The World's Greatest Books - Volume 11 Part 14

A number of notorious scandals at this period emphasise the degradation of morals and the disregard for the sanct.i.ty of the marriage tie in a society where children were regarded as a burden, in spite of official encouragement of the birth-rate. There was an instructive debate on a proposal that magistrates appointed to provinces should not take their wives with them.

Risings in Gaul of the Treveri and Aedui created much alarm in Rome; the composure of Tiberius was justified by their decisive suppression.

In Africa, Blaems successfully suppressed, though he did not finally curb, the brigand chief Tacfarinas, who had been building up a nomad empire of his own. It was under Dolabella, the successor of Blaems, that Tacfarinas was completely overthrown and slain.

Hitherto the rule of Tiberius had been, on the whole, prosperous. But the ninth year marks the establishment of the ascendancy of aelius Seja.n.u.s over the mind of the emperor, whereby his sway was transformed into a foul tyranny. Not of n.o.ble birth, Seja.n.u.s had neglected no means, however base, to secure his own favour with Tiberius and with the Praetorian Guard, of which he held the command. He was now determined to get rid of Drusus, the son of Tiberius, as the most dangerous obstacle to his ambitions. He accomplished his purpose by administering a poison, of which the operation was unsuspected till the facts were revealed many years later by an accomplice. Then the young sons of Germanicus became the accepted representatives of the imperial line, for the infant sons of Drusus died very shortly afterwards. Accordingly, Seja.n.u.s now directed his attacks against the more powerful persons who might be regarded as partisans of the house of Germanicus.

Despite the multiplications of prosecutions, it is to be noted that it was still possible for a shrewd and tactful person, as exemplified by the career of Marcus Lepidus, to uphold the principles of justice and liberty without losing the favour of the emperor. Among other prosecutions, that of Cremutius, whose crime was that of praising the memory of Brutus and Ca.s.sius, demands attention, as the first of the kind.

The ambitions of Seja.n.u.s received a check when he had the presumption to request Tiberius to grant him the hand of the widow of Drusus in marriage. In order the more surely to bring disgrace on the house of Germanicus, he now implanted in the mind of Agrippina a conviction that Tiberius intended to poison her. That such suspicions were mere commonplaces of that terrible time is well ill.u.s.trated by the story.

Incapable of hiding her feelings, the persistent gloom of her face and voice, and her refusal of proffered dishes as she sat near Tiberius at dinner, attracted his attention; to test her, he personally commended and pressed on her some apples; this only intensified her suspicions, and she gave them to the attendants untasted. Tiberius made no open comment, but observed to his mother that it would hardly be surprising should he contemplate harsh measures towards one who obviously took him for a poisoner.

_III.--Morbid Tyrant and Dotard_

It was at this time that Tiberius withdrew himself from the capital, and took up his residence at a country seat where hardly anyone had access to him except Seja.n.u.s; whether at the favourite's suggestion or not is uncertain. The retreat finally selected was the island of Caprae.

The monstrous lengths to which men of the highest rank were now prepared to go to curry favour with Tiberius and Seja.n.u.s was exemplified in the ruin of Sabinus, a loyal friend of the house of Germanicus. The unfortunate man was tricked into speaking bitterly of Seja.n.u.s and Tiberius. Three senators were actually hidden above the ceiling of the room where he was entrapped into uttering unguarded phrases, and on this evidence he was condemned.

The death of the aged Livia Augusta removed the last check on the influence of Seja.n.u.s.

[The account of his two years of unqualified supremacy, and of his sudden and utter overthrow has been lost, two books of the "Annals"

being missing here.]

From this time, the life of Tiberius at Caprae was one of morbid and nameless debauchery. The condition of his mind may be inferred from the opening words of one of his letters to the senate. "If I know what to write, how to write it, what not to write, may the G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses destroy me with a worse misery than the death I feel myself dying daily." The end came when Macro, the prefect of the Praetorians, who, to save his own life and secure the succession of Gaius Caesar Caligula, the surviving son of Germanicus, caused the old emperor to be smothered.

