 Section 9 of the Complete Works of Tacitus, edited by Thomas Gordon. This is the LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, visit LibriVox.org. The Complete Works of Tacitus, to which are prefixed political discourses upon that author, edited and translated by Thomas Gordon, with introductory essays by Thomas Gordon. Volume 1. Discourse 7 of the Accusations and Accusers Under the Emperor Part 1. Section 1. The Pestulent Employment of these Men, Their Treachery and Encouragement. From law thus perverted, there arose encouragement, more than enough, foreign formers and accusers, and a plentiful harvest. A sort of men, says Tacitus, born for the destruction of mankind, and by no terrors or penalties ever sufficiently restrained. Yet by the Emperor such sons of perdition were sought out and invited by great rewards. Tiberius had the front to tell the Senate that these insects, enemies to law and liberty, were the guardians and defenders of the laws. They were his defenders, if he pleased, the champions of imperial violence and lust. But the pests of the public, dogs of prey thirsting after the blood and fortunes of every worthy and every wealthy man. That Prince, who does not punish informers, encourages them, said to Mission. But this he said in the beginning of his reign, while he yet retained the appearances of benevolence and humanity. Afterwards, when the disguise was taken off, and he followed the bent of his brutal nature, it was enough to ruin any man, if he were but charged to have done some deed, or spoke some word, no matter what, against the majesty of the Prince. Men were then capitalally arraigned, and the estates were seized of both the living and the dead, for any fault whatsoever, upon the credit of any accuser whatsoever. In inheritances, to which he could have no possible title or pretense upon earth, were usurped by him. If there was but one person, one informer, who could say that he heard the deceased declare Caesar to be his heir. The same pretense served Caligula. Nay, when people had out of fear named him amongst their heirs, he wondered at their impudence to keep him out of his share by living afterwards, and for that offense poisoned many such. In short, the chief and most frequent incidents in the reigns of almost all the Caesars were but the bloody efforts and success of the accusers. And the groundwork and support for all accusations was the perverted law of violated majesty, which came to signify everything which the accusers averred and the emperors disliked. In the beginning of Tiberius's reign, Lucius Piso, one of the boldest men then surviving, owned himself so much intimidated by the merciless pursuits of the Impleters, who breathed nothing but terror and accusation that he threatened an open senate to relinquish Rome and retire into some distant corner of the earth. He had reason for his complaint and fears. He was afterwards marked out as a victim and prayed by one of the tribe, and arraigned for certain works secretly dropped against the majesty of the prince. These accusations were no other or better than the cruel prescription continued. By the latter, senators and knights, patriots obnoxious to the usurpers were butchered in the lump. Afterwards, under the process of the accusers, they perished piecemeal, but were incessantly perishing, often a great many at a time. Every law of the old free state and every man who loved his country and her laws were repugnant to the reigning tyranny. Hence, as the republic was swallowed up in the soventry of the Caesars, all her laws were made to center in that of majesty. And all men who adhered or were suspected to adhere to the ancient constitution were either destroyed by this new law, rather an old law turned into a new snare, or at the mercy of its guardians and accusers. And all this new violence was committed under old names and constitutions, so that the commonwealth was made to cut her own throat. Just as cruel and ambitious men justify persecution and oppression by the authority of the gospel, which abhors it, the Church of Rome calls everything that depletes her heresy and blasphemy. This is the lexma-justice of some churchmen, and by cruelties committed under that name, they have more than vied with the Nero's and the Domitians. Thus, after a solemn murder committed by the senate to gratify Tiberius, it is with them a letter of thanks for punishing a person who was an enemy to the commonwealth, as if the republic had been then subsisting and vindicating her own wrongs. The accusers were the agents and tools of tyranny, and by the tyrants upheld and animated with open countenance and high rewards. Their business was to hunt down and destroy every man's signal for blood, or wealth, or dignity, or virtue, such men were obnoxious to imperial jealousy and displeasure. Had a noble Roman sustained public offices? He was a dangerous man. Had another refused to bear them? He was equally dangerous. And for public offices, either exercised or declined, he was sure to be attacked as a criminal of state. And if he were conspicuous for any notable ability or virtue, his doom was inevitable. Valerius Asiaticus perished because he had delightful gardens, which tempted the avidity of Masalina, as did Stilius Taurus for the same reason by the avarice and subornation of Agrippina. So did Sextus Marius for his immense wealth and gold mines under Tiberius. This gives one an idea of the terrible spirit of the emperors, as well as of the accusers, of how much the former feared and hated, and how fast they destroyed everything that was noble, good, or amiable amongst men, and what a pestulant employment was that of an accuser. Was it any wonder that to carry on so detestable a trade, they were to be tempted with lucrative earnings? In truth, the recompenses were so public and ample that they were detested not more for their iniquities than for the wages of their iniquities. These pests of Rome were, for being so, frequently raised to the highest offices in the Roman state, and that imperial city, the mistress of the earth, saw her public dignities, those of the pontificate and of the consulship, bestowed as spoils upon parasites for spilling her best blood and tearing her vitals. With the prince, their credit was high, as their merit was infamous. Some were preferred to be governors of the provinces. Others taken to be his chief confidants and counselors in the palace. And thus, vested with credit and sway, exerting all their terrors and pursuing their hate, they controlled and confounded all things. After the tragical death of Lybodrusus, procured by exerbile artifices, falsehoods, horrors, and rested laws, all the substance of that noble protrition was divided amongst his accusers. And some of them, as were senators, were created praetors, even without the regular method of election. The four senators who had snared Titus Sabinus, by lurking, feigned friendship, and by a series of treachery, the most infamous and cruel that could be practiced amongst men, and afterwards accused him, engaged in all this meritorious villainy, purely to gain the consulship, to which there was no possible access but through Sejanus. Nor, without villainy, was the favor of Sejanus to be sought or purchased. But besides rewarding of the accusers out of the fortunes of the accused, for where they had not awe they still went shares with his children, they had frequently excessive sums out of the public treasury. Capitocus Soutianus had near 130,000 crowns for accusing Thracia Pettis. A pyrus Marcellus had as much for the same good service, for Nero, after he had long wallowed in the blood of eminent men and butchered them without number, was in the hopes by the murder of Thracia and Serenus to extirpate virtue, name, and essence from the face of the earth. Astoria Sabinus, the accuser of Serenus, had indeed a less reward in money, that of 30,000 crowns, but the reward was enhanced by the ornaments of the quistership presented with it. These incendiaries were animated, and such crying calamities to the public were excited by the minions of the court, who, as it were, sounded the trumpet to arraignments and confiscations. On purpose, that, out of the fortunes of the condemned, they might raise or increase their own, says Amanianus Marcellinus. Achilles Regulus, an upstart and a mischievous accuser under Nero, was distinguished with two consulships, and the dignity of Pontiff, and had premiums and money to the value of more than 200,000 crowns, as if he had been bearing the commonwealth, and for this merit had afterwards gathered her spoils, says Thacitus. Section 2. The traitorous methods taken to circumvent and convict innocence. The spirit of accusing how common, the dread of it how universal, and the misery of the times. As upon these bloody occasions it was necessary to find or fain some crime, so any crime served the turn, as I have largely shown, witnesses also must be had, but any witnesses were good witnesses, and where they did not offer themselves they were bought with money, or frightened with the torture. Slaves were suborned against the life of their lords, clients and freedmen against their patrons, and he, who had no enemy, was betrayed and undone by his friends. Now, because, by the old Roman laws, slaves could not be witnesses against their masters, the crafty Tiberius found a trick to evade that law, without seeming to violate it. He contrived to have the slaves upon such occasions sold, and then they might be evidence against their late lord. This perfidious subtlety was begun by Augustus, as is largely shown by Dion Cassius. Nay, when a man had no other to accuse him, he was accused by his own son, dreadful times. Even, all rewards and incitements apart, fear for themselves made men treacherous to others. Falsehood and cruelty reigned uncontrolled. If you would please the prince, you must gratify his bloody spirit. To do that, you must offer victims and exercise the trade of accusing. If you are ill with him, no man, no innocence could protect you. And to be well with him, you must make all other men detest you. To make your own fortune, you must ruin that of others, and shed blood to get money. To this vile employment, men of the highest quality descended, and those of the first note for eloquence and civil accomplishments. Such was Cata Masalinas, a man nobly born, but the foremost in every sanguinary motion. Such was Publius Dolabella, who sprang from ancestors the most illustrious, yet depaced his nobility, engaged in the occupation of an accuser, even against those of his own blood. When men of such quality set such example, what wonder if numbers followed it? Many pursued it for money, others because they would not become obnoxious by appearing slack. The question was not about right or wrong, law or majesty, but how to please and humor, desatiate the emperor, and to escape his suspicion and fury. It was the plea of the accusers afterwards, when they were brought to answer for their crimes, that they were obliged by the emperors, or their wives, to undertake and prosecute accusations. This, Suilius pleaded, and urged the imperious orders of Masalina. Nay, men of figure were sometimes called upon by the emperor in person to undertake accusations. This, says Tacitus, was one of the most baneful and deadly evils of those times, that the first lords of the senate degraded themselves to the office of the vilest informers, some impunately in the face of the sun, others in the dark ways of treachery. No distinction of kindred from strangers, of friends from such as were unknown, none between things lately transacted, and such as were covered by a course of years in oblivion, for words spoken in the forum, spoken at an entertainment, and