Roman Society from Nero to Marcus Aurelius. Dill Samuel
this is expressed by a scrupulous observance of old republican forms. The commander of conquering legions, the Caesar, Augustus, Pontifex Maximus, has actually condescended to take the oath of office, standing before the consul seated in his chair!255 Here we seem to have the key to the senatorial position. They were ready to recognise the overwhelming power of the prince, if he, for his part, would only respect in form, if not in substance, the ancient dignity of the Senate. Tolerance, affability, [pg 44]politic deference to a great name, seemed to Pliny and his kind a restoration of the ancient freedom, almost a revival of the old Republic. Fortunately for the world a succession of wise princes perceived that, by deference to the pride of the Senate, they could secure the peace of their administration, without diminishing its effective power.
Yet, even from Pliny’s Panegyric, we can see that the recognition of the prerogatives, or rather of the dignity, of the Senate, the coexistence of old republican forms side by side with imperial power, depended entirely on the grace and tolerance of the master of the legions. Nothing could be more curious than Pliny’s assertion of the senatorial claims, combined with the most effusive gratitude to Trajan for conceding them. The emperor is only primus inter pares, and yet Pliny, by the whole tone of his speech, admits that he is the master who may equally indulge the constitutional claims or superstitions of his subjects or trample on them. In the first century a power, the extent of which depended only on the will of the prince, and yet seemed limited by shadowy claims of ancient tradition, was liable to be distrustful of itself and to be challenged by pretenders. In actual fact, the prince was so powerful that he might easily pass into a despot; in theory he was only the first of Roman nobles, who might easily have rivals among his own class. Pliny congratulates Trajan on having, by his mildness and justice, escaped the terror of pretenders which haunted the earlier emperors, and was often justified and cruelly avenged.256 In spite of the lavish splendour of Nero or Caligula, the imperial household, till Hadrian’s reorganisation, was still modelled on the lines of other great aristocratic houses. Nero’s suspicions were more than once excited by the scale of establishments like that of the Silani, by wealth and display like Seneca’s, by the lustre of great historic traditions in a gens like the Calpurnian.257 The loyalty of Corbulo could not save him from the jealousy aroused by his exploits in eastern war.258 And the power of great provincial governors, in command of great armies, and administering realms such as Gaul or Spain or Syria, was not an altogether imaginary danger. If Domitian seemed distrustful of Agricola [pg 45]in Britain, we must remember that he had in his youth seen Galba and Vindex marching on Rome, and his father concentrating the forces of the East for the overthrow of Vitellius in the great struggle on the Po.
The emperor’s fears and suspicions were immensely aggravated by the adepts in the dark arts of the East. The astrologers were a great and baneful power in the early Empire. They inspired illicit ambitions, or they stimulated them, and they often suggested to a timorous prince the danger of conspiracy. These venal impostors, in the words of Tacitus, were always being banished, but they always returned. For the men who drove them into temporary exile had the firmest faith in their skill. The prince would have liked to keep a monopoly of it, while he withdrew from his nobles the temptation which might be offered to their ambition by the mercenary adept.259 Dion Cassius and Suetonius, who were themselves eager believers in this superstition, never fail to record the influence of the diviners. The reign of Tiberius is full of dark tales about them.260 Claudius drove Scribonianus into exile for consulting an astrologer about the term of his reign.261 On the appearance of a flaming comet, Nero was warned by his diviner, Bilbilus, that a portent, which always boded ill to kings, might be expiated by the blood of their nobles.262 Otho’s astrologer, Seleucus, who had promised that he should survive Nero,263 stimulated his ambition to be the successor of Galba. Vitellius, as superstitious as Nero or Otho, cruelly persecuted the soothsayers and ordered their expulsion from Italy.264 He was defied by a mocking edict of the tribe, ordaining his own departure from earth by a certain day.265 Vespasian once more banished the diviners from Rome, but, obedient to the superstition which cradled the power of his dynasty, he retained the most skilful for his own guidance.266 The terror of Domitian’s last days was heightened by a horoscope, which long before had foretold the time and manner of his end.267 Holding such a faith as this, it is little wonder that the emperors should dread its effect on rivals who were equally [pg 46]credulous, or that superstition, working on ambitious hopes, should have been the nurse of treason. Thus the emperor’s uncertain position made him ready to suspect and anticipate a treachery which may often have had no existence. The objects of his fears in their turn were driven into conspiracy, sometimes in self-defence, sometimes from the wish to seize a prize which seemed not beyond their grasp. Gossip, lampoon, and epigram redoubled suspicion, while they retaliated offences. And cruel repression either increased the danger of revolt in the more daring, or the degradation of the more timorous.
