a ridiculous light upon the stage. Advice of Sejanus's proceedings was soon carried to the emperor at Capri; his indignation was immediately excited; and with a confidence founded upon an authority exercised for several years, he sent orders for accusing Sejanus (246) before the senate. This mandate no sooner arrived, than the audacious minister was deserted by his adherents; he was in a short time after seized without resistance, and strangled in prison the same day.
Human nature recoils with horror at the cruelties of this execrable tyrant, who, having first imbrued his hands in the blood of his own relations, proceeded to exercise them upon the public with indiscriminate fury. Neither age nor sex afforded any exemption from his insatiable thirst for blood. Innocent children were condemned to death, and butchered in the presence of their parents; virgins, without any imputed guilt, were sacrificed to a similar destiny; but there being an ancient custom of not strangling females in that situation, they were first deflowered by the executioner, and afterwards strangled, as if an atrocious addition to cruelty could sanction the exercise of it. Fathers were constrained by violence to witness the death of their own children; and even the tears of a mother, at the execution of her child, were punished as a capital offence. Some extraordinary calamities, occasioned by accident, added to the horrors of the reign. A great number of houses on Mount Caelius were destroyed by fire; and by the fall of a temporary building at Fidenae, erected for the purpose of exhibiting public shows, about twenty thousand persons were either greatly hurt, or crushed to death in the rains.
By another fire which afterwards broke out, a part of the Circus was destroyed, with the numerous buildings on Mount Aventine. The only act of munificence displayed by Tiberius during his reign, was upon the occasion of those fires, when, to qualify the severity of his government, he indemnified the most considerable sufferers for the loss they had sustained.
Through the whole of his life, Tiberius seems to have conducted himself with a uniform repugnance to nature. Affable on a few occasions, but in general averse to society, he indulged, from his earliest years, a moroseness of disposition, which counterfeited the appearance of austere virtue; and in the decline of life, when it is common to reform from juvenile indiscretions, he launched forth into excesses, of a kind the most unnatural and most detestable. Considering the vicious passions which had ever brooded in his heart, it may seem surprising that he restrained himself within the bounds of decency during so many years after his accession; but though utterly destitute of reverence or affection for his mother, he still felt, during her life, a filial awe upon his mind: and after her death, he was actuated by a slavish fear of Sejanus, until at last political necessity absolved him likewise from this restraint. These checks being both removed, (247) he rioted without any control, either from sentiment or authority.
Pliny relates, that the art of making glass malleable was actually discovered under the reign of Tiberius, and that the shop and tools of the artist were destroyed, lest, by the establishment of this invention, gold and silver should lose their value. Dion adds, that the author of the discovery was put to death.
The gloom which darkened the Roman capital during this melancholy period, shed a baleful influence on the progress of science throughout the empire, and literature languished during the present reign, in the same proportion as it had flourished in the preceding. It is doubtful whether such a change might not have happened in some degree, even had the government of Tiberius been equally mild with that of his predecessor. The prodigious fame of the writers of the Augustan age, by repressing emulation, tended to a general diminution of the efforts of genius for some time; while the banishment of Ovid, it is probable, and the capital punishment of a subsequent poet, for censuring the character of Agamemnon, operated towards the farther discouragement of poetical exertions. There now existed no circumstance to counterbalance these disadvantages. Genius no longer found a patron either in the emperor or his minister; and the gates of the palace were shut against all who cultivated the elegant pursuits of the Muses. Panders, catamites, assassins, wretches stained with every crime, were the constant attendants, as the only fit companions, of the tyrant who now occupied the throne. We are informed, however, that even this emperor had a taste for the liberal arts, and that he composed a lyric poem upon the death of Lucius Caesar, with some Greek poems in imitation of Euphorion, Rhianus, and Parthenius. But none of these has been transmitted to posterity: and if we should form an opinion of them upon the principle of Catullus, that to be a good poet one ought to be a good man, there is little reason to regret that they have perished.
