 Book 4, Part 4 of the Annals by Publius Cornelius Tacitus. The Annals by Publius Cornelius Tacitus, translated by Alfred John Church and William Jackson Broderib. Book 4, A.D. 23-28, Part 4, Tiberius Retires from Rome. Meanwhile, after long reflection on his purpose and frequent deferment of it, the Emperor retired to Campania to dedicate, as he pretended, a temple to Jupiter at Capua and another to Augustus at Nola, but really resolved to live at a distance from Rome. Although I have followed most historians in attributing the cause of his retirement to the arts of Sojanus, still, as he passed six consecutive years in the same solitude after that minister's destruction, I am often in doubt whether it is not to be more truly ascribed to himself, and his wish to hide by the place of his retreat the cruelty and licentiousness which he betrayed by his actions. Some thought that in his old age he was ashamed of his personal appearance. He had indeed a tall, singularly slender and stooping figure, a bald head, in a face full of eruptions, and covered here and there with plasters. And the seclusion of Rhodes he had habituated himself to shun society and to hide his voluptuous life. According to one account his mother's domineering temper drove him away. He was weary of having her as his partner in power, and he could not thrust her aside, because he had received this very power as her gift. For Augustus had had thoughts of putting the Roman state under Germanicus, his sister's grandson, whom all men esteemed, but yielding to his wives and treaties he left Germanicus to be adopted by Tiberius and adopted Tiberius himself. With this Augusta would taunt her son and claim back what she had given. His departure was attended by a small retinue, one senator, who was an ex-console, Kosias Snirva, learned in the Laws, one Roman knight, beside Sojanus, of the highest order, Cirtius Atticus, the rest being men of liberal culture, for the most part Greeks, in whose conversation he might find amusement. It was said by men who knew the stars that the motions of the heavenly bodies when Tiberius left Rome were such as to forbid the possibility of his return. This caused ruin for many who conjectured that his end was near and spread the rumor, for they never foresaw the very improbable contingency of his voluntary exile from his home for eleven years. Soon afterwards it was clearly seen what a narrow margin there is between science and delusion, and in what obscurity truth is veiled. That he would not return to Rome was not a mere random assertion, as to the rest they were wholly in the dark, seeing that he lived to extreme old age in the country or on the coast near Rome and often close to the very walls of the city. It happened at this time that a perilous accident which occurred to the emperor strengthened vague rumors and gave him grounds for trusting more fully in the friendship and fidelity of Sojanus. They were dining in a country house called the Cave, between the Gulf of Omucle and the Hills of Fundy, in a natural grotto. The rocks at its entrance suddenly fell in and crushed some of the attendants. Thereupon Panic seized the whole company and there was a general flight of the guests. Sojanus hung over the emperor and with knee, face, and hand encountered the falling stones, and was found in this attitude by the soldiers who came to their rescue. After this he was greater than ever, and though his councils were ruinous, he was listened to with confidence as a man who had no care for himself. He pretended to act as a judge toward the children of Germanicus, after having sub-borned person to assume the part of prosecutors and to invade specially against Nero, next in secession to the throne, who, though he had proper, youthful modesty, often forgot present expediency, while freedmen and clients, eager to get power, incited him to display vigor and self-confidence. This they said was what the Roman people wished, what the armies desired, and Sojanus would not dare to oppose it, though now he insulted alike the tame spirit of the old emperor and the timidity of the young prince. Nero, while he listened to this and liked talk, was indeed not inspired with any guilty ambition, but still occasionally there would break from him willful and thoughtless expression which spies about his person caught up and reported with exaggeration, and this he had no opportunity of rebutting. Then again alarms under various forms were continually arising. One man would avoid meeting him, another after returning his salutation would instantly turn away, many after beginning a conversation would instantly break it off, while Sojanus's friends would stand their ground and laugh at him. Tiberius, indeed, were an angry frown or a treacherous smile. Whether the young prince spoke or held his tongue, silence and speech were like criminal. Every night had its anxieties, for his sleepless hours, his dreams and sighs were all made known by his wife to her mother Livia, and by Livia to Sojanus. Nero's brother, Drusus, Sojanus actually drew into his scheme by holding out to him the prospect of becoming emperor through the removal of an elder brother, already all but fallen. The savage temper of Drusus, to say nothing of lust of power in the usual feuds between brothers, was inflamed with envy by the partiality of the mother Agrippina towards Nero. And yet Sojanus, while he favored Drusus, was not without thoughts of sowing the scenes of his future reign, well knowing how very impetuous he was, and therefore the more exposed to treachery. Towards the close of the year died two distinguished men, Acinius Agrippa and Quintus Heterius. Agrippa was of illustrious rather than ancient ancestry, which his career did not disgrace. Heterius was of a senatorian family and famous for his eloquence while he lived, though the monuments which remain of his genius are not admired as of old. The truth is he succeeded more by vehemence than by finish of style. While the research and labors of other authors are valued by an after-age, the harmonious fluency of Heterius died with him. In the year of the consulship of Marcus Licinius and Lucius Calpurnius, the losses of a great war were matched by an unexpected disaster, no sooner begun than ended. Oneatilius of the Friedman class, having undertaken to build an amphitheater at Fadina for the exhibition of a show of gladiators, failed to lay a solid foundation to frame the wooden superstructure with beams of sufficient strength, for he had neither an abundance of wealth nor zeal for public popularity, but he had simply sought the work for sordid gain. Thither flocked all who loved such sights and who, during the reign of Tiberias, had been wholly debarred from such amusements, men and women of every age crowding to the place because it was near Rome. And so the calamity was all the more fatal. The building was densely crowded, then came a violent shock, as it fell inwards or spread outwards, precipitating and burying an immense multitude, which was intently gazing on the show or standing round. Those who were crushed to death in the first moment of the accident had, at least, under such dreadful circumstances, the advantage of escaping torture. More to be pitied were they who, with limbs torn from them, still retained life, while they recognized their wives and children by seeing them during the day and by hearing in the night their screams and groans. Soon all the neighbors in their excitement at the report were bewailing brothers, kinsmen, or parents. Even those whose friends or relatives were away from home for quite a different reason still trembled for them, and, as it was not yet known who had been destroyed by the crash, suspense made the alarm more widespread. As soon as they began to remove the debris, there was a rush to see the lifeless forms and much embracing and kissing. Often a dispute would arise, when some distorted face, bearing, however, a general resemblance of form and age, had baffled their efforts at recognition. Fifty thousand persons were maimed or destroyed in this disaster. For the future it was provided by a decree of the Senate that no one was to exhibit a show of gladiators whose fortune fell short of four hundred thousand cisterces, and that no amphitheater was to be erected except on a foundation the solidity of which had been examined. Attilius was banished. At the moment of the calamity the nobles threw open houses and supplied indiscriminately medicines and physicians, so that Rome then, notwithstanding her sorrowful aspect, wore a likeness to the manners of our forefathers, who after a great battle always relieved the wounded with their bounty and attentions. This disaster was not forgotten when a furious conflagration damaged the capital to an unusual extent, reducing Mount Kellyus to ashes. It was an ill-starred year, people began to say, and the emperor's purpose of leaving Rome must have been formed under evil omens. They began in vulgar fashion to trace ill luck to guilt, when Tiberius checked them by distributing money in proportion to losses disdained. He received a vote of thanks in the Senate from its distinguished members, and was applauded by the populace for having assisted, with his liberality, without partiality or the solicitations of friends, strangers whom he had himself sought out. And proposals were also made that Mount Kellyus should for the future be called Mount Augustus. Inasmuch as when all around was in flames only a single statue of Tiberius in the house of one Junius, a senator, had remained uninjured. This, it was said, had formerly happened to Claudia Quinta. Her statue, which had twice escaped the violence of fire, had been dedicated by our ancestors in the temple of the mother of gods. Hence the Claudii had been accounted sacred and numbered among deities. And so additional sanctity ought to be given