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IV.46‑56

This webpage reproduces a section of
The Annals

of
Tacitus

published in Vol. IV
of the Loeb Classical Library edition of Tacitus, 1937

The text is in the public domain.

This page has been carefully proofread
and I believe it to be free of errors.
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V (fragment)

(Vol. IV) Tacitus
Annals

Book IV (end)

 p103  57 1 Meanwhile, after long meditating and often deferring his plan, the Caesar at length departed for Campania, ostensibly to consecrate one temple to Jupiter at Capua and one to Augustus at Nola,​1 but in the settled resolve to fix his abode far from Rome. As to the motive for his withdrawal, though I have followed the majority of historians in referring it to the intrigues of Sejanus, yet in view of the fact that his isolation remained equally complete for six consecutive years after Sejanus' execution, I am often tempted to doubt whether it could not with greater truth be ascribed to an impulse of his own, to find an inconspicuous home for the cruelty and lust which his acts proclaimed to the world. There were those who believed that in his old age he had become sensitive also to his outward appearances. For he possessed a tall, round-shouldered, and abnormally slender figure, a head without a trace of hair, and an ulcerous face generally variegated with plasters; while, in the seclusion of Rhodes, he had acquired the habit of avoiding company and taking his pleasures by stealth. The statement is also made that he was driven into exile by the imperious temper of his mother, whose partner­ship in his power he could not tolerate, while it was impossible to cut adrift one from whom he held that power in fee. For Augustus had hesitated whether to place Germanicus, his sister's grandson and the theme of all men's praise, at the head of the Roman realm, but, overborne by the entreaties of his wife, had introduced Germanicus into the family of Tiberius, and Tiberius into his own: a benefit which the old empress kept recalling and reclaiming.

58 1 His exit was made with a slender retinue:  p105 one senator who had held a consul­ship (the jurist Cocceius Nerva)​2 and — in addition to Sejanus — one Roman knight of the higher rank,​3 Curtius Atticus;​4 the rest being men of letters, principally Greeks, in whose conversation he was to find amusement. The astrologers declared that he had left Rome under a conjunction of planets excluding the possibility of return: a fatal assertion to the many who concluded that the end was at hand and gave publicity to their views. For they failed to foresee the incredible event, that through eleven years he would persist self-exiled from his fatherland. It was soon to be revealed how close are the confines of science and imposture, how dark the veil that covers truth.​5 That he would never return to Rome was not said at venture: of all else, the seers were ignorant; for in the adjacent country, on neighbouring beaches, often hard under the city-walls, he reached the utmost limit of old age.

59 1 It chanced in those days that a serious accident which occurred to the Caesar encouraged these idle speculations and gave the prince himself a reason for greater faith in the friendship and firmness of Sejanus. They were at table in a villa known as the Grotto, built in a natural cavern between the Gulf of Amyclae​6 and the mountains of Fundi.​7 A sudden fall of rock at the mouth buried a number of servants, the consequence being a general panic and the flight of the guests present. Sejanus alone hung over the Caesar with knee, face and hands, and opposed himself to the falling stones —  p107 an attitude in which he was found by the soldiers who had come to their assistance. This brought an accession of greatness, and, fatal though his advice might be, yet, as a man whose thoughts were not for himself, he found a confiding listener. Towards the family of Germanicus he began to assume the pose of judge, suborning agents to support the character of accusers, their main attack to be delivered on Nero, who stood next in the line of succession, and, in spite of the modesty of his youth, too often forgot what the times demanded, while his freedmen and clients, bent on the rapid acquisition of power, urged him to a display of spirit and confidence:— "It was this the nation desired and the armies yearned for, and Sejanus, who now trampled alike on the patience of an old man and the tameness of a young one, would not risk a counter-stroke!"

60 1 To all this and the like he listened with no malice in his mind; but at intervals there fell from him defiant and unconsidered phrases; and as these were seized upon and reported with enlargements by the watchers posted round his person, no chance of refutation being allowed him, other forms of anxiety began in addition to make their appearance. One man would avoid meeting him; some went through the formality of salutation, then promptly turned away; many broke off any attempt at conversation; while, in contrast, any adherents of Sejanus who happened to be present stood their ground and jeered. As to Tiberius, he met him either with gloomy brows or with a hypocritical smile on his countenance; whether the boy spoke or held his peace, there was guilt in silence, guilt in speech. Even night itself was not secure, since his  p109 wakeful hours, his slumbers, his sighs, were communicated by his wife​8 to her mother Livia, and by Livia to Sejanus; who had actually made a convert of his brother Drusus by holding before his eyes the prospect of supremacy, once he should have ousted his senior from his already precarious position. Over and above the lust of power and the hatred habitual to brothers, the savage temper of Drusus was inflamed by envy, as the preferences of his mother Agrippina were for Nero. None the less, Sejanus' solicitude for Drusus was not so great but that, even against him, he was pondering the measures which should ripen to his destruction: for he knew the rash hardihood which laid him peculiarly open to treachery.

61 1 At the close of the year, two distinguished men passed away: Asinius Agrippa,​9 of an ancestry more honourable than old, from which his life had not degenerated; and Quintus Haterius, a member of a senatorial family, and master of an eloquence famous in his lifetime, though the extant memorials of his talent are not retained in equal esteem. The truth is that his strength lay more in vigour than in care;​10 and, as the study and labour of others take an added value with time, so the melody and fluency of Haterius were extinguished with himself.

62 1 In the consulate of Marcus Licinius​11 and Lucius Calpurnius,​12 the casualties of some great wars were equalled by an unexpected disaster. It began  p111 and ended in a moment. A certain Atilius, of the freedman class, who had begun an amphitheatre at Fidena,​13 in order to give a gladiatorial show, failed both to lay the foundation in solid ground and to secure the fastenings of the wooden structure above; the reason being that he had embarked on the enterprise, not from a superabundance of wealth nor to court the favours of his townsmen, but with an eye to sordid gain. The amateurs of such amusements, debarred from their pleasures under the reign of Tiberius, poured to the place, men and women, old and young, the stream swollen because the town lay near. This increased the gravity of the catastrophe, as the unwieldy fabric was packed when it collapsed, breaking inward or sagging outward, and precipitating and burying a vast crowd of human beings, intent on the spectacle or standing around. Those, indeed, whom the first moment of havoc had dashed to death, escaped torture, so far as was possible in such a fate: more to be pitied were those whose mutilated bodies life had not yet abandoned, who by day recognized their wives or their