about what subjects so ever spoken. The speaker was accused, everyone hastening to be the foremost in the accusation, and to prevent his fellows, some for their own safety, many as it were, with the contagion and smitten with the disease of accusing. This universal treachery begot apprehension in all men equally universal. When villainy was thus rewarded, or thus necessary, and thus everywhere practiced by high and low, every man was fearful of finding every man a villain. Hence the mournful anguish and terror which seized the city. People were afraid to converse, nay, afraid to meet. They distrusted all alike, and their acquaintances as well as the unknown. Even things, mute and inanimate, were dreaded, and roofs and walls created terror and circumspection. Nay, they were apprehensive, that guilt might be found in these their apprehensions, and thus came to dread this very thing, that they had shown dread. Section 3. Plots feigned or true, an ample field for accusations and cruelty, and upon what miserable evidence executions were decreed. But the best market for accusations, and the best opportunity for the emperor to exert tyranny and consume men, was the detection of any conspiracy forged or real. How prodigious and merciless was the slaughter committed by Constantius after the death of Magnentius, and his bloody instrument Paulus, surname Catena, from his dexterity and calamity in accusations. Thus, too, upon the detection of the designs of Sejanus against Tiberius, who at one time, for a course of years, had destroyed every man that was obnoxious to this excerble favorite of his, and afterwards destroyed every man who had been well with his favorite. Thus when those of Piso against Nero came to be discovered, the whole business of the state was that of accusing, imprisoning and executing. Rome was died, deformed and filled with blood, and death and funerals, and as many as were hated or disliked or worth destroying upon any account, were sure to have been conspirators, and to be doomed to the pains annexed to conspiracy. Tiberius caused a general slaughter to be made of all that were in prison under accusation of intelligence with Sejanus. Anything upon earth, the lightest, the most fortuitous and foolish thing, served for proof of such intelligence. Pomponius Secundus was arraigned of treason. For that there were some signs, but not shown by him neither, a friendship between him and Aetius Gallus, who was a friend to Sejanus, and who was a traitor. Gallus, upon the execution of Sejanus, had retired into the gardens of Pomponius. This was all, yet this was the doubty argument used by his accuser for proving this worthy and accomplished man a traitor, one who had violated majesty. Yet his accuser, Considius, was a man considerable enough to have been praetor. It was thus, I supposed, he showed well how he deserved imperial favor in one of the highest dignities of the state. The emperor Constantius was as cruel and as credulous. With him it was death to be accused, and every accusation, however doubtful or false or even whispered, was convincing proof of guilt. Nay, the least rumor, however groundless, the smallest hint, however spiteful, created treason and death without redemption. And by no better proof, men of the first quality and merit were doomed to confiscation or banishment or execution. The barest saying that such a one was in the conspiracy or a friend to the conspiracers was conviction and abundance for taking away estates and lives. Nero, whose chief and only purpose was to afflict and destroy, created guilt wheresoever he found distaste. His own hatred or fear was crime enough and reason sufficient to destroy the object. Some were sacrificed without being once accused or named, some punished ere they knew that they were accused, and the least defamation was full conviction. Nothing was more common than to charge any great man doomed beforehand to destruction with designs against the state. This was the charge upon Libodrusus, all the guilt that could be proved upon him, though to prove it and indeed to create it the most villainous arts were used was that he had consulted the fortune tellers and dealt in charms. This was conspiring against the state, it was treason, and because the Romans were much addicted to such sort of superstition this became a very convenient treason and very fertile. Yet Tiberias himself was as much as any addicted to astrology. In the accusations particularly against great ladies who for blood or wealth or beauty merited imperial wrath, it was a constant article that they had dealt with the Chaldeans or practiced the rites of magic. For this many great ladies were doomed to death. Section 4 What ridiculous causes produced capital guilt, the spirit of the emperor Constantius with somewhat of his father Constantine. This humor of consulting the astrologers still increasing with superstition and tyranny administered an inexhaustible fund of crimes and accusations. The noise of a mouse and a wall or the sight of a weasel became matters of omen and consultation and consequently matters of treason and blood. So did the use of an old woman's charm for aches. So did the counting the vows upon one's fingers as a remedy against the colic. So did the wearing of an amulet for an auger. So did the casual dropping of any word or joke that bore any analogy to the empire or the emperor's name or to any manner of state and power. So did the frequenting of sepulchres and carrying away the bones or hablements of the dead. So did any dream dreamt about any such subject or construed to be so dreamed. Under Constantius there was one Mercurius, a Persian who was a favorite of the emperor and a spy for dreams. In so much that he had the title of Somniorum comes. This blessed instrument, a fellow of a malicious spirit and fawning behavior used to creep into all companies and banquets to fish out dreams from particulars and whatever there he learned of this kind after he had, with all his invention dressed it up in ugly and formidable colors he carried instantly to the emperor whose ears were ever open wide to such mischievous infusions. And this dreaming, thus represented, was a crime to be expiated only by the blood of the criminal. I should say dreamer, and so a terrible process was formed. This terror spread so much that people, far from telling their dreams, durst scarce own that they slept, nay, it was lamented by some that they had not been born upon Mount Atlas where, according to tradition, people never dream. To complain, too, of the badness of the times was high treason, for this was arraigning the government and punished capitally. But death itself, however unjust, was not always the most formidable woe. The accused were often not allowed the benefit of death till they were first barbarously wracked and mangled by torture and to gratify the inhuman vengeance of the prince, their agonies were continued as long as life could continue under them. This is testified by Amianus Marcellinus of Constantius, the second Christian emperor, more cruel than Nero and Caligula, a consideration which confirms what I have said before, that where government is bad, even the best religion can do little good. Constantius was a Christian, an even zealous in church matters and religious disputes, and by fostering them did miserably afflict Christianity and the empire. But he was so far from being proved or bettered by this zeal that the most cruel tyrants that went before him, such monsters as Caligula, Domitian, and Commodus were but babes to him in cruelty. I wish much better things could be boasted of his father, the first emperor who embraced Christianity, and styled Constantine the Great. All the princes, even the persecuting princes who went before him, hurt not religion so much as he did by blending it politics and power, by laying the foundations of a spiritual tyranny and enabling the Bishop of Rome and other great prelates to exert the domineering spirit which before they had but ill-concealed, a spirit which has almost extinguished that of the gospel. In his civil administration he was rapacious, profuse, and oppressive, and in his family barbarous and sanguinary. However his partial and flattering historian Eusebius has extolled him and concealed the iniquities of his reign. But in barbarity in the excesses of power his son and successor Constantius exceeded him. What just reason had Amianus to say that under the lying pretense of guarding imperial majesty, numerous and horrible were the butcheries then committed? Section 5. The black and general carnage under Constantius, by his bloody minister Paulus Catena, for certain causes of superstition and curiosity. Constantius surrendered at one time a great part of the Roman world to the merciless hands of accusers, torturers and executioners, and certain causes in themselves frivolous and contemptible but magnified with the swelling imputation of majesty violated, produced all the uproar and calamity attending a great civil war. The trumpet sounded to try and slay. An Egyptian deity named Bessa was noted for uttering oracles and telling fortunes and thence much frequented, adored and consulted by all the countries round about. As many consulted him in person others did it in writing. This occasioned that several of the billets thus sent continued in the temple after the answer was returned. Some of these were maliciously transmitted to the emperor, a prince of poor spirit, suspicious and bitter. He now waxed fierce and wrathful and instantly dispatched his excerble instrument, Paulus' container into the east, armed with powers equal to those given to some famous captain for carrying on a mighty war. Paulus was authorized to hear and determined discretionally and proceeded to his charge, breathing nothing but rage and bloody zeal, universal accusation and calamity, being thus licensed and encouraged. Numbers of all degrees were dragged far and near, as it were, out of the several quarters of the world to this barbarous tribunal and exposed to the mercy of a butcher who only pursued blood and prey. Some came with their joints excoriated with fetters. Others crushed and spent in carts made for carrying criminals. No distinction made between the noble and the vulgar. The process was long and tragical. In short, confiscations, exiles, tortures worse than death, death under tedious torments and every evil, painful or destructive to human nature was there exerted and suffered. As for Paulus, the lives and fortunes and fate of multitudes depended on his nod, a man skilled in the arts of cruelty and openly professing them, a savage who made a market of the rack and wheel, one fed, as it were, with human carcasses mangled and enriched with butchery and rapine. A fellow who avowed the trade of accusing and killing and studied to ensnare and devour innocence, lives and property. This was the man in high favor and trust under the pious, Constantius. It will be a relief to the reader to know that this monster bloated with blood and crimes was burnt alive under Julian, a prince of very different parts and spirit. Section 6. The ravages of the accusers continued, with the emperors, yet generally meet their fate, the falsehood of these princes, the melancholy state of those times. The reigns of the following princes, Constantius, Constans, Gallus, Valentinian, Valens, were spent in a continual war upon their people under color of their majesties being violated. Crying and tragical were the ravages committed at Rome by that bloody man Maximinus, where, under pretense of majesty violated, poisonings and acts of lewdness, some few real, more imputed, were used as a stale for killing, torturing and destroying. Every man or woman that was obnoxious to him or the