I, Claudius

He did not believe Germanicus capable of seizing the power for his own selfish ends but thought that if he knew of the suppressed will he might try to restore Postumus to his rightful inheritance and even to make him the third--Tiberius, Germanicus and Postumus--in a new triumvirate. Agrippina was devoted to Postumus, and Germanicus took her advice as consistently as Augustus had taken Livia's. If Germanicus marched on Rome the Senate would go out in a body to welcome him: Tiberius knew that. And, at the worst, by behaving modestly now he would be able to escape with his life and live in honourable retirement.

The Senate realised that Tiberius really wanted what he was so modestly refusing and were about to renew their pleas when Gallus interposed in a practical voice: "Very well then, Tiberius, which part of the government do you want to be entrusted to you?"

Tiberius was confounded by this awkward and unforeseen question. He was silent for some time and at last said: "The same man cannot both make the division and choose; and even if this were possible it would be immodest for me to choose or reject any particular branch of the administration when, as I have explained, I really want to be excused from the whole of it."

Gallus pressed his advantage: "The only possible division of the Empire would be: first, Rome and all Italy; second, the armies; and third, the provinces.

Which of these would you choose?"

When Tiberius was silent Gallus continued: “Very well.

I know there's no answer. That's why I asked the question.

I wanted you to admit by your silence that it was nonsense to speak of splitting into three an administrative system that has been built up and centrally co-ordinated by a single individual. Either we must return to the republican form of government or we must continue with the monarchy. It is wasting the time of the House, which appears to have decided in favour of the monarchy, to go on talking about triumvirates. You have been offered the monarchy. Take it or leave it."

Another senator, a friend of Callus', said: "As Protector of the People you have the power of vetoing the motion of the Consuls offering you the monarchy. If you really don't want it you should have used your veto half an hour ago."

So Tiberius was forced to beg the Senate's pardon and to say that the suddenness and unexpectedness of the honour had overcome him: he begged leave to consider his answer a little longer.

The Senate then adjourned, and in succeeding sessions Tiberius gradually allowed himself to be voted, one by one, all Augustus' offices. But he never used the name Augustus, which had been bequeathed him, except when writing letters to foreign kings; and was careful to discourage any tendency to pay him divine honours. There was another explanation of this cautious behaviour of his, namely that Livia had boasted in public that he was receiving the monarchy as a gift from her hands. She made the boast not only to strengthen her position as Augustus'

widow but to warn Tiberius that if her crimes ever came to light he would be regarded as her accomplice, being the person who principally benefited from them. Naturally he wished to appear under no obligation to her but as having had the monarchy forced on him against his will by the Senate.

The Senate were profuse in their flattery of Livia and wanted to confer many unheard-of honours on her. But Livia as a woman could not attend the debates in the Senate and was legally now under Tiberius' guardianship--he had become head of the Julian house. So having himself refused the title "Father of the Country" he had refused, on her behalf, the title "Mother of the Country" which had been offered her, on the ground that modesty would not allow her to accept it.

Nevertheless, he was greatly afraid of Livia and at first wholly dependent on her for learning the inner secrets of the Imperial system. It was not merely a matter of understanding the routine. The criminal dossiers of every man of importance in the two Orders and of most of the important women, secret service reports of various sorts, Augustus' private correspondence with confederate kings and their relatives, copies of treasonable letters intercepted but duly forwarded--all these were in Livia's keeping and written in cipher, and Tiberius could not read them without her help. But he also knew that she was extremely dependent on him. There was an understanding between them of guarded co-operation. She even thanked him for refusing the title offered her, saying that he had been right to do so; and in return he promised to have her voted whatever titles she wished as soon as their position seemed secure. As a proof of his good faith he put her own name alongside his own in all letters of State. As a proof of hers she gave him the key of the common cipher, though not that of the cipher extraordinary, the secret of which, she pretended, had died with Augustus. It was in the cipher extraordinary that the dossiers were written.

Now about Germanicus. When, at Lyons, he heard of Augustus' death and of the terms of his will, and of Tiberius' succession, he felt it his duty to stand loyally by the new regime. He was Tiberius' nephew and adopted son, and though there was not true affection between the two they had been able to work together without friction both at home and on campaign. He did not suspect Tiberius of complicity in the plot that had brought about Postumus' banishment; and he knew nothing of the suppressed will, and further, he still believed Postumus to be on Planasia--for Augustus had told nobody but Fabius either of the visit or of the substitution. He decided, however, to return to Rome as soon as he could and frankly discuss the case of Postumus with Tiberius. He would explain that Augustus had told him privately that he intended to restore Postumus to favour as soon as he had evidence of his innocence to offer the Senate; and that though death had prevented him from putting his intentions into execution, they should be respected. He would insist on Postumus' immediate recall, the restoration of his confiscated estates and his elevation to honourable office; and lastly on Livia's compulsory retirement from State affairs as having unjustly engineered his banishment. But before he could do anything in the matter news came from Mainz of an army mutiny on the Rhine, and then, as he was hurrying to put it down, news of Postumus' death. Postumus, it was reported, had been killed by the captain of the guard, who was under orders from Augustus not to let his grandson survive him. Germanicus was shocked and grieved that Postumus had been executed but had no leisure for the moment to think of anything but the mutiny. You may be sure, though, that it caused poor Claudius the greatest possible grief, for poor Claudius at this time never wanted for leisure. On the contrary poor Claudius was hard put to it often to find occupation for his mind. Nobody can write history for more than five or six hours a day, especially when there is little hope of anyone ever reading it.

So I gave myself up to my misery. How was I to know that it was Clement who had been killed, and that not only was the murder not ordered by Augustus but that Livia and Tiberius were also innocent of it?

For the man really responsible for Clement's murder was an old knight called Crispus, the owner of the Gardens of Sallust and a close friend of Augustus.

At Rome, as soon as he heard of Augustus' death, he had not waited to consult Livia and Tiberius at Nola but immediately dispatched the warrant for Postumus'

execution to the captain of the guard at Planasia, attaching Tiberius' seal to it.

Tiberius had entrusted him with this duplicate seal for the signing of some business papers which he had not been able to deal with before being sent to the Balkans. Crispus knew that Tiberius would be angry or pretend to be angry, but explained to Livia, whose protection he at once claimed, that he had put Postumus out of the way on learning of a plot among some of the Guards officers to send a ship to rescue Julia and Postumus and carry them off to the regiments at Cologne; there Germanicus and Agrippina could hardly fail to welcome and shelter them and the officers would then force Germanicus and Postumus to march on Rome.

Tiberius was furious that his name had been used in this way, but Livia made the best of things and pretended that it really was Postumus who had been killed. Crispus was not prosecuted and the Senate was unofficially informed that Postumus had died by the orders of his deified grandfather who had wisely foreseen that the savage-tempered young man would attempt to usurp supreme power as soon as news came of his grandfather's death; as indeed he had done.

Crispus' motive in having Postumus murdered was not a wish to curry favour with Tiberius and Livia or to prevent civil war. He was revenging an insult. For Crispus, who was as lazy as he was rich, had once boasted that he had never stood for office, content to be a simple Roman knight. Postumus had replied: "A simple Roman knight, Crispus? Then you had better take a few simple Roman riding-lessons."

Tiberius had not yet heard of the mutiny. He wrote Germanicus a friendly letter condoling with him on the loss of Augustus and saying that Rome now looked to him and his adoptive brother Castor for the defence of the frontiers, himself being now too old for foreign service and required by the Senate to manage affairs at Rome. Writing of Postumus' death, he said that he deplored its violence but could not question the wisdom of Augustus in the matter.

He did not mention Crispus. Germanicus could only conclude that Augustus had once more changed his mind about Postumus on the strength of some information of which he himself knew nothing; and was content for awhile to let the matter rest there.

XV

THE RHINE MUTINY HAD BROKEN OUT IN SYMPATHY WITH a mutiny among the Balkan forces. The soldiers’ disappointment with their bequests under Augustus' will--a mere four months' bounty of pay, three gold pieces a man--aggravated certain long-standing grievances; and they reckoned that the insecurity of Tiberius' position would force him to meet any reasonable demands they made, in order to win their favour. These demands included a rise in pay, service limited to sixteen years, and a relaxation of camp discipline. The pay was certainly insufficient: the soldiers had to arm and equip themselves out of it and prices had risen. And certainly the exhaustion of military reserves had kept thousands of soldiers with the Colours who should have been discharged years before, and veterans had been recalled to the Colours who were quite unfit for service. And, certainly too, the detachments formed from recently liberated slaves were such poor fighting material that Tiberius had considered it necessary to tighten up discipline, choosing martinets for his captains, and giving them instructions to keep the men constantly employed on fatigue duty and to keep the vine-branch saplings--their badges of rank--constantly employed on the men's backs.

When the news of Augustus' death reached the Balkan forces, three regiments were together in a summer camp, and the General gave them a few days'

holiday from parades and fatigues. This experience of ease and idleness unsettled them and they refused to obey their captains when called out on parade again.

They formulated certain demands.

The General told them that he had no authority to grant these demands and warned them of the danger of a mutinous attitude. They offered him no violence but refused to be awed into obedience and finally obliged him to send his son to Rome to convey their demands to Tiberius. After the son had left the camp on this mission the disorder increased. The less-disciplined men began plundering the camp and the neighbouring villages, and when the General arrested the ringleaders, the rest broke open the guardroom and released them, finally murdering a captain who tried to oppose them. This captain was nicknamed "Old Give-me-Another" because after breaking one sapling over a man's back he would call for a second and a third. When the General's son arrived at Rome, Tiberius sent Castor to the General's support at the head of two battalions of Guards, a squadron of Guards cavalry and most of the Household Battalion, who were Germans; a staff-officer called Sejanus, the son of the Commander of the Guards and one of Tiberius' few intimates, went with Castor as his lieutenant. Of this Sejanus I shall later have more to write. Castor on arrival addressed the mob of soldiers in a dignified and fearless way and read them a letter from his father, promising to take care of the invincible regiments with whom he had shared the hardships of so many wars, and to negotiate with the Senate about their demands as soon as he had recovered from his grief for Augustus' death. Meanwhile, he wrote, his son had come to them to make whatever immediate concessions might be practicable--the rest must be reserved for the Senate.

The mutineers made one of their captains act as their spokesman and present their demands, for no soldier would risk doing so for fear of being singled out later as a ringleader. Castor said that he was very sorry, but that the sixteen-year limit of service, the discharge of veterans and the increase of pay to a full silver-piece a day were demands which he had no authority to grant. Only his father and the Senate could make such concessions.

This put the men into an ugly temper. They asked why in Hell's name had he come then if he had no power to do anything for them. His father Tiberius, they said, used always to play the same trick on them when they presented their grievances: he used to shelter behind Augustus and the Senate. What was the Senate, anyhow? A pack of rich good-for-nothing lazy-bones, most of whom would die of fear if they ever caught sight of an enemy shield or saw a sword drawn in anger! They began throwing stones at Castor's staff and the situation became dangerous. But it was saved that night by a fortunate chance. The moon was eclipsed, which affected the army--all soldiers are superstitious--in a surprising way. They took the eclipse for a sign that Heaven was angry with them for their murder of Old Give-me-Another and for their defiance of authority.

There were a number of secret loyalists among the mutineers and one of these came to Castor suggesting that he should get hold of others like himself and send them around the tents in parties of two or three to try to bring the disaffected men to their senses. This was done. By morning there was a very different atmosphere in the camp and Castor, though he consented to send the General's son again to Tiberius with the same demands endorsed by himself, arrested the two men who appeared to have started the mutiny and publicly executed them. The rest made no protest and even voluntarily handed over the five murderers of the captain as a proof of their own fidelity. But there was still a firm refusal to attend parades, or do anything but the most necessary fatigues until an answer came ['87]

from Rome. The weather broke and incessant rain flooded the camp and made it impossible for the men to keep communication between tent and tent. This was taken as a fresh warning from Heaven, and before the messenger had time to return the mutiny was at an end, the regiments marching obediently back to winter-quarters under their officers.

But the mutiny on the Rhine was a far more serious affair. Roman Germany was now bounded on the East by the Rhine and divided into two provinces, the Upper and the Lower. The capital of the Upper Province, which extended up into Switzerland, was Mainz and that of the Lower, which reached North to the Scheldt and Sambre, was Cologne. An army of four regiments manned each of the provinces and Germanicus was Commander-in-Chief.

Disorders broke out in a summer camp of the Lower Army.

The grievances were the same here as in the Balkan army but the conduct of the mutineers was more violent because of the greater proportion of newly-recruited City freedmen in the ranks. These freedmen were still slaves by nature and accustomed to a far more idle and luxurious life than the free-bom citizens, mostly poor peasants, who formed the backbone of the army. They made thoroughly bad soldiers and their badness went unchecked by any regimental esprit-de-corps. For these were not the regiments which had been under the command of Germanicus in the recent campaign, they were Tiberius' men.

The General lost his head and was unable to check the insolence of the mutineers who came crowding round him with complaints and threats. His nervousness encouraged them to fall on their most hated captains, about twenty of whom they beat to death with their own vine-saplings, throwing the bodies into the Rhine. The remainder they jeered at and insulted and drove from the camp.

Cassius Chaarea was the only senior officer who made any attempt to oppose this monstrous and unheard-of behaviour. He was set upon by a large party but instead of running away or begging for mercy rushed straight into the thick of them with his sword drawn, stabbing right and left, and broke through to the sacred tribunal-platform where he knew that no soldier would dare to touch him.

Germanicus had no battalions of Guards to support him but rode at once to the mutinous camp with only a small staff behind him. He did not yet know of the massacre.

The men surged about him in a mob, as they had done about their General, but Germanicus calmly refused to say anything to them, until they had formed up decently in companies and battalions under their proper banners so that he should know whom he was addressing. It seemed a small concession to authority, and they wanted to hear what he had to tell them. Once they were back in military formation a certain sense of discipline returned, and though by the murder of their officers they had put themselves beyond hope of his trust or forgiveness, their hearts suddenly went out to him as a brave and humane and honourable man. One old veteran--there were many there who had been serving in Germany twenty-five and thirty years before this--called out: "How like he is to his father!" And another; "He's got to be cursed good to be as cursed good as him." Germanicus began in a voice of ordinary conversational pitch, to command more attention. He first spoke of the death of Augustus and the great grief it had inspired but assured them that Augustus had left behind him an indestructible work and a successor capable of carrying on the government and commanding the armies in the way that he himself would have wished. "Of my father's glorious victories in Germany you are not unaware. Many of you have shared in them."

"Never was there a better general or a better man," shouted a veteran.

"Hurrah for Germanicus, father and son!"

It is a comment on my brother's extreme simplicity that he did not realise the effect his words were having. By his father he meant Tiberius [who also was often styled Germanicus], but the veterans thought he meant his real father; and by Augustus' successor he meant Tiberius again, but the veterans thought that he meant himself.

Unaware of these cross-purposes he went on to speak of the harmony that prevailed in Italy and of the fidelity of the French, from whose territory he had just come, and said that he could not understand the sudden feeling of pessimism that had overcome them. What ailed them?

What had they done with their captains and their colonels and their generals? Why weren't these officers on parade?

Had they really been expelled from the camp, as he had heard?

"A few of us are still alive and about, Caesar," someone said, and Cassius came limping through the ranks and saluted Germanicus. "Not many! They pulled me off the tribunal and have kept me tied up in the guardroom without food for the last four days. An old soldier has just been good enough to release me."

"You, Cassius! They did that to you! The man who brought back the eighty from the Teutoburger Forest?

The man who saved the Rhine bridge?"

"Well, at least they spared my life," said Cassius.

Germanicus asked with horror in his voice: "Men, is this true?"

"They brought it on themselves," someone shouted, and then a fearful hubbub arose. Men stripped themselves to the skin to show the clean silver scars of honourable wounds on their breasts and the ragged and discoloured marks of flogging on their backs. One decrepit old man broke from the ranks, and running forward pulled his mouth open with his fingers to show his bare gums. Then he shouted, "I can't eat hard tack without teeth. General, and I can't march and fight on slops. I served under your father in his first campaign in the Alps and I'd done six years' service even then. I've two grandsons serving in the same company as myself. Give me my discharge. General. I dandled you on my knees when you were a babyl And look. General, I've got a rupture and they expect me to march twenty miles with a hundred pounds' weight on my back."

"Back to the ranks, Pomponius," ordered Germanicus, who recognised the old man and was shocked to find him still under arms. "You forget yourself. I'll look into your case later. For Heaven's sake show a good example to the young soldiers!"

Pomponius saluted and returned to the ranks. Germanicus held up his hand for silence, but the men went on shouting about their pay and the unnecessary fatigues put on them so that they hardly had a moment to themselves from reveille to lights out, and that the only discharge a man got from the Army now was to drop dead from old age. Germanicus made no attempt to speak until he had complete quiet again. Then he said: "In the name of my father Tiberius I promise you justice. He has your welfare at heart as deeply as I have and whatever can be done for you without danger to the Empire, he will do. I'll answer for that."

"Oh, to hell with Tiberius!" someone shouted, and the cry was picked up on all sides with groans and catcalls. And then suddenly they all began to shout: "Up, Germanicus!

You're the Emperor for us. Chuck Tiberius into the Tiber! Up, Germanicus!

Germanicus for Emperor! To hell with Tiberius! To hell with that bitch Livia! Up, Germanicus!

March on Rome! We're your men! Up, Germanicus, son of Germanicus!

Germanicus for Emperor!"

Germanicus was thunderstruck. He shouted: "You're mad, men, to talk like that. What do you think I am? A traitor?"

A veteran shouted: '"None of that. General! You said just now that you'd take on Augustus' job. Don't back out!"

Germanicus then realised his mistake, and when the cheers of "Up, Germanicus" continued he jumped off the tribunal and hurried to where his horse was standing tied to a post, intending to mount and gallop wildly away from this accursed camp. But the men drew their swords and barred his way.

Germanicus, beside himself, cried: "Let me pass, or by God, I'll kill myself."

"You're the Emperor for us," they answered. Germanicus drew his sword, but someone caught his arm. It was clear to any decent man that Germanicus was in earnest, but a good many of the ex-slaves thought that he was just making a hypocritical gesture of modesty and virtue.

One of them laughed and called out; "Here, take my sword! It's sharper!"

Old Pomponius, who was standing next to this fellow, flared up and struck him on the mouth.

Germanicus was hurried away by his friends to the General's tent. The General was lying in bed half-dead with dismay, hiding his head under a coverlet.

It was a long [i9i] time before he could get up and pay his respects to Germanicus.

His life and that of his staff had been saved by his bodyguard, mercenaries from the Swiss border.

A hurried council was held. Cassius told Germanicus that from a conversation which he had overheard while lying in the guardroom the mutineers were about to send a deputation to the regiments in the Upper Province, to secure their co-operation in a general military revolt. There was talk of leaving the Rhine unguarded and marching into France, sacking cities, carrying off the women and setting up an independent military kingdom in the South-West, protected in the rear by the Pyrenees. Rome would be paralysed by this move and they would remain undisturbed long enough to be able to make their kingdom impregnable.

