name of Piso should be erased from the annals, part of his estate confiscated, part granted to his son Cneius, upon changing that name; that his son Marcus be divested of his dignity, and, taking fifty thousand great sesterces for his support, be banished for ten years: and that to Plancina indemnity should be granted, in consideration of the prayer of Augusta."

18. Much of this sentence was abated by the emperor; as that of striking Piso's name out of the annals, when "that of Mark Antony, who made war upon his country; that of Julius Antonius,' who had violated the house of Augustus, continued still there.' He also exempted Marcus Piso from ignominy, and left him his whole paternal inheritance; for, as I have already often observed, he was tolerably proof against the temptation of money, and, at that time, from shame at having screened Plancina, he was the more disposed to mercy. He likewise withstood the motion of Valerius Messalinus, "for erecting a golden statue in the temple of Mars the Avenger;" and that of Cæcina Severus, "for founding an altar to Revenge." "Such monuments as these," he insisted, were only fit to be raised upon foreign victories; domestic calamities should be buried in the grief which attended them." Messalinus had added, "that to Tiberius, Livia, Antonia, Agrippina, and Drusus, public thanks should be rendered for having revenged the death of Germanicus;" but had omitted to mention Claudius. Messalinus was asked by Lucius Asprenas, in the presence of the senate, "whether he was aware that he had omitted him?" and then at length the name of Claudius was subjoined. The more I meditate on the events of ancient or modern times, the more I am struck with the capricious uncertainty which mocks the calculations of men in all their transactions.; for there was

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and after them to the members of consular rank, and in regular succession to the rest of the senate. The reason of this arrangement seems to have been an idea that the magistrates, if they took the lead, would have too much influence on the rest of the assembly. After the change of government, the same practice continued, with this difference if the emperor attended the debates in the senate, he, of course, was the supreme magistrate; and in that case it was his to collect the voices. He began with the consuls actually in office, and proceeded to the other magistrates according to their rank.

1 See Annals, book iv. s. 44.

c. 21.]

TACFARINAS RENEWS THE WAR IN AFRICA.

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not a man who was not thought more likely to succeed to the throne, whether from his fame, his promise, or public veneration, than he whom Fortune treasured up in her secret counsels as the future prince.

19. A few days after, Vitellius, Veranius, and Severus, were by the senate preferred to the honours of the priesthood, at the motion of Tiberius. To Fulcinius he promised his suffrage for preferment, but advised him "not to embarrass his eloquence by impetuosity." Here was the termination of the proceedings for avenging the death of Germanicus; an affair which had been the subject of every variety of misrepresentation, not by those only who then lived, but likewise in succeeding times: so true is it that all transactions of preeminent importance are wrapt in doubt and obscurity; while some hold for certain facts the most precarious hearsays, others turn facts into falsehold; and both are exaggerated by posterity. Drusus went out of the city to renew the auspices, and presently entered it in ovation. A few days after died Vipsania, his mother; the only one of the children of Agrippa who died a natural death: the rest manifestly perished, or are believed to have perished, by the sword, poison, or famine.

20. The same year, Tacfarinas, whom I have mentioned to have been defeated the former summer by Camillus, renewed the war in Africa; first by desultory incursions for the purposes of devastation, so sudden that they escaped unchastised; next, by sacking towns and bearing away large booty; at last, he besets a Roman cohort, at a small distance from the river Pagida. The fort they occupied was commanded by Decrius, an active and experienced soldier, who regarded this siege as a dishonour. Encouraging his men to offer battle on the open plain, he drew them up without the walls: at the first shock the cohort was repulsed; but the resolute Decrius braved the enemy's darts, opposed the runaways, and upbraided the standard-bearers, "that upon vagabonds and undisciplined robbers the Roman soldiers turned their backs." At the same time he received several wounds; and, though his eye was pierced through, he faced the foe, nor ceased fighting till, deserted by his men, he was slain.

21. Lucius Apronius had succeeded Camillus. As soon as he learnt this defeat, grieved rather at the disgrace of his own

men than the glory of the enemy, he practised a severity, at this time rare, and founded on the example of ancient times;1 beating to death with a cudgel every tenth man of that degraded cohort, drawn by lot; and such was the benefit of this rigour, that those very forces of Tacfarinas, as they assaulted the fortress of Thala, were routed by a body of not more than five hundred veterans. In this battle, Rufus Helvius, a common soldier, acquired the glory of saving a citizen, and was by Apronius presented with the spear and collar: Tiberius added the civic crown, complaining rather than offended, that Apronius had not, in his own right as proconsul, granted that also. Tacfarinas, as the Numidians were dismayed and set against sieges, adopted a desultory mode of war; retiring when attacked, and, upon a retreat, assaulting the rear. As long as the barbarian observed this method, without sustaining any loss himself, he mocked the baffled and harassed Romans; but after he drew down to the maritime places, being prevented from moving by the quantities of plunder, he pitched a camp and remained there. Hither Apronius Cesianus was by his father despatched with the cavalry and auxiliary cohorts, to which he had added the most active of the legionary foot; and, having successfully fought the Numidians, drove them back to the deserts.