We meet with no poetical production in this reign; and of prose writers the number is inconsiderable, as will appear from the following account of them.——
VELLEIUS PATERCULUS was born of an equestrian family in Campania, and served as a military tribune under Tiberius, in his expeditions in Gaul and Germany. He composed an Epitome of the History of Greece and Rome, with that of other nations of remote antiquity: but of this work there only remain fragments of the history of Greece and Rome, from the conquest of Perseus to the seventeenth year of the reign of Tiberius. It is written in two books, addressed to Marcus Vinicius, who had (248) the office of consul. Rapid in the narrative, and concise as well as elegant in style, this production exhibits a pleasing epitome of ancient transactions, enlivened occasionally with anecdotes, and an expressive description of characters. In treating of the family of Augustus, Paterculus is justly liable to the imputation of partiality, which he incurs still more in the latter period of his history, by the praise which is lavished on Tiberius and his minister Sejanus. He intimates a design of giving a more full account of the civil war which followed the death of Julius Caesar; but this, if he ever accomplished it, has not been transmitted to posterity. Candid, but decided in his judgment of motives and actions, if we except his invectives against Pompey, he shows little propensity to censure; but in awarding praise, he is not equally parsimonious, and, on some occasions, risks the imputation of hyperbole. The grace, however, and the apparent sincerity with which it is bestowed, reconcile us to the compliment. This author concludes his history with a prayer for the prosperity of the Roman empire.——
VALERIUS MAXIMUS was descended of a Patrician family; but we learn nothing more concerning him, than that for some time he followed a military life under Sextus Pompey. He afterwards betook himself to writing, and has left an account, in nine books, of the memorable apophthegms and actions of eminent persons; first of the Romans, and afterwards of foreign nations. The subjects are of various kinds, political, moral, and natural, ranged into distinct classes. His transitions from one subject to another are often performed with gracefulness; and where he offers any remarks, they generally show the author to be a man of judgment and observation. Valerius Maximus is chargeable with no affectation of style, but is sometimes deficient in that purity of language which might be expected in the age of Tiberius, to whom the work is addressed. What inducement the author had to this dedication, we know not; but as it is evident from a passage in the ninth book, that the compliment was paid after the death of Sejanus, and consequently in the most shameful period of Tiberius's reign, we cannot entertain any high opinion of the independent spirit of Valerius Maximus, who could submit to flatter a tyrant, in the zenith of infamy and detestation. But we cannot ascribe the cause to any delicate artifice, of conveying to Tiberius, indirectly, an admonition to reform his conduct. Such an expedient would have only provoked the severest resentment from his jealousy.——
PHAEDRUS was a native of Thrace, and was brought to Rome as a slave. He had the good fortune to come into the service of Augustus, where, improving his talents by reading, he obtained (249) the favour of the emperor, and was made one of his freedmen. In the reign of Tiberius, he translated into Iambic verse the Fables of Aesop. They are divided into five books, and are not less conspicuous for precision and simplicity of thought, than for purity and elegance of style; conveying moral sentiments with unaffected ease and impressive energy. Phaedrus underwent, for some time, a persecution from Sejanus, who, conscious of his own delinquency, suspected that he was obliquely satirised in the commendations bestowed on virtue by the poet. The work of Phaedrus is one of the latest which have been brought to light since the revival of learning. It remained in obscurity until two hundred years ago, when it was discovered in a library at Rheims.——
HYGINUS is said to have been a native of Alexandria, or, according to others, a Spaniard. He was, like Phaedrus, a freedman of Augustus; but, though industrious, he seems not to have improved himself so much as his companion, in the art of composition. He wrote, however, a mythological history, under the title of Fables, a work called Poeticon Astronomicon, with a treatise on agriculture, commentaries on Virgil, the lives of eminent men, and some other productions now lost. His remaining works are much mutilated, and, if genuine, afford an unfavourable specimen of his elegance and correctness as a writer.
CELSUS was a physician in the time of Tiberius, and has written eight books, De Medicina, in which he has collected and digested into order all that is valuable on the subject, in the Greek and Roman authors. The professors of Medicine were at that time divided into three sects, viz., the Dogmatists, Empirics, and Methodists; the first of whom deviated less than the others from the plan of Hippocrates; but they were in general irreconcilable to each other, in respect both of their opinions and practice. Celsus, with great judgment, has occasionally adopted particular doctrines from each of them; and whatever he admits into his system, he not only establishes by the most rational observations, but confirms by its practical utility. In justness of remark, in force of argument, in precision and perspicuity, as well as in elegance of expression, he deservedly occupies the most distinguished rank amongst the medical writers of antiquity. It appears that Celsus likewise wrote on agriculture, rhetoric, and military affairs; but of those several treatises no fragments now remain.