Germanicus decided to go at once to the Upper Province and make the regiments there swear allegiance to Tiberius.

These were the troops who'had recently served directly under his command and he believed that they would remain loyal if he reached them before the deputation of mutineers. They had the same grievances about pay and service, he was aware, but their captains were a better set of men, chosen by himself for their patience and soldierly qualities rather than for their reputation. But first something had to be done to quiet the mutinous regiments here. There was only one course to take. He committed the first and only crime of his life: he forged a letter purporting to come from Tiberius and had it delivered to him at his tent door the next morning. The courier had been secretly sent out at night with instructions to steal a horse from the horse-lines, ride twenty miles South-West and then gallop back at top speed by another route.

The letter was to the effect that Tiberius had heard that the regiments in Germany had voiced certain legitimate grievances, and was anxious to remove them at once. He would see that Augustus' legacy was promptly paid to them and as a mark of his confidence in their loyalty would double it from his own purse.

He would negotiate with the Senate about the rise in pay. He would give an immediate and unqualified discharge to all men of twenty years' service and a qualified discharge to all who had completed sixteen years--these would be called on for no military duty whatsoever except garrison duty.

Germanicus was not as clever a liar as his uncle Tiberius or his grandmother Livia or his sister Livilla. The courier's horse was recognised by its owner and so was the courier, one of Germanicus' own grooms. Word went round that the letter was a forgery. But the veterans were in favour of treating it as authentic and asking for the promised discharge and the legacy at once. They did so, and Germanicus replied that the Emperor was a man of his word and that the discharges could be granted that very day. But he asked them to have patience about the legacy, which could only be paid in full when they marched back to winter quarters.

There was not sufficient coin in the camp, he said, for every man to have his six gold pieces, but he would see that the General would hand over as much as there was.

This quieted them, though opinion had somewhat turned against Germanicus as not being the man they had taken him to be: he was afraid of Tiberius, they said, and not above committing forgery. They sent parties out to look for their captains and undertook to obey orders from their General again.

Germanicus had told the General that he would have him impeached before the Senate for cowardice if he did not immediately take himself in hand.

So having seen that the discharges were made in due form and all the available money distributed, Germanicus rode off to the Upper Province. He found the regiments standing-by waiting for news of what was happening in the Lower Province; but not yet in open mutiny, for Silius, their general, was a strong-minded man. Germanicus read them the same forged letter and made them swear allegiance to Tiberius; which they did at once.

There was great emotion at Rome when news arrived of the Rhine mutiny.

Tiberius, who had been strongly criticized for sending Castor out to the Balkan mutiny--which had not yet been put down--instead of going there himself, was now booed in the streets and asked why it was that the troops who mutinied were the ones whom he had personally commanded, while the others remained loyal.

[For the regiments that Germanicus had commanded in Dalmatia had not mutinied either.] He was called on to go to Germany ^95] at once and do his own dirty work on the Rhine instead of leaving it to Germanicus. He therefore told the Senate that he would go to Germany, and began slowly to make preparations, choosing his staff and fitting out a small fleet. But by the time he was ready the approach of winter made navigation dangerous and the news from Germany was more hopeful.

So he did not go. He had not intended to go.

Meanwhile, I had had a hasty letter from Germanicus, begging me to raise two hundred thousand gold pieces at once from his estate, but with the greatest secrecy: they were needed for the safety of Rome. He said no more but sent me a signed warrant which enabled me to act for him.

I went to his chief-steward, who said that he could only raise half that amount without selling property, and that to sell property would make talk, which was what Germanicus evidently wanted to avoid. So I had to find the rest myself--fifty thousand from my strong-box, which left me with only ten thousand after I had paid my initiation fee to the new priesthood--and another fifty thousand from the sale of some City property which had been left me by my father--luckily I had already had an offer for it--and such of my slaves as I could spare, but only men and women whom I considered not particularly devoted to my service. I sent the money out within two days of getting the letter asking for it. My mother was extremely angry when she heard that the property had been sold, but I was pledged not to tell her why the money was needed, so I said that I had been playing dice for too high stakes lately and in trying to recoup my heavy losses had lost twice as much again. She believed me, and "gambler" was another stick to beat me with.

But the thought that I had not failed Germanicus or Rome was ample compensation for her taunts.

I was gambling a good deal at this time, I must say, but never either lost or gained much. I used to play as a relaxation from my work. After finishing my history of Augustus' religious reforms I wrote a short humorous book about Dice, dedicated to the divinity of Augustus; which was to tease my mother. I quoted a letter that Augustus, who had been very fond of dice, had once written to my father: in which he said how much he had enjoyed their game on the previous night, for my father was the best loser he had ever met. My father, he wrote, always made a great laughing outcry against fate whenever he threw the Dog, but if-a fellow-gambler threw Venus he seemed as pleased as if he had thrown her himself. "It is, indeed, a pleasure to win from you, my dear fellow, and to say this is the highest praise I can bestow on a man, for usually I hate winning because of the insight it gives me into the hearts of my supposedly mast devoted friends. All but the very best grudge losing to me, because I am the Emperor and, they think, of infinite wealth, and obviously the Gods should not give more to a man who already has too much. It is my policy therefore--perhaps you have noticed it--always to make a mistake in the reckoning after a round of throws.

Either I claim less than I have won, as if by mistake, or I pay more than I owe, and hardly anyone but yourself, I find, is honest enough to put me right." [I should have liked to quote a further passage in which there was a reference to Tiberius' bad sportsmanship, but of course I could not.]

In this book I began with a mock-serious enquiry into the antiquity of dice, quoting a number of non-existent authors, and describing various fanciful ways of shaking the dice-cup. But the main subject was, naturally, that of winning and losing and the title was How To Win At Dice.

Augustus had written in another letter that the more he tried to lose, the more he seemed to win, and even by cheating himself in the reckoning it was seldom that he rose from the table poorer than he sat down. I quoted an opposite statement attributed by Pollio to my grandfather Antony to the effect that the more he tried to win at diceplay the more he seemed to lose. Putting these statements together I deduced that the fundamental law of dice was that the Gods, unless they had a grudge against him on another score, always let the man win who cared least about winning. The only way to win at dice therefore was to cultivate a genuine desire to lose. Written in a heavy style, parodying that of my bugbear Cato, it was, I flatter myself, a very funny book, the argument being so perfectly paradoxical. I quoted the old proverb which promises a man a thousand gold pieces every time he meets a stranger riding on a piebald mule, but only on condition that he does not [195] think of the mule's tan until he gets the money. I had hoped that this squib would please people who found my histories indigestible. It did not. It was not read as a humorous work at all. I should have realised that oldfashioned readers who had been brought up on the works of Cato were hardly the sort to enjoy a parody of their hero and that the younger generation, who had not been brought up on Cato, would not recognise it as a parody. The book was therefore dismissed as a fantastically dull and stupid production written in painful seriousness and proving my rumoured mental incapacity beyond further dispute.

But this has been a very ill-judged digression, leaving Germanicus, as it were, waiting anxiously for his money while I write a book about dice. Old Athenodorus would criticise me pretty severely, I think, if he were alive now.

XVI

GERMANICUS WAS MET AT BONN BY A DEPUTATION OF senators sent by Tiberius. They really came to see whether Germanicus had been either exaggerating or minimising the seriousness of the mutiny. They also brought a private letter from Tiberius approving the promises made to the men on his behalf with the exception of the doubled bequest, which would now have to be promised to the entire Army, not merely the regiments in Germany. Tiberius congratulated Germanicus on the apparent success of the ruse but deplored the necessity of forgery. He added that whether he fulfilled the promises depended on the behaviour of the men. [By this he did not mean, as Germanicus supposed, that if the men returned to obedience he would fulfil the promises, but exactly the reverse.] Germanicus wrote back at once apologising for the expense involved in the doubling of the bequest, but explained that the money was being paid from his own purse and the men would not know that it was not Tiberius who was their benefactor; and that in the forged letter he had made it plain that only the German regiments were to benefit, making the payment a reward for their recent successful campaign across the Rhine. As for the other specific promises, the veterans of twenty years' service had already been discharged and were only remaining with the Colours until the bounty-money arrived for them.

Germanicus could ill afford this heavy charge on his estate and wrote asking me not to press him for repayment of my fifty thousand for awhile. I answered that it had not been a loan but a gift, which I was proud to have been able to make. But to return to the order of events. Two of the regiments were in their winter quarters at Bonn when the deputation arrived. Their march back under their General had been a disgraceful display: the bags which had contained the money were tied to long poles and carried mouth-downwards, between the standards. The other two regiments had refused to leave the summer camp until the whole bequest was paid them. The Bonn regiments, the First and Twentieth, suspected that the deputation had been sent to cancel the concessions and began to riot again.

Some of them were for marching to their new kingdom at once and at midnight a party broke into Germanicus' quarters where the Eagle of the Twentieth Regiment was kept in a locked shrine and, pulling him out of bed tore the key of the shrine from the thin gold chain which he wore round his neck, unlocked the shrine and seized the Eagle. As they marched shouting down the streets, calling on their comrades to "follow the Eagle" they met the senators of the deputation, who had heard the noise and came running for protection to Germanicus. The soldiers cursed and drew their swords. The senators changed their direction and darted into the headquarters of the First Regiment, where they took sanctuary with its Eagle.

But their pursuers were mad with rage and drink and if the Eaglebearer had not been a man of courage, and a good swordsman too, the leader of the deputation would have had his skull split open--a crime which would have outlawed the regiment beyond pardon and been the signal for civil war throughout the country.

The disorders continued all night, but fortunately without bloodshed except as the result of drunken brawls between rival companies of soldiers. When dawn came Germanicus told the trumpeter to blow the Assembly, and stepped on the tribunal, putting the leader of the senatorial deputation beside him. The men were in a nervous, guilty, irritable mood, but Germanicus' courage fascinated them.

He stood up, commanded silence, and then gave a great yawn. He covered his mouth with his hand and apologised, saying that he had not slept well because of the scuffling of mice in his quarters. The men liked that joke and laughed.

He did not laugh with them. "Heaven be praised that dawn is here. Never have I known such an evil night. At one moment I dreamed that the Eagle of The Twentieth flew away. What a delight to see it on parade this morning! There were destructive spirits hovering in the camp, sent beyond doubt by some God whom we have offended.

You all felt the madness and it was only by a miracle that you were prevented from committing a crime unparalleled in the history of Rome--the unprovoked murder of an ambassador of your own City who had taken sanctuary from your swords with your own regimental Deities!" He then explained that the deputation had come merely to confirm Tiberius' original promises on behalf of the Senate and to report whether they were being faithfully executed by himself.

"Well, what about it, then? Where's the rest of the bounty?" someone shouted, and the cry was taken up. "We want our bounty." But by a lucky chance the moneywagons were sighted at that moment, driving into camp under convoy of a troop of auxiliary horse. Germanicus took advantage of the situation to send the senators hurriedly back to Rome under escort of these same auxiliaries; then he supervised the distribution of the coin, having difficulty in restraining some of the men from plundering the money intended for the other regiments.

The disorder increased that afternoon; so much gold in the men's purses meant heavy drinking and reckless gambling. Germanicus decided that it was not safe for Agrippina who was now with him, to remain in the camp. She was pregnant again; and though her young sons, my nephews Nero and Drusus, were here at Rome staying with my mother and myself, she had little Gains there with her.

This pretty child had become the army mascot, and someone had made him a miniature soldier-suit, complete with tin breast-plate and sword and helmet and shield. Everyone spoilt him. When his mother put on his ordinary clothes and sandals he used to cry and plead for his sword and his little boots to go visiting the tents. So he was nicknamed Caligula, or Little Boot.

Germanicus insisted on Agrippina's going away, though she swore that she was afraid of nothing and would far rather die with him there than have news from safety of his murder by the mutineers. But he asked her whether she thought that Livia would make a good mother for their orphaned children, and this decided her to do as he wished.

With her went several officers' wives, with their children, all weeping and wearing mourning clothes. They passed on foot slowly through the camp, without their usual attendants, like fugitives from a doomed city. A single rough cart, drawn by a mule, was all their transport. Cassius Chaerea went with them as guide and sole protector. Caligula rode on Cassius' back as if on a charger, shouting and making the regulation sword-cuts and panics in the air with his sword, as the cavalrymen had taught him. They left the camp very early in the morning and hardly anyone saw them go; for there was no guard at the gate and nobody now took the trouble to blow the reveille, most of the men sleeping like pigs till ten or eleven o'clock. A few old soldiers who woke early from long habit were outside the camp gathering firewood for their breakfasts and called to ask where the ladies were off to. "To "Treves," shouted Cassius. "The Commander-in-Chief is sending his wife and child away to the protection of the uncivilised but loyal French allies of Treves rather than risk their murder by the famous First Regiment. Tell your comrades that."

The old soldiers hurried back to the camp and one of them, the old man Pomponius, got hold of a trumpet and blew the alarm. The men came tumbling out of their tents half-asleep with their swords in their hands. "What's wrong? What's happened?"

"He's been sent away from us. That's the end of our luck and we'll never see him again."

"Who's that? Who's been sent away?"

"Our boy has. Little Boot. His father says he can't trust the First Regiment with him so he's sent him away to the damned French allies. God knows what will happen to him there. You know what the French are. His mother's been sent off too. Seven months gone with her latest, and walking on foot, like a slave woman, poor lady. O lads!

Germanicus' wife and the daughter of old Agrippa whom we used to call the Soldier's Friend! And our Little Boot."

Soldiers really are an extraordinary race of men, as tough as shield-leather, as superstitious as Egyptians and as sentimental as Sabine grandmothers. Ten minutes later there were about two thousand men besieging Germanicus' tent in a drunken ecstasy of sorrow and repentance and imploring him to let his lady come back with their darling little boy.

Germanicus came out to them with a pale angry face and told them to trouble him no more. They had disgraced themselves and him and the name of Rome and he could never trust them so long as he lived; they had done him no kindness in wresting his sword from him when he was on the point of plunging it into his breast.

"Tell us what to do, General! We'll do anything you say. We swear we'll never mutiny again. Forgive us. We'll follow you to the world's end. But give us back our little playfellow."

Germanicus said: "These are my conditions. Swear allegiance to my father Tiberius, and sort out from among yourselves the men responsible for the death of your captains, the insult to the deputation and the stealing of the Eagle. If you do this you will so far have my forgiveness that I shall let you have your playfellow back. My wife however must not be brought to bed in this camp, until it has been purged of guilt. Her time is near now and I want no evil influence to cloud the life of the child. But I can send her to Cologne instead of Treves if you do not wish it said that I confided her to the protection of barbarians. My full pardon will only be given when you have wiped out the [200] memory of your bloody crimes by a bloodier victory over your country's enemies, the Germans."

They swore to abide by his conditions. So he sent a messenger to overtake Agrippina and Cassius; he was to explain matters and fetch Caligula back. The men ran to the tents and called on every loyal comrade to join them and arrest the ringleaders of the mutiny. About a hundred men were seized and frog-marched to the tribunal, about which the remainder of the two regiments formed a hollow square with drawn swords. A colonel made each prisoner in turn mount a rough scaffold which had been put up beside the tribunal, and if the men of his company judged him guilty he was thrown down and beheaded by them. Germanicus said nothing throughout the two hours of this informal trial, sitting with folded arms and an impassive face. All but a few of the prisoners were found guilty.

When the last head had fallen and the bodies had been taken out of camp to be burned, Germanicus called up every captain in turn to the tribunal and asked him to give particulars of his service. If he had a good record and had evidently not been appointed by favouritism Germanicus appealed to the company veterans for their opinion of him.

If they gave him a good name and the battalion colonel had nothing against him the man was confirmed in his rank.

But if his record was bad or if there were complaints from his company he was degraded, and Germanicus called on the company to choose the best man they had among them to succeed him. Germanicus then thanked the men for their co-operation and called on them to take the oath of allegiance to Tiberius. They took it solemnly; and a moment later a great cheer went up. They saw Germanicus'

messenger galloping back; and there was Caligula on the crupper in front of him shouting in his shrill voice and waving his toy sword.

Germanicus embraced the child and said that he had one more thing to add.

Fifteen hundred time-expired veterans had been discharged from the two regiments in accordance with instructions from Tiberius. But if any of them, he said, wanted his full pardon, which their fellows were soon going to earn by crossing the Rhine and avenging Varus' defeat, they could still win it. He would permit the more [201] active men to re-enlist in their old companies; while those who were only fit for garrison duty could enlist in a special force for service in the Tyrol where dangerous raids from Germany had lately been reported. Would you believe it? --every man stepped forward and more than half volunteered for active service across the Rhine. Among these active volunteers was Pomponius, who protested that he was as fit as any man in the army, in spite of his bare gums and his rupture. Germanicus made him his tent-orderly and put his grandsons into the bodyguard. So everything was all right again at Bonn, and Caligula was told by the men that he had put down the mutiny single-handed and that one day he'd be a great emperor and win wonderful victories; which was very bad for the child, who was already, as I say, disgracefully spoilt.

But there remained the five other regiments who were at a place called Santen to bring to their senses. They had continued to behave mutinously even after the payment of their bounty and their General could do nothing with them.

When news came of the change of heart in the Bonn regiments the chief mutineers became seriously alarmed for their own safety and stirred up their comrades to fresh acts of violence and depredation. Germanicus sent their General word that he was coming down the Rhine at once at the head of a powerful force and that if such loyal men as remained under his command did not quickly follow the example of the Bonn regiments and execute the troublemakers he would put the whole lot to the sword indiscriminately. The General read the letter privately to the standard-bearers, non-commissioned officers and a few trustworthy old soldiers and told them that there was little time for delay; for Germanicus might be on them any moment. They promised him to do what they could and, letting a few more loyalists into the secret, which was well kept, they rushed into the tents at midnight on a given signal and began to massacre the mutineers. These defended themselves as best they could and killed a number of the loyalists, but they were soon overpowered. Five hundred men were killed or wounded that night. The rest, leaving only sentries in the camp, marched out to meet Germanicus, begging him to lead them at once across the Rhine against the enemy. Although the campaigning season was nearly at an end, the fine weather still held and Germanicus promised to do what they asked. He threw a pontoon bridge over the river and marched across at the head of twelve thousand Roman infantry, twenty-

six battalions of allies and eight squadrons of cavalry. From his agents in enemy territory he knew of a large concentration of the enemy in the villages of Münster, where an annual autumn festival in honour of the German Hercules was being held. News of the mutiny had reached the Germans--the mutineers had actually been in treaty with Hermann and had exchanged presents with him--and they were only waiting for the regiments to march away to their new kingdom in the South-West before crossing the Rhine and marching direct for Italy.

