[4.1]  C. Asinio C. Antistio consulibus, nonus Tiberio annus erat compositæ Rei Publicæ, florentis domus (nam Germanici mortem inter prospera ducebat), quum repente turbare fortuna cœpit, sævire ipse aut sævientibus vires præbere.  Initium et causa penes Ælium Sejanum, cohortibus Prætoriis præfectum, cujus de potentia supra memoravi :  nunc originem, mores, et quo facinore dominationem raptum ierit expediam.  Genitus Vulsiniis, patre Sejo Strabone, equite Romano, et prima juventa Gajum Cæsarem, divi Augusti nepotem, sectatus, non sine rumore Apicio diviti et prodigo stuprum veno dedisse, mox Tiberium variis artibus devinxit — adeo ut obscurum adversum alios, sibi uni incautum intectumque efficeret, non tam sollertia (quippe eisdem artibus victus est) quam deum ira in rem Romanam, cujus pari exitio viguit ceciditque.  Corpus illi laborum tolerans, animus audax ;  sui obtegens, in alios criminator ;  juxta adulatio et superbia ;  palam compositus pudor, intus summa apiscendi libido, ejusque causa modo largitio et luxus, sæpius industria ac vigilantia — haud minus noxiæ quotiens parando regno finguntur.

[4.1]  The year when Gajus Asinius and Gajus Antistius were consuls {a.D. 23} was the ninth of Tiberius’s reign, a period of tranquillity for the State and prosperity for his own house, for he counted Germanicus’s death a happy incident.  Suddenly fortune started to turn disruptive and the man himself to become savage — or to confer power on savages;  the emperor became a cruel tyrant, as well as an abettor of cruelty in others.  Of this the cause and origin was Ælius Sejanus, commander of the Prætorian cohorts, of whose influence I have already spoken.  I will now fully describe his extraction, his character, and the daring wickedness by which he grasped at power.  Born at Vulsinii, the son of Sejus Strabo, a Roman knight, he attached himself in his early youth to Gajus Caesar, grandson of the Divine Augustus, and rumored to have sold anal sex to the rich and debauched Apicius.  Soon afterwards he won the heart of Tiberius so effectually by various artifices that the emperor, ever dark and mysterious towards others, was with Sejanus alone careless and freespoken.  It was not so much through his artfulness (indeed, it was by this same trickery that he was vanquished) as rather by the anger of the gods against Rome, through whose double-edged deadliness he both throve and fell.  His body was enduring of toil, his mind daring.  Secretive about himself, he slandered others;  sycophancy and haughtiness existed side by side;  outwardly he had a calm reserve;  inside was a lust for supreme power, for the sake of which he was sometimes lavish and given to luxury, but oftener energetic and vigilant, qualities no less deadly when employed hypocritically for acquiring a kingdom.

[4.2]  Vim præfecturæ modicam antea intendit, dispersas per Urbem cohortes una in castra conducendo, ut simul imperia acciperent, numeroque et robore et visu inter se fiducia ipsis, in ceteros metus oreretur.  Prætendebat lascivire militem diductum ;  si quid subitum ingruat, majore auxilio pariter subveniri ;  et severius acturos si vallum statuatur procul Urbis illecebris.  Ut perfecta sunt castra, irrepere paulatim militares animos adeundo, appellando ;  simul centuriones ac tribunos ipse deligere.  Neque senatorio ambitu abstinebat clientes suos honoribus aut provinciis ornandi, facili Tiberio atque ita prono ut “socium laborum” non modo in sermonibus, sed apud patres et populum celebraret, colique per theatra et fora effigies ejus interque principia legionum sineret.

[4.2]  He intensified the power of the prætorian prefect’s command, previously modest, by drawing the cohorts dispersed throughout the city together into a single camp, so that given their number and strength and appearance, there would be a rise of self-confidence among themselves and of fear in others.  His pretexts were that a dispersed soldiery would lose its discipline ;  if an emergency happened, there would simultaneously be help from a larger taskforce ;  and they would behave with greater discipline if the rampart were established far from City allurements.  As soon as the camp was completed, he crept gradually into the affections of the soldiers by mixing with them and addressing them by name, himself selecting the centurions and tribunes.  Nor did he refrain from senatorial canvassing, endowing his own clients with honors or provinces — with Tiberius complaisant and so well inclined that he celebrated him as his “partner in toil” not only in conversation but before the fathers and people, and allowed likensses of him to be worshipped throughout theaters and fora and within the headquarters of legions.

[4.3]  Ceterum plena Cæsarum domus, juvenis filius, nepotes adulti, moram cupitis afferebant ;  et quia vi tot simul corripere, intutum, dolus intervalla scelerum poscebat.  Placuit tamen occultior via, et a Druso incipere, in quem recenti ira ferebatur.  (Nam Drusus, impatiens æmuli et animo commotior, orto forte jurgio, intenderat Sejano manus, et contra tendentis os verberaverat.)  Igitur cuncta temptanti promptissimum visum ad uxorem ejus Liviam convertere, quæ soror Germanici, formæ initio ætatis indecoræ, mox pulchritudine præcellebat.  Hanc, ut amore incensus, adulterio pellexit, et postquam primi flagitii potitus est (neque femina, amissa pudicitia, alia abnuerit), ad conjugii spem, consortium regni et necem mariti impulit.  Atque illa, cui avunculus Augustus, socer Tiberius, ex Druso liberi, seque ac majores et posteros municipali adultero fœdabat, ut pro honestis et præsentibus flagitiosa et incerta expectaret.  Sumitur in conscientiam Eudemus, amicus ac medicus Liviæ, specie artis frequens secretis.  Pellit domo Sejanus uxorem Apicatam, ex qua tres liberos genuerat, ne pælici suspectaretur.  Sed magnitudo facinoris metum, prolationes, diversa interdum consilia afferebat.

[4.3]  There were however obstacles to his ambition in the imperial house with its many princes, a son in youthful manhood {Drusus} and grown-up grandsons {Germanicus & Tiberius Gemellus}.  As it would be unsafe to sweep off such a number at once by violence, while craft would necessitate successive intervals in crime, he chose, on the whole, the stealthier way and to begin with Drusus, against whom he had the stimulus of a recent resentment.  (Drusus, intolerant of his rival and temperamentally rather volatile, had brandished his fists at Sejanus in a chance wrangle and had beaten him in the face when he brandished back.)  On considering every plan Sejanus thought his easiest revenge was to turn his attention to Livia, Drusus’s wife.  She was a sister of Germanicus, and though she was not handsome as a girl, she became a woman of surpassing beauty.  Pretending an ardent passion for her, he seduced her, and having won his first infamous triumph, and assured that a woman after having parted with her virtue will hesitate at nothing, he lured her on to thoughts of marriage, of a share in sovereignty, and of her husband’s destruction.  And she, the niece of Augustus, the daughter-in-law of Tiberius, the mother of children by Drusus, for a provincial paramour, foully disgraced herself, her ancestors, and her descendants, giving up honor and a sure position for prospects as base as they were uncertain.  They took into their confidence Eudemus, Livia’s friend and physician, whose profession was a pretext for frequent secret interviews.  Sejanus, to prevent his concubine from suspecting him, divorced his wife Apicata, by whom he had had three children.  Still the magnitude of the crime caused fear and delay, and sometimes conflicting plans.

[4.4]  Interim anni principio Drusus ex Germanici liberis togam virilem sumpsit, quæque fratri ejus Neroni decreverat Senatus, repetita.  Addidit orationem Cæsar multa cum laude filii sui quod patria benevolentia in fratris liberos foret.  Nam Drusus, quanquam arduum sit eodem loci potentiam et concordiam esse, æquus adulescentibus aut certe non adversus habebatur.  Exim vetus et sæpe simulatum proficiscendi in provincias consilium refertur.  Multitudinem veteranorum prætexebat imperator, et dilectibus supplendos exercitus :  nam voluntarium militem deesse, ac si suppeditet, non eadem virtute ac modestia agere, quia plerumque inopes ac vagi sponte militiam sumant.  Percensuitque cursim numerum legionum et quas provincias tutarentur.  Quod mihi quoque exsequendum reor, quæ tunc Romana copia in armis, qui socii reges, quanto sit angustius imperitatum.

[4.4]  Meanwhile, at the beginning of this year, Drusus, one of the children of Germanicus, assumed the dress of manhood, with a repetition of the honors decreed by the Senate to his brother Nero.  The emperor added a speech with warm praise of his son for sharing a father’s affection to his brother’s children.  Drusus indeed, difficult as it is for power and mutual harmony to exist side by side, had the character of being kindly disposed or at least not unfriendly towards the lads.  And now the old plan, so often insincerely broached, of a progress through the provinces, was again discussed.  The emperor’s pretext was the number of veterans on the eve of discharge and the necessity of fresh levies for the army.  Volunteers were not forthcoming, and even if they were sufficiently numerous, they had not the same bravery and discipline, as it is chiefly the needy and the homeless who adopt by their own choice a soldier’s life.  Tiberius also rapidly enumerated the legions and the provinces which they had to garrison.  I too ought, I think, to go through these details, and thus show what forces Rome then had under arms, what kings were our allies, and how much narrower then were the limits of our empire.

[4.5]  Italiam utroque mari duæ classes, Misenum apud et Ravennam, proximumque Galliæ litus rostratæ naves præsidebant, quas Actiaca victoria captas Augustus in oppidum Forojuliense miserat valido cum remige.  Sed præcipuum robur Rhenum juxta, commune in Germanos Gallosque subsidium, octo legiones erant.  Hispaniæ recens perdomitæ tribus habebantur.  Mauros Juba rex acceperat, donum populi Romani.  Cetera Africæ per duas legiones parique numero Ægyptus, dehinc initio ab Syriæ usque ad flumen Euphraten, quantum ingenti terrarum sinu ambitur, quattuor legionibus coërcita, accolis Hibero Albanoque et aliis regibus qui magnitudine nostra proteguntur adversum externa imperia.  Et Thræciam Rhœmetalces ac liberi Cotyis, ripamque Danuvii legionum duæ in Pannonia, duæ in Mœsia attinebant, totidem apud Delmatiam locatis quæ, positu regionis, a tergo illis, ac si repentinum auxilium Italia posceret, haud procul accirentur, quanquam insideret Urbem proprius miles, tres urbanæ, novem Prætoriæ cohortes, Etruria ferme Umbriaque delectæ aut vetere Latio et coloniis antiquitus Romanis.  At apud idonea provinciarum sociæ triremes alæque et auxilia cohortium, neque multo secus in eis virium :  sed persequi incertum fuit, quum ex usu temporis huc illuc mearent, gliscerent numero et aliquando minuerentur.

[4.5]  Italy on both seas was guarded by fleets, at Misenum and at Ravenna, and the contiguous coast of Gaul by warships captured in the victory of Actium, and sent by Augustus powerfully manned to the town of Forum Julium.  But chief strength was on the Rhine, as a defence alike against Germans and Gauls, and numbered eight legions.  Spain, lately subjugated, was held by three.  Mauretania was king Juba’s, who had received it as a gift from the Roman people.  The rest of Africa was garrisoned by two legions, and Egypt by the same number, and the whole area thereafter, which is encompassed within the mighty arc of land from the start of Syria right up to the River Euphrates, by only four legions, its neighbors being the Iberian, Albanian, and other kings who ae protected by our greatness against foreign empires.  Thrace was held by Rhœmetalces and the children of Cotys;  the bank of the Danube by two legions in Pannonia, two in Moesia — with the same number located in Dalmatia which, given the region’s position, could be summoned from the rear by those provinces and, if Italy demanded sudden help, from not far away (although the City was occupied by its own soldiery, three urban and nine prætorian cohorts, chosen mostly from Etruria and Umbria or from old Latium and the ancient Roman colonies).  And at suitable points in the provinces there were allied triremes and wings and auxiliary cohorts, all not much different in striking power.  But it would be unreliable to go into detail, since they moved from place to place as circumstances required, and had their numbers increased and sometimes diminished.

[4.6]  Congruens, crediderim, recensere ceteras quoque Rei Publicæ partes, quibus modis ad eam diem habitæ sint, quoniam Tiberio mutati in deterius principatus initium ille annus attulit.

Jam primum publica negotia et privatorum maxima apud patres tractabantur, dabaturque primoribus disserere, et in adulationem lapsos cohibebat ipse ;  mandabatque honores nobilitatem majorum, claritudinem militiæ, illustres domi artes spectando, ut satis constaret non alios potiores fuisse.  Sua consulibus, sua prætoribus species ;  minorum quoque magistratuum exercita potestas ;  legesque — si majestatis quæstio eximeretur — bono in usu.  At frumenta et pecuniæ vectigales, cetera publicorum fructuum societatibus equitum Romanorum agitabantur.  Res suas Cæsar spectatissimo cuique, quibusdam ignotis ex fama, mandabat ;  semelque assumpti tenebantur prorsus sine modo, quum plerique eisdem negotiis insenescerent.

Plebes acri quidem annona fatigabatur, sed nulla in eo culpa ex principe :  quin infecunditati terrarum aut asperis maris obviam iit quantum impendio diligentiaque poterat.  Et ne provinciæ novis oneribus turbarentur, utque vetera sine avaritia aut crudelitate magistratuum tolerarent providebat :  corporum verbera, ademptiones bonorum aberant.  Rari per Italiam Cæsaris agri, modesta servitia, intra paucos libertos domus ;  ac si quando cum privatis disceptaret, forum et jus.

[4.6]  It is appropriate, I might think, to go over the other parts of the government, how they were handled up to that day, because that year brought the beginning of a principate changed for the worse for Tiberius.

In the beginning, public business and the most important private matters were managed by the Senate:  the leading men were allowed freedom of discussion, and when they stooped to flattery, the emperor himself checked them.  He bestowed honors with regard to noble ancestry, military renown, and illustrious qualities at home, so there should be sufficient agreement that there were no better men to choose.  The consuls and the praetors had their own prestige;  inferior magistrates exercised their authority;  the laws too — of the question of treason was subtracted — were properly enforced.  Grain dues, monetary taxes and all other state revenues, however, were in the hands of companies of Roman knights.  The emperor entrusted his own property to men in his highest regard or to some unknows on the basis of their reputation, and once appointed they were retained without any limitation, since most of them grew old in the same jobs.

The common people, it is true, kept being exhausted by high grain prices, but there was no blame for that on the emperor’s part ;  in fact he confronted the problems of infertile lands and rough seas as much as he could by his expenditure and assiduousness.  And he saw to it that provinces were not disrupted by new burdens, and that they could bear the old ones without any rapacity or cruelty from magistrates.  There were no corporal beatings and confiscations of property.  Cæsar’s estates in Italy were scarce, his slaves restrained, his household limited to a few freedmen.  If ever he had a dispute with private individuals, there was the forum and justice.

[4.7]  Quæ cuncta non quidem comi via sed horridus ac plerumque formidatus retinebat tamen, donec morte Drusi verterentur :  nam dum superfuit, mansere, quia Sejanus, incipiente adhuc potentia, bonis consiliis notescere volebat.  Et ultor metuebatur non occultus odii, sed crebro querens, “incolumi filio adjutorem imperii alium vocari.”  Et “¿ Quantum superesse ut collega dicatur ?  Primas dominandi spes in arduo :  ubi sis ingressus, adesse studia et ministros.  Extructa jam, sponte præfecti, castra, datos in manum milites ;  cerni effgiem ejus in monumentis Cn. Pompeji ;  communes illi cum familia Drusorum fore nepotes :  precandam post hæc modestiam ut contentus esset.”  Neque raro neque apud paucos talia jaciebat, et secreta quoque ejus corrupta uxore prodebantur.

[4.7]  All of these things — not of course in an affable way but, grisly and mostly frightening as he was — he nevertheless maintained until they were overturned by the death of Drusus.  While he lived, the system continued, because Sejanus, as yet only in the beginning of his power, wished to be known for good advice.  And there was the fear of the avenger who did not conceal his hatred but frequently complained that “with a son alive, another man is being called the adjutant in command.”  And, “How much left before he is said to be a colleague!?  The first hopes of becoming master are a steep climb;  but, once you embark, support and servants present themselves.  Already, on the prefect’s initiative, a camp has been established, soldiers given into his hands;  his statues are to be seen among the monuments of Gnæus Pompejus;  his grandsons will be of the same blood as the family of the Drusi.  After this, Modesty must be entreated so that Drusus might calm down.”  And it was not rarely or to only a few people that he tossed out such remarks.  And his confidences, now that his wife had been corrupted, were betrayed.

[4.8]  Igitur Sejanus, maturandum ratus, deligit venenum quo paulatim irrepente fortuitus morbus assimularetur.  Id Druso datum per Lygdum spadonem, ut octo post annos cognitum est.  Ceterum Tiberius per omnes valetudinis ejus dies, nullo metu, an ut firmitudinem animi ostentaret — etiam defuncto necdum sepulto —, curiam ingressus est ;  consulesque, sede vulgari per speciem mæstitiæ sedentes, honoris locique admonuit, et effusum in lacrimas Senatum, victo gemitu, simul oratione continua erexit :  non quidem sibi ignarum posse argui quod tam recenti dolore subierit oculos Senatus :  vix propinquorum alloquia tolerari, vix diem aspici a plerisque lugentium.  Neque illos imbecillitatis damnandos :  se tamen fortiora solacia e complexu Rei Publicæ petivisse.  Miseratusque Augustæ extremam senectam, rudem adhuc nepotum et vergentem ætatem suam, ut Germanici liberi, unica præsentium malorum levamenta, inducerentur petivit.  Egressi consules firmatos alloquio adulescentulos deductosque ante Cæsarem statuunt.  Quibus apprensis, “Patres conscripti, hos,” inquit, “orbatos parente tradidi patruo ipsorum, precatusque sum — quanquam esset illi propria suboles — ne secus quam suum sanguinem foveret, attolleret, sibique et posteris conformaret.  Erepto Druso, preces ad vos converto, disque et patria coram obtestor :  Augusti pronepotes, clarissimis majoribus genitos, suscipite, regite, vestram meamque vicem explete.  Hi vobis, Nero et Druse, parentum loco.  Ita nati estis ut bona malaque vestra ad Rem Publicam pertineant.”

[4.8]  Sejanus accordingly thought that he must be prompt, and chose a poison which, by worming its way gradually, would resemble a chance disease.  It was given to Drusus by Lygdus, a eunuch, as was ascertained eight years later.  As for Tiberius, he went to the Senate house during the whole time of the prince’s illness, either because he was not afraid, or to show his firmness of purpose ;  and even in the interval between his death and funeral.  And he reminded the consuls (who were sitting in ordinary seating as a show of sorrowfulness) of their place of honor;  and when the Senate burst into tears, suppressing a groan, he revived their spirits with a smoothly flowing oration.  “He knew indeed that he might be reproached for thus subjecting himself to the gaze of the Senate after so recent an affliction.  Most mourners could hardly bear even the soothing words of kinsfolk or to look on the light of day.  And such were not to be condemned as weak.  But he had sought stronger solace in the embrace of the state.”  Then, having expressed pity at Augusta’s extreme elderliness, the still raw age of his grandsons and his own declining years, he begged the Senate to summon Germanicus’s children, the only comfort under their present misery.  The consuls went out and, having encouraged the young princes with kind words, brought them in and presented them to the emperor.  Taking them by the hand he said:  “Senators, when these boys lost their father, I committed them to their uncle, and begged him, though he had children of his own, to cherish and rear them as his own offspring, and train them for himself and for posterity.  Drusus is now lost to us, and I turn my prayers to you, and before heaven and your country I adjure you to receive into your care and guidance the great-grandsons of Augustus, begotten with a most brilliant ancestry.  So fulfil your duty and mine.  To you, Nero and Drusus, these senators are as fathers.  Such is your birth that your prosperity and adversity must alike affect the State.”

[4.9]  Magno ea fletu et mox precationibus faustis audita ;  ac si modum orationi posuisset, misericordia sui gloriaque animos audientium impleverat :  ad vana et totiens irrisa revolutus, de reddenda Re Publica, utque consules seu quis alius regimen susciperent, vero quoque et honesto fidem dempsit.  Memoriæ Drusi eadem quæ in Germanicum decernuntur, plerisque additis, ut ferme amat posterior adulatio.  Funus imaginum pompa maxime  illustre fuit, quum origo Juliæ gentis Æneas omnesque Albanorum reges et conditor Urbis Romulus, post Sabina nobilitas, Attus Clausus ceteræque Claudiorum effigies, longo ordine spectarentur.

