Part 19

Marriage, although it was so easy to dissolve, was distasteful to most persons, so that they lived in concubinage; the many freedmen whose names are found on the inscriptions of that period, are the children whom the masters had by their female slaves. This gave rise to those celebrated laws, the _Lex Julia_ and the _Lex Papia Poppæa_. The degeneracy and profligacy of the freeborn female citizens was so awful, that many a man who was no profligate, may have found a much more faithful and estimable partner in a slave than in a Roman lady of high birth; and thus it was looked upon as a point of conscience not to marry. Hence there were now many more born slaves and _libertini_ than there were freeborn citizens; besides which, in the great houses, innumerable hosts of bought slaves were kept. In the provinces, where the _parsimonia provincialis_ was still reigning, there was no such disproportion: these had a population of _ingenui_; in some it was also restored and recruited by the military colonies;—such a soldier, though he may formerly have been a brigand, might after all have turned out quite a respectable man, after having once got a home of his own. These men made the use of the Latin language more general. Nor could this be helped: for what was spoken in those countries was but a jargon, from which the people did their best to wean themselves; and they were none the worse for it. The main object of the provincials could not have been, and indeed was not, anything else but to become Romans. In the midst, therefore, of the most detestable tyranny, the vital energies of the countries bordering upon the Mediterranean revived. The tyranny of the governors was, however, far less than what it had been in the times of the republic; at least, it was so under Tiberius, in whose reign a fraudulent proconsul would certainly not have been acquitted.

NERO.

After the death of Claudius, Nero, then a youth of seventeen years, mounted the throne without any opposition: whether Claudius had still made a disposition in favour of Britannicus, can no longer be made out. Nero was endowed by nature with bountiful gifts; he had a talent for music and the fine arts, and also for mechanics: there is no reason to doubt that in music he was a virtuoso. He was a pupil of Seneca. At first, he gave birth to the fairest hopes; yet even thus early, it was difficult for farsighted people to believe in them, who felt sure that a viper’s brood must be vipers. His mother Agrippina was the unworthy daughter of the worthy Germanicus, and the worthy sister of Caligula; his father, Cn. Domitius Ahenobarbus, was quite her match, and he said himself, that from him and Agrippina a monster only could have been born. The whole of the Roman world shared in this foreboding; and therefore people were so much the more astonished at Nero’s behaving at first like the disciple of Seneca and Burrhus. The latter was a fine honest man of the old school, and a good officer, who was appointed by Nero as _præfectus prætorio_; Seneca was a refined man of the world, who busied himself a great deal about virtue, and may also have looked upon himself as an old Stoic, believing for certain that there was not a more clever and virtuous man living than himself: yet this did not prevent his giving himself every moment a dispensation from his virtue. The influence of these two men during the first years of this reign was decided; but the beautiful dream of Nero’s amiability was very short, as both of these tutors were very soon set aside. The first impulse was given by the profligacy to which Nero had yielded himself up from his earliest youth; and then by his mother, who left no means untried to keep her son in a state of dependence. She was opposed by Burrhus and Seneca: the former withstood her out of love for his country; the latter perhaps from the same motives, but just as much from personal grounds, Agrippina being his enemy. When this change took place, cannot be exactly ascertained. The progress of it—the personal connexions in which Nero lived; the influence of Poppæa Sabina, a woman of high rank and wonderful beauty, but tainted with the profligacy of her age, in whose nets he was irretrievably entangled; the still more baneful influence of his mother—is described by Tacitus: I will not speak of Nero’s degeneracy and unbounded depravity; all of it is too well known,—his name alone is enough. He resolved to murder his own mother, against whom he bore a grudge; and after an unsuccessful attempt, he carried out his purpose, owing, as Dio represents it, to Seneca’s instigation. That the speech which he caused to be read on that subject in the senate, was composed by Seneca, is an undoubted fact.

Though Nero now raged without restraint, and every day steeped his hands more and more in bloodshed, Tacitus does not look upon it as certain, that he had the city set on fire: on the contrary, he takes it for an idle rumour. It looks like Nero’s madness, that during the fire he got up upon the tower of Mæcenas, and in the attire of a tragedian sang the Ἰλίου ἅλωσις to the lyre: at all events, it may have been a welcome thing to him to be now able to build Rome anew. This fire, which lasted six whole days, is of very great importance in history: an immense number of monuments of every kind, historical records, works of art, and libraries, utterly perished; the larger half of Rome was destroyed, or at least very much damaged; the streets were all laid out in straight lines, and made broader, and they were built up in a new style, which gave the city quite a different appearance. The great fire at Constantinople, under Leo Macellas[41] in the fifth century of our era, has likewise had a most ruinous effect on Greek literature.