Germanicus followed a rarely used forest-route and surprised the Germans completely, catching them at their beer-drinking. [Beer is a fermented drink made from steeped grain and they drink it to extraordinary excess at their feasts.] He divided his forces into four columns and wasted the country on a fifty-mile frontage, burning the villages and slaughtering the inhabitants without respect for age or sex. On his return he found detachments of various neighbouring tribes posted to dispute his passage through the forest; but he advanced in skirmishing order and was pressing the enemy back well when there was a sudden alarm from the Twentieth Regiment, which was acting as rear-guard, and Germanicus found that a huge force of Germans under the personal command of Hermann was upon him. Fortunately the trees at this point were not dense and allowed room for manoeuvre. Germanicus rode back to the position of most danger and cried out,

"Break their line, Twentieth, and everything will be forgiven and forgotten." The Twentieth fought like madmen and threw the Germans back with huge slaughter, pursuing them far into the open country at the back of the wood. Germanicus caught sight of Hermann and challenged him to combat, but Hermann's men were running away: it would have been death for him to have accepted &e challenge.

He galloped off. Germanicus was as unlucky [»3] as our father had been in his pursuit of enemy chieftains; but he won his victories in the same style, and the name "Germanicus" which he had inherited he bore now in his own right. He marched the exultant army back to safety in their camps across the Rhine.

Tiberius never understood Germanicus, nor Germanicus Tiberius. Tiberius, as I have said, was one of the bad Claudians. Yet he was, at times, easily tempted to virtue, and in a noble age might well have passed for a noble character: for he was a man of no mean capacity. But the age was not a noble one and his heart had been hardened, and for that hardening Livia must, you will agree, bear the chief blame. Germanicus, on the other hand, was wholly inclined to virtue and, however evil the age into which he had been born, could never have behaved any differently from the way he did. So it was that when he refused the monarchy offered him by the German regiments, and made them swear allegiance to Tiberius, Tiberius could not make out why he should have done so. He decided that he must be even more subtle than himself and playing some very deep game indeed. The simple explanation, that Germanicus put honour above all other considerations and that he was bound to Tiberius by military allegiance and by having been adopted as his son, never occurred to him. But Germanicus, since he did not suspect Tiberius of complicity in Livia's designs and since Tiberius never offered him any slights or injuries, but on the contrary praised him greatly for his handling of the mutiny and decreed him a full triumph for his campaign in Münster, believed him to be as honourably-intentioned as himself, only a little simpleminded not to have seen through Livia's designs yet. He determined to have a frank talk with Tiberius as soon as he went home for the triumph. But Varus'

death was not yet avenged; it was three years before Germanicus came back. The tone of the letters exchanged between Germanicus and Tiberius during this period was set by Germanicus, who wrote with dutiful affection. Tiberius replied in the same friendly strain because he thought that by so doing he was beating Germanicus at his own clever game.

He undertook to repay him the amount of the doubled bequest and to extend the bounty to the Balkan regiments too. As a matter of policy he did pay the Balkan regiments this extra three gold pieces a man--there were threats of another mutiny--but excused himself from repaying Germanicus for a few months on the grounds of financial embarrassment. Naturally Germanicus did not press him for the money and naturally Tiberius never gave it him. Germanicus wrote again to ask me whether he might wait to repay me until Tiberius repaid him, and I wrote back that I really meant the money as a gift.

Shortly after Tiberius' accession I wrote to him and said that I had been studying law and administration--as was the case--for some time, in the hope that I would at last be given an opportunity of serving my country in some responsible capacity. He wrote back to say that it certainly was an anomaly for a man who was the brother of Germanicus and his own nephew to go about as a mere knight, and that since I was now being made a priest of Augustus I must certainly be allowed to wear the dress of a senator: in fact, if I could undertake not to make a fool of myself in it he would ask permission for me to adopt the brocaded gown now worn by Consuls and ex-Consuls. I wrote back at once to say that I would even prefer office without dress to dress without office; but his only answer to this was to send me a present of forty gold pieces "to buy toys with next All Fools' Day".

The Senate did vote me the brocaded grown, and as a mark of honour to Germanicus, who was now in the middle of a new successful campaign in Germany, proposed to decree me a seat in the House among the ex-Consiris. But Tiberius here interposed his veto, telling them that I was in his opinion incapable of delivering a speech on matters of State which would not be a trial of his fellow-members' patience.

There was another decree proposed at the same time, which he also vetoed.

The circumstances were as follows: Agrippina had been delivered of her child, a girl called Agrippinilla, at Cologne; and I must say at once that this Agrippinflla turned out one of the very worst of the Claudians--in fact, I may say that she shows signs of outdoing all her ancestors and ancestresses in arrogance and vice.

Agrippina was ill for some months after her delivery, and unable to keep Caligula in hand properly, so he was [205] sent away on a visit to Rome as soon as Germanicus began his spring campaign. The child became a sort of national hero.

Whenever he went out for a walk with his brothers he was cheered and stared at and made much of. Not yet three years old but marvellously precocious, he was a most difficult case, only pleasant when flattered and only docile when treated firmly. He came to stay with his great-grandmother Livia, but she had no time to look after him properly, and because he was always getting into mischief and quarrelling with his elder brothers, he came from her to live with my mother and me. My mother never flattered him, but neither did she treat him with enough firmness, until one day he spat at her in a fit of temper and she gave him a good spanking. "You horrid old German woman," he said, "I'll burn your German house down!" He used '"German" as the worst insult he knew. And that afternoon he sneaked away into a lumber-room, which was next to the slaves' attic and full of old furniture and rubbish, and there set fire to a heap of worn-out straw mattreses.

The fire soon swept the whole upper storey, and since it was an old house with dry-rot in the beams and draught-holes in the flooring there was no putting it out even with an endless bucket-chain to the carp pool. I managed to save all my papers and valuables and some of the furniture, and no lives were lost except two old slaves who were lying sick in bed, but nothing was left of the house except the bare walls and the cellars. Caligula was not punished, because the fire had given him such a great fright. He nearly got caught in it himself, hiding guiltily under his bed until the smoke drove him screaming out.

Well, the Senate wanted to decree that my house should be rebuilt at the expense of the State, on the ground that it had been the home of so many distinguished members of my family: but Tiberius would not allow this. He said that the outbreak of fire had been due to my negligence and that the damage could easily have been confined to the attics if I had acted in a responsible way; and rather than that the State should pay he undertook to rebuild and refurnish the house himself. Loud applause from the House.

This was most unjust and dishonest, particularly as he had no intention of keeping his undertaking. I was forced to sell my last important piece of property in Rome, a block of houses near the Cattle Market and a large building site adjoining, to rebuild the house at my own expense. I never told Germanicus that Caligula had been the incendiary, because he would have felt obliged to make good the damage himself; and, I suppose it was, in a way, an accident, because one couldn't hold so young a child responsible.

When Germanicus' men went out to fight the Germans again they had a new addition to that ballad of Augustus' Three Griefs, of which I recall two or three verses and odd lines of others, most of them ridiculous: Six gold bits a man he left us

For to buy us pork and beans,

For to buy us cheese and craknels

In the German dry canteens.

And God Augustus walks in Heaven,

Ghost Marcellus swims in Styx,

Julia's dead and gone to join him--

That's the end of Julia's tricks.

But our Eagles still are straying

And by shame and sorrow stirred

To the tomb of God Augustus

We'll bring back each wandering bird.

There was another which began:

German Hermann lost his sweetheart

And his little pot of beer,

but I can't remember the finish, and the verse is not important except as reminding me to tell of Hermann's "sweetheart". She was the daughter of a chieftain called, in German, Siegstoss or something of the sort; but his Roman name was Segestes. He had been to Rome, like Hermann, and enrolled among the Knights, but unlike Hermann had felt morally bound by the oath of friendship he had swom to Augustus. It was this Segestes who had warned Varus about Hermann and Segimerus and suggested that Varus should arrest them at the banquet to which he had invited them just before his unfortunate expedition started. Segestes had a favourite daughter whom Hermann had carried off and married and Segestes never forgave him for this injury. He could not, however, come out openly on the side of the Romans against Hermann, who was a national hero; all that he had been able to do as yet was to maintain a secret correspondence with Germanicus, giving him intelligence of military movements and constantly assuring him that he had never wavered in his loyalty to Rome and was only waiting for an opportunity to make proof of it. But now he wrote to Germanicus that he was being besieged in his stockaded village by Hermann, who had swom to give no quarter; and that he could not hold out much longer. Germanicus made a forced march, defeated the besieging force, which was not numerous--Hermann himself was away, wounded--and rescued Segestes: when he found that he had a valuable prize awaiting him--Hermann's wife who had been visiting her father when the quarrel broke out between him and her husband, and who was far gone in pregnancy. Germanicus treated Segestes and his household very kindly, giving them an estate on the Western side of the Rhine. Hermann, who was enraged at his wife's capture, feared that Germanicus' clemency might induce other German chieftains to make overtures of peace. He built up a strong new confederation of tribes, including some which had always hitherto been friendly to Rome.

Germanicus was undaunted. The more Germans he had in the field openly against him, the better he was pleased. He never trusted them as allies.

And before the summer was out he had beaten them in a series of battles, forced Segimerus to surrender and won back the first of the three lost Eagles, that of the Nineteenth Regiment. He also visited the scene of Varus' defeat and gave the bones of his comrades-in-arms a decent burial, laying the first sod of their tomb with his own hands. The General who had behaved so supinely in the mutiny fought bravely at the head of his corps, and on one occasion turned what had seemed a hopeless defeat into a creditable victory. Premature news that this battle was lost and that the conquering Germans were marching towards the Rhine caused such consternation at the nearest bridge that the captain of the guard gave his men orders to retreat across it and then break it down: which would have meant abandoning everyone on the other side to their fate. But Agrippina was there and countermanded the order. She told the men that she was captain of the guard now and would remain so until her husband returned to relieve her of her command. When eventually the victorious troops came marching back she was at her post to welcome them. Her popularity now almost equalled that of her husband. She had organised a hospital for the wounded as Germanicus sent them back after each battle and had given them the best available medical treatment.

Ordinarily, wounded soldiers remained with their units until they either died or recovered. The hospital she paid for out of her own purse.

But I mentioned the death of Julia. When Tiberius became Emperor, Julia's daily supply of food at Reggio was reduced to four ounces of bread a day and one ounce of cheese. She was already in a consumption from the unhealthiness of her quarters and this starvation diet soon carried her off. But there was still no news of Postumus, and Livia, until she was certain of his death, could not be easy in her mind.

XVII

TIBERIUS CONTINUED TO RULE WITH MODERATION AND consulted the Senate before taking any step of the least political importance. But the Senate had been voting according to direction for so long that they seemed to have lost the power of independent decision; and Tiberius never made it plain which way he wanted them to vote even when he was very anxious for them to vote one way or another.

He wanted to avoid all appearance of tyranny and yet to keep his position at the head of affairs. The Senate soon found that if he spoke with studied elegance in favour of a motion he meant that he wanted it voted against, and that if he spoke with studied elegance against it this meant that he wanted it passed; and that on the very few occasions when he spoke briefly and without any rhetoric he meant to be taken literally. Gallus and an old wag called Haterius used to delight in making speeches in warm agreement with Tiberius, enlarging his arguments to a point only just short of absurdity and then voting the way he really wanted them to vote; thus showing that they understood his tricks perfectly. This Haterius in the debate about Tiberius' accession had cried out: "O Tiberius, how long will you allow unhappy Rome to remain without a head?" --which had offended him because he knew that Haterius saw through his intentions. The next day Haterius pursued the joke by falling at Tiberius' feet and pleading for pardon for not having been warm enough. Tiberius started back in disgust, but Haterius grabbed at his knees and Tiberius went over, catching the back of his head a bang on the marble floor.

Tiberius' German bodyguard did not understand what was happening and sprang forward to slaughter their master's assailant; Tiberius only just stopped them in time, Haterius excelled in parody. He had an enormous voice, a comic face, and great fertility of invention. Whenever Tiberius in his speeches introduced any painfully farfetched or archaic phrase Haterius would pick it up and make it the key-word of his reply. [Augustus had always said that the wheels of Haterius'

eloquence needed a dragchain even when he was driving uphill.] The slow-witted Tiberius was no match for Haterius. Callus' gift was for mock zeal. Tiberius was extremely careful not to appear a candidate for any divine honours and refused to allow himself to be spoken about as if he had any superhuman attributes: he did not even allow the provincials to build him temples. Gallus was therefore fond of referring, as if accidentally, to Tiberius as "His Sacred Majesty". When Haterius, who was always ready to carry on the gag, rose to rebuke him for this incorrect way of speaking he would [210] apologise profusely and say that nothing was farther from his mind than to do anything in disobedience of the orders of His Sacred... oh, dear, it was so easy to fall into that mistaken way of speaking, a thousand apologies once more ... he meant, contrary to the wishes of his honoured friend and fellow-senator Tiberius Nero Caesar Augustus.

"Not Augustus, fool," Haterius would say in a stage whisper. "He's refused that title a dozen times. He only uses it when he writes letters to other monarchs."

They had one trick which annoyed Tiberius more than any other. If he made a show of modesty when thanked by the Senate for performing some national service--such as undertaking to complete the temples which Augustus had left unfinished--they would praise his honesty in not taking credit for his mother's work, and congratulate Livia on having so dutiful a son. When they saw that there was nothing that Tiberius hated so much as hearing Livia praised they kept it up.

Haterius even suggested that just as the Greeks were called by their fathers' names, so Tiberius should be named after his mother and that it should be a crime to call him other than Tiberius Liviades--or perhaps Livigena would be the more correct Latin form.

Gallus found another weak spot in Tiberius' armour, and that was his hatred of any mention of his stay at Rhodes.

The most daring thing he did was to praise Tiberius one day for his clemency--it was the very day that news reached the city of Julia's death--and to tell the story of the teacher of rhetoric at Rhodes who had refused Tiberius' modest application to join his classes, on the ground that there was no vacancy at present, saying that he must come back in seven days. Gallus added, "And what do you think His Sacred... I beg your pardon, I should say, what do you think my honoured friend and fellow-senator Tiberius Nero Caesar did on his recent accession to the monarchy, when the same impertinent fellow arrived to pay his respects to the new divinity? Did he cut off that impudent head. and give it as a football to his German bodyguard? Not at all: with a wit only equalled by his clemency he told him that he had no vacancies at present in his corps of flatterers and that he must come back in seven years." This was an invention, I think, but the Senate had no reason to disbelieve [211] it and applauded so heartily that Tiberius had to let it go by as the truth.

Tiberius at last silenced Haterius by saying very slowly one day: "You will please forgive me, Haterius, if I speak rather more frankly than it is usual for one senator to speak to another, but I must say that I think you are a dreadful bore and not in the least witty." Then he turned to the House: "You will forgive me, my lords, but I have always said and will say again that since you have been good enough to entrust such absolute power to me I ought not to be ashamed to use it for the common good. If I use it now to silence buffoons who insult you as well as myself by their silly performances, I trust that I will earn your approval, You have always been very kind and patient with me." Without Haterius, Gallus had to play a lone game.

Though Tiberius hated his mother more than ever, he continued to let her rule him. All the appointments which he made to Consulships or provincial governorships were really hers: and they were very sensible ones, the men being chosen for merit, not for family influence or because they had flattered her or done her some private service. For I must make it plain, if I have not already done so, that however criminal the means used by Livia to win the direction of affairs for herself, first through Augustus and then through Tiberius, she was an exceptionally able and just ruler; and it was only when she ceased to direct the system that she had built up that it went wrong.

I have spoken of Sejanus, the son of the Commander of the Guards. He now succeeded to his father's command and was one of the only three men to whom Tiberius in any way opened his mind. Thrasyllus was another; he had come to Rome with Tiberius and never lost his hold on him.

The third was a senator called Nerva. Thrasyllus never discussed State policy with Tiberius and never asked for any official position; and when Tiberius gave him large sums of money he accepted them casually, as if money were something of little importance to him. He had a big observatory in a dome-shaped room in the Palace which had windows of glass so clear and transparent that you hardly knew they were there. Tiberius used to spend a great deal of his time here with Thrasyllus, who taught him the rudiments CLAUDIUS [212] of astrology and many other magic arts including that of interpreting dreams in the Chaldean style.

Sejanus and Nerva, Tiberius seems to have chosen for their totally opposite characters. Nerva never made an enemy and never lost a friend. His one fault, if you may call it so, was that he kept silent in the presence of evil when speech would not remedy it. He was sweet-tempered, generous, courageous, utterly truthful and was never known to stoop to the least fraud, even if good promised to come from so doing. If he had been in Germanicus' position, for instance, he would never have forged that letter though his own safety and that of the Empire had hung upon it.

Tiberius made Nerva superintendent of the City aqueducts and kept him constantly by him; I suppose by way of providing himself with a handy yardstick of virtue--as Sejanus certainly served as a handy yardstick of wickedness. Sejanus had as a young man been a friend of Gaius, on whose staff he had served in the East, and had been clever enough to foresee Tiberius' return to favour: he had contributed to it by reassuring Gaius that Tiberius meant what he said when he disclaimed any ambition to rule, and by urging him to write that letter of recommendation to Augustus.

He let Tiberius know at the time that he had done this and Tiberius wrote him a letter, still in his possession, promising never to forget his services. Sejanus was a liar but so fine a general of lies that he knew how to marshal them into an alert and disciplined formation--this was a clever remark of Gallus', it is not mine--which would come off best in any skirmish with suspicions or any general engagement with truth. Tiberius envied him this talent as he envied Nerva his honesty: for though he had progressed far in the direction of evil, he still felt hampered by unaccountable impulses towards the good.

It was Sejanus who first began poisoning his mind against Germanicus, telling him that a man who could forge a letter from his father in whatever circumstances was not to be trusted; and that Germanicus was really aiming at the monarchy but was acting with caution--first winning the men's affection by bribery and then making sure of their fighting capacities and his own leadership by this unnecessary campaign across the Rhine. As for Agrippina, Sejanus said, she was a dangerously ambitious woman: look how she had behaved--styled herself captain of the bridge and welcomed the regiments on their return as if she were Heaven knows whol That the bridge was in danger of being destroyed was probably an invention of her own.

Sejanus also said that he knew from a freedman of his who had once been a slave in Germanicus' household that Agrippina somehow believed Livia and Tiberius responsible for the death of her three brothers and the banishment of her sister and had sworn to be revenged. Sejanus also began discovering all kinds of plots against Tiberius and kept him in constant fear of assassination while assuring him that he need not have the least anxiety with himself on guard. He encouraged Tiberius to cross Livia in trifling ways, to show her that she overestimated the strength of her position. It was he who, a few years later, organised the Guards into a disciplined body. Hitherto the three battalions stationed at Rome had been billetted by sections in various parts of the City, in inns and such-like places, and were difficult to fetch out on parade in a hurry and slovenly in their dress and movements. He suggested to Tiberius that if he built a single permanent camp for them outside the City it would give them a strong corporate sense, prevent them from being influenced by the rumours and waves of political feeling which were always running through the City, and attach them more closely to his person as their Emperor. Tiberius improved on his advice by recalling the remaining six battalions from their stations in other parts of Italy and making the new camp big enough to house them all--nine thousand infantry and two thousand cavalry. Apart from the four City battalions, one of which he now sent to Lyons, and various colonies of discharged veterans, these were the only soldiers in Italy. The German bodyguard did not count as soldiers, being technically slaves. But they were picked men and more fanatically loyal to their Emperor than any true-born Roman There was not a man of them who really wanted to return to his cold rude barbarous land, though they were always singing sad choruses about it; they had too good a time here.