[4.9]  These words were heard with great weeping and then with propitious prayers.  Had the emperor set bounds to his speech, he would have filled the hearts of his hearers with sympathy and admiration.  But in now falling back on those idle and often ridiculed topics about restoring the republic, and the wish that the consuls or some one else might undertake the government, he withdrew credibility even from what was genuine and honorable.  The same honors were decreed to the memory of Drusus as to that of Germanicus, and many more were added (as later sycophancy usually loves to do).  The funeral was particularly illustrious for its procession of images, since Æneas, the father of the Julian house, all the Alban kings, Romulus, Rome’s founder, then the Sabine nobility, Attus Clausus, and the busts of all the other Claudii were displayed in a long train.

[4.10]  In tradenda morte Drusi quæ plurimis maximæque fidei auctoribus memorata sunt rettuli :  sed non omiserim eorundem temporum rumorem, validum adeo ut nondum exolescat.  Corrupta ad scelus Livia, Sejanum Lygdi quoque spadonis animum stupro vinxisse, quod is ætate atque forma carus domino interque primores ministros erat ;  deinde inter conscios ubi locus veneficii tempusque composita sint, eo audaciæ provectum ut verteret et, occulto indicio Drusum veneni in patrem arguens, moneret Tiberium vitandam potionem quæ prima ei apud filium epulanti offerretur.  Ea fraude captum senem, postquam convivium inierat, exceptum poculum Druso tradidisse ;  atque illo ignaro et juveniliter hauriente auctam suspicionem tanquam metu et pudore sibimet irrogaret mortem quam patri struxerat.

[4.10]  In relating the death of Drusus I have followed the narrative of most of the best historians.  But I would not like to pass over from those same times a rumor so effective that it has not yet abated.  It was said that, having seduced Livia into crime, Sejanus, by means of illicit sex had constrained the heart of the eunuch Lygdus, too, since, becuase of his age and good looks, he was dear to his master and among his leading servants.  Then, when those who were in on the secret had decided on the time and place of the poisoning, Sejanus had advanced to such a pitch of daring that he changed things and, by means of an anonymous accusation, ensured that Drusus was accused of aiming to poison his father, and that Tiberius was warned to avoid the first drink to be offered to him when banqueting at the house of his son.  Thus deceived, the old emperor, on sitting down to the banquet, took the cup and handed it to Drusus who, in his ignorance, drained it with a young man’s gusto, thereby increasing the suspicion that, from fear and shame, he was actually inflicting on himself the death he had planned for his father.

[4.11]  Hæc vulgo jactata, super id quod nullo auctore certo firmantur, prompte refutaveris.  ¿ Quis enim mediocri prudentia, nedum Tiberius tantis rebus exercitus, inaudito filio exitium offerret, idque sua manu et nullo ad pænitendum regressu ?  ¿ Quin potius ministrum veneni excruciaret, auctorem exquireret, insita denique etiam in extraneos cunctatione et mora adversum unicum et nullius ante flagitii compertum uteretur ?  Sed quia Sejanus facinorum omnium repertor habebatur, ex nimia caritate in eum Cæsaris, et ceterorum in utrumque odio, quamvis fabulosa et immania credebantur — atrociore semper fama erga dominantium exitus.

Ordo alioqui sceleris per Apicatam Sejani proditus tormentis Eudemi ac Lygdi patefactus est.  Neque quisquam scriptor tam infensus exstitit ut Tiberio objectaret — quum omnia alia conquirerent intenderentque.  Mihi tradendi arguendique rumoris causa fuit ut claro sub exemplo falsas auditiones depellerem, peteremque ab eis quorum in manus cura nostra venerit ne divulgata atque incredibilia avide accepta veris, neque in miraculum corruptis, antehabeant

[4.11]  These popular rumors, over and above the fact that they are not vouched for by any good writer, you may readily refute.  For who, with moderate prudence — far less Tiberius, practiced as he was in great affairs — would have offered extermination to a son unheard, and that too with his own hand and no recourse fro repentance?  Would he not rather have had the slave who handed the poison tortured, have sought to discover the traitor, and finally — given the innate hesitancy and delay with which he treated even outsiders —, treated his one and only, who had been discovered in no outrage, with the same?  But since Sejanus was considered the inventor of every sort of wickedness, the fact that he was the emperor’s special favorite, and that both were hated by everyone else, no matter how outrageous were the fantasies and monstrosities, they were believed — rumor too always has a dreadful side in regard to the deaths of men in power.

In any case, the progress of the crime was betrayed by Sejanus’s {wife} Apicata and fully divulged, under torture, by Eudemus and Lygdus.  No writer has been found so hostile as to impute it to Tiberius — though they raked up and aimed at him everything else.  My object in mentioning and refuting this story is, by a conspicuous example, to dispel false hearsay, and to request all into whose hands my work shall come not to prefer widely circulated and eagerly accepted fantasies to what is genuine and uncorrupted by the miraculous.

[4.12]  Ceterum, laudante filium pro rostris Tiberio, Senatus populusque habitum ac voces dolentum — simulatione magis quam libens — induebat, domumque Germanici revirescere occulti lætabantur.  Quod principium favoris, et mater Agrippina spem male tegens, perniciem acceleravere.  Nam Sejanus, ubi videt mortem Drusi inultam interfectoribus sine mærore publico esse, ferax scelerum, et quia prima provenerant, volutare secum quonam modo Germanici liberos perverteret, quorum non dubia successio.  Neque spargi venenum in tres poterat, egregia custodum fide et pudicitia Agrippinæ impenetrabili.  Igitur contumaciam ejus insectari, vetus Augustæ odium, recentem Liviæ conscientiam exagitare, ut superbam fecunditate, subnixam popularibus studiis, inhiare dominationi apud Cæsarem arguerent.  Atque hæc callidis criminatoribus, inter quos delegerat Julium Postumum, per adulterium Mutiliæ Priscæ inter intimos aviæ et consiliis suis peridoneum, quia Prisca, in animo Augustæ valida, anum (suapte natura potentiæ anxiam) insociabilem nurui efficiebat.  Agrippinæ quoque proximi illiciebantur pravis sermonibus tumidos spiritus perstimulare.

[4.12]  Tiberius pronounced a panegyric on his son before the Rostra, during which the Senate and people — in pretence rather than gladly — put on the guise and voices of sorrow, while secretly they were pleased at the revival of the house of Germanicus.  This beginning of popularity, and the mother Agrippina’s ill-concealed ambition, hastened its downfall.  For, when he saw that Drusus’ death went unavenged for his killers and without pulbic sorrow, Sejanus — prolific of crimes as he was, and because his first undertakings had succeeded — turned over privately in what way he could overthrow Germanicus’ children, of whose succession there was no doubt.  Poison could not be dispensed against the three of them, given the exceptional loyalty of their guards and the impenetrable virtue of Agrippina.  So he went after her obstinacy and stirred up Augusta’s old hatred and Livia’s fresh consciousnss of guilt, so that they would accuse her before Cæsar of lusting after power — haughty as she was because of her fecundity and supported by popular esteem.  And all of this by means of astute accusers, among whom he had selected Julius Postumus, who through his adultery with Mutilia Prisca was among the grandmother’s intimates and highly suitable for his plans, because Prisca had influence over Augusta’s mind and kept making the old woman (who by her very nature was anxious about her own influence) implacable towards her granddaughter-in-law.  Agrippina’s closest acquaintances too were constantly inveigled to egg on her pompous spirit by prevaricating conversation.

[4.13]  At Tiberius, nihil intermissa rerum cura, negotia pro solaciis accipiens, jus civium, preces sociorum tractabat ;  factaque auctore eo Senatus consulta ut civitati Cibyraticæ apud Asiam, Ægiensi apud Achajam, motu terræ labefactis, subveniretur remissione tributi in triennium.  Et Vibius Serenus, pro consule ulterioris Hispaniæ de vi publica damnatus, ob atrocitatem morum in insulam Amorgum deportatur.  Carsidius Sacerdos, reus tanquam frumento hostem Tacfarinatem juvisset, absolvitur, ejusdemque criminis C. Gracchus.  Hunc comitem exilii admodum infantem pater Sempronius in insulam Cercinam tulerat.  Illic adultus inter extorres et liberalium artium nescios, mox per Africam ac Siciliam mutando sordidas merces sustentabatur ;  neque tamen effugit magnæ fortunæ pericula.  Ac ni Ælius Lamia et L. Apronius qui Africam obtinuerant insontem protexissent, claritudine infausti generis et paternis adversis foret abstractus.

[4.13]  Tiberius meanwhile, who did not relax his attention to business, and found solace in his work, occupied himself with the causes of citizens at Rome and with petitions from allies.  Decrees of the Senate were passed at his proposal for relieving the cities of Cibyra and Ægium in Asia and Achaia, which had suffered from earthquakes, by a remission of three years’ tribute.  Vibius Serenus too, proconsul of Further Spain, was condemned for violence in his official capacity, and was banished to the island of Amorgus for the barbarity of his conduct.  Carsidius Sacerdos, accused of having helped our enemy Tacfarinas with supplies of grain, was acquitted, as was also Gajus Gracchus on the same charge.  Gracchus’s father, Sempronius, had taken him when a mere child to the island of Cercina to be his companion in exile.  There he grew up among outcasts and those ignorant of the liberal arts, he later supported himself by trading trashy wares around Africa and Sicily.  But he did not escape the dangers of high fortune.  And, had the blameless man not been protected by Ælius Lamia and Lucius Apronius, who had both held Africa, he would have been dragged away owing to the brilliancy of his unpropitious family and to paternal adversities.

[4.14]  Is quoque annus legationes Græcarum civitatium habuit, Samiis Junonis, Cois Æsculapii delubro vetustum asyli jus ut firmaretur petentibus.  Samii decreto Amphictyonum nitebantur, quis præcipuum fuit rerum omnium judicium, qua tempestate Græci conditis per Asiam urbibus ora maris potiebantur.  Neque dispar apud Coos antiquitas, et accedebat meritum ex loco :  nam cives Romanos templo Æsculapii induxerant, quum jussu regis Mithridatis apud cunctas Asiæ insulas et urbes trucidarentur.

Variis dehinc et sæpius irritis prætorum questibus, postremo Cæsar de immodestia histrionum rettulit :  multa ab eis in publicum seditiose, fœda per domos temptari ;  Oscum quondam ludicrum, levissimæ apud vulgum oblectationis, eo flagitiorum et virium venisse ut auctoritate patrum coërcendum sit.  Pulsi tum histriones Italia.

[4.14]  This year too brought embassies from the Greek communities.  The people of Samos and Cos petitioned for the confirmation of the ancient right of sanctuary for the respective temples of Juno and Æsculapius.  The Samians relied on a decree of the Amphictyonic Council, which had the supreme decision of all questions when the Greeks, through the cities they had founded in Asia, had possession of the sea-coast.  Cos could boast equal antiquity, and it had an additional claim connected with the place:  they had escorted Roman citizens into the temple of Æsculapius when {in 88 B.C.}, on the order of King Mithridates, they were being butchered across all the islands and cities of Asia.

Next, after various and usually fruitless complaints from the praetors, the emperor finally brought forward a motion about the indecency of the players.  “Their assaults in public,” he said, “were many and mutinous, while those in private homes were simply disgraceful ;  and the formerly Oscan farce, the basest amusement for the masses, had become at once so indecent and so influential, that it must be checked by the Senate’s authority.”  The players, upon this, were banished from Italy.

[4.15]  Idem annus alio quoque luctu Cæsarem affecit, alterum ex geminis Drusi liberis exstinguendo, neque minus morte amici.  Is fuit Lucilius Longus, omnium illi tristium lætorumque socius, unusque e senatoribus Rhodii secessus comes.  Ita, quanquam novo homini, censorium funus, effigiem apud forum Augusti publica pecunia patres decrevere, apud quos etiam tum cuncta tractabantur, adeo ut procurator Asiæ Lucilius Capito, accusante provincia, causam dixerit, magna cum asseveratione principis non se jus nisi in servitia et pecunias familiares dedisse :  quodsi vim prætoris usurpasset, manibusque militum usus foret, spreta in eo mandata sua :  audirent socios.  Ita reus cognito negotio damnatur.  Ob quam ultionem, et quia priore anno in C. Silanum vindicatum erat, decrevere Asiæ urbes templum Tiberio matrique ejus ac Senatui.  Et permissum statuere ;  egitque Nero grates ea causa patribus atque avo, lætas inter audientium affectiones qui, recenti memoria Germanici, illum aspici, illum audiri rebantur.  Aderantque juveni modestia ac forma principe viro digna, notis in eum Sejani odiis, ob periculum gratiora.

[4.15]  That same year also brought fresh sorrow to the emperor by being fatal to one of the twin sons of Drusus, equally too by the death of an intimate friend.  This was Lucilius Longus, the partner of all his griefs and joys, the only senator who had been the companion of his retreat at Rhodes.  And so, though he was a parvenue, the Senate decreed him a censor’s funeral and a statue in the forum of Augustus at the public expense.  At that time all business was still handled by the Fathers, so much so that Lucilius Capito, procurator of Asia, who was impeached by his province, was tried by them, the emperor vehemently asserting “that he had given the man authority only over the slaves and property of the imperial establishments;  that if he had taken upon himself the powers of a praetor and used military force, he had disregarded his instructions;  therefore they must hear the provincials.”  So the case was heard and the accused condemned.  The cities of Asia, gratified by this retribution and the punishment inflicted in the previous year on Gajus Silanus, voted a temple to Tiberius, his mother, and the Senate, and were permitted to build it.  Nero thanked the Senators and his grandfather on their behalf amid the joyful sympathies of his audience, who, with the memory of Germanicus fresh in their minds, imagined that it was his face they saw, his voice they heard.  The youth too had a modesty and a grace of person worthy of a prince, the more charming because of his peril from the notorious enmity of Sejanus.

[4.16]  Sub idem tempus, de flamine Diali in locum Servi Maluginensis defuncti legendo, simul roganda nova lege, disseruit Cæsar.  Nam patricios confarreatis parentibus genitos tres simul nominari, ex quis unus legeretur, vetusto more ;  neque adesse, ut olim, eam copiam — omissa confarreandi assuetudine aut inter paucos retenta (pluresque ejus rei causas afferebat, potissimam penes incuriam virorum feminarumque) ;  accedere ipsius cærimoniæ difficultates quæ consulto vitarentur, et quoniam exiret e jure patrio qui id flamonium apisceretur, quæque in manum flaminis conveniret.  Ita medendum Senatus decreto aut lege, sicut Augustus quædam ex horrida illa antiquitate ad præsentem usum flexisset.  Igitur, tractatis religionibus, placitum instituto flaminum nihil demutari.  Sed lata lex qua flaminica Dialis, sacrorum causa, in potestate viri ;  cetera, promisco feminarum jure ageret.  Et filius Maluginensis patri suffectus.  Utque glisceret dignatio sacerdotum atque ipsis promptior animus foret ad capessendas cærimonias, decretum Corneliæ virgini, quæ in locum Scantiæ capiebatur, sestertii vicies {H$100,000 * 20 = H$2,000,000} et, quotiens Augusta theatrum introisset, ut sedes inter Vestalium consideret.

[4.16]  About the same time the emperor spoke on the subject of electing a priest of Jupiter in the room of Servius Maluginensis, deceased, and of the enactment of a new law.  It was, he said, the olden custom that three patricians begotten by confarreate parents were nominated simultaneously, from whom one was to be chosen;  but such a supply was not available in the same way as formerly, since the habit of confarreate marriage had been abandoned or was retained among only a few families (and he adduced several reasons for that, the chief being the indifference of men and women);  in addition there were the difficulties of the ceremonial office itself, which were being deliberately avoided, and the fact that he who acquired the flamonium, and she who took the hand of the flamen, left the jurisdiction of their fathers.  So a remedy must be found by a Senate’s decree or a law, just as Augustus had made certain adaptations to the well-known rigidity of antiquity in order to suit present conditions.  Thus, after a discussion of the religious issues, they decided that the structure ofthe office of flamen should remain unchanged, but a law was carried whereby the flaminica Dialis should be in her husband’s power for the purposes of the rituals but should come under the general legal standing of women otherwise;  and the son of Maluginensis replaced his father.  And, in order that esteem for the priests might grow and they themselves have a readier inclination to undertake the ceremonial offices, a decree was passed of two million sesterces {20 * H$100,000 = H$2,000,000} to Cornelia, the Virgin who was appointed in place of Scantia, and that, whenever August entered the theater, she should sit among the seats of the Vestals.

[4.17]  Cornelio Cethego, Visellio Varrone consulibus, pontifices eorumque exemplo ceteri sacerdotes, quum pro incolumitate principis vota susciperent, Neronem quoque et Drusum eisdem dis commendavere, non tam caritate juvenum quam adulatione quæ, moribus corruptis, perinde anceps, si nulla et ubi nimia est.  Nam Tiberius haud unquam domui Germanici mitis, tum vero æquari adulescentes senectæ suæ impatienter indoluit, accitosque pontifices percontatus est num id precibus Agrippinæ aut minis tribuissent.  Et illi quidem, quanquam abnuerent, modice perstricti — etenim pars magna e propinquis ipsius aut primores civitatis erant —;  ceterum, in Senatu oratione monuit in posterum ne quis mobiles adulescentium animos præmaturis honoribus ad superbiam extolleret.  Instabat quippe Sejanus, incusabatque diductam civitatem ut civili bello :  esse qui se partium Agrippinæ vocent, ac ni resistatur, fore pluris ;  neque aliud gliscentis discordiæ remedium quam si unus alterve maxime prompti subverterentur.

[4.17]  In the consulship of Cornelius Cethegus and Visellius Varro {a.D. 24}, the pontiffs, whose example was followed by the other priests in offering prayers for the emperor’s health, commended also Nero and Drusus to the same deities, not so much out of love for the young princes as out of sycophancy, both the absence and excess of which in a corrupt age are alike dangerous.  Tiberius indeed, who was never friendly to the house of Germanicus, felt intolerably pained that the juveniles were being placed on the same level as his elderly self.  He summoned the pontiffs, and asked them whether it was to the entreaties or the threats of Agrippina that they had made this concession.  And they at least, despite their denials, suffered only a moderate lashing (for the majority were either his own relatives or leaders of the community).  However, he addressed a warning to the Senate that no one should encourage the juveniles’ impressionable minds to haughtiness by means of premature honors.  For he was being hounded by Sejanus, who repeatedly censured the fact that the community was split as in a civil war :  there were, he said, people calling themselves members of “Agrippina’s faction” and, unless resistance was built up, there would be more of them;  and the only remedy for the swelling disaffection was if one or two of the readiest were undermined.

[4.18]  Qua causa C. Silium et Titium Sabinum aggreditur.  Amicitia Germanici perniciosa utrique, Silio et quod ingentis exercitus septem per annos moderator, partisque apud Germaniam triumphalibus, Sacroviriani belli victor, quanto majore mole procideret, plus formidinis in alios dispergebatur.  Credebant plerique auctam offensionem ipsius intemperantia, immodice jactantis, suum militem in obsequio duravisse, quum alii ad seditiones prolaberentur ;  neque mansurum Tiberio imperium si eis quoque legionibus cupido novandi fuisset.  Destrui per hæc fortunam suam Cæsar imparemque tanto merito rebatur.  Nam beneficia eo usque læta sunt, dum videntur exsolvi posse :  ubi multum antevenere, pro gratia odium redditur.

[4.18]  Accordingly he attacked Gajus Silius and Titius Sabinus.  The friendship of Germanicus was fatal to both.  As for Silius, commander of a great army for seven years, with the triumphal insignia bestowed on him in Germany, as victor in the war with Sacrovir, the greater his fall were to be, the more fear would be spread among others.  Many thought that he had provoked further displeasure by his own presumption and his extravagant boasts that his own troops had remained in compliance, while other armies were falling into mutiny, and that Tiberius’ command could not have lasted had his legions too been bent on revolution.  All this the emperor regarded as undermining his own power, and that he personally was no match for such meritorious service.  Benefits are welcome while they seem able to be repaid ;  but, when they become excessive, hatred rather than gratitude is the return.

[4.19]  Erat uxor Silio, Sosia Galla, caritate Agrippinæ invisa principi.  Hos corripi, dilato ad tempus Sabino, placitum, immissusque Varro consul qui, paternas inimicitias obtendens, odiis Sejani per dedecus suum gratifcabatur.  Precante reo brevem moram, dum accusator consulatu abiret, adversatus est Cæsar :  solitum quippe magistratibus, diem privatis dicere ;  nec infringendum consulis jus, cujus vigiliis niteretur ne quod Res Publica detrimentum caperet.  Proprium id Tiberio fuit, scelera nuper reperta priscis verbis obtegere.  Igitur multa asseveratione, quasi aut legibus cum Silio ageretur, aut Varro consul, aut illud Res Publica esset, coguntur patres, silente reo vel, si defensionem cœptaret, non occultante cujus ira premeretur.  Conscientia belli Sacrovir diu dissimulatus, victoria per avaritiam fœdata et uxor socia arguebantur.  Nec dubie repetundarum criminibus hærebant, sed cuncta quæstione majestatis exercita, et Silius imminentem damnationem voluntario fine prævertit.

