The Master’s Touch – Cornelius
Tacitus
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For the longest time, words have
ceased
to mean what they say. Squandering the goods of others is called
generosity,
and recklessness in wrong doing is called courage. In fine phrases
Gaius Caesar
has asked this body to confiscate the estates of the prisoners. Does he
fear
danger from the conspirators? Because if amid such general fear he
alone has
none, I have the more reason to fear for you and for myself.
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Cato
the Younger, (62 BC.)
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I.
Except for his spell
as a
quartermaster, Tacitus (42/56 – 117 AD.)
was a civilian – the soldiers he came in contact with were mostly
veterans on
leave, a haughty lot, stomping by in hordes, shouldering the
pedestrians into
the gutter. An early memory may have been the victory celebrations over
the
Parthians in 58 AD. He certainly remembered the second Parthian
invasion from
62 AD. It came at the worst possible time.
The
regime had concerns about
the corn supply from Egypt and the current budget deficit, since the
currency
had been put on a new footing while Nero’s ministers shook up the civil
service
and handed out impeachments against corrupt magistrates. Nero even
moved to
abolish indirect taxes altogether. It speaks for the quality and
competence of
Nero’s cabinet that the political crisis was resolved without firing a
single
shot. A masterpiece of diplomacy secured the situation for 51 years.
Tacitus
was perhaps nineteen or twenty when Rome went up in flames on July 18,
64 AD.
The cause may have been a domestic fire, but the angered mob called for
a scape
goat and the regime prosecuted a group of sectarian radicals for arson.
Only
later, much later – even the church historian Eusebius (275 – 339 AD.) was blissfully unaware
of Tacitus’ Annals –
Christian apologists alleged that these sectarians
were Christians and had been persecuted for their faith. Nero was
declared
to be
the anti-Christ.
In
65 AD., Senator Piso became the head of a conspiracy against the
regime. During the interrogations of suspected accessories, Tacitus,
the son of an equestrian family with connections to the Senate, got a
first taste of what it means to live in a climate of suspicion and
mutual recriminations. The experience left a mark on Tacitus,
instilling a habitual distrust for the men in the purple, especially
during the difficult days under Emperor Domitian. Tacitus could never
bring himself to write anything about a current emperor, not even in
the reign of Emperor Trajan, the "optimus,"
the best of rulers, when he professed to enjoy this “rare
happiness of
times, when we may think what we please and express what we think.” He knew, this happiness
came
for a price.
Emperor
Trajan was no less of
an autocrat than Domitian, but with infinitely better people skills.
This most
powerful, and perhaps even most humane, of all emperors ran his office
as
a never
ending election campaign. He didn’t need anybody’s consent, but he made
sure he
had it anyway, and that it was the consent of the majority.
His
awareness of security issues went to extraordinary lengths. In one
instance Trajan prohibited even the installation of a much needed
professional fire brigade in a provincial town (Pliny the younger, Letters), because it could become a gathering
point for political rallies. Rome did not acknowledge a
right to freely assemble or demonstrate in the streets with “Romani ite domum” – "Romans go
home!" – written on the banners. The near disastrous campaign into Iraq
has to be seen under this aspect as well. It was as much a propaganda
campaign as it was an armed invasion. Together with the usual
pay raises, Trajan rewrote the military training manual and introduced
improvements in the military equipment. He also introduced public
pension schemes for war widows and war orphans. Obviously this could
only tighten the bond between the army and the supreme commander. Less
conspicuous but of even greater constitutional import was, how Trajan
peace meal pruned the Senate’s prerogatives. Positions in the civil
service, that should have been assigned to a senator, ever more
frequently were filled by professionals from the emperor’s personal
staff. For the first time, the budgets of the municipal administration
was subjected to imperial auditioning. A new type of public servant
emerged, accountable only to the imperial bureau.
All
this was implemented with impeccable courtesy and kindness, the Senate
was left to debate every motion and the House virtually voted itself
out of its privileges while the political master tactician on the
throne presented himself to the public as a simple soldier and model
husband to a model wife. A grateful public pretended not to notice that
Pomeia Plotina and Trajan exchanged their tokens of domestic affection
only in public. In the streets it was an open secret, that at home the
emperor was far too occupied with his harem of adolescent boys, to pay
much attention to his wife.
Emperor
Trajan’s actual policies followed the political blueprint laid out by
Domitian to a “T.” Although never condoning the predecessor’s conduct,
the emperor made sure that Domitian’s assassins were brought to book.
Even for Nero he had a good word: “If Nero had had the decency to
die after the first six
years
of his rule, his regime would be remembered as the Golden Age of the
empire.” It is easy to forget,
that despite of Emperor Nero’s demise and the turbulent aftermath, the
continuity of the empire was largely preserved by Nero’s civil service,
a very efficient and widely popular administration. The names of key
figures from Nero’s list of appointments appear in the records well
until the reign of Emperor Hadrian. If the Annals were our only source
for Nero, this emperor’s actual popularity would remain an
inconceivable mystery. For the poor in Rome and for the provincials in
Greece, Nero had become something of a saint; centuries later St.
Augustine still saw people laying down flowers at the spot of Nero’s
alleged suicide. Lucius
Flavius Philostratus (170 – 247),
the author of Apollonius of Tyana’s
biography, wrote: “The fact is, Nero restored the liberties of
Hellas with a
wisdom and moderation quite alien to his character; and the cities
regained
their Doric and Attic characteristics, and a general rejuvenescence
accompanied
the institution among them of a peace and harmony such as not even
ancient
Hellas ever enjoyed. Emperor Vespasian, however, on his arrival in the
country
took
away her liberty, alleging their factiousness with other pretexts
hardly
justifying such extreme severity.”
Not everybody would agree.
Emperor Augustus’ constitutional
settlement from 23 BC. had assigned Greece to the Senate as a
proconsular province. A representative of the senate, such as Tacitus,
was more likely to censor Nero for taking away the senatorial
franchise, although it was popular with the people, and would give
Emperor Vespasian the thumbs-up for restoring it. In the House, the old
liberties of a province were on nobody’s mind. We realize that the
antagonism between the senate and the man wearing the purple, made the
Roman emperor the speaker of the people against the big interests.
