Tiberius heard the news of Drusus’ accident when he was at Ticinum (today’s Pavia) in northern Italy reporting to Augustus about his Pannonian campaign. He rushed off in a panic to his brother. After crossing the Alps he covered two hundred miles at full stretch in a day and a night, changing his horses at intervals. The achievement was all the more remarkable in that he was traveling through unsettled territory that had only recently been conquered, with a Gallic guide as his sole companion.
As Tiberius approached his brother’s camp, someone went ahead to announce his arrival. Almost at his last gasp, Drusus ordered his legions to march out to meet him and salute him as commander in chief. He died shortly afterward, and the anguished Tiberius accompanied his body back to Italy, walking in front all the way. For most of the journey, the coffin was carried by leading men from the towns and cities through which the procession passed. Augustus and Livia met the cortège at Ticinum and traveled with it to Rome.
Livia was shattered by the death of her son. As she followed his body she was moved by the pyres that were lit in the dead man’s honor throughout the country and the crowds that came out to escort Drusus on his way.
She did not know how to comfort herself in her grief. Areius, the Alexandrian philosopher and family friend, counseled her not to bottle up her feelings, so she displayed pictures of Drusus in public places and in her private apartments and encouraged her friends and acquaintances to talk about him. However, unlike Octavia when Marcellus died, Livia maintained her dignity, and was widely respected for not overstating her grief.
Drusus’ much-loved wife, Antonia, the daughter of Mark Antony and Octavia, and her children—two boys, Germanicus and Claudius, and a girl, Julia Livilla—moved in with Livia. The dual household on the Palatine was also home to Gaius and Lucius, Agrippa’s boys whom Augustus had adopted, and the orderly bustle of officials was counterpointed by the unruly sounds of children’s voices.
Drusus was given a splendid sendoff. His body lay in state in the Forum, where Tiberius delivered a eulogy. Augustus gave another in the Circus Flaminius. After cremation, his ashes were laid in the Mausoleum of Augustus.
Everybody liked Drusus, and it was clear that his family was shocked by his sudden death. However, it did not take long for conspiracy theorists to weave a curious tale. This was that Augustus suspected Drusus of being a revolutionary who wanted to bring back the “old Republican constitution.” Tiberius was supposed to have treacherously shown the princeps a letter from Drusus suggesting they broach the subject with their step-father. So Augustus recalled him from Germany and had him poisoned. Suetonius reports the allegation, only to dismiss it. Rightly so, for how could the arrest of Drusus have been concealed and the charade of a funeral procession stage-managed? Suetonius writes: “In point of fact Augustus felt so deep a love for Drusus while he lived that, as he admitted to the Senate on one occasion, he considered him no less an heir than were his sons,” Gaius and Lucius.
Yet there may be some truth in the claim that the brothers held republican sympathies. They could well have discussed the kind of state they would like to see in the long term, with Tiberius agreeing to raise the matter with Augustus. In 9 B.C., the year of Drusus’ consulship, Augustus took some measures to strengthen the Senate; these could have been concessions to Drusus’ wishes. Two regular meetings were to be held every month on days freed from legal and other business. Fines for nonattendance by senators were increased, and strict attendance records were kept.
Two other men whom the princeps loved joined the roster of death in the following year: Maecenas and Horace. Together with Agrippa, Maecenas had been with Augustus from the beginning. Although their relations had cooled, and Maecenas’ political influence declined, the two men were still friends. Maecenas remained loyal and always advised against despotic measures, recommending that nothing be done to limit freedom of speech and opposing the death penalty for political enemies.
Maecenas was something of a hypochondriac. In the last three years of his life he seems to have suffered from a perpetual fever; he found it hard to sleep, and arranged for music to play quietly in another room. But he put up with his infirmities, writing a little poem to his dear friend Horace:
Cripple my hand,
my foot and my hip;
shake out my loose teeth.
So long as I’m alive,
everything’s all right.
Maecenas feared death, and Horace reassured him with a touching ode, in which he promised not to outlive his patron
The same day shall heap earth
over us both. I take the soldier’s oath:
you lead, and we shall go together, both
ready to tread the road that ends
all roads, inseparable friends.
It was many years since Maecenas had talent-spotted Horace and introduced him to Augustus. The princeps had grown very fond of the tubby little poet. He used to call him “my purest of pricks” (purissimum penem) and “little charmer” (homuncionem lepidissimum). They shared a certain dry and cool realism about life.
Once Augustus asked Horace to work for him as a secretary to help him draft his correspondence. This was the last sort of job the poet would enjoy, and he declined. The princeps showed no resentment. He wrote to him good-humoredly: “Even if you were so arrogant as to spurn my friendship, I decline to return your scorn!”
Augustus greatly admired Horace’s poetry and was always trying to persuade him to write on political or public themes. The “Secular Hymn” and the odes about Tiberius and Drusus were the result. When Augustus was piqued at finding that he made no appearance in Horace’s satires and epistles, many of which took the form of conversations with friends, he protested: “I have to say I am most displeased with you, that in your copious writings of this sort you ‘converse’ with other people and not with me. Are you afraid that posterity will condemn you if you appear to have been my friend?”
