The Histories & The Annals. Tacitus

now, loosed from every bond, they rule our houses, our tribunals, even our armies.”

      A few heard this speech with approval, but the majority clamorously objected that there was no proper motion on the subject, and that Caecina was no fit censor on so grave an issue. Presently Valerius Messalinus, Messala’s son, in whom the father’s eloquence was reproduced, replied that much of the sternness of antiquity had been changed into a better and more genial system. “Rome,” he said, “is not now, as formerly, beset with wars, nor are the provinces hostile. A few concessions are made to the wants of women, but such as are not even a burden to their husbands homes, much less to the allies. In all other respects man and wife share alike, and this arrangement involves no trouble in peace. War of course requires that men should be unincumbered, but when they return what worthier solace can they have after their hardships than a wife’s society? But some wives have abandoned themselves to scheming and rapacity. Well; even among our magistrates, are not many subject to various passions? Still, that is not a reason for sending no one into a province. Husbands have often been corrupted by the vices of their wives. Are then all unmarried men blameless? The Oppian laws were formerly adopted to meet the political necessities of the time, and subsequently there was some remission and mitigation of them on grounds of expediency. It is idle to shelter our own weakness under other names; for it is the husband’s fault if the wife transgresses propriety. Besides, it is wrong that because of the imbecility of one or two men, all husbands should be cut off from their partners in prosperity and adversity. And further, a sex naturally weak will be thus left to itself and be at the mercy of its own voluptuousness and the passions of others. Even with the husband’s personal vigilance the marriage tie is scarcely preserved inviolate. What would happen were it for a number of years to be forgotten, just as in a divorce? You must not check vices abroad without remembering the scandals of the capital.”

      Drusus added a few words on his own experience as a husband. “Princes,” he said, “must often visit the extremities of their empire. How often had the Divine Augustus travelled to West and to the East accompanied by Livia? He had himself gone to Illyricum and, should it be expedient, he would go to other countries, not always however with a contented mind, if he had to tear himself from a much loved wife, the mother of his many children.”

      Caecina’s motion was thus defeated. At the Senate’s next meeting came a letter from Tiberius, which indirectly censured them for throwing on the emperor every political care, and named Marcus Lepidus and Junius Blaesus, one of whom was to be chosen pro-consul of Africa. Both spoke on the subject, and Lepidus begged earnestly to be excused. He alleged ill-health, his children’s tender age, his having a daughter to marry, and something more of which he said nothing, was well understood, the fact that Blaesus was uncle of Sejanus and so had very powerful interest. Blaesus replied with an affectation of refusal, but not with the same persistency, nor was he backed up by the acquiescence of flatterers.

      Next was exposed an abuse, hitherto the subject of many a whispered complaint. The vilest wretches used a growing freedom in exciting insult and obloquy against respectable citizens, and escaped punishment by clasping some statue of the emperor. The very freedman or slave was often an actual terror to his patron or master whom he would menace by word and gesture. Accordingly Caius Cestius, a senator, argued that “though princes were like deities, yet even the gods listened only to righteous prayers from their suppliants, and that no one fled to the Capitol or any other temple in Rome to use it as an auxiliary in crime. There was an end and utter subversion of all law when, in the forum and on the threshold of the Senate House, Annia Rufilla, whom he had convicted of fraud before a judge, assailed him with insults and threats, while he did not himself dare to try legal proceedings, because he was confronted by her with the emperor’s image.” There rose other clamorous voices, with even more flagrant complaints, and all implored Drusus to inflict exemplary vengeance, till he ordered Rufilla to be summoned, and on her conviction to be confined in the common prison.

      Considius Aequus too and Coelius Cursor, Roman knights, were punished on the emperor’s proposal, by a decree of the Senate, for having attacked the praetor, Magius Caecilianus, with false charges of treason. Both these results were represented as an honour to Drusus. By moving in society at Rome, amid popular talk, his father’s dark policy, it was thought, was mitigated. Even voluptuousness in one so young gave little offence. Better that he should incline that way, spend his days in architecture, his nights in banquets, than that he should live in solitude, cut off from every pleasure, and absorbed in a gloomy vigilance and mischievous schemes.