Since Trajan’s accession, one could become a senator only by
appointment, a minimum of 1,2 million sesterces in personal assets was
required to qualify for the position. In modern terms, the Roman senate
was the legislative assembly, the supreme court and the stock exchange,
all rolled in one. It was the senate’s prerogative, however, to bestow
on a new emperor the “tribunicia
potestas,” the absolute veto power. Usually this would lead to
considerable arm-twisting and months of negotiations, before the new
emperor could rest secured in the full array of his authority. When the
terminally ill Emperor Nerva – himself a senator before he had acceded
– appointed a popular colonel from the province, a certain Trajan, as
his colleague and successor, it was smiles all around, but the seasoned
Tacitus couldn’t help noticing where all this was heading to.
We know very little about Cornelius
Tacitus, not even his first name is certain. He and his close friend
Pliny the younger were both provincials of considerable means who owed
their fortunes to the Flavian emperors. In 78 AD. Tacitus married the
daughter of the senator Gnaeus Julius Agricola from the province of
Gallia Narbonensis. Tacitus himself may have been of Celtic origin.
In
the textbooks Tacitus’ conjectural year of birth is generally given as
52 or 56 AD. and is vaguely based on the age of Tacitus’ friend Pliny
the younger who in his letters refers to Tacitus as an older friend.
However in the Histories Tacitus himself gives us a pretty precise date
for his birth. After the young man had arrived in the capital to seek
his fortune at the bar, he had set foot on the lowest rung of the
‘cursus honorum’ – public service – under Emperor Vespasian. “I cannot
deny that I originally owed my position to
Vespasian, or that I was advanced by Titus and still further promoted
by
Domitian” ("dignitatem
nostram a
Vespasiano inchoatam, a Tito auctam, a Domitiano longius provectam") (Histories I:1),
he
says.
Tacitus
became ‘quaestor’ (officer of
the exchequer), then in 88 AD. was made
‘praetor’ (police
commissioner)
of a suburb. Short after he donned the robe of a ‘quindecemir,’
and became augur of
the
Sybelline books. Between 89 and 93
AD. Tacitus served as a quartermaster in the legion. The Lex
Villia
Annalis was not always observed,
but
generally determined the legal age of a candidate for office. This
means
Tacitus could not have filled the office of quaestor before he’d
reached the
age of 31 and when he was “advanced by Titus” in the two years between 79 and
81 AD. he must
have reached the age
of 36 or 37 to become ‘aedile,’
a superintendent of public works. This moves his year of birth down to
44 or 42
AD. It also implies that advanced age must have put a tight schedule on
his
writing when changes in the political climate allowed him to openly
publish
under the emperors Nerva (96 – 98
AD.),
Trajan (98 – 117 AD.) and Hadrian
(117 – 138 AD.). In
his commentary on Zecharia,
St. Jerome is telling us that the Histories was comprised in “thirty
books.” Of these, less than five
completed
books have reached us. That gives us an idea of the size of this work.
It must
have been a huge tome and one can only wonder where Tacitus ever found
the
time to write the Annals? In fact
why should he have bothered? According to his own testimony all the
remarkable
events from the founding of Rome to the age of Emperor Nero had been
recorded
by many historians “with equal eloquence and liberty” and Tacitus gives this as a reason why
he commenced
his narrative with the accession of Emperor Servius Galba. So it should
really
not come
as a surprise when there is not a single ancient testimony for the
existence of
what is now known as Tacitus’ Annals. Instead
Fulgentius, the Bishop of Carthage, speaks of a now lost “Book
of
pleasing Anecdotes” – Facetiae – perhaps a product of idle hours before
the
accession of Emperor Nerva.
In
the monograph about his
father in law, Tacitus expresses a deep resentment against the
micromanaging
Emperor Domitian and his bloodstained despotism. A public servant who
wished to
advance his fortunes – and Tacitus did advance – could not do so
without a
certain elasticity in his spine. Tacitus came out of it with
self-loathing and
cynicism. His resentment may also have contained a drop of envy. Pliny
speaks
of Tacitus' lifelong passion for hunting and the outdoors. Emperor
Domitian,
this urban bureaucrat who inspected his armies from a sedan chair,
was
known as a great archer and could bring down his quarry “with two
successive
arrows so dexterously placed in the head, as to resemble horns” (Sueton, Domitian).
However
it would be misguided
to see in Tacitus merely the conservative proponent of the old
republican
liberties: “The passion for power ingrained in
the human race
matured with the growth of the empire. When still living in narrow
confines,
equality was easily preserved among us. But once we had the world at
our feet
and no other state or king could rival us, we were left free to play
the game
of power without fear of interruption. It was at this point when
patricians and
plebeians went for each other’s jugular and tribunes took turns with
the
consuls in the assumption of unconstitutional powers. It was on the
forum where
the seeds of civil war were sown. By force of arms, Marius, rising from
the
dregs of the mob, and Sulla, the most ruthless of the nobles,
established
dominium over our liberties. Then came Cn. Pompeius, whose aims, though
apparent, were no better than theirs. Supreme power in the state became
the
sole objective. Even at Pharsalia and Philippi the armies formed of
Roman
citizens would not lay down their arms. How then can we suppose that
the troops
of Otho and Vitellius should have willingly stopped the war? The same
anger of
heaven, the same human passions, the same criminal motives, the same
discord.
True, these wars were settled on a single blow, but that was due more
to lack
of energy by the generals.” (Histories). Tacitus might have been many things
but he
certainly was not naive. He knew that the person demanding security
will accept
the power to be, and the one who is providing, or promising to provide
security,
will be the one exerting this power.
II.
At some point almost
everybody has his moment of fatigue, growing tired of all this
litigious hub-hub of commitments, enquiries and petitioning, even of
the right to vote and pressing charges, that goes with the exercise of
our freedom. It is just becoming too much. We want to be left alone and
eat our supper under the pergola in peace and quiet. As a Chinese once
said to me, “what business is
it of
these elderly ladies in England to get engaged in the rescue of stray
dogs,
don’t they have a home and a family to cook for?” It takes a politician to identify
politics with living; the rest of
us rather prefer having a life.
Under
Emperor Nerva, Tacitus became the appointed suffect consul – the
speaker of the house – the highest office and the pinnacle of his
career, after which he retired from public service except for the
occasional appointment at the bar. In 100 AD. he teamed up with Pliny
the younger and prosecuted Marius Priscus, the governor of North Africa
on charges of corruption with "all the majesty which characterizes his
style of oratory" (Pliny, Letters II:11). Finally he had the time and
opportunity to sit down and write freely about the year 69 – the year
of the four emperors – and the period of Flavian despotism until the
death of Emperor Domitian in 96 AD.: “I propose to begin my
narrative with the second
consulship of Servius Galba, in which Titus Vinius was his colleague.