[The record of the next ten years--the reign of Caligula, and the first years of Claudius--is lost. When the story is taken up again, the wife of Claudius, the infamous Messalina, was at the zenith of her evil career.]

While the doting pedant Claudius was adding new letters to the alphabet, Messalina was parading with utter shamelessness her last and fatal pa.s.sion for Silius, and went so far as publicly to marry her paramour.

It was the freedman Narcissus who made the outrageous truth known to Claudius, and practically terrorised him into striking. Half measures were impossible; a swarm of Messalina's accomplices in vice were put to death. To her, Claudius showed signs of relenting; but Narcissus gave the orders for her death without his knowledge. When they told Claudius that she was dead, he displayed no emotion, but went on with his dinner, and apparently forgot the whole matter.

A new wife had to be provided; Agrippina, the daughter of Germanicus, niece of Claudius himself, and mother of the boy Domitius, who was to become the emperor Nero, was the choice of the freedman Pallas, and proved the successful candidate. Shortly after, her new husband adopted Nero formally as his son. It was not long before she had a.s.sumed an air of equality with her husband; and all men saw that she intended him to be succeeded not by his own son Britannicus, but by hers, Nero.

Meanwhile, there had been a great revolt in Britain against the propraetor Ostorius. First the Iceni took up arms, then the Brigantes; then--a still more serious matter--the Silures, led by the most brilliant of British warriors, Caractacus. Even his skill and courage, however, were of no avail against the superior armament of the Roman legions; his forces were broken up, and he himself, escaping to the Brigantes, was by them betrayed to the Romans. The famous warrior was carried to Rome, where by his dignified demeanour he won pardon and liberty. In the Far East, Mithridates was overthrown by his nephew Rhadamistus, and Parthia and Armenia remained in wild confusion. The reign of Claudius was brought to an end by poison--the notorious Locusta was employed by Agrippina for the purpose--and he was succeeded by Nero, to whom his mother's artifices gave the priority over Britannicus.

_IV.--The Infamies of Nero_

At the outset the young emperor was guided by Seneca and Burrus; his first speech--put into his mouth by Seneca, for he was no orator--was full of promise. But he was encouraged in a pa.s.sion for Acte, a freed-woman, by way of counterpoise to the influence of his mother, Agrippina. The latter, enraged at the dismissal of Pallas, threatened her son with the legitimate claims of Britannicus, son of Claudius; Nero had the boy poisoned. In terror now of his mother, he would have murdered her, but was checked by Burrus. Nero's private excesses and debaucheries developed, while the horrible system of delation flourished, and prosecutions for treason abounded.

About this time the emperor's pa.s.sion for Poppaea Sabina, the wife of Otho, became the source of later disaster. Beautiful, brilliant, utterly immoral, but complete mistress of her pa.s.sions, she had married Nero's boon companion. Otho was dispatched to Lusitania, and Poppaea remained at Rome. Poppaea was bent on the imperial crown for herself, and urged Nero against his mother. A mock reconciliation took place, but it was only the preliminary to a treacherous plot for murdering the former empress.

The plot failed; her barge was sunk, but she escaped to sh.o.r.e. Nero, however, with the shameful a.s.sent of Burrus and Seneca, dispatched a.s.sa.s.sins to carry out the work, and Agrippina was slaughtered.

For a moment remorse seized Nero, but it was soon soothed; Burrus headed the cringing congratulations of Roman society, to which Thrasea Paetus was alone in refusing to be a party. The emperor forthwith began to plunge into the wild extravagances on which his mother's life had been some check. He took cover for his pa.s.sion for chariot-driving and singing by inducing men of n.o.ble birth to exhibit themselves in the arena; high-born ladies acted in disreputable plays; the emperor himself posed as a mime, and pretended to be a patron of poetry and philosophy.

The wildest licence prevailed, and there were those who ventured even to defend it.