[4.19]  Silius had a wife, Sosia Galla, whose love of Agrippina made her hateful to the emperor.  The two, it was decided, were to be attacked, but Sabinus was to be put off for a time.  Varro, the consul, was let loose on them, who, under color of a hereditary feud, humored the malignity of Sejanus to his own disgrace.  The accused begged a brief respite, until the prosecutor’s consulship expired, but the emperor opposed the request.  “It was usual,” he argued, “for magistrates to specify the day for {= to serve a summons on} private citizens, and a consul’s authority ought not to be impaired, seeing that it rested with his vigilance to see ‘that the republic suffered no damage.’”  (It was characteristic of Tiberius to cloak new devices in wickedness under archaic terminology.)  And so, with great seriousness, the Senate was convened — as though Silius’ case were being tried by law, or Varro were a consul, or this were the Republic.  The accused either said nothing, or, whenever he attempted to defend himself, did not conceal by whose anger he was being crushed.  The allegations against him were :  having long engaged in cover-up through complicity in Sacrovir’s war ;  a victory defiled by rapacity ;  and his wife’s being an accomplice.  Doubtless the extortion charges would have stuck, but everything was conducted as a treason trial, and Silius preëmpted his impending conviction by suicide.

[4.20]  Sævitum tamen in bona, non ut stipendiariis pecuniæ redderentur, quorum nemo repetebat, sed liberalitas Augusti avulsa, computatis singillatim quæ fisco petebantur.  Ea prima Tiberio erga pecuniam alienam diligentia fuit.  Sosia in exilium pellitur, Asinii Galli sententia, qui partem bonorum publicandam, pars ut liberis relinqueretur censuerat.  Contra M’. Lepidus quartam accusatoribus secundum necessitudinem legis, cetera liberis concessit.  Hunc ego Lepidum temporibus illis gravem et sapientem virum fuisse comperior :  nam pleraque ab sævis adulationibus aliorum in melius flexit.  Neque tamen temperamenti egebat, quum æquabili auctoritate et gratia apud Tiberium viguerit.  Unde dubitare cogor, fato et sorte nascendi, ut cetera, ita principum inclinatio in hos, offensio in illos, an sit aliquid in nostris consiliis, liceatque inter abruptam contumaciam et deforme obsequium pergere iter ambitione ac periculis vacuum.  At Messalinus Cotta, haud minus claris majoribus sed animo diversus, censuit cavendum Senatus consulto, ut, quanquam insontes magistratus et culpæ alienæ nescii, provincialibus uxorum criminibus proinde quam suis plecterentur.

[4.20]  His property was nevertheless savaged — not that any money was returned to those liables for dues, none of whom was demanding resitution,but Augustus’ generosity to him was wrested away from his estate, with an itemized calculation of what was demanded for the emperor’s private treasury.  That was the first time Tiberius paid attention to someone else’s money.  Sosia was banished on the motion of Asinius Gallus, who had proposed that part of her estate should be confiscated, part left to the children.  Marcus Lepidus, on the contrary, ensured the granting of a quarter to her accusers, as the law required, and the remainder to her children.  (I am discovering for myself that this Lepidus was a weighty and wise man during that period.  He frequently steered issues away from the savage sycophancies of others in a better direction, but at the same time he did not lack balance, since he throve as much by his continuing influence with Tiberius as by the latter’s favor toward him.  Hence I feel compelled to question whether it is by fate and the chance of birth that, as is the case with all other things, emperors incline toward some men and are affronted at others;  or whether there is something in our own policies which permits us to proceed between sheer truculence and grotesque compliance along a path cleared of ambition and peril.)  On the other hand, Messalinus Cotta, of no less illustrious ancestry than Lepidus but different in temperament, proposed taking measures by Senate’s resolution that magistrates, even if blameless and ignorant of another’s wrong, should nevertheless be chastized for their wives’ provincial crimes as if they were their own.

[4.21]  Actum dehinc de Calpurnio Pisone, nobili ac feroci viro.  Is namque, ut rettuli, cessurum se Urbe ob factiones accusatorum in Senatu clamitaverat et, spreta potentia Augustæ, trahere in jus Urgulaniam, domoque principis excire ausus erat.  Quæ in præsens Tiberius civiliter habuit :  sed in animo revolvente iras, etiam si impetus offensionis languerat, memoria valebat.  Pisonem Q. Veranius secreti sermonis incusavit adversum majestatem habiti, adjecitque in domo ejus venenum esse, eumque gladio accinctum introire curiam.  Quod ut atrocius vero tramissum ;  ceterorum quæ multa cumulabantur, receptus est reus, neque peractus ob mortem opportunam.

Relatum et de Cassio Severo exule, qui sordidæ originis, maleficæ vitæ, sed orandi validus, per immodicas inimicitias ut, judicio jurati Senatūs, Cretam amoveretur effecerat ;  atque illic, eadem actitando, recentia veteraque odia advertit, bonisque exutus, interdicto igni atque aqua, saxo Seripho consenuit.

[4.21]  Proceedings were then taken against Calpurnius Piso, a noble and defiant man.  He it was, as I have related, who had exclaimed more than once in the Senate that he would quit Rome because of the combinations of the informers, and had dared, in defiance of Augusta’s power, to sue Urgulania and summon her from the emperor’s palace.  Tiberius took this civilly at the time, but in a mind which brooded over its resentments, even though the impact of an affront had subsided, its memory remained strong.  Quintus Veranius accused Piso of secret treasonable conversation, and added that he kept poison in his house and came into the Senate girded with a sword.  This was passed over as too ghastly to be true.  On other charges, a multitude of which were being piled up, he was cited as a defendant but not prosecuted owing to his timely death.

Next was taken the case of Cassius Severus’ an exile.  Despite sordid origins and a life of wrongdoing, he was an effective speaker and through his unrestrained antagonisms had ensured that he was banished to Crete by a sworn verdict of the Senate.  Once there, he continued to act in the same way, bringing upon himself fresh hatreds as well as old;  and, stripped of his property, and with fire and water forbidden him, he grew old on the rock of Seriphos.

[4.22]  Per idem tempus Plautius Silvanus prætor incertis causis Aproniam conjugem in præceps jecit, tractusque ad Cæsarem ab L. Apronio socero turbata mente respondit, tanquam ipse somno gravis atque eo ignarus, et uxor sponte mortem sumpsisset.  Non cunctanter Tiberius pergit in domum, visit cubiculum, in quo reluctantis et impulsæ vestigia cernebantur.  Refert ad Senatum ;  datisque judicibus, Urgulania, Silvani avia, pugionem nepoti misit.  Quod perinde creditum quasi principis monitu ob amicitiam Augustæ cum Urgulania.  Reus, frustra temptato ferro, venas præbuit exsolvendas.  Mox Numantina, prior uxor ejus, accusata injecisse carminibus et veneficiis vecordiam marito, insons judicatur.

[4.22]  During the same period Plautius Silvanus, a prætor, threw his spouse headlong from a height for reasons which were unclear.  When summoned before the emperor by Lucius Apronius, his father-in-law, he replied incoherently, representing that he had been in a sound sleep and consequently knew nothing, and that his wife had chosen death of her own accord.  Without hesitation Tiberius went to the house and inspected the bedroom (where the traces of her struggle and ejection were to be seen), and referred the matter to the Senate.  When the judges had been appointed, Urgulania, Silvanus’ grandmother, sent her grandson a dagger, an action which was believed to have been taken as if on the emperor’s advice, owing to Augusta’s friendship with Urgulania.  Having tried the steel to no purpose, the defendent presented his veins for severing {i.e., by a slave}.  Shortly afterwards Numantina, his former wife, was charged with having caused her husband’s insanity by magical incantations and potions, but she was acquitted.

[4.23]  Is demum annus populum Romanum longo adversum Numidam Tacfarinatem bello absolvit.  Nam priores duces, ubi impetrando triumphalium insigni sufficere res suas crediderant, hostem omittebant ;  jamque tres laureatæ in Urbe statuæ, et adhuc raptabat Africam Tacfarinas, auctus Maurorum auxiliis qui, Ptolemæo Jubæ filio, juventa incurioso, libertos regios et servilia imperia bello mutaverant.  Erat illi prædarum receptor ac socius populandi rex Garamantum, non ut cum exercitu incederet, sed missis levibus copiis quæ, ex longinquo, in majus audiebantur ;  ipsaque e provincia ut quis fortunæ inops, moribus turbidus, promptius ruebant, quia Cæsar post res a Blæso gestas quasi nullis jam in Africa hostibus reportari Nonam Legionem jusserat — nec pro consule ejus anni, P. Dolabella, retinere ausus erat, jussa principis magis quam incerta belli metuens.

[4.23]  This year at last released Rome from her long contest with the Numidian Tacfarinas.  Former generals, whenever they believed that their achievements had warranted a successful request for the triumphal insignia, left the enemy to himself.  There were now in Rome three laurelled statues, and yet Tacfarinas was still ravaging Africa, strengthened by reinforcements from the Moors, who, given the youthful indifference of Ptolemy (Juba’s son), had substituted warfare for the royal freedmen and their servile commands.  He had the king of the Garamantes to receive his plunder and to be the partner of his raids, not indeed with a regular army, but with detachments of light troops whose numbers were exaggerated in hearsay by the distance involved.  From the province itself every all the elements who were destitute of fortune and disruptive in behavior had been rushing to him the more readily because Cæsar, in the light of Blæsus’ achievements, as though there were no longer an enemy at all in Africa, had ordered the Ninth Legion to be conveyed back — and Publius Dolabella, proconsul that year, had not dared to retain it, because he feared the emperor’s orders more than the uncertainties of war.

[4.24]  Igitur Tacfarinas — disperso rumore rem Romanam aliis quoque ab nationibus lacerari eoque paulatim Africa decedere, ac posse reliquos circumveniri si cuncti quibus libertas servitio potior incubuissent — auget vires positisque castris Thubuscum oppidum circumsidet.  At Dolabella, contracto quod erat militum, terrore nominis Romani et quia Numidæ peditum aciem ferre nequeunt, primo sui incessu solvit obsidium, locorumque opportuna permunivit ;  simul princpes Musulamiorum defectionem cœptantes securi percutit.  Dein, quia pluribus adversum Tacfarinatem expeditionibus cognitum non gravi nec uno incursu consectandum hostem vagum, excito cum popularibus rege Ptolemæo, quattuor agmina parat, quæ legatis aut tribunis data ;  et prædatorias manus delecti Maurorum duxere :  ipse consultor aderat omnibus.

[4.24]  So Tacfarinas — spreading a rumor that Roman power was being shredded by other nations too, that there was a gradual retreat from Afica, and that the remaining men could be surrounded if they were set upon by all to whom freedom was more important than servitude — increased his forces and, after pitching camp, besieged the town of Thubscum.  But Dolabella, gathering all the troops there were, and, by the terror of the Roman name and because the Numidians cannot stand against the charge of infantry, raised the siege with his own very first attack and fortified some advantageous positions.  At the same time he beheaded some chiefs of the Musulamii who were on the verge of defecting.  Next, as several expeditions against Tacfarinas had proved that a roving enemy could not be hunted down with a heavy-armed or single attack, he summoned to his aid king Ptolemy and his people, and equipped four columns which were put under the command of his lieutenants and tribunes.  Marauding parties were also led by picked Moors, and the general himself was on hand as adviser to everyone.

[4.25]  Nec multo post affertur Numidas apud castellum semirutum, ab ipsis quondam incensum, cui nomen Auzea, positis mapalibus consedisse, fisos loco quia vastis circum saltibus claudebatur.  Tum expeditæ cohortes alæque, quam in partem ducerentur ignaræ, cito agmine rapiuntur.  Simulque cœptus dies et concentu tubarum ac truci clamore aderant semisomnos in barbaros, præpeditis Numidarum equis aut diversos pastus pererrantibus.  Ab Romanis confertus pedes, dispositæ turmæ, cuncta prœlio provisa :  hostibus contra omnium nesciis non arma, non ordo, non consilium, sed pecorum modo trahi, occidi, capi.  Infensus miles memoria laborum et adversum eludentis optatæ totiens pugnæ se quisque ultione et sanguine explebant.  Differtur per manipulos, Tacfarinatem omnes, notum tot prœliis, consectentur :  non nisi duce interfecto requiem belli fore.  At ille, dejectis circum stipatoribus vinctoque jam filio et effusis undique Romanis, ruendo in tela captivitatem haud inulta morte effugit.  Isque finis armis impositus.

[4.25]  Soon afterwards news came that the Numidians had fixed their tents and encamped near a half-demolished fortress, by name Auzea, to which they had themselves formerly set fire, and on the position of which they relied, as it was inclosed by vast forests.  Immediately the unencumbered cohorts and cavalry, without knowing whither they were being led, were hurried along at quick march.  Day dawned, and with the sound of trumpets and fierce shouts, they were on the half-asleep barbarians, whose horses were tethered or roaming over distant pastures.  On the Roman side, the infantry was in close-packed array, the cavalry in its squadrons, everything prepared for an engagement, while the enemy, utterly surprised, without arms, order, or plan, were seized, slaughtered, or captured like cattle.  The infuriated soldiers, remembering their hardships and how often the longed-for conflict had been eluded, sated themselves to a man with vengeance and bloodshed.  The word went through the companies that all were to aim at securing Tacfarinas, whom, after so many battles, they knew well, as there would be no rest from war except by the destruction of the enemy’s leader.  Tacfarinas, his guards slain round him, his son a prisoner, and the Romans bursting on him from every side, rushed on the spears, and by a death which was not unavenged, escaped captivity.  This ended the war.

[4.26]  Dolabellæ petenti abnuit triumphalia Tiberius, Sejano tribuens, ne Blæsi avunculi ejus laus obsolesceret.  Sed neque Blæsus ideo illustrior, et huic negatus honor gloriam intendit :  quippe minore exercitu insignes captivos, cædem ducis bellique confecti famam deportarat.  Sequebantur et Garamantum legati, raro in Urbe visi, quos Tacfarinate cæso perculsa gens et culpæ conscia ad satis faciendum populo Romano miserat.  Cognitis dehinc Ptolemæi per id bellum studiis, repetitus ex vetusto more honos, missusque e senatoribus qui scipionem eburnum, togam pictam, antiqua patrum munera, daret, regemque et «socium atque amicum» appellaret.

[4.26]  Dolabella asked for triumphal distinctions, but was refused by Tiberius, out of compliment to Sejanus, the glory of whose uncle Blæsus he did not wish to be forgotten.  But this did not make Blæsus more famous, while the refusal of the honor heightened Dolabella’s renown.  He had, in fact, with a smaller army, brought back with him illustrious prisoners and the fame of having slain the enemy’s leader and terminated the war.  There followed too legates from the Garamantes, rarely seen in the City, whom their nation, shocked by Tacfarinas’ slaughter and conscious of their own guilt, had sent to make reparation to the Roman people.  Subsequently when Ptolemy’s support during the war was realized, an honor was revived from olden custom, and one of the Senate was sent to present him with an ivory sceptre and an embroidered toga, gifts anciently bestowed by the Senate, and to confer on him the titles of king, «ally and friend».

[4.27]  Eadem æstate mota per Italiam servilis belli semina fors oppressit.  Auctor tumultus T. Curtisius, quondam Prætoriæ cohortis miles, primo cœtibus clandestinis apud Brundisium et circumjecta oppida, mox positis propalam libellis ad libertatem vocabat agrestia per longinquos saltus et ferocia servitia, quum velut munere deum tres biremes appulere ad usus commeantium illo mari.  Et erat eisdem regionibus Cutius Lupus quæstor, cui provincia, vetere ex more, calles evenerant :  is, disposita classiariorum copia, cœptantem quum maxime conjurationem disjecit.  Missusque a Cæsare propere Stajus tribunus cum valida manu ducem ipsum et proximos audaciā in Urbem traxit, jam trepidam ob multitudinem familiarum quæ gliscebat immensum, minore in dies plebe ingenua.

[4.27]  The same summer, chance stifled the seeds of a slave war which were stirring across Italy.  The originator of the movement was Titus Curtisius, once a soldier of the Prætorian guard.  First, by secret meetings at Brundisium and the neighboring towns, then by placards publicly exhibited, he called the fierce agricultural slave population all over the remote pastoral woodlands to freedom.  By divine providence, three vessels came to land serving the commercial traffic in that sea.  In the same part of the country too was Curtius Lupus, the quæstor, to whom, following ancient practice, the public pasturelands had been alloted as sphere of office.  Deploying a force of marines, he broke up the seditious combination at its very inception.  The emperor at once sent Staius, a tribune, with a strong detachment, by whom the ringleader himself, with his most daring followers, were brought prisoners to Rome where men already trembled at the vast scale of the slave population, which was growing explosively while the freeborn populace daily decreased.

[4.28]  Eisdem consulibus, miseriarum ac sævitiæ exemplum atrox, reus pater, accusator filius (nomen utrique Vibius Serenus) in Senatum inducti sunt.  Ab exilio retractus illuvieque ac squalore obsitus et tum catena vinctus, pater oranti filio comparatur.  Adulescens multis munditiis, alacri vultu, structas principi insidias, missos in Galliam concitores belli index idem et testis dicebat, annectebatque Cæcilium Cornutum prætorium ministravisse pecuniam ;  qui, tædio curarum et quia periculum pro exitio habebatur, mortem in se festinavit.  At contra reus, nihil infracto animo, obversus in filium quatere vincla, vocare ultores deos ut sibi quidem redderent exilium ubi procul tali more ageret, filium autem quandoque supplicia sequerentur.  Asseverabatque innocentem Cornutum et falso exterritum ;  idque facile intellectu si proderentur alii :  non enim se cædem principis et res novas uno socio cogitasse.

[4.28]  That same consulship witnessed a horrible instance of misery and brutality.  A father as defendant, a son as prosecutor (Vibius Serenus was the name of both), were brought before the Senate;  the father, dragged from exile in filth and squalor now stood in irons, while the son pleaded for his guilt.  With studious elegance of dress and cheerful looks, the youth, at once accuser and witness, alleged a plot against the emperor and that men had been sent to Gaul to excite rebellion, further adding that Cæcilius Cornutus, an ex-praetor, had furnished money.  Cornutus, weary of anxiety and feeling that peril was equivalent to ruin, accelerated his own end.  But the accused with fearless spirit, looked his son in the face, shook his chains, and appealed to the gods of vengeance that they would restore him to his exile, where he might live far away from such practices, and that, as for his son, punishment might sooner or later overtake him.  He protested too that Cornutus was innocent and had panicked before a false accusation, as would easily be perceived if other names were produced;  for he never could have plotted the emperor’s murder and a revolution with only one confederate.

[4.29]  Tum accusator Cn. Lentulum et Sejum Tuberonem nominat, magno pudore Cæsaris, quum primores civitatis, intimi ipsius amici, Lentulus senectutis extremæ, Tubero defecto corpore, tumultus hostilis et turbandæ Rei Publicæ accerserentur.  Sed hi quidem statim exempti :  in patrem ex servis quæsitum et quæstio adversa accusatori fuit.  Qui scelere vecors, simul vulgi rumore territus, robur et saxum aut parricidarum pœnas minitantium, cessit Urbe.  Ac retractus Ravenna exsequi accusationem adigitur, non occultante Tiberio vetus odium adversum exulem Serenum.  Nam post damnatum Libonem, missis ad Cæsarem litteris, exprobraverat suum tantum studium sine fructu fuisse, addideratque quædam contumacius quam tutum apud aures superbas et offensioni proniores.  Ea Cæsar octo post annos rettulit, medium tempus varie arguens, etiamsi tormenta pervicaciā servorum contra evenissent.

[4.29]  Upon this the prosecutor named Cnæus Lentulus and Sejus Tubero, to the great embarassment of the emperor, at finding a hostile rebellion and disturbance of the public peace charged on two leading men in the state, his own intimate friends, the first of whom was in extreme old age and the second physically infirm.  They were, however, at once acquitted.  As for the father, his slaves were examined by torture, and the result was unfavorable to the accuser.  The man, deranged by his crime, and terror-stricken by the popular voice, which menaced him with the dungeon, the rock, or a parricide’s doom, fled from Rome.  He was dragged back from Ravenna, and forced to go through the prosecution, with Tiberius not concealing his inveterate hatred towards the exile Serenus.  For after Libo’s conviction, he had sent the emperor a letter, charging that his own efforts alone had gone without reward, and had added various things more insulting than safe in haughty ears easily offended.  All this Tiberius revived eight years later, charging the intervening period with various accusations, even though the examination by torture, owing to the obstinacy of the slaves, had contradicted his guilt.