After this fire, Nero gave loose to his boundless prodigality and love of building; and for this purpose he extorted money from the whole of the Roman world. He built, what is called his “Golden Palace,” which extended from the Palatine, where afterwards the temple of Venus and Roma[42] was erected by Hadrian, to the baths of Titus, which, to speak more correctly, are those of Trajan: Vespasian had it destroyed for the sake of the remembrances connected with it. Some parts of the walls may still be found in the substructions of the baths of Titus: it was a most beautiful pile of masonry, with a coating of the finest marble: we are to imagine it to have been like a fairy palace in an eastern dream.

After this, Nero also had Seneca executed, whose manly end somewhat redeems the weakness of his life. Bareas Soranus and Thrasea Pætus were likewise made to die: the latter was preceded by his wife Arria, who gave him the example of a courageous death.

In Nero’s days, the Roman empire had not such rest as under Claudius. During the reign of the latter, the Romans had carried on wars in Britain, where they had established themselves, and had reduced a large part of the country into the form of a Roman province. From the despair of the Britons, we may see that the condition of a province, while it was yet new, and especially in a poor country, was one of great hardship; for it was only by great extortion that anything worth naming could be wrung from it. Hence arose the insurrection of the Britons under the great queen Boudicea as Tacitus calls her; according to Dio Cassius, Bunduica. This war at first was disastrous, and, to say the least, very serious indeed: the Romans were utterly beaten; their fortresses were demolished, two of their towns were taken, and many of them were slain. Suetonius Paullinus at last with great difficulty crushed the rebellion; Boudicea killed herself, and the Britons again bowed beneath the Roman yoke. Thus that outbreak paved the way for the complete conquest of Britain; and the Romans were now already masters of England, with the exception of Yorkshire and Lancashire, and the northern provinces: Anglesea also was Roman.

Another war was waged by Corbulo against the Parthians in Armenia, where a younger dynasty of the Arsacidæ was seated on the throne. This war Corbulo carried on with unfaltering success, conquering Artaxata and Tigranocerta, and obliging Vologæsus to sue for peace. The last scion of this race of kings, Tiridates, was forced to receive Armenia as a fief from Nero; for which purpose he had to come to Rome, where he met with a splendid reception. His appearance in Rome is one of those events of which the memory has survived in the traditions of the middle ages: he is mentioned, for instance, in the _Mirabilia Romæ_; and there is a legend—which, of course, is quite unfounded—that he brought the statues of Castor and Pollux, the work of Phidias and Praxiteles, as a present to Rome. The thanks which Corbulo earned for his victories, was death. He was undoubtedly one of the best Romans of that age; he was a man free from every craving of ambition, true and conscientious. His bust was found about forty years ago; its features are noble.

Nero now passed from one mad freak to another. I am inclined to believe, that he was not morally accountable for all of this, as insanity seems to have been hereditary in his family: Caligula was his uncle. Many things that he did were merely contemptible; as for instance, his going like a stroller through the Greek towns, where he tried to win the prizes, either as a musician, singer, or poet, in the public contests, or else in the horse-races, putting himself on a level with the other competitors. This would have been the most innocent of his pranks, were it not that he also robbed Greece of its works of art. The _præfectus prætorio_, Tigellinus, who had been appointed in the room of Burrhus, was at that time the most infamous of all those men who had any energy: the world was rid of him by the rising of Galba and Vindex.

In the thirteenth year of Nero’s reign, the first real attempt was made to overthrow his rule: a former conspiracy of Calpurnius Piso, in which Seneca also had perished, was a mere court plot in which no troops had any share. Nero had undertaken his journey through Greece to gratify his vanity: and whilst he everywhere caused himself to be crowned there as a conqueror, a rebellion broke out in Gaul under Julius Vindex, an Aquitanian of rank. The Gauls who had received the Roman franchise, bore all of them at that time the _prænomen_ of Julius, either after Julius Cæsar or Augustus; just as in Asia all had the name of Tiberius Claudius (thus, without a doubt Tib. Claudius Galenus). This has given rise to confusion in the system of Roman names: Julius Agricola, although a native of the Roman colony Forum Julii, may likewise have sprung from Gallic ancestors, which Tacitus, of course, says nothing about. Julius Vindex had the rank of a Roman senator; and by his wealth and his influence he set an insurrection on foot, which had quite a different character from a former rising in the reign of Tiberius: his object was simply as a Roman to shake off the yoke of Nero, not to sever Gaul itself from Rome. He met with very great sympathy, and had already spread his rule from Aquitaine as far as Besançon. The history of that time is in a very wretched state, as Tacitus is wanting, and nothing is left of Dio but the abridgment of Xiphilinus. Near Besançon, Vindex met T. Virginius Rufus, the commander of the German troops, a distinguished man, one of the few disinterested and true patriots which Rome still had. The latter was afraid that such a rising in Gaul, although it had the deliverance of Rome for its object, might cause the dismemberment of the empire; so they made a truce, and agreed to acknowledge the authority of the senate. The German troops wished to have Rufus for emperor; but he refused: Vindex, on the other hand, was slain in a tumult which had broken out between the two armies.

