and cities. He fought successful wars in Armenia, Parthia Germany, Spain, Dalmatia, the Alps, and France.
My father was, as I say, one of the best Claudians. He was as strong as his brother, far better looking, quicker of speech and movement and by no means less successful as a general. He treated all soldiers as Roman citizens and therefore as his equals, except in rank and education. He hated having to inflict punishment on them: he gave orders that as far as possible all offences against discipline should be dealt with by the offender's own comrades, whom he assumed to be jealous for the good name of their section or company. He gave it out that if they found that any offence was beyond their corrective powers, for he did not allow them to kill a culprit or incapacitate him for his daily military duties, it should be referred to the regimental colonel; but so far as possible he wished his men to be their own judges. The captains might flog, by permission of their regimental colonels, but only in cases where the offence, such as cowardice in battle or theft from a comrade, showed a baseness of character that made flogging appropriate; but he ordered that a man once flogged must never afterwards serve as a combatant, he must be degraded to the transport or clerical staff. Any soldier who considered that he had been unjustly sentenced by his comrades or his captain might appeal to him; but he thought it unlikely that such sentences would need to be revised. This system worked admirably, because my father was such a fine soldier that he inspired the troops to a virtue of which other commanders did not believe them capable. But it can be understood how dangerous it was for troops who had been handled in this way to be commanded afterwards by any ordinary general. The gift of independence once granted cannot be lightly taken away again. There was always trouble when troops who had served under my father happened to be drafted for service under my uncle. It happened the other way about too: troops who had served under my uncle reacted with scorn and suspicion to my father's disciplinary system. Their custom had been to shield each other's crimes and to pride themselves on their cunning in avoiding detection; and since under my uncle a man could be flogged, for example, for addressing an officer without being first addressed, or for speaking with too great frankness, or for behaving independently in any way, it was an [41] honour rather than a disgrace for a soldier to be able to show the marks of the lash on his back.
My father's greatest victories were in the Alps, France, the Low Countries, but especially in Germany, where his name will, I think, never be forgotten. He was always in the thick of the fighting. His ambition was to perform a feat which had only been performed twice in Roman history, namely, as general to kill the opposing general with his own hands and strip him of his arms. He was many times very close to success but his prey always escaped him.
Either the fellow galloped off the field or surrendered instead of fighting, or some officious private soldier got the blow in first. Veterans telling me stories of my father have often chuckled admiringly: 'Oh, Sir, it used to do our hearts good to see your father on his black horse playing hide-and-seek in the battle with one of those German chieftains. He'd be forced to cut down nine or ten of the bodyguard sometimes, tough men too, before he got near the standard, and by then the wily bird would be flown.
The proudest boast of men who had served under my father was that he was the first Roman general who had marched the full length of the Rhine from Switzerland to the North Sea.
IV
MY FATHER HAD NEVER FORGOTTEN MY GRANDFATHER'S teaching about liberty. As quite a small boy he had fallen foul of Marcellus, five years his senior, to whom Augustus had given the title 'Leader of Cadets'. He had told Marcellus that the title had been awarded to him only for a specific occasion [a sham-fight called 'Greeks and Trojans' fought on Mars Field between two forces of mounted cadets, the sons of knights and senators] and that it did not carry with it any of the general judicial powers which Marcellus had since assumed; and that, for himself, as a free-born Roman, he would not submit to such tyranny.
He reminded Marcellus that the opposing side in the sham fight had been led by Tiberius, and that Tiberius had won the honours of the engagement. He challenged Marcellus to a duel. Augustus was very much amused when he heard the story and for a long time never referred to my father except playfully as 'the free-born Roman'.
Whenever he was in Rome now my father chafed at the growing spirit of subservience to Augustus that he everywhere encountered, and always longed to be back in arms.
While acting as one of the chief City magistrates during an absence of Augustus and Tiberius in France he was disgusted by the prevalence of place-hunting and political jobbery. He privately told a friend, from whom I heard it years later, that there was more of the old Roman spirit of liberty to be found in a single company of his soldiers than in the whole senatorial order. Shortly before his death he wrote Tiberius a bitter letter to this effect from a camp in the interior of Germany. He said that he wished to Heaven that Augustus would follow the glorious example of the Dictator Sulla, who, when sole master of Rome after the first Civil Wars, all his enemies being either subjugated or pacified, had only]
paused until he had settled a few State matters to his liking before laying down his rods of office and becoming once more a private citizen. If Augustus did not do the same pretty soon--and he had always given out that this was his ultimate intention--it would be too late. The ranks of the old nobility were sadly thinned: the proscriptions and the Civil Wars had carried away the boldest and best, and the survivors, lost among the new nobility--nobility indeed!--tended more and more to behave like family slaves to Augustus and Livia.
Soon Rome would have forgotten what freedom meant and would fall at last under a tyranny as barbarous and arbitrary as those of the East. It was not to forward such a calamity that he had fought so many wearisome campaigns under Augustus' supreme command. Even his love and deep personal admiration for Augustus, who had been a second father to him, did not prevent him from expressing these feelings. He asked Tiberius' opinion: could not the [43] two of them together persuade, even compel, Augustus to retire? 'If he consents I shall hold him in a thousand times greater love and admiration than formerly; but I am sorry to say that the secret and illegitimate pride that our mother Livia has always derived from her exercise of supreme power through Augustus will be the greatest hindrance that we are likely to encounter in this matter.'
By ill-luck the letter was delivered to Tiberius while he was in the presence of Augustus and Livia. 'A despatch from your noble brother!' the Imperial courier called out, handing it to him. Tiberius, not suspecting that there was anything in the letter that should not be communicated to Livia and Augustus, asked permission to open and read it at once. Augustus said: 'By all means, Tiberius, but on condition that you read it aloud to us.' He motioned the servants out of the room. 'Come, let us lose no time, what are his latest victories? I am impatient to hear. His letters are always well written and interesting, much more so than yours, my dear fellow, if you'll pardon me for making the comparison.'
Tiberius read out the first few words and then grew very red. He tried to skip over the dangerous part, but found that there was little but danger throughout the letter, except just at the end where my father complained of giddiness from a head-wound and told of his difficult march to the Elbe. Curious portents had occurred lately, he wrote.
A most extraordinary display of shooting stars, night after night; sounds like the lamenting of women from the forest; and two divine youths on white horses in Greek, not German, dress, had suddenly ridden through the middle of the camp at dawn. Finally, a German woman of more than mortal size had appeared at his tent door and spoken to him in Greek, telling him to advance no further because fate ruled against it. So Tiberius read a word here and there, stumbled, said that the writing was illegible, started again, stumbled again and finally excused himself.
'What's this?' said Augustus. 'Surely you can make out more than that.'
Tiberius pulled himself together. 'To be honest. Sir, I can, but the letter does not deserve reading. Evidently my brother was not well at the time of writing it.'
Augustus was alarmed. 'He is not seriously ill, I hope?'
But my grandmother Livia, as if her mother's anxiety for once overrode good manners--though of course she guessed at once that there was something in the letter that Tiberius was afraid to read because it reflected either on Augustus or herself--snatched it from him. She read it through, frowned grimly and handed it to Augustus, saying: 'This is a matter which only concerns you. It is not my business to punish a son, however unnatural, but yours as his guardian and as the head of the State.'
Augustus was alarmed, wondering what in the world could be amiss. He read the letter, but it seemed to call for disapproval rather as something which had outraged my grandmother than as something written against himself.