to a spot where heaven showed such honor to the emperor. It will not be uninteresting to mention that Mount Kellyus was anciently known by the name of Querquentalanus, because it grew oak timber in abundance and was afterwards called Kellyus by Kellyus Vibina, who led the Etruscan people to the aid of Rome, and had the place given him as a possession by Tarquinius Prisces or by some other of the kings. As to that point historians differ. As to the rest it is beyond a question that Vibina's numerous forces established themselves in the plain beneath and in the neighborhood of the Forum, and that the Tuscan street was named after these strangers. But though the zeal of the nobles and the bounty of the prince brought relief to suffering, yet every day a stronger and fiercer host of informers pursued its victims, without one alleviating circumstance. Quintilius Varus, a rich man and related to the emperor, was suddenly attacked by Demitius' offer, the successful prosecutor of Claudio Pultra, his mother, and no one wondered that the needy adventurer of so many years, who had squandered his lately gotten recompense, was now preparing himself for fresh iniquities. That Publius Dullabella should have associated himself in the prosecution was a marvel, for he was of illustrious ancestry, and was allied to Varus, and was now himself seeking to destroy his own noble race, his own kindred. The senate, however, stopped the proceedings and decided to wait for the emperor, this being the only means of escaping for a time impending horrors. Caesar, meanwhile, after dedicating the temples in Campania, warned the public by an edict not to disturb his retirement and posted soldiers here and there to keep off the throngs of townsfolk. But he so loathed the towns and colonies, and in short every place on the mainland, that he buried himself in the island of Capri, which is separated by three miles of straight from the extreme point of the promontory of Serentum. The solitude of the place was, I believe, its chief attraction, for a harbourless sea surrounds it, and even for a small vessel it has but few safe retreats, nor can any one land unknown to the sentries. Its air and winter is soft, as it is screened by a mountain which is a protection against cutting winds. In summer it catches the western breezes, and the open sea round it renders it most delightful. It commanded, too, a prospect of the most lovely bay, till Vesuvius, bursting into flames, changed the face of the country. Greeks, so tradition says, occupied those parts, and Capri was inhabited by the teleboy. Tiberius had by this time filled the island with twelve country houses, each with a grand name and a vast structure of its own. Intent as he had once been on the cares of the state, he was now for thoroughly unbending himself in secret profligacy and a leisure of malignant schemes. For he still retained that rash proneness to suspect and to believe, which even at Rome Sajanas used to foster, and which he here excited more keenly, no longer concealing his machinations against Agrippina and Nero. Soldiers hung about them, and every message, every visit, their public and their private life were, I may say, regularly chronicled. And persons were actually suborned to advise them to flee to the armies of Germany, or, when the forum was most crowded, to class the statue of the Divine Augustus and appeal to the protection of the people and senate. These councils they disdained, but they were charged with having had thoughts of acting on them. The year of the consulship of Solanas and Silius Nerva opened with a fowl beginning. A Roman night of the highest rank, Titius Sabinus, was dragged to prison because he had been a friend of Germanicus. He had indeed persisted in showing marked respect towards his wife and children as their visitor at home, their companion in public, the solitary survivor of so many clients, and he was consequently esteemed by the good, as he was a terror to the evil-minded. Latinius Latierus, Porcius Cato, Petitius Rufus, and Marcus Opsius, ex-praders, conspired to attack him, with an eye to the consulship, to which there was access only through Solanas, and the good will of Solanas was to be gained only by crime. They arranged themselves against that Latierus, who had some slight acquaintance with Sabinus, should devise the plot, that the rest should be present as witnesses, and that they should begin the prosecution. Accordingly Latierus, after first dropping some casual remarks, went on to praise the fidelity of Sabinus in not having, like others, forsaken, after its fall, the house of which he had been the friend in its prosperity. He also spoke highly of Germanicus and compassionately of Agrippina. Sabinus, with the natural softness of the human heart under calamity, burst into tears, which he followed up with complaints, and soon with yet more daring invective against Solanas, against his cruelty, pride, and ambition. He did not spare even Tiberius in his reproaches. That conversation, having united them, as it were, in an unlawful secret, led to a semblance of close intimacy. Henceforward Sabinus himself sought Latierus, went continually to his house, and imparted to him his griefs as to a most faithful friend. The men who I have named now consulted how these conversations might fall within the hearing of more persons. It was necessary that the place of meeting should preserve the appearance of secrecy, and if witnesses were to stand behind the doors, there was a fear of there being seen or heard, or of suspicion casually arising. Three senators thrust themselves into the space between the roof and ceiling, a hiding place as shameful as the treachery was excreable. They applied their ears to apertures and crevices. Latierus, meanwhile, having met Sabinus in the streets, drew him to his house and to the room, as if he was going to communicate some fresh discoveries. There he talked much about the past and impeding troubles, a copious topic indeed, and about fresh horrors. Sabinus spoke as before and at greater length, as sorrow, when once it has broken into utterance, is the harder to restrain. Instantly they hastened to accuse him, and having dispatched a letter to the emperor, they informed him of the order of the plot and of their own infamy. Never was Rome more distracted and terror-stricken. Meetings, conversations, the era of friend and stranger were alike shunned. Even things mute and lifeless, the very roof and walls were eyed with suspicion. The emperor, in his letter on the first of January, after offering the usual prayers for the new year, referred to Sabinus, whom he reproached with having corrupted some of his freedmen and having attempted his life, and he claimed vengeance in no obscure language. It was decreed without hesitation, and the condemned man was dragged off, exclaiming as loudly as he could, withhead covered and throat tightly bound, that this was inaugurating the year, these were the victims slain to Sabinus. Wherever he turned his eyes, wherever his words fell, there was flight and solitude. The streets and public places were forsaken. A few retraced their steps and again showed themselves, shuddering at the mere fact that they had betrayed alarm. What day, they asked, will be without some execution, when amid sacrifices and prayers, a time when it is usual to refrain even from a profane word, the chain and halter are introduced. Tiberias has not incurred such odium blindly. This is a study device to make us believe that there is no reason why the new magistrates should not open the dungeons as well as the temple and the altars. Thereupon there came a letter of thanks to them for having punished a foe so bitter to the state, and the emperor farther added that he had an anxious life, that he apprehended treachery from enemies, but he mentioned no one by name. Still, there was no question that this was aimed at Nero and Agrippina. But, for my plan of referring each event to its own year, I should feel a strong impulse to anticipate matters, and at once relate the deaths by which Latinius and Obsius and the other authors of this atrocious deed perished, some after Caes became emperor, some even while Tiberias yet ruled. For although he would not have the instruments of his wickedness destroyed by others, he frequently, when he was tired of them, and fresh ones offered themselves for the same services, flung off the old, now become a mere incubus. But these and other punishments of guilty men I shall describe in due course. A sinious gallus, to whose children Agrippina was on, then moved that the emperor should be requested to disclose his apprehensions to the senate and allow their removal. Of all his virtues, as he counted them, there was none on which Tiberias so prided himself as his ability to assemble, and he was therefore the more irritated and an attempt to expose what he was hiding. So Johnus, however, pacified him, not out of love for gallus, but rather to wait the result of the emperor's wavering mood, knowing, as he did, though slow informing his purpose, yet having once broken through his reserve, he would follow up harsh words with terrible deeds. About the same time Julia died, the granddaughter of Augustus. He had condemned her on a conviction of adultery and had banished her to the island of Trimeras, not far from the shores of Apulia. There she endured a twenty years' exile, in which she was supported by relief from Augusta, who having overthrown the prosperity of her step-children by secret machinations, made open display of her compassion to the fallen family. The same year the Free Sea, a nation beyond the Rhine, cast off peace, more because of our rapacity than from their impatience of subjection. Druces had imposed on them a moderate tribute, suitable to their limited resources, the furnishing of ox hides for military purposes. No one ever