About this time the Roman governor in Britain, Suetonius, crossed the Menai Strait and conquered the island of Anglesea. But outrages committed against Boadicea, queen of the Iceni, stirred that tribe to fierce revolt. Being joined by the Trin.o.bantes, they fell upon the Romans at Camulodunum and ma.s.sacred them. Suetonius, returning hastily from the west, found the Roman population in panic. The troops, however, inspired by the general's resolution, won a decisive victory, in which it is said that no fewer than 80,000 Britons, men and women, were slaughtered.

Not long after, Burrus died--in common belief, if not in actual fact, of poison; and Seneca found himself driven into retirement, while Tigellinus became Nero's favourite and confidant. Nero then capped his matricide by suborning the same scoundrel who had murdered Agrippina to bring foul and false charges against his innocent wife, Octavia; who was thus done to death when not yet twenty, that her husband might be free to marry Poppaea. As a matter of course, the crime was duly celebrated by a public thanksgiving.

The dispatch of an incompetent general into Asia resulted in a most inglorious Parthian campaign. Nero, however, was more interested first in extravagant rejoicings at the birth of a daughter to Poppaea, and then in equally extravagant mourning over the infant's death. It was well that Corbulo, marching from Syria, restored the Roman prestige in the Far East.

These events were followed by the famous fire which devastated Rome; whether or no it was actually Nero's own work, rumour declared that he appeared on a private stage while the conflagration was raging, and chanted appropriately of the fall of Troy. He planned rebuilding on a magnificent scale, and sought popularity by throwing the blame of the fire--and putting to the most exquisite tortures--a cla.s.s hated for their abominations, called Christians, from their first leader, Christus, who had suffered the extreme penalty under Pontius Pilate, procurator of Judaea, in the reign of Tiberius.

A very widespread conspiracy was now formed against Nero, in favour of one Gaius Calpurnius Piso; Faenius Rufus, an officer of the Praetorians, who had been subordinated to Tigellinus, being one of the leaders. The plot, however, was betrayed by a freedman of one of the conspirators.

SALl.u.s.t

The Conspiracy of Catiline

The Roman historian Caius Crispus Sall.u.s.t, who was born at Amiternum in 86 B.C., and died in 34 B.C., lived throughout the active career of Julius Caesar, and died while Anthony and Octavian were still rivals for the supreme power. It might be supposed from his works that he was a person of eminent virtue, but this was merely a literary pose. He was probably driven into private life, in the first place, on account of the scandals with which he was a.s.sociated. He became a partisan of Caesar in the struggle with Pompey, and to this he owed the pro-consulship of Numidia, on the proceeds of which he retired into leisured ease. Sall.u.s.t aspired with very limited success to a.s.sume the mantle of Thucydides, and the role of a philosophic historian. He displays considerable political ac.u.men on occasion, but his a.s.sumption of stern impartiality is hardly less a pose than his pretense of elevated morality. His "Conspiracy of Catiline"--the first of his historical essays--was probably written, in part at least, with the object of dissociating Caesar from it; the lurid colors in which he paints the conspirator are probably exaggerated. But whether true or false, the picture presented is a vivid one. This epitome is adapted specially from the Latin text.

_I.--The Plotting_

I esteem the intellectual above the physical qualities of man; and the task of the historian has attracted me because it taxes the writer's abilities to the utmost Personal ambition had at first drawn me into public life, but the political atmosphere, full of degradation and corruption, was so uncongenial that I resolved to retire and devote myself to the production of a series of historical studies, for which I felt myself to be the better fitted by my freedom from the influences which bias the political partisan. For the first of these studies I have selected the conspiracy of Catiline.

Lucius Catilina [commonly called Catiline] was of high birth, richly endowed both in mind and body, but of extreme depravity; with extraordinary powers of endurance, reckless, crafty, and versatile, a master in the arts of deception, at once grasping and lavish, unbridled in his pa.s.sions, ready of speech, but with little true insight Of insatiable and inordinate ambitions, he was possessed, after Sulla's supremacy, with a craving to grasp the control of the state, utterly careless of the means, so the end were attained. Naturally headstrong, he was urged forward by his want of money, the consciousness of his crimes, and the degradation of morals in a society where luxury and greed ruled side by side.