Many
historians have dealt with the times since the beginning of Rome, and
the story
of the Roman Republic has been told with ability and truth. After the
Battle of
Actium and the centralization of all authority in one hand, there
followed a
dearth of literary ability, which at the same time suffered from the
ignorance
of politics. It was no longer a citizen's concern, instead a taste grew
for
flattery and hatred of the ruling house. So torn between malice and
servility,
the historians find that a tone of flattery soon earns them contempt,
whereas
people readily listen to the voice of envy, since malice makes a show
of
independence” (Histories). The man had a story to tell, “rich in vicissitudes, of grim
warfare, torn by civil
strife, a tale of horror even during times of peace. It tells of four
emperors
slain by the sword, three civil wars, an even larger number of foreign
wars and
some that were both at once; of successes in the East, disaster in the
West,
disturbance in Illyricum, disaffection in the provinces of Gaul, the
conquest
of Britain and its immediate loss, the uprising of the Sarmatian and
Suebic
tribes. It tells how Dacia came to blows with Rome, and how a pretender
claiming to be Nero almost deluded the Parthians into declaring war.
Even
Italy, too, was smitten with disaster, calamities it had not witnessed
for the
longest time.”
“The
rich towns at the seaboard of Campania were submerged or buried. Swarms
of
exiles floated on the sea, and the shores and cliffs of the islands
were red
with blood. The capital was devastated by fires, ancient temples turned
to
rubble, and the Capitol itself went up in flames by Roman hands. Sacred
rites
were grossly profaned, and there were scandals in high places. To be
rich or
well-born was a crime; men were prosecuted for holding or for refusing
office,
merit of any kind meant certain ruin. The minions of the secret police
were
hated either for their crimes or for their spoils; some carried off a
priesthood or the consulship (sic!), others won offices and influence
in the imperial
household, everywhere life was in disarray. Slaves took bribes to
betray their
masters, freedmen reported on their patrons. If a man had no enemies,
his
friends were sure to come to his ruin. And yet, the period was not
utterly
barren of merits, heroism did occur. Mothers followed their sons into
exile,
and wives went with their husbands. Kinsmen acted with courage and
sons-in-law
with devotion, faithful slaves would not be broken, even on the rack.
Men of
distinction faced atrocities with courage and their death equaled the
examples
of history. There were portents in the sky and on the earth,
thunderbolts and
premonitions. Surely, never proved the calamity of the Roman people
more
conclusive that the immortals care not for our happiness, and only
think to
punish us” (Histories).
Then
Tacitus is setting the stage: “Before
I
commence my task,
it seems best to go back and consider the state of affairs in the city,
the
temper of the armies, the condition of the provinces, and to determine
the
strengths and weaknesses in different parts of the Roman world. By this
we may
see not only the actual course of events, which is largely governed
by
chance (sic!), but also why and how they occurred” (Histories). One should think Tacitus, the
ex-quartermaster, will now continue with statistics, details and data.
Instead he gives us the newsreel.
“In
the meantime from a trifling cause and completely unexpected a riot
broke out
and nearly ended in the destruction of Rome. Otho had given orders to
summon
the 17th cohort from the colony of Ostia, and Varius Crispinus, a
tribune of
the guards, was instructed to provide them with arms. The tribune,
anxious to
carry out his instructions undisturbed while the camp was quiet, had
the
arsenal opened and the cohort's wagons loaded after nightfall. The hour
aroused
suspicion; the motive was questioned; his choice of a quiet moment
resulted in
an uproar. The mere sight of swords made the drunken soldiers long to
use them.
They began to accuse their officers of treachery, that the senators'
slaves were
going to be armed against Otho. Some were too drunk to know what they
were
saying, but they were not drunken enough to miss a chance for plunder.
Most of
the others, as usual, were simply eager for a change; who remained
loyal waited
in vein for orders in the confusion of darkness.”
“When
Crispinus tried to check them, the mutineers killed him together with
the most
determined of the centurions, seized their armour, bared their swords,
and
mounting the horses, made off at full speed for Rome and the palace. It
so
happened that a large party of Roman senators and their wives was
dining with
Otho. The news of the soldiers' outbreak made them wonder whether it
was a ruse
of the emperor's: would it be safer to flee or to stay and be arrested?
They
were watching Otho's face, and, as happens when people suspect each
other, he
was just as afraid himself as they were of him. He promptly dispatched
the
prefects of the Guards to appease the anger of the troops, and told all
his
guests to leave immediately. On all sides Roman officials could be seen
to
throw away their insignia, avoid their suite, and slink off unattended.
Old
gentlemen and their wives wandered aimless through the unlit streets.
Few went
home, most of them fled to friends, or sought an obscure refuge with
the
humblest of their retainers. The soldiers' onrush didn’t stop at the
gates of
the palace. They demanded to see Otho and invaded the banquet-hall.
Julius
Martialis, a tribune of the Guards, and Vitellius Saturninus, the
commander of
the legion’s camp, were wounded trying to hold them off. Swords were
brandished
and threats hurled against the officers and the whole senate; and since
the
mob’s wrath couldn’t select any one victim, in a blind frenzy of panic
they
clamored for a free hand against all the senators. At last Otho letting
go of
all dignity, stood up on a couch and restrained the rabble with prayers
and
tears. They returned to their camp unwilling, and with a guilty
conscience” (Histories).
So
this is the famous Roman
army? How could such ill disciplined and loquacious rabble ever have
conquered
the world? The author continues with psychological insight: “The next day Rome was like a
captured city. The
houses were shut, the streets deserted, and everybody looking downcast.
The
soldiers, too, hung their heads, though they were more sulky than sorry
for
what they had done. Their officers harangued them by companies, some
mild, some
harsh. They announced to the men a donative of 5,000 sesterces, 180 for
each.
Only then Otho ventured to enter the camp.”
“The
tribunes and centurions flung away the insignia of rank and crowded him
begging
for a safe discharge. Stung by the disgrace of this – or perhaps out of
a sense
of abandon – the troops fell quiet, and voices were heard that the
ringleaders
should be punished. Otho's position was difficult. The soldiers were by
no
means unanimous. The better sort wanted him to put a stop to the
prevalent
insubordination, but the great bulk of them liked to see emperors court
their
favour, and the prospect of riot and plunder, even of civil war. Otho
appreciated that a throne won by violence cannot be kept by suddenly
enforcing
the rigid discipline of earlier days. He was alarmed by the danger for
the
capital and the senate. To
clamor for
the destruction of what is the head of the empire, good God,” Otho said in his address to the camp, “not
even those Germans whom Vitellus has roused to be sent against us,
would dare
to do so” (Histories).