severely scrutinized the size or thickness till Ollinius, a first-ranked centurion, appointed to govern the Free Sea, selected hides of wild bulls as the standard according to which they were to be supplied. This would have been hard for any nation, and it was the less tolerable to the Germans, whose forests abound in huge beasts, while their home cattle are undersized. First it was their herds, next their lands, and last the persons of their wives and children, which they gave up to bondage. Then came angry remonstruses, and when they received no relief they sought a remedy in war. The soldiers appointed to collect the tribute were seized and gibbeted. Ollinius anticipated their fury by flight, and found refuses in a fortress named Flevim, where a by no means contemptible force of Romans and allies kept guard over the shores of the oceans. As soon as this was known to Lucius Apronius, proprietor of Lord Germany, he summoned from the upper province the legionary veterans, as well as some picked auxiliary infantry and cavalry. Instantly conveying both armies down the Rhine, he threw them on the Frisi, raising at once the siege of the fortress and dispelling the rebels in defense of their own possessions. Next he began constructing solid roads and bridges over the neighboring estuaries for the passage of his heavy troops, and meanwhile, having found a ford, he ordered the cavalry of the Caninefates, with all the German infantry which served with us to take the enemy in the rear. Already in battle array, they were beating back our auxiliary horse as well as that of the legion sent to support them, when three light cohorts, then two more, and after a while the entire cavalry were sent to the attack. They were strong enough, had they charged altogether, but coming up as they did at intervals, they did not give fresh courage to the repulsed troops, and were themselves carried away in a panic of the fugitives. Apronius entrusted the rest of the auxiliaries to Cathagos Labeo, the commander of the fifth legion, but he too, finding his men's position critical and being in extreme peril, sent messages imploring the whole strength of the legions. The soldiers of the fifth sprang forward, drove back the enemy in a fierce encounter and saved our cohorts and cavalry, who were exhausted by their wounds. But the Roman general did not attempt vengeance or even bury the dead, although many tribunes, prefects, and first-ranked centurions had fallen. Soon afterwards it was ascertained from deserters that nine hundred Romans had been cut to pieces in a wood called Braduhenes, after prolonging the fight till the next day, and that another body of four hundred, which had taken possession of the house of one cryptorix, once a soldier in our pay, fearing betrayal, had perished by mutual slaughter. The Frisian name thus became famous in Germany, and Tiberius kept our loss as a secret, not wishing to entrust anyone with the war. Nor did the Senate care whether dishonor fell on the extreme frontiers of the empire. Fear at home had filled their hearts, and for this they sought relief in sycophony. And so, although their advice was asked on totally different subjects, they decreed an altar to clemency, an altar to friendship, and statues round them to Caesar and Sajanas, both of whom they earnestly begged with repeated entreaties to allow themselves to be seen in public. Still, neither of them would visit Rome, or even the neighborhood of Rome. They thought it enough to quit the island and show themselves on the opposite shores of Campania. Senators, knights, a number of the city populous flocked thither, anxiously looking to Sajanas, approached to whom was particularly difficult, and was consequently sought by intrigue and by complicity in his councils. It was sufficiently clear that his arrogance was increasing by gazing on this foul and open-displayed servility. At Rome indeed, hurrying crowds are a familiar sight, from the extent of the city no one knows on what business each citizen is bent. But there, as they lounged in promiscuous crowds in the fields or on the shore, they had to bear day and night alike the patronizing smiles and the supercilious insolence of hall-porters, till even this was forbidden them, and those whom Sajanas had not deigned to accost or to look on returned to the capital in alarm, while some felt an evil joy, though there hung over them the dreadful doom of that ill-starred friendship. Tiberius, meanwhile, having himself in person bestowed the hand of his granddaughter, Agrippina, Germanicus's daughter, Hansenius Demitius, directed the marriage to be celebrated at Rome. In selecting Demitius he looked not only to his ancient lineage, but also to his alliance with the blood of the Caesars, for he could point to Octavia as his grandmother and through her to Augustus as his great-uncle. Book 5 of the Annals by Publius Cornelius Tacitus This is a Librivox recording. All Librivox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Librivox.org. Recording by Graham Redman. The Annals by Publius Cornelius Tacitus, translated by Alfred John Church and William Jackson Broderib. Book 5, AD 29-31 The Death and Character of Livia In the consulship of Rebellius and Fufius, both of whom had the surname Geminus, died in an advanced old age, Julia Augusta. Acclaudia by birth, and by adoption Olivia and Julia, she united the noblest blood of Rome. Her first marriage, by which she had children, was with Tiberius Nero, who, an exile during the Perusian War, returned to Rome when peace had been concluded between Sextus Pompeius and the Triumvus. After this, Caesar, enamoured of her beauty, took her away from her husband, whether against her wish is uncertain. So impatient was he that he brought her to his house actually pregnant, not allowing time for her confinement. She had no subsequent issue, but allied as she was through the marriage of Agrippina and Germanicus to the blood of Augustus, her great-grandchildren were also his. In the purity of her home life she was of the ancient type, but was more gracious than was thought fitting in ladies of former days. An imperious mother and an amiable wife, she was a match for the diplomacy of her husband and the dissimulation of her son. Her funeral was simple, and her will long remained unexecuted. Her panegyric was pronounced from the rostra by her great-grandson, Gaius Caesar, who afterwards succeeded to power. Tiberius, however, making no change in his voluptuous life, excused himself by letter for his absence from his last duty to his mother, on the ground of the pressure of business. He even abridged out of moderation, as it seemed, the honours which the Senate had voted on a lavish scale to her memory, allowing only a very few, and adding that no religious worship was to be decreed, this having been her own wish. In a part of the same letter he sneered at female friendships, with an indirect censure on the consul Fufius, who had risen to distinction through Augustus' partiality. Fufius was indeed a man well fitted to win the affection of a woman. He was witted, too, and accustomed to ridicule Tiberius with those bitter jests which the powerful remember so long. This at all events was the beginning of an unmitigated and grinding despotism. As long indeed as Augusta lived, there yet remained a refuge, for with Tiberius, obedience to his mother was the habit of a life, and Sojanus did not dare to set himself above a parent's authority. Now, so to say, they threw off the reins and let loose their fury. A letter was sent, directed against Agrippina and Nero, which was popularly believed to have been long before forwarded, and to have been kept back by Augusta, as it was publicly read soon after her death. It contained expressions of studied harshness, yet it was not armed rebellion or a longing for revolution, but unnatural passions and profligacy which the emperor imputed to his grandson. Against his daughter in law he did not dare to invent this much. He merely censured her insolent tongue and defiant spirit amid the panic-stricken silence of the Senate, till a few who had no hope from merit, and public calamities are ever used by individuals for interested purposes, demanded that the question should be debated. The most eager was Cotta Messolinas, who made a savage speech. Still the other principal senators, and especially the magistrates, were perplexed, for Tiberius, notwithstanding his furious invective, had left everything else in doubt. There was in the Senate one Junius Rusticus, who, having been appointed by the emperor to register its debates, was therefore supposed to have an insight into his secret purposes. This man, whether through some fatal impulse, he had indeed never before given any evidence of courage, or a misdirected acuteness which made him tremble at the uncertain future, while he forgot impending perils, attached himself to the waverers, and warned the consuls not to enter on the debate. He argued that the highest issues turned on trivial causes, and that the fall of the House of Germanicus might one day move the old man's remorse. At the same moment the people, bearing the images of Agrippina and Nero, thronged round the Senate House, and with words of blessing on the emperor, kept shouting that the letter was a forgery, and that it was not by the prince's will that ruin was being plotted against his house. And so that day passed without any dreadful result. Fictitious speeches, too, against Sejanus were published under the names of ex-consuls. For several persons indulged all the more recklessly, because anonymously, the caprice of their imaginations. Consequently, the wrath of Sejanus was the more furious, and he had ground for alleging that the Senate disregarded the emperor's trouble, that the people were in revolt, that speeches in a new style and new resolutions were being heard and