[4.30]  Dictis dein sententiis ut Serenus more majorum puniretur, quo molliret invidiam, intercessit.  Gallus Asinius quum Gyaro aut Donusa claudendum censeret, id quoque aspernatus est, egenam aquæ utramque insulam referens, dandosque vitæ usus cui vita concederetur.  Ita Serenus Amorgum reportatur.  Et quia Cornutus sua manu ceciderat, actum de præmiis accusatorum abolendis, si quis majestatis postulatus ante perfectum judicium se ipse vita privavisset.  Ibaturque in eam sententiam ni — durius contraque morem suum, palam pro accusatoribus — Cæsar irritas leges, Rem Publicam in præcipiti conquestus esset :  subverterent potius jura quam custodes eorum amoverent.  Sic delatores, genus hominum publico exitio repertum et ne pœnis quidem unquam satis coërcitum, per præmia eliciebatur.

[4.30]  The Senate then gave their votes that Serenus should be punished according to ancient precedent, when the emperor, to soften the odium of the affair, interposed with his veto.  Next, Gallus Asinius proposed that he should be confined on Gyaros or Donusa, but this he rejected, on the ground that both these islands were deficient in water, and that he whose life was spared, ought to be allowed the necessaries of life.  And so Serenus was conveyed back to Amorgus.  In consequence of the suicide of Cornutus, it was proposed to deprive informers of their rewards whenever a person accused of treason put an end to his life by his own act before the completion of the trial.  And the vote would have gone in favor of the proposal had not Cæsar — more harshly and, contrary to his custom, openly on the accusers’ behalf — complained that the laws would be thwarted and the state on the brink :  better to overthrow the legislation, he said, than remove its guardians.  Thus the informers, a class invented to destroy the commonwealth, and never enough controlled even by legal penalties, were lured on by rewards.

[4.31]  His tam assiduis tamque mæstis modica lætitia interjicitur, quod C. Cominium equitem Romanum, probrosi in se carminis convictum, Cæsar precibus fratris, qui senator erat, concessit.  Quo magis mirum habebatur, gnarum meliorum, et quæ fama clementiam sequeretur, tristiora malle.  Neque enim socordia peccabat ;  nec occultum est, quando ex veritate, quando adumbrata lætitia, facta imperatorum celebrentur.  Quin ipse, compositus alias, et velut eluctantium verborum, solutius promptiusque eloquebatur quotiens subveniret.

At P. Suillium, quæstorem quondam Germanici, quum Italia arceretur, convictus pecuniam ob rem judicandam cepisse, amovendum in insulam censuit — tanta contentione animi, ut jure jurando obstringeret e Re Publica id esse.  Quod aspere acceptum ad præsens, mox in laudem vertit, regresso Suillio ;  quem vidit sequens ætas præpotentem, venalem, et Claudii principis amicitia diu prospere, nunquam bene usum.  Eadem pœna in Catum Firmium senatorem statuitur, tanquam falsis majestatis criminibus sororem petivisset.  Catus, ut rettuli, Libonem  illexerat insidiis, deinde indicio perculerat.  Ejus operæ memor, Tiberius — sed alia prætendens — exilium deprecatus est ;  quominus Senatu pelleretur non obstitit.

[4.31]  Into this chain of events, so unremitting and woeful, a little gaiety was interjected.  Cæsar spared Gajus Cominius, a Roman knight, convicted of a poem instulting to him, on the intercession of his brother, who was a senator.  Hence it seemed the more amazing that one who knew better, and the reputation which attends clemency, should prefer grimmer courses.  He did not indeed err from unintelligence;  and there is no concealing when the deeds of emperors are celebrated out of truth and when with fictitious gaiety.  And even he himself, otherwise inhibited, his words virtually struggling to emerge, spoke out freely and fluently whenever he came to a man’s rescue.

In another case, that of Publius Suillius, formerly quæstor to Germanicus, who was to be expelled from Italy on a conviction of having received money for a judicial decision, he held that the man ought to be banished to an island — and so intensely strong was his feeling that he swore by oath that this was a State necessity.  The act was thought cruel at the moment, but subsequently it redounded to his honor when Suillius returned from exile.  The next age saw him in tremendous power and a venal creature of the emperor Claudius, whose friendship he long used, with success, never for good.  The same punishment was adjudged to Catus Firmius, a Senator, for having (it was alleged) assailed his sister with a false charge of treason.  Catus, as I have related, had drawn Libo into a snare and then destroyed him by informing on him.  Tiberius, remembering this service, while he alleged other reasons, averted a sentence of exile, but did not oppose his expulsion from the Senate.

[4.32]  Pleraque eorum quæ rettuli, quæque referam, parva forsitan et levia memoratu videri non nescius sum :  sed nemo annales nostros cum scriptura eorum contenderit qui veteres populi Romani res composuere.  Ingentia illi bella, expugnationes urbium, fusos captosque reges, aut si quando ad interna præverterent, discordias consulum adversum tribunos, agrarias frumentariasque leges, plebis et optimatium certamina libero egressu memorabant ;  nobis in arto et inglorius labor :  immota quippe aut modice lacessita pax, mæstæ Urbis res et princeps proferendi imperii incuriosus erat.  Non tamen sine usu fuerit introspicere illa primo aspectu levia ex quis magnarum sæpe rerum motus oriuntur.

[4.32]  Much what I have related and shall have to relate, may perhaps, I am not unaware, seem insignificant and trivial.  But no one should compare my Annals with the writings of those who compiled the early histories of the Roman people.  They, with freedom to digress, would recount the history of mighty wars, the storming of cities, or the routing and capture of kings;  and if ever they turned to internal affairs, it would be to the quarrels of consuls the the tribunes, the agricultural and grain legislation, and the struggles of the plebs and aristocracy.  My labors are restricted and inglorious :  peace unbroken or only modestly challenged, dismal misery in the capital, an emperor indifferent to expanding the empire.  Still it will not be useless to study those at first sight trifling events out of which the movements of vast changes often take their rise.

[4.33]  Nam cunctas nationes et urbes, populus aut primores aut singuli regunt :  delecta ex eis et consociata Rei Publicæ forma laudari facilius quam evenire, vel si evenit, haud diuturna esse potest.  Igitur ut olim, plebe valida, vel quum patres pollerent, noscenda vulgi natura et quibus modis temperanter haberetur, Senatusque et optimatium ingenia qui maxime perdidicerant, callidi temporum et sapientes credebantur, sic converso statu neque alia rerum salute quam si unus imperitet, hæc conquiri tradique in rem fuerit, quia pauci prudentia honesta ab deterioribus, utilia ab noxiis discernunt, plures aliorum eventis docentur.

Ceterum ut profutura, ita minimum oblectationis afferunt.  Nam situs gentium, varietates prœliorum, clari ducum exitus, retinent ac redintegrant legentium animum ;  nos sæva jussa, continuas accusationes, fallaces amicitias, perniciem innocentium et easdem exitii causas conjungimus, obvia rerum similitudine et satietate.  Tum quod antiquis scriptoribus rarus obtrectator, neque refert cujusquam, Punicas Romanasve acies lætius extuleris :  at multorum, qui Tiberio regente pœnam vel infamias subiere, posteri manent.  Utque familiæ ipsæ jam exstinctæ sint, reperies qui, ob similitudinem morum, aliena malefacta sibi objectari putent.  Etiam gloria ac virtus infensos habet, ut nimis ex propinquo diversa arguens.  Sed ad inceptum redeo.

[4.33]  All nations and cities are ruled by the people, the nobility, or by one man.  A constitution formed by selection out of these elements can more easily be praised than evolve;  or, if it does evolve, it cannot be long-lasting.  Thus, just as formerly — when the people had power or when the patricians dominated — it was necessary to know the nature of the proletariat and the means of keeping it restrained had to be studied, and those who had acquainted themselves most thoroughly with the instincts of the Senate and aristocracy were believed astute and wise for their times, so, now that the situation has changed and there is no salvation for affairs other than if one man is in command, it will be apposite for these matters to have been assembled and transmitted, because few men have the proficiency to distinguish the honorable from the baser, or the useful from the harmful, whereas the majority are taught by what happens to others.

Still, though likely to be advantageous, these matters afford very little enjoyment.  The topography of peoples, the various incidents of battles, the famous deaths of leaders, rivet and reinvigorate the minds of readers.  I have to concatenate savage orders, incessant accusations, faithless friendships, the ruin of innocents, and always the same reasons for their extermination, with a satiety of similar material confronting me.  Then, again, an ancient historian has but few disparagers, and no one cares whether you praise more heartily the armies of Carthage or Rome.  But of many who endured punishment or disgrace under Tiberius, the descendants yet survive;  and, even if the actual families have now gone extinct, you will find those who, owing to a similarity of behavior, think that the misdeeds of others are being imputed to themselves.  Even glory and courage excite hostility by seemingly indicting their opposites with too close a contrast.  But I return to my undertaking.

[4.34]  Cornelio Cosso, Asinio Agrippa consulibus, Cremutius Cordus postulatur novo ac tunc primum audito crimine, quod editis annalibus, laudatoque M. Bruto, C. Cassium «Romanorum ultimum» dixisset.  Accusabant Satrius Secundus et Pinarius Natta, Sejani clientes.  Id perniciabile reo, et Cæsar truci vultu defensionem accipiens quam Cremutius, relinquendæ vitæ certus, in hunc modum exorsus est :  “Verba mea, patres conscripti, arguuntur :  adeo factorum innocens sum.  Sed neque hæc in principem aut principis parentem, quos lex majestatis amplectitur :  Brutum et Cassium laudavisse dicor, quorum res gestas quum plurimi composuerint, nemo sine honore memoravit.  Titus Livius, eloquentiæ ac fidei præclarus in primis, Cn. Pompejum tantis laudibus tulit ut Pompejanum eum Augustus appellaret ;  neque id amicitiæ eorum offecit.  Scipionem, Afranium, hunc ipsum Cassium, hunc Brutum nusquam latrones et parricidas, quæ nunc vocabula imponuntur, sæpe ut insignes viros nominat.  Asinii Pollionis scripta egregiam eorundem memoriam tradunt ;  Messala Corvinus imperatorem suum Cassium prædicabat :  et uterque opibusque atque honoribus perviguere.  Marci Ciceronis libro quo Catonem cælo æquavit, ¿ quid aliud dictator Cæsar quam rescripta oratione velut apud judices respondit ?  Antonii epistulæ, Bruti contiones falsa quidem in Augustum probra, sed multa cum acerbitate habent ;  carmina Bibaculi et Catulli referta contumeliis Cæsarum leguntur :  sed ipse divus Julius, ipse divus Augustus et tulere ista et reliquere — haud facile dixerim, moderatione magis an sapientia.  Namque spreta exolescunt ;  si irascare, agnita videntur.”

[4.34]  In the year of the consulship of Cornelius Cossus and Asinius Agrippa {a.D. 25}, Cremutius Cordus was arraigned on a new charge, now for the first time heard.  He had published a history in which he had praised Marcus Brutus and called Gajus Cassius the last of the Romans.  His accusers were Satrius Secundus and Pinarius Natta, creatures of Sejanus.  That was lethal for the accused;  and then too the emperor listened with an angry frown to his defence, which Cremutius, resolved to give up his life, began thus:  — “It is my words, Senators, which are condemned, so innocent am I of any guilty acts;  yet these do not touch the emperor or the emperor’s mother, who are alone comprehended under the law of treason.  I am said to have praised Brutus and Cassius, whose careers many have described and no one mentioned without eulogy.  Titus Livius, pre-eminently famous for eloquence and truthfulness, extolled Gnæus Pompejus in such a panegyric that Augustus called him a ‘Pompejan,’ and yet this was no obstacle to their friendship.  Scipio, Afranius, this very Cassius, this same Brutus, he nowhere describes as brigands and traitors, terms now applied to them, but repeatedly as illustrious men.  Asinius Pollio’s writings, too, hand down a glorious memory of them, and Messala Corvinus used to speak with pride of Cassius as his general.  Yet both these men continued to thrive in wealth and honors.  Again, that book of Marcus Cicero, in which he lauded Cato to the skies, how else was it answered by Cæsar the dictator, than by a written oration in reply, as if he was pleading in court?  The letters of Antonius, the harangues of Brutus contain reproaches against Augustus, false indeed, but urged with acerbity;  the poems which we read of Bibaculus and Catullus are crammed with invectives on the Cæsars.  Yet the Divine Julius, the Divine Augustus themselves bore all this and let it pass, whether in forbearance or in wisdom I cannot easily say.  Assuredly what is despised is soon forgotten;  when you become infuriated, you seem to recognise it.”

[4.35]  “Non attingo Græcos, quorum non modo libertas, etiam libido impunita ;  aut si quis advertit, dictis dicta ultus est.  Sed maxime solutum et sine obtrectatore fuit prodere de eis quos mors odio aut gratiæ exemisset.  ¿ Num enim, armatis Cassio et Bruto ac Philippenses campos obtinentibus, belli civilis causa populum per contiones incendo ?  ¿ An illi quidem septuagesimum ante annum perempti, quomodo imaginibus suis noscuntur — quas ne victor quidem abolevit — sic partem memoriæ apud scriptores retinent ?  Suum cuique decus posteritas rependit ;  nec deerunt, si damnatio ingruit, qui non modo Cassii et Bruti sed etiam mei meminerint.”  Egressus dein Senatu vitam abstinentia finivit.

Libros per ædiles cremandos censuere patres :  et manserunt, occultati et editi.  Quo magis socordiam eorum irridere libet qui præsenti potentia credunt exstingui posse etiam sequentis ævi memoriam.  Nam contra punitis ingeniis gliscit auctoritas ;  neque aliud externi reges, aut qui eadem sævitia usi sunt, nisi dedecus sibi atque illis gloriam peperere.

[4.35]  “Of the Greeks I say nothing;  with them not only liberty, but even license went unpunished, or if anyone took notice, he avenged words with words.  What was particularly unrestricted, and had no one to disparage it, was to speak freely of those whom death has delivered from hatred or favor.  For surely it is not the case that, by my having Cassius and Brutus armed and holding the plains of Philippi, I am inflaming the people in pulbic addresses with civil war as my motive?  Is it not rather the case that, slain as they were seventy years ago, they for their part not only come to be known by their images — which not even the victor abolished — but retain some part of their memory among writers in exactly the same way?  To every man posterity gives his due repute, and, if condemnation is closing in on me, there will be no lack of those who remember not merely Cassius and Brutus but me as well.”  He then left the Senate and ended his life by starvation.

His books, so the Senators decreed, were to be burnt by the ædiles;  but they survived, having been concealed and later published.  This makes one all the more inclined to laugh at the stupidity of those who think that the memories of succeeding generations can be stifled by power in the present day.  On the contrary, the influence of punished talents swells;  nor have foreign kings, or those who have resorted to the same savagery, produced anything except disrepute for themselves and for their victims glory.

[4.36]  Ceterum postulandis reis tam continuus annus fuit ut feriarum Latinarum diebus præfectum Urbis Drusum, auspicandi gratia tribunal ingressum, adierit Calpurnius Salvianus in Sextum Marium ;  quod, a Cæsare palam increpitum, causa exilii Salviano fuit.

Objecta publice Cyzicenis incuria cærimoniarum divi Augusti, additis violentiæ criminibus adversum cives Romanos.  Et amisere libertatem quam bello Mithridatis meruerant circumsessi, nec minus sua constantia quam præsidio Luculli pulso rege.  At Fontejus Capito, qui pro consule Asiam curaverat, absolvitur, comperto ficta in eum crimina per Vibium Serenum.  Neque tamen id Sereno noxæ fuit, quem odium publicum tutiorem faciebat.  Nam ut quis destrictior accusator, velut sacrosanctus erat ;  leves ignobiles pœnis afficiebantur.

[4.36]  That year was so full of arraigned defendants that on the days of the Latin festival when Drusus, as city-prefect, had ascended the tribunal to take the auspices for his inauguration, Calpurnius Salvianus accosted him with a charge against Sextus Marius.  This the emperor openly censured, and it caused the banishment of Salvianus.

Next, the people of Cyzicus were officially impeached for neglecting the ceremonies of the Divine Augustus, and also charged with violence against Roman citizens.  They were deprived of the independence which they had earned during the war with Mithridates when besieged, the king was repulsed as much by their steadfastness as by the garrison of Lucullus.  Then followed the acquittal of Fontejus Capito, who had been proconsul of Asia, on proof that charges brought against him by Vibius Serenus were fictitious.  Still this did not injure Serenus, whom public hatred made more secure.  For the more aggressive an informer was, he was as though sacrosanct;  it was the lightweight, the ignoble, who had punishments inflicted on them.

[4.37]  Per idem tempus Hispania ulterior, missis ad Senatum legatis, oravit ut exemplo Asiæ delubrum Tiberio matrique ejus extrueret.  Qua occasione Cæsar, validus alioqui spernendis honoribus et respondendum ratus eis quorum rumore arguebatur in ambitionem flexisse, hujusce modi orationem cœpit :  “Scio, patres conscripti, constantiam meam a plerisque desideratam quod Asiæ civitatibus nuper idem istud petentibus non sim adversatus.  Ergo et prioris silentii defensionem et quid in futurum statuerim simul aperiam.  Quum divus Augustus sibi atque Urbi Romæ templum apud Pergamum sisti non prohibuisset, qui omnia facta dictaque ejus vice legis observem, placitum jam exemplum promptius secutus sum quia cultui meo veneratio Senatus adjungebatur.  Ceterum ut semel recepisse veniam habuerit, ita per omnes provincias effigie numinum sacrari ambitiosum, superbum ;  et vanescet Augusti honor si promiscis adulationibus vulgatur.

[4.37]  About the same time Further Spain sent a deputation to the Senate, with a request to be allowed, after the example of Asia, to erect a temple to Tiberius and his mother.  On this occasion, the emperor, who was generally firm in spurning honors and now thought it right to reply to those by whose rumor he was criticized for having deviated toward self-aggrandizement, began a speech of this kind:  “I am aware, Senators, that many deplore my lack of consistency in not having opposed a similar recent petition from the cities of Asia.  I will therefore both explain the grounds of my previous silence and what I have decided for the future.  Inasmuch as the Divine Augustus did not forbid the founding of a temple at Pergamos to himself and to the city of Rome, I who respect all his actions and sayings as if law, have the more readily followed a precedent once approved, seeing that with the homage to myself was linked an expression of reverence towards the Senate.  But though it may be pardonable to have allowed this once, it would be a vain and arrogant thing to be worshipped with divine images throughout all the provinces, and the homage paid to Augustus will disappear if it is vulgarised by indiscriminate flattery.

[4.38]  “Ego me, patres conscripti, mortalem esse et hominum officia fungi satisque habere si locum principem impleam et vos testor et meminisse posteros volo ;  qui satis superque memoriæ meæ tribuent, ut majoribus meis dignum, rerum vestrarum providum, constantem in periculis, offensionum pro utilitate publica non pavidum credant.  Hæc mihi in animis vestris templa, hæ pulcherrimæ effigies et mansuræ.  Nam quæ saxo struuntur, si judicium posterorum in odium vertit, pro sepulchris spernuntur.  Proinde socios cives et deos ipsos et deas precor, hos ut mihi ad finem usque vitæ quietam et intellegentem humani divinique juris mentem duint, illos ut, quandoque concessero, cum laude et bonis recordationibus facta atque famam nominis mei prosequantur.”  Perstititque posthac secretis etiam sermonibus aspernari talem sui cultum.  Quod alii modestiam, multi, quia diffideret, quidam ut degeneris animi interpretabantur.  Optimos quippe mortalium altissima cupere :  sic Herculem et Liberum apud Græcos, Quirinum apud nos deum numero additos :  melius Augustum, qui speraverit.  Cetera principibus statim adesse :  unum insatiabiliter parandum, prosperam sui memoriam ;  nam contemptu famæ contemni virtutes.

