СНАР. A. D. 14. careful to avoid committing himself to any personal views: all he had requested was that they should consult about the honours to be paid to the deceased; while for himself he proposed to continue in the meantime in attendance upon the venerated remains, the only public function which he claimed the right to discharge. Yet he had not scrupled to assume the ordinary ensigns of power at the death-bed of the emperor; he had disposed the sentinels and given the watchword without any pretended reserve; even in presenting himself in the Forum and the Senate House he had surrounded himself with a military escort; still more, he had dispatched his own orders to the legions in the provinces; in short, he had shown no signs of hesitation in anything but his address to the senators themselves.1 As the associate indeed in the imperium he was perfectly competent to take these military measures; but the motive which impelled him to act so promptly and decisively was the fear he entertained of Germanicus, the commander of several legions and the personal favourite of the people, who, it might be apprehended, would rather choose to seize upon the supreme power at once than wait for its descent to him hereafter.? Tiberius had a further reason for courting the suffrages 1 Tac. Ann. l. c.: Defuncto Augusto signum prætoriis cohortibus ut imperator dederat; excubiæ, arma, cætera aulæ; miles in Forum miles in Curiam comitabatur; literas ad exercitus, tanquam adepto principatu, misit; nusquam cunctabundus nisi quum in Senatu loqueretur. Comp. Suet. Tib. 24.; Dion, lvii. 2. 2 Tac. 1. c.: Causa præcipua ex formidine ne Germanicus, in cujus manu tot legiones, immensa sociorum auxilia, mirus apud populum favor, habere imperium quam exspectare mallet. СНАР. XLII. A. U. 767. of the senate, rather than commanding them: he was anxious to appear to owe his election to the voice of the nation rather than slip into the suc- A.D. 14. cession of Augustus as the adopted heir of a woman-ruled dotard. It suited his temper, moreover, and in estimating the acts of the moody Tiberius we must regard his temper even more than his policy, to ascertain by these means the real disposition of the courtiers, whose voices he could have easily secured. testament of Augustus. Already, sixteen months before his death, Au. Private gustus had signed and sealed his last will and testament, and placed it beyond his own reach in the sacred custody of the Vestals. By this instrument he had made a careful disposition of his property, after the manner of a private citizen. The bulk of it he had bequeathed, after expressing his regret at the loss of Caius and Lucius, to Tiberius and Livia in unequal proportions, the former receiving two thirds, the latter one third only; but even this share was beyond what the law allowed to a widow, and required a special exemption from the senate.2 It was provided at the same time that Livia should be adopted into the Julian family, and distinguished with the title of Augusta. In default of the survival of these his first-named heirs, he called his grandsons and their children to the inheritance, one third of which was to descend to 1 Suet. Oct. 101.; Tac. Ann. i. 8.; Dion, lvi. 32, 33. 2 The lex Voconia had allowed a widow to inherit only a fourth, and this had been reduced to a fifth by the lex Papia Poppæa. It may be said, however, that Livia had been released from the severity of this law by receiving the Jus trium liberorum. Dion, lv. 2. Se Reimar's note on Dion, Ivi. 32. CHAP. A.D. 14. A. U. 767. Drusus, the son of Tiberius, the remainder to be apportioned among Germanicus and his three male children. The unfortunate Julias were specially excepted from all benefit in this arrangement, and a clause was added by which their remains were forbidden to rest in the Cæsarean mausoleum. Of Agrippa Postumus no mention seems to have been made at all. Failing all natural or adoptive successors, the emperor had taken the precaution of inserting the names of some of the chief nobility, even such as he was well known to have regarded during his lifetime with distrust and dislike, with the view of conciliating their favour towards his descendants, or as an empty display of generosity. But the property which, after fifty years of power, the emperor had on his death-bed to bestow, did not exceed what might be expected from a noble citizen of the first rank; and it was burdened by considerable donations to the public treasury, to the citizens individually, to the legionaries and to the prætorian Last public guards, and also to a few private friends.1 counsels. As regarded public affairs, the last counsels he gave to his children and the commonwealth were exhortations to prudence and moderation. He requested that no ostentation of generosity or magnificence should induce them to emancipate many slaves at his funeral; that they should abstain from admitting the subjects of the empire indiscriminately to the honour and privileges of the ruling race; that they should summon all men capable of affairs to a 1 Tac. 1. c.: Populo et plebi ccccxxxv., prætoriarum cohortium militibus singula nummum millia, legionariis ecc., cohortibus civium Rom. ccccc. nummos viritim dedit. CHAP. XLII. honours de creed him. share in their administration, and not accumulate all public functions in a single hand; lastly, that they should rest satisfied with the actual extension A.D. 14. of the frontiers, nor risk, by the lust of further conquests, the loss of the provinces they possessed: for so he had paused himself in the career of his own successes, and preferred to present gain or personal ambition the permanent interests of the republic.1 Tiberius was anxious that the citizens should Funeral notice the modest deference of their deceased ruler to their presumed supremacy, and fancy that the empire, with all its various powers and prerogatives, was still their own to give or to withhold. The senators and people vied with one another in the honours they heaped upon the memory of so loyal a sovereign. The body, it was decreed, should be borne into the Field of Mars through the Gate of Triumph, but Tiberius himself interfered to moderate the officious zeal of individual courtiers. The populace signified their determination to consume the remains in the Forum, and an armed guard was required to prevent this irregularity, to avert the riots which might have ensued, and spare the superstitious feelings which would be hurt by it. But the vapid admiration of the sated sight-seers of Rome was finally contented .... 1 Dion, lvi. 33. These latter counsels seem to have been appended to the register of the empire (its forces, revenues, &c.), which Augustus bequeathed to the state. Tac. Ann. i. 11.: Proferri libellum recitarique jussit: opes publicæ continebantur, &c. . . . . addideratque consilium coercendi intra terminos imperii. See chap. xxxix. vol. iv. p. 431. It was still a question, however, whether this last advice was the result of apprehension for the public weal, or of envy towards his successor. СПАР. A.D. 14. Tiberius in the senate. with the decorous solemnities of a national apotheosis. The senate, the same body, at least in name, which had struck down another Cæsar sixty years before, which had conceded honours to his corpse under bitter compulsion, and driven his adorers from his shrine with blows and menaces, now combined with all classes of the citizens in a common act of extravagant adulation. The procession of the Roman knights who attended on the bier held its stately march from the suburban station of Boville to the centre of the city; orations in praise of the deceased were pronounced by Tiberius and his son Drusus from the steps of the Julian temple and from the rostra; from the Forum the honoured remains were borne upon the shoulders of the senators to the place of cremation in the Campus Martius. Temples, priests, and holy observances were decreed to the divine Augustus, as before to the divine Julius, for a prætorian senator was found to affirm that he had seen his soul ascend from his ashes into the celestial abodes. This testimony, such as it was, followed an ancient and auspicious precedent, and was rewarded with a splendid present from Livia. On the death of Cæsar no such vision had been required: Rome and the world believed without a witness, that a spirit more than human had exchanged life for immortality. Meanwhile a scene was being enacted in the Senate House of much more importance to the interests of the citizens than that which concerned. 1 Suet. Oct. 100.; Dion, lvi. 46.-Comp. the legend of Romulus. |