Tacitus: Annals: Book 14 [40]

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The Works of Tacitus
tr. by Alfred John Church and William Jackson Brodribb
[1864-1877]
Tacitus: Annals Book 14 [40]
40. That same year two remarkable crimes were committed at Rome, one by a senator, the other by the daring of a slave. Domitius Balbus, an ex-praetor, from his prolonged old age, his childlessness and his wealth, was exposed to many a plot. His kinsman, Valerius Fabianus, who was marked out for a career of promotion, forged a will in his name with Vinicius Rufinus and Terentius Lentinus, Roman knights, for his accomplices. These men had associated with them Antonius Primus and Asinius Marcellus. Antonius was a man of ready audacity; Marcellus had the glory of being the great-grandson of Asinius Pollio, and bore a character far from contemptible, except that he thought poverty the greatest of all evils. So Fabianus, with the persons whom I have named and some others less distinguished, executed the will. The crime was proved against them before the Senate, and Fabianus and Antonius with Rufinus and Terentius were condemned under the Cornelian law. Marcellus was saved from punishment rather than from disgrace by the memory of his ancestors and the intercessions of the emperor.
41. That same day was fatal also to Pompeius Aelianus, a young ex-quaestor, suspected of complicity in the villanies of Fabianus. He was outlawed from Italy, and from Spain, where he was born. Valerius Pontius suffered the same degradation for having indicted the defendants before the praetor to save them from being prosecuted in the court of the city-prefect, purposing meanwhile to defeat justice on some legal pretext and subsequently by collusion. A clause was added to the Senate's decree, that whoever bought or sold such a service was to be just as liable to punishment as if he had been publicly convicted of false accusation.
42. Soon afterwards one of his own slaves murdered the city-prefect, Pedanius Secundus, either because he had been refused his freedom, for which he had made a bargain, or in the jealousy of a love in which he could not brook his master's rivalry. Ancient custom required that the whole slave-establishment which had dwelt under the same roof should be dragged to execution, when a sudden gathering of the populace, which was for saving so many innocent lives, brought matters to actual insurrection. Even in the Senate there was a strong feeling on the part of those who shrank from extreme rigour, though the majority were opposed to any innovation. Of these, Caius Cassius, in giving his vote, argued to the following effect:-
43. "Often have I been present, Senators, in this assembly when new decrees were demanded from us contrary to the customs and laws of our ancestors, and I have refrained from opposition, not because I doubted but that in all matters the arrangements of the past were better and fairer and that all changes were for the worse, but that I might not seem to be exalting my own profession out of an excessive partiality for ancient precedent. At the same time I thought that any influence I possess ought not to be destroyed by incessant protests, wishing that it might remain unimpaired, should the State ever need my counsels. To-day this has come to pass, since an ex-consul has been murdered in his house by the treachery of slaves, which not one hindered or divulged, though the Senate's decree, which threatens the entire slave-establishment with execution, has been till now unshaken. Vote impunity, in heaven's name, and then who will be protected by his rank, when the prefecture of the capital has been of no avail to its holder? Who will be kept safe by the number of his slaves when four hundred have not protected Pedanius Secundus? Which of us will be rescued by his domestics, who, even with the dread of punishment before them, regard not our dangers? Was the murderer, as some do not blush to pretend, avenging his wrongs because he had bargained about money from his father or because a family-slave was taken from him? Let us actually decide that the master was justly slain.
44. "Is it your pleasure to search for arguments in a matter already weighed in the deliberations of wiser men than ourselves? Even if we had now for the first time to come to a decision, do you believe that a slave took courage to murder his master without letting fall a threatening word or uttering a rash syllable? Granted that he concealed his purpose, that he procured his weapon without his fellows' knowledge. Could he pass the night-guard, could he open the doors of the chamber, carry in a light, and accomplish the murder, while all were in ignorance? There are many preliminaries to guilt; if these are divulged by slaves, we may live singly amid numbers, safe among a trembling throng; lastly, if we must perish, it will be with vengeance on the guilty. Our ancestors always suspected the temper of their slaves, even when they were born on the same estates, or in the same houses with themselves and thus inherited from their birth an affection for their masters. But now that we have in our households nations with different customs to our own, with a foreign worship or none at all, it is only by terror you can hold in such a motley rabble. But, it will be said, the innocent will perish. Well, even in a beaten army when every tenth man is felled by the club, the lot falls also on the brave. There is some injustice in every great precedent, which, though injurious to individuals, has its compensation in the public advantage."