When Horace’s health was in decline, Augustus wrote again: “Do as you please in my house, as if you were living with me, for this is how I always wanted our relationship, if only your health permitted it.”
In September of 8 B.C., Maecenas died. Two months later Horace fulfilled his promise, only a little late, and followed him. He was buried close to his friend’s tomb.
The deaths of Agrippa and Drusus within four years of each other transformed Roman politics. The ages of the key players throw light on the realities of the situation. The princeps was fifty-four years old (a year younger than Julius Caesar had been when he died). Tiberius was thirty-three and in his prime. The young hopeful gentlemen, Gaius and Lucius Caesar, were eleven and eight respectively; it would be a good ten years before they were ready to play a full part in public life, by which time Augustus would be in his mid-sixties, a ripe old age for the period.
Two things must have been clear to Augustus. If his dynastic plans were to succeed, then, by hook or by crook, he needed to survive for another decade, for if he did not Tiberius would have to succeed him, just as Agrippa would have done rather than Marcellus in far-off 23 B.C. And Tiberius was the only senior and experienced adult on hand to help Augustus run the empire. His stepson was essential, for now.
Augustus was an autocrat who valued and acted on advice, but the persons on whom he depended emotionally and professionally were falling away. Agrippa; Octavia, who had died in 11 B.C.; Drusus; Maecenas—all gone. The astute Livia was on hand, of course, and the taciturn Tiberius, more experienced on the battlefield than at court. But from now on one senses a growing rigidity of mind in the princeps.
XXII
A FAMILY AT WAR
7 B.C.–A.D. 9
* * *
In 7 B.C., Augustus’ powers were renewed, this time for ten years. Tiberius held his second consulship, but, despite the fact that he was tacitly expected to assume Agrippa’s role as deputy to the princeps, he received no official acknowledgment that he had become collega imperii, or sharer of power.
He had
plenty of work to do, taking over Drusus’ command and campaigning for two years on the German frontier. (Meanwhile Augustus went to Gaul to monitor events from close at hand, taking with him Gaius, now twelve years old.) As usual Tiberius, who was winning a considerable record as a commander, was victorious. Repeating his treatment of the Alpine tribes in 15 B.C., he deported forty thousand Germans to the Gallic side of the Rhine, where they could more easily be supervised and controlled.
At last he was allowed the distinction of celebrating a full triumph. However, the land between the Rhine and the Elbe remained contested territory. Rome could march about, win battles, and build forts, but it failed to extinguish resistance. Its armies continued to winter on the western bank of the Rhine.
The most notable and far-reaching development at this time was a process rather than a single happening: the boys were growing up. Their adoptive father devoted time and energy to their education. He gave them reading, swimming, and other simple lessons, and behaved as if he were their professional tutor. Whenever they dined in his company, he had them sit at his feet, and when they accompanied him on his travels they rode either in front of his carriage or on each side of it.
During their childhood, Augustus took care to keep Gaius and Lucius in the public eye, and they became darlings of the people. This was politically important, for Augustus could recall that when he entered public life in his late teens, he inherited Julius Caesar’s popular support and from it drew much-needed auctoritas. The same protection would be invaluable if he, Augustus, were to die before the boys were old enough to have established themselves in power.
One result of this policy was that Gaius and Lucius began to behave badly—something the princeps had hoped to prevent. They showed little inclination to model themselves on Augustus. It is easy to imagine that his omnipresence in their lives became stifling and unbearable. A loving father is not necessarily a good teacher of his own children. Dio reports:
They not only lived in an excessively luxurious style, but also offended against decorum; for example, Lucius on one occasion entered the theatre unattended. Virtually the whole population of Rome joined in flattering the two…and in consequence the boys were becoming more and more spoiled.
The Roman tradition was to keep the young on a tight leash, so, on the face of it, it is hardly credible that the princeps was unable to discipline two small boys, if he really wanted to. He may have feigned irritation to allow Gaius and Lucius to acquire public identities independent of his own in the popular mind.
Unfortunately, the people went one step too far. At the elections for 5 B.C., Augustus stood for consul so that he could preside over the fifteen-year-old Gaius’ coming-of-age ceremony. He was of course voted in without trouble, but the people unexpectedly elected Gaius as his colleague in office. The princeps never nominated the boys for offices of state without adding the qualification “provided they deserve this honor.” On this occasion, Gaius was obviously too young to be deserving, but while vetoing the election Augustus conceded that he could hold the consulship in A.D. 1, when he would be twenty. For now, he awarded Gaius a priesthood, and allowed him to attend Senate meetings and sit in the seats reserved for senators at public spectacles and banquets. A year later he appointed Gaius princeps iuventutis (literally “leader of youth”), or honorary president of the equites.
The publicity surrounding the boys unsettled Tiberius. He had come to detest Julia and his labors were only too clearly designed to benefit a couple of inexperienced and annoying teenagers.
