resume of events in the following years may be serviceable, in the regrettable absence of Tiberius' own account.
Tiberius returned to Rome in 2 AD. A few weeks later the younger of the princes, Lucius, died at Marseilles on his way to Spain. Tiberius composed an elegy (also lost) for his erstwhile stepson, but Lucius' death made no difference to his political position. However, eighteen months later Gaius also died, as a result of a fever following a wound. This changed everything, destroying all Augustus' plans for the future. Only one of Julia's sons by her marriage to Agrippa survived. This was Agrippa Postumus, so called because he had been born after his father's death. He was unfortunately a brutish imbecile. As he grew up it became apparent that he was unlikely to be fit for office, though this was not yet certain in 4 AD.
The death of Gaius forced Augustus to turn to Tiberius, who had become the necessary man. Augustus adopted him, grudgingly, telling the Senate that he did so for reasons of state, because 'cruel fate' had deprived him of his 'beloved grandsons'. He adopted Agrippa Postumus at the same time, but three years later, on account of his violent behaviour, the wretched young man was confined to an island. Tiberius was himself ordered to adopt his own nephew Germanicus, the son of Drusus and Augustus' niece Antonia. Germanicus was married to Agrippina, a daughter of Julia and Agrippa, and therefore Augustus' grand-daughter. In this way Augustus hoped that the succession would revert to his own blood relatives. The sufferer in this instance was of course Tiberius' own son Drusus.
Tiberius spent most of the next decade away from Rome, campaigning on the Danube frontier and in Germany. He achieved great success. The period, however, saw one of the greatest disasters in the history of Rome when P. Quintilius Varus lost three legions in the German forests. Again Tiberius had to restore the situation, retrieve the disaster. His achievement was formidable. Nevertheless the defeat of Varus persuaded Augustus that Germany could never be conquered and that the Roman Empire should not be extended further. Tiberius concurred in this decision.
In 13 AD Tiberius was formally associated with Augustus in the government of the empire, sharing his imperium as Agrippa had done long ago. The following year Augustus died at the age of seventy-six. Book Two
Chapter One
Old Age is a shipwreck. I saw that in Augustus and indeed heard the phrase on his lips, though, if I remember, he did not apply it to himself. Now I recognise its truth for me. I am breaking on the sharp rocks, buffeted by cruel winds. Peace of mind and ease of body both desert me. The Greek poet Callimachus complained of being assailed by the Telchines – a cannibal tribe ready to tear your liver out. I had thought to erect a barricade by study, collecting the wisdom of ages as found in books. It offers no defence. Philosophy, I conclude, offers comfort only to minds that are not disturbed, which have, therefore, no need of it. Philosophy cannot quiet the maledictory and maleficent demons who torment me. I am, men say, the emperor of the world. Some fools in Asia are even ready to worship me as a god. When I was told this, I remarked to myself that the only resemblance I could see between the gods and myself lay in our indifference to humanity, and contempt for men.
Augustus died in his seventy-seventh year. I had grown fonder of him in his old age, as he became aware of the depth of his failure. There were moments, I even thought, when he realised how he had corrupted Rome, breeding a generation of slaves, therefore of liars, since no slave can be trusted to tell the truth, but must always say what he believes his master wishes to hear. He fell ill when I was about to return to the army. Naturally I changed my plans and hastened back. He was still conscious and lucid. He entrusted Rome, and Livia, to my care. I knew that it was not what he would have wished to do, but I knew also that he had come to value me in his last years. In a letter he once wrote 'If you were to fall ill, the news would kill your mother and me, and the whole country would be in danger.' The first part of the apodosis was characteristically hyperbolic, but he knew the second part to be true, and I welcomed his recognition of my worth.
We buried his ashes in the mausoleum he had constructed for the family. I pronounced the funeral eulogy, avoiding the direct lie, not eschewing polite fictions. A couple of days later, the former praetor Numerius Atticus obligingly informed the Senate that during the cremation ceremony he had seen my stepfather's spirit soaring up to Heaven through the flames. Nobody chose to express doubt. Augustus was declared to be a god.
What would they have said if they had known that almost his last act had been to despatch orders that his only surviving grandson Agrippa Postumus should… cease to survive? Nothing, I suppose. They would not have dared.
I owed Augustus some gratitude for taking that decision on himself. Unfortunately the timing was such that the boy was not killed till a few days after his grandfather's death, and then there were naturally many ready to believe that I had ordered his execution. I would in fact have had no authority to do so.
The question of authority had to be settled immediately. Augustus claimed in his political testament, the res gestae, which I published at his request, that after the expiry of the peculiar powers granted him by the law which established the Triumvirate with Mark Antony and Manius Aemilius Lepidus, he had possessed 'no more power than the others who were my colleagues in each magistracy, though I excelled all in authority'.
This was disingenuous. He had ensured that a superior overriding imperium was granted to him, which, in effect, meant that his legal power was unquestioned in all affairs, even within those provinces of the empire which are nominally within the charge of the Senate. He had devised a constitution which obscured his power, but did not prevent him from exercising it wherever he chose. It was his wish that I should inherit his position.
I had no doubt of that. He had revealed it in numerous conversations in his last years. Livia was certain that was his intention. When she returned from watching over her husband's ashes, she embraced me, and said: 'At last, my son, you have everything which I have striven for years to obtain for you.'
'Mother,' I said, 'if I have anything, it is as a result of my own labours, and anyway I am not certain what I wish to have.'
'What you wish…' she repeated my words, and shook her head. 'Don't you understand, my dear, that your wishes have never entered into the matter? You have what is yours, what the gods have awarded you, what I have for forty years worked to bring about.' 'We shall see.'
'Oh no, you will see sense. You will see that you have no choice. Go down to the Senate by all means, and offer to restore the Republic in its old form. You won't find anyone to understand what you mean.' Gnaeus Piso gave me the same advice.
'Of course you're a Republican,' he said. 'So am I. Of course you detest the tyranny which has been imposed on Rome. So do I. But that's all there is to it. It's not a choice between the empire and the Republic. It's a choice between Tiberius and some other emperor. You must grab the empire by the balls, my friend, or someone else will take a tight and painful grip of yours.' I did not sleep the night before I attended the Senate. It was a calm night in September. The moon was up and the city silent. A cat brushed against my legs as I stood on the terrace of my house gazing beyond the city to the invisible sea. I bent down, picked up the cat and held it in my arms, stroking its back and listening to its contented purr. Everything Livia and Piso said was true; yet I rebelled against the despotism of fact. I sought to be dull, yet to impress the Senate with the magnitude of empire. I read to them the account of the empire which Augustus had prepared. I deluged them with statistics concerning the number of regular and auxiliary troops serving in the armies, the strength of the navy; details concerning the provinces and dependent kingdoms; the tax receipts, both direct and indirect; the annual expenditure. It was an audit of empire, impressive and daunting in scale. The last sentence repeated the judgment at which Augustus and I myself had independently arrived following the disaster in Germany: that the empire should not be extended beyond its present frontiers. Then I laid the document aside, and spoke as follows.
'Conscript Fathers, we are all of us heirs of the great history of Rome, children of the great Republic. My own family, as you all know, has played a major part in the development of Rome's greatness. My late father Augustus has overseen the security of the empire, and guided its destiny, for more than forty years, longer than some of you have been alive. You have known no other father of the country. He restored peace within the territories of the Republic. After the civil wars he restored the institutions of the Republic. He extended the frontiers of the empire into lands where the arms of Rome had been unknown. In the words of the poet whom he delighted to honour, he made the world cry: 'Behold them, conquerors, all clad in Roman togas.' He followed the Roman custom: to spare