The wildest, the most reckless, the most prodigal, the most criminal, were readily drawn into the circle of Catiline's a.s.sociates; in such a circle those who were not already utterly depraved very soon became so under the sinister and seductive influence of their leader. This man, who in the pursuit of his own vices had done his own son to death, did not hesitate to encourage his pupils in every species of crime; and with such allies, and the aid of the disbanded Sullan soldiery swarming in Italy, he dreamed of subverting the Roman state while her armies, under Gnaeus Pompeius, were far away.

The first step was to secure his own election as consul. One plot of his had already failed, because Catiline himself had attempted to move prematurely; but the conspirators remained scatheless. Those who were now with Catiline included members of the oldest families and of equestrian rank. Cra.s.sus himself was suspected of complicity, owing to his rivalry with Pompeius. The a.s.sembled conspirators were addressed by Catiline in a speech of the most virulent character. He urged these social outcasts to rise against a bloated plutocracy battening on the ill-gotten wealth to which his audience had just as good a t.i.tle. He promised the cancellation of all debts, the proscription of the wealthy, and the general application of the rule of "the spoils to the victors."

He had friends at the head of the armies in Spain and Mauritania, if Gaius Antonius were the other successful candidate for the consulship, his co-operation, too, could be secured. Such was the purport of his speech; but I do not credit the popular fiction that the conspirators were solemnly pledged in a bowl of mingled wine and blood.

Rumours of the plot, however, began to leak out through a certain Fulvia, mistress of Quintus Curio, a man who had been expelled from the senatorial body on account of his iniquities; and this probably caused many of the n.o.bility to support, for the consulship, Cicero, whom, as a "new man," they would otherwise have religiously opposed. The result was that Catiline's candidature failed, and Cicero was elected with Gaius Antonius for his colleague.

At length Cicero, seeing that the ferment was everywhere increasing to an extent with which the ordinary law could not cope, obtained from the senate the exceptional powers for dealing with a national emergency which they had const.i.tutional authority to grant. Thus, when news came that a Catilinarian, Gaius Manlius, had risen in Etruria at the head of an armed force, prompt administrative measures were taken to dispatch adequate military forces to various parts of the country. Catiline himself had taken no overt action; he now presented himself in the senate, was openly a.s.sailed by Cicero, responded with insults which were interrupted by cries of indignation, and flung from the house with the words "Since I am beset by enemies and driven out, the fire you have kindled about me shall be crushed out by the ruin of yourselves."

Seeing that delay would be fatal, he started at once for the camp of Manlius, leaving Cethegus and Lentulus to keep up the ferment in Rome.

To several persons of position he sent letters announcing that he was retiring to Ma.r.s.eilles; but, with misplaced confidence, he sent one of a different and extremely compromising tenor to Quintus Catullus, which the recipient read to the senate. It was next reported that he had a.s.sumed the consular attributes and joined Manlius; whereupon he was proclaimed a public enemy, a general levy was decreed, Antonius was appointed to take the field, while Cicero was to remain in the capital.

_II.--The Downfall_

Meanwhile, Lentulus at Rome, among his various plots, intrigued to obtain the support of the Allobroges, a tribe of Gauls from whom there was at the time an emba.s.sy in Rome. The envoys, however, took the advice of Quintus Fabius Sanga, and while he kept Cicero supplied with information, themselves pretended to be at one with the conspirators.

Risings were now taking place all over Italy, though they were ill-concerted. At Rome, the plan was that when Catiline's army was at Faesulae, the tribune Lucius Bestia should publicly accuse Cicero of having caused the war; and this was to be the signal for an organised ma.s.sacre, while the city itself was to be fired at twelve points simultaneously. The insurgents were then to march out and join Catiline at Faesulae.