accusers was put to death, and a private malice or rapaciousness, a sea of Roman blood was spilled. I think it was this Maximinus who persuaded certain persons accused to confess and discover others. In that case, promised that they should undergo no punishment either by sword or fire. They did so, trusting to his faith, and confessed crimes never committed. He then, for salvo, doomed them to die under leaden hammers. He was executed himself under Gratian. Against the defense of innocence accused, against the most evident truth and justice and all honest information, the ears of the emperor were eternally shut. But Calumni, whispered by any malignant, had equal weight with real crimes proved by authentic witnesses, says Amianus. Falsehood and flattery, envy and rapaciousness passed for evidence. Justice was converted into cruelty and judgment into rage. The tributals erected for justice and preservation of life and property were become shambles and what had names of pains and penalties was in truth robbery and assassination. As there was never any lack of accusers, there was none of criminals in the accused. In more, they were destroyed the faster they multiplied, like witches in former days, daily executed and daily increasing. They were the food and revenue of the accusers, who, while they could speak and lie, could never want occupation or wages as long as they were tyrants and men. Marcellus was charged with uttered disaffected words concerning Tiberius. And the accuser collected everything which was detestable in the manners of that prince, alleged the same as the imputations of the accused, a large field for accusations, and well cultivated by the accusers. You could say nothing of these emperors that was true, but what was treason? Such bloody monsters were they all. The worst you could have said being actually true, you were easily believed to have actually said it. Thus had lot it must have been to have lived in these rains, under monsters unchanged, and rogues let loose. When virtue and property were prescribed, villains caressed and guarded. The persons of accusers came to be considered as sacred and inviolable. The more they were detested by the public, the more they were protected by the emperor, and in proportion as they merited death and ignominy had countenance and preferment. Their vireless forgeries they owned against the lives and fortunes of the greatest men, drew down no doom or penalty upon them. The crimes charged upon Fontaeus, late procouncil of Asia by Serenus, were proved to have been by him forged, yet he escaped punishment. Nay, the more the man was aboard by all men, the more Tiberius considered and protected him. This Serenus was a villain of exalted merit. He had falsely accused his own father of treason, and already in exile. But Tiberius owed him a spite, and the son studied to oblige Tiberius, who had been offended with the elder Serenus for once abrading him with some wicked service unrewarded, nor had an interval of eight years pacified the prince. Yet it generally so happened that their reign was but temporary. First or last most of them found the genuine wages of their fraud and iniquity and suffered the same doom that they had made others suffer. A doom much more bitter as it was just, accompanied also with the universal hatred of their persons, and with a guilty and upgrading conscience. This was the fate of Seulius, Cassius Severus, and others. Now it was the custom to find high treason and harmless words in pertinent vanities and even in ridiculous follies, deserving rather pity than punishment, such as were those charged upon libo. So it was the purpose and policy of the emperor never to prevent any guilt of this kind. On the contrary he was glad of guilt and when he knew it was begun let it run on till it was ripe and evidence and accusers were ready. Tiberius knew that libo dealt with the astrologers, with everything done or said by him. Yet in no time had he caressed libo more than at the time when he was meditating his destruction. He preferred him to the pritorship. He entertained him at his table, showed no strangeness in his countenance, no resentment in his words, so deeply had he smothered his vengeance. And when he might have restrained all the dangerous speeches and practices of libo, he chose rather to permit them in order to punish him for them. The crafty tyrant did not only lull asleep his destined victim by these excessive civilities, but met by them to deceive the world. As if libo's crimes were a surprise upon him, at a juncture when he would seem to have meant all kindness to libo. But he was mistaken and his dissimulation only served to heighten the opinion of his malice. For craft discovered is worse than folly, as folly never creates hatred. Cunning is only then complete when it cannot be detected, which seldom happens. Nero caressed and flattered Seneca while he was devising all methods to destroy him. Never was there such a scene of false fondness as that which he played. He was foreign by nature, says Tacitus, and by habit nurtured to hide his hate under insidious blandishments. Domitian used to treat with the utmost good humor and tenderness, such as he intended to murder. Nor was there any warning or interval between his caressing you and delivering you to the executioner. Nor a more certain sign that a tragical doom awaited you as his gentle behavior towards you. Well, might Suetonius say that his cruelty was not only excessive, but sly and instantaneous. Now, under such a torrent of accusations, under laws perverted, in former's busy, employed, protected and rewarded, when all things were crimes and all men were feared, nay, when fear itself was a crime, for when Caligula murdered his brother he gave it for a reason that the youth was afraid of being murdered. When servants and neighbors, nay, acquaintance and kindred, when all justified to be suspected, we need not admire that all offices of friendship and compassion were suspended amongst men, and compassion itself as it were extinguished. When Libo Drusus, so often already mentioned upon his arraignment for treason, went into mourning from house to house to solicit the interposition of his relatives as all the great families in Rome were so, and to pray their aid, when his life and all was at stake they all declined it to a man, each alleging a reason of his own, but every one in reality from the same cause, namely the fear of the emperor. People must not only show no sorrow or sympathy for their murdered relations, but they must testify joy unless they had a mind to be murdered themselves. As under Nero, many, those nearest relations having been murdered by him, repaired to the temples with Thanksgiving and when the city was filled with corpses, so was the capital with victims. In that mighty carnage made by Tiberius, of the friends and followers of Sejanus at once, when the pavements were covered with single carcasses, or filled with carcasses and piles, those of every age, many that were noble, many that were mean, all cast abroad promiscuously, neither their acquaintance nor kindred were allowed to approach them, or even at last to behold them. About the corpses, spies were placed to watch countenances and the signs of sorrow, and when, after they became putrified and noisome, they were thrown into the Tiber, whether they floated in the stream or were cast upon the banks, none would touch them, none durst bury or burn them. The force of fear had cut off all the commerce and offices of humanity, and the more tyranny raged, the more compassion was extinguished. Even the outrageous Caligula had so well learned to hide his heart that when the cruelty of Tiberius, his mother and both his brothers were condemned in banishment. Even the outrageous Caligula had so well learned to hide his heart that when, by the cruelty of Tiberius, his mother and both his brothers were condemned and banished, not a word escaped him, nor groan, though all arts were used to draw words and resentment from him. Octavia, too, the wife of Nero, when her little innocent brother was murdered before her face by the direction of the tyrant, her husband, had even then learned, young though she was, to smother all symptoms of tenderness and sorrow and every affection of the soul, nay, agrippina without her courage and high spirit, labored to hide her surprise and dread and every other emotion upon that occasion. Section 7 the increase of tyranny, innocence and guilt not measured by the law, but by the emperor's pleasure and malice. One would think that tyranny had by this time gone as far as it could go, and that after this, human cruelty and tears could be strained no higher. But this is a mistake. Flatterers and accusers were ingenious villains, and tyranny is a monster never glutted. It is still craving for new butchery and victims, its purveyors therefore are ever studying to humor and to pamper it. Who could have imagined anything upon earth more intensely cruel than Tiberius? Yet his successors exceeded him, one and another in cruelties, for number and quality, and Domitian committed such as had escaped even the proceeding monsters. Hence, Tacitus says, as our forefathers have seen the ultimate point and the last efforts of public liberty, it was reserved to us of this generation to behold the utmost weight and severity of public bondage. Since by the terrors of state inquisitors we are even bereft by the common intercourse of civil life, that of discoursing ourselves and of listening to the discourse of others. He adds, we should have also lost the use of memory as well as the habit of speaking had it been equally in our power to forget as to be silent. The trial of persons for treason went on generally in the old form, all was resolvable upon the breast and good pleasure of the Prince. According to hints from him, persons were condemned or acquitted, sometimes by his interposing the tribuncial power, they were not admitted to be accused. Sometimes treason was found in one man's words and actions, which in another were not allowed to be criminal. Thus men were sentenced or absolved, or not accused, not according to their guilt or innocence, but to their degree of grace or dislike with the Emperor, who had the prerogative to coin guilt and innocence, and to invert one into the other as he pleased. Thus Tiberius pursued Vestilius to death, his brother's ancient friend, and his own, for suspicion of having lampooned his nephew Caligula, but would not allow Cata Veselinus to be a criminal for the same offense and for many more. But Cata had merit, he was always foremost in every bloody council, all his wickedness and crimes were so many services and so much merit. In those days there was no sure guilt, but that of worth and of virtue and innocence, hence the security of all men egregiously mischievous. The known cruelty of the Prince was no terror to those who took care to escape it by the vileness of their lives, especially if they were active to feed his cruelty by noble sacrifices, like Heterius Agrippa, who meditated in the midst of his cups and harlots the destruction of illustrious men. The worst and vileest men in the Empire became the Securist and often the highest by destroying the best. End of Discourse 7, Part 1 The Complete Works of Tacitus, to which are prefixed political discourses upon that author, edited and translated by Thomas Gorton with introductory essays by Thomas Gorton. Volume 1 Discourse 7 of The Accusations and Accusers Under the Emperors, Part 2 Section 8 What Tacitus Means by Instrumenta Regni Besides the accusers who were the imperial bloodhounds to hunt men down for words, conjectures, signs, and appearances, by ridiculous pleas, force constructions, and rested laws, the emperors