      Tiberius indeed and the informers were never weary. Ancharius Priscus had prosecuted Caesius Cordus, proconsul of Crete, for extortion, adding a charge of treason, which then crowned all indictments. Antistius Vetus, one of the chief men of Macedonia, who had been acquitted of adultery, was recalled by the emperor himself, with a censure on the judges, to be tried for treason, as a seditious man who had been implicated in the designs of Rhescuporis, when that king after the murder of his brother Cotys had meditated war against us. The accused was accordingly outlawed, with the further sentence that he was to be confined in an island from which neither Macedonia nor Thrace were conveniently accessible.

      As for Thrace, since the division of the kingdom between Rhoemetalces and the children of Cotys, who because of their tender age were under the guardianship of Trebellienus Rufus, it was divided against itself, from not being used to our rule, and blamed Rhoemetalces no less than Trebellienus for allowing the wrongs of his countrymen to go unpunished. The Coelaletae, Odrusae and Dii, powerful tribes, took up arms, under different leaders, all on a level from their obscurity. This hindered them from combining in a formidable war. Some roused their immediate neighbourhood; others crossed Mount Haemus, to stir up remote tribes; most of them, and the best disciplined, besieged the king in the city of Philippopolis, founded by the Macedonian Philip.

      When this was known to Publius Vellaeus who commanded the nearest army, he sent some allied cavalry and light infantry to attack those who were roaming in quest of plunder or of reinforcements, while he marched in person with the main strength of the foot to raise the siege. Every operation was at the same moment successful; the pillagers were cut to pieces; dissensions broke out among the besiegers, and the king made a well-timed sally just as the legion arrived. A battle or even a skirmish it did not deserve to be called, in which merely half-armed stragglers were slaughtered without bloodshed on our side.

      That same year, some states of Gaul, under the pressure of heavy debts, attempted a revolt. Its most active instigators were Julius Florus among the Treveri and Julius Sacrovir among the Aedui. Both could show noble birth and signal services rendered by ancestors, for which Roman citizenship had formerly been granted them, when the gift was rare and a recompense only of merit. In secret conferences to which the fiercest spirits were admitted, or any to whom poverty or the fear of guilt was an irresistible stimulus to crime, they arranged that Florus was to rouse the Belgae, Sacrovir the Gauls nearer home. These men accordingly talked sedition before small gatherings and popular assemblies about the perpetual tributes, the oppressive usury, the cruelty and arrogance of their governors, hinting too that there was disaffection among our soldiers, since they had heard of the murder of Germanicus. “It was,” they said, “a grand opportunity for the recovery of freedom, if only they would contrast their own vigour with the exhaustion of Italy, the unwarlike character of the city populace, and the utter weakness of Rome’s armies in all but their foreign element.”

      Scarcely a single community was untouched by the germs of this commotion. First however in actual revolt were the Andecavi and Turoni. Of these the former were put down by an officer, Acilius Aviola, who had summoned a cohort which was on garrison duty at Lugdunum. The Turoni were quelled by some legionary troops sent by Visellius Varro who commanded in Lower Germany, and led by the same Aviola and some Gallic chieftains who brought aid, in order that they might disguise their disaffection and exhibit it at a better opportunity. Sacrovir too was conspicuous, with head uncovered, cheering on his men to fight for Rome, to display, as he said, his valour. But the prisoners asserted that he sought recognition that he might not be a mark for missiles. Tiberius when consulted on the matter disdained the information, and fostered the war by his irresolution.

      Florus meanwhile followed up his designs and tried to induce a squadron of cavalry levied among the Treveri, trained in our service and discipline, to begin hostilities by