As for the criminal dossiers, to which Tiberius, because of his fear of plots against his life, was most anxious now to have access, Livia still pretended that the key to the cipher was lost. Tiberius, at Sejanus' suggestion, told her that since they were of no use to anyone he would burn them. She said that he could do so if he liked but surely it would be better to keep them, just in case the key turned up?

Perhaps she might even suddenly remember the key.

"Very well, mother," he answered. "I'll take charge of them until you do; and meanwhile I'll spend my evenings trying to work the cipher out myself." So he took them off to his own room and locked them in a cupboard. He tried his hardest to find the key to that cipher but it beat him. The common cipher was simply writing Latin E for Greek Alpha, Latin F for Greek Beta, G for Gamma, H for Delta and so on. The key of the higher cipher was next to impossible to discover.

It was provided by the first hundred lines on the first book of the Iliad, which had to be read concurrently with the writing of the cipher, each letter in the writing being represented by the number of letters of the alphabet intervening between it and the corresponding letter in Homer. Thus the first letter of the first word of the first line of the first book of the Iliad is Mu. Suppose the first letter of the first word of an entry in the dossier to be Upsilon. There are seven letters in the Greek alphabet intervening between Mu and Upsilon so Upsilon would be written as 7.

In this plan the alphabet would be thought of as circular. Omega, the last letter, following Alpha, the first, so that the distance between Upsilon and Alpha would be 4, but the distance between Alpha and Upsilon would be 18. It was Augustus'

invention and must have taken rather a long time to write and decode, but I suppose by practice they came to know the distance between any two letters in the alphabet without having to count up, which saved a lot of time. And how do I know about all this? Because many many years later when the dossiers came into my possession I worked the cipher out myself. I happened to find a roll of the first book of Homer, written on sheepskin, filed among the other rolls. It was clear that the first hundred lines only had been studied; because the sheepskin was badly soiled and inked at the beginning and quite clear at the end. When I looked closer

["5] and saw tiny figures--6, 23, 12--faintly scratched under the letters of the first line, it was not difficult to connect them with the cipher. I was surprised that Tiberius had overlooked this clue.

Speaking of the alphabet, I was interested at this time in a simple plan for making Latin truly phonetic. It seemed to me that three letters were missing. These three were consonantal U to distinguish it from U, the vowel; a letter to correspond to the Greek Upsilon [which is a vowel between Latin I and U] for use in Greek words which have become Latinized; and a letter to denote the double consonant which we now write in Latin as BS but pronounce like the Greek Psi. It was important, I wrote, for provincials learning Latin to learn it correctly; if the letters did not correspond to the sound how could they avoid mistakes in pronunciation? So I suggested, for consonantal U, the upside down F [which is used for that purpose in Etruscan]: thus LAJINIA instead of LAUINIA; and a broken H for Greek Upsilon: thus B ^BLIOTHECA instead of BIBLIOTHECA; and an upside down C for BS: thus AOQUE for ABSQUE. The last letter was not so important, but the other two seemed to me essential, I suggested the broken H

and the upside-down F and C because these would cause the least trouble to the men who use letter-punches for metal or clay: they would not have to make any new punches. I published the book and one or two people said that my suggestions were sensible; but of course it had absolutely no result. My mother told me that there were three impossible things in the world; that shops should stretch across the bay from Baiae to Puteoli, that I should subdue the island of Britain, and that any one of these absurd new letters would ever appear on public inscriptions in Rome. I have always remembered this remark of hers, for it had a sequel.

My mother was extremely short-tempered with me these days because our house took such a long time to rebuild and the new furniture I bought was not equal to the old, and because her income was greatly reduced by the share she took in these expenses--I could not have found all the money myself. We lived for two years in quarters at the Palace [not very good ones] and she vented her irritation on me so constantly that in the end I could not bear it any longer and moved out of Rome to my villa near Capua, only visiting the City when my priestly functions demanded it, which was not often. You will ask about Urgulanilla. She never came to Capua; in Rome we had little to do with each other. She scarcely greeted me when we met and took no notice of me except, for appearances' sake, when guests were present; and we always slept apart. She seemed fond enough of our boy, Drusillus, but did little for him in any practical way. His bringing-up was left to my mother, who managed the household, and never called on Urgulanilla for any help. My mother treated Drusillus as if he were her own child, and somehow contrived to forget who his parents were. I never learned to like Drusillus myself; he was a surly, stolid, insolent child, and my mother scolded me so often in his presence that he learned to have no respect for me.

I don't know how Urgulanilla got through her days. But she never seemed bored and ate enormously and, so far as I know, entertained no secret lovers. This strange creature had one passion, though--Numantina, the wife of my brother-in-law Silvanus, a little fair-haired elf-like creature who had once done or said something [I don't know what] which had penetrated through that thick hide and muscular bulging body and touched what served Urgulanilla for a heart.

Urgulanilla had a life-size portrait of Numantina in her boudoir: she used, I believe, to sit gazing at it for hours whenever there was no opportunity for gazing at Numantina herself. When I moved to Capua, Urgulanilla stayed at Rome with my mother and Drusillus.

The only inconvenience of Capua as a home for me was the absence of a good library. However, I began a book for which a library was not needed--a history of Etruria. I had by now made some progress in Etruscan, and Aruns, with whom I spent a few hours every day, was most helpful in giving me access to the archives of his half-ruined temple.

He told me that he had been born on the day that the comet appeared which had announced the beginning of the tenth and last cycle of the Etruscan race. A cycle is a period reckoned by the longest life: that is to say, a cycle does not close until the death of everyone who was alive at the festival [217] celebrating the close of the previous cycle. A cycle averages a little over one hundred years. Well, this was the last cycle and it would end with the total disappearance of Etruscan as a spoken language. The prophecy was already as good as fulfilled because he had no successors in his priestly office, and the country-people now talked Latin even in the home; so he was glad to help me to write my history, he said, as a mausoleum for the traditions of a once great race. I started it in the second year of Tiberius'

reign and I finished it twenty-one years later. I consider it my best work: certainly I worked hardest at it. So far as I know, there is no other book on the subject of the Etruscans at all and. they were a very interesting race indeed; so I think that historians of the future will be grateful to me.

I had Gallon and Pallas with me and lived a quiet orderly life. I took an interest in the farm attached to my villa and enjoyed occasional visits from friends in Rome who came out for a holiday. There was a woman permanently living with me, called Acre, a professional prostitute and a very decent woman, I never had any trouble with her in the fifteen years she was with me. Our relationship was a purely business one. She had deliberately chosen prostitution as her profession; I paid her well; there was no nonsense about her. We were quite fond of each other in a way. At last she told me that she wanted to retire on her earnings.

She would marry a decent man, an old soldier for choice, and settle down in one of the colonies and have children before it was too late. She had always wanted to have a houseful of children. So I kissed her and said good-bye and gave her enough dowry-money to make things very easy for her. She did not go away, though, until she had found me a successor whom she could trust to treat me properly. She found me Calpurnia, who was so like her that I have often thought she must have been her daughter. Acte did once mention having had a daughter whom she had to put out to nurse because one couldn't be a prostitute and a mother at the same time. Well, so Acte married an ex-Guardsman who treated her quite well and had five children by her.

I have always kept an eye on that family. I mention her only because my readers will wonder what sort of sexual life I led when living apart from Urgulanilla. I do not think that it is natural for an ordinary man to live long without a woman, and since Urgulanilla was impossible as a wife I do not think that I can be blamed for living with Acte.

Acte and I had an understanding that while we were together we would neither of us have to do with anyone else.

This was not sentiment but a medical precaution: there was so much venereal disease now in Rome--another fatal legacy, by the way, of the Punic War.

Here I wish to put it on record that I have never at any time of my life practised homosexuality. I do not use Augustus' argument against it, that it prevents men having children to support the State, but I have always thought it at once pitiful and disgusting to see a full-grown man, a magistrate, perhaps, with a family of his own, slobbering uxoriously over a plump little boy with a painted face and bangles; or an ancient senator playing Queen Venus to some tall young Adonis of the Guards cavalry who tolerates the old fool only because he has money.

When I had to go up to Rome I stayed there for as short a time as possible. I felt something uncomfortable in the atmosphere on the Palatine Hill, which may well have been the growing tension between Tiberius and Livia. He had begun building a huge palace for himself on the NorthWest of the hill, and now moved into the lower rooms, before the upper ones were finished, leaving her in sole possession of Augustus' palace. Livia, as if to show that Tiberius' new building, though three times the size, would never have the prestige of the old one, put a magnificent gold statue of Augustus in her hall and proposed, as High Priestess of his cult, to invite all the senators and their wives to the dedicatory banquet. But Tiberius pointed out that he must first ask the Senate to vote on the matter: it was a State occasion, not a private entertainment. He so managed the debate that the banquet was held in two parts simultaneously: the senators in the hall with himself as host, and their wives in a big room leading off it with Livia as hostess. She swallowed the insult by not treating it as such, only as a sensible arrangement more in keeping with what Augustus would have wished himself; but gave orders to the Palace cooks that the women were to be served first [»9] with the best joints and sweetmeats and wine. She also appropriated the most costly dishes and drinking-vessels for her feast. She got the better of him on that occasion and the senators' wives all had a good laugh at the expense of Tiberius and their husbands.

Another uncomfortable thing about coming to Rome was that I never seemed to be able to avoid meeting Sejanus.

I disliked having anything to do with him, though he was always studiously polite to me and never did me any direct injury. I was astonished that a man with a face and manner like his and not well-born or a famous fighter, or even particularly rich, could have made such a huge success in the City: he was now the next most important man after Tiberius, and extremely popular with the Guards. It was a completely untrustworthy face--sly, cruel and irregular featured--and the one thing that held it together was a certain animal hardiness and resolution. What was stranger still to me, several women of good family were said to be rivals in love for him. He and Castor got on badly together, which was only natural, for there were rumours that Livilla and Sejanus had some sort of understanding. But Tiberius seemed to have complete confidence in him.

I have mentioned Briseis, my mother's old freedwoman.

When I told her that I was leaving Rome and settling at Capua she said how much she would miss me, but that I was wise to go. "I had a funny dream about you last night, Master Claudius, if you'll forgive me. You were a little lame boy, and thieves broke into his father's house and murdered his father and a whole lot of relations and friends; but he squeezed through a pantry-window and went hobbling into the neighbouring wood. He climbed up a tree and waited. The thieves came out of the house and sat down under the tree where he was hiding, to divide the plunder. Soon they began to quarrel about who should have what, and one of the thieves got killed, and then two more, and then the rest began drinking wine and pretending to be great friends; but the wine had been poisoned by one of the murdered thieves, so they all died in agony. The lame boy climbed down the tree and collected the valuables and found a lot of gold and jewels among them that had been I, CLAUDlUt [220] stolen from other families: but he took it all home with him and became quite rich."

I smiled. "That's a funny dream, Briseis. But he was still as lame as ever and all that wealth could not buy his father and family back to life again, could it?"

"No, my dear, but perhaps he married and had a family of his own. So choose a good tree. Master Claudius, and don't come down till the last of the thieves are dead. That's what my dream said."

"I'll not come down even then, if I can help it, Briseis.

I don't want to be a receiver of stolen goods."

"You can always give them back. Master Claudius."

This was all very remarkable in the light of what happened later. I have no great faith in dreams. Athenodorus once dreamed that there was treasure in a badger's den in a wood near Rome. He found his way to the exact spot, which he had never visited before, and there in a bank was the hole leading to the den. He fetched a couple of countrymen to dig away the bank until they came to the den at the end of the hole--where they found a rotten old purse containing six mouldy coppers and a bad shilling, which was not enough to pay the countrymen for their work. And one of my tenants, a shopkeeper, dreamed once that a flight of eagles wheeled round his head and one settled on his shoulder. He took it for a sign that he would one day be Emperor, but all that happened was that a piquet of Guards visited him the next morning [they had eagles on their shields] and the corporal arrested him for some offence that brought him under military jurisdiction.

XVIII

ONE SUMMER AFTERNOON AT CAPUA I WAS SITTING ON A stone bench behind the stables of my villa, thinking out some problem of Etruscan history and idly shooting dice, [221] left hand against right, on the rough plank table in front of me. A raggedly dressed man came up and asked whether I was Tiberius Claudius Drusus [A.D. 16] Nero Germanicus: he had been directed here from Rome, he said.

"I have a message for you, sir. I don't know whether it's worth delivering but I'm an old soldier on the tramp--one of your father's veterans, sir--and you know what it is, I'm glad of having an excuse for taking one road rather than another."

"Who gave you the message?"

"A fellow I met in the woods near Cape Cosa. Curious sort of fellow. He was dressed like a slave but he spoke like a Caesar. A big thick-set fellow and looked half starved."

"What name did he give?"

"No name at all. He said you'd know who he was by the message, and be surprised to hear from him. He made me repeat the message twice to make sure I had it right. I was to say that he was still fishing, but that a man couldn't live wholly on fish, and that you were to pass the word to his brother-in-law, and that if the milk was sent it never reached him, and that he wanted a little book to read, at least seven pages long. And that you were not to do anything until you heard from him again. Does that make sense, sir, or was the fellow cracked?"

When he said that, I could not believe my ears. Postumus! But Postumus was dead. "Has he a big jaw, blue eyes and a way of tilting his head on one side when he asks you a question?"

"That's the man, sir."

I poured him out a drink with a hand so shaky that I spilt as much as I poured. Then, signing that he was to wait there for me, I went into the house. I found two good plain gowns and some underclothes and sandals and a pair of razors and some soap. Then I took the first sewn-sheet book that came to hand--it happened to be a copy of some recent speeches of Tiberius to the Senate--and on the seventh page I wrote in milk: What joy! I will write to G. at once. Be careful.

Send for whatever you need. Where can I see you? My dearest love to you. Here are twenty gold pieces, all I have at the moment, but quick gifts are double gifts, I hope.

I waited for the page to dry and then gave the man the book and clothes wrapped in a bundle, and a purse. I said: "Take these thirty gold pieces. Ten are for yourself.

Twenty are for the man in the woods. Bring back a message from him and you shall have ten more. But keep your mouth shut and be back soon."

"Good enough, sir," he said. "I'll not fail you. But what's to prevent me from going off with this bundle and all the money?"

I said: "If you were a dishonest man you wouldn't ask that question. So let us have another drink together and off you go."

To cut a long story short, he went away with the bundle and money and a few days later brought me back a verbal answer from Postumus, which was thanks for the money and clothes and that I was not to seek him out, but that the crocodile's mother would know where he was and that his name was now Pantherus and would I forward him his brother-in-law's answer as soon as possible. I paid the old soldier the ten pieces I had promised him and ten more for his faithfulness. I understood whom Postumus meant by the crocodile's mother.

The Crocodile was an old freedman of Agrippa's whom we called that because of his torpidity and greed and his enormous jaws. He had a mother living at Perusia, where she kept an inn. I knew the place well. I sent off a letter to Germanicus at once to tell him the news; I sent it by Pallas to Rome telling him to send it off with the next post to Germany. In the letter I merely said that Postumus was alive and in hiding--I did not say where--and begged Germanicus to acknowledge the receipt of the letter at once. Then I waited and waited for an answer but none came. I wrote again, rather more fully; but still no answer. I sent a message to the Crocodile's mother by a country-carrier that no message had yet arrived for Pantherus from his brother-in-law.

I did not hear again from Postumus. He did not wish to compromise me further, and now that he had money and was able to move about without being arrested on suspicion as a runaway slave he was not dependent on my help.

Somebody at the inn recognised him and he had to move from there for safety's sake. Very soon the rumour that he was alive was all over Italy. Everyone was talking about it at Rome. A dozen people, including three senators, came out to me from the City to ask me privately if it were true.

I told them that I had not seen him but that I had met someone who had, and that there was no doubt that it was Postumus. In return I asked them what they intended to do if he came to Rome and won the support of the populace. But the directness of my question embarrassed and hurt them, and I got no answer.

Postumus was reported to have visited various country towns in the neighbourhood of Rome, but apparently he took the precaution of not entering them before nightfall and always going away, in disguise, before dawn. He was never seen publicly but would lodge at some inn and leave behind a message of thanks for the kindness shown him--signed with his real name. At last one day he landed at Ostia from a small coasting vessel. The port knew, a few hours beforehand, that he was coming, and he had a tremendous ovation at the quay as he stepped ashore. He chose to land at Ostia because it was the summer headquarters of the Fleet, of which his father Agrippa had been Admiral. His vessel flew a green pennant which Augustus had given Agrippa the right to fly whenever he was at sea [and his sons after him] in memory of his sea-victory off Actium. Agrippa's memory was honoured at Ostia almost beyond that of Augustus.

Postumus was in great danger of his life, being still under sentence of banishment and therefore outlawed by his public reappearance in Italy. He made a short speech of thanks to the crowd for their welcome. He said that if Fortune was kind to him and if he won back the esteem of the Roman Senate and people which he had forfeited because of certain lying accusations brought against him by his enemies--accusations which his grandfather, the God Augustus, had realised too late were untrue--he would reward the loyalty of the men and women of Ostia in no niggardly fashion. A company of Guards was there with orders to arrest him, for Livia and Tiberius had got the news too, somehow. But the men would have had no chance against that crowd of sailors. The captain wisely made no attempt to carry out his commission; he ordered two men to change into sailors' slops and not lose sight of Postumus. But by the time they had changed he had disappeared and they could find no trace of him.

The next day Rome was full of sailors who picketed the principal streets: whenever they met a knight or senator or public official they asked him the pass-word. The pass-word was "Neptune", and if he did not already know it he was given it and made to repeat it three times unless he wanted a beating. Nobody wanted a beating, and popular feeling now ran so strongly in sympathy with Postumus and against Tiberius and Livia that if a single favourable word had come from Germanicus the whole City, including the Guards and the City battalions, would have come over to him at once. But without Germanicus' support any rising in favour of Postumus would have meant civil war; and nobody had much confidence in Postumus' chances if it came to a struggle with Germanicus.

In this crisis the same Crispus who had antagonised Tiberius two years before by sending Clement to his death on the island [but had been forgiven] came forward and offered to redeem his fault by this time making sure of Postumus.

Tiberius gave him a free hand. He found out somehow where Postumus'

headquarters were and, going to him with a large sum of money which he said was for the payment of his sailors, who had already lost two working-days by this picketing work, he undertook to bring over the German bodyguard to Postumus'

side as soon as he gave the signal. He had, he said, already given them enormous bribes. Postumus believed him. They arranged a meeting for two hours after midnight at a certain street corner where Postumus' sailors were also to assemble in force. They would march to Tiberius' Palace. Crispus would order the bodyguard to admit Postumus. Tiberius, Castor and Livia would be arrested, and Crispus said trial Sejanus, while not active in the plot, had undertaken to bring the Guards over in support of the new regime as soon as the first blow had been successfully struck: on condition that he retained his command. The sailors were punctual at the rendezvous but Postumus ["S] did not arrive. At that hour no citizens were in the street; so when a combined force of Germans from the bodyguard and picked men of Sejanus' suddenly fell on the sailors--who were mostly drunk and not in any regular formation--the pass-word "Neptune" lost its power. Many of them were killed on the spot, many more as they broke and ran, and the rest never once slowed down, it is said, before they reached Ostia again.