45. No one indeed dared singly to oppose the opinion of Cassius, but clamorous voices rose in reply from all who pitied the number, age, or sex, as well as the undoubted innocence of the great majority. Still, the party which voted for their execution prevailed. But the sentence could not be obeyed in the face of a dense and threatening mob, with stones and firebrands. Then the emperor reprimanded the people by edict, and lined with a force of soldiers the entire route by which the condemned had to be dragged to execution. Cingonius Varro had proposed that even all the freedmen under the same roof should be transported from Italy. This the emperor forbade, as he did not wish an ancient custom, which mercy had not relaxed, to be strained with cruel rigour.
46. During the same consulship, Tarquitius Priscus was convicted of extortion on the prosecution of the Bithynians, to the great joy of the senators, who remembered that he had impeached Statilius, his own pro-consul. An assessment was made of Gaul by Quintus Volusius, Sextius Africanus, and Trebellius Maximus. There was a rivalry, on the score of rank, between Volusius and Africanus. While they both disdained Trebellius, they raised him above themselves.
47. In that year died Memmius Regulus, who from his solid worth and consistency was as distinguished as it is possible to be under the shadow of an emperor's grandeur, so much so, in fact, that Nero when he was ill, with flatterers round him, who said that if aught befell him in the course of destiny, there must be an end of the empire, replied that the State had a resource, and on their asking where it was specially to be found, he added, "in Memmius Regulus." Yet Regulus lived after this, protected by his retiring habits, and by the fact that he was a man of newly-risen family and of wealth which did not provoke envy. Nero, the same year, established a gymnasium, where oil was furnished to knights and senators after the lax fashion of the Greeks.
48. In the consulship of Publius Marius and Lucius Asinius, Antistius, the praetor, whose lawless behaviour as tribune of the people I have mentioned, composed some libellous verses on the emperor, which he openly recited at a large gathering, when he was dining at the house of Ostorius Scapula. He was upon this impeached of high treason by Cossutianus Capito, who had lately been restored to a senator's rank on the intercession of his father-in-law, Tigellinus. This was the first occasion on which the law of treason was revived, and men thought that it was not so much the ruin of Antistius which was aimed at, as the glory of the emperor, whose veto as tribune might save from death one whom the Senate had condemned. Though Ostorius had stated that he had heard nothing as evidence, the adverse witnesses were believed, and Junius Marullus, consul-elect, proposed that the accused should be deprived of his praetorship, and be put to death in the ancient manner. The rest assented, and then Paetus Thrasea, after much eulogy of Caesar, and most bitter censure of Antistius, argued that it was not what a guilty prisoner might deserve to suffer, which ought to be decreed against him, under so excellent a prince, and by a Senate bound by no compulsion. "The executioner and the halter," he said, "we have long ago abolished; still, there are punishments ordained by the laws, which prescribe penalties, without judicial cruelty and disgrace to our age. Rather send him to some island, after confiscating his property; there, the longer he drags on his guilty life, the more wretched will he be personally, and the more conspicuous as an example of public clemency."
49. Thrasea's freespokenness broke through the servility of the other senators. As soon as the consul allowed a division, they voted with him, with but few exceptions. Among these, the most enthusiastic in his flattery was Aulus Vitellius, who attacked all the best men with abuse, and was silent when they replied, the usual way of a cowardly temper. The consuls, however, did not dare to ratify the Senate's vote, and simply communicated their unanimous resolution to the emperor. Hesitating for a while between shame and rage, he at last wrote to them in reply "that Antistius, without having been provoked by any wrong, had uttered outrageous insults against the sovereign; that a demand for punishment had been submitted to the Senate, and that it was right that a penalty should be decreed proportioned to the offence; that for himself, inasmuch as he would have opposed severity in the sentence, he would not be an obstacle to leniency. They might determine as they pleased, and they had free liberty to acquit." This and more to the same effect having been read out, clearly showing his displeasure, the consuls did not for that reason alter the terms of the motion, nor did Thrasea withdraw his proposal, or the Senate reject what it had once approved. Some were afraid of seeming to expose the emperor to odium; the majority felt safe in numbers, while Thrasea was supported by his usual firmness of spirit, and a determination not to let his fame perish.
Next: Book 14 [50]

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