[4.38]  “For myself, Senators, I am mortal and limited to the functions of humanity, content if I can adequately fill the highest place;  of this I solemnly assure you, and would have posterity remember it.  They will more than sufficiently honor my memory by believing me to have been worthy of my ancestry, watchful over your interests, courageous in danger, not afraid of giving offense for the good of the state.  These sentiments of your hearts are my temples, these my most glorious and abiding monuments.  Those built of stone are despised as mere tombs, if the judgment of posterity passes into hatred.  And therefore this is my prayer to our allies, our citizens, and to the gods and goddesses themselves;  to the latter, that, to my life’s close, it grant me a tranquil mind, which can discern alike human and divine law;  to the former, that, when I die, they honor my career and the reputation of my name with praise and kindly remembrance.”  Thereafter Tiberius even in private conversations persisted in showing contempt for such homage to himself.  Some attributed this to modesty;  many, because he lacked confidence;  some as a sign of a degenerate spirit.  “The noblest men,” it was said, “have the loftiest aspirations, and so Hercules and Bacchus among the Greeks and Quirinus among us were enrolled in the number of the gods.  Augustus did better, seeing that he had aspired.  All other things princes have as a matter of course;  one thing they ought insatiably to pursue, that their memory may be glorious.  For with the contempt of fame virtues are contemned.”

[4.39]  At Sejanus nimia fortuna socors et muliebri insuper cupidine incensus (promissum matrimonium flagitante Livia), componit ad Cæsarem codicillos (moris quippe tum erat, quanquam præsentem, scripto adire).  Ejus talis forma fuit :  benevolentia patris Augusti et mox plurimis Tiberii judiciis ita insuevisse ut spes votaque sua non prius ad deos quam ad principum aures conferret.  Neque fulgorem honorum unquam precatum :  excubias ac labores ut unum e militibus pro incolumitate imperatoris malle — ac tamen quod pulcherrimum adeptum, ut conjunctione Cæsaris dignus crederetur :  hinc initium spei.  Et quoniam audiverit Augustum in collocanda filia nonnihil etiam de equitibus Romanis consultavisse, ita, si maritus Liviæ quæreretur, haberet in animo amicum sola necessitudinis gloria usurum.  Non enim exuere imposita munia :  satis æstimare firmari domum adversum iniquas Agrippinæ offensiones, idque liberorum causa ;  nam sibi multum superque vitæ fore, quod tali cum principe explevisset.

[4.39]  Sejanus meanwhile, made insensible by his extravagant good fortune and inflamed too by a woman’s passion (since Livia was importuning him for the promised marriage), he composed a note to Cæsar.  (For it was then the custom to approach him, even though present, in writing.)  Its outline was as follows:  — through the benevolence of his father Augustus, and later through the very many tokens of Tiberius’ esteem, he had become accustomed to taking his hopes and prayers not primarily to the gods but to the ears of the emperors.  The glitter of honors he had never pleaded;  he had preferred guard duty and hardships, like one of the common soldiers, for the emperor’s safety.  But the best thing he had gained was being deemed worthy of a family relationship with Cæsar:  hence the beginning of his hope.  And as he had heard that Augustus, in betrothing his daughter, had given some consideration to Roman knights as well, so, if a husband were being sought for Livia, Tiberius might keep in mind his friend, who would profit only from the glory of the relationship.  For he did not mean to cast off the duties imposed on him;  he would be satisfied to think that the family was being strengthened against the unfair affronts of Agrippina — and that, too, for the children’s sake.  For himself, completing his life under such a sovereign would be more than enough.

[4.40]  Ad ea Tiberius, laudata pietate Sejani, suisque in eum beneficiis modice percursis, quum tempus tanquam ad integram consultationem petivisset, adjunxit :  ceteris mortalibus in eo stare consilia quid sibi conducere putent ;  principum diversam esse sortem quibus præcipua rerum ad famam derigenda.  Ideo se non illuc decurrere, quod promptum rescriptu, posse ipsam Liviam statuere, nubendum post Drusum an in penatibus eisdem tolerandum haberet ;  esse illi matrem et aviam, propiora consilia.  Simplicius acturum, de inimicitiis primum Agrippinæ, quas longe acrius arsuras si matrimonium Liviæ velut in partes domum Cæsarum distraxisset.  Sic quoque erumpere æmulationem feminarum, eaque discordia nepotes suos convelli ;  ¿ quid si intendatur certamen tali conjugio ?  “Falleris enim, Sejane, si te mansurum in eodem ordine putas, et Liviam — quæ C. Cæsari, mox Druso nupta fuerit — ea mente acturam ut cum equite Romano senescat.  Ego ut sinam, ¿ credisne passuros qui fratrem ejus, qui patrem majoresque nostros in summis imperiis videre ?  Vis tu quidem istum intra locum sistere ;  sed illi magistratus et primores, qui te invitum perrumpunt omnibusque de rebus consulunt, excessisse jam pridem equestre fastigium, longeque antisse patris mei amicitias, non occulti ferunt, perque invidiam tui me quoque incusant.

At enim Augustus filiam suam equiti Romano tradere meditatus est.  ¿ Mirum hercule, si quum in omnes curas distraheretur, immensumque attolli provideret quem conjunctione tali super alios extulisset, C. Proculejum et quosdam in sermonibus habuit insigni tranquillitate vitæ, nullis Rei Publicæ negotiis permixtos ?  Sed si dubitatione Augusti movemur, ¿ quanto validius est quod Marco Agrippæ, mox mihi collocavit ?

Atque ego hæc pro amicitia non occultavi :  ceterum neque tuis neque Liviæ destinatis adversabor.  Ipse quid intra animum volutaverim, quibus adhuc necessitudinibus immiscere te mihi parem, omittam ad præsens referre :  id tantum aperiam, nihil esse tam excelsum quod non virtutes istæ tuusque in me animus mereantur, datoque tempore vel in Senatu vel in contione non reticebo.”

[4.40]  Tiberius, in reply, after praising the loyal sentiments of Sejanus and giving a modest review of his own kindnesses toward him, sought time as though for a proper and unprejudiced deliberation, adding that while other men’s plans depended on their ideas of their own interest, but the lot of emperors was differnet, since they had to regulate paramount affairs with regard to their own reputation.  “Hence,” he said, “I do not take refuge in an answer which it would be easy to return, that Livia can herself decide whether she considers that, after Drusus, she ought again to marry or rather to continue in the same household, and that she has a mother and grandmother, more intimate counsels.  I will act more straightforwardly.  First, as to the enmity of Agrippina, I maintain that it will blaze out more fiercely if Livia’s marriage rends, so to say, the house of the Cæsars into factions.  Even as it is, feminine jealousies break out, and my grandsons are torn asunder by the strife.  What might happen if the rivalry were to be exacerbated by such a marriage?  For you are mistaken, Sejanus, if you think that you will then remain in the same position, and that Livia — who has been the wife of Gajus Caesar and afterwards of Drusus — will act with a mind to grow old with a mere Roman knight.  Were I to allow it, do you imagine it would be tolerated by those who have seen her brother, her father, and our ancestors in the highest offices of state?  You indeed desire to keep within your station;  but those magistrates and nobles who burst in on you against your will and consult you about every affair, make no secret of maintaining that you long ago passed the pinnacle of an equestrian and have far outstripped my father’s friendships ;  and in their resentment of you they censure me too.

“But, you say, Augustus had thoughts of giving his daughter to a Roman knight.  Is it any wonder that, when he was being rent by every concern and foresaw the immeasurable exaltation of whichever person he raised above others by such a connection, his conversations included Gajus Proculejus and those distinguished by the same tranquillity of life, involved in no businesses of state?  Still, if we are influenced by Augustus’ hesitation, how much stronger is the fact that it was to Marcus Agrippa, and later to myself, that he engaged her?

“These matters, in virtue of our friedship, I have not concealed;  but I will not oppose either your designs or Livia’s.  What I personally have been turning over within my mind, by what further relationships I am preparing to link you to me, I shall omit to mention at present;  this only will I disclose, that there is nothing so lofty as not to be deserved by those virtues of yours and by your intentions toward me, and, given the right time, either in the Senate or at a public meeting, I shall not keep silent.”

[4.41]  Rursum Sejanus non jam de matrimonio sed altius metuens, tacita suspicionum, vulgi rumorem, ingruentem invidiam deprecatur.  Ac ne assiduos in domum cœtus arcendo infringeret potentiam aut receptando facultatem criminantibus præberet, huc flexit ut Tiberium ad vitam procul Roma amœnis locis degendam impelleret.  Multa quippe providebat :  sua in manu aditus, litterarumque magna ex parte se arbitrum fore, quum per milites commearent ;  mox Cæsarem, vergente jam senecta secretoque loci mollitum, munia imperii facilius tramissurum ;  et minui sibi invidiam adempta salutantum turba, sublatisque inanibus veram potentiam augeri.  Igitur paulatim negotia Urbis, populi accursus, multitudinem affluentium increpat, extollens laudibus quietem et solitudinem quis abesse tædia et offensiones ac præcipua rerum maxime agitari.

[4.41]  In response Sejanus no longer talked about marriage but, with a deeper dread, begged Tiberius to ignore the silent suspicions, the public rumors, the encroaching resentments.  That he might not impair his influence by banning the regular gatherings at his house or provide his accusers with an opportunity by continuing them, he turned to inducing Tiberius to live in attractive places far from Rome.  In this he foresaw several advantages.  Access to the emperor would be in his own hands, and letters, for the most part he would be the judge of correspondence, since it traveled by soldiers.  Cæsar too, already in the decline of life and softened by the seclusion of the place, would soon more readily transfer to him the functions of government ;  envy towards himself would be lessened with the crowd of morning well-wishers withdrawn;  and with the inessentials removed, his real power would increase.  So little by little he began criticizing the press of City business, the people rushing up and streaming multitudes, while extolling the praises of quiet and solitude, where irksomeness and affronts were absent, and paramount affairs in particular could be conducted.

[4.42]  Ac forte habita per illos dies de Votieno Montano, celebris ingenii viro, cognitio cunctantem jam Tiberium perpulit ut vitandos crederet patrum cœtus vocesque quæ plerumque veræ et graves coram ingerebantur.  Nam postulato Votieno ob contumelias in Cæsarem dictas, testis Æmilius e militaribus viris, dum studio probandi cuncta refert et — quanquam inter obstrepentes — magna asseveratione nititur, audivit Tiberius probra quis per occultum lacerabatur, adeoque perculsus est ut se vel statim vel in cognitione purgaturum clamitaret ;  precibusque proximorum, adulatione omnium ægre componeret animum.  Et Votienus quidem majestatis pœnis affectus est :  Cæsar, objectam sibi adversus reos inclementiam eo pervicacius amplexus, Aquiliam adulterii delatam cum Vario Ligure — quanquam Lentulus Gætulicus, consul designatus, lege Julia damnasset — exilio punivit, Apidiumque Merulam, quod in acta divi Augusti non juraverat, albo senatorio erasit.

[4.42]  It happened that the investigation at this time of Votienus Montanus, a man of renowned intellect, convinced the hesitating Tiberius that he ought to avoid all assemblies of the Senate, where comments, generally true and weighty, were brought up in his very presence.  Votienus was impeached for insults made against Cæsar, and while the witness, Æmilius, a military man, in his eagerness to produce the proof, reported everything and despite loud objections struggled on with loud assertiveness, Tiberius heard the reproaches with which he was regularly torn to shreds in secret, and was so shaken that he exclaimed that he would clear himself either at once or during the inquiry, and only through the pleas from intimates and the sycophancy of everyone would he barely calm down.  Votienus for his part had the punishment for treason inflicted on him;  As for Cæsar, embracing all the more persistently the mercilessness towards defendents which was imputed to him, punished Aquilia with exile for the crime of adultery with Varius Ligur, although Lentulus Gætulicus, the consul-elect, had condemned her under the Julian law.  He next struck Apidius Merula off from the register of the Senate for not having sworn obedience to the enactments of the Divine Augustus.

[4.43]  Auditæ dehinc Lacedæmoniorum et Messeniorum legationes de jure templi Dianæ Limnatidis, quod suis a majoribus suaque in terra dicatum Lacedæmonii firmabant annalium memoria vatumque carminibus, sed Macedonis Philippi, cum quo bellassent, armis ademptum ac post C. Cæsaris et M. Antonii sententia redditum.  Contra, Messenii veterem inter Herculis posteros divisionem Peloponnesi protulere, suoque regi Denthaliatem agrum, in quo id delubrum, cessisse ;  monimentaque ejus rei sculpta saxis et ære prisco manere.  Quod si vatum, annalium ad testimonia vocentur, plures sibi ac locupletiores esse ;  neque Philippum potentia sed ex vero statuisse :  idem regis Antigoni, idem imperatoris Mummii judicium ;  sic Milesios, permisso publice arbitrio, postremo Atidium Geminum prætorem Achajæ decrevisse.  Ita secundum Messenios datum.

Et Segestani ædem Veneris (montem apud Erycum), vetustate dilapsam, restaurari postulavere, nota memorantes de origine ejus et læta Tiberio.  Suscepitque curam libens ut consanguineus.

Tunc tractatæ Massiliensium preces probatumque P. Rutilii exemplum ;  namque eum legibus pulsum civem sibi Zmyrnæi addiderant.  Quo jure Vulcacius Moschus exul in Massilienses receptus bona sua Rei Publicæ eorum ut patriæ reliquerat.

[4.43]  Then a hearing was given to embassies from the Lacedæmonians and Messenians on the question of the temple of Diana in the Marshes.  The Lacedæmonians asserted that it had been dedicated by their ancestors and in their territory, and appealed to the records of their history and the hymns of poets, but it had been wrested from them, they said, by the arms of Philip of Macedon, with whom they had fought, and subsequently restored by the decision of Gajus Caesar and Marcus Antonius.  The Messenians, on the contrary, alleged the ancient division of the Peloponnesus among the descendants of Hercules, in which the territory of Denthalia (where the temple stood) had fallen to their own king.  Records of this event still existed, engraven on stone and ancient bronze.  But if they were asked for the testimony of poetry and of history, they had it, they said, in more numerous and fuller.  Philip had not decided on the basis of his power, but according to fact ;  the same judgement was made by king Antigonus, and by the general Mummius.  So also the Milesians to whom arbitration had been publicly entrusted, and, finally, Atidius Geminus, the praetor of Achaia.  So it went in favor of the Messenians.

Next the people of Segesta petitioned for the restoration of the temple of Venus at Mount Eryx, which had fallen to ruin from its antiquity.  They recalled the well-known facts about its origin, which delighted Tiberius.  He undertook the work willingly, and like a blood relative he undertook the concern gladly.

After this a petition from the city of Massilia was discussed and the precedent of Publius Rutilius was approved;  following his banishment by law from Rome, the people of Smyrna had adopted him as a citizen.  It was by this authority that the exile Volcacius Moschus had been received by the Massilians, leaving his property to their state as to a fatherland.

[4.44]  Obiere eo anno viri nobiles Cn. Lentulus et L. Domitius.  Lentulo, super consulatum et triumphalia de Getis, gloriæ fuerat bene tolerata paupertas, dein magnæ opes innocenter partæ et modeste habitæ.  Domitium decoravit pater civili bello maris potens, donec Antonii partibus, mox Cæsaris misceretur.  Avus Pharsalica acie pro optimatibus ceciderat.  Ipse, delectus cui minor Antonia (Octavia genita) in matrimonium daretur, post exercitu flumen Albim transcendit, longius penetrata Germania quam quisquam priorum, easque ob res insignia triumphi adeptus est.

Obiit et L. Antonius, multa claritudine generis sed improspera.  Nam patre ejus Jullo Antonio ob adulterium Juliæ morte punito, hunc admodum adulescentulum, sororis nepotem, seposuit Augustus in civitatem Massiliensem ubi specie studiorum nomen exilii tegeretur.  Habitus tamen supremis honor, ossaque tumulo Octaviorum illata per decretum Senatus.

[4.44]  Two men of noble rank died in that year, Gnæus Lentulus and Lucius Domitius.  It had been the glory of Lentulus, above and beyond his consulship and his triumphal distinctions over the Getæ, to have borne poverty with a good grace, then to have attained great wealth, which had been blamelessly acquired and was modestly handled.  Domitius derived lustre from a father who during the civil war had been master of the sea, till he united himself to the party of Antonius and afterwards to that of Cæsar.  His grandfather had fallen in the battle of Pharsalia, fighting for the aristocracy.  He himself, chosen to be given the younger Antonia (daughter of Octavia) in marriage, subsequently led an army across the Elbe, penetrating further into Germany than any of his predecessors.  For this achievement he gained triumphal honors.

Lucius Antonius too then died, of a most illustrious but unfortunate family.  His father, Jullus Antonius, was punished by death for adultery with Julia, and Augustus banished the son, his sister’s grandson, to the community of Massilia, where the name of exile would be masked under the appearance of “studies.”  Yet honor was paid him at his last rites, and his bones, by the Senate’s decree, were interred in the tomb of the Octavii.

[4.45]  Eisdem consulibus, facinus atrox in citeriore Hispania admissum a quodam agresti nationis Termestinæ.  Is prætorem provinciæ L. Pisonem, pace incuriosum, ex improviso in itinere adortus uno vulnere in mortem affecit ;  ac pernicitate equi profugus, postquam saltuosos locos attigerat, dimisso equo per derupta et avia sequentes frustratus est.  Neque diu fefellit :  nam, prenso ductoque per proximos pagos equo, cujus foret cognitum.  Et repertus, quum tormentis edere conscios adigeretur, voce magna sermone patrio frustra se interrogari clamitavit :  assisterent socii ac spectarent ;  nullam vim tantam doloris fore ut veritatem eliceret.  Idemque, quum postero ad quæstionem retraheretur, eo nisu proripuit se custodibus saxoque caput afflixit ut statim exanimaretur.  Sed Piso Termestinorum dolo cæsus habetur ;  quippe pecunias e publico interceptas acrius quam ut tolerarent barbari cogebat.

[4.45]  While the same consuls were in office, an atrocious crime was committed in Nearer Spain by a peasant of the Termestine tribe.  Suddenly attacking the praetor of the province, Lucius Piso, as he was travelling in all the carelessness of peace, he killed him with a single wound.  Escaping due to the speed of his horse, he reached a wooded region where he let his steed go and eluded pursuit amid rocky and pathless wilds.  But he did not deceive them for long.  The horse was caught and led through the neighboring villages, and its owner ascertained.  Being found and put to the torture that he might be forced to reveal his accomplices, he exclaimed in a loud voice, in the language of his country, that it was in vain to question him;  his comrades might stand by and look on, but that the most intense agony would not wring the truth from him.  Next day, when he was dragged back to torture, he broke loose from his guards and dashed his head against a stone with such violence that he instantly fell dead.  It was however believed that Piso had been murdered through a plot of the Termestini ;  he was trying to collect money embezzled from the public treasury too fiercely for the barbarians to tolerate.

[4.46]  Lentulo Gætulico C. Calvisio consulibus, decreta triumphi insignia Poppæo Sabino contusis Thræcum gentibus, qui montium editis incultu atque eo ferocius agitabant.  Causa motus super hominum ingenium, quod pati dilectus et validissimum quemque militiæ nostræ dare aspernabantur, ne regibus quidem parere nisi ex libidine soliti, aut si mitterent auxilia, suos ductores præficere nec nisi adversum accolas belligerare.  Ac tum rumor incesserat fore ut, disjecti aliisque nationibus permixti, diversas in terras traherentur.  Sed antequam arma inciperent, misere legatos amicitiam obsequiumque memoraturos, et mansura hæc si nullo novo onere temptarentur :  sin ut victis servitium indiceretur, esse sibi ferrum, et juventutem, et promptum libertati aut ad mortem animum.  Simul castella rupibus indita collatosque illuc parentes et conjuges ostentabant, bellumque impeditum, arduum, cruentum minitabantur.

[4.46]  In the consulship of Lentulus Gætulicus and Gajus Calvisius {a.D. 26}, triumphal distinctions were decreed to Poppæus Sabinus, for crushing some Thracian tribes, who in their mountain uplands lived devoid of culture and thus all the more savagely.  Besides their own nature, the rebellion had its origin in their scornful refusal to endure recruitments and to supply our armies with their bravest men.  Even native princes they would obey only according to their caprice, and if they sent auxiliaries, they would appoint their own leaders and fight only against their neighbors.  A rumor had then spread itself among them that, dispersed and mingled with other tribes, they were to be dragged away to distant countries.  Before however they took up arms, they sent envoys with assurances of their friendship and loyalty, which, they said, would continue, if they were not tried by any fresh burden.  But if slavery were imposed upon them as a conquered people, they had swords and young warriors and a spirit ready for freedom or death.  As they spoke, they pointed to fortresses amid rocks whither they had conveyed their parents and their wives, and threatened us with a difficult, dangerous and sanguinary war.