In the meanwhile, Servius Sulpicius Galba was proclaimed emperor in Spain: in that country there was only one legion, though there were many veterans out of whom a militia might be formed. Galba sprang from one of the most distinguished Roman houses. The _prænomen_ Servius was quite an heir-loom among the Sulpicii, as Appius was among the Claudii: yet it had altogether vanished as a _prænomen_, and had almost become a nomen, so that sometimes another _prænomen_ is put before it; which indeed is incorrect, but may be accounted for. Of Galba’s character we do not know much; had we but Suetonius, we should be at a loss how to form any notion of him, as Suetonius himself has no insight into character, being nothing but a pleasing and lively teller of anecdotes; some light is, however, thrown on Galba by the beginning of the _Historiæ_ of Tacitus. Galba had the respect of the army; he had been, when in his best days, a good general, and for those times at least, a blameless governor: but now he was in his seventy-first year, and had fallen under the influence of unworthy people, especially of freedmen. This sort of petty courts, composed of freedmen, had a great deal to do with the demoralized state of the Roman world. On the whole, there was in the Roman empire a bitter hatred against Nero, except among bloodthirsty men, of whom there were not a few: these rather liked him. Galba began his march, and soon formed new legions from the Romans and Italians who came to hand. According to the obscure accounts which we have, it appears that he now availed himself of the pretence that the Gauls were rebels against the majesty of the Roman senate, although under Vindex they had risen against the tyrant only; and he allowed his troops to plunder the southern Gallic towns. Virginius Rufus declared for him, and they both of them now crossed the Alps by different roads. Not a sword was drawn in behalf of Nero, although the prætorians were devoted to him: the passes of the Alps opened without a blow being struck, and the rebel armies drew nigh to the capital; on which Nero found himself abandoned by every one. The senate quickly passed from its former cringing servility into defiance and contempt; Nero fled from his palace, and took refuge in the farm-yard of one of the retainers of his household, where he hid himself, and, with the greatest reluctance, and with uncertain hand, inflicted on himself a deadly wound. Against him and his memory, every possible condemnation was denounced; yet his dead body was buried after all.

SERVIUS SULPICIUS GALBA. M. SALVIUS OTHO. A. VITELLIUS.

Galba entered Rome. Had he shown himself open-handed, he might easily have won men’s hearts; but he gave offence on every side. He partly protected Nero’s companions from public animadversion, and partly punished them. Then he behaved like a miser. Economy was certainly necessary; but he overdid it, as he gave no donation whatever to the prætorians, and a very niggardly one to the troops which he had brought with him. He moreover displayed hatred and mistrust towards the prætorians, although he had dismissed his own soldiers, except a few whom he billeted in the city. The prætorians, being ten thousand strong, were masters of his life; so that he ought to have driven them out, and decimated them as accomplices in the cruelties of Nero. The most powerful person in the city, to the disgrace of the age, was M. Salvius Otho; a man without any illustrious ancestry, whose station was entirely owing to Nero’s favour; a coxcomb of the then world in the most disgusting sense, and this implied much more depravity in ancient times than in our days; the associate of many of the profligacies of Nero:—cruelty, however, cannot be laid to his charge with certainty. He was rich, pleasing, what is called amiable; and he had that affable manner, which could not but have the greatest influence upon the minds of the prætorians. These therefore saw in him the man who could make up to them for Nero, whom they began to miss more and more. Galba, who already knew that the German troops on the Upper Rhine under Cæcina and Fabius Valens had become mutinous, and would not acknowledge him, tried to strengthen himself by adopting Calpurnius Piso, a distinguished young Roman. But that choice was an unfortunate one, as Piso had nothing to recommend him, but his high descent and his spotless character. Had not Galba been weakened by old age, his government might have become quite praiseworthy; but he lost the affection of all good men, not only by his avarice, but also because justice was shamefully abused and sold under his name by his favourites Vinius, Laco, and Icelus. Otho had reckoned on being himself adopted; whatever choice therefore Galba might have made, it would have been his ruin, if it were not Otho: yet the old soldier had after all too much love for his country to choose him. By dint of deep dissimulation, Otho got the prætorians to declare themselves at the moment when he wanted to call upon them. This was done. The city being at that time quite open, the prætorians marched in, and went straight to the forum. Galba, who had appeared in person with Piso to restore tranquillity, was stabbed before the German troops could have been moved into the town; and Otho was proclaimed emperor.