In the eyes of Tacitus, the most terrible result of the tyranny of the bad emperors was the fawning servility of a once proud order, and their craven treachery in the hour of danger. He has painted it with all the concentrated power of loathing and pity. It is this almost personal degradation which inspires the ruthless, yet haughtily restrained, force with which he blasts for ever the memory of the Julio-Claudian despotism. It was in this spirit that he penned the opening chapters of his chronicle of the physical and moral horrors of the year in which that tyranny closed. The voice of history has been silenced or perverted, partly by the ignorance of public affairs, partly by the eagerness of adulation, or the bitterness of hatred. It was an age darkened by external disasters, save on the eastern frontier, by seditions and civil war, and the bloody death of four princes. The forces of nature seemed to unite with the rage of men to deepen the universal tragedy. Italy was overwhelmed with calamities which had been unknown for many ages; Campania’s fairest cities were swallowed up; Rome itself had been wasted by fire; the ancient Capitol was given to the flames by the hands of citizens. Polluted altars, adultery in high places, the islands of the sea crowded with exiles, rank and wealth and virtue made the mark for a cruel jealousy, all this forms an awful picture.268 But even more repulsive is the spectacle of treachery rewarded with the highest place, slaves and clients betraying their master for gain, and men without an enemy ruined by their friends. When the spotless Octavia, overwhelmed by the foulest calumnies, had been tortured to death, to satisfy the jealousy of an adulteress, offerings were voted to the [pg 47]temples.269 And Tacitus grimly requests his readers to presume that, as often as a banishment or execution was ordered by Nero, so often were thanksgivings offered to the gods. The horrors of Nero’s remorse for the murder of Agrippina were soothed by the flatteries and congratulations of his staff, and the grateful sacrifices which were offered for his deliverance by the Campanian towns.270 Still, the notes of a funereal trumpet and ghostly wailings from his mother’s grave were ever in his ears,271 and he long doubted the reception which he might meet with on his return to the capital. He need not have had any anxiety. Senate and people vied with one another in self-abasement. He was welcomed by all ranks and ages with fawning enthusiasm as he passed along in triumphal progress to return thanks on the Capitol for the success of an unnatural crime.
The Pisonian conspiracy against Nero was undoubtedly an important and serious event. Some of the greatest names of the Roman aristocracy were involved in it, and the man whom it would have placed on the throne, if not altogether untainted by the excesses of his time, had some imposing qualities which might make him seem a worthy competitor for the principate.272 But, to Tacitus, the conspiracy seems to be chiefly interesting as a damning proof of the degradation of the aristocracy under the reign of terror. Epicharis, the poor freedwoman of light character, who bore the accumulating torture of scourge and rack and fire, and the dislocation of every limb, is brought into pathetic contrast with the high-born senators and knights, who, without any compulsion of torture, betrayed their relatives and friends.273 Scaevinus, a man of the highest rank, knowing himself betrayed by his freedman and a Roman knight, revealed the whole plot.274 The poet Lucan tried in vain to purchase safety by involving his own mother. But Nero was inexorable, and the poet died worthily, reciting some verses from the Pharsalia, which describe a similar end.275 The scenes which followed the massacre are an awful revelation of cowardly sycophancy. While the streets were thronged with the funerals of the victims, [pg 48]the altars on the Capitol were smoking with sacrifices of gratitude. One craven after another, when he heard of the murder of a brother or a dear friend, would deck his house with laurels, and, falling at the emperor’s feet, cover his hand with kisses.276 The Senate