To the writers of this reign we must add APICIUS COELIUS, who has left a book De Re Coquinaria [of Cookery]. There were three Romans of the name of Apicius, all remarkable for their (250) gluttony. The first lived in the time of the Republic, the last in that of Trajan, and the intermediate Apicius under the emperors Augustus and Tiberius. This man, as Seneca informs us, wasted on luxurious living, sexcenties sestertium, a sum equal to 484,375 pounds sterling. Upon examining the state of his affairs, he found that there remained no more of his estate than centies sestertium, 80,729l. 3s. 4d., which seeming to him too small to live upon, he ended his days by poison.
[284] Intramural interments were prohibited at Rome by the laws of the Twelve Tables, notwithstanding the practice of reducing to ashes the bodies of the dead. It was only by special privilege that individuals who had deserved well of the state, and certain distinguished families were permitted to have tombs within the city.
[285] Among the Romans, all the descendants from one common stock were called Gentiles, being of the same race or kindred, however remote. The Gens, as they termed this general relation or clanship, was subdivided into families, in Familias vel Stirpes; and those of the same family were called Agnati. Relations by the father's side were also called Agnati, to distinguish them from Cognati, relations only by the mother's side. An Agnatus might also be called Cognatus, but not the contrary.
To mark the different gentes and familiae, and to distinguish the individuals of the same family, the Romans had commonly three names, the Praenomen, Nomen, and Cognomen. The praenomen was put first, and marked the individual. It was usually written with one letter; as A. for Aulus; C. Caius; D. Decimus: sometimes with two letters; as Ap. for Appius; Cn. Cneius; and sometimes with three; as Mam. for Mamercus.
The Nomen was put after the Praenomen, and marked the gens. It commonly ended in ius; as Julius, Tullius, Cornelius. The Cognomen was put last, and marked the familia; as Cicero, Caesar, etc.
Some gentes appear to have had no surname, as the Marian; and gens and familia seem sometimes to be put one for the other; as the Fabia gens, or Fabia familia.
Sometimes there was a fourth name, properly called the Agnomen, but sometimes likewise Cognomen, which was added on account of some illustrious action or remarkable event. Thus Scipio was named Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus, from the conquest of Carthage. In the same manner, his brother was called Lucius Cornelius Scipio Asiaticus. Thus also, Quintus Fabius Maximus received the Agnomen of Cunctator, from his checking the victorious career of Hannibal by avoiding a battle.
[290] An ancient Latin town on the Via Appia, the present road to Naples, mentioned by St. Paul, Acts xxviii. 15, and Horace, Sat. i. 5, 3, in giving an account of their travels.
[292] Cybele; first worshipped in Phrygia, about Mount Ida, from whence a sacred stone, the symbol of her divinity, probably an aerolite, was transported to Rome, in consequence of the panic occasioned by Hannibal's invasion, A.U.C. 508.
[298] These, and other towns in the south of France, became, and long continued, the chief seats of Roman civilization among the Gauls; which is marked by the magnificent remains of ancient art still to be seen. Arles, in particular, is a place of great interest.
[301] A.U.C. 712. Before Christ about 39.
[304] See before, in the reign of AUGUSTUS, c. xxxii.
[311] Ostia, at the mouth of the Tiber, about thirteen miles from the city, was founded by Ancus Martius. Being the port of a city like Rome, it could not fail to become opulent; and it was a place of much resort, ornamented with fine edifices, and the environs "never failing of pasture in the summer time, and in the winter covered with roses and other flowers." The port having been filled up with the depositions of the Tiber, it became deserted, and is now abandoned to misery and malaria. The bishopric of Ostia being the oldest in the Roman church, its bishop has always retained some peculiar privileges.
[312] The Gymnasia were places of exercise, and received their name from the Greek word signifying naked, because the contending parties wore nothing but drawers.
[314] The cloak and slippers, as distinguished from the Roman toga and shoes.
[316] This fountain, in the Euganian hills, near Padua, famous for its mineral waters, is celebrated by Claudian in one of his elegies.
[317] The street called Carinae, at Rome, has been mentioned before; AUGUSTUS, c. v.; and also Mecaenas' house on the Esquiline, ib. c. lxxii. The gardens were formed on ground without the walls, and before used as a cemetery for malefactors, and the lower classes. Horace says—
Nunc licet Esquiliis habitare salubribus, atqueAggere in aprico spatiari.—Sat. 1. i. viii. 13.