We hear a voice addressing the soldiery, but Tacitus’ camera angle
doesn’t
allow for isolating close ups.
The
hum and jostle of sometimes blurred figures mobbing the background
never ceases, the camera is positioned in the middle of the action and
buffeted by the jostling crowd, very different from reading the work of
a younger colleague of Tacitus, the historian Suetonius (69 – 122 AD.).
With
Suetonius it is like stepping
into a room with the
windows wide open and the sun shining bright.
He
gives us an
unforgettable mug-shot of Nero: A man of average height with a bad
smelling and
pustular body; his features “pretty rather than handsome,” the hair flax-blond, the eyes rather
dullish blue,
the head sitting squat on a plump nape. We can visualize the word
picture. It
reminds of the verbal snapshots in the warrants for the apprehension of
fugitive slaves: “On the 25th of Epiphi a servant of
Aristogenes has
escaped. His name is Hermon, otherwise Nilus: by race a Syrian of
Bambyce, age
about 18 years, of medium height, beardless, straight-legged, with a
dimple on
the chin, a mole on the left of his nose, a scar above the left angle
of his
mouth; tattooed on the right wrist with foreign characters. He has with him a string-purse
with 3
mina of gold. Whoever brings back this fellow shall receive 2 talents
of brass.
If he is denounced after having reached the asylum of a sanctuary, one
talent;
if shown to be in the hands of a solvent and responsible person, 3
talents.
Information may be given by anyone to the chief magistrate’s officers.
His
companion in flight is Bion, a slave of Callicrates, the court’s
councillor:
short of stature, broad shouldered, bowlegged, grey eyed. He also has
gone off
with a cloak and a child’s jacket and a woman’s toilett case worth 6
talents.
Whosoever brings him back shall receive the same amount as for the
above named.
Information concerning him to be given as well at the chief
magistrate’s
chancery.”
Now
compare Tacitus. He
obviously has a problem with physical appearances. Even in the obituary
for his
father in law, all he manages to get across is a faceless figure,
fading away
in a distant crowd; a walking coat-hanger for the regalia of his rank,
and mind
you, this was meant to be an homage and an epitaph! But who knows,
there could
be an explanation for such inaptitude. Maybe this author had impaired
eyesight,
an astigmatism, easily corrected today but untreatable in the first
century.
Tacitus does have stupendous powers of style and psychological insight,
but it
often plays out in a blur of faceless silhouettes.
Knowing
his shortcoming, it
looks as if the author is trying to compensate by making his
protagonists exist
only through the interaction with other figures. Nobody is
permitted to be
alone by himself, not even in his death: “When
the city was taken, Vitellius left the Palace by a rear entrance and was carried in a litter to his
wife's house on the
Aventine. If he could lie low during the day, he hoped to make his
escape to
his brother and the guards at Tarracina. He suddenly changed his mind
and
returned to the deserted palace, where even the lowest of his
attendants had
fled, or avoided meeting him. Feeling chills, he wandered about the
solitude
and hushed silence of the vast place, opened closed doors, only to be
terrified
by another empty room; until at last, exhausted, he crept into some
hiding-place. There Julius Placidus, an officer of the guards, found
him and
dragged him out. His hands were tied behind his back, his clothes were
torn,
and thus he was led forth. Many hurled insults and no one shed a single
tear of
pity. On the way a soldier of the German army either aimed an angry
blow at
him, or tried to put him out of his misery, instead he cut off the
officer's
ear and was immediately dispatched. On the points of their swords they
made
Vitellius hold up his head and face their insults, and watch his own
statues
torn down. He looked at the Rostra and the spot where Galba had been
killed. At
last he was dragged along to where the body of Flavius Sabinus had
lain. Yet
his spirit was not entirely broken and he answered to the insults of an
officer: 'And yet I was once your emperor.' After that he expired from
his
wounds, and the mob abused the dead as they had flattered the living,
both with
as little reason” (Histories).
His
epitaph for Vitellus is not
lacking in sympathy: “Still he
had the qualities
of candor and generosity, which without moderation are liable to prove
disastrous. Believing that friendship can be bought rather than earned
by
consistency of character, he deserved more of it than he secured. And
although “it was indubitably
good for the
country that Vitellius should be beaten, those who betrayed him to
Vespasian
can hardly make a merit of their perfidy, for they were the very men
who had
deserted Galba for Vitellius” (Histories).
As former augur and connoisseur of the Sybellines, Tacitus must have
taken a
professional interest in the fabric of what Thomas Wolfe called “the
secret
weavings of dark chance that threads our million lives into strange
purposes” (Of Time
and the River). In our
day and
age, we rather prefer speaking of the ‘butterfly effect:’ And so two
common soldiers took it upon them to transfer the Roman Empire: and
they did,” Tacitus
noted, “the secret is out
– Emperors can be made in places other than Rome.” (Histories).
On the other hand one wonders whether this one-time-prelate (quindecemir) and speaker of a desperate opposition,
could really
have believed in the prognostic powers of the Sybelline books.
Every
author worth his salt is
of course interested in what makes people tick. Before the advent of
modern
advertising and PR, ancient oratory was the most sophisticated
methodology of
influencing and manipulating people. It would be arrogant to think that
a man
trained in the arts of persuasion could be lacking in psychological expertise.
Even
the wandering bard of the Iliad
had already been able to conceptualized the
psychology of his cast and presented it as a sequence of discontinuous
but
recurring stimuli and appetites. Tacitus knew
nothing of a “super ego,” of an “id,” of
“introverts” or
“extroverts,” but his training had provided him with a solid
conceptualization
in the form of Hippocrates’ four temperaments. Coming to think of it,
how
little has changed. We use different labels but still the old typology.