read. What remained but to take the sword and choose for their generals and emperors, those whose images they had followed as standards. Upon this, the emperor, after repeating his invectives against his grandson and his daughter-in-law, and reprimanding the populace in an edict, complained to the Senate that by the trick of one senator the imperial dignity had been publicly flouted. And he insisted that, after all, the whole matter should be left to his exclusive decision. Without further deliberation, they proceeded, not indeed to pronounce the final sentence, for this was forbidden, but to declare that they were prepared for vengeance, and were restrained only by the strong hand of the sovereign. Note, the remainder of the fifth book and the beginning of the sixth, recounting Sejanus' marriage and fall and covering a space of nearly three years, are lost. Newer editions of Tacitus mark the division between the fifth and sixth books at this point, rather than at the end of Section 11, but references are regularly made to the older numbering, and so it has been retained here. The beginning of the next section, Section 6, is obviously fragmentary. End of note. Forty-four speeches were delivered on this subject, a few of which were prompted by fear, most by the habit of flattery. There is now a change of fortune, and even he who chose Sejanus to be his colleague, and his son-in-law, excuses his error. As for the rest, the man whom they encouraged by shameful baseness, they now wickedly revile, which is the most pityable, to be accused for friendship's sake, or to have to accuse a friend, I cannot decide. I will not put any man's cruelty or compassion to the test, but while I am free and have a clear conscience, I will anticipate peril. I implore you to cherish my memory with joy rather than with sorrow, numbering me too with those who by noble death have fled from the miseries of our country. Then, detaining those of his friends who were minded to stay with him and converse, or if otherwise dismissing them, he thus spent part of the day, and with a numerous circle yet round him, all gazing on his fearless face and imagining that there was still time to elapse before the last scene, he fell on a sword which he had concealed in his robe. The emperor did not pursue him after his death with either accusation or reproach, although he had heaped a number of foul charges on blizzards. Next were discussed the cases of Publius Vitelius and Pomponius Secundus. The first was charged by his accusers with having offered the keys of the treasury, of which he was prefect, and the military chest in aid of a revolution. Against the latter, Considius, an ex-preter, alleged intimacy with Elius Gallus, who, after the punishment of Sejanus, had fled to the gardens of Pomponius as his safest refuge. They had no resource in their peril, but in the courageous firmness of their brothers who became their sureties. Soon, after several adjournments, Vitelius, weary alike of hope and fear, asked for a pen knife, avowedly for his literary pursuits, and inflicted a slight wound in his veins, and died at last of a broken heart. Pomponius, a man of refined manners and brilliant genius, bore his adverse fortune with resignation and outlived Tiberius. It was next decided to punish the remaining children of Sejanus, though the fury of the populace was subsiding and people generally had been appeased by the previous executions. Accordingly, they were carried off to prison. The boy, aware of his impending doom, and the little girl, who was so unconscious that she continually asked what was her offense, and with her she was being dragged, saying that she would do so no more, and a childish chastisement was enough for her correction. Historians of the time tell us that, as there was no precedent for the capital punishment of a virgin, she was violated by the executioner with the rope on her neck. Then they were strangled, and their bodies mere children as they were, were flung down the Germanii. About the same time, Asha and Achaea were alarmed by a prevalent but short-lived rumour that Drusus, the son of Germanicus, had been seen in the Cyclades and subsequently on the mainland. There was indeed a young man of much the same age, whom some of the Emperor's freedmen pretended to recognize, and to whom they attached themselves with a treacherous intent. The renown of the name attracted the ignorant, and the Greek mind eagerly farsens on what is new and marvellous. The story, indeed, which they no sooner invented than believed, was that Drusus had escaped from custody, and was on his way to the armies of his father with the design of invading Egypt or Syria, and he was now drawing to himself a multitude of young men and much popular enthusiasm, enjoying the present and cherishing idle hopes of the future when Papyrus Sabinus heard of the affair. At the time he was chiefly occupied with Macedonia, but he also had the charge of Achaea. So, to forestall the danger, let the story be true or false, he hurried by the bays of Tyrone and Thermae, then passed on to Euboea, an island of the Aegean, to Pyreus on the coast of Attica, thence to the shores of Corinth and the Narrow Isthmus, and having arrived by the other sea at Nicopolis, a Roman colony, he there at last ascertained that the man, when skillfully questioned, had said that he was the son of Marcus Silanus, and that after the dispersion of a number of his followers he had embarked on a vessel intending it seemed to go to Italy. Sabinus sent this account to Tiberius, and of the origin and issue of the affair nothing more is known to me. At the close of the year a long-growing feud between the consuls broke out. Trio, a reckless man in incurring enmities and a practised lawyer, had indirectly censured Regulus as having been half-hearted in crushing the satellites of Ser Jainus. Regulus, who, unless he was provoked, loved quietness, not only repulsed his colleague's attack, but was for dragging him to trial as a guilty accomplice in the conspiracy. And though many of the senators implored them to compose a quarrel likely to end fatally, they continued their enmity and their mutual menaces till they retired from office. End of the extant portion of Books 5 and 6. Recording by Graeum Redmond. Book 6. AD 32-37 Part 1. Tiberius at Capriae Caneus Demetius and Camillus Scribonianus had entered on the consulship, when the emperor, after crossing the channel which divides Capriae from Serentum, sailed along Campania, in doubt whether he should enter Rome, or possibly simulating the intention of going thither, because he had resolved otherwise. He often landed at points in the neighborhood, visited the gardens by the Tiber, but went back to the cliffs and to the solitude of the seashores, in shame at the vices and profligacies into which he had plunged so unrestrainedly that in the fashion of a despot he debauched the children of free-born citizens. It was not merely a beauty and a handsome person, which he felt as an incentive to his last, but the modesty of childhood in some, and noble ancestry in others. Here the two unknown terms were then for the first time invented, derived from the abominations of the place, and the endless phases of sensuality. Slaves, too, were set over the work of seeking out and procuring, with rewards for the willing, and threats to the reluctant. And if there was resistance from a relative or a parent they used violence and force, and actually indulged their own passions, as if dealing with captives. At Rome, meanwhile, in the beginning of the year, as if Livia's crimes had just been discovered, and not also long ago punished, terrible decrees were proposed against her very statues and memory, and the property of Segenus was to be taken from the Exchequer, and transferred to the Imperial Treasury, as if there was any difference. The motion was being urged with extreme persistency, in almost the same, or with but slightly changed language, by such men as Scipio, Silanus, and Cassius, when suddenly Togonius Gallus, intruding his own obscurity among illustrious names, was heard with ridicule. He begged the Emperor to select a number of Senators, twenty out of whom should be chosen by lot to wear swords and to defend his person whenever he entered the Senate House. The man had actually believed a letter from him, in which he asked the protection of one of the Consuls, so that he might go in safety from Caprii to Rome. Tiberius, however, who usually combined gesting and seriousness, thanked the Senators for their goodwill, but asked who could be rejected, who could be chosen? Were they always to be the same, or was there to be a succession? Were they to be men who had held office, or youths, private citizens, or officials? Then again, what a scene would be presented by persons grasping their swords on the threshold of the Senate House? His life was not of so much worth, if it had to be defended by arms. This was his answer to Tagonius, guarded in its expression, and he urged nothing beyond the rejection of the motion. Junius Gallio, however, who had proposed that the Praetorian soldiers, after having served their campaigns, should acquire the privilege of sitting in the fourteen rows of the theater, received a savage censure. Tiberius, just as if he were face to face with him, asked what he had to do with the soldiers, who ought to receive the Emperor's orders, or his rewards, except from the Emperor himself. He had rarely discovered something which the Divine Augustus had not foreseen, or was not one of Sogenus's satellites, rather seeking to sow discord and sedition, as a means of prompting ignorant minds, under the pretense of compliment, to ruin military discipline. This was Gallio's recompense for his carefully prepared flattery, with immediate expulsion from the Senate, and then from Italy. And Asmin complained that he would