[321] Reviving the simple habits of the times of the republic; "nec fortuitum cernere cespitem," as Horace describes it.—Ode 15.
[323] The portico of the temple of Concord is still standing on the side of the Forum nearest the Capitol. It consists of six Ionic columns, each of one piece, and of a light-coloured granite, with bases and capitals of white marble, and two columns at the angles. The temple of Castor and Pollux has been mentioned before: JUL. c. x.
[326] Augustus interlards this epistle, and that subsequently quoted, with Greek sentences and phrases, of which this is one. It is so obscure, that commentators suppose that it is a mis-reading, but are not agreed on its drift.
[327] A verse in which the word in italics is substituted for cunctando, quoted from Ennius, who applied it to Fabius Maximus.
[328] Iliad, B. x. Diomede is speaking of Ulysses, where he asks that he may accompany him as a spy into the Trojan camp.
[329] Tiberius had adopted Germanicus. See before, c. xv. See also CALIGULA, c. i.
[330] In this he imitated Augustus. See c. liii. of his life.
[331] Si hanc fenestram aperueritis, if you open that window, equivalent to our phrase, "if you open the door."
[332] Princeps, principatus, are the terms generally used by Suetonius to describe the supreme authority vested in the Caesars, as before at the beginning of chap. xxiv., distinguished from any terms which conveyed of kingly power, the forms of the republic, as we have lately seen, still subsisting.
[333] Strenas; the French etrennes.
[334] "Tiberius pulled down the temple of Isis, caused her image to be thrown into the Tiber, and crucified her priests."—Joseph. Ant. Jud. xviii. 4.
[335] Similia sectantes. We are strongly inclined to think that the words might be rendered "similar sects," conveying an allusion to the small and obscure body of Christians, who were at this period generally confounded with the Jews, and supposed only to differ from them in some peculiarities of their institutions, which Roman historians and magistrates did not trouble themselves to distinguish. How little even the well-informed Suetonius knew of the real facts, we shall find in the only direct notice of the Christians contained in his works (CLAUDIUS c. xxv., NERO, c. xvi.); but that little confirms our conjecture. All the commentators, however, give the passage the turn retained in the text. Josephus informs us of the particular occurrence which led to the expulsion of the Jews from Rome by Tiberius.—Ant. xviii. 5.
[336] Varro tells us that the Roman people "were more actively employed (manus movere) in the theatre and circus, than in the corn-fields and vineyards."—De Re Rustic. ii. And Juvenal, in his satires, frequently alludes to their passion for public spectacles, particularly in the well- known lines—
————Atque duas tantum res serrius optat,Panem et Circenses. Sat. x. 80.
[337] The Cottian Alps derived their name from this king. They include that part of the chain which divides Dauphiny from Piedmont, and are crossed by the pass of the Mont Cenis.
[338] Antium, mentioned before, (AUG. c. lviii.) once a flourishing city of the Volscians, standing on the sea-coast, about thirty-eight miles from Rome, was a favourite resort of the emperors and persons of wealth. The Apollo Belvidere was found among the ruins of its temples and other edifices.
[340] Terracina, standing at the southern extremity of the Pontine Marshes, on the shore of the Mediterranean. It is surrounded by high calcareous cliffs, in which there are caverns, affording, as Strabo informs us, cool retreats, attached to the Roman villas built round.
[341] Augustus died at Nola, a city in Campania. See c. lviii. of his life.
[342] Fidenae stood in a bend of the Tiber, near its junction with the Anio. There are few traces of it remaining.
[343] That any man could drink an amphora of wine at a draught, is beyond all credibility; for the amphora was nearly equal to nine gallons, English measure. The probability is, that the man had emptied a large vessel, which was shaped like an amphora.
[344] Capri, the luxurious retreat and scene of the debaucheries of the Roman emperors, is an island off the southern point of the bay of Naples, about twelve miles in circumference.
[345] Pan, the god of the shepherds, and inventor of the flute, was said to be the son of Mercury and Penelope. He was worshipped chiefly in Arcadia, and represented with the horns and feet of a goat. The Nymphs, as well as the Graces, were represented naked.
[346] The name of the island having a double meaning, and signifying also a goat.
[347] "Quasi pueros primae teneritudinis, quos 'pisciculos' vocabat, institueret, ut natanti sibi inter femina versarentur, ac luderent: lingua morsuque sensim appetentes; atque etiam quasi infantes firmiores, necdum tamen lacte depulsos, inguini ceu papillae admoveret: pronior sane ad id genus libidinis, et natura et aetate."