had other pestilent tools called by Tacitus Instrumenta Regni, the instruments of imperial rule. These were the poisoners and assassins. When there was no room or pretence to accuse a person's signal for worth or opulence or on any account obnoxious and thence fit to be destroyed, or when it was unsafe to accuse him, recourse was had to a dose or dagger. Such were Publius Sellar and Ilius the Freedman, they who poisoned Jews Silanus by the appointment of Agrippina. Such was Anisetus who murdered Nero's mother by the direction of her son. Such was Locusta who administered the poison to Claudius, a woman famous for many feats in poisoning, and long retained for this talent amongst the implements of court. It was she who prepared this poison as well as that which destroyed young Britannicus. Such was Xenophon, physician to Claudius, one who helped to dispatch his master. Such were they who, by the procurement of Livia, made away the descendants of Augustus. After the assassination of Caligula, in his apartment was found a chest filled with all sorts of poisons so rapid that when they were thrown to the sea they proved baneful to the fish, and numbers were by the tide cast dead upon the shore. Such also were the tribunes and centurions, and even the captain of the Praetorian guards who, whenever they were ordered to seize and kill, never failed to obey without any reason about the word of command. Thus Postumus Agrippa was dispatched by a centurion Tiberius. Thus Geryllanus the Tribune was at the head of a band of soldiers by Nero employed to see the execution of Vistainus the Consul, a man charged with no guilt. But Nero, who hated and feared him, having neither crime nor accuser against him and being therefore unable to assume even the false guise of a judge, betook himself to the violence of the tyrant. In truth the whole body of Praetorian guards were kept by these tyrants as their assassins to murder for them or to secure others who did. The Turk, too, has his mutes and poisoners in the Serralio, as well as soldiers to execute his fury secretly or openly. Louis XI entertained to stab and drown besides his trusty murderer the provost Tristan. Queen Catherine and her son Charles IX kept an assassin to dispatch privately such men of rank as they could find no other means to destroy. And as dark as the proceedings in the Bastille are kept it is known what helps have been administered to the miserable prisoners there to get rid of life besides that of nature. Under the reign of Louis XIV the trade of poisoning was brought to great perfection and was suspected with too much appearance to have been part of the politics of some French ministers as well as the bane of others. Section IX how much these emperors hated and how fast they destroyed all great and worthy men their dread of every man for any reason the destruction of every man who was great or good was so common and almost certain in those tragical reigns that Tacitus reckons as a wonder the natural death of Lucius Piso, chief pontiff. Eminent men and eminent merit are the dread of tyrants. That merit and those talents which during the Old Republic would have certainly recommended a man to public favour and public honours did afterwards expose him as certainly to imperial jealousy and persecution generally to ruin and death. And those pestilent accusers instruments of public servitude the sons of rapine and blood who were now the men of fashion and favour clothed with the spoils of their country for afflicting and mangling her and devouring her vitals would have been then treated as public enemies and beasts of prey and doomed to the pains of murder and treason with universal consent and abhorrence. Such a barbarous and unnatural inversion of all order law and righteousness accompanied the sovereignty of the Caesars. Augustus reckoned the best and wisest of them though he affected to love and countenance men of parts and accomplishments yet limited his favours to such of them as were devoted to flattery and the usurpation. Hence the public honours conferred by him upon Ateius Capito a new man, one of signal abilities but a notorious flatterer. Nay, the emperor raised him in opposition to Antistia's labio one who excelled in the same acquirements one who never departed from a laudable freedom of speech and spirit and thence more applauded than the other by the public voice whereas the suppleness and submission of Capito rendered him more acceptable to those who bore rule. However, by this merit gained the dignity of consul the other, for having too much was never suffered to rise higher than that of Preta how much must the spirit of imperial jealousy increase afterwards. Everything gave these tyrants fear and offence. Was a man nobly born and popular? He withdrew the affections of the people rivaled the prince and threatened a civil war. Was he akin to Augustus? He had his eye upon the sovereignty. Had he a reputation for arms? He was a living terror to the princes. Was a great man afraid of popularity and lived retired? He gained fame by shunning it and still was an eyesore and his best fate was to leave his country. But where the exile was a considerable man the executioner generally followed. Was he virtuous and his life and morals exact? He was another brutus and by the purity of his manners upbraided the vicious behaviour of the emperor. Was a man sad? It was because the administration prospered. Did he indulge himself in gaiety and feasting? It was because the emperor was ill and his end thought to be near. Was he rich? He was too wealthy for a subject and great wealth in private hands boded ill to princes. Was he poor? He was thence the more enterprising and desperate. Was he a dull man and unactive? He only put on the guise of stupidity and sloth till he found room for some bloody purpose. Or had he a different character and was a lively and active man? Then it was plain he did not so much as feign a desire of private life and recess but avowed a bustling republican spirit and to be meddling with the state. Did he live in pomp and magnificence? He studied to overshadow the emperor in seats and grandeur. Was he accomplished in science, a philosopher or master of eloquence and thence esteemed? The luster of his fame gave umbrage to the prince. In short, no man could possess any advantage or quality that rendered him acceptable to God or man, a blessing to his country, or to himself. But such quality and advantage was sure to awaken the jealousy and vengeance of these tyrants and procure his doom. Section 10 Reflections upon the spirit of a tyrant, with what wantonness the Roman emperor's shed the blood of the Roman people, the blindness of such as assisted the usurpation of Caesar and Augustus. How miserable must be the reflections of a tyrant if he has any reflections that numbers must be wretched for what wretchedness is not produced by tyranny, that he may make a hideous figure unsafe and detested. Every step he takes for his grandeur and security renders him more contemptible or abhorred and therefore more insecure and the bloody end of most abundantly shows that numerous guards and armies are so far from securing him that from them his greatest dread accrues. What a curse it is upon a thinking being to consider himself as an obstacle to everything lovely and desirable amongst men, to the virtue, liberty and happiness of all men, to his own peace and stability, to his own innocence and true glory, that for every chain he puts upon his people he multiplies terrors and contempt upon his own head and having forfeited their affections and living in distrust of those whom he ought chiefly to confide in relies for his life upon hirelings, the sons of vice and idleness or forced from their honest labour to be made so and often picked out of streets and jails. He dreads every man who is great and brave and one who fights for him, conquers for him and saves him does but expose himself to jealousy, indignity and martyrdom. His own slaves, spiritless and cowardly cannot serve him and a man truly valiant to him. The people are apt to admire and magnify military virtue and thence the tyrant hates and dreads such as have it. Charles V held it a greater honour to be count of Catalonia than king of the Romans. He had reason. The Catalans were free men and valiant, the Romans poor monk-ridden slaves. But I shall find another place in the course of these observations to discourse more fully of armies and conquests. I shall here only observe with what wantonness these tyrants shed the blood of Roman citizens. Citizens whose lives were once so valuable fenced and secured by laws so numerous, so sacred and strong, lives so precious that nothing against the life and fortune of the meanest Roman could be determined but by the Romans in general assembled in centuries. These Romans who, while free became the masters of mankind were by losing their liberty become daily victims to their own domestic traitors and miserable traitors they were to a Claudius, a Caligula, a Nero. By the ancient constitution and laws of Rome these usurpers were the only persons liable to be put to death without process or form or penalty. See the Lex Valeria in Livy and Cicero Pro Domo Suar. Had such as were champions for the exultation of Caesar and Augustus foreseen what their race and descendants were to suffer under the successes of these usurpers, who have quenched their zeal would it not have struck them with horror? Had they foreseen their offspring stooping and groaning under a beastly bondage, not to the emperor only but to his slaves and trumpets living a precarious life at the mercy of sycophants under continual terrors of the accusers or themselves exercising the execrable occupation of such some endangered by the lustre of their name some by that of their virtue and capacity others from that of their wealth many become pimps, pathics and parasites to the prince several upon his authority prostituting their persons and quality upon the public stage numbers doomed to exile upon desolate rocks and islands numbers slain outright their carcasses exposed and denied the privilege of burial their fortunes seized from their families and all of them liable to the like tragical fate their wives with all daily exposed to the lust of the tyrant and afterwards made the subject of his imperial sport and drolary even before their injured and blushing husbands they prostituted in the palace as in the public stews and such as passed by invited in to lie with these illustrious ladies as with common harlots for money had the partisans of usurpation foreseen these woeful consequences to their families from it would it not have changed their hearts and their conduct yet what was easier to be foreseen than the fury and ravages of a madman or fool unlimited where chance and not law directed the blind succession as did blind will and not reason the administration but with the heat of party and present impulse cool reflection and foresight are incompatible it scarce ever happens that for future considerations however wise and passion however foolish is smothered the adherents of Caesar and Augustus had an immediate view of greatness and would not disturb so pleasing an imagination by anxious care or fears for things future all the world goes well with those that are well and before men can be brought to believe prophecies of misery and to feel it what a child is man what a name is reason the most frequent use we make of it is to reason ourselves out of it and from it to borrow arms against itself just as we have seen laws quoted to vindicate the subversion of law and the holy gospel of peace and love urged in defence of persecution and enmity section 11 why under such tyrants the senate continued to subsist it