[4.47]  At Sabinus, donec exercitus in unum conduceret, datis mitibus responsis, postquam Pomponius Labeo e Mœsia cum legione, rex Rhœmetalces cum auxiliis popularium qui fidem non mutaverant, venere, addita præsenti copia ad hostem pergit, compositum jam per angustias saltuum.  Quidam audentius apertis in collibus visebantur, quos dux Romanus, acie suggressus, haud ægre pepulit, sanguine barbarorum modico ob propinqua suffugia.  Mox castris in loco communitis valida manu montem occupat angustum et æquali dorso continuum usque ad proximum castellum quod magna vis armata aut incondita tuebatur.  Simul in ferocissimos, qui ante vallum more gentis cum carminibus et tripudiis persultabant, mittit delectos sagittariorum.  Ii dum eminus grassabantur, crebra et inulta vulnera fecere :  propius incedentes eruptione subita turbati sunt receptique subsidio Sugambræ cohortis, quam Romanus promptam ad pericula nec minus cantuum et armorum tumultu trucem haud procul instruxerat.

[4.47]  Sabinus meantime, while he was concentrating his troops, returned gentle answers;  but on the arrival of Pomponius Labeo with a legion from Moesia and of king {of the Thracians} Rhœmetalces with those auxiliaries from his subjects who had not thrown off their allegiance, he advancd with these and the force he already had against the enemy, now drawn up in some wooded defiles.  Some, more daringly, showed themselves on open hillsides;  these the Roman general approached in battle formation and easily drove them off, the barbarians’ bloodshed being only moderate owing to their nearby refuges.  In this position he soon established a camp, and held with a strong detachment a narrow and unbroken mountain ridge, stretching as far as the next fortress, which was garrisoned by a large force, partly armed and partly unorganized.  At the same time he sent some selected archers against the most definat, who were prancing about in front of their rampart, singing and three-stepping in the fashion of their race.  As long as their advance was at a distance, they caused frequent wounds which went unavenged, but, approaching nearer, they were disrupted by a sudden breakout and rescued by the aid of a Sugambrian cohort which the Roman had drawn up not far away, ready for danger and in its clash of songs and weapons no less callous than the enemy.

[4.48]  Translata dehinc castra hostem propter, relictis apud priora munimenta Thræcibus, quos nobis affuisse memoravi.  Eisque permissum vastare, urere, trahere prædas, dum populatio lucem intra sisteretur, noctemque in castris tutam et vigilem capesserent.  Id primo servatum ;  mox, versi in luxum et raptis opulenti, omittere stationes, lascivia epularum aut somno et vino procumbere.  Igitur hostes, incuria eorum comperta, duo agmina parant quorum altero populatores invaderentur, alii castra Romana appugnarent, non spe capiendi sed ut clamore, telis, suo quisque periculo intentus sonorem alterius prœlii non acciperet.  Tenebræ insuper delectæ augendam ad formidinem.  Sed qui vallum legionum temptabant facile pelluntur ;  Thræcum auxilia repentino incursu territa, quum pars munitionibus adjacerent, plures extra palarentur, tanto infensius cæsi quanto perfugæ et proditores ferre arma ad suum patriæque servitium incusabantur.

[4.48]  He then moved his camp near to the enemy, leaving in his former entrenchments the Thracians who, as I have mentioned, were with us.  These were given permission to ravage, burn, and plunder, provided that their pillaging stayed within daylight and they passed a safe and watchful night in camp.  This at first they strictly observed.  But soon, turning to the ways of luxuriousness and enriched by their seizures, they neglected their pickets for reckless banqueting or lay prostrate from sleep and wine.  Therefore the enemy, discovering their carelessness, prepared two columns, by one of which the pillagers would be assailed, while othrs would besiege the Roman camp — not in the expectation of capturing it but so that amid the shouts and weapons each man, intent on his own dangers, would not catch the sound of the other battle.  Night too was chosen for the movement to increase the panic.  Those who tried to storm the entrenchment of the legions were easily repulsed;  but the Thracian auxiliaries were terrified by the unexpected incursion, since some were lying against the fortifications and more of them were straying about outside, and they were slaughtered all the more ferociously to the extent that they were being censured as turncoats and traitors, bearing arms for the servitude of themselves and their fatherland.

[4.49]  Postera die Sabinus exercitum æquo loco ostendit si barbari, successu noctis alacres, prœlium auderent.  Et postquam castello aut conjunctis tumulis non degrediebantur, obsidium cœpit per præsidia quæ opportune jam muniebat ;  dein fossam loricamque contexens, quattuor milia passuum ambitu amplexus est ;  tum paulatim, ut aquam pabulumque eriperet, contrahere claustra artaque circumdare ;  et struebatur agger unde saxa, hastæ, ignes propinquum jam in hostem jacerentur.  Sed nihil æque quam sitis fatigabat, quum ingens multitudo bellatorum, imbellium uno reliquo fonte uterentur ;  simulque armenta, ut mos barbaris, juxta clausa egestate pabuli exanimari ;  adjacere corpora hominum quos vulnera, quos sitis peremerat ;  pollui cuncta sanie, odore, contactu.

[4.49]  Next day Sabinus displayed his forces in the plain, on the chance of the barbarians being encouraged by the night’s success to risk an engagement.  Finding that they did not quit the fortress and the adjoining hills, he began a siege by means of the blockhouses which he was already constructing at appropriate places;  then, interweaving trench and breastwork, he encircled them with a perimeter of four miles, and by degrees contracted and narrowed the cordon, with the view of cutting off their water and forage.  He also built a ramp from which to discharge stones, spears, and brands on the enemy, who was now within range.  But nothing exhausted them so much as thirst, for there was only one spring for the use of a vast multitude of soldiers and non-combatants.  At the same time their cattle, penned up close to them, after the fashion of barbarians, were dying of want of fodder;  near them lay human bodies which had perished from wounds or thirst, and the whole place was befouled with rotting carcases and stench and infection.

[4.50]  Rebusque turbatis malum extremum discordia accessit, his deditionem, aliis mortem et mutuos inter se ictus parantibus ;  et erant qui non inultum exitium sed eruptionem suaderent.  Neque ignobiles tantum his diversi sententiis, verum e ducibus Dinis, provectus senecta et longo usu vim atque clementiam Romanam edoctus, ponenda arma, unum afflictis id remedium disserebat, primusque secum conjuge et liberis victori permisit.  Secuti ætate aut sexu imbecilli, et quibus major vitæ quam gloriæ cupido.  At juventus Tarsam inter et Turesim distrahebatur.  Utrique destinatum cum libertate occidere, sed Tarsa properum finem, abrumpendas pariter spes ac metus clamitans, dedit exemplum demisso in pectus ferro ;  nec defuere qui eodem modo oppeterent.  Turesis sua cum manu noctem opperitur haud nescio duce nostro.  Igitur firmatæ stationes densioribus globis ;  et ingruebat nox nimbo atrox, hostisque clamore turbido, modo per vastum silentium, incertos obsessores effecerat, quum Sabinus circumire, hortari, ne ad ambigua sonitus, aut simulationem quietis, casum insidiantibus aperirent, sed sua quisque munia servarent immoti telisque non in falsum jactis.

[4.50]  To the disruption of affairs was added — the ultimate misfortune — discord, some getting ready for surrender, others for destruction by mutual blows.  Some there were who suggested a sortie instead of an unavenged extermination.  And it was not just the lower ranks with different ideas, but one of the leaders, Dinis, advanced in age and through long experience knowledgeable about Roman might and clemency, argued for laying down their arms — the only remedy for their plight, and he was the first one to entrust himself with his wife and children to the conqueror.  He was followed by all whom age or sex unfitted for war, by all too who had a stronger love of life than of renown.  The young were divided between Tarsa and Turesis, both of whom had resolved to fall together with their freedom.  Tarsa however kept urging them to speedy death and to the instant breaking off of all hope and fear, and, by way of example, plunged his sword into his heart.  Nor was there any lack of those who met their death in the same way.  Turesis and his band waited for night, not without the knowledge of our general.  Consequently, the sentries were strengthened with denser masses of troops.  Night was coming on with a fierce storm, and the foe, one moment with a tumultuous uproar, another in awful silence, had perplexed the besiegers, when Sabinus went round the camp, entreating the men not to give a chance to the ambushers by heeding ambiguous noises or the pretense of stillness, but to keep, every one, to his post without moving or hurling their javelins at false targets.

[4.51]  Interea barbari catervis decurrentes nunc in vallum manualia saxa, præustas sudes, decisa robora jacere, nunc virgultis et cratibus et corporibus exanimis complere fossas, quidam pontes et scalas, ante fabricati, inferre propugnaculis eaque prensare, detrahere et adversum resistentes comminus niti.  Miles contra deturbare telis, pellere umbonibus, muralia pila, congestas lapidum moles provolvere.  His paratæ victoriæ spes et si cedant insignitius flagitium, illis extrema jam salus et assistentes plerisque matres et conjuges earumque lamenta addunt animos.  Nox aliis in audaciam, aliis ad formidinem opportuna ;  incerti ictus, vulnera improvisa ;  suorum atque hostium ignoratio et montis anfractu repercussæ velut a tergo voces adeo cuncta miscuerant ut quædam munimenta Romani quasi perrupta omiserint.  Neque tamen pervasere hostes nisi admodum pauci :  ceteros, dejecto promptissimo quoque aut saucio, appetente jam luce trusere in summa castelli ubi tandem coacta deditio.  Et proxima sponte incolarum recepta :  reliquis, quominus vi aut obsidio subigerentur, præmatura montis Hæmi et sæva hiems subvenit.

[4.51]  The barbarians meanwhile rushed down in companies, at one moment threw manageable rocks, scorched stakes and lopped-off boughs against the rampart, at another they filled the ditches with brushwood, hurdles and lifeless bodies.  Some brought bridges and ladders (previously manufactured) up to the defenses, which they then grasped and tried to drag down, struggling hand to hand with the resisters;  the soldiery on the other side repelled them with weapons and beat them off with shield-bosses, wielded wall-javelins and rolled down boulders which they had collected.  What added spirit to the latter was their hope of an easily-won victory and, if they yielded, a scandal even more notable ;  for the former it was the fact that now was their last chance of salvation, and also the presence, in many cases, of mothers and spouses and their lamentations.  Darkness, which increased the daring of some and the terror of others, random blows, wounds not foreseen, failure to recognise friend or enemy, echoes, seemingly in their rear, from the winding mountain valleys, spread such confusion that the Romans abandoned some of their lines in the belief that they had been stormed.  Only however a very few of the enemy had broken through them;  the rest, after all of their bravest men dislodged or injured, were at the approach of daylight pushed back to the upper part of the fortress and there at last compelled to surrender.  Then the neighboring areas, on the initiative of their inhabitants, were received in submission.  The early and severe winter of Mount Hæmus saved the rest of the population from being reduced by assault or blockade.

[4.52]  At Romæ, commota principis domo, ut series futuri in Agrippinam exitii inciperet, Claudia Pulchra, sobrina ejus, postulatur, accusante Domitio Afro.  Is recens prætura, modicus dignationis et quoquo facinore properus clarescere, crimen impudicitiæ, adulterum Furnium, veneficia in principem et devotiones objectabat.  Agrippina semper atrox, tum et periculo propinquæ accensa, pergit ad Tiberium ac forte sacrificantem patri repperit.  Quo initio invidiæ, non ejusdem ait mactare divo Augusto victimas et posteros ejus insectari.  Non in effigies mutas divinum spiritum transfusum :  se imaginem veram, cælesti sanguine ortam, intellegere discrimen, suscipere sordes.  Frustra Pulchram præscribi cui sola exitii causa sit quod Agrippinam stulte prorsus ad cultum delegerit, oblita Sosiæ ob eadem afflictæ.

Audita hæc raram occulti pectoris vocem elicuere, arreptamque Græco versu admonuit non ideo lædi quia non regnaret.  Pulchra et Furnius damnantur.

Afer, primoribus oratorum additus, divulgato ingenio et secuta asseveratione Cæsaris qua suo jure «disertum» eum appellavit.  Mox, capessendis accusationibus aut reos tutando, prosperiore eloquentiæ quam morum famā fuit, nisi quod ætas extrema multum etiam eloquentiæ dempsit, dum fessa mente retinet silentii impatientiam.

[4.52]  At Rome meanwhile, the imperial house had been shaken.  In such a way that the chain of events began for Agrippina’s future destruction, Claudia Pulchra, her cousin, was arraigned via the accusation of Domitius Afer.  Fresh from the praetorship, he was of moderate social class and quick to become famous by any deed whatsoever, he threw at her an accusation of immorality, her adulterer being Furnius, poisoning and magic curses aimed at the emperor.  The always fierce Agrippina, now inflamed all the more by the danger to her relative, went straight to Tiberius and accidentally found him offering a sacrifice to his father.  With this stimulus to her indignation, “It is not,” she exclaimed, “for the same man to slay victims to the Divine Augustus and to persecute his posterity.  The divine spirit has not transferred itself to the mute statue;  here is the true image, sprung of heavenly blood, and she perceives her danger and is donning mourning clothes.  Pulchra’s name is being falsely used as a front;  the only reason for her destruction is that she has, foolishly, selected Agrippina for her courting, forgetting that Sosia was ruined on the same account.”

Hearing this elicited a rare utterance from that secretive breast, and, taking her hand, he warned her by means of a Greek verse that “she was not wronged because she was not a queen.”  Pulchra and Furnius were condemned.

Afer was added to the chief advocates after the publicity given to his talent and following an assertion of Cæsar’s in which he called him a skillful speaker in his own right.  Henceforward as a counsel for the prosecution or the defence he enjoyed a more favorable reputation for his eloquence rather than his morals, except that extreme age deprived him of much of his eloquence too, while with a failing intellect he retained an inability to keep silent.

[4.53]  At Agrippina pervicax iræ et morbo corporis implicata, quum viseret eam Cæsar, profusis diu ac per silentium lacrimis, mox invidiam et preces orditur :  subveniret solitudini, daret maritum ;  habilem adhuc juventam sibi, neque aliud probis quam ex matrimonio solacium ;  esse in civitate * {viros idoneos qui} * Germanici conjugem ac liberos ejus recipere dignarentur.  Sed Cæsar, non ignarus quantum ex Re Publica peteretur, ne tamen offensionis aut metus manifestus foret, sine responso quanquam instantem reliquit.  (Id ego, a scriptoribus annalium non traditum, repperi in commentariis Agrippinæ filiæ quæ Neronis principis mater vitam suam et casus suorum posteris memoravit.)

[4.53]  Agrippina in stubborn rage and confined with a bodily illness, when the emperor came to see her, wept long and silently, and then began with angry entreaties.  She begged him “to relieve her loneliness and provide her with a husband;  her youth still fitted her for marriage, which was a virtuous woman’s only solace, and there were * {suitable men} * in Rome who would not disdain to receive the wife of Germanicus and his children.”  But the emperor, not unaware of how much was being sought from the state, but did not wish to show displeasure or apprehension, left her, notwithstanding her urgency, without an answer.  (This incident, not mentioned by any historian, I have found in the memoirs of the younger Agrippina, the mother of the emperor Nero, who handed down to posterity the story of her life and of the misfortunes of her family.)

[4.54]  Ceterum Sejanus mærentem et improvidam altius perculit, immissis qui per speciem amicitiæ monerent paratum ei venenum, vitandas soceri epulas.  Atque illa simulationum nescia, quum propter discumberet, non vultu aut sermone flecti, nullos attingere cibos, donec advertit Tiberius, forte, an quia audiverat ;  idque quo acrius experiretur, poma, ut erant apposita, laudans nurui sua manu tradidit.  Aucta ex eo suspicio Agrippinæ et intacta ore servis tramisit.  Nec tamen Tiberii vox coram secuta, sed obversus ad matrem non mirum ait si quid severius in eam statuisset a qua veneficii insimularetur.  Inde rumor :  parari exitium, neque id imperatorem palam audere, secretum ad perpetrandum quæri.

[4.54]  But Sejanus struck more deeply at the sorrowing and misguided woman, sending in people, under the guise of friendship, to warn her that poison was prepared for her, and that she ought to avoid a banquet of her father-in-law.  She for her part was innocent of all pretense and, when she reclined at his table, changing neither her look nor conversation, touched none of the food, until Tiberius noticed — by chance or because he had been told.  To test her more closely, he praised some fruit as it was set on the table and passed it with his own hand to his daughter-in-law.  This increased the suspicions of Agrippina, and without putting the fruit to her lips she gave it to the slaves.  Still no utterance came from Tiberius in her presence but, turning to his mother, he said it was no wonder if he had decided to be more strict with one by whom he was being incriminated for poisoning.  Thence came the rumor that a plan was laid for her destruction, that the emperor did not dare to attempt it openly, but a clandestine way for perpetrating it was being sought.

[4.55]  Sed Cæsar, quo famam averteret, adesse frequens Senatui, legatosque Asiæ, ambigentes quanam in civitate templum statueretur, plures per dies audivit.  Undecim urbes certabant, pari ambitione, viribus diversæ.  Neque multum distantiā inter se memorabant de vetustate generis, studio in populum Romanum per bella Persi et Aristonici aliorumque regum.  Verum Hypæpeni Trallianique Laodicenis ac Magnetibus simul tramissi ut parum validi ;  ne Ilienses quidem, quum parentem Urbis Romæ Trojam referrent, nisi antiquitatis gloria, pollebant.  Paulum addubitatum quod Halicarnasii mille et ducentos per annos nullo motu terræ nutavisse sedes suas, vivoque in saxo fundamenta templi asseveraverant.  Pergamenos (eo ipso nitebantur) æde Augusto ibi sita satis adeptos creditum.  Ephesii Milesiique, hi Apollinis, illi Dianæ cærimoniā occupavisse civitates visi.  Ita Sardianos inter Zmyrnæosque deliberatum.  Sardiani decretum Etruriæ recitavere ut consanguinei :  nam Tyrrhenum Lydumque Atye rege genitos ob multitudinem divisisse gentem ;  Lydum patriis in terris resedisse, Tyrrheno datum novas ut conderet sedes ;  et ducum e nominibus indita vocabula, illis per Asiam, his in Italia ;  auctamque adhuc Lydorum opulentiam, missis in Græciam populis cui mox a Pelope nomen.  Simul litteras imperatorum et icta nobiscum fœdera bello Macedonum ubertatemque fluminum suorum, temperiem cæli ac dites circum terras memorabant.

[4.55]  Tiberius, to divert people’s talk, continually attended the Senate, and gave an audience of several days to embassies from Asia on a disputed question as to the city in which the above-mentioned temple should be erected.  Eleven cities were rivals for the honor, with equal self-aggrandizement, but different in their strengths.  With little variation they dwelt on antiquity of race and loyalty to Rome throughout her wars with Perseus, Aristonicus, and other kings.  But the Hypæpeni and Tralliani, along with the Laodiceni and Magnesians, were passed over as having an insufficiently strong case;  not even the Ilians, while recalling Troy as the parent of Rome, were strong except in the glory of their antiquity.  There was a little hesitation about Halicarnassus, as its inhabitants affirmed that for twelve hundred years their homes had not swayed in a single earthquake and that the foundations of their temple would be on the living rock.  The people of Pergamum, it was thought, had achieved enough with the temple to Augustus situated there (the very fact on which they relied).  The Ephesians and Milesians seemed to have fully occupied their cities, the latter with the ceremonies of Apollo, the former with those of Diana.  And so the question lay between Sardis and Smyrna.  The envoys from Sardis read out a decree of the Etrurians, as if their kinsmen, on the grounds that Tyrrhenus and Lydus, the offspring of King Atys, had divided their race on account of its numbers:  Lydus had stayed to settle in his father’s land, while it was given to Tyrrhenus to found a new settlement;  and it was from the names of the leaders that designations had been applied to the former across Asia and to the latter in Italy.  The wealth of the Lydians were yet further augmented by the immigration of nations into that part of Greece which subsequently took its name from Pelops” {i.e., the Peloponnesus}.  They spoke too of letters from Roman generals, of treaties concluded with us during the Macedonian war, and of their copious rivers, of their climate, and the rich countries round them.

[4.56]  At Zmymæi repetita vetustate — seu Tantalus Jove ortus illos, sive Theseus divina et ipse stirpe, sive una Amazonum condidisset —, transcendere ad ea quis maxime fidebant, in populum Romanum officiis :  missa navali copia non modo externa ad bella sed quæ in Italia tolerabantur ;  seque primos templum Urbis Romæ statuisse, M. Porcio consule, magnis quidem jam populi Romani rebus, nondum tamen ad summum elatis, stante adhuc Punica urbe et validis per Asiam regibus.  Simul L. Sullam testem afferebant, gravissimo in discrimine exercitus ob asperitatem hiemis et penuriam vestis, quum id Zmyrnam in contionem nuntiatum foret, omnes qui astabant detraxisse corpori tegmina nostrisque legionibus misisse.  Ita rogati sententiam patres Zmyrnæos prætulere.  Censuitque Vibius Marsus ut M’. Lepido (cui ea provincia obvenerat) super numerum legaretur qui templi curam susciperet.  Et quia Lepidus ipse deligere per modestiam abnuebat, Valerius Naso e prætoriis sorte missus est.