endure his exile with equanimity, since he had chosen the famous and lovely island of Lesbos. He was dragged back to Rome, and confined in the houses of different officials. The Emperor, in the same letter, crushed Sextus Paconianus and ex-Prytor, to the great joy of the Senators, as he was a daring, mischievous man, who pried into every person's secrets, and had been the chosen instrument of Sogenus in his treacherous designs against Chias Caesar. When this fact was divulged, there came an outburst of long-concealed hatreds, and there must have been a sentence of capital punishment, had he not himself volunteered a disclosure. As soon as he named Latinius Latiaris, accuser and accused both alike objects of execration presented a most welcome spectacle. Latiaris, as I have related, had been foremost in contriving the ruin of Titius Sabinus, and was now the first to pay the penalty. By way of episode, Haterios Agrippa invade against the consuls of the previous year for now sitting silent after their threats of impeaching one another. It must be fear, he said, and not a guilty conscience, which are acting as a bond of union, but the Senators must not keep back what they have heard. Regulus replied that he was awaiting the opportunity for vengeance and meant to press it in the Emperor's presence. Trio's answer was that it was best to efface the memory of rivalries between colleagues, and of any words uttered in quarrels. When Agrippa still persisted, Sanquinius Maximus, one of the ex-consuls, implored the Senate not to increase the Emperor's personal anxieties by seeking further occasions of bitterness, as he was himself competent to provide remedies. This secured the safety of Regulus and the postponement of Trio's ruin. Haterios was hated all the more, one with untimely slumbers and knights of riot, and, not fearing in his indolence even the cruel list of princes, he yet plotted amid his gluttony and lust the destruction of illustrious men. Several charges were next brought, as soon as the opportunity offered, against Cotta Mascellinus, the author of every unusually cruel proposal, and consequently regarded within veteran hatred. He had spoken, it was said, of Caeus Caesar, as if it were a question whether he was a man, and of an entertainment at which he was present on Augustus' birthday with the priests, as a funeral banquet. In remonstrating, too, against the influence of Marcus Lepidus and Lucius Arantius, with whom he had disputes on many matters, he had added the remark, They will have the Senate's support. I shall have that of my darling Tiberius. But the leading men of the State failed to convict him on all the charges. When they pressed the case, he appealed to the Emperor. Soon afterwards a letter arrived, in which Tiberius traced the origin of the friendship between himself and Cotta, enumerated his frequent services, and then requested that words perversely misrepresented and the freedom of table-talk might not be construed into a crime. The beginning of the Emperor's letter seemed very striking. It opened thus, May all the gods and goddesses destroy me more miserably than I feel myself to be daily perishing, if I know at this moment what to write to you, Senators, how to write it, or what in short not to write. So completely had his crimes and infamies recoiled, as a penalty on himself. With profound meaning was it often affirmed by the greatest teacher of philosophy that, could the minds of tyrants be laid bare, there would be seen gashes and wounds, for, as the body is lacerated by scourging, so is the spirit by brutality, by lust, and by evil thoughts. Assuredly, Tiberius was not saved by his elevation or his solitude from having to confess the anguish of his heart and his self-inflicted punishment. Authority was then given to the Senate to decide the case of Caicillianus, one of its members, the chief witness against Cotter, and it was agreed that the same penalty should be inflicted as on Aruseus and Sanquinius, the accusers of Lucius Orontius. Nothing ever happened to Cotter more to his distinction. Of noble birth, but beggared by extravagance and infamous for his excesses, he was now, by dignity of his revenge, raised to a level with the stainless virtues of Orontius. Quintus Cerveius and Minucius Thermus were next arraigned. Cerveius was an ex-pritor, and had formally been a companion of Germanicus. Minucius was of equestrian rank, and both had enjoyed, though discreetly, the friendship of Sygenus. Hence they were the more pitied. Tiberius, on the contrary, denounced them as foremost in crime, and bade Caius Cestius the elder tell the Senate what he had communicated to the emperor by letter. Cestius undertook the prosecution. And this was the most dreadful feature of the age, that leading members of the Senate, some openly, some secretly, employed themselves in the very lowest work of the informer. One could not distinguish between aliens and kinsfolk, between friends and strangers, or say what was quite recent, or what half-forgotten from lapse of time. People were incriminated for some casual remark in the forum or at the dinner table. For everyone was impatient to be the first to mark his victim, some to screen themselves most from being as it were infected with the contagion of the malady. Minuchius and Cerveius, on being condemned, went over to the prosecution, and then Julius Africanus, with Seius Quadratus, were dragged into the same ruin. Africanus was from the Santones, one of the states of Gaul, the origin of Quadratus, I have not ascertained. Many authors, I am well aware, have passed over the perils and punishments of a host of persons, sickened by the multiplicity of them, or fearing that what they had themselves found wearisome and saddening would be equally fatiguing to their readers. For myself, I have lighted on many facts worth knowing, though other writers have not recorded them. A Roman knight, Marcus Terentius, at the crisis when all others had hypocritically repudiated the friendship of Sijane as dead, when impeached on that ground, to cling to it by the following avowal to the Senate. In my position it is perhaps less to my advantage to acknowledge than to deny the charge, still, whatever is to be the issue of the matter, I shall admit that I was the friend of Sijane's, that I anxiously sought to be such, and was delighted when I was successful. I had seen him, his father's colleague in the command of the Praetorian cohorts, and subsequently combining the duties of civil and military life. His kinsfolk and connections were loaded with honours, intimacy with Sijane's was in every case a powerful recommendation to the emperor's friendship, those on the contrary whom he hated had to struggle with danger and humiliation. I take no individual as an instance. All of us who had no part in his last design, I mean to defend at the peril of myself unknown. It was rarely not, Sijane's, of Vul's knee. It was a member of the Claudian and Julian houses, in which he had taken up a position by his marriage alliance. It was your son-in-law, Caesar, your partner in the consulship, the man who administered your political functions, whom we courted. It is not for us to criticise one whom you may raise above all others, or your motives for so doing. Heaven has entrusted you with the supreme decision of affairs, and for us is left the glory of obedience. And again we see what takes place before our eyes, who it is on whom you bestow riches and honours, who are the most powerful to help, or to injure. That Sijane's was such, no one will deny. To explore the prince's secret thoughts, or any of his hidden plans, is a forbidden, a dangerous thing. Nor does it follow that one could reach them. Do not, Senators, think only of Sijane's's last day, but of his sixteen years of power. We actually adored a satrious and a pomponious. To be known even to his freedmen and hall-porters was thought something very grand. What then is my meaning? Is this apology meant to be offered for all, without difference and discrimination? No. It is to be restricted within proper limits. Let plots against the State, murderous designs against the Emperor, be punished. As for friendship and its obligations, the same principle must acquit both you, Caesar, and us. The courage of this speech, and the fact that there had been found a man to speak out what was in all people's thoughts, had such an effect that the accusers of Tyrantius were sentenced to banishment or death, their previous offences being taken into account. Then came a letter from Tiberius against Sextus Vistilius, an ex-Prytor whom, as a special favorite of his brother Drusus, the Emperor had admitted into his own select circle. His reason for being displeased with Vistilius was that he had either written an attack on Caius Caesar as a profligate, or that Tiberius believed a false charge. For this Vistilius was excluded from the Prince's table. He then tried the knife with his aged hand, but again bound up his veins, opening them once more, however, on having begged for pardon by letter, and received a pitiless answer. After him a host of persons were charged with treason. Anius Polio, Apius Silenus, Scaurus Manecus, Sabinus Calvissius, Vinkianus too coupled with Polio, his father, men all of illustrious descent, some two of the highest political distinction. The senators were panic-stricken for how few of their number were not connected by alliance or by friendship with this multitude of men of rank. Kelsus, however, a tribune of a city cohort, and now one of the prosecutors, saved Apius and Calvissius from the peril. The emperor postponed the cases of Polio, Vinkianus, and Scaurus, intending to try them himself with the senate, not, however, without affixing some ominous marks to the name of Scaurus. Even women were not exempt from danger. Where they could not be accused of grasping at political