may be inquired why tyrants so jealous and precipitous did not abolish the senate and it was once the purpose of Caligula as it was afterwards that of Nero to have murdered all the senators but in truth it would have been an enterprise of infinite difficulty and danger to have attempted the suppression of that body it is incredible what stubbornness and force there is in established names customs and forms which often are harder to destroy than realities and substances and signs and titles frequently remain when the things signified and denominated by them are gone thus popery has extirpated christianity and is called christianity and evangelical humility and forbearance are preached and extolled in the midst of pride and flames as the popes pretend to derive all power from the gospel which they pervert and suppress so did the other Roman tyrants theirs from the senate as if the ancient free state had still subsisted and to have destroyed the senate would have been to have abrogated their own title to sovereignty they must likewise have destroyed the consulship which was still recon summum imperium the supreme magistracy with the office of preter and every office great and small in the state with the title and style of every law of Rome and every tribunal of justice for every law and every office depended upon the senate or upon the senate and people they must have abolished learning, history records, all process and memory nay the very military titles and laws of war and negotiation those about the colonies and provinces, customs and trade and have introduced absolute oblivion to new language and a new creation now what power what genius upon earth was equal to such a prodigious design that of vacating at once regulations and usages so infinitely numerous so long established become a great part of the public language grown as it were to the minds and memories of men and essential to speech and conversation as to business and protection and then to supply such an immense void with ordinances, offices terms and manner of process so as to answer all the ends of society in so vast an empire this was not to be done nor was it needful they found their account sufficiently in breaking the power and spirit of the senate in reducing it to a skeleton and a name and in exercising under that name all their own violences and exorbitances the senate and the people had a venerable sound and served as a cloak for power when they themselves have none and the emperor had all the registering of edicts by the parliament of Paris has become a matter of form but without that form the court as uncontrolled as it is does not care to execute an edict the Romans still preserved a veneration for their senate and magistrates and the same was often found in the armies in so much that as later as the reign of Commodus the soldiers were so enraged at the insolence of Perennis his favourite and minister for discharging from their military commands patricians and senators and for placing in their room others of equestrian rank that they cut him in pieces time however with the continuance of tyranny and barbarity its inseparable companion cancelled by degrees the old names and forms after the essence had been long cancelled and introduced a cloud of offices and words rumbling sounds and swelling titles suitable to the genius of absolute rule and as different from the purity of the old republican language as our liberty and politeness from grossness and bondage section 12 how the unrelenting cruelty of the emperors hastened the dissolution of the empire the bad reigns of Constantine and Constantius the good reign of Julian the indistreet behaviour of the Christians continued tyranny and end of the empire to resume once more the subject of accusations and the abused law of majesty they were cankers in the heart of the empire which at last hastened its dissolution the emperors to gratify their own cruelty were continually wasting the public strength by sacrifices noble and many and to satiate their avarice or that of their creatures encouraged endless seizures and confiscations this crying oppression was by the emperor Constantine before mentioned carried higher than any of the pagan emperors had ever carried it besides his own rapine who was merciless and excessive he glutted his favourites and grandees with the spoil and fortunes of others as Marcellinus witnesses his son Constantius followed his example and was a more consuming tyrant than the father I have already said something of his character and reign which was chiefly conducted by inhuman villains whose heads and hands were eternally engaged in the plunder and blood of his people such were his counsellors such his governors of provinces which were sucked and devoured to the bone and might say with truth what a noble dalmatian once told Tiberius instead of sending us shepherds to protect our flocks you send us wolves to devour them how many governors in all countries have deserved to be hanged before they reached their governments because they went with design to rob and oppress these depredations were restrained during the reign of Julian who had as much capacity as many virtues and accomplishments as could well adorn private life or a crown he was brave, generous wise and humane a hero, a philosopher a politician, a friend and father to mankind it is pity such an amiable character should have any blots his had too he was superstitious even to weakness and had conceived an aversion to the Christians altogether unsuitable to his remarkable candour and equity an aversion which they themselves improved too much by a behaviour unworthy of so great a prince much more unworthy of so meeker religion they indeed treated him with eminent spite and outrage to reduced him libeled him and even mobbed him nothing could be a sharper satire upon them for such brutish conduct than the singular meekness with which he bore it the truth is the Christians were then strangely degenerated from the primitive peaceableness and purity become licentious and turbulent to the last degree and perpetually instigated by the arrogance and ambition of the bishops who were come to contend with arms as well as curses for the possession of opulent churches it was not uncommon with these ambitious men to affront and revile the emperors to their faces to publish invectives against them to break the public peace and to raise frequent tumults and seditions as they were the most complacent courtiers when pleased so they were the most implacable incendiaries when disgusted all this was enough to alarm any prince and to awaken resentment in the most phlegmatic moreover a great part of the wealth and revenue which used to go towards the public charge particularly to defend the frontiers against the barbarians was diverted and appropriated to maintain the grandeur and pomp of the great prelates sacadotes, speckier religiones fortunous omnes effundaband as Tacitus says upon another occasion as some parts of the behaviour of that great prince one wise and good in most things but mistaken and even unjust in others chiefly towards the Christians ought to be censured and condemned the behaviour of the Christians towards him can never be justified they insulted him intolerably with all the excesses of bitterness and ill-breeding while he lived and slandered and blackened him shamefully when dead as much as some of them basically flattered and extolled other emperors who though complacent and liberal to the ecclesiastics were consuming tyrants it is the business of truth and of true religion to give even enemies their due and friends no more than their due to give Julian his if we lay aside his religion I doubt whether we can find or record one prince that excelled him or three that equalled him he is indeed a pattern to princes in spite of the anger and obliquy of writers who were apparently animated by a spirit then too common a spirit altogether narrow monkish and vindictive such a one as the charitable religion of Jesus disclaims and wants not to his benevolent gospel and presets I sincerely wish all men to conform but fewer signs of such conformity or rather greater signs of the want of it have I nowhere seen than in the conduct discourses and writings of such as have railed at others for their religious sentiments real or imputed I wish too that a temper so barbarous and anti-Christian had been entirely confined to the days of that Emperor whose administration will forever recommend him to all calm and impartial men as an astonishing example of virtue and parts the reign of Jovian whose intention seems to have been honest and good was but short and followed by those of Valentinian and Valens princes exceeding furious and sanguinary under them the old accusations confiscations and carnage were revived without mercy and continued then forward with few intervals till the Roman Empire was quite overthrown the people in every part of it being quite harassed and consumed finding no relaxation from oppressors and accusations no protection from law no refuge in the clemency of the emperors grew desperate and revolted to the Goths, Huns, Vandals and other invaders section 13 the Excellency of a limited monarchy especially of our own I think it is Machiavell who observes that two or three weak and bad princes succeeding each other are sufficient to ruin a state where they govern by mere will but it may survive a long succession of foolish princes limited by good laws Vespasian found three hundred millions of our money wanting to restore the empire to a condition of subsisting monarchy according to Plato is the best government or the worst to which opinion I subscribe as I do to that of Philip de Comines that England is the place in the world where the public is most equally administered and where the people suffer the least violence we are blessed with that form of government which Tacitus mentions as the most perfect and thinks the hardest to be framed that happy balance and mixture of interests which comprehends every interest an English monarch has one advantage which sets him above any arbitrary monarch upon earth he obliges his subjects by being obliged to them as he protects them by defending their property and laws so they by supporting him enable him to do it while they give by choice and not by force they give cheerfully princes who take all themselves and leave nothing to their people to give can never be beloved by their people if it be true that we hate those whom we have hurt it is equally true that we are apt to love those whom we have obliged hence God is said not only to love doing good but to love the good that he does arbitrary princes would at least choose to have the love and affections of their people were the same to be acquired by furious and unaccountable rule but this is impossible hence dread of their power is all the share they can expect in the hearts of their subjects and this is a compliment which their subjects pay to things the most hideous and vile to serpents to mad and wild beasts to plagues and Satan to pain and poverty but even this miserable compliment is not always paid to such princes they are not always dreaded when their terrors are become habitual they cease in a good measure to be terrors the people grow hardened and desperate they themselves become scorned and contempt the most abject lot in life becomes the portion of those who possess the highest when Nero asked Sobrius Flavius one of the conspirators against his life from what motives he had renounced his allegiance it was because I abhorred thee said he the consul Vistinius too was known to Nero to despise his vile and unmanly spirit and in the whole detection of that conspiracy and the punishment of the conspirators nothing was so signal