In an age when the press still had to discover how to mint gold from
other people's misery, Tacitus was already fully aware that
“the public
is always ready to believe any news, provided it is bad” (Histories). So he recorded with a certain glee
that “various portents vouched
for by many witnesses gave
cause to alarm. In the Capitoline Square, it was said, the figure of
Victory
had dropped the reins of her chariot from her hands; a ghost of
superhuman size
had suddenly burst out of the chapel of Juno; a statue of the Divine
Julius on
the island in the Tiber had, on a fine, still day, turned round from
the west
and faced the east; an ox had spoken in Etruria; animals had given
birth to
strange monsters” (Histories). Which is followed by a remark
typical for
Tacitus’ sarcasm: “There were
many stories of
such occurrences, which in a more primitive age had been observed even
in time
of peace. Now we only hear of them in times of panic.” As
an illustration he offers this example: “But the greatest damage at the moment,
and the greatest
alarm for the future, was caused by a sudden rising of the Tiber. It
carried
away the bridges and its current, being stemmed by the debris, flooded
not only
the flat, low-lying portions of the city, but also districts that had
seemed
safe from inundation. People were swept away in the streets and visited
by the
flood in the shops or in their beds at home. It caused a famine, and
the poor
were deprived of their means of livelihood. Blocks of flats, the
foundations of
which had rotted in the standing water, collapsed when the river sank.
When the
panic subsided it was found that the route for Otho’s expedition over
the
Martian Plain and up the Flaminian Road was blocked. Though probably
caused by
chance, or the course of Nature, this mishap was turned into a
miraculous omen
of impending disaster”
(Histories).
An
other nugget about human nature is something the proponents of
“positive
thinking” never take to heart, although it plays out in plain sight on
their
rallies and TV shows at the very moment of the announcement: “With every fresh piece of news
that rumor carried
into the crowd, men's feelings and the expression on their faces
changed. They
were afraid to be found lacking in confidence when things looked
doubtful, or
in joy when they went well for Otho” (Histories).
Not
a single word may have dropped from Tacitus’ pen by accident. By
comparison, the younger Suetonius doesn’t seem interested in rhetorical
effects, he tries, simply, letting the facts speak for themselves.
Reading Tacitus is like rising from the sleep to feel the damp of a
nippy morning on your face, reminding you, that you’ve left your house
too early.
It
is a considered effect; and
we know of course, the right choice of the ‘mot juste’ can be enormously effective: “Down
the
shining tracks a half mile away, the black snout of the locomotive
swung slowly
round the menacing bend
of the
rails” (Of Time and the
River). “Menacing,”
where did this come from? It is the perfect word to depict the
unconcerned
power of a railway track baking under the sun and it makes us see the “clumped
dusty autumn masses of the trees that bordered the track upon the
left,” smell the “thick
exciting hot tarred
caulking of the tracks, the dry warmth and good worn wooden smell of
the
powerful railway ties,” and look
at the “dull
rusty red, the gaping emptiness and joy of a fright car” (Of Time and the River). A
majestic performance but in the case of Thomas Wolfe I don’t feel it
amounting
to anything. A garland of purple patches illustrating trite people
doing trite
things. Wolfe is very good at provoking in the reader an emotional
responses to
often beautifully presented perceptions of characters involved in
activities
not really worth knowing. And that is clearly the writer’s fault: his
first and
foremost task should be to keep us interested in his story, not in the
subtleties of his syntax. All things considered, one must agree with
Jorge Luis
Borges, that “the
perfect page, the page in which not a word can be altered without harm
is the
most precarious of all. Changes in language erase shades of meaning and
the
“perfect” page is precisely the one that consists of those delicate
fringes
that are so easily worn away. The page that becomes immortal, on the
other
hand, can traverse the purgatory of typographical errors, paraphrasing
translations, and inattentive or erroneous readings without losing its
soul in
the process. I do not wish to foment negligence, nor do I believe in a
mystical
virtue of the awkward locution and the shoddy epithet, but genuine
literature
is as indifferent to the rough hewn phrase as it is to a smooth
sentence” (The
superstitious Ethics of the Reader). In other words, there is no
such
thing as “good style” without substance. Only the exceptional writer
will
give us the best of both worlds:
“On
that day there was no one so indifferent to the tragedy of human life
as to be
unmoved by this spectacle. A Roman emperor, yesterday still master of
the
inhabited world, left the seat of his authority, and was now passing
through
the streets of the city, through the crowding populace, quitting the
throne.
Such a sight had never been seen or heard of before. The dictator,
Caesar, had
been the victim of sudden violence; Caligula of a secret conspiracy.”
“Nero's
attempted escape to some obscure country house under cover of night.
Piso and
Galba could be said to have fallen on the field of battle. But here was
Vitellius, before the assembly of his own people, with his own soldiers
protecting him, with women looking on, when he uttered a few suitable
words
expressive of his misery. He said it was in the interest of peace and
of his
country that he now resigned. He begged them to retain his memory in
their
hearts and to take pity on his brother, his wife, and his little
innocent
children. As he said this, he held out his son to them and commended
him to the
care of the odd individual and to the whole assembly. At last tears
choked his
voice. Turning to the consul, Caecilius Simplex, he un-strapped his
dagger and
offered to surrender it as a symbol of his power over the life and
death of his
subjects. The consul refused. The people in the assembly shouted 'No'.
So he
left them with the intention of depositing the regalia in the Temple of
Concord
and then going to his brother's house. But he was faced with a still
louder
uproar. They refused to let him enter a private house, and shouted to
him to
return to the palace. They blocked every other road and only left open
the way
to the Via Sacra. Not knowing what else to do, Vitellius returned to
the
palace” (Histories).
III.
In a curiously myopic
way the
great Michel de Montaigne (1533 – 1592)
has applauded Tacitus for, what I feel, all the wrong reasons: “There
are in Tacitus more precepts than stories, Montaigne says, “it’s not a
book to read,
it’s a book to study and learn, full of sententious opinions, whether
right or
wrong, a nursery of ethics and political discourse for the use and
ornament of
those who govern.” Clearly the
essayist has
completely missed Tacitus’ greatest forte, his stupendous power as a
storyteller. Or did he? Montaigne’s apropos regarding the Annals
leaves something
niggling underneath, something, I couldn’t lay my finger on for the
longest time: “His pen seems
most
proper for a troubled and sick state as ours; you can’t help realizing
it is us
he paints and pinches across the ages.” Oh
really? (By “us” meaning of course the people of the 16th century.)
Even
great admirers of Tacitus
haven’t failed to recognize that “in comparison to the Historiae,
the
Annales
are rather less fluid and more incongruous.”
As a critic has put it: “The verbal forms lack harmony, there
are
many violent metaphors and audacious uses of personification, otherwise
without
parallel in Tacitus’ work. The author of the Annals often uses poetic
styles, especially
that of Virgil (sic!).
For example, the description of Germanicus’
foray onto the field of the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest in search of
the
destroyed legions of Varus follows the style of Virgil's description of
Aeneas’
descent into the underworld. The
style is shifting throughout the work. From
the 13th book on, Tacitus uses a more traditional method, closer to the
fundamentals of the classic style.
