told him that Castor had accused Sejanus of debauching Livilla, of abusing his position of confidence by levying blackmail on rich men in Tiberius' name, and of aiming at the monarchy; that he had said that unless Tiberius dismissed the rascal soon he would take the matter into his own hands; and that he had then asked for her co- operation. By putting the case like this to Tiberius she hoped to make him as mistrustful of Sejanus as he was of Castor and thus to cause him to fall back into his old habit of dependence on her.
For a time at least she succeeded. But then an accident suddenly convinced Tiberius that Sejanus was as loyally devoted as he pretended to be and as all his actions had hitherto shown him. They were picnicking together one day with three or four friends in a natural cave by the seashore, when there was a sudden rattle and roar and part of the roof fell in, killing some of the attendants and burying others, and blocking up the entrance. Sejanus crouched with arched back over Tiberius--they were both unhurt--to shield him from a further fall. When the soldiers dug them out an hour later he was found still in the same position.
Thrasyllus, too, by the way, increased his reputation on this occasion: he had told Tiberius that there would be an hour of darkness about noon that day. Tiberius had Thrasyllus' assurance that he would outlive Sejanus by a great many years, and that Sejanus was not dangerous to him. I think that Sejanus had arranged this with Thrasyllus, but I have no proof: Thrasyllus was not altogether incorruptible but when he made prophecies to suit his clients' wishes they seemed to come off just as well as his ordinary ones. Tiberius did outlive Sejanus as it happens, by a number of years.
Tiberius gave a further public sign that Castor was out of favour by censuring him in the Senate for a letter he had written. Castor had excused himself from attending the [277] sacrifice when the House opened after the summer recess, explaining that he was prevented by other public business from returning to the city in time. Tiberius said scornfully that anyone would think that the young fellow was on campaign in Germany or on a diplomatic visit to Armenia: when all the 'public business' that kept him was boating and bathing at Terracina. He said that he himself, now in the decline of life, might be excused for an occasional absence from the City: he might plead that his energies had been exhausted by prolonged public service with the sword and the pen. But what except insolence could detain his son? This was most unjust: Castor had been commissioned to make a report on coastal defence during the recess and had not been able to collect all the evidence in time: rather than waste time by a journey to Rome and then back again to Terracina he was finishing his task.
When Castor returned he almost immediately fell ill.
The symptoms were those of rapid consumption. He lost colour and weight and began coughing blood. He wrote to his father and asked him to come and visit him in his room--he lived at the other end of the Palace-- because he believed that he was dying, and to forgive him if he had in any way offended. Sejanus advised Tiberius against the visit: the illness might be real, but on the other hand it might easily be a trick for assassinating him. So Tiberius did not visit him and a few days later Castor died.
There was not much sorrow at the death of Castor. The violence of his temper and his reputation for cruelty had made the City apprehensive of what would happen if he succeeded his father. Few believed in his recent reformation.
Most people thought it had merely [A.D. 25] been a trick to win popular affection, and that he would have been just as bad as his father as soon as he found himself in his father's place. And now Germanicus' three sons were growing up--Drusus, too, had just come of age--and were unquestionably Tiberius' heirs. But the Senate, out of respect for Tiberius, mourned for Castor as noisily as it could and voted the same honours in his memory as it had voted Germanicus. Tiberius made no pretence of sorrow on this occasion but pronounced the panegyric he had prepared for Castor in a firm resonant voice. When he saw tears rolling down the faces of several senators he remarked in an audible aside to Sejanus at his elbow:
'Faugh! The place smells of onions!' Gallus afterwards rose to compliment Tiberius on his mastery over his grief.