as the series of contempt poured upon that brutal tyrant in the height of his power and amidst the terrors of his tyranny nothing says Tacitus mortified him so much but when the monster was deposed he incurred such sovereign scorn he was doomed to be stripped naked and scourged to death like a slave with his head fastened in a pillory his carcass to be cast afterwards from the Tarpean rock and with a hook in his nose to be dragged to the Tiber nor could the great reputation of Julius Caesar all that of Augustus and all their power secure them from popular insults despite the Moicum Calvum and Videsne Utcanidus Orbem Digito Temparet were contumilis which even their greatness could not escape Mithridates king of Armenia when despoiled of his kingdom experienced by the behavior of his people how much they reverenced him they even assaulted him with reproaches and blows when the emperor Vitelius was led along to the slaughter with his hands bound behind him his habit all torn and himself a filthy spectacle he found much the like usage numbers wounded him with reproaches but none was found to bewail him and the populace railed at him when dead with the same baseness of heart with which they had flattered him lovingly end of discourse 7 part 2 section 11 of the complete works of Tacitus edited by Thomas Gordon this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org recorded by Mary Rody the complete works of Tacitus to which are prefixed political discourses upon that author edited and translated by Thomas Gordon with introductory essays by Thomas Gordon volume 1 discourse 8 of the general debasement of spirit inagulation which accompany power unlimited section 1 the motives of flattery considered its wildness and whence it begins I shall now say something of the extreme debasement of the Romans under the emperors flattery ever rises in proportion to power and fear where law and liberty reign and men hold not their property and lives at the mercy of one or a few the security begets in them a pride and stubbornness inconsistent with servility and adulation men do not flatter such as they are owned to be no better than themselves or such as have no power to hurt them nor will they pay over much reverence to great titles which are not accompanied with great power nor supported by superstition for superstition enslave as effectually as real power and therefore confers it nor is tyranny ever so complete as when the chief magistrate is chief pontiff as where the Saldans Egypt and Baghdad or which is the next thing can create and depose him as do the Turkish emperors but where men hold their fortunes and lives at the mere mercy of another they will fear him as much as they love themselves and flatter him as much as they fear him if his power be limited their flattery will be limited but boundless if his authority be so thus court and psychofency prevail less under a mixed monarchy than under one that is despotic in an aristocracy less than there and less still in a popular state perfect equality quite destroys it complete sovereignty raises it to the highest the more foolish and wicked a prince is the more incense he will have it is the surest way of pleasing a tyrant as it sanctifies his iniquities and represents him to himself the authority of all his grandeur and equal to all the highest offices of empire Tiberias who was a prince of great penetration hated flattery because he knew it to be so as he knew that they who paid him most the senate and grandees dreaded and therefore hated his power as he who understood perfectly the nature and blessing of liberty would have dreaded and hated any man in his place and in theirs he knew that flattery and hate often go together so that they who possess the greatest hate profess the greatest affection it is as much as their lives are worth to manifest any tokens of aversion and the stronger it is it will require the more art and acidity to hide it Julius Caesar was loaded with all sorts and every excess of honors to take him odious while they who conferred them aboard him and were concerning schemes to destroy him with the same view the like artifices were practiced by the senate towards his successor Octavius afterwards Augustus concerning whom the equivocal saying of Cicero could not but be remembered by Tiberias they should extol the youth and take him off hence though Tiberias was irreconcilable to public liberty he abominated flattery he saw that flattery was the mere effect of bondage and suiting only with the spirit of slaves and though he would not part with the sovereignty notwithstanding he often talked of it as well as pretended great backwardness to accept it yet he was ashamed of the violent slavish abjectness of the Romans but neither under Tiberias was there any security in abstaining from flattery he was a prince infinitely jealous and could brook no sort of opposition nor even independence and it was both necessary and dangerous to flatter him but in my opinion not so dangerous as necessary I mean to such as purely consulted their own safety and to escape the rage of the tyrant it is true he despised flatterers but he hurt them not and it was natural for him to think suspicious as he was that such as would not flatter him scorned him it is certain he never forgave free speakers never could endure men of bold spirit but first or last pursued them to destruction it was perilous sestacitus to practice no flattery and perilous to practice too much El Piso had invaded against the corruptions of the state particularly against the pestilent pursuits of the empleters who were daily arraigning and circumventing and menacing all men he even threatened to quit Rome Tiberias bore this calmly nay he descended to mollify him with kind words but in a soul like his brooding over vengeance though he had suppressed the sallies of wrath the deep impressions remained Piso was a good while afterwards charged with treason and but for a natural death which opportunely intervened must have suffered the pains of treason Asenius Gallus incurred his rage for a motion in senate which had really a compliment in it Tiberias had in a letter to the fathers complained that from the plots and snares of his enemies he led a life full of dread and apprehensions Gallus proposed to address the prince that he would explain his fears to the senate and permit them to remove the causes this incensed him Gallus too had piqued him before and was suspected by him of aspiring views and though he had notoriously flattered him he could not by it redeem his life As all corruptions in a state begin commonly from the grandees or rather they are beginners of all corruption although the grandees are the most signal flatterers they are most in the eye of a prince they are the most obnoxious to his jealousy and thence the most prone to flatter him a prince who governs or would govern by mere will must countenance and employ such as ask no reasons for what he does but commend all he does and the more they have to get or lose the lower they must stoop the more they must praise the servitude of theirs they make reprisals upon the people and are as terrible to those below them as fawning to those above them for the most prostitute slaves are the most insolent tyrants and it is from the same baseness of spirit that men oppress and flatter it was truly said of Caligula that there never lived a more complacent slave nor a more cruel and detestable master thus flattery is propagated and infects all degrees of men the prince awes the grandees and by the grandees is flattered the grandees oppress and terrify the people and thence the people dread and adore the grandees the bushas are slaves to the great Turk the people slaves to the bushas the insolence of slavish spirits is by tacitus exemplified in Vitellius among many other instances he was always the foremost in flattery ever assaulting every worthy patriot with reproaches and ever struck silent when repulsed agreeably to the genius of sycophants to be both insulting and cowardly this man however prospered by prostitution he had great employments under Tiberius he was a great favorite in the two succeeding reigns he was thrice consul and one censor nor did the man want good talents and qualifications in the government of provinces sestacitus he exercised the integrity of a primitive Roman but his dread of Caligula and complacence to Claudius changed him into a filthy slave and he is handed down to posterity as a pattern of the most infamous flattery the just reward of his servile submission his first and best actions were forgot his last and worst remembered and the excellences of his younger years obliterated by an old age drenched in servitude and iniquity besides his adoring Claudius as a god he carried one of Messalina sandals in his bosom continually frequently kissed it and amongst his household gods placed golden statues of palace and Narcissus the emperor's freed slaves this man was I think farther to Vitalius afterwards emperor such men such princes delight in Regibus Bonico Amali suspectiores sunt semperque his alienavirtus formidulosa est sestalist section two men of elevated minds irreconcilable to arbitrary power and then suspected by it the court paid to it always insincere sometimes expedient but seldom observes any bounds Agrippa told Augustus according to Dion Cassius that it was impossible for a man of great spirit and resolution to be other than a lover of liberty and an enemy in his heart to an absolute master Agrippa himself was that sort of man he had courage enough to advise that prince to resign the sovereignty and restore public liberty such in truth was his credit and bravery that Augustus thought himself no otherwise safe than either by killing him or taking him for his son-in-law the emperor did more than give him his daughter he assumed him partner in the tribunitial power which as the surfer and his successors manage it was in effect the dictatorial power the other great men of Rome he suspected and hated though in manatee and for the praise of posterity he left him his heirs in the third degree Augustus and Tiberius judged too well to imagine that the illustrious senators and chiefs of Rome men who had scorned the alliance and affinity of kings nay treated kings as their creatures like a blind dependence upon one of their own citizens who by usurpation and violence had made himself an enemy to all even in the reign of Tiberius there were Romans who thought themselves as good as him Cneus Piso for example scarce gave place to him and despised his sons as men far beneath himself but his haughty spirit cost him his life for though Tiberius used him as a proper instrument to thwart and overthrow Germanicus he afterwards turned that very service to the destruction of Piso affection can never accompany a submission which is forced nor men submit willingly to a power which they think they have themselves a right to exercise hence the compliments and praises of these eminent Romans toward the emperors are generally by Tacitus from flattery though sometimes necessary and sometimes well intended necessary when used for their own preservation and well intended when employed to instill into the prince virtuous lessons of government Marcus Tarentius was perhaps justifiable when in defense of his life which was at stake he made that high flown compliment to Tiberius to thee the gods have granted their disposal of things and to us have left the glory of obedience the senators also did well in magnifying some popular acts of Nero that his youthful mind being thus incited by the glory arising from light things might court in it things which were greater Anthracia pedis was justifiable when in his speech about Antistius the Praetor arraigned for treason