The
writing becomes richer, more elevated, less concise, less sharp, and
less
insinuating. In choosing between synonyms, Tacitus changes from the use
of
selected and decorative expressions to the use of more normal and more
moderate
expressions. The
occasional
carelessness in the 15th and 16th books has led some to the opinion
that the
available editions of these books were not the final revision, but an
earlier
draft.”
That,
however, would be unusual indeed. To publish anything incomplete was
not a common practice in the second century, although some manuscripts
had been published without much editing, like the collection of letters
Cicero had written to his banker.
The Annals
are unusually devoted
to biographical presentation,
unusual not when held against the work of Tacitus’ younger colleagues,
such as
Suetonius and Plutarch, but unusual when held against Tacitus himself.
Even the
Agricola is less a study of the protagonist’s character, than a history
of
events in which General Agricola was the leading cast. Tacitus,
although a man
of deep psychological insight, is not much of an psychoanalyst, he
rather
prefers showing the mind in action and how this is affecting the
surrounding
world. Hero-worship is not his cup of tea, but writing biography was
the bread
and butter for Sueton and Plutarch; in Tacitus’ old age the public
began developing
a new taste for the moral example. After all, this also was the age
where the gospels had emerged.
Before
1469, we can find the not
infrequent reference to the Histories,
but not a single specific mentioning of the Annals. Sulpicius Severus in 420 AD. seems to
give us a
quotation, but the passage is clearly a paraphrase, written in much
better
Latin than the “original,” and without actually mentioning the Annals as the source. There is also the monk
Rudolphus of
Fulda, whose now lost testimony from the 9th century seems to testify
for at
least a fleeting acquaintance with a manuscript containing the two
first books
of the Annals. Then
there is a
long silence and only from the 16th century onward the commentaries on
Tacitus’ Annals suddenly
proliferate,
keeping the aficionados intrigued ever since. The Latin in the Annals doesn’t always make sense, the sentences
are
punctured with lacunae, and some of these omissions seemed already
present in
the manuscript Rudolphus had before him. The problem is made worse by
copyists
in the 15th century, who thought they knew how to improve the Latin of
the
original and actually made it worse. Nothing unusual for the history of
a
manuscript and modern editions have a large critical apparatus,
explaining why
the editors chose to reconstruct the text in the way they did. If the
tradition
of a manuscript is bad, half of the page may be filled with a snowstorm
of
alternative readings and suggestions in small print.
But
what is one to think when the eminent expert on Tacitus, Tony Woodman,
identifies a battle in the Annals, that Tacitus had “copied from
himself”
at another point in this historical account? It is because of the Annals,
that Tacitus the
military writer is held in
low esteem, undeserved as everybody can tell who read the Histories
and the Agricola.
Tacitus has a way to
involve the reader in his battle
descriptions; we march with the first line, see the enemy falling back,
but
orders arrive not to rush forward and instead hold the position,
because the
general “recognizes
the enemy’s stratagem” (Histories).
(After Hannibal had annihilated an entire Roman army rushing into his
trap, Canae had become
textbook in the Roman military manual.)
Archaeology
is not always
helpful and can be misleading if the findings are arranged to fit a
preconception. In Britain, well up to 1984, Tacitus’ father in law
became the
second best known Roman known to the British people, thanks to a
relentless
presentation of findings supposed to confirm Tacitus’ Agricola. Context was something that happened only
to
Tacitus, but not on site. Since then, more exacting standards in carbon
dating
and dendrochronology, the old standbys of numismatic and pottery, and
the whole
gamut of new forensic tools have lifted the bar. We now know that there
was a
past before the events in his monograph, which Tacitus had elected to
ignore in
order to heighten the coloring of his hero. This doesn’t make Tacitus –
as the
churchfather Tertulian would have it – “most loquacious in
falsehood.'' In his own
introduction to the Agricola, Tacitus praises the good old times when
good men did great deeds and then wrote about them, while under
Domitian to do so could lead to charges of treason. He therefore is
going to provide the biography of a good man who was condemned to
silence about his accomplishments in bad times. And since it is meant
to be an achiever's record, Tacitus does not refrain from shifting the
actual order of events, when it serves his purpose.
From
the historian Cassius
Dio’s report, we know that Agricola was governor in Britain, that he
fought
battles and that he circumnavigated Britain, proving that it was an
island, and
that for this reason Titus accepted his 15th acclamation as imperator
in 79 AD.
Tacitus, too, mentions the circumnavigation of Britain, but he moves it
to the
end of Agricola’s term as the crowning achievement and in parallel to
the
decisive victory at Mons Graupius in 83/84 AD. By then Domitian was
already
emperor. So by
shifting the date and order of events, Tacitus created a suitably happy
ending to a
successful
career, with a suspicious emperor frowning at the scene.
Compared
with the accounts by Suetonius,
Velleius Paterculus, Lucius Annaeus Florus und Cassius Dio Cocceianus,
the Annals (I. 65:2-4)
give us the most confused and confusing account of General Varus’
disaster against
the Germans of Arminius. It is utterly useless for the archaeologist.
The
excavations at the Kalkrieser Berg near Osnabrück and the
topography of the
region suggest a very different course of events.
The
leader of the Germans, Arminius, had previously been an officer of the
Roman auxiliaries. He knew Roman tactics and had trained his army at
the Roman model. The fatal engagement, far from being an ambush in
treacherous swamps, was a pitched battle in open, slightly hilly
territory, carefully prepared by the attacker with his reserves
positioned in camouflaged trenches. The Romans walked into a trap and
were beaten at their own game. One of the most unfortunate events in
European history. Had the Romans succeeded to extend their cultural
influence to the river Elbe, many things would be very different in our
days. I must admit, I have a hard time to accept that the same Tacitus,
who was so well informed about the affairs in Britain and introduces us
to the action in battles and public gatherings with unsurpassed
immediacy, should suddenly become so inadequate and cryptic when it
comes to the Roman campaigns in Germany. It is after all supposed to be
the same author who wrote an anthropological monograph on the Germanic
tribes; the first of its kind by any Roman, meant to warn of potential
dangers.
Much
of the discrepancies can
be explained by the conditions of copying and preserving the text. But
not
everything. I am told it was Voltaire who as the first suggested that
portions
of Tacitus’ work, especially the Annals,
could be a forgery. Even carbon dating of the vellum would be
inconclusive
because such forgeries were being made on old parchments with the
former
content bleached away. The Messrs John William Ross, Hochart, and Leo
Weiner
have written thick tomes about the hundreds of factual inconsistencies
and the thousands of stylistic doubts and grammatical blunders in the Annals. It
tallies badly when held against the concise and
versatile master of Latin prose in the Histories, the Agricola, and the Germania.