Augustus chose this moment at last to promote him to Agrippa’s position as collega imperii by awarding him tribunician status and imperium maius. Perhaps he recognized and wished to appease his stepson’s discontents, perhaps he wanted to deliver a warning to the unruly Gaius and Lucius that they were not, after all, indispensable. More probably, being a supreme realist, the princeps saw it was time to recognize facts. He had no choice but to yoke himself to a man who, while he no longer seemed to be the enthusiastic collaborator of earlier years, was essential to good governance of the empire.
Augustus dispatched Tiberius, equipped with full powers, to settle unrest in Armenia. This client kingdom had been quiet since the successful negotiations between Rome and the Parthian empire in 20 B.C., but now Augustus’ appointee as king, Dikran II, died. A struggle ensued between two pretenders to the vacant throne, one of them a Roman nominee and the other a nationalist.
Tiberius then did an extraordinary thing. Before setting off from Rome to take up his commission, he announced without warning his immediate retirement from public life. The official reason he gave was that “he was weary of office and needed a rest.” Everyone was bemused. How was it that a thirty-six-year-old man, in excellent health, famous and successful, had decided to throw in his cards?
Tiberius’ personality and motives are confusing and in many ways irrecoverable. A gloomy fatalist, he was more used to wielding power than ambitious to win it. If not a republican, he was a believer in senatorial government, and he seems to have been oppressed by the responsibilities he shouldered as Augustus’ stepson. He took well to warfare and was more at ease among the simplicities of military life than the soiling compromises of politics.
A popular explanation at the time, and still the most plausible, was that he voluntarily resigned his place to make way for Gaius and Lucius, as Agrippa was supposed to have done for Marcellus. But was he acting from self-effacement, or frustrated anger? We do not know. The situation may not have been as simple as our inadequate sources imply. One fact to be borne clearly in mind is that Tiberius’ abdication was partial and provisional. He resigned activity, not office. He retained the imperium and tribunician status he had just been awarded. He could have handed his powers back, and presumably Augustus could have arranged for their removal. Neither man did so.
It may be wise to consider the likely tensions at court. It would be very surprising if there were not factions on the Palatine Hill jockeying for position. Livia and her influential circle would support her two sons, now reduced to one; and Julia would wish to assure herself that Gaius’ and Lucius’ progress to supreme power was unimpeded. These groupings would surely have had action plans ready for immediate implementation in the event of Augustus’ incapacity or death.
It may be that Tiberius’ retirement was an acknowledgment of defeat in a sophisticated (and now irrecoverable) game. The Julian faction was in the ascendant and he could even have begun to worry about his personal safety in the long run (a good reason for retaining his powers). Alternatively, Tiberius may have felt that his services could not be dispensed with, and that a temporary absence would strengthen his position. He would have to be recalled. Did he even hope to arm-twist the princeps to rescind, tone down, or delay his plans to promote Gaius?
Augustus, of course, resisted any pressure to change his dynastic strategy, but he was too aware of the uncertainties of life to remove Tiberius from the board entirely. Circumstances could possibly arise in the future, unwelcome though they were to contemplate, that would call for his return to power.
Augustus did his best to persuade Tiberius to change his mind. So did Livia, but to no avail. Family quarrels often descend into childishness, and Tiberius went on hunger strike for four days to prove that he was serious. The princeps admitted defeat and announced the retirement to the Senate. He characterized it bitterly as an act of betrayal. It was a very long time since someone had said no to him.
Tiberius left Rome at once, hurrying down to the port of Ostia without saying a word to the troop of friends who had come to offer their farewells, and kissing only very few of them before he boarded his ship and sailed off. He traveled as a private citizen, accompanied by one little-known senator and a few equites. As he was coasting past Campania on his journey south, he received news that Augustus was ill. He cast anchor for a time, but soon guessed that the princeps was applying moral blackmail. He did not want to appear to be awaiting an opportunity to seize power. So he r
esumed his journey.
He decided he would live on Rhodes in the eastern Mediterranean, where he had had an enjoyable holiday many years before on his return from Armenia. The diamond-shaped island is nearly fifty miles long and in those days had between sixty thousand and eighty thousand inhabitants. Until the arrival of Rome, it had been a leading sea power; it was still a center of Greek culture. The land was fertile and figs, pears, pistachios, and olives were grown, as they are today.
Tiberius settled in a modest town house and acquired a villa not far away in the countryside. He behaved unassumingly, keeping his lictors (the guards who symbolized his authority) and his runners out of sight. He often strolled around the Gymnasium, where, Suetonius reports, “he greeted and chatted with simple Greeks as if they were his equals.”
Tiberius wanted Augustus, and perhaps especially supporters of Gaius and Lucius, the “Julian faction,” to believe that he was politically inactive, as indeed he was. It was awkward that distinguished Romans, traveling to eastern provinces on one commission or another, made a point of stopping off at Rhodes to pay their respects, but he could hardly refuse to receive them. Many governors had friendly connections with the self-made exile and, according to Velleius Paterculus, a military officer who served under Tiberius, lowered their fasces to him in acknowledgment that “his retirement was more worthy of respect than their official positions.”
Nobody quite believed that the career of Tiberius was over.
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