power, their tears were made a crime. Vitia, an aged woman, mother of Fufius Gaminus, was executed for bewailing the death of her son. Such were the proceedings in the senate. It was the same with the emperor. Vescularius Atticus and Julius Marinos were hurried off to execution, two of his oldest friends, men who had followed him to roads, and been his inseparable companions at Capriae. Vescularius was his agent in the plot against Libo, and it was with the cooperation of Marinos that Sejanus had ruined Cirtius Atticus. Hence there was all the more joy at the recoil of these precedents on their authors. About the same time, Lucius Piso the pontiff died a natural death, a rare incident in Sohya rank. Never had he by choice proposed a servile motion, and whenever necessity was too strong for him, he would suggest judicious compromises. His father, as I have related, had been a censor. He lived to the advanced age of eighty, and had won in Thrace the honour of a triumph. But his chief glory rested on the wonderful tact with which, as city-prefect, he handled an authority, recently made perpetual, and all the more galling to men unaccustomed to obey it. In former days, when the kings and subsequently the chief magistrates went from Rome, an official was temporarily chosen to administer justice and provide for emergencies, so that the capital might not be left without government. It is said that Denterromulius was appointed by Romulus, then Numomarchius by Tullus Astilius, and Spiorius Lucrecius by Tarquinius Superbus. Afterwards the consuls made the appointment. The shadow of the old practice still survives, whenever in consequence of the Latin festival someone is deputed to exercise the consul's functions. And Augustus, too, during the civil wars, gave Kilnius Mycenaeus a Roman knight charge of everything in Roman Italy. When he rose to supreme power, in consideration of the magnitude of the state and the slowness of legal remedies, he selected one of the ex-consuls to over awe the slaves, and that part of the population, which, unless it fears a strong hand, is disorderly and reckless. Messala Corvinus was the first to obtain the office, which he lost within a few days, and was not knowing how to discharge it. After him, Taurus Statilius, though in advanced years sustained it admirably, and then Piso, after twenty years of similar credit, was, by the senate's decree, honored with a public funeral. A motion was next brought forward in the senate, by Quintilianus, a tribune of the people, respecting an alleged book of the Sibyl. Caninius Gallus, a book of the College of the Fifteen, had asked that it might be received among the other volumes of the same prophetess, by a decree on the subject. This having been carried by a division, the emperor sent a letter in which he gently censored the tribune as ignorant of the ancient usage because of his youth. Gallus, he scolded, for having introduced the matter in a thin senate, notwithstanding his long experience in the science of religious ceremonies, without taking the opinion of the college, or having the verses read and criticized, as was usual by its presidents, though their authenticity was very doubtful. He also reminded him that, as many spurious productions were current under a celebrated name, Augustus had prescribed a day within which they should be deposited with the city praetor, and after which it should not be lawful for any private person to hold them. The same regulations, too, had been made by our ancestors after the burning of the capitol in the social war, when there was a search throughout Samos, Ilium, Erythry, and even in Africa, Sicily, and the Italian colonies for the verses of the Sibyl, whether there were but one or more, and the priests were charged with the business of distinguishing as far as they could by human means what were genuine. Accordingly, the book in question was now also submitted to the scrutiny of the College of the Fifteen, during the same consulship, a high price of corn almost brought on an insurrection. For several days there were many clamorous demands made in the theatre with an unusual freedom of language towards the emperor. This provoked him to censure the magistrates and the senate for not having used the authority of the state to put down the people. He named, too, the corn-supplying provinces, and dwelt on the far larger amount of grain imported by himself than by Augustus. So the senate drew up a decree in the severe spirit of antiquity, and the consuls issued a not less stringent proclamation. The emperor's silence was not, as he had hoped, taken as a proof of patriotism, but of pride. At the year's close, Giminius, Kelsus, and Pompeius Roman knights fell beneath a charge of conspiracy. Of these, Caius Giminius, by lavish expenditure and deluxeurious life, had been a friend of Segenus, but with no serious result. Julius Kelsus, a tribune, while in confinement loosened his chain and, having twisted it round him, broke his neck by throwing himself in an opposite direction. Rubrius Fabatus was put under surveillance on a suspicion that, in despair of the fortunes of Rome, he meant to throw himself on the mercy of the Parthians. He was, at any rate, found near the straits of the Sicily, and when dragged back by Centurion, he assigned no adequate reason for his long journey. Still, he lived on in safety, thanks to forgetfulness, rather than to mercy. In the consulship of Servius Galber and Lucius Sulla, the emperor, after having long considered whom he was to choose to be husbands for his granddaughters, now that the maidens were of marriageable age, selected Lucius Cassius and Marcus Vinicius. Vinicius was of provincial descent. He was born at Cailis, his father and grandfather having been consuls, and his family on the other side being of the rank of knights. He was a man of amiable temper and of cultivated eloquence. Cassius was of an ancient and honorable though plebeian house at Rome. Though he was brought up by his father under a severe training, he won esteem more frequently by his good nature than by his diligence. To him, and to Vinicius, the emperor married, respectively, Drusilla and Julia, Germanicus' daughters, and addressed a letter on the subject of the Senate with a slightly complementary mention of the young men. He next assigned some very vague reasons for his absence, then passed to more important matters, the ill will against him originating in his state policy, and requested that Macro, who commanded the Praetorians with a few tribunes and Centurians, might accompany him whenever he entered the Senate house. But though a decree was voted by the Senate on a liberal scale and without any restrictions as to rank or numbers, he never so much as went near the walls of Rome, much less the State Council, for he would often go round and avoid his native city by circuitous routes. Meanwhile, a powerful host of accusers fell with sudden fury on the class which systematically increased its wealth by usury in defiance of a law passed by Caesar the Dictator, defining the terms of lending money and of holding his states in Italy, a law long obsolete because the public good is sacrificed to private interest. The curse of usury was indeed of old standing in Rome, and a most frequent cause of sedition and discord, and it was therefore repressed even in the early days of a less corrupt morality. First, the twelve tables prohibited anyone from exacting more than ten percent, when previously the rate had depended upon the caprice of the wealthy. Subsequently, by a bill brought in by the tribunes, interest was reduced to half that amount, and finally compound interest was wholly forbidden. A check, too, was put by several enactments of the people on evasions which, though continually put down still through strange artifices, reappeared. On this occasion, however, Gracchus, the praetor, to whose jurisdiction the inquiry had fallen, felt himself compelled by the number of persons endangered to refer the matter to the Senate. In their dismay, the Senators, not one of whom was free from similar guilt, threw themselves on the Emperor's indulgence. He yielded, and a year and six months were granted, within which everyone was to settle his private currents conformably to the requirements of the law. Hence followed a scarcity of money, a great shock being given to all credit. The current coin, too, in consequence of the conviction of so many persons of the sale of their property, being locked up in the Imperial Treasury, or the public exchequer. To meet this, the Senate had directed that every creditor should have two-thirds his capital secured on his states in Italy. Creditors, however, were suing for payment in full, and it was not respectable for persons when sued to break faith. So at first there were clamorous meetings and important entreaties, then noisy applications to the praetor's court. And the very device intended as a remedy, the sale and purchase for states, proved the contrary, as the usurers had hoarded up all their money for buying land. The facilities for selling were followed by a fall of prices, and the deeper a man was in debt, the more reluctantly did he part with his property, and many were utterly ruined. The destruction of private wealth precipitated the fall of rank and reputation, till at last the Emperor interposed his aid by distributing throughout the banks a hundred million cisterces, and allowing freedom to borrow without interest for three years, provided the borrower gave security to the state in land to double the amount. Credit was thus restored, and gradually private lenders were fined. Purchase two of his states was not carried out according to the letter of the Senate's decree, rigor at the outset, as usual with such matters, becoming negligence in the end. Former alarms then returned, as there was a charge of treason against