In
the end it is the language giving away the game. It is always the
language. It distinguishes the author and gives away the imitator. My “little Latin and lesse Greek” came
late to me and has always been a labor. In other words, other people
are more competent than I to expand on the finer points of Latin syntax
and style. Yet even the untutored eye can see that the real Tacitus
fine-tuned his idiomatic figures according to the occasion. To belong
to the top brass he brings across as “leading the van” – “primum pilum ducere” -– a military
term. To get on with business is “to gird the loins” – “accingi.” The author of the Annals on the other hand is all
over the place with his figures of speech, choosing his metaphors
haphazard from the workshops, accountancy and seamanship, a hallmark of
Livy’s easygoing style of writing, but very unlike the other works of
Tacitus. The Annals barely
venture into military jargon, even when appropriate.
The
digressions in Tacitus’
genuine narratives are called for by incident and
situation;
we learn about the history of the capitol on an occasion when people
pass from
hand to hand pails of water to prevent the building
from
burning down. The writer of the Annals
on the other hand is all giddy and can’t wait for his cue to jabber
just about
everything that tickles his fancy, from the deluge and Deucalion – the
Roman
Noah – to the laws of Lycurgus and the wars of the Amazons. The Annals make absurd claims about the finer points
of the jus
Romanum, Latinum and Italicum, when in fact Italians from the province
did not have the same civil
rights as a Roman and therefore were "non eos esse cives
Romanos" (Livy, XXXIV: 42). And this is supposed to
be written
by a barrister and elder statesman, practiced in the law of the land?
Are
we expected to believe that
Tacitus did ascribe legislation on usury to the Twelve Table Law, when it had been introduced centuries
later by the
tribunes Duillius and Moenius and passed the floor of the House under
the
consulate of Lucius Manlius Torquatus and Caius Plautius (Livy
XVI:27)? In fact the Annals make the preposterous
claim that after the issuing
of the Twelve Tables legislation
virtually ceased altogether except for the occasional penal enactment
and on
account of decrees for attaining illegitimate honors or banishing
distinguished
citizens: "compositae duodecim tabulae, finis aequi juris;
nam
secutae leges, etsi aliquando in maleficos ex delicto, saepius tamen
dissensione ordinum, et apiscendi illicitos honores, aut pellendi
claros viros,
aliaque ob prava, per vim latae sunt" (Annals III:
27). Obviously
the Lex Canuleia which legalized the intermarriage of
patricians
and plebeians, and the Leges Liciniae, opening
access to public offices for both orders, to mention only an example,
came
never to the annalist’s attention. Instead we are told that Brutus –
the
ancestor of Caesar’s assassin – created a new class of nobility when in
fact it
was Tarquinius Priscus who enlarged the patrician body. The new dignity
conferred on the senators was purely titular; until then Roman senators
had
been addressed as "patres,"
now they referred to their club as "patres conscripti." Not even the average Roman in the
streets could
have been ignorant of this, least of all someone who was himself a
conscript
father. In the Annals
we read:
"for though there were many shrines of Fortuna in Rome, there
was none of Fortuna the Equestrian”
(Annals
III:71), when Livy is telling us that there was such temple
which had
been “dedicated by Quintus Fulvius after the war with the
Celtiberians” (Livy, XL:42), a fact confirmed by
Vitruvius,
Valerius Maximus, and Publius Victor. How could this have escaped a man
who was
an augur by profession, and as a superintendent had attended to the
public
buildings? The Annals want us
to
believe, that somebody consulted the Colophonian Oracle of Apollo
Clarius under Emperor Claudius (Annals
XII:22). How so? The geographer Strabo, living in the time of
Augustus, is
telling us that "the grove of Apollo Clarius, in which there used to
be
the ancient oracle" no longer
existed” (Strabo, XIV. I:27). Had Tacitus suddenly
become
senile?
The Annals are an unrelenting and monotonous libel.
The real Tacitus
had of course his pet-peeves about Emperor Domitian, but nowhere in his
genuine
work does he stoop to personal insult. Where the unsubtle Suetonius
accuses
Vitellus of matricide and having one of his sons executed, Tacitus is
presenting us with a tender father, protective of his children and
trying with
timely abdication to shield his parents from retribution. In
the
monograph about Emperor Tiberius, Suetonius is speaking of no more than
twenty
executions in the aftermath of Sejanus’ fall, the Annals revel in “uncounted corpses of all sexes, age, and rank,
piling up in heaps.” Suetonius
introduces Tiberius as an
emperor who
officiated with clemency; Cassius Dio confirms that Tiberius never
evicted
anybody, nor confiscated any man's possessions, nor exacted money by
force.
Compare this with the conceited tyrant in the Annals.
IV.
All this must raise
the
suspicion of heavy tampering with the text. Yet before I am ready to
condemn
the Annals wholesale as a
forgery, we
should remember that neither of the two early manuscripts in existence
is
preserved in its original form. They are now bound together with other
items in
two volumes at Medicis’ library.
So
who is to say, that what has
reached the Renaissance in the 15th century could not have been in a
much worse
condition as it appears now, say, as an originally barely legible text with “battle-sized” lacunae, very much
in need of
“restoration;” say, a mere 40% of the text we now believe to know? Filling the gaps became a restorative
job and was
done, perhaps, with the best intention, by taking clues from what was
still
legible on the parchment, not unlike Nodot, who quietly had filled the
gaps in
Petron’s Satyricon. The
grafting on of
Woodman’s battle scene may indeed testify to the audacity of a grifter,
if it
wasn’t an act of restorative desperation. In the end the “restored”
manuscript
changed hands for 500 sequins in gold; in today’s money this would buy
you some
decent real estate. So what is the truth?
Only
the Annals tell us of
Christians and their prosecution on charges of arson under Nero,
something no
other historian of the period cares to mention. A flawed testimony by
any
standard, even conservative critics have a problem with the
authenticity of the
phrasing. Tacitus was an imperial writer, and no imperial document
would ever
refer to Jesus as "Christ."
The
period when the Annals were
discovered was one of hunting the monasteries for ancient manuscripts.