for emperor he extolled that princess mercy in order to make him merciful but as that which is only good in some certain degrees and exigencies seldom stops there so this same flattery no wise blamable under some circumstances grew scandalous and excessive it's kept pace with all the frenzy and cruelties of these outrageous and inhuman tyrants and by yet their cruelties and frenzy were encouraged the more mischievous and vile they were the more they were adored dread of their fury had seized the souls of men no as any remedy sought against their fury but that of flattery men of slavish minds always began the detestable route their example drew others after them the lovers of liberty found it impossible to resist the many to distinguish themselves by opposition interests weighed some example others fear all and at last it became a common strife who should be foremost in the race to servitude all public spirit all regard to the glory and good of Rome the inseparable characteristic of the old free Romans was now lost and forgot it was converted into fear and anxiety of every man for himself this will ever be the case when a prince armed with sufficient powers sets up his own interest against that of the state particulars having no longer anything to do with the public will study only to secure themselves section three the excessive power of the imperial freed slaves with the scandalous submission of the Romans as tyranny produces abject fear and anxiety in particulars for themselves so from this selfish fear and anxiety come the beginning and progress of universal servitude the extinction of all patriotism and honest zeal the power of corruption and the symptoms of a state hastening to ruin and desolation all the good or evil which could befall any Roman lay wholly in the breast and option of the prince and hence the study of every man to humor the prince or the slaves who governed him for governed he generally was by slaves the vilest and most pestilent yes the whole empire that empire that contained a great share of the globe and terrified almost the whole was swayed, sold, oppressed and despot from the chain and the ore Claudius not only declared that affairs abjudged by his receiver should be held equally valid with those abjudged by himself but got the same established by a solemn decree of senate now these receivers of the emperors were his manumized slaves who under that title often governed promises he raised the authority of these vermin to a pitch equal that of the sovereign and the laws Felix governor of Judea was a freed slave the husband of three queens and the brother of Pallas another freed slave who controlled the emperor lay with the empress and was master of the empire so that Nero said pertinently of him when he turned him out of office that Pallas went to abdicate the sovereignty behold the debasement of great and memorable Roman senate it is not enough that they flatter the emperor and heap upon him powers and honors so great and manifold that at last they have none for themselves hardly any for him they must likewise adore and enrich and exalt the fugitives and off-scourings of the earth insects naturally doomed to the vilest offices of the kitchen stable and privies the Romans lords of the world must put their necks under the feet of the dregs of human race for a contemptible project of that same Pallas about punishing ladies who married slaves baria saranis consul elect the first magistrate in the Roman world moved the senate to reward him with the ornaments of praetor the next civil office in the state and a present of near to this motion it was added by Cornelia Scipio that Pallas should have public thanks that he who descended from the old kings of Arcadia should to the service of the public thus postponed that his ancient nobility and dain to be reckoned amongst the emperor's ministers but Claudius avert that Pallas would rest content with the honors of the praetor ship and rejecting the present choose to live in his usual poverty the decree passed was engraved in brass and publicly hung up a pompous decree in which a fellow lately a bear-sooted slave now worth eight millions was magnified for observing the laudable self-denial and parsimony of the primitive ages observed the strange inversion of all order and sense dignity debased infamy exalted how low the awful authority of the senate descended how vilely the function of a consul prostituted how ignominiously the glorious name of Scipio employed how abominably the ornaments of magistracy defiled an ordinance of state big with servitude and lies what stupidity in the emperor with insolence in the slave and what a melancholy failure of all virtue truth and glory amongst all degrees of men it was in truth a compliment made to a slave by a body of slaves as Pliny well observes we may guess at the villainy and evil deeds of the man by the enormous honors that were paid to him though we had no other ruler proof as we have proofs enough no such violent court was ever paid to Seneca and Tygellinus had much than Boris real goodness and merit beget in all good men real friendship and affection and real affection is never so loud nor should we as affection assumed where we sincerely like and esteem we are not afraid of suspicion in the person esteemed nor spend much breath and ceremony to convince him but where we are conscious of our own serity our professions our pompous and wordy it was absolutely impossible that these vile upstarts should love the senate or any great men great in blood or fortune or virtue or the senate or any great Roman could love such vile upstarts but we see what disguises fear and falsehood can put on impartial posterity which neither fears the senate nor palace can perceive nothing but the honors by them conferred upon him but the infamy of both perpetuated nor was Claudius the only emperor who was thus led in bondage by his franchised bond men other submitted to the same vassalage to the same infamous counsellors pluric principles says Pliny Libertorum errant serbi Borum consilis Borum nutura gevantur kindly governed and humankind completely happy when the universal lord was swayed by the lust and nod of creatures just redeemed from the infamy of whips and fetters the mighty Caesar to whom the Romans owed all their ensuing misery and bondage began the exaltation of such sons of earth and in contempt of censure declared that if he had employed highwaymen and assassins to support his grandeur he would in return have honored them with the same favor a true confession but my things not very politic we have seen already whether his worthy successors did not actually do so and what were the instrument the regni the bloody tools and machinery of absolute rule Polycletus a manumized slave of Nero's when sent by his master to inspect the state of Britain traveled with such an immense train that he was a burden to great nations even those of Italy and Gaul section 4 the excessive flattery of the senate how ill judged there was no mean in the flattery of the senate they might have been good courtiers without being so abandoned courtiers there are instances of their carrying questions against the spirit of the court and the efforts of favourites in the worst rains thus in spite of all the power and cabaling of Agrippina they expelled Tarketius Priscus a creature of hers from the senate in detestation of his base attack upon the life of Statilius Taurus in subserviency to the empress who yearned after the wealth and fine gardens of that illustrious senator thus too in the case of Antistias the Praetor who had composed some virulent verses against Nero and exposed them at a great entertainment though he was implanted of treason by Cossutianus Capito's son-in-law to that powerful minion Tegallinus and though Junius Marullus the consul-elect moved that he might be doomed to die after the rigorous manner of antiquity the senate followed the milder motion of Tracea Perus for confiscation and exile nor would they depart from the sentence even after they had received Nero's letter about it though in it he manifested high indignation they might have made some other efforts of this kind where they made none on the contrary they gave away their liberties and voices faster than they could have been taken but the honest boldness of Tracea broke the bondage which hung upon the minds of others so much can the example of one worthy man do even in an assembly devoted to corruption and servitude it is true Tracea paid a severe after reckoning and it was the apprehension of that which stopped the mouths of others or opened them only to fawn but who would not choose the reputation and integrity of a patriot that of a Tracea even at the expense of his fate rather than the fortune and favor of the sycophant Vitelius with the abjectness of his life and infamy of his name section 5 the free judgment of posterity a powerful warning to princes to reign with moderation and to detest flatterers the name and memory of the Roman tyrants how treated all men have some vanity and then some fondness for fame if they would acquire it and devoid infamy they must square their actions to the judgment of posterity with posterity little evasions false colorings and chicane will not pass for reasons though they may with our contemporaries who are often influenced by friendships often engaged in parties often warmed and misled by passion and partiality in time destroy all artifices dissipate all mists and unveil mysteries the intentions of men with all their motives and pursuits are then scanned and laid open the flights of flattery will not then be termed fondness for the prince nor the efforts of ambition miscalled public zeal Claudius and Pallas Tiberius and Sejanus Nero and Tigellenus men so caressed applauded and worshipped during their life and power men who then employed all tongues in their praises do now fill and have long filled the mouths of all men with detestation and their hearts with apporance what avail now their craft and subordinations their power and high posts does the awe of purple or the violence of the sword and their memory as they did their persons do I for example fear their charges of treason or the vile breath of their informers while I treat them as sanguinary monsters as the tyrants pests and oppressors of the earth as public curses and murderers in cold blood these tyrants and their flatterers though they pushed both tyranny and flattery as far as they would go they have been able with all their arts and terrors to stifle the memory of men nor restrain the speech they are handed down to us under their proper titles the emperor Nero we seldom say but the tyrant Nero is in everyone's mouth and the idea of a sycophant ever accompanies the name of Vitellius his great credit and offices are forgot or remembered only to his infamy the epic must history and the censure of posterity be to a prince that has any reflection had Tiberius Claudius Caligula and other imperial monsters considered what frightful lights they were like to be drawn into future times it would have spoiled their pleasure in tyrannizing and made them hate their flatterers who persuaded them that all men at least the best men spoke of them as they themselves spoke in regard to fame and posterity it had been better for these wretches that they had never been born as well as happy for humankind yet no man was ever a greater drudge for fame than Nero witness his laborious fatigues in the theater and circus continued day after day left in nights and days for the reputation of a good singer harper and coachman Caligula aspired to the light glory and was a notable fencer and assiduous dancer as well as a chariotary laudable ambition for a prince and as just and high as that of