Considious Proculus. While he was celebrating his birthday without a fear, he was hurried before the Senate, condemned, and instantly put to death. His sister, a Sankia, was outlawed on the accusation of Quintus Pomponius, a restless spirit who pretended that he employed himself in this and like practices to in favour with the sovereign, and thereby alleviate the perils hanging over his brother, Pomponius Secundus. Pompaya Macrina, too, was sentenced to banishment. Her husband, Argolicus, and her father-in-law, Leko, leading men of Acaya, had been ruined by the Emperor. Her father, likewise, an illustrious Roman knight, and her brother, an ex-prator, seeing their doom was near, destroyed themselves. It was imputed to them as a crime that their great-grandfather, Theophanes of Mitolini, had been one of the intimate friends of Pompi the Great, and that after his death Greek flattery had paid him divine honours. Sextus Marius, the richest man in Spain, was next accused of incest with his daughter, and thrown headlong from the Tarpean Rock. To remove any doubt that the vastness of his wealth had proved the man's ruin, Tiberius kept his gold-mines for himself, though they were forfeited to the state. Executions were now as stimulus to his fury, and he ordered the death of all who were lying in prison under accusation of complicity with Sigenus. Their lay, singly or in heaps, the unnumbered dead, of every age and sex, the illustrious with the obscure. Kinfolk and friends were not allowed to be near them, to weep over them, or even to gaze on them too long. Spies were set round them who noted the sorrow of each mourner, and followed the rotting corpses till they were dragged to the Tiber, where, floating or driven on the bank, no one dared to burn nor to touch them. The force of terror had utterly extinguished the sense of human fellowship, and, with the growth of cruelty, pity was thrust aside. End of Book 6, Part 1. About the same time, Claudia, daughter to Marcus Salanus, was given in marriage to Caligula, who had accompanied his grandfather to Capria, having always hid, under a subdualist guise of modesty, his savage and inhuman spirit, even upon the condemnation of his mother, even for the exile of his brothers, not a word escaped him, not a sigh, nor groan. He was so blindly observant of Tiberius, that he studied the bent of his temper, and seemed to possess it, practiced his looks, imitated the change and fashion of his dress, and affected his words and manner of expression. Hence the observation of Passianus, the orator, grew afterwards famous, that there never lived a better slave, nor a worse master. Neither would I omit the presage of Tiberius concerning Galba, then consul. Having sent for him, and sifted him upon several subjects, he at last told him in Greek, and thou, Galba, shalt hereafter taste of empire, signifying his late and short sovereignty. Then he uttered from his skill in astrology, which at Rhodes he had leisure to learn, and had Threselus for his teacher, whose capacity he proved by this following trial. As often as he consulted this way concerning any affair, he retired to the roof of the house, attended by one freedman trusted with the secret. This man, strong of body but destitute of letters, guided along the astrologer, whose art Tiberius meant to try, over solitary precipices, for upon a rock the house stood. And as he returned, if any suspicion arose that his predictions were vain, or that the author designed fraud, cast him headlong into the sea, to prevent his making discoveries. Threselus being therefore led over the same rocks, and minutely consulted, his answers were full, and struck Tiberius, as approaching empire, and many future revolutions were specifically foretold him. The artist was then questioned, whether he had calculated his own nativity, and thence presaged what was to befall him that same year, nay, that very day. Threselus surveying the positions of the stars, and calculating their aspects, began at first to hesitate, then to quake, and the more he meditated, being more and more dismayed with wonder and dread, he at last cried out, that over him just then hung a boating danger, and well-nigh fatal. Fourthwith, Tiberius embraced him, congratulated of him upon his foresight of perils, and his security from them, and esteeming his predictions, as so many oracles, held him thence forward in the rank of his most intimate friends. For myself, while I listened to these and the like relations, my judgment wavers, whether things human are in their course and rotation determined by fate and immutable necessity, or left to roll at random. For upon this subject, the wisest of the ancients, and those addicted to their sects, are of opposite sentiments. Many are of opinion, that to the gods, neither the generation of us men, nor our death, and in truth, neither men nor the actions of men, are of any importance or concernment, and thence, such numberless calamities afflict the upright, while pleasure and prosperity surround the wicked. Others hold the contrary position, and believe a fate to preside over events, a fate however not resulting from wandering stars, but co-eval with the first principles of things, and operating by the continued connection of natural causes. Yet their philosophy leaves out course of life in our own free option, but that after the choice is made, the chain of consequences is inevitable. Neither is that good or evil which passes for such in the estimation of the vulgar. Many who seem wounded with adversity are yet happy. Numbers that wallow in wealth are yet most wretched, since the first often bear with magnanimity the blows of fortune, and the latter abuse her bounty in baneful pursuits. For the rest it is common to multitudes of men to have each their whole future fortunes determined from the moment of their birth, or if some events thwart the prediction, it is through the mistakes of such as pronounced at random, and thence debase the credit of an art, which, both in ages past and our own, hath given signal instances of its certainty. For, to avoid lengthening this discretion, I shall remember in its order, how by the sun of this same threselice the empire was predicted to Nero. During the same consulship was divulged the death of a sinious gallus, that he perished through famine was undoubted, but whether of his own accord or by constraint was held uncertain. The pleasure of the emperor being consulted, whether he would suffer him to be buried, he was not ashamed to grant such a piece of mock mercy, nor even to blame the anticipations of casualty, which had withdrawn the criminal before he was publicly convicted, as if during three intermediate years between his accusation and his death there wanted time for the trial of an ancient consular, and the father of so many consulers. Next perished Drusus, condemned by his grandfather to be starved, but by gnawing the weeds upon which he lay, he by that miserable nourishment protracted life the space of nine days. Some authors relate that in case Sojanus had resisted and taken arms, macro had instructions to draw this young man out of confinement, for he was kept in the palace, and set him at the head of the people. Afterwards, because a report ran that the emperor was about to be reconciled to his daughter-in-law and grandson, he chose rather to gratify himself by cruelty than the public by relenting. Tiberius not satiated with the death of Drusus, even after death pursued him with cruel invectives, and in a letter to the senate charged him with a body foul with prostitution, with a spirit breathing destruction to his own family and rage against the republic, and ordered to be recited the minutes of his words and actions which had been long and daily registered. A proceeding more black with horror could not be devised, that for so many years there should be those expressly appointed who were to note down his looks, his groans, his secret and extorted murmurs, that his grandfather should delight to hear the treacherous detail, to read it, and to the public expose it, would appear a series of fraud, meanness, and amazement beyond all measure of faith, were it not for the letters of Actius the Centurion and Didymus the Freedmen, who in them declare particularly the names of the slaves set purposely to abuse and provoke Drusus, with the several parts they acted, how one struck him going out of his chamber, and how another filled him with terrors and dismay. The Centurion too repeated, as matter of glory, his own language to Drusus full of outrage and barbarity, with the words uttered by him under the agonies of famine, that at first feigning disorder of spirit he ventured in the style of a madman, dismal denunciations against Tiberius. But after all hopes of life had forsaken him, then, in steady and deliberate imprecations, he invoked the direful vengeance of the gods, that as he had slaughtered his son's wife, slaughtered the son of his brother and his son's sons, and with slaughters had filled the whole house, so they would, injustice to the ancestors of the slain, injustice to their posterity, doom him to the dreadful penalties of so many murders. The senators in truth upon this raised a mighty din, under color of detesting these imprecations. But it was dread which possessed them, and amazement, that he who had once been so dark in the practice of wickedness, and so subtle in the concealment of his bloody spirit, was arrived at such an utter insensibility of shame, that he could thus remove, as it were, the covert of the walls, and represent his own grandson under the ignominious chastisement of a centurion, torn by the barbarous stripes of slaves, and imploring in vain the last sustenance of life. Before the impressions of this grief were worn away, the death of Agrippina was published. I suppose she had lived thus long upon the hopes which