The senate was still respectable enough to abhor this election; but yet nothing better was to be looked for from Vitellius, whom the troops on the German frontier had proclaimed: he was by far the more vulgar and worthless of the two. His beastly gluttony alone distinguished him; and it is quite inconceivable, how Galba could have given him the chief command of the troops in Germany. He had a sort of popularity from his father, who had been thrice consul and likewise censor: the latter must have been a goodnatured man; for though he disgraced himself by the most abject flattery to Claudius, he was an enemy to no one, and therefore enjoyed the favour of the people. This favour passed on to the son, who, however, spent the whole of his life in brutal sensuality and vulgarity. He was at that time already fifty-seven years old, nor could he be said to have made a better use of his youth: it is very likely that Cæcina and Valens merely wished to put him forward for the moment, as, they might afterwards get him out of the way, and decide which of them should succeed to the throne. Vitellius was profusely liberal to the soldiers: he flattered them by granting them everything, while old Galba wanted to allow them nothing but what was absolutely necessary. He marched forth against Italy; the quickness with which he approached shows the readiness with which the Roman soldiers could move, and also the excellence of the high roads. Otho raised an army; Vitellius met with resistance on the frontiers from the legions in Mœsia and Pannonia, who thought it presumptuous in the German troops to try and force an emperor upon them. On these therefore Otho could rely, and likewise on the armies in the East, where at that time there had been as yet no rising. Italy was then the most defenceless part of the whole empire, there being hardly any troops there but the prætorians: with these Otho took the field. Cæcina and Valens had already passed the Alps, before Otho with his hastily collected force had reached the Po. The first battle was in favour of his cause. Otho ought now to have protracted the war, as he had much greater resources and far more money, and he could also reckon on getting reinforcements; but to his misfortune, he resolved upon giving battle near Bedriacum, in the neighbourhood of Cremona, and there he was worsted. All was not, however, lost; yet Otho made up his mind to put an end to his life, telling those who survived him, to make their peace with the conqueror as they best could. People generally look upon this as the act of a noble-minded man, who does not wish blood to be shed for his honour; which is the view which Tacitus also seems to take: I cannot see anything in it but the act of a most effeminate soul, for which the effort of a long struggle, the suspense between fear and hope, is the hardest lot to bear. Such characters are not unseldom met with: as, for instance, persons who are very fond of money, will often rather forego a great deal, than bring upon themselves the worry of a troublesome lawsuit. Juvenal looks upon Otho’s deed with just as little respect. Nor has Tacitus in his heart thought higher of Otho than he really deserves; for we must indeed consider that when a great writer describes a truly tragical act, it may easily happen that he does it with an emotion which is widely different from his moral judgment. Otho died in his thirty-seventh year, on the ninety-fifth day after his proclamation. Galba had reigned seven or eight months.

Vitellius took possession of Rome, and of the palace of the Cæsars; and giving himself the appearance of an avenger of Galba, although he had himself rebelled against him, he caused upwards of a hundred prætorians to be put to death. Yet, leaving aside his contemptible character, things did not at first go on as badly as had been expected. Soon, however, (A. D. 70.) his tranquillity was disturbed by the news of the rising of the Mœsian legions: these were to have come to the aid of Otho, and had wished to do so; and they were now commanded by a most ambitious tribune, Antonius Primus. At the same time, he was informed that the Syrian and the Parthian legions, the former under T. Flavius Vespasianus, the latter under Licinius Mucianus, refused to acknowledge him. Yet both of these last-named insurrections were far off; both armies also had enough to do, the one with the Parthians, the other with the Jews, and they could not leave the country where they were without leaving the frontiers open to the inroads of the enemy. It is also quite inconceivable to me, how the legions could have been withdrawn from the Rhine to Italy, without the barbarians attacking the frontiers. There are some traces of treaties having been concluded; but that treaties should have been made at all, is the very thing which we cannot understand: it would seem that since the times of Caligula a peaceful intercourse had sprung up, and that the Germans had lost every longing for an offensive war. The tract of country between the Upper Rhine and the Upper Danube, may even then have been Roman, although the ditch with the rampart and palisades (_limes_) was not dug till a later period.