[4.56]  The envoys from Smyrna, after tracing their city’s antiquity back — to such founders as either Tantalus, the son of Jupiter, or Theseus, also of divine origin, or one of the Amazons —, passed on to that on which they chiefly relied, their services to the Roman people, whom they had helped with naval armaments, not only in wars abroad, but in those under which we struggled in Italy.  They had also been the first, they said, to build a temple in honor of Rome, during the consulship of Marcus Porcius Cato, when Rome’s power indeed was great, but not yet raised to the highest point, inasmuch as the Punic capital was still standing and there were mighty kings in Asia.  They appealed too to the testimony of Lucius Sulla, whose army was once in terrible jeopardy from a severe winter and want of clothing, and this having been announced at Smyrna in a public assembly, all who were present stripped their clothes off their backs and sent them to our legions.  And so the Senate, when the question was put, gave the preference to Smyrna.  Vibius Marsus moved that an extra legate be assigned to Marcus Lepidus (to whom the province of Asia had been assigned) to manage the temple project.  As Lepidus himself, out of modesty, declined to make the selection, Valerius Naso, one of the ex-praetors, was chosen by lot and sent out.

[4.57]  Inter quæ diu meditato prolatoque sæpius consilio, tandem Cæsar in Campaniam, specie dedicandi templa apud Capuam Jovi, apud Nolam Augusto, sed certus procul Urbe degere.  Causam abscessus, quanquam secutus plurimos auctorum, ad Sejani artes rettuli, quia tamen, cæde ejus patrata, sex postea annos pari secreto conjunxit, plerumque permoveor num ad ipsum referri verius sit — sævitiam ac libidinem, quum factis promeret, locis occultantem.  Erant qui crederent, in senectute, corporis quoque habitum pudori fuisse :  quippe illi prægracilis et incurva proceritas, nudus capillo vertex, ulcerosa facies ac plerumque medicaminibus interstincta ;  et Rhodi secreto vitare cœtus, recondere voluptates insuerat.  Traditur etiam matris impotentia extrusum quam dominationis sociam aspernabatur neque depellere poterat, quum dominationem ipsam donum ejus accepisset.  Nam dubitaverat Augustus Germanicum, sororis nepotem et cunctis laudatum, rei Romanæ imponere, sed precibus uxoris evictus Tiberio Germanicum, sibi Tiberium ascivit.  Idque Augusta exprobrabat, reposcebat.

[4.57]  Meanwhile, after long reflection on his purpose and frequent deferment of it, the emperor retired into Campania to dedicate, as he pretended, a temple to Jupiter at Capua and another to Augustus at Nola, but really resolved to live at a distance from Rome.  Although I have followed most historians in attributing the cause of his retirement to the arts of Sejanus, still, as he passed six consecutive years in the same solitude after that minister’s destruction, I am often in doubt whether it is not to be more truly ascribed to himself — concealing his savagery and lust by his location while revealing them in his deeds.  Some thought that in his old age he was ashamed of his personal appearance.  (He had indeed a tall, singularly slender and stooping figure, a bald head, a face full of eruptions, and covered here and there with cosmetic medications.)  In the seclusion of Rhodes he had habituated himself to shun society and to hide his voluptuous life.  According to one account he had been driven out by the irrationality of his mother whom he spurned as a partner in power, yet could not thrust aside, because he had received that very power as her gift.  For Augustus had debated putting the Roman state under Germanicus, his sister’s grandson, whom all men esteemed ;  but overcome by his wife’s entreaties, he had Germanicus adopted by Tiberius and adopted Tiberius himself.  Augusta was constantly bringing this up and demanding repayment.

[4.58]  Profectio arto comitatu fuit :  unus senator consulatu functus, Coccejus Nerva, cui legum peritia ;  eques Romanus præter Sejanum ex illustribus Curtius Atticus ;  ceteri liberalibus studiis præditi, ferme Græci, quorum sermonibus levaretur.  Ferebant periti cælestium eis motibus siderum excessisse Roma Tiberium, ut reditus illi negaretur.  Unde exitii causa multis fuit, properum finem vitæ conjectantibus vulgantibusque ;  neque enim tam incredibilem casum providebant, ut undecim per annos libens patria careret.  Mox patuit breve confinium artis et falsi, veraque quam obscuris tegerentur.  Nam in Urbem non regressurum haud forte dictum :  ceterorum nescii egere, quum propinquo rure aut litore et sæpe mœnia Urbis assidens, extremam senectam compleverit.

[4.58]  His departure was attended by a small entourage :  a senator, who was an ex-consul, Cocceius Nerva, learned in the laws ;  a Roman knight (apart from Sejanus) of the highest order, Curtius Atticus ;  the rest were endowed with liberal studies, for the most part Greeks, in whose conversation he might find alleviation.  Experts in heavenly matters said that Tiberius had left Rome under such movements of the planets as denied him a return.  This was the cause of the extermination of many who inferred and publicized a speedy end to his life;  they did not foresee so incredible a circumstance that for eleven years he would willingly absent himself from his fatherland.  But subsequently the narrow boundary between science and falsehood became clear, and by what darkness the reality was veiled.  For that he would not return to the City had not been said at random;  but of everything else they acted in ignorance, since he lived to an extreme old age, in the nearby country or the seaside and often residing near the City walls.

[4.59]  Ac forte illis diebus oblatum Cæsari anceps periculum auxit vana rumoris, præbuitque ipsi materiem cur amicitiæ constantiæque Sejani magis fideret.  Vescebantur in villa cui vocabulum “Speluncæ”, mare Amunclanum inter et Fundanos montes, nativo in specu.  Ejus os, lapsis repente saxis, obruit quosdam ministros :  hinc metus in omnes et fuga eorum qui convivium celebrabant.  Sejanus, genu utroque et manibus super Cæsarem suspensus, opposuit sese incidentibus atque habitu tali repertus est a militibus qui subsidio venerant.  Major ex eo, et quanquam exitiosa suaderet, ut non sui anxius, cum fide audiebatur.  Assimulabatque vindicis partes adversum Germanici stirpem, subditis qui accusatorum nomina sustinerent, maximeque insectarentur Neronem proximum successioni et, quanquam modesta juventa, plerumque tamen quid impræsentiarum conduceret oblitum, dum a libertis et clientibus, apiscendæ potentiæ properis, exstimulatur ut erectum et fidentem animi ostenderet :  velle id populum Romanum, cupere exercitus, neque ausurum contra Sejanum qui nunc patientiam senis et segnitiam juvenis juxta insultet.

[4.59]  It happened at this time that a perilous accident which occurred to the emperor strengthened vague rumors and gave him grounds for trusting more fully in the friendship and fidelity of Sejanus.  They were dining in a country house called “The Cave,” between the Amynclan sea and the Fundanian mountains, in a natural cave.  In an unexpected rock slide its mouth puried some servants.  Hence dread among everyone and flight by those who were celebrating the party;  but Sejanus, suspended over the emperor on his two knees and hands, placed himself in the way of the fall and in such a posture was discovered by the soldiers who had come to the rescue.  He was more influential after that, and, though his urgings had fatal consequences, he was listened to with trust as not being anxious for himself.  And indeed he feigned the part of champion against the progeny of Germanicus, supplying men who would take on the role of accuser and in particular would assail Nero, closest as he was to the succession and, though with the modesty of youth, nevertheless often forgetful of what was appropriate in the present circumstances, inasmuch as his freedmen and clients, in their haste at acquiring power, goaded him to appear alert and confident in spirit:  that was what the Roman people wanted and the armies desired, they said, nor would opposition dare to come from Sejanus, who was now scoffing at an old man’s passivity and a young man’s slugglishness alike.

[4.60]  Hæc atque talia audienti nihil quidem pravæ cogitationis, sed interdum voces procedebant, contumaces et inconsultæ, quas appositi custodes exceptas auctasque quum deferrent — neque Neroni defendere daretur —, diversæ insuper sollicitudinum formæ oriebantur.  Nam alius occursum ejus vitare, quidam salutatione reddita statim averti, plerique inceptum sermonem abrumpere, insistentibus contra irridentibusque qui Sejano fautores aderant.  Enimvero Tiberius torvus aut falsum renidens vultu :  seu loqueretur seu taceret juvenis, crimen ex silentio, ex voce.  Ne nox quidem secura, quum uxor vigilias, somnos, suspiria matri Liviæ atque illa Sejano patefaceret, qui fratrem quoque Neronis, Drusum, traxit in partes, spe objecta principis loci, si priorem ætate et jam labefactum demovisset.  Atrox Drusi ingenium super cupidinem potentiæ et solita fratribus odia accendebatur invidiā quod mater Agrippina promptior Neroni erat.  Neque tamen Sejanus ita Drusum fovebat ut non in eum quoque semina futuri exitii meditaretur, gnarus præferocem et insidiis magis opportunum.

[4.60]  As Nero listened to things such as these, no trace of a crooked thought was his;  but sometimes utterances would issue, truculent and injudicious, which were noted down by the guards assigned to him;  and, since they then reported them in an exaggerated fashion and Nero was given no chance of rebuttal, different and additional manifestations of disquiet began to emerge.  One man would avoid meeting him ;  another after returning his salutation would instantly turn away;  many after beginning a conversation would instantly break it off, while Sejanus’s friends would stand their ground and laugh at him.  Tiberius indeed wore an angry frown or a treacherous smile.  Whether the young prince spoke or held his tongue, silence and speech were alike criminal.  Every night had its anxieties, for his sleepless hours, his dreams and sighs were all made known by his wife to her mother Livia and by Livia to Sejanus.  Nero’s brother Drusus Sejanus actually drew into his scheme by holding out to him the prospect of becoming emperor through the removal of an elder brother, already all but fallen.  Drusus’ savage nature, to say nothing of lust of power and the usual feuds between brothers, was inflamed with envy by the partiality of the mother Agrippina towards Nero.  And yet Sejanus, while he favored Drusus, was not without thoughts of sowing the seeds of his future ruin as well, well knowing how very impetuous he was and how much more susceptible to traps.

[4.61]  Fine anni excessere insignes viri Asinius Agrippa, claris majoribus quam vetustis vitaque non degener, et Q. Haterius, familia senatoria, eloquentiæ quoad vixit celebratæ :  monumenta ingenii ejus haud perinde retinentur.  Scilicet impetu magis quam cura vigebat ;  utque aliorum meditatio et labor in posterum valescit, sic Haterii canorum illud et profluens cum ipso simul exstinctum est.

[4.61]  Towards the close of the year died two distinguished men, Asinius Agrippa and Quintus Haterius.  Agrippa was of illustrious rather than ancient ancestry, which his career did not disgrace;  Haterius was of a senatorian family and famous for his eloquence while he lived, though the monuments of his talents are not remembered equally.  The truth is, he succeeded more through his powerful delivery than by diligence.  While the deliberation and labors of others have an influence on posterity, that resonant fluency of Haterius was extinguished along with himself.

[4.62]  M. Licinio L. Calpurnio consulibus, ingentium bellorum cladem æquavit malum improvisum :  ejus initium simul et finis exstitit.  Nam cœpto apud Fidenam amphitheatro, Atilius, quidam libertini generis, quo spectaculum gladiatorum celebraret, neque fundamenta per solidum subdidit neque firmis nexibus ligneam compagem superstruxit, ut qui non abundantia pecuniæ nec municipali ambitione sed in sordidam mercedem id negotium quæsivisset.  Affluxere avidi talium — imperitante Tiberio, procul voluptatibus habiti —, virile ac muliebre secus, omnis ætas, ob propinquitatem loci effusius.  Unde gravior pestis fuit, conferta mole, dein convulsa, dum ruit intus aut in exteriora effunditur, immensamque vim mortalium, spectaculo intentos aut qui circum astabant, præceps trahit atque operit.  Et illi quidem quos principium stragis in mortem afflixerat (ut tali sorte) cruciatum effugere ;  miserandi magis quos abrupta parte corporis nondum vita deseruerat ;  qui per diem visu, per noctem ululatibus et gemitu conjuges aut liberos noscebant.  Jam ceteri fama exciti, hic fratrem, propinquum ille, alius parentes lamentari.  Etiam quorum diversa de causa amici aut necessarii aberant, pavere tamen ;  nequedum comperto quos illa vis perculisset, latior ex incerto metus.

[4.62]  In the year of the consulship of Marcus Licinius and Lucius Calpurnius {a.D. 27}, the losses of a great war were matched by an unexpected disaster, no sooner begun than ended.  One Atilius, of the freedman class, having started an amphitheater near Fidenæ to celebrate spectacles of gladiators, neither sank the foundations down into solid ground nor built up the wooden construction with reliable clasps, being one who had won the business not because of an abundance of money or for courting the municipality, but for a sordid profit.  Hungry for such entertainment, people streamed in, having been kept far from their pleasures during the command of Tiberius — in gender both men and women, every age, spilling out in greater numbers owing to the nearness of the site.  Hence the destruction was more severe, with the massive structure packed and then collapsing as it crashed inward or spilled down over the areas outside and swept down headlong and buried an immense mass of mortals intently watching the show or standing around.  Those who were dashed to death in the initial wreckage (given such a fate) at least escaped the torturous agony.  More to be pitied were those whom, despite the severing of some part of their body, life had not yet deserted;  during the day they recognized their spouses or children by sight, during the night by their wailing and groans.  Soon everyone else, alerted by the report, lamented a brother in one case, a relative in another, or parents in yet another.  Even those whose friends or connections were absent for a quite different reason nevertheless panicked;  and, since it had not yet been discovered whom the violence had struck, dread was more widespread owning to the uncertainty.

[4.63]  Ut cœpere dimoveri obruta, concursus ad exanimos complectentium, osculantium ;  et sæpe certamen si confusior facies sed par forma aut ætas errorem agnoscentibus fecerat.  Quinquaginta hominum milia eo casu debilitata vel obtrita sunt ;  cautumque in posterum Senatus consulto ne quis gladiatorium munus ederet cui minor quadringentorum milium res, neve amphitheatrum imponeretur nisi solo firmitatis spectatæ.  Atilius in exilium actus est.  Ceterum sub recentem cladem patuere procerum domus, fomenta et medici passim præbiti, fuitque Urbs per illos dies, quanquam mæsta facie, veterum institutis similis, qui magna post prœlia saucios largitione et cura sustentabant.

[4.63]  As soon as they began to remove the debris, there was a rush to the lifeless to embrace and kiss them.  Often a dispute would arise, when some unrecognizable face, bearing however a general resemblance of form and age, had caused errors of identification.  Fifty thousand persons were disabled or crushed in this disaster.  For the future it was provided by a decree of the Senate that no one was to exhibit a gladiatorial show, whose capital was less than four hundred thousand sesterces, and that no amphitheater was to be erected except on soil of inspected firmness.  Atilius was banished.  Besides that, the nobles threw open their houses and universally supplied medicines and physicians, so that Rome then, notwithstanding her sorrowful aspect, wore a likeness to the manners of our forefathers who after great battles always relieved the wounded with their generosity and care.

[4.64]  Nondum ea clades exoleverat, quum ignis violentia Urbem ultra solitum affecit, deusto monte Cælio ;  feralemque annum ferebant, et ominibus adversis susceptum principi consilium absentiæ (qui mos vulgo, fortuita ad culpam trahentes) — ni Cæsar obviam isset, tribuendo pecunias ex modo detrimenti.  Actæque ei grates apud Senatum ab  illustribus, famaque apud populum quia, sine ambitione aut proximorum precibus, ignotos etiam et ultro accitos munificentia juverat.  Adduntur sententiæ ut mons Cælius in posterum «Augustus» appellaretur quando, cunctis circum flagrantibus, sola Tiberii effigies, sita in domo Junii senatoris, inviolata mansisset.  Evenisse id olim Claudiæ Quintæ, ejusque statuam vim ignium bis elapsam majores apud ædem Matris Deum consecravisse.  Sanctos acceptosque numinibus Claudios, et augendam cærimoniam loco in quo tantum in principem honorem di ostenderint.

[4.64]  This disaster was not forgotten when a furious conflagration damaged the capital to an unusual extent, with the Cælian Hill burnt down.  People were maintaining that it was a fatal year and that the emperor’s counsel of absence had been undertaken with unfavorable omens (which is a habit of the public, interpreting chance events in terms of blame) ;  but Cæsar confronted the issue by distributing money in proportion to the losses.  He received a vote of thanks in the Senate from its distinguished members, and was applauded by the populace because, without canvassing or pleas from relatives, even unknowns who had been summoned spontaneously were helped by his munificence.  And proposals were also made that Mount Cælius should for the future be called Mount Augustus, since, with everything ablaze all around, only a likeness of Tiberius, located in the house of the senator Junius, had survived the violence intact.  This, it was said, had formerly happened to Claudia Quinta;  her statue, which had twice escaped the violence of fire, had been dedicated by our ancestors in the temple of the Mother of Gods;  the Claudii were sacred and acceptable to the divinities, and there was an obligation to augment the holiness of a place in which the gods had displayed such honor to the emperor.

[4.65]  Haud fuerit absurdum tradere montem eum antiquitus «Querquetulanum» cognomento fuisse, quod talis silvæ frequens fecundusque erat, mox «Cælium» appellitatum a Cæle Vibenna qui, dux gentis Etruscæ quum auxilium portavisset, sedem eam acceperat a Tarquinio Prisco seu quis alius regum dedit (nam scriptores in eo dissentiunt).  Cetera non ambigua sunt :  magnas eas copias per plana etiam ac foro propinqua habitavisse, unde «Tuscum vicum» e vocabulo advenarum dictum.

[4.65]  It will not be out of place to mention that Mount Cælius was anciently known by the name of “Oakwood,” because it was prolific and productive of that wood, and that later it came to be called “Cælius” after Cæles Vibenna, the leader of the Etruscan people when it had brought help, had received it as an abode from Tarquinius Priscus or another of the kings (writers disagree on the point);  as to the rest, it is beyond a question that large numbers of his forces also inhabited the level areas close to the Forum, whence “Tuscan Street” is so called from the designation of the immigrants.

[4.66]  Sed ut studia procerum et largitio principis adversum casus solacium tulerant, ita accusatorum major in dies et infestior vis sine levamento grassabatur ;  corripueratque Varum Quintilium, divitem et Cæsari propinquum, Domitius Afer, Claudiæ Pulchræ matris ejus condemnator — nullo mirante, quod diu egens et parto nuper præmio male usus plura ad flagitia accingeretur.  Publium Dolabellam socium delationis exstitisse miraculo erat, quia claris majoribus et Varo conexus suam ipse nobilitatem, suum sanguinem perditum ibat.  Restitit tamen Senatus et opperiendum imperatorem censuit, quod unum urgentium malorum suffugium in tempus erat.

[4.66]  But just as the zeal of the nobles and the bounty of the prince had brought relief to counter the disasters, so the accusers’ violence, daily ever greater and more ferocious, was spreading without let-up.  Quintilius Varus, a rich man and related to the emperor, had been seized by Domitius Afer, the condemner of Claudia Pulchra, his mother — with no one in wonder that, having been needy for a long time and having misused his recently won reward, he was girding himself for further outrages.  What was a source of wonderment, however, was that it was Publius Dolabella who presented himself as the man’s ally in the denouncement because, with his brilliant ancestry and being related to Varus, it was his own nobility and his own blood on whose destruction he was embarking.  The Senate however resisted and decided to wait for the emperor, this being the one temporary refuge from the pressing evils.

[4.67]  At Cæsar, dedicatis per Campaniam templis, quanquam edicto monuisset ne quis quietem ejus irrumperet concursusque oppidanorum disposito milite prohiberentur, perosus tamen municipia et colonias omniaque in continenti sita, Capreas se in insulam abdidit, trium milium freto ab extremis Surrentini promunturii dijunctam.  Solitudinem ejus placuisse maxime crediderim, quoniam importuosum circa mare et vix modicis navigiis pauca subsidia ;  neque appulerit quisquam nisi gnaro custode.  Cæli temperies hieme mitis objectu montis, quo sæva ventorum arcentur ;  æstas in Favonium obversa et aperto circum pelago peramœna ;  prospectabatque pulcherrimum sinum, antequam Vesuvius mons ardescens faciem loci verteret.  Græcos ea tenuisse, Capreasque Telebois habitatas fama tradit.  Sed tum Tiberius duodecim villarum amœnitatibus et molibus insederat, quanto intentus olim publicas ad curas, tanto occultiores in luxus et malum otium resolutus.  Manebat quippe suspicionum et credendi temeritas quam Sejanus augere etiam in Urbe suetus acrius turbabat, non jam occultis adversum Agrippinam et Neronem insidiis.  Quis additus miles nuntios, introitus, aperta, secreta velut in annales referebat, ultroque struebantur qui monerent perfugere ad Germaniæ exercitus vel celeberrimo fori effigiem divi Augusti amplecti populumque ac Senatum auxilio vocare.  Eaque spreta ab illis, velut pararent, objiciebantur.