Huge
amounts of money changed hands for recently “unearthed” new texts,
especially
if they seemed to bolster the claims of Christian legend. We now know that Pilate was not a
"procurator" but a prefect, so why should Tacitus not
have known it
too? It is true, no ancient historian ever researched the public
archives – there
weren’t any. All to go by were the memoirs of distinguished persons,
collections of private letters, funeral orations and the acta
senatus – the recorded minutes of
the sessions in the House.
The acta populi or acta
diurna, the first ever gazette to
inform
the public, was pasted on walls and washed away under the rain. To
describe the
events, Tacitus would have needed to take recourse to his own childhood
memories, provided he already had taken residence in the capital at the
time,
and for this alone it is a complete mystery how the Annals possibly could speak of Christians in
Nero’s Rome as
a “vast multitude,”
when even in
Judea and the East the small number of Christians made them virtually
invisible. In fact the so called "Neronian persecution" is unrecorded
by
every
other historian of the day. Seneca (BC.
4
– 65 AD.) was Nero’s Prime Minister and should have witnessed
such
persecution. He wrote an essay On
Superstition, a stinging attack on pagans and Jews alike, now no
longer available. But according to St. Augustine, who still had access to Seneca’s piece, (City of God,
Book X), it doesn’t mention Christians at all. Nor are
Christians
mentioned or alluded to by Tacitus' in his genuine writings, not even
once!
V.
We use to print
together with
Virgil’s original works the Appendix Virgiliana, texts that once were thought to be from
Virgil’s own hand, and still
are considered of high quality. As far as I am concerned, Tacitus is
the author
of the Histories, the Agricola, and perhaps the Germania. About the Orator the verdict may still be out; the author
of the Annals belongs
into the appendix. It
just doesn’t sound like a concern the real Tacitus would have had, had
he
written about these events. He‘d rather cast a scowling eye on the
incompetence
of leadership: "The
senate had allowed Galba to nominate the commissioners and he showed
the most
miserable indecision, now making nominations, now rescinding them, now
replacing his own nominees, yielding always to pressures and excuses
from the
candidates. Nero had squandered in lavish presents two
thousand two
hundred million sesterces. Galba gave instructions that these monies
should be
recovered from the individual recipients, leaving each a tithe of their
original gift. However, in each case there was scarcely a tenth part
left, for
these worthless spendthrifts had run through Nero's money as freely as
they had
squandered their own: though living in luxury they had no real property
or
capital left. Thirty of the knights were entrusted with the duty of
recovering
the money. This commission, for which there was no precedent, proved
vastly
unpopular owing to the scope of its authority, and the large number of
the
victims. Everywhere the streets resounded with auctions and litigation.
And
yet the discovery that the beneficiaries of Nero's bounty were as poor
as the
victims of his greed was received with a sense of glee” (Histories).
The
real Tacitus would never have
ceased to be intrigued by his bête noire – the mob: “The
crowd stood by and watched the fighting, cheering
and applauding like spectators at a gladiatorial contest. Whenever
either side
gave way, the crowd clamored to drag into the open and butcher the
soldiers
hiding in the shops or seeking refuge in a private house, and while the
soldiers were busy with bloodshed and massacre, the spoils fell to the
crowd.
The scene throughout the city was hideous and terrible: fighting and
wounded men, coolly
beheld by the people crowding the baths and
taverns; heaps of bleeding dead, and
next to prostitutes on the beat plying their trade as if nothing was
happening.
All the vice and licence of luxury and peace, shoulder to shoulder with
all the
crime and horror of a captured town. One might well have thought the
city went
mad with fury and mad with pleasure at the same time. Armies had fought
in the
city before this, twice when Sulla mastered Rome, and once under Cinna.
There
were no less horrors then. What was new was the people's indifference.
Not for
one minute did they interrupt the life of pleasure, as if the fighting
added
spice to their holiday. Caring nothing for either party, they enjoyed
themselves in riotous dissipation and took pleasure in their country's
disaster” (Histories). But Tacitus also doesn’t hesitate to
give
credit where credit is due for a piece of practical leadership skill.
“Valens
set his lictors to work to check the mutiny. Yet the mutineers threw stones at the general and chased him out of
the camp, shouting
that he was concealing the spoils of Gaul and the gold from Vienne, the
due
reward of their labours. They looted the baggage, ransacked the
general's
quarters, and even rummaged in the ground with javelins and lances.
Valens,
disguised in a slave's garb, took refuge with a cavalry officer.
Gradually the
disorder began to die down. Alfenus Varus, then forbade the centurions
to go the rounds nor was the bugle to be sounded to summon the men to
their
duties. No one had anything to do: they eyed each other in
astonishment,
dismayed above all at having no one to command them. At first by silent
submission, finally with tears and entreaties, they sought
forgiveness.”
“Valens
appeared, haggard and in tears, but above all expectation safe and
sound, which
moved them to joy, pity, and cheers! Their revulsion was just that of a
mob,
always going to the extreme either way. They surrounded the general
with the
eagles and standards, and carried him to the Tribunal with praises and
congratulations. With wise moderation he demanded no punishment, but,
to disarm
suspicion of his good faith, he criticized one or two of them severely.
He was
well aware that in civil war the men are allowed more licence than
their
officers” (Histories).
The
following reads almost like
a commentary on a recent event. Needless to say, nobody in the
Whitehouse or in
Whitehall has cared to notice.
“With
the death of Vitellius the war had indeed come to an end, but peace
had yet
to begin. The
victors remained
under arms, and the defeated Vitellians were hunted through the city
with
implacable hatred, and butchered promiscuously wherever they were
found. The
streets were choked with corpses; squares and temples reeked with
blood. Soon
the riot knew no restraint; they began to hunt for those who were in
hiding and
to drag them out. Who was tall and young, whether soldier or civilian,
he was
cut down indiscriminately. Then suddenly the instinct of greed
prevailed. On
the pretext of hunting for hidden Vitellianists, they would leave no
door unopened
and regard no privacy. Thus they began to rifle private houses and an
owner’s
resistance provided the excuse for murder. The lowly and poor, too, and
the
most worthless of slaves, didn’t fail to betray their wealthy patrons
and
masters; friends sold out friends. Everywhere was mourning and misery.
Rome was
like a captured city. People even longed to have the insolent soldiery
of Otho
and Vitellius back again, much as they had been hated. The leaders of
the
Flavian party, who had fanned the flame of civil war with such energy,
were
incapable of checking the abuses of victory. In riot and disorder the
worst
characters take the lead; peace and quiet call for the highest
qualities”
(Histories).
©
– 4/24/2007 – by michael sympson, 10,125 words, all rights reserved