from the execution of Sogenus she had conceived. But, feeling afterwards no relaxation of cruelty, death grew her choice. Unless perhaps she were bereaved of nourishment, and her decease feigned to have been of her own seeking. For Tiberius raged against her with abominable imputations, reproaching her with lewdness as the adulteress of a sinious gallus, and that upon his death she became weary of life. But these were none of her crimes. Agrippina, impatient of an equal lot, and eager for rule, had then sacrificed to masculine ambition all the passions and vices of women. The Emperor added that she departed the same day on which Sogenus had suffered as a traitor two years before, and that the same ought to be perpetuated by a public memorial. Nay, he boasted of his clemency, in that she had not been strangled and her body cast into the charnel of malefactors. For this, as for an instance of mercy, the Senate solemnly thanked him and decreed that on the seventeenth of October the day of both their deaths, a yearly offering should be consecrated to Jupiter for ever. Not long after, cocaeus Narva, in full prosperity of fortune, in perfect vigor of body, formed a purpose of dying. As he was the incessant companion of the Prince, and accomplished in the knowledge of all laws, divine and human, Tiberius having learned his design was earnest to dissuade him, examined his motives, joined in treaties, and even declared how grievous to his own spirit it would prove, how grievous to his reputation if the nearest of his friends should relinquish life without any cause for dying. Narva rejected his reasoning, and completed his purpose by abstinence. It was alleged by such as knew his thoughts that the more he saw into the dreadful source and the increase of public miseries, the more transported with indignation and fear he resolved to make an honest end in the bloom of his integrity before his life and credit were assaulted. Moreover, the fall of Agrippina, by a reverse hardly credible, procured that of Plancina. She was formally married to Cneus Piso, and though she exalted publicly for the death of Germanicus, yet, when Piso fell, she was protected by the solicitations of Augusta, more or less by the known animosity of Agrippina. But as favour and hate were now withdrawn, justice prevailed, and being questioned for crimes long since sufficiently manifest, she executed with her own hand that vengeance which was rather too slow than too severe. While the city yet bewailed so many tragical deaths, it was in a session to the public affliction that Julia, the daughter of Drusus, and lately the wife of Nero, was espoused to rebellious blandus, whose grandfather was remembered by many to have been only a Roman knight from Tiber. At the issue of the year happened the death of Alias Lamia, and was celebrated with a public funeral. For his last employment he was Governor of Rome, having been at length discharged from the mock administration of Syria, which he was never suffered to visit. In his descent he was noble, enjoyed a lively old age, and upon his character was derived fresh glory from the withholding of his province from him. As Pomponius Flaccus, proprietor of Syria died some time after, there arrived letters from Tiberius. In them he complained that all the senators of distinguished name and qualified to command armies refused that office. Hence he was reduced to the necessity of entreaties, to engage some of the consulers to undertake the rule of provinces. He thought fit to forget Aruntius, Governor of Spain, already for ten years detained at Rome. The same year also died Marcus Lepidus, of whose wisdom and moderation I have in the former books inserted abundant instances. Nor does it require more Rome here to display his nobility, since his race was that of Emili, a race fertile in good citizens, and even those of the same family who lapsed into corruption, continued still to be distinguished by their illustrious dignities and fortune. In the consulship of Paulus Fabius and Lucius Vitellius, after a long vicissitude of ages, the phoenix arrived in Egypt, and furnished the most learned of the natives and Greeks with matter of large and various observations concerning that miraculous bird. The circumstances in which they agree, with many others, that however disputed deserved to be known, claim a recital here. That it is a creature sacred to the sun, and in the fashion of its head and diversity of feathers distinct from other birds, all who have described its figure are agreed. About the length of its life relations vary. It is by the vulgar tradition fixed at five hundred years, but there are those who extend it to one thousand four hundred and sixty-one, and assert that the three former phoenixes appeared in reigns greatly distant, the first under Sosostris, the next under Amasas, and that one was seen under Ptolemy the third king of Egypt of the Macedonian race, and flew to the city of Heliopolis, accompanied by a vast host of other birds gazing upon the wonderful stranger. But these are, in truth, the obscure accounts of antiquity. Between Ptolemy and Tiberius the interval was shorter, not two hundred and fifty years. Hence some have believed that the present was a spurious phoenix, and derived not its origin from the territories of Arabia, since it observed nothing of the instinct which ancient tradition attributes to the genuine, for that the latter, having completed its course of years, just before its death, builds a nest in its native land, and upon it sheds a generative power, from whence arises a young one, whose first care when he has grown, is to bury his father. Neither does he undertake it unadvisably, but by collecting and fetching loads of myrrh, tries his strength in great journeys, and as soon as he finds himself equal to the burden and fit for the long flight, he rears upon his back his father's body, carries it quite to the altar of the sun, and then flies away. These are uncertain tales, and their uncertainty heightened by fables, but that this bird has been sometimes seen in Egypt is not questioned. At Rome, as the course of slaughter continued unrelenting, Pomponius Lebeo, whom I have remembered to have been governor of Mosea, chose by opening his veins to let out his own blood, as by his example did his wife Paxia hers. Such efficacy had the terror of falling by the executioner that to escape him deaths of this sort were readily undergone. Besides, that they who stayed to be sentenced forfeited their estates with their lives, and were debarred the rites of burial. Of such, on the contrary, as anticipated condemnation, the bodies were interred and their wills remained in force. The mode of this and price of dispatch, Tiberius however, in a letter to the senate, argued that it was the usage of our ancestors when they would renounce friendship to forbid the person obnoxious their house, and by it shut up all intercourse, a usage repeated by himself towards Lebeo. Whereas Lebeo, who was charged with male administration and other crimes, had now, by leaving upon the prince the odium of his death, sought avail to his own guilt, and thence falsely terrified his wife, to whom, however criminal, no punishment was meant. Mamercas Scouris was thereafter questioned afresh, a man of signal quality, a noble orator, but profligate liver. In his overthrow the friendship of Sojanus had no share, but in an engine no less potent to destroy, the enmity of macro, who pursued but with more subtlety the same depraved politics. He was furnished with a handle from a tragedy composed by Scouris, in which were some lines capable of being pointed against Tiberius. But the accusers, Servilius and Cornelius, the crimes objected were those of adultery with Livia and the mysteries of magic. Scouris, as became the magnanimity of the ancient Emili, prevented condemnation by the persuasion of Sextia his wife, who animated him to die, and died with him. And yet the accusers, when opportunity occurred, were surrendered to vengeance, as were this same Servilius and Cornelius, men become famous by the doom of Scouris. But for accepting from various Ligur, a bribe to drop prosecution, they were interdicted fire and water and exiled into different lands. A buddhist Rufo too, once a deal, whilst he brought a charge against Lentulus Gatulicus, under whom he had led a legion, that he had espoused his daughter to marry a son of Sojanus, was himself condemned and banished Rome. Gatulicus was at this time commander of the legions in Upper Germany, and by them wonderfully beloved for his unbounded clemency and his discipline void of rigor. Neither was he unacceptable to the neighbouring army, through his interest in Lucius Apronius his father-in-law. Hence he was universally believed to have, by a letter, represented to the emperor, that by no choice of his own had he joined affinity with Sojanus, but in compliance with the council of Tiberius, and was as liable as Tiberius to be deceived, nor ought one and the same error to pass unblamed in the prince only, and upon all others draw down deadly vengeance. For his own faith it was pure and inviolate, and if against him no plots were framed would continue unshaken. A successor he would receive as no other than the herald of death. It remained therefore that between them two they should, as it were, establish a league by which the prince should still enjoy all the rest of the empire, and he himself always retain his province. This proceeding, however amazing, derived credit from hence, that he only of all that were allied to Sojanus remained in safety, and even in high favour. Tiberius indeed considered himself under the pressure of public hatred, under the weight of extreme age, and that more by reputation than force his authority was upheld. End of Book 6, Part 2. Recording by Calinda in Raymond, New Hampshire, on February 20th,