22. At Rome, Emilia Lepida, who, besides the nobleness of the Emilian family, was great-granddaughter to Pompey and Sylla, was charged with feigning that she had given birth to a child by Publius Quirinus, her husband, a man rich and childless. She was further charged with "adulteries, poisonings, and treasonable dealings with the Chaldæans about the fate and continuance of the imperial house." Her brother, Manius Lepidus, defended her; and guilty and infamous as she was, the persecution from her husband (continued after their divorce) drew compassion upon her. In this trial, it was no easy matter to discover the heart of Tiberius; with such subtlety he blended and disguised the symptoms of

1 Appius Claudius, consul A. U. c. 259, commanded in the war against the Volsci. The soldiers, regardless of discipline and subordination, paid no respect to their officers, and, in consequence of their contumacy, suffered a defeat. As soon as they returned to their camp, Claudius punished the ringleaders with death, and decimated the rest of his army. "Cætera multitudo, sorte decimus quisque, ad supplicium lecit."-Liv. lib. ii. s. 59.

c. 24.]

ACCUSATION OF LEPIDA.

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indignation and clemency. At first he besought the senate "not to meddle with the articles of treason;" and presently engaged Marcus Servilius, once consul, and the other witnesses, to produce the very evidences of treason which he had desired to suppress and yet, he took the slaves of Lepida from the guard of soldiers, and transferred them to the consuls; nor would he suffer them to be examined by torture, as to her practices against his own house: he even excused Drusus from voting first, as consul elect. This some understood as a concession to civil equality, "that the rest might not be obliged to follow the example of Drusus;" some ascribed it to cruelty, "for that he would not have surrendered his privilege except he had meant to condemn her."

23. The public games interrupted the trial, when Lepida, accompanied with other ladies of distinguished quality, entered the theatre;' and with doleful lamentations invoking her ancestors, and Pompey himself, whose statues stood round in view, and who raised those monuments he saw, she excited such universal commiseration, that the spectators burst into tears, and gave vent to angry and direful imprecations against Quirinus, "to whose childless old age and mean extraction, a lady once designed for the wife of Lucius Cæsar, and for the daughter-in-law of the deified Augustus, was given." At last, by putting her slaves to the rack, her crimes were made manifest, and the judgment of Rubellius Blandus prevailed, for interdicting her from fire and water. To this judgment Drusus assented, though others had proposed a milder. That her estate should not be forfeited, was shortly after granted to Scaurus, who by her had had a daughter; and now, after condemnation, Tiberius divulged the fact, that "from the slaves too of Quirinus he had learnt her attempts to poison him."

24. As a consolation to the illustrious families of Rome for their late calamities (for the Calpurnian house had suffered the loss of Piso, and just after, the Æmilian house that of Lepida), Decius Silanus was now restored to the Julian family. I will briefly recite his disgrace. As, against the republic, the fortune of Augustus carried all before it, so in his family it was unhappy, on account of the lewdness of his daughter and

1 The Theatre of Pompey, dedicated A. U. c. 669. For a further account of this building, capable, according to Pliny (lib. xxxv. s. 15), of holding forty thousand persons, see Annals, book xiv. s. 20.

granddaughter, whom he banished the city, punishing with death or exile their adulterers. For, by giving to a fault common between men and women, the heinous name of sacrilege and treason, he departed from the lenity of our ancestors and his own laws. But I shall hereafter relate the fate of others from this his severity, as also the other transactions of that time, if, having finished my present undertaking, life remains for other studies. Silanus, who had debauched the granddaughter of Augustus, though the only punishment inflicted on him was, to be excluded from the friendship and presence of the emperor, yet understood this as a denunciation of banishment; nor durst he, till the reign of Tiberius, supplicate the prince and the senate for leave to return, through the influence of his brother, Marcus Silanus, who was preeminently distinguished by his illustrious rank and eloquence. Marcus having returned thanks to Tiberius, had this answer from him before the senate,-"that he himself also rejoiced that his brother was returned after a long absence; and justly was it permitted him, since neither by decree of the senate, nor by any law, had he been banished; that he himself, however, retained entire the resentment of his father towards him, nor by the return of Silanus were the resolutions of Augustus cancelled. Thenceforward he remained at Rome,

but obtained no honours.

25. A mitigation of the law Papia Poppea1 was next proposed, a law which Augustus had made when in years, in support of the Julian laws, for punishing celibacy and enriching the exchequer. Nor even by this means did marriages and the bringing up of children become more in vogue, the advantage of having no children to inherit outweighing the penalty of disobedience; however, the numbers endangered by it increased, while by the glosses of informers every family was suffering. So that, as before the city laboured under the weight of crimes, so now under the pest of laws. From this circumstance I am induced to investigate the first rise of laws,

1 The law Papia Poppaa derived its name from two consuls who were the authors of it; namely, Marcus Papius Mutilus, and Quintus Poppæus, A. U. c. 762, the ninth of the Christian era. Dio observes that the two consuls had neither wife nor children; and for that reason a law which imposed penalties on celibacy, and rewarded the married state, was the more acceptable, because disinterested.