He recalled that even the God Augustus, during his presence among them in mortal shape, had so far given way to his feelings at the death of Marcellus, his adopted son [not even his real son], that when he was thanking the House for its sympathy he had to break off in the middle, unable to go on for emotion. Whereas the speech they had just heard was a masterpiece of restraint. [I may mention here that when four or five months later depuities arrived from Troy to condole with Tiberius on the death of his only son, Tiberius thanked them: 'And I condole with you, gentlemen, on the death of Hector.'] Tiberius then sent for Nero and Drusus, and when they arrived at the House he took them by the hand and introduced them: 'My Lords, three years ago I committed these fatherless children to their uncle, my dear son whom to-day we are all so bitterly mourning, desiring him to adopt them as his sons, though he already had sons of his own, and bring them up as worthy inheritors of the family tradition. [Hear, hearl from Gallus, and general applause.] But now that he has been snatched from us by cruel fate [groans and lamentations]
I make the same request of you. In the presence of the Gods, in the face of your beloved Country, I beseech you, receive into your protection, take under your tuition, these noble great-grandchildren of Augustus, descended from ancestors whose names resound in Roman history: see that your duty and mine is honourably fulfilled towards them.
Grandsons, these senators are now in the place of fathers to you, and your birth is such that whatever good or evil may befall you will spell the good or evil of the entire State.' [Resounding applause, tears, benedictions, shouts of loyalty.]
But instead of leaving off there he spoilt the whole effect by ending on a familiar note with his old stale phrases about presently retiring and restoring the Republic--when 'the Consuls or someone else' would 'take the burden of government off' his 'aged shoulders'. If he did not intend Nero and Drusus [or one or other of them] as his Imperial [279] successors, what did he mean by identifying their fortune so closely with that of the State?
Castor's funeral was less impressive than Germanicus', being marked by very few genuine expressions of grief, but on the other hand far more magnificent.
Every one of the family masks of the Caesars and Claudians was worn in the procession, beginning with those of ^Eneas, the founder of the Julian family, and Romulus, the founder of Rome, and ending with those of Gaius, Lucius and Germanicus. Julius Caesar's mask appeared because, like Romulus, he was only a demi-god, but Augustus' did not appear, because he was a major Deity.
Sejanus and Livilla had now to consider how to achieve their ambition of becoming Emperor and Empress, Nero, Drusus and Caligula stood in the way and would have to be removed. Three seemed rather many to get rid of safely, but, as Livilla pointed out, her grandmother had apparently managed to get rid of Gaius, Lucius and Postumus when she wanted to put Tiberius into power. And Sejanus was clearly in a much better position than Livia had been for carrying their plans through. To show Livilla that he really intended to marry her, as he had promised, Sejanus divorced his wife Apicata, by whom he had three children.
He charged her with adultery and said that she was about to become the mother of a child which was not his own.
He did not publicly name her lover but told Tiberius in private that he suspected Nero. Nero, he said, was getting a bad reputation for his affairs with the wives of prominent men and seemed to think that, as heir- presumptive to the monarchy, he could behave how he liked. Livilla meanwhile did her best to detach Agrippina from Livia's protection, by warning Agrippina that Livia was only using her as a weapon in her conflict with Tiberius--which happened to be true--and by warning Livia, through one of her ladies-in-waiting, that Agrippina was only using her as a weapon in her conflict with Tiberius--which was also true. She made each believe that the other had sworn to kill her as soon as her usefulness ended.
The twelve pontiffs now began to include Nero and Drusus in the customary prayers they offered for the health and prosperity of the Emperor, and the other priests followed their example. Tiberius as High Pontiff sent a letter of complaint to them, saying that they had made no difference between these boys and himself, a man who had honourably held most of the highest offices of State twenty years before they were bom, and all the rest since: it was not decent. He called them into his presence and there asked them whether Agrippina had merely coaxed them to make this addition to the prayer or whether she had frightened them into making it by using threats. They denied, of course, that she had done either, but he was not convinced; four of the twelve, including Gallus, were in some way connected with her by marriage and five others were on very friendly terms with her and her sons. He reprimanded them severely. In his next speech he warned the Senate to 'award no further premature distinctions that might encourage the giddy minds of young men to indulge in presumptuous aspirations.'
Agrippina found an unexpected ally in Calpurnius Piso.