[4.67]  Cæsar, meanwhile, after dedicating the temples in Campania, warned the public by an edict not to disturb his retirement and posted soldiers here and there to keep off the converging townsfolk.  But he so loathed the towns and colonies and, in short, every place on the mainland, that he buried himself on the island of Capreæ which is separated by three miles of strait from the extreme point of the promontory of Sorrentum.  The solitude of the place was, I believe, its chief attraction, for a harborless sea surrounds it and even for small vessels it has but few safe retreats, nor can any one land unknown to the sentries.  Its air in winter is soft, as it is screened by a mountain which is a protection against cutting winds.  Its summer faces Westerlies and, with the open main all round, is exceptionally attractive;  and it used to look out on a very fine bay, until the fires of Mount Vesuvius changed the face of the country.  Greeks, so tradition says, occupied those parts and Capreæ was inhabited by the Teleboi.  But now it was Tiberius who had settled there in twelve attractive and massive country houses, his former attentiveness to public concerns contrasting with his more concealed relaxing into luxuriousness and evil inactivity.  For there still remained his rashness in suspicion and credulity which Sejanus, accustomed to aggravate it even in the City, was stirring more keenly with his traps against Agrippina and Nero, which were no longer concealed.  The soldiery assigned to them recorded, as though in annals, their messages, visits, disclosures and secrets;  and in addition agents were employed to warn them to flee to the armies of Germany or, when the Forum was most crowded, to clasp the statue of the Divine Augustus and appeal to the protection of the people and Senate.  And all of this they spurned, yet it was cast against them as though it were their intention.

[4.68]  Junio Silano et Silio Nerva consulibus, fœdum anni principium incessit, tracto in carcerem illustri equite Romano Titio Sabino ob amicitiam Germanici.  Neque enim omiserat conjugem liberosque ejus percolere, sectator domi, comes in publico, post tot clientes unus — eoque apud bonos laudatus et gravis iniquis.  Hunc Latinius Latiaris, Porcius Cato, Petilius Rufus, M. Opsius prætura functi aggrediuntur, cupidine consulatus ad quem non nisi per Sejanum aditus ;  neque Sejani voluntas nisi scelere quærebatur.  Compositum inter ipsos ut Latiaris, qui modico usu Sabinum contingebat, strueret dolum, ceteri testes adessent, deinde accusationem inciperent.  Igitur Latiaris jacere fortuitos primum sermones, mox laudare constantiam quod non, ut ceteri, florentis domus amicus, afflictam deseruisset ;  simul honora de Germanico, Agrippinam miserans, disserebat.  Et postquam Sabinus, ut sunt molles in calamitate mortalium animi, effudit lacrimas, junxit questus, audentius jam onerat Sejanum, sævitiam, superbiam, spes ejus ;  ne in Tiberium quidem convicio abstinet.  Iique sermones, tanquam vetita miscuissent, speciem artæ amicitiæ fecere.  Ac jam ultro Sabinus quærere Latiarem, ventitare domum, dolores suos quasi ad fidissimum deferre.

[4.68]  The year of the consulship of Silanus and Silius Nerva {a.D. 28} opened with a foul beginning.  A Roman knight of the highest rank, Titius Sabinus, was dragged to prison because he had been a friend of Germanicus.  He had not stopped paying respect to his wife and children as their visitor at home, their companion in public — the only one remaining from so many previous clients, and for that reason praised among good men and a reproach for the prejudiced.  Latinius Latiaris, Porcius Cato, Petitius Rufus, and Marcus Opsius, ex-praetors, conspired to attack him, with an eye to the consulship, to which there was access only through Sejanus, and the good will of Sejanus was to be gained only by a crime.  They arranged amongst themselves that Latiaris, who had some slight acquaintance with Sabinus, should set up the snare, that the rest should be present as witnesses, and that then they should begin the prosecution.  Accordingly Latiaris, after first dropping some casual remarks, went on to praise the fidelity of Sabinus in not having, like others, forsaken after its fall the house of which he had been the friend in its prosperity.  He also spoke highly of Germanicus and compassionately of Agrippina.  And after Sabinus (since mortals’ hearts are pliant in misfortune) had poured forth tears and followed them with complaints, the other, more boldly now, loaded accusations upon Sejanus and his savagery, haughtiness and hopes;  he did not refrain even from disparagement of Tiberius.  And those conversations, as though the two had exchanged forbidden topics, produced a show of close friendship:  it was now Sabinus who spontaneously sought out Latiaris, frequented his house, and brought his troubles to him as if to the most loyal of men.

[4.69]  Consultant quos memoravi quonam modo ea plurium auditu acciperentur.  Nam loco in quem coibatur servanda solitudinis facies ;  et si pone fores assisterent, metus visūs, sonitūs aut forte ortæ suspicionis erat.  Tectum inter et laquearia tres senatores haud minus turpi latebra quam detestanda fraude sese abstrudunt, foraminibus et rimis aurem admovent.  Interea Latiaris repertum in publico Sabinum, velut recens cognita narraturus, domum et in cubiculum trahit, præteritaque et instantia, quorum affatim copia, ac novos terrores cumulat.  Eadem ille et diutius, quanto mæsta, ubi semel prorupere, difficilius reticentur.  Properata inde accusatio, missisque ad Cæsarem litteris, ordinem fraudis suumque ipsi dedecus narravere.  Non alias magis anxia et pavens civitas, cautissime agens adversum proximos ;  congressus, colloquia, notæ ignotæque aures vitari ;  etiam muta atque inanima, tectum et parietes circumspectabantur.

[4.69]  The men whom I have named now consulted as to how these conversations might fall within the hearing of more persons.  It was necessary that the place of meeting should preserve the appearance of solitude, and, if witnesses were to stand behind the doors, there was a fear of their being seen or heard, or of suspicion casually arising.  Three senators thrust themselves into the space between the roof and ceiling, a hiding-place as shameful as the treachery was execrable.  They applied their ears to apertures and crevices.  Latiaris meanwhile having met Sabinus in the streets, drew him to his house and to the room, as if he was going to communicate some fresh discoveries.  There he talked much about past and impending troubles (of which there was an ample supply) and about new terrors as well.  Sabinus spoke as before and at greater length, as sorrow, when once it has broken into utterance, is the harder to restrain.  Thereupon the accusation was speeded up, and in a letter sent to Cæsar they told of the stages of the plot and of their own disgrace.  At no other time was the community more tense and panicked, behaving most cautiously of all toward those closest to them:  encounters, dialogues, familiar and unfamiliar ears were avoided;  even dumb and inanimate objects such as a roof and walls were treated with circumspection.

[4.70]  Sed Cæsar, sollemnia incipientis anni kalendis Januariis epistulā precatus, vertit in Sabinum, corruptos quosdam libertorum et petitum se arguens, ultionemque haud obscure poscebat.  Nec mora quin decerneretur ;  et trahebatur damnatus, quantum obducta veste et astrictis faucibus niti poterat, clamitans sic incohari annum, has Sejano victimas cadere.  Quo intendisset oculos, quo verba acciderent, fuga, vastitas, deseri itinera, fora.  Et quidam regrediebantur ostentabantque se rursum, id ipsum paventes quod timuissent.  ¿ Quem enim diem vacuum pœnā, ubi inter sacra et vota — quo tempore verbis etiam profanis abstineri mos esset — vincla et laqueus inducantur ?  Non imprudentem Tiberium tantam invidiam adisse :  quæsitum meditatumque, ne quid impedire credatur quominus novi magistratus, quomodo delubra et altaria, sic carcerem recludant.  Secutæ insuper litteræ grates agentis quod hominem infensum Rei Publicæ punivissent, adjecto trepidam sibi vitam, suspectas inimicorum insidias, nullo nominatim compellato ;  neque tamen dubitabatur in Neronem et Agrippinam intendi.

[4.70]  But Cæsar, having offered solemn prayers for the starting year by letter on the first of January, attacked Sabinus, whom he charged with having corrupted some of his freedmen and having made an attempt on his life, and he demanded vengeance in no obscure language.  It was decreed without hesitation, and the condemned man was dragged off, shouting repeatedly (insofar as he was able, with his clothing drawn up over his head and his throat restricted), “that this was inaugurating the year;  these were the victims slain to Sejanus.”  Wherever he turned his eyes, wherever his words fell, there was flight and solitude;  the streets and public places were forsaken.  A few came back and showed themselves again, frightened of the very fact that they had shown their fear.  “What day,” they asked, “will be without some execution, when amid sacrifices and prayers, a time when it is usual to refrain even from a profane word, the chain and noose are introduced?  Tiberius has not incurred such odium blindly;  it was deliberately chosen so that nothing would be believed to keep new magistrates from opening the prison as they did the shrines and altars.”  Following that there came a letter of gratitude from him for their having punished an enemy of the state, adding that his life was one of anxiety, that he suspected treachery from enemies, but without mentioning anyone by name.  Still, there was no question that this was aimed at Nero and Agrippina.

[4.71]  Ni mihi destinatum foret suum quæque in annum referre, avebat animus antire, statimque memorare exitus quos Latinius atque Opsius ceterique flagitii ejus repertores habuere, non modo postquam Gajus Cæsar rerum potitus est, sed incolumi Tiberio, qui scelerum ministros ut perverti ab aliis nolebat, ita plerumque, satiatus et oblatis in eandem operam recentibus, veteres et prægraves afflixit :  verum has atque alias sontium pœnas in tempore trademus.  Tum censuit Asinius Gallus, cujus liberorum Agrippina matertera erat, petendum a principe ut metūs suos Senatui fateretur amoverique sineret.  Nullam æque Tiberius, ut rebatur, ex virtutibus suis quam dissimulationem diligebat :  eo ægrius accepit recludi quæ premeret.  Sed mitigavit Sejanus, non Galli amore, verum ut cunctationes principis opperiretur, gnarus lentum in meditando, ubi prorupisset, tristibus dictis atrocia facta conjungere.

Per idem tempus Julia mortem obiit, quam neptem Augustus convictam adulterii damnaverat projeceratque in insulam Trimerum, haud procul Apulis litoribus.  Illic viginti annis exilium toleravit, Augustæ ope sustentata, quæ florentes privignos quum per occultum subvertisset, misericordiam erga afflictos palam ostentabat.

[4.71]  Were it not for my plan of assigning all events to their appropriate year, I would have liked to jump ahead and immediately record the ends that Latinius, Opsius and the other devisers of that outrage experienced, not only after Gajus {“Caligula”} Cæsar came to power, but even during Tiberius’ lifetime.  (While Tiberius was loath to see the agents of his crimes brought down by others, he often became fed up with them and, when offered fresh men for the same work, he got rid of he older ones who had become wearisome to him.)  But these and other punishments of guilty men I shall describe in due course.  Asinius Gallus, to whose children Agrippina was a maternal aunt, then expressed his opinion that the emperor should be asked to divulge his fears to the Senate, and allow them to be dispelled.  Tiberius prized none of what he considered to be his virtues as highly as he did his ability to dissemble, and so he was all the more annoyed at what he wanted to suppress being brought out into the open.  Sejanus, however, pacified him, not out of love for Gallus, but rather to wait out the emperor’s temporizing, knowing that he was slow in deliberation but that, once he erupted, he followed his grim words with terrible deeds.

About the same time Julia died, the granddaughter of Augustus.  He had condemned her on a conviction of adultery and had banished her to the island of Trimerus, not far from the shores of Apulia.  There she endured twenty years of exile, in which she was supported by relief from Augusta who, though she had secretly undermined her stepchildren while they were flourishing, made a public display of pity toward them in their misfortune.

[4.72]  Eodem anno Frisii, transrhenanus populus, pacem exuere, nostra magis avaritia quam obsequii impatientes.  Tributum eis Drusus jusserat modicum pro angustia rerum, ut in usus militares coria boum pendĕrent, non intenta cujusquam cura quæ firmitudo, quæ mensura, donec Olennius e primipilaribus, regendis Frisiis impositus, terga urorum delegit quorum ad formam acciperentur.  Id, aliis quoque nationibus, arduum apud Germanos difficilius tolerabatur, quis ingentium beluarum feraces saltus, modica domi armenta sunt.  Ac primo boves ipsos, mox agros, postremo corpora conjugum aut liberorum servitio tradebant.  Hinc ira et questus, et postquam non subveniebatur, remedium ex bello.  Rapti qui tributo aderant milites et patibulo affixi ;  Olennius infensos fuga prævenit, receptus castello cui nomen Flevum ;  et haud spernenda illic civium sociorumque manus litora Oceani præsidebat.

[4.72]  That same year the Frisii, a nation beyond the Rhine, cast off peace, more because of our rapacity than from their impatience of subjection.  Drusus had imposed on them a moderate tribute, suitable to their limited resources, that they should pay oxhides for military uses.  No one ever paid attention to questions of toughness or dimension until Olennius, a first-rank centurion, appointed to govern the Frisii, selected aurochs hides as the standard for what was acceptable.  This would have been hard for any nation, and it was the less tolerable to the Germans, whose forests abound in huge beasts, while their domestic cattle are of moderate size.  First they handed over the actual oxen, then their fields, and finally their wives and children bodily into servitued.  Then came angry complaints and, when they received no relief, they sought a remedy in war.  The soldiers appointed to collect the tribute were seized and hung on the gallows.  Olennius forestalled their fury by flight and was taken in at a fortress named Flevum;  there a by no means contemptible force of Romans and allies kept guard over the shores of the ocean.

[4.73]  Quod ubi L. Apronio inferioris Germaniæ pro prætore cognitum, vexilla legionum e superiore provincia peditumque et equitum auxiliarium delectos accivit, ac simul utrumque exercitum Rheno devectum Frisiis intulit, soluto jam castelli obsidio et ad sua tutanda degressis rebellibus.  Igitur proxima æstuaria aggeribus et pontibus traducendo graviori agmini firmat.  Atque interim, repertis vadis, alam Canninefatem et quod peditum Germanorum inter nostros merebat, circumgredi terga hostium jubet ;  qui jam acie compositi pellunt turmas sociales equitesque legionum subsidio missos.  Tum tres leves cohortes ac rursum duæ, dein tempore interjecto alarius eques immissus.  Satis validi si simul incubuissent, per intervallum adventantes neque constantiam addiderant turbatis, et pavore fugientium auferebantur.

Cethecio Labeoni, legato Quintæ Legionis, quod reliquum auxiliorum tradit.  Atque ille, dubia suorum re in anceps tractus, missis nuntiis vim legionum implorabat.  Prorumpunt Quintani ante alios et acri pugna hoste pulso recipiunt cohortes alasque fessas vulneribus.  Neque dux Romanus ultum iit aut corpora humavit, quanquam multi tribunorum præfectorumque et insignes centuriones cecidissent.  Mox compertum a transfugis nongentos Romanorum apud lucum (quem Baduhennæ vocant) pugna in posterum extracta confectos, et aliam quadringentorum manum, occupata Cruptorigis quondam stipendiarii villa, postquam proditio metuebatur, mutuis ictibus procubuisse.

[4.73]  When all this became known to Lucius Apronius, the proprætor of Lower Germany, he summoned detachments of the legions from the Upper province and an elite group of auxiliary infantry and cavalry and, sailing both armies down the Rhine, brought them simultaneously against the Frisians.  (Their siege of the fortress had by now been raised, and the rebels had left in orderto defend their own territory.)  He therefore consolidated the nearest estuaries with embankments and bridges for the transportation of a heavier column;  and, having discovered a ford inthe meantime, he ordered a Canninefate wing and the German infantry that was serving alongside our men to surround the rear of the enemy (who were already deployed for battle, and were driving back the allied squadrons and legionary cavalry sent as reinforcements).  Next, three light cohorts and then a further two and subsequently, after an interval of time, the mounted auxiliaries were sent in — effective enough if they had set upon the opposition simultaneously;  but, because they kept arriving in stages, they had not stabilized the disrupted men and swept being carried backward in the panic of the fugitives.

To Cethecius Labeo, legate of he Fifth Legion, Apronius handed what remained of the auxiliaries, and he for his part, put gravely at risk by his men’s precarious situation, sent a message pleading for the full legion’s help.  The men of the Fifth stormed ahead of the others and, repulsing the enemy in a fierce fight, rescued the cohorts and wings, exhausted as they were by their wounds.  Yet the Roman leader did not go after retribution, nor did he inter the bodies, although many of the tribunes and prefects, as well as distinguished centurions, had fallen.  Later it was discovered from deserters that at the grove which they call Baduhenna’s nine hundred Romans had been wiped out in a fight which had dragged on into the next day;  and that another unit of four hundred, after occupying the villa of Cruptorix (a former mercenary) and dreading betrayal, had fallen by each other’s hands.

[4.74]  Clarum inde inter Germanos Frisium nomen, dissimulante Tiberio damna, ne cui bellum permitteret.  Neque Senatus in eo cura an imperii extrema dehonestarentur :  pavor internus occupaverat animos cui remedium adulatione quærebatur.  Ita, quanquam diversis super rebus consulerentur, Aram Clementiæ, Aram Amicitiæ — effigiesque circum Cæsaris ac Sejani — censuere ;  crebrisque precibus efflagitabant visendi sui copiam facerent.  Non illi tamen in Urbem aut propinqua Urbi degressi sunt :  satis visum omittere insulam et in proximo Campaniæ aspici.  Eo venire patres, eques, magna pars plebis, anxii erga Sejanum cujus durior congressus atque eo per ambitum et societate consiliorum parabatur.  Satis constabat auctam ei arrogantiam, fœdum illud in propatulo servitium spectanti ;  quippe Romæ sueti discursus, et magnitudine Urbis incertum quod quisque ad negotium pergat ;  ibi, campo aut litore jacentes, nullo discrimine noctem ac diem, juxta gratiam aut fastūs janitorum perpetiebantur, donec id quoque vetitum.  Et revenere in Urbem trepidi quos non sermone, non visu dignatus erat, quidam male alacres quibus infaustæ amicitiæ gravis exitus imminebat.

[4.74]  After that the Frisian name was famous among the Germans, with Tiberius disguising the damage in order to avoid entrusting anyone with the war.  Nor was the Senate concerned whether the extremities of the empire were being dishonored ;  domestic fear had preoccupied their minds, for which the remedy was sought in sycophancy.  So, although they were consulted on various different matters, what they voted for was an Altar of Clemency and an Altar of Friendship and likenesses of Cæsar round about;  and with frequent prayers they importuned the two of them to provide an opportunity for being seen.  Still, neither of them would visit the City or even the neighborhood of the City;  it was deemed sufficient to leave the island and be seen in the adjacent part of Campania.  To this area came Senators, knights and a considerable number of the populace, worried because of Sejanus with whom a meeting was harder, and so it would be obtained through roundabout means and through complicity in his plans.  It was generally agreed that his haughtiness had increased as he surveyed “that servile filth in the forecourt.”  For at Rome bustling activity is normal, and due to the size of the City it is uncertain what business anyone is going about;  but there, lounging around on the plain or the seashore indiscriminately day and night, they endured his doorkeepers’s favor or disdain alike, untile even that too was forbidden.  The return to the City was made in trepidation by those whom he had not considered worthy of eiher conversation or glance, but in misguided eagerness by those over whom there loomed the weighty outcome of their unpropitious friendship.

[4.75]  Ceterum Tiberius neptem Agrippinam, Germanico ortam, quum coram Cn. Domitio tradidisset, in Urbe celebrari nuptias jussit.  In Domitio, super vetustatem generis, propinquum Cæsaribus sanguinem delegerat ;  nam is aviam Octaviam et per eam Augustum avunculum præferebat.

[4.75]  Tiberius meanwhile, having himself in person bestowed the hand of his granddaughter Agrippina, Germanicus’s daughter, on Gnæus Domitius, directed the marriage to be celebrated at Rome.  In Domitus he had chosen, in addition to the antiquity of his family, a blood relative of the Cæsars:  for the man could boast Octavia as grandmother and, through her, Augustus as great-uncle.