Crispus and two soldiers had waylaid Postumus in a narrow alley between his headquarters and the rendezvous, stunned him with a sandbag, gagged and bound him, put him into a covered sedan and carried him off to the Palace. The next day Tiberius made a statement to the Senate. A certain slave of Postumus Agrippa's called Clement, he said, had caused a deal of unnecessary alarm in the City by impersonating his dead former master. This bold fellow had run away from the provincial knight who had bought him when Postumus' estate was sold and had hidden in a wood on the coast of Tuscany until his beard grew long enough to hide his receding chin--the chief point of dissimilarity between himself and Postumus.

Some rowdy sailors at Ostia had pretended to believe in him, but only as an excuse for marching to Rome and creating a disturbance there. They had assembled in the suburbs a little before dawn that morning under his leadership with the object of marching to the centre of the City and plundering shops and private houses. When challenged by a force of Watchmen they had dispersed and deserted their leader, who had since been put to death; so the House need have no further anxiety about the matter.

I heard later that Tiberius pretended not to recognise Postumus when he was brought before him at the Palace and asked him, mockingly: "How did you happen to become one of the Caesars?" To which Postumus answered: "In the same way and on the same day as you did. Have you forgotten?" Tiberius told a slave to strike Postumus on the mouth for his insolence, and he was then put on the rack and asked to reveal his fellow-conspirators. But he would only tell scandalous anecdotes of the private life of Tiberius, which were so disgusting and so circumstantial that Tiberius lost his temper and battered his face in with his great bony fists. The soldiers finished the bloody work by beheading him and hacking him into pieces in the cellar of the Palace.

What greater sorrow can there be than to mourn a beloved friend as murdered--at the close of a long and undeserved exile, too--and then, after the brief joy and astonishment of hearing that he has somehow cheated his executioners, to have to mourn him a second time--this time without hope of error and without even seeing him in the interval--as treacherously recaptured and shamefully tortured and killed? My one consolation was that when Germanicus heard what had happened--and I would at once write him the whole story so far as I knew it--he would leave his campaigns in Germany and march back to Rome at the head of as many regiments as could be spared from the Rhine and avenge Postumus' death on Livia and Tiberius. I wrote, but he did not answer; I wrote again, and still no answer. But eventually a long affectionate letter came in which there was a wondering reference to the success which Clement had had in impersonating Postumus--how in the world had he managed to do it? From this sentence it was quite clear that none of my important letters had arrived: the only one to arrive had been sent off by the same post as the second. In this I had merely given him particulars of a business matter which he had asked me to look into for him: he now thanked me for the information, which he said was exactly what he wanted. I realized with a sudden feeling of dread that Livia or Tiberius must have intercepted all the rest.

My digestion had always been bad and fear of poison in every dish did not improve it. My stammer returned and I had attacks of aphasia--sudden blanks in the mind which brought me into great ridicule: if they caught me in the middle of a sentence I would finish it anyhow. The most unfortunate result of this weakness was that I made a mess of my duties as priest of Augustus, which hitherto I had carried out without cause for complaint from anyone.

There is an old custom at Rome that if any mistake is made in the ritual of a sacrifice or other service the whole thing has to be gone over again from the beginning. It now often happened when I was officiating that I would ["7] lose my way in a prayer and perhaps go on repeating the same sequence of sentences two or three times before I realised what I was doing, or that I would take up the flint knife for cutting the victim's throat before sprinkling its head with the ritual flour and salt--and this sort of thing meant going back to the beginning again. It was tedious to make three or four attempts at a service before I could get through it perfectly, and the congregation used to get very restless. At last I wrote to Tiberius as High Pontiff and asked to be relieved from all my religious duties for a year on the ground of ill-health. He granted the request without comment.

XIX

GERMANICUS' THIRD YEAR OF WAR AGAINST THE GERMANS was

more successful even than the first two. He had worked out a new plan of campaign, by which he would take the Germans by surprise and save his men a lot of dangerous and weary marching. This was to build on the Rhine a fleet of nearly a thousand transports, [A.D. 16] embark with most of his forces and sail down the river and, by way of the canal that our father had once cut, through the Dutch lakes and by sea to the mouth of the Ems. Here he would anchor his transports on the near bank, except for a few which would serve for making a pontoon bridge. He would then attack the tribes across the Weser, a river, fordable in places, which runs parallel to the Ems about fifty miles beyond. The plan worked well in every detail.

When the advance-guard reached the Weser they found Hermann and some allied chieftains waiting on the further bank. Hermann shouted across to ask whether Germanicus was in command. When they answered yes, he asked whether they would take him a message. The message was: "Hermann's courteous greetings to Germanicus, and might he be permitted speech with his brother?" This was a brother of Hermann's called, in German, something like Goldkopf, or at any rate a name so barbarous that it was impossible to transliterate it into Latin--as

"Hermann" had been made into "Arminius", or as "Siegmyrgth" into "Segimerus"; so it was translated as Flavius, meaning the golden-headed. Flavius had been in the Roman Army for years, and being at Lyons at the time of the disaster of Varus had there made a declaration of his continued loyalty to Rome, repudiating all the family ties which bound him to his treacherous brother Hermann. In the next year's campaign of Tiberius and Germanicus he had fought bravely and lost an eye.

Germanicus asked Flavius whether he wished to address his brother.

Flavius said he didn't much want to but that it might be an offer to surrender. So the two brothers started shouting at each other across the river. Hermann began talking German, but Flavius said that unless he talked Latin the conversation was at an end. Hermann did not want to talk Latin, which the other chiefs did not understand, for fear of being thought a traitor, and Flavius did not want to be thought a traitor by the Romans, who did not understand German. On the other hand Hermann wanted to make an impression on the Romans, and Flavius on the Germans. Hermann tried to keep to German, and Flavius to Latin, but as they grew more and more heated they fell into such a dreadful mixture of both languages that, as Germanicus wrote to me, it was as good as a comedy to hear them. I quote from Genrmanicus' account ot the dialogue.

HERMANN: Hullo, brother. What's happened to your face? That scar's an awful deformity. Lost an eye?

FLAVIUS; Yes, brother. Did you happen to pick one up?

I lost it that day you galloped away out of the wood with mud smeared on your shield so that Germanicus wouldn't recognise you.

HERMANN:

You're

wrong, brother. That wasn't me. You must have been

drinking again. You were always like that before a battle: a bit nervous unless you had drunk at least ["9] a gallon of beer, and had to be strapped to the saddle by the time the warhorns sounded.

FLAVIUS: That's a lie, of course, but it reminds me what a barbarous gut-rotting drink your German beer is. I never drink it now even when there's a great consignment come into the camp from one of your captured villages. The men only drink it when they have to: they say that it's better than swamp water spoilt by German corpses.

HERMANN: Yes, I like Roman wine myself. I have a few hundred jars left of what I captured from Varus. This summer I'll be getting in another good supply, if Germanicus doesn't look out. By the way, what reward did you get for losing your eye?

FLAVIUS: [with great dignity]: The personal thanks of the Commander-in-Chief, and three decorations, including the Crown and the Chain.

HERMANN: Ho, Ho! The Chain! Do you wear it round your ankles, you Roman slave?

FLAVIUS: I'd rather any day be a slave to the Romans than a traitor to them. By the way, your dear Thrusnelda's very well and so's your boy. When are you coming to Rome to visit them?

HERMANN: At the end of this campaign, brother. Ho, Ho!

FLAVIUS: You mean when you walk behind Germanicus' car in the triumph and the crowd pelts you with rotten eggs? How I'll laugh!

HERMANN: You had better do all your laughing in advance, because if you still have any throat left to laugh through in three days from now my name's not Hermann.

But enough of this. I have a message to you from your mother.

FLAVIUS

[suddenly

serious and fetching a deep sigh]: Ah, my dear, dear

mother! What message does my mother send me? Have I her sacred blessing still, brother?

HERMANN: Brother, you have wounded our wise and noble and prolific mother to the soul. She says that she will turn her blessing into a curse if you continue to be a traitor to your family and tribe and race, and do not instantly come over to us again and act as joint-General with me.

FIAVIUS [in German, bursting into tears of rage]: Oh, she never said that, Hermann. She couldn't have said that. It's a lie you made up yourself just to make me unhappy. Confess it's a lie, Hermann!

HERMANN: She gave you two days to make up your mind.

FLAVIUS [to his groom}: Hi, you ugly-faced pig, give me my horse and arms! I'm going over the stream to fight my brother. Hermann, you foul thing, I'm coming to fight you!

HERMANN: Come on then, you one-eyed bean-eating slave, you!

Flavius jumped on his horse and was about to swim it across the river when a Roman colonel caught at his leg and pulled him off the saddle: he knew German and he knew the absurd veneration that Germans have for their wives and mothers.

Suppose Flavius really meant to desert?

So he told him not to bother about Hermann or believe his lies. But Flavius couldn't resist having the last word. He dried his eyes and shouted across: "I saw your father-in-law last week. He'd got a nice place near Lyons. He told me that Thrusnelda came to him because she couldn't bear the disgrace of being married to a man who broke his solemn oath as an ally of Rome and betrayed a friend at whose table he had eaten. She said that the only way you can ever win back her esteem is by not using the arms which she gave you on your wedding-day against your sworn friends. She has not been unfaithful to you yet, but that won't last long if you don't instantly come to your senses."

Then it was Hermann's turn to weep and storm and accuse Flavius of telling lies. Germanicus privately detailed a captain to watch Flavius very carefully during the next battle and at the least sign of treachery to run him through.

Germanicus wrote seldom but when he did they were long letters and he put into them, he said, all the interesting and amusing things that did not seem quite suitable for his official dispatches to Tiberius: I lived for those letters.

I was never anxious about Germanicus' safety when he was fighting the Germans: he had the same sort of confidence with them as an experienced bee-keeper has with bees, who can go boldly to a hive and remove the honey, and the bees somehow never sting him as they would you [231] or me if we tried to do the same thing. Two days after fording the Weser he fought a decisive battle with Hermann. I have always been interested in speeches made before a battle: there is nothing that throws such light on the character of a general. Germanicus neither harangued his men in an oratorical way nor joked obscenely with them like Julius Caesar. He was always very serious, very precise and very practical. His speech on this occasion was about what he really thought of the Germans. He said that they were not soldiers. They had a certain bravado and fought well in a mob, as wild cattle fight, and they had a certain animal cunning too which made it unwise to neglect ordinary precautions in fighting them. But they soon tired after their first furious charge and they had no discipline in any true military sense, only a spirit of mutual rivalry. Their chiefs could never count on them to do what was wanted: either they did too much or not enough. "The Germans," he said, "are the most insolent and boastful nation in the world when things go well with them, but once they are defeated they are the most cowardly and abject. Never trust a German out of your sight, but never be afraid of him when you have him face to face. And that's all that need be said except this: most of the fighting tomorrow will be in among those woods, where from all accounts the enemy will be so tightly packed that they will have no room for manoeuvre. Go straight at them, never mind their assegais, and get to close quarters at once. Stab at their faces: that is what they hate most."

Hermann had chosen his battle-ground carefully: a narrowing plain lying between the Weser and a range of wooded hills. He would fight at the narrow end of this plain with a big oak and birch forest at his back, the river on his right and the hills on his left. The Germans were in three detachments. The first of these, young assegai-men of local tribes, were to advance into the plain against the leading Roman regiments, who would probably be French auxiliaries, and drive them back. Then when the Roman supports came up they were to break off the fight and pretend to fly in panic. The Romans would press on towards the wood and at this point the second detachment, consisting of Hermann's own tribe, would charge down from an ambush on the hill and take them in the flank. This would cause great confusion and the first detachment would then return, closely supported by the third--the experienced elder men of the local tribes--and drive the Romans into the river. The German cavalry by this time would have come round from behind the hill and taken the Romans in the rear.

It would have been a good plan if Hermann had been in command of disciplined troops. But it went ludicrously wrong. Germanicus' order of battle was as follows: first, two regiments of French heavy infantry on the river flank, and two of the auxiliary Germans on the mountain flank, then the foot archers, then four regular regiments, then Germanicus with two Guards battalions and the regular cavalry, then four more regular regiments, then the French mounted archers, then the French light infantry. As the German auxiliaries advanced along the spurs of the mountain, Hermann, who was watching events from the top of a pine tree, called out excitedly to his nephew who was standing by for orders below: "There goes my traitor brother! He must never leave this battle alive." The stupid nephew sprang forward shouting, "Hermann's orders are to charge at once!"

He rushed down into the plain with about half the tribe. Hermann with difficulty managed to restrain the rest. Germanicus sent the regular cavalry out at once to charge the fools in the flank before they could reach Flavius' men, and the French mounted archers to cut off their retreat.

The German skirmishing detachment had meanwhile advanced from the wood, but the Roman cavalry charge sent the men under Hermann's nephew rushing back on top of them and they caught the panic and ran back too.

The German third detachment, the main body, then came out of the wood, expecting the skirmishers to halt and turn back with them as arranged. But the skirmishers' only thought was to get away from the cavalry: they ran back through the main body. At this moment there came a most cheering omen for the Romans--eight eagles, who had been frightened from the hill by the sortie and were wheeling about the plain, uttering loud shrieks, now flew all together towards the wood. Germanicus called out: "Follow ['33] the Eagles! Follow the Roman Eagle!" The whole army took up the cry: "Follow the Eagles!" Meanwhile Hermann had charged with the rest of his men and taken the foot-archers by surprise, killing a number of them; but the rear regiment of French heavy infantry wheeled round to the archers' assistance. Hermann's force, which consisted of some fifteen thousand men, might still have saved the battle by crushing the French infantry and thus driving a formidable wedge between the Roman advance guard and the main body. But the sun flashed in their faces from the weapons and breast-plates and shields and helmets of the long ranks of advancing regular infantry, and the Germans lost courage. Most of them rushed back to the hill.

Hermann rallied a thousand or two, but not enough, and by this time two squadrons of regular cavalry had come charging back among the fugitives, and cut off his retreat to the hill. How he got away is a mystery, but it is generally believed that he spurred his horse towards the wood and overtook the German auxiliaries who were advancing to attack it. Then he shouted: "Make way, cattle! I'm Hermann!"

Nobody dared to kill him because he was Flavius' brother and Flavius would feel bound in family honour to avenge his death.

It was no longer a battle but a slaughter. The German main-body was outflanked and forced towards the river, which many managed to swim, but not all. Germanicus pushed his second line of regular infantry into the wood and routed the skirmishers who were waiting there in the vague hope of the battle suddenly turning in their favour.

[The archers had good sport shooting down Germans who had climbed trees and were hiding in the foliage at the top.] All resistance was now over. From nine o'clock in the morning until seven o'clock in the evening, when it began to get dark, the killing went on. For ten miles beyond the battle-field the woods and plains were scattered with German corpses. Among the captives was the mother of Hermann and Flavius. She begged for life, saying that she had always tried to persuade Hermann to abandon his futile resistance to the Roman conquerors. So Flavius' loyalty was now assured.

A month later another battle was fought, in thick forestland on the banks of the Elbe. Hermann had chosen an ambush and made dispositions which might have been most effective if Germanicus had not heard all about them a few hours beforehand from deserters. As it was, instead of the Romans being driven into the river, the Germans were forced back through the wood, in which they were packed too closely for their usual strike-and-run tactics--back into a quaking bog which surrounded it, where thousands slowly sank out of sight, yelling with rage and despair. Hermann, who had been disabled by an arrow wound in the previous battle, was not much to the fore this time.

But he carried on the fight in the wood as stubbornly as he could and, meeting by chance with his brother Flavius, thrust him through with an assegai.

He escaped across the bog, jumping from tussock to tussock with extraordinary nimbleness and good luck.

Germanicus raised a huge trophy-heap of German weapons and put on it the following inscription: "The Forces of Tiberius Caesar having subdued the tribes between Rhine and Elbe consecrate these memorials of their victory to Mars, to Jove and to Augustus." No mention of himself.

His total casualties in these two battles were not above twenty-five hundred men killed and seriously wounded.

The Germans must have lost at least twenty-five thousand.

Germanicus considered that he had done enough this year and sent some of his men back to the Rhine by land and embarked the rest on transports. But then came misfortune: a sudden storm from the south-west caught the fleet soon after it weighed anchor and scattered it in all directions. Many vessels went to the bottom and only Germanicus' own ship managed to reach the mouth of the Weser, where he reproached himself as a second Varus with the loss of a whole Roman army. He was with difficulty prevented by his friends from leaping into the sea to join the dead. However, a few days later the wind veered round to the north and one by one the scattered ships came back, almost all oarless and some with cloaks spread instead of sails, the less disabled taking turns to tow the ones that could barely keep afloat.

Germanicus

hurriedly

set

to work repairing the damaged hulls and sent off

as many of the fit vessels as he could to [255] search the desolate neighbouring islands for survivors.

Many were found there, but in a half-starved state, kept alive only by shell-fish and the carcasses of horses thrown up on the beach. Many more came in from points further up the coast; they had been respectfully treated by the inhabitants, who had lately been forced to swear alliance with Rome. About twenty ship-loads returned from as far away as Britain, which had been paying a nominal tribute since its conquest seventy years before by Julius Ceesar, sent back by the petty kings of Kent and Sussex. In the end not more than a quarter of the lost men were unaccounted for, and nearly two hundred of these were found, years later, in South-Western Britain. They were rescued from the tin mines, where they had been put to forced labour.

The inland Germans, when they first heard of this disaster, thought that their gods had avenged them. They overthrew the battle-field trophy and even began talking of a march to the Rhine. But Germanicus suddenly struck again, sending an expedition of sixty infantry battalions and a hundred cavalry squadrons against the tribes of the upper Weser, while he himself marched with eighty more infantry battalions and another hundred cavalry squadrons against the tribes between the lower Rhine and the Ems. Both expeditions were completely successful and, what was better than the killing of many thousand Germans, the Eagle of the Twenty-Sixth Regiment was found in an underground temple in a wood and triumphantly borne away.

Only the Eagle of the Twenty-Fifth now remained unredeemed, and Germanicus promised his men that next year, if he was still in command, they would rescue that too. Meanwhile he marched them back to winter-quarters.

Then Tiberius wrote pressing him to come home for the triumph which had been decreed him, for he had surely done enough. Germanicus wrote back that he would not be content until he had altogether broken the power of the Germans, for which not many more battles were now needed, and recovered the third Eagle.

Tiberius wrote again that Rome could not afford such high casualties even at the reward of such splendid victories: he was not criticizing Germanicus' skill as a general, for his battles had been most economical in men, but between battle casualties and the sea-disaster he had lost the equivalent of two whole regiments, which was more than Rome could afford.

He reminded Germanicus that he had himself been sent nine times into Germany by Augustus and so was not talking without experience. His opinion was that it was not worth the life of a single Roman to kill even as many as ten Germans. Germany was like a Hydra: the more heads you lopped off the more it grew. The best way of managing Germans was to play on their inter-tribal jealousies and foment war between neighbouring chieftains: encouraging them to kill each other without outside help. Germanicus wrote back begging for one year more in which to round off his work of subjugation. But Tiberius told him that he was wanted at Rome as Consul again, and touched him on his most tender spot by saying that he should remember his brother Castor. Germany was the only country now where any important war was being fought and if he insisted on finishing it himself. Castor would have no opportunity of winning a triumph or the title of field-marshal.

Germanicus persisted no longer but said that Tiberius' wishes were his law and that he would return as soon as relieved.

He came back in the early spring and celebrated his triumph. The whole population of Rome streamed [A.D. 17] out to welcome him twenty miles from the City.

A great arch to commemorate the recovery of the Eagles was dedicated near the temple of Saturn. The triumphal procession passed under it. There were cars heaped with the spoil of German temples, and with enemy shields and weapons; others carried tableaux representing battles or German river-gods and mountain-gods dominated by Roman soldiers, Thrusnelda and her child were on one car, with halters about their necks, followed by an enormous train of manacled German prisoners. Germanicus rode, crowned, in his chariot with Agrippina seated beside him and his five children--Nero, Drusus, Caligula, Agrippinilla and Drusilla--seated behind. He won more applause than any other triumphant general had won since Augustus' triumph after Actium.

But I was not there. Of all places in the world I was in Carthage! Only a month before Germanicus' return I had [237] been sent a note by Livia instructing me to prepare for a journey to Africa. A representative of the Imperial family was needed to dedicate a new temple to Augustus at Carthage, and I was the only one who could be spared for the task. I would be given ample advice on how to conduct myself and how to perform the ceremony, and it was to be hoped I would not once more make a fool of myself, even before African provincials. I guessed at once why I was being sent. There was no reason for anyone to go yet, because the temple would not be completed for at least another three months. I was being got out of the way. While Germanicus was in the City I would not be allowed to return, and all my letters home would be opened. So I never had an opportunity of telling Germanicus what I had been saving up for him so long. On the other hand, Germanicus had his talk with Tiberius. He told him that he knew that Postumus'

banishment had been due to a cruel plot on Livia's part--he had positive proof of it.

Livia certainly ought to be removed from public affairs. Her actions could not be justified by any subsequent misbehaviour of Postumus'. It was only natural for him to try to escape from undeserved confinement. Tiberius professed to be shocked by Germanicus' revelations; but said that he could not create a public scandal by suddenly dishonouring his mother: he would charge her privately with the crime and gradually take away her powers.

What he really did was to go to Livia and tell her exactly what Germanicus had said to him, adding that Germanicus was a credulous fool, but seemed to be in earnest and was so popular at Rome and in the Army that perhaps it would be advisable for Livia to convince him that she was not guilty of what he charged her, unless she thought this beneath her dignity. He added that he would send Germanicus away somewhere as soon as possible, probably to the East, and would raise the question again in the Senate of her being called Mother of the Country, a title which she had well deserved. He had taken exactly the right line with her. She was pleased that he still feared her sufficiently to tell her so much, and called him a dutiful son. She swore that she had not arranged false charges against Postumus: this story was probably invented by Agrippina, whom Germanicus followed blindly and who was trying to persuade him to usurp the monarchy. Agrippina's plan, she said, was no doubt to make trouble between Tiberius and his loving mother. Tiberius, embracing her, said that though little disagreements might occasionally occur nothing could break the ties that bound them. Livia then sighed, she was getting to be an old woman now--she was well on in her seventies-

-and was beginning to find her work too much for her: perhaps he would anyhow relieve her of the more tedious part and only consult her on important questions of appointments and decrees? She would not even be offended if he discontinued his practice of putting her name above his on all official documents: she did not want it said that he was under her tutelage. But, she said, the sooner he persuaded the Senate to give her that title the more pleased she would be. So there was a show of reconciliation: but neither trusted the other.

Tiberius now named Germanicus as his colleague in the Consulship and told him that he had persuaded Livia to retire from public business, though as a matter of form he would still pretend to consult her. This seemed to satisfy Germanicus. But Tiberius did not feel at all comfortable.

Agrippina would hardly speak to him, and knowing that Germanicus and she had only one soul between them, he could not believe in their continued loyalty. Besides, things were going on at Rome which a man of Germanicus'

character would naturally detest. First of all, the informers.

Since Livia would not give him access to the criminal dossiers or let him share the control of their very efficient spy-system--she had a paid agent in almost every important household or institution--he had to adopt another method. He made a decree that if anyone was found guilty of plotting against the State or blaspheming the God Augustus his confiscated estates would be divided among his loyal accusers. Plots against the State were less easy to prove than blasphemies against Augustus. The first case of blasphemy against Augustus was that of a wag, a young shopkeeper, who happened to be standing near Tiberius in the Market Place as a funeral passed. He sprang forward and whispered something in the ear of the corpse. Tiberius was curious to know what it was. The man explained that he [2?9] was asking the dead man to tell Augustus when he met him down below that his legacies to the people of Rome had not yet been paid. Tiberius had the man arrested and executed for speaking of Augustus as if he were a mere ghost, not an immortal God, and said that he was sending him down below to convince him of his mistake. A month or two later, by the way, he did pay the legacies in full. In a case like this Tiberius had some justification, but later the most harmless abuses of Augustus' name were enough to put a man on trial for his life.

A class of professional informers sprang up who could be counted on to make out a case against any man who was indicated to them as having incurred Tiberius' displeasure.

Thus criminal dossiers based on a record of real delinquency were superfluous. Sejanus was Tiberius' go-between with these scoundrels. In the year before Germanicus' return Tiberius had put the informers to work on a young man called Libo who was a great-grandson of Pompey and a cousin of Agrippina's

[A.D. 16] through their grandmother Scribona. Sejanus had warned Tiberius that Libo was dangerous and had been making disrespectful remarks about him: but Tiberius was careful at this stage not to make disrespect to himself an indictable offence, so he had to invent other charges.

Now, Tiberius, to cover his own association with Thrasyllus, had expelled from Rome all astrologers, magicians, fortune-tellers and interpreters of dreams, and forbidden anyone to consult such of them as secretly stayed on. A few stayed, with Tiberius' connivance, on condition that they gave seances only with an Imperial agent concealed in the room. Libo was persuaded by a senator who had turned professional informer to visit one of these decoys and have his fortune told.

His questions were noted down by the hidden agent. In themselves they were not treasonable, only foolish: he wanted to know how rich he would become and whether he would ever be the leading man at Rome, and so on. But a forged document was produced at his trial which was said to have been discovered by slaves in his bedroom--a list, in what appeared to be his handwriting, of names of all the members of the Imperial family "and of the leading senators, with curious Chaldean and Egyptian characters written against each name in the margin. The penalty for consulting a magician was banishment, but the penalty for practising magic oneself was death. Libo denied authorship of the document, and the evidence of slaves, even under torture, would not be sufficient to condemn him: slave-evidence was accepted only when the accusation was that of incest. There was no freedman evidence, because Libo's freedmen could not be persuaded to testify against him nor might a freedman be put to torture to force a confession from him. On Sejanus' advice, however, Tiberius made a new legal ruling that when a man was charged with a capital crime his slaves could be bought at a fair valuation by the Public Steward and thus enabled to give evidence under torture.

Libo, who had not been able to get a lawyer brave enough to defend him, saw that he was caught and asked for an adjournment of the trial until the next day. When this was granted he went home and killed himself. The charge against him was nevertheless gone through with in the Senate with the same formality as if he had been alive and he was found guilty on all charges. Tiberius said that it was unfortunate that the foolish young man had killed himself, because he would have interceded tor his life. Libo's estate was divided among his accusers, among whom were four senators.

Such a disgraceful farce could never have been played when Augustus was Emperor, but under Tiberius it was played, with variations, over and over again.

Only one man made a public protest, and that was a certain Calpurnius Piso, who rose in the Senate to say that he was so disgusted with the atmosphere of political intrigue in the City, the corruption of justice and the disgraceful spectacle of his fellow-senators acting as paid informers, that he was leaving Rome for good and retiring to some village in a remote part of Italy. Having said this he walked out.

The speech made a powerful impression on the House. Tiberius sent someone to call Calpurnius back, and when he was once more in his seat told him that if there were miscarriages of justice any senator was at liberty to call attention to them at question-time. He said, too, that a certain amount of political intrigue was inevitable in the capital city of the greatest Empire the world had ever known. Did

[241] Calpurnius suggest that the senators would not have come forward with their accusations if they had had no hopes of reward? He said that he admired Calpurnius' earnestness and independence and envied his talents; but would it not be better to employ these noble qualities for the improvement of social and political morality at Rome than to bury them in some wretched hamlet of the Apennines, among shepherds and bandits? So Calpurnius had to stay. But soon after he showed his earnestness and independence by summoning old Urgulania to appear in court for non-payment of a large sum of money which she owed him for some pictures and statuary: Calpurnius' sister had died and there had been a sale.

When Urgulania read the summons, which was for her immediate attendance at the Debtors' Court, she told her chair-men to take her straight to Livia's Palace.

Calpurnius followed her and was met in the hall by Livia, who told him to be off.

Calpurnius courteously but firmly excused himself, saying that Urgulania must obey the summons without fail unless too ill to attend, which clearly she was not.

Even Vestal Virgins were not exempt from attendance at court when subpoenaed.

Livia said that his behaviour was personally insulting to her and that her son, the Emperor, would know how to avenge her. Tiberius was sent for and tried to smooth things over, telling Calpurnius that Urgulania surely meant to come as soon as she had composed herself after the sudden shock of the summons, and telling Livia that it was no doubt a mistake, that Calpurnius certainly meant no disrespect, and that he himself would attend the trial and see that Urgulania had a capable counsel and a fair trial. He left the Palace, walking beside Calpurnius towards the courts and talking with him of this and that. Calpurnius' friends tried to persuade him to drop the charge, but he replied that he was old-fashioned; he liked being paid money that was owed to him. The trial never came off. Livia sent a mounted messenger after them with the whole amount of the debt in gold in his saddle-bags: he overtook Calpurnius and Tiberius before they arrived at the door of the Court.

But I was writing about informers and the demoralising effect they had on the life at Rome, and about judicial corruption. I was about to record that while Germanicus was at Rome there was not a single charge heard in the courts of blaspheming Augustus or of plotting against the State, and the informers were warned to keep absolutely quiet.

Tiberius was on his best behaviour and his speeches in the Senate were models of frankness. Sejanus retired into the background. Thrasyllus was removed from Rome to the shelter of Tiberius' villa on the island of Capri, and Tiberius appeared to have no intimate friend but the honest Nerva, whose advice he was always asking.

Castor I never could learn to like. He was a foulmouthed, bloody-minded, violent-tempered, dissolute fellow. His character showed up most clearly at a sword-fight, where he took more delight in seeing blood spurting from a wound than in any act of skill or courage on the part of the combatants. But I must say that he behaved very finely towards Germanicus and seemed to undergo a real change of heart in his company. City factions tried to force the two into the wretched position of rivals for succession to the monarchy, but they never on any occasion encouraged this view. Castor treated Germanicus with the same brotherly consideration that Germanicus gave him. Castor was not exactly a coward, but he was a politician rather than a soldier. When he was sent across the Danube in answer to an appeal for help by the tribes of East Germany who were fighting a defensive and bloody war against Hermann's Western confederacy, he managed by clever intrigue to bring into the war the tribes of Bohemia, and of Bavaria too. He was carrying out Tiberius' policy of encouraging the Germans to exterminate each other. Maroboduus ["He who walks on the lake bottom"], the priest-king of the East Germans, fled for protection to Castor's camp.

Maroboduus was given a safe retreat in Italy; and since the East Germans had sworn an oath of perpetual allegiance he remained for eighteen years a hostage for their good behaviours. These East Germans were a fiercer and more powerful race than the West Germans and Germanicus was lucky not to have had them at war with him too. But Hermann had become a national hero by his defeat of Varus, and Maroboduus was jealous of his success. Rather than that Hermann should become High King of all the German nations, which was his ambition, Maroboduus •^ tl •s [^43] had refused to give him any help in his campaign against Germanicus, not even by making a diversion on another frontier.

I have often thought about Hermann. He was a remarkable man in his way, and though it is difficult to forget his treachery to Varus, Varus had done much to provoke the revolt and Hermann and his men were certainly fighting for liberty.

They had a genuine contempt for the Romans.

They could not understand in what sense the extremely severe discipline in the Roman army under Varus, Tiberius, and almost every other general but my father and my brother, differed from downright slavery. They were shocked at the disciplinary floggings and regarded the system of paying soldiers at so much a day, instead of engaging them by promises of glory and plunder, as most base.

The Germans have always been very chaste in their morals and Roman officers openly practised vices which in Germany, if they ever came to light--but this was seldom--were punished by smothering both culprits in mud under a hurdle. As for German cowardice, all barbarous people are cowards. If Germans ever become civilised it will then be time to judge whether they are cowards or not. They seem, however, to be an exceptionally nervous and quarrelsome people, and I cannot make up my mind whether there is any immediate chance of their becoming really civilised.

Germanicus thought that there was none. Whether his policy of extermination was justified or not [certainly it was not the usual Roman policy with frontier tribes] depends on the answer to the first question. Of course, the captured Eagles had to be won back, and Hermann had shown no mercy, after the defeat of Varus, when he overran the province; and Germanicus, who was a most gentle and humane man, disliked general massacre so much that he must have had very good reasons for ordering it.

Hermann did not die in battle. When Maroboduus was forced to fly from the country, Hermann thought that his way was now clear to a monarchy over all the nations of Germany. But he was mistaken: he was not even able to make himself monarch of his own tribe, which was a free tribe, the chieftain having no power to command, only to lead and advise and persuade. One day, a year or two later, he tried to issue orders like a king. His family, which had hitherto been greatly devoted to him, were so scandalised that, without even first discussing the matter together, they all rushed at him with their weapons and hacked him to pieces. He was thirty-seven when he died, having been born the year before my brother Germanicus, his greatest enemy.

XX

I WAS NEARLY A YEAR IN CARTHAGE. IT WAS THE YEAR that Livy died, at Padua, where his heart had always been.

Old Carthage had been razed to the ground and this was a new city, built by Augustus on the south-east of the peninsula and destined to become the first city

[A.D. 18] of Africa, It was the first time I had been out of Italy since my babyhood. I found the climate very trying, the African natives savage, diseased and overworked; the resident Romans dull, quarrelsome, mercenary and behind the times; the swarms of unfamiliar creeping and flying insects most horrible.

What I missed most was the absence of any wild wooded countryside. In Tripoli there is nothing to mediate between the regularly planted land--fig and olive orchards, or cornfields--and the bare, stony, thorny desert. I stayed at the house of the Governor, who was that Furius Camillus, my dear Camilla's uncle, of whom I have already written; he was very kind to me. Almost the first thing he told me was how useful my Balkan Summary had been to him in that campaign and that I should certainly have been publicly rewarded for compiling it so well. He did everything he could to make my dedication ceremony a success and to exact from the provincials the respect due to my rank. He was also most assiduous in showing me the sights. The town did a flourishing trade with Rome, exporting not only vast quantities of grain and oil, but slaves, purple dye, sponges, gold, ivory, ebony, and

[^45] wild beasts for the Games. But I had little occupation here and Furius suggested that it would be a good thing for me, while I was here, to collect materials for a complete history of Carthage. There was no such book to be found in the libraries at Rome. The archives of the old town had recently come into his hands, discovered by natives quarrying in the ruins for hidden treasure, and if I cared to use them they were mine. I told him that I had no knowledge of the Phoenician language; but he undertook, if I was sufficiently interested, to set one of his freedmen the task of translating the more important manuscripts into Greek.

The idea of writing the history pleased me very much: I felt that historical justice had never been done to the Carthaginians. I spent my leisure time in making a study of the ruins of the Old City, with the help of a contemporary survey, and familiarising myself with the geography of the country in general. I also learned the rudiments of the language well enough to be able to read simple inscriptions and understand the few Phoenician words used by authors who have written about the Punic Wars from the Roman side. When I returned to Italy I began to write the book concurrently with my Etruscan history. I like having two tasks going at the same time: when I tire of one I turn to the other. But I am perhaps too careful a writer. I am not satisfied merely with copying from ancient authorities while there is any possible means of checking their statements by consulting other sources of information on the same subject, particularly accounts by writers of rival political parties. So these two histories, each of which I could have written in a year or two if I had been less conscientious, kept me busy between them for some twenty-five years. For every word I wrote I must have read many hundreds; and in the end I became a very good scholar both of Etruscan and Phoenician, and had a working knowledge of several other languages and dialects too, such as Numidian, Egyptian, Oscan and Faliscan. I finished the History of Carthage first.

Shortly after my dedication of the temple, which went off without a hitch, Furius had suddenly to take the field against Tacfarinas with the only forces available in the province--a single regular regiment, The Third, together with a few battalions of auxiliaries and two cavalry squadrons.

Tacfarinas was a Numidian chief, originally a deserter from the ranks of the Roman auxiliaries, and a remarkably successful bandit. He had recently built up a sort of army on the Roman model in the interior of his own country and had allied himself with the Moors for an invasion of the province from the West. The two armies together outnumbered Furius' force by at least five to one. They met in open country about fifty miles from the City and Furius had to decide whether to attack Tacfarinas' two semidisciplined regiments which were in the centre or the undisciplined Moorish forces on the flank. He sent the cavalry and auxiliaries, mostly archers, to keep the Moors in play and with his regular regiment marched straight at Tacfarinas' Numidians. I was watching the battle from a hill some five hundred paces away--I had ridden out on a mule--and never before or since, I think, have I been so proud of being a Roman. The Third kept perfect formation: it might have been a ceremonial parade on Mars Field. They advanced in three lines at fifty paces distance. Each line consisted of one hundred and fifty files, eight men deep.

The Numidians halted in a defensive posture. They were in six lines, with a frontage the same as ours. The Third did not halt but marched straight at them without pausing a moment, and it was only when they were ten paces off that the leading line discharged their javelins in a shining shower. Then they drew their swords and charged, shield to shield. They rolled the enemy's first line, who were pikemen, back on the second. This new line they broke with a fresh discharge of javelins--every soldier carried a pair.

Then the Roman support-line passed through them, to give them a chance to reorganise. Soon I saw still another shower of javelins, simultaneously thrown, fly shining at the Numidians' third line. The Moors on the flanks, who were greatly bothered by the arrows of the auxiliaries, saw the Romans cutting their way deep into the centre. They began howling, as if the battle was lost, and scattered in all directions. Tacfarinas had to fight a costly rear-guard action back to his camp. The only unpleasant memory I have of this victory was the banquet with which it was celebrated: in the course of which Furius' son, who was called ['47] Scribonianus, made satiric references to the moral support I had given the troops. He did this chiefly to call attention to his own gallantry, which he thought had not been sufficiently praised. Furius afterwards made him beg my pardon. Furius was voted triumphal ornaments by the Senate--the first member of his family to win military distinction since his ancestor Camillus saved Rome more than four hundred years previously.

When I was finally recalled to Rome, Germanicus had already gone to the East, where the Senate had voted him supreme command of all the provinces.

With him went Agrippina, and Caligula, who was now aged eight. The elder children remained at Rome with my mother. Though Germanicus was greatly disappointed at having to leave the German War unfinished, he decided to make the most of things and improve his education by visiting places famous in history or literature. He visited the Bay of Actium, and there saw the memorial chapel dedicated to Apollo by Augustus, and the camp of Antony.

As Antony's grandson the place had a melancholy fascination for him. He was explaining the plan of the battle to young Caligula, when the child interrupted with a silly laugh; "Yes, father, my grandfather Agrippa and my greatgrandfather Augustus gave your grandfather Antony a pretty good beating. I wonder you're not ashamed to tell me the story." This was only one of many recent occasions on which Caligula had spoken insolently to Germanicus, and Germanicus now decided that it was no use treating him in the gentle, friendly way he treated the other children--that the only course with Caligula was strict discipline and severe punishments.

He visited Boeotian Thebes, to see Pindar's birth-chamber, and the island of Lesbos, to see Sappho's tomb. Here another of my nieces was bom, who was given the unlucky name of Julia. We always called her Lesbia, though. Then he visited Byzantium, Troy and the famous Greek cities of Asia Minor. From Miletus he wrote me a long letter describing his journey in terms of such delighted interest that it was clear that he no longer greatly regretted his recall from Germany.

Meanwhile affairs at Rome relapsed into the condition in which they had been before Genrmanicus' Consulship; and Sejanus revived Tiberius' old fears about Germanicus.

He reported a remark of Germanicus' made at a private dinner-party at which one of his agents had been present, to the effect that the Eastern regiments probably needed the same sort of overhauling as he had given the ones on the Rhine. This remark had actually been made, but meant no more than that these troops were probably being mishandled by the inferior officers in much the same way as the others had been: and that he would review all appointments at the first opportunity. Sejanus made Tiberius understand the remark as meaning that the reason why Germanicus had delayed his usurpation of power so long was that he could not count on the affection of the Eastern regiments: which he was now going to win by letting the men choose their own captains, and giving them presents and relaxing the severity of their discipline--just as he had done on the Rhine.

Tiberius was alarmed and thought it wise to consult Livia: he counted on her to work with him. She knew what to do at once. They appointed a man called Gnasus Piso to the governorship of the province of Syria--an appointment which would give him command, under Germanicus, of the greater part of the Eastern Regiments--and told him in private that he could count on their support if Germanicus tried to interfere with any of his political or military arrangements. It was a clever choice. Gnasus Piso, an uncle of that Lucius Piso who had offended Livia, was a haughty old man who twenty-five years before had earned the bitter hatred of the Spanish, when sent to them by Augustus as Governor, for his cruelty and avarice. He was deeply in debt and the hint that he could behave how he liked in Syria, so long as he provoked Germanicus, seemed an invitation to make another fortune to replace the one he had made in Spain and had long since run through. He disliked Germanicus for his seriousness and piety and used to call him a superstitious old woman; and he was also extremely jealous of him.

Germanicus, when he had visited Athens, had shown his respect for her ancient glories by appearing at the city gates with only a single yeoman as escort.

He had also [249] made a long and earnest speech in eulogy of Athenian poets, soldiers and philosophers, at a festival which was organized in his honour. Now Piso came through Athens on his way to Syria and, since it was not part of his province and he did not take any pains to be civil to them as Germanicus had done, the Athenians did not take any pains to be civil to him. A man called Theophilus, the brother of one of Piso's creditors, had just been condemned for forgery by a vote of the City Assembly. Piso asked as a personal favour that the man should be pardoned, but his request was refused, which made Piso very angry: if Theophilus had been pardoned, the brother would have certainly cancelled the debt. He made a violent speech in which he said that the latter-day Athenians had no right to identify themselves with the great Athenians of the days of Pericles, Demosthenes, ,/Eschylus, Plato. The ancient Athenians had been extirpated by repeated wars and massacres and these were mere mongrels, degenerates and the descendants of slaves. He said that any Roman who flattered them as if they were the legitimate heirs of those ancient heroes was lowering the dignity of the Roman name; and that for his part he could not forget that in the last Civil War they had declared against the great Augustus and supported that cowardly traitor Antony.

Piso then left Athens and sailed for Rhodes on his way to Syria.

Germanicus was at Rhodes too, visiting the University, and news of the speech, which was plainly directed at himself, reached him just before Piso's ships were sighted. A sudden squall rose and Piso's ships were seen to be in difficulties. Two smaller vessels went down before Germanicus' eyes, and the third, which was Piso's, was dismasted and was being driven on the rocks of the northern headland.

Who but Germanicus would not have abandoned Piso to his fate? But Germanicus sent out a couple of well-manned galleys which succeeded by desperate rowing in reaching the wreck just before it struck and towing it safely to port. Or who but a man as depraved as Piso would not have rewarded his rescuer with lifelong gratitude and devotion? But Piso actually complained that Germanicus had delayed the rescue until the last moment, in the hope that it would come too late; and without stopping a day at Rhodes, he sailed away while the sea was still rough in order to reach Syria before Germanicus.

As soon as he arrived at Antioch he began to overhaul the regiments in just the opposite sense to that intended by Germanicus. Instead of removing slack bullying captains, he reduced to the ranks every officer who had a good record and appointed scoundrelly favourites of his own in their places--with the understanding that a commission of half whatever they succeeded in making out of their appointments should be paid to him, and no questions asked.

So a bad year began for the Syrians. Shopkeepers in the towns and farmers in the country had to pay secret "protection-money" to the local captains; if they refused to pay there would be a raid at night by masked men, their houses would be burned down and their families murdered.

At first there were many appeals made to Piso against this terrorism by city guilds, farmers' associations and so forth.

He always promised an immediate enquiry but never made one; and the complainers were usually found beaten to death on the road home. A delegation was sent to Rome to enquire privately from Sejanus whether Tiberius was aware of what was going on and, if so, whether he countenanced it. Sejanus told the provincials that Tiberius knew nothing officially; and though he would, no doubt, promise an enquiry, Piso had done as much for them as that, had he not? Perhaps the best course for them to take, he said, would be to pay whatever protection-

money was demanded with as little fuss as possible. Meanwhile the standard of camp-discipline in the Syrian regiments had sunk so low that Tacfarinas' bandit-army would by comparison have seemed a model of efficiency and devotion to duty.

Delegates also came to Germanicus at Rhodes, and he was disgusted and amazed at their revelations. In his recent progress through Asia Minor he had made it his'task to enquire personally into all complaints of maladministration and to remove all magistrates who had acted in an illegal or oppressive way. He now wrote to Tiberius telling him of the reports that had reached him of Piso's behaviour, saying that he was setting out for Syria at once; and asking for permission to remove Piso and put a better man in his [251] place if even a few of the complaints were justified. Tiberius wrote back that he had also heard certain complaints but they appeared to be unfounded and malicious; he had confidence in Piso as a capable and just Governor.

Germanicus did not suspect Tiberius of dishonesty and was confirmed in the opinion he already had of him as simple-minded and easily imposed upon. He regretted having written for permission to do what he should have done at once on his own responsibility. He now heard another serious charge against Piso, namely, that he was plotting with Vonones, the deposed king of Armenia, who was in refuge in Syria, to restore him to his throne.

Vonones was immensely wealthy, having fled to Syria with most of the contents of the Armenian treasury, so Piso hoped to do well out of the business.

Germanicus went at once to Armenia, called a conference of nobles and, with his own hands, but in Tiberius' name, put the diadem on the head of the man they had chosen for king. He then ordered Piso to visit Armenia at the head of two regiments to pay his neighbourly respects to the new monarch; or, if he was held by more important business, to send his son.

Piso neither sent his son nor went himself. Germanicus, having visited other outlying provinces and allied kingdoms and settled affairs there to his satisfaction, came down into Syria and met Piso at the winter quarters of the Tenth Regiment.

There were several officers present as witnesses of this meeting, because Germanicus did not wish Tiberius to be misinformed as to what was said. He began, in as gentle a voice as he could command, by asking Piso to explain his disobedience of orders. He said that if there was no explanation of it but the same personal animosity and discourtesy which he had shown in his speech at Athens, in his ungrateful remarks at Rhodes, and on several occasions since, a strong report would have to be forwarded to the Emperor. He went on to complain that, for troops living under peacetime conditions in a healthy and popular station, he found the Tenth Regiment in a most shocking, undisciplined and dirty condition.

Piso said grinning: "Yes, they are a dirty lot, aren't they?

What would the people of Armenia have thought if I had sent them there as representatives of the power and majesty of Rome?" ["The power and majesty of Rome" was a favourite phrase of my brother's.]

Germanicus, keeping his temper with difficulty, said that the deterioration seemed to date only from Piso's arrival in the province, and that he would write to Tiberius to that effect.

Piso made an ironical plea for forgiveness, coupled with an insulting remark about the high ideals of youth which often have to yield, in this hard world, to less exalted but more practical policies.

Germanicus interrupted with flashing eyes: "Often, Piso, but not always.

Tomorrow, for instance, I shall sit with you on the appeal tribunal and we shall see whether the high ideals of youth are controlled by any obstacle at all: and whether justice to the provincials can be denied them by any incompentent, avaricious, bloody-minded sexagenarian debauchee."

This ended the interview. Piso at once wrote to Tiberius and Livia, telling what had happened. He quoted Germanicus' last sentence in such a way that Tiberius believed that the "incompetent, avaricious, bloody-minded sexagenarian debauchee" was himself. Tiberius replied that he had the fullest confidence in Piso, and that if a certain influential person continued to speak and act in this disloyal way, any steps, however daring, taken by a subordinate to check this disloyalty would doubtless be pleasing to the Senate and people of Rome.

Meanwhile Germanicus sat on the tribunal and heard appeals from the provincials against unjust sentences in the courts. Piso did his best at first to embarrass him by legal obstructionism, but when Germanicus kept his patience and continued the hearing of the cases without any respite for meals or siestas, he gave up that policy and excused himself from attendance altogether on the grounds of ill-health.

Piso's wife, Plancina, was jealous of Agrippina because, as Germanicus'

wife, she took precedence over her at all official functions. She thought out various petty insults to annoy her, chiefly discourtesies by subordinates which could be explained away as due to accident or ignorance. When Agrippina retaliated by snubbing her in public, she went [253] still further. One morning in the absence of both Piso and Germanicus she appeared on parade with the cavalry and put them through a burlesque series of movements in front of Germanicus'

headquarters. She wheeled them through a cornfield, charged a line of empty tents, which were slashed to ribbons, had every possible call sounded from "Lights Out!"

to the fire-alarm, and arranged collisions between squadrons. She finally galloped the whole force round and round in a gradually dwindling circle, and then, when she had narrowed the centre space to only a few paces across, gave the order,

"Right about wheel," as if to reverse the movement. Many horses went down, throwing their riders. There never was such a mess-up seen in the whole history of cavalry manoeuvre. The rowdier men increased it by sticking daggers into their neighbours' horses to make them buck, or wrestling from the saddle. Several men were badly kicked, or had legs broken, their horses falling on them. One man was picked up dead. Agrippina sent a young staff-officer to request Plancina to stop making a fool of herself and the Army. Plancina sent back the answer, in parody of Agrippina's own brave words at the Rhine bridge: "Until my husband-returns I am in command of the cavalry. I am preparing them for the expected Parthian invasion." Some Parthian ambassadors had, as a matter of fact, just arrived in camp, and were watching this display in astonishment and contempt.

Now, Vonones, before he had been king of Armenia, had been king of Parthia, from which he had been quickly expelled. His successor had sent these ambassadors to Germanicus to propose that the alliance between Rome and Parthia should be renewed and to say that in honour of Germanicus he would come to the River Euphrates [the boundary between Syria and Parthia] to greet him. In the meantime he requested that Vonones might not be allowed to remain in Syria, where it was easy for him to carry on a treasonable correspondence with certain Parthian nobles.

Germanicus replied that as representative of his father, the Emperor, he would be pleased to meet the king, and renew the alliance, and that he would remove Vonones to some other province. So Vonones was sent to Cilicia, and Piso's hope of a fortune vanished. Plancina was as angry as her husband: Vonones had been giving her almost daily presents of beautiful jewels.

Early the next year news reached Germanicus of great scarcity in Egypt.

The last harvest had not been good, but there was plenty of corn from two years before, stored in granaries. The big corn-brokers kept up the price by putting only very small supplies on the market.

[A.D.

19]

Germanicus

sailed at once to Alexandria and forced

the brokers to sell at a reasonable price all the corn that was needed. He was glad of this excuse for visiting Egypt, which interested him even more than Greece.

Alexandria was then, as it is now, the true cultural centre of the world, as Rome was, and is, the political centre, and he showed his respect for its traditions by entering the city in simple Greek costume, with bare feet and no bodyguard. From Alexandria he sailed up the Nile, visiting the pyramids and the Sphinx and the gigantic ruins of Egyptian Thebes, a former capital, and the great stone statue of Memnon, the breast of which is hollow, and which shortly after the sun rises begins to sing, because the air in the hollow becomes warm and rises in a current through the pipe-shaped throat. He went as far as the ruins of Elephantis, keeping a careful diary of his travels. At Memphis he visited the pleasure-ground of the great God Apis, incarnate as a bull with peculiar markings; but Apis gave him no encouraging sign, walking away from him the moment that they met and entering the "malevolent stall".

Agrippina was with him but Caligula had been left behind at Antioch in the charge of a tutor, as a punishment for his continued disobedience.

Germanicus could do nothing now that did not encourage Tiberius'

suspicions of him; but going to Egypt was the worst mistake he had yet made. I shall explain why.

Augustus, realising early in his reign that Rome was now chiefly dependent on Egypt for her corn supply and that Egypt, if it fell into the hands of an adventurer, could be successfully defended by a quite small army, had laid it down as a precept of government that no Roman knight or senator should henceforth be allowed to visit the province without express permission from himself. It was generally understood that the same rule held under Tiberius. But te] Germanicus, alarmed by reports of the corn famine in Egypt, had not wasted time by waiting to get permission to go there. Tiberius was certain now that Germamcus was about to strike the blow that he had withheld so long; he had certainly gone to Egypt to bring the garrison there over to his side; the sight-seeing up the Nile was merely an excuse for visiting the frontier-guards; it had been a great mistake to send him to the East at all. He made a public complaint in the Senate against so daring a breach of Augustus' strict injunctions.

When Germanicus returned to Syria, feeling much hurt by Tiberius'

reprimand, he found that all his orders to the regiments and to the cities had either been neglected or superseded by contradictory ones from Piso. He re-issued them and now for the first time gave public notice of his displeasure by issuing a proclamation that all orders issued by Piso during his own absence in Egypt were hereby declared cancelled and that, until further notice, no order signed by Piso would be valid in the province unless endorsed by himself. He had hardly signed this proclamation when he fell ill. His stomach was so disordered that he could keep nothing down. He suspected that his food was being poisoned and took every possible precaution against this. Agrippina prepared all his meals herself and none of the household staff had any opportunity of handling the food either before or after she cooked it. But it was some time before he was sufficiently recovered to leave his bed and sit propped in a chair. Hunger made his sense of smell abnormally acute and he said that there was a stench of death in the house.

Nobody else smelt it and Agrippina at first dismissed the complaint as a sick fancy. But he persisted in it. He said that the stench grew daily worse. At last Agrippina herself became aware of it. It seemed to be in every room. She burned incense to cleanse the air but the smell persisted. The household grew alarmed and whispered that witches were at work.

Germanicus had always been extremely superstitious like every member of our family but myself: I am only somewhat superstitious. Germanicus not only believed in the luckiness or unluckiness of certain days or omens, but had bound himself in a whole network of superstitions of his own. The number twenty-five and the midnight crowing of cocks were the two things which distressed him most.

He took it as a most unlucky sign that, having been able to recover the lost eagles of the Nineteenth and TwentySixth Regiments, he had been recalled from Germany before he could recover that of the Twenty-Fifth. And he was terrified of black magic of the sort that Thessalian witches use, and always slept with a talisman under his pillow which was proof against them: a green jasper figure of the Goddess Hecate [who alone has power over witches and phantoms]

represented with a torch in one hand and the keys of the Underworld in another.

Suspecting that Plancina was practising witchcraft against him, for she had the reputation of being a witch, he made a propitiatory sacrifice of nine black puppies to Hecate; which was the proper course to take when so victimized. The next day a slave reported with a face of terror that as he had been washing the floor in the hall he had noticed a loose tile and, lifting it up, had found underneath what appeared to be the naked and decaying corpse of a baby, the belly painted red and horns tied to the forehead.

An immediate search was made in every room and a dozen equally gruesome finds were made under the tiles or in niches scooped in the walls behind hangings. They included the corpse of a cat with rudimentary wings growing from its back, and the head of a Negro with a child's hand protruding from its mouth.

With each of these dreadful relics was a lead tablet on which was Germanicus'

name.

The house was ritually cleansed and Germanicus began to be more cheerful, though his stomach continued troublesome. Soon after this hauntings began in the house. Cocks' feathers smeared in blood were round among the cushions and unlucky signs were scrawled on the walls in charcoal, sometimes low down as if a dwarf had written them, sometimes high up as if written by a giant--a man hanging, the word Rome upside down, a weasel; and, though only Agrippina knew of his private superstition about the number twenty-five, this number was constantly recurring. Then appeared the name Germanicus, upside down, every day shortened by a letter. It would have been possible for [^57]

Plancina to hide charms in his house during his absence in Egypt, but for this continued haunting there was no explanation. The servants were not suspected, because the words and signs were written in rooms to which they had no access, and in one locked room, with a window too small for a man to squeeze through, they covered the walls from floor to ceiling. Germanicus' one consolation was the courage with which Agrippina and little Caligula behaved.

Agrippina did her best to make light of the hauntings, and Caligula said that he felt safe because a great-grandson of the God Augustus couldn't be hurt by witches, and that if he met a witch he would run her through with his sword.

But Germanicus had to take to his bed again. In the middle of the night following the day when only three letters remained of his name, Germanicus was awakened by the noise of crowing. Weak as he was, he leaped out of bed, snatched up his sword and rushed into the adjoining room where Caligula and the baby Lesbia slept. There he saw a cock, a big black one with a gold ring around its neck, crowing as if to wake the dead. He tried to strike off its head but it flew out of the window. He fell down in a faint.

Agrippina somehow got him back to his bed again, but when he recovered consciousness he told her that he was doomed. "Not while you have your Hecate with you," she said. He felt under his pillow for the charm and his courage returned.