many others Tiberius also wished and prayed for the praises and a fictionate remembrance of posterity how well he succeeded we all know he is detested as one of the most dangerous, false and deliberate tyrants that ever afflicted men nay he was no sooner known to be dead than the people broke forth into joy and execrations some cried into the Tiber with Tiberius others besought mother earth and the infernal gods to allot him no mansion but amongst the damned and accursed others threatened to drag his body with hooks to the charnel of malefactors and when his corpse was going to be removed from his ennem to Rome everyone cried aloud that it should rather be carried to the town of Attella to be in the amphitheater there thrown into a fire till it were half burned such were the marks of remembrance he had and deserved from the people the other two are treated as monsters or rather as two mad dogs delighted with carnage and worrying bent and active to kill and destroy what is it to us that they were princes and emperors men of sins find no magic in names but regard monsters as monsters whatever titles fortune or flatterers gave them or they themselves took it is thus tyrants suffer the vengeance of after ages and terrible vengeance it is to such as are tender of their renown and seek immortality as most princes do and indeed have it forced upon them since they stand too high and do too much not to be remembered hence they ought to be more afraid of future censure which is generally well grounded and will certainly last than of temporary praise which is often false consequently fleeting at best to be suspected section six how lamentably princes are debauched and misled by flatterers now if tyrants are abhorred how much abhorrence is due to flatterers who often change princes into tyrants and make tyrants worse than they would be Tiberius assumed the sovereignty with great diffidence and his natural weariness would have probably made him mild against his nature had not the Romans so readily offered him their necks and their persons to bondage but when he found them devoted to slavery he used them like slaves and having nothing to fear from them he only followed the vile bent of his own spirit Domitian rejoiced when he found that Agricola had left him co-heir with his wife and daughter he vainly thought it done out of judgment and choice so much was he corrupted and blinded by continual flattery as to be utterly ignorant that no prince but a bad one was ever by a father tender of his issue and family assumed into airship with them as Pliny the Younger well observes Nero was in terrible agonies after he had murdered his mother he dreaded the soldiery the senate and the people but when instead of danger of resentment he met with flattering speeches from the officers flattering decrees from the senate popular processions applausees public devotions paid to all the deities and universal acquiescence his native insolence became more swelled and from this general servitude assuming the pride of victory he ascended the capital offered sacrifices and thenceforth surrendered himself to the full sway of all his exorbitant lusts when he had caused these two noble Romans Plautus and Silla to be assassinated he wrote to the senate without mentioning the execution only that they were two men of turbulent spirits and what mighty care it cost him to secure the state instantly the obsequious fathers degraded from the senate these dead senators and ordained public prayers to the ministers narrow upon the receiving of this decree and finding that all his brutal iniquities and acts of blood passed for so many feats of renown grew emboldened to do a thing which even narrow till then durst not do and turned away the virtuous Octavia his wife her by whom he held the emperor nay when soon after the imperial butcher had ordered the blood of that illustrious innocent to be shed thanks and oblations were again presented to the deities by an ordinance of senate a particular says tacitus which with this view I recount that whoever reads the events of those times in this or any other history may take it for granted that as often as the emperors commanded acts of cruelty banishments and assassinations so often thanks and sacrifices were decreed to the gods and those solemnities which were of all the marks and consequences of public victories and public felicity were now so many sad marks of public slaughter and desolation this was remarkably verified afterwards as well as now and when Nero upon the discovery of Piso's conspiracy had spilt rivers of blood and slain men by heaps the fuller the city was of executions and funerals the fuller too were the temples of sacrifices one had lost a son one a brother or kinsman or friend in this general butchery and the greater their loss the more gaiety they should adorned their houses with laurel frequented temples with thanksgiving embraced the knees of the tyrant and worried his hand with kisses Nero took all this for so many sincere tokens of affection and joy when in truth their congratulations and flattery were just in proportion to their severe sorrow section seven the pestilent tendency of flattering councils and the glory of such as are sincere what a poisonous thing is flattery by it princes are misled into a persuasion that all their measures of oppression all their acts of frenzy and rage with measures of government that forced praise is real affection that they themselves are popular when they are abhorred and thus they are kept from repenting or amending because relying upon the assurances of flatterers they cannot find that they have done a mess or see anything to be mended the flatterers of Nero ridiculed Seneca and railed at him and persuaded that prince he wanted no tutors the same did the flatterers of comatose in relation to the old counselors which had been his fathers Nero and comatose followed the advice of their flatterers and drained mischievously and died tragically and their memories are abhorred thus they are kept hoodwinked and secure till the first thing they open their eyes upon is their throne tottering or overturned and perhaps an executioner's their breast and even when things are come to that extremity there will be those to misrepresent and flatter as in the case of Golba a few moments before he was massacred he was soothed with false assurances of security how pernicious too is such falsification even to those that practice it since though they mean it out of selfishness and for security yet by sanctifying upon all occasions the oppression and destruction of others they do but invite their own whereas where matters laid honestly before princes that this measure is a grievance that an oppression and that whatever is unjust to others is dangerous to themselves they would prefer caution with safety to humor and willfulness accompanied with peril they would grow into a habit of doubting, deliberating of submitting their own judgment to that of others of remembering that they are what they are for the sake of their people and that they ought to have no will nor interest but the public will and the public interest had Nero pursued the good rules of government dictated by Seneca and Buras and proposed by himself in his first speech to the senate had he avoided the councils of that bloody and detestable sycophant Tagelinas and of others like him he might have ended his reign with as much renown as he began it and left a memory revered as much as it is now detested and with the confidence of princes instead of debasing themselves into the characters of parasites instead of abusing their trust and bringing infamy upon their masters and themselves would they instead of this give upright people such as conduced to the good of all men they would besides the praise of well doing take the best method to secure themselves their fortunes and families in the general security or should they be rewarded with disgrace or even with death they would have the approbation of their own consciences the applause of the living and the praises of posterity but while they sued the prince in his jealousies and violence and destroying such as he or such as they fear or dislike they said him a lesson and example for turning the edge of his fury upon themselves whenever he becomes prompted by his humor or caprice a case often happening and always to be apprehended the courtiers and flatterers of the emperor Karakala to humor him concurred with him in the murder of his brother Gitta that murder though committed by his own hand were themselves murdered for their wicked complacence and amongst them lead us his favorite and confident yet he was so far from remorse for shedding his brother's blood that he massacred every friend and adherent to his brother to the number of twenty thousand in a short time Tiberius of all his friends confidence and counselors scarce let one escape in a violent end unless where by a natural death they prevented it and they who had been ministers of his tyranny hardly ever failed to fall by it he indeed protected them from the resentment and prosecution of others but he generally poured vengeance upon them himself Vescularius Atticus and Julius Marinas were two of his most ancient intimates they had accompanied him during his retirement at Rhodes and never first took him in his retreat at Capria they had abetted his tyranny and assisted him in his cruel councils nor does it appear that they had ever offended him by any good council Vescularius was his manager and interagent in the perfidious plot to destroy that noble Roman Libodrusis and by the cooperation of Marinas Sejanus had worked the overthrow of courteous Atticus was not all this merit enough at least to have redeemed their own lives it was not they fell themselves victims to his cruelty as to satiate his cruelty they had made others fall their tragical end was followed with the more joy for that upon their own heads had thus recoiled the precedence of their own traitorous devising in truth these instruments of cruelty are generally abhorred by the princes that used them Aniseda's admiral of the galleys de Niro conducted and perpetrated the murder of his mother Agrippina and for a short space continued in some small favor with the prince but was afterwards held in greater aversion for Sestacitus the ministers of evil councils are princes beheld as men whose looks continually abrade them such too was the fate of Cleander under Commodus who loved him was governed by him and cut off his head how differently related is the fate of Borus suspected to have been poisoned by Niro mighty and lasting was the sorrow of Rome for his death for the Romans remembered his virtues and a little before while the calamities of the public were growing daily more heavy and bitter the resources of the public were diminished and Borus died how nobly too is the tragedy of Seneca recounted it is too long to find room here I shall end this discourse with observing that as flattery is the effect of dread and falsehood as the most tyrannical princes are most flattered and men of the falsest minds are the greatest flatterers this consideration should listen to princes and great men to weigh the actions they do against the praises they receive and if they find themselves righteous they may conclude their panagerics to be sincere let them reflect upon their acts of benevolence or oppression and how they have used their people they would also do well to examine what sort of men they are who praise them whether men of virtue and honor lovers of truth lovers of their country of human kind or whether they are those unlimited psychophants whose custom and rule it is to extol at random all the sayings and doings of princes worthy and unworthy end of discourse 8