[348] "Foeminarum capitibus solitus illudere."
[349] "Obscoenitate oris hirsuto atque olido."
[350] "Hircum vetulum capreis naturam ligurire"
[351] The Temple of Vesta, like that dedicated to the same goddess at Tivoli, is round. There was probably one on the same site, and in the same circular form, erected by Numa Pompilius; the present edifice is far too elegant for that age, but there is no record of its erection, but it is known to have been repaired by Vespasian or Domitian after being injured by Nero's fire. Its situation, near the Tiber, exposed it to floods, from which we find it suffered, from Horace's lines—
"Vidimus flavum Tiberim, retortisLittore Etrusco violenter undis,Ire dejectum monumenta Regis,Templaque Vestae."—Ode, lib. i. 2. 15.
This beautiful temple is still in good preservation. It is surrounded by twenty columns of white marble, and the wall of the cell, or interior (which is very small, its diameter being only the length of one of the columns), is also built of blocks of the same material, so nicely joined, that it seems to be formed of one solid mass.
[352] Antlia; a machine for drawing up water in a series of connected buckets, which was worked by the feet, nisu pedum.
[353] The elder Livia was banished to this island by Augustus. See c. lxv. of his life.
[354] An island in the Archipelago.
[355] This Theodore is noticed by Quintilian, Instit. iii. 1. Gadara was in Syria.
[356] It mattered not that the head substituted was Tiberius's own.
[357] The verses were probably anonymous.
[358] Oderint dum probent: Caligula used a similar expression; Oderint dum metuant.
[359] A.U.C. 778. Tacit. Annal. iv. The historian's name was A. Cremutius Cordo. Dio has preserved the passage, xlvii. p. 619. Brutus had already called Cassius "The last of the Romans," in his lamentation over his dead body.
[360] She was the sister of Germanicus, and Tacitus calls her Livia; but Suetonius is in the habit of giving a fondling or diminutive term to the names of women, as Claudilla, for Claudia, Plautilla, etc.
[361] Priam is said to have had no less than fifty sons and daughters; some of the latter, however, survived him, as Hecuba, Helena, Polyxena, and others.
[362] There were oracles at Antium and Tibur. The "Praenestine Lots" are described by Cicero, De Divin. xi. 41.
[363] Agrippina, and Nero and Drusus.
[364] He is mentioned before in the Life of AUGUSTUS, c. xc.; and also by Horace, Cicero, and Tacitus.
[365] Obscure Greek poets, whose writings were either full of fabulous stories, or of an amatory kind.
[366] It is suggested that the text should be amended, so that the sentence should read—"A Greek soldier;" for of what use could it have been to examine a man in Greek, and not allow him to give his replies in the same language?
[367] So called from Appius Claudius, the Censor, one of Tiberius's ancestors, who constructed it. It took a direction southward of Rome, through Campania to Brundusium, starting from what is the present Porta di San Sebastiano, from which the road to Naples takes its departure.
[368] A small town on the coast of Latium, not far from Antium, and the present Nettuno. It was here that Cicero was slain by the satellites of Antony.
[369] A town on a promontory of the same dreary coast, between Antium and Terracina, built on a promontory surrounded by the sea and the marsh, still called Circello.
[370] Misenum, a promontory to which Aeneas is said to have given its name from one of his followers. (Aen. ii. 234.) It is now called Capo di Miseno, and shelters the harbour of Mola di Gaieta, belonging to Naples. This was one of the stations of the Roman fleet.
[371] Tacitus agrees with Suetonius as to the age of Tiberius at the time of his death. Dio states it more precisely, as being seventy-seven years, four months, and nine days.
[372] Caius Caligula, who became his successor.
[373] Tacitus and Dio add that he was smothered under a heap of heavy clothes.
[374] In the temple of the Palatine Apollo. See AUGUSTUS, c. xxix.
[375] Atella, a town between Capua and Naples, now called San Arpino, where there was an amphitheatre. The people seemed to have raised the shout in derision, referring, perhaps, to the Atellan fables, mentioned in c. xiv.; and in their fury they proposed that his body should only be grilled, as those of malefactors were, instead of being reduced to ashes.
[376] Tacit. Annal. lib. ii.
End of Project Gutenberg's Tiberius Nero Caesar (Tiberius), by C. Suetonius Tranquillus