When morning came he wrote a letter to Piso, in the old Roman manner, declaring private war between them; ordering him to leave the Province, and defying him to do his worst. Piso had, however, already sailed and was now at Cliios waiting for news of Germanicus' death and ready to return to govern the Province as soon as it reached him.

My poor brother was growing hourly weaker. The next day while Agrippina was out of the room and he was lying half insensible he felt a movement under his pillow. He turned on his side and fumbled in terror for the charm. It was gone; and there was nobody in the room.

The next day he called his friends together and told them that he was dying and Piso and Plancina were his murderers. He charged them to tell Tiberius and Castor what had been done to him and implored them to avenge his cruel death.

"And tell the people of Rome," he said, "that I entrust my dear wife and my six children to their charge, and that they must not believe Piso and Plancina if they pretend to have had instructions to kill me; or, if they do believe it, that they must not on that account pardon them." He died on the ninth of October, the day that the single letter G appeared on the wall of his room facing his bed, and on the twenty-fifth day of his illness. His wasted body was laid out in the market-place of Antioch so that everyone could see the red rash on his belly and the blueness of his nails. His slaves were put to torture. His freedmen too, were cross-examined in turn, each for twentyfour hours on end and always by fresh questioners, and they were so broken in spirit at the end of this that if they had known anything they would certainly have revealed it, only to be left in peace. The most that could be discovered, however, either from freedmen or slaves, was that a notable witch, one Martina, had been frequently seen in Plancina's company and that she had actually been in the house one day with Plancina when nobody was there but Caligula.

And that one afternoon, just before Germanicus' return, the house had been left unattended except by a single deaf old janitor, all the remaining staff having gone out to see a sword-fight exhibited by Piso in the local amphitheatre.

No

natural

explanations

could however be offered for the cock, or for the

writing on the wall, or for the disappearance of the talisman.

There was a meeting of regimental commanders and all the other Romans of rank in the Province, to appoint a temporary Governor. The Commander of the Sixth Regiment was chosen. He immediately arrested Martina and had her sent under escort to Rome. If Piso came up for trial she would be one of the most important witnesses.

When he heard that Germanicus was dead, Piso, so far from concealing his joy, offered up sacrifices of thanksgiving in the temples. Plancina, who had recently lost a sister, actually threw off her mourning and put on her gayest clothes again. Piso wrote to Tiberius saying that he had only been dismissed from his governorship, to which he had been personally appointed by Tiberius, because of his bold opposition to Germanicus' treasonable designs [^9] against the State; he was now returning to Syria to resume his command. He also referred to Germanicus' "luxury and insolence". He did fay to return to Syria and even got some troops to support him, but the new Governor besieged the castle in Cilicia which he had made his stronghold, forced him to surrender and sent him to Rome to answer the charges that would surely be brought against him there.

Meanwhile Agrippina had sailed for Italy with the two children and the ashes of her husband in an urn. At Rome the news of his death had brought such grief that it was as though every single household in the City had lost its most beloved member. Three whole days, though there was no decree of the Senate or order of the magistrates for it, were consecrated to public sorrow: shops shut, law-courts were deserted, no business of any sort was transacted, everyone wore mourning. I heard a man in the street say that it was as though the sun had set and would never rise again. Of my own sorrow I cannot trust myself to write.

XXI

LIVIA AND TIBERIUS SHUT THEMSELVES IN THEIR PALACES and pretended to be so grief-stricken that they could not show their faces abroad.

Agrippina should have come by the overland route, because the winter had already begun and the sailing season was over. But she put to sea in spite of storms and a few days later [A.D. 20] reached Corfu, from where it is only a day's sail, with a good breeze, to the port of Brindisi. Here she rested for awhile, sending messengers ahead to say that she was coming to throw herself on the protection of the people of Italy. Castor, who was now back at Rome, her four other children and myself went out from Rome to meet her.

Tiberius had immediately sent two Guards battalions forward to the port with directions that the magistrates of the country districts through which the ashes passed should pay his dead son the last offices of respect. When Agrippina disembarked, greeted with respectful silence by an immense crowd, the urn was put in a catafalque and carried towards Rome on the shoulders of the Guards'

officers. The battalion standards were undecorated, as a sign of public calamity, and the axes and rods were borne reversed. As the procession, many thousands strong, passed through Calabria, Apulia and Campania, everyone came flocking, the country people dressed in black, the knights in purple robes, with tears and loud lamentations, and burned offerings of perfumes for their dead hero's ghost.

We met the procession at Terracina, about sixty miles southeast of Rome, where Agrippina, who had walked dry-eyed and marble-faced, without a word to anyone all the way from Brindisi, let her grief break out afresh at the sight of her four fatherless children. She cried to Castor: "By the love you had for my dear husband swear that you will defend the lives of his children with your own, and avenge his death! It was his last charge to you." Castor, weeping, for the first time perhaps since his childhood, swore that he would accept the charge.

If you ask why Livilla did not come with us, the answer is that she had just been delivered of twin boys: of which, by the way, Sejanus seems to have been the father. If you ask why my mother did not come, the answer is that Tiberius and Livia did not allow her even to attend the funeral. If overwhelming grief prevented their own attendance, as grandmother and adoptive father of the dead man, it was clearly quite impossible for her, as his mother, to attend. And they were wise not to show themselves. If they had done so, even with a pretence of grief, they would certainly have been assaulted by the populace; and I think that the Guards would have stood by and not raised a finger to protect them. Tiberius had neglected to make even such preparations as were customary at the funeral of far less distinguished persons: the family masks of the Claudians and Julians did not appear nor the usual effigy of the dead man himself, laid on a bed; no funeral speech was made from the Oration Platform; no funeral hymns [261] sung.

Tiberius' excuse was that the funeral had already been celebrated in Syria and that the Gods would be offended if the rites were repeated. But never was such unanimous and sincere grief shown in Rome as on that night.

Mars Field was ablaze with torches, and the crowd about Augustus' tomb, in which the urn was reverently placed by Castor, was so dense that many people were crushed to death. Everywhere people were saying that Rome was lost, and that no hope remained: for Germanicus had been their last bulwark against oppression, and Germanicus was now foully murdered. And everywhere Agrippina was praised and pitied, and prayers were offered for the safety of her children.

Tiberius published a proclamation a few days later saying that, though many illustrious Romans had died for the commonwealth, none had been so universally and vehemently regretted as his dear son. But it was now time for the people to compose their minds and return to their daily business: princes were mortal, but the commonwealth eternal. In spite of this, All Fools' Festival at the end of December passed without any of the usual jokes and jollity, and it was not until the Festival of the Great Mother in April that mourning ended and normal public business was resumed. Tiberius' suspicions were now concentrated on Agrippina. She visited him at the Palace on the morning after the funeral and fearlessly told him that she would hold him responsible for her husband's death until he had proved his innocence and taken vengeance on Piso and Plancina. He cut short the interview at once by quoting at her the Greek lines: And if you are not queen, my dear, think you that you are wronged?

Piso did not return to Rome for some time. He sent his son ahead to intercede for him with Tiberius while he himself went to visit Castor, who was now back with the legions on the Danube, He expected Castor to be grateful to him for his removal of a rival heir to the monarchy and willing to believe the story of Germanicus' treason. Castor refused to receive him and publicly told Piso's messenger I, C X A U D I U S [262] that, if current rumours were true, it was on Piso that he would have to inflict the vengeance that he had sworn for his dear brother's death, and that Piso would be advised to keep away until he had plainly established his innocence.

Tiberius received Piso's son without either particular graciousness or particular disfavour, as if to show that he would remain unprejudiced until a public enquiry had been made into Germanicus' death.

Eventually

Piso

appeared at Rome with Plancina. They came sailing down

the Tiber and disembarked with a number of retainers at the tomb of Augustus, where they nearly created a riot by strutting with broad smiles through the hostile crowd which soon gathered, and stepping into a decorated carriage drawn by a pair of well-matched white French cobs which was waiting for them on the Flaminian road. Piso had a house overlooking the Market Place and this was decorated too.

He invited all his friends and relations to a banquet celebrating his return and made a great deal of disturbance: merely to show the people of Rome that he was not afraid of them and that he counted on the support of Tiberius and Livia.

Tiberius had planned for Piso to be prosecuted in the ordinary Criminal Court by a certain senator who could be trusted to do it so clumsily, contradicting himself and neglecting to produce proper evidence in support of his charges, that the proceedings could only end in an acquittal. But Germanicus' friends, especially the three senators who had been on his staff in Syria and had returned with Agrippina, opposed Tiberius' choice. Tiberius was forced in the end to judge the case himself, and in the Senate too, where Germanicus' friends could count on all the support they needed. The Senate had voted a number of exceptional honours to Germanicus' memory--cenotaphs, memorial arches, semi-divine rites--which Tiberius had not dared to veto.

Castor now returned once more from the Danube and, though an ovation

[or lesser triumph] had been decreed him for his management of the Maroboduus affair, he entered the City on foot as a private citizen instead of in a war-chariot with a chaplet on his head. After visiting his father he went straight to Agrippina and swore to her that she could count on him to see that justice was done.

Piso asked four senators to defend him; three of them excused themselves on the ground of sickness or incapacity; the fourth, Gallus, said that he never defended anyone on a murder charge of which he seemed guilty unless there was at least a chance of pleasing the Imperial family. Calpurnius Piso, though he had not attended his uncle's banquet, volunteered to defend him for the honour of the family, and three others afterwards joined him because they were sure that Tiberius would acquit Piso, whatever the evidence, and that they would later be rewarded for their part in the trial. Piso was pleased to be judged by Tiberius himself, because Sejanus had assured him that it would be all properly managed, that Tiberius would pretend to be very severe but finally adjourn the court sine die for fresh evidence. Martina, the principal witness, had already been put out of the way--smothered by Sejanus' agents--and the prosecutors now had a poor case.

Two days only were allowed for the prosecution, and the man who had been originally commissioned to bungle it for Piso's benefit came forward and did his best to talk the time out by bringing stale charges against him of misgovernment and corruption in Spain under Augustus. Tiberius let him continue with this irrelevant matter for some hours, until the Senate, by scuffling feet, coughing and clattering writing-tablets together, warned him that the principal witnesses must be heard or there would be trouble.

Germanicus' four friends had their case well prepared and each in turn rose and testified to Piso's corruption of military discipline in Syria, his insulting behaviour to Germanicus and themselves, his disobedience of orders, his intrigues with Vonones, his oppression of the provincials.

They accused him of murdering Germanicus by poison and witchcraft, of offering thanksgiving sacrifices at his death, and finally of having made an armed attack on the Province with private forces illegally raised.

Piso did not deny the charges of corrupting military discipline, of insulting and disobeying Germanicus, or of oppressing the provincials; he merely said that they were exaggerated. But he indignantly denied the charge of poison and witchcraft. The accusers did not mention the supernatural events at Antioch for fear of encouraging sceptical laughter, nor could they accuse Piso of interfering with Germanicus' household servants and slaves, because it bad already been shown that they had nothing to do with the murder. So Piso was accused of poisoning Germanicus' food while he sat next to him at a banquet in Germanicus'

own house. Piso ridiculed this charge: how could he possibly have done such a thing without someone noticing it, when the whole table, not to mention the waiters, were watching every movement he made? By magic perhaps?

He had a bundle of letters in his hand which everyone knew, by the size and colour and the way they were tied, were from Tiberius. Germanicus' friends moved that any instructions that Piso had been sent from Rome should be read.

Piso refused to read the letters on the ground that they were sealed as with the Sphinx seal [originally Augustus'], which made them "secret and confidential": it would be treasonable to read them. Tiberius ruled against the motion, saying that it would be a waste of time to read the letters, which contained nothing of importance. The Senate could not press the point. Piso handed the letters to Tiberius as a sign that he trusted him to save his life.

Angry noises were now heard from the crowd outside, which was being kept informed of the progress of the trial, and a man with a huge raucous voice shouted through a window: "He may escape you, my Lords, but he won't escape us!" A messenger came to tell Tiberius that some statues of Piso had been seized by the crowd and were being dragged to the Wailing Stairs to be broken up. The Wailing Stairs were a flight of steps at the foot of the Capitoline Hill where the corpses of criminals were customarily exposed before being dragged by a hook in the throat to the Tiber and thrown in. Tiberius ordered the statues to be rescued and replaced on their pedestals. But he complained that he could not continue to judge a case under such conditions and adjourned it until the evening. Piso was conveyed away under escort. Plancina, who had hitherto boasted that she would share her husband's fate whatever it might be, and if necessary die with him, now grew alarmed. She decided to make a separate defence and counted on Livia, with whom she had been on intimate terms, to get her off. Piso knew nothing of this treachery. When the trial was resumed Tiberius gave him no sign of sympathy, and though he told the accusers that they should have provided more conclusive evidence of poisoning, he warned Piso that his armed attempt to win back his province could never be forgiven. At home that evening Piso shut himself in his room and was found the next morning stabbed to death with his sword beside him.

It was not, as a matter of fact, suicide.

For Piso had retained the most incriminating letter of all, one written to him by Livia but in the names of Tiberius and herself, and not stamped with the Sphinx seal [which Tiberius reserved for his own use]. He told Plancina to bargain for their lives with it. Plancina went to Livia. Livia told her to wait while she consulted Tiberius.

Livia and Tiberius then had their first quarrel. Tiberius was furious with Livia for having written the letter, and Livia said that it was his own fault for not allowing her to use the Sphinx seal and complained that he had been behaving very insolently to her lately. Tiberius asked, who was Emperor, he or she? Livia said that if he was, it was by her contrivance and that it was foolish of him to be rude to her, because as she had found means to make him, so she could find means to break him. She took a letter from her purse and began reading it: it was an old letter written to her by Augustus during Tiberius' absence in Rhodes, accusing him of treachery, cruelty and bestiality and saying that if he were not her son he would not live another day. "This is only a copy," she said. "But I have the original in safe keeping. It's only one of many letters in the same strain.

You wouldn't like them handed about the Senate, would you?"

Tiberius

controlled

himself and apologised for his bad temper: he said that it was clear that he and she were each able to ruin the other and that therefore it was absurd for them to quarrel. But how could he spare Piso's life, especially after having said that, if the charge of raising private forces and trying to win back Syria with them was proved, this would mean the death penalty, beyond hope of pardon?

"Plancina didn't raise any forces, though, did she?"

"I don't see what that has to do with it. I can't get the letter back from Piso merely by promising to spare PIancina."

"If you promise to spare Plancina, I'll get the letter from Piso: leave that to me. If Piso's killed that will satisfy public opinion. And if you are afraid of sparing Plancina on your own responsibility you can say that it was I who pleaded for her.

That's fair enough, because I admit that it is a letter I wrote that all the trouble is about."

So Livia went to Plancina and told her that Tiberius refused to listen to reason, and that he would rather sacrifice his own mother to popular hatred than risk his own skin in standing by his friends. All that she had been able to get from him, she said, was a grudging promise of pardon for her if the letter were given up.

So Plancina went to Piso with a letter in Tiberius' name, forged by Livia, and said that she had arranged everything beautifully and here was the promise of acquittal.

As Piso handed her the letter in exchange she suddenly stabbed him in the throat with a dagger. As he lay dying she dipped the point of his sword in blood, clasped his sword-hand around the pommel and left him. She took the letter and the forged promise back to Livia as arranged.

In the Senate next day Tiberius read a statement which he said that Piso had made before his suicide, pleading complete innocence of the crime charged against him, protesting his loyalty to Livia and himself, and imploring their protection for his sons as having taken no part in the events which had been made the subject of his impeachment. Plancina's trial then began. She was proved to have been seen in the society of Martina, and Martina's reputation as a poisoner was sworn to, and it came out that when Martina's corpse was prepared for burial a phial of poison was found knotted in her hair. Old Pomponius, Germanicus’ orderly, testified to the horrible putrid relics planted in the house and to Plancina's visit there with Martina in Germanicus' absence; and when questioned by Tiberius he gave detailed evidence of the hauntings. Nobody came forward to defend Plancina. She protested her innocence with tears and oaths and said that she knew nothing of Martina’s reputation as a poisoner and that her only business with her had been to buy perfumes. She said that the woman who had come with her to the house was not Martina but the wife of one of the colonels. And that surely it was an innocent thing to go calling and find nobody at home but a little boy. As for her insults to Agrippina, she was heartily sorry for them and begged Agrippina's pardon most humbly; but she had been obeying her husband's orders, as a wife was bound to do, and moreover her husband had told her that Agrippina was plotting with Germanicus against the State, so she had the more willingly done what was expected of her.

Tiberius summed up. He said that there seemed to be a certain doubt as to Plancina's guilt. Her connexion with Martina seemed proved, and so did Martina's reputation as a poisoner. But that it was a guilty connexion remained open to question. The prosecution had not even produced in court the phial found in Martina's hair nor any evidence that the contents were poisonous: it might well have been a sleeping draught or aphrodisiac. His mother Livia had a high opinion of Plancina's character and wished the Senate to give her the benefit of the doubt if the evidence of guilt was not conclusive; for the ghost of her beloved grandson had appeared to her in a dream and begged her not to allow the innocent to suffer for the crimes of a husband or father.

So Plancina was acquitted, and of Piso's two sons, one was allowed to inherit his father's estate and the other, who had taken part in the fighting in Cilicia, was merely banished for a few years. A senator proposed that public thanks be paid to the dead hero's family--to Tiberius, Livia, my mother Antonia, Agrippina and Castor--for having avenged his death. This motion was just about to be voted upon when a friend of mine, an ex-Consul who had been Governor of Africa before Furius, rose to make an amendment. The motion was, he objected, not in order: one important name had been omitted, that of the dead hero's brother'

Claudius, who had done more than anyone to prepare the case for the prosecution and to protect the witnesses from molestation. Tiberius shrugged his shoulders and said that he was surprised to hear that I had been called upon for any assistance and that perhaps if I had not been, the charges against Piso would have been more clearly presented. [It was quite true that I had presided at the meeting of my brother's friends and decided what evidence each witness was to bring; and I had, as a matter of fact, advised them against accusing Piso of administering poison at the banquet with his own hands, but they had overruled me. And I had kept Pomponius and his grandsons and three of my brother's freedmen safely hidden in a farmhouse near my villa at Capua until the day of the trial. I had also tried to hide Martina away at the house of a merchant I knew at Brindisi, but Sejanus traced her.]

Well, Tiberius let my name be included in the vote of thanks; but that meant little to me compared with the thanks that Agrippina gave me: she said that she understood now what Germanicus had meant when he told her, just before his death, that the truest friend he had ever had was his poor brother Claudius.

Feeling against Livia was so strong that Tiberius made it an excuse to her for again not asking the Senate to vote her the title that he had so often promised.

Everyone was wanting to know what it meant when a grandmother gave gracious interviews to the murderess of her grandson and rescued her from the vengeance of the Senate. The answer could only be that the grandmother had instigated the murder herself and was so utterly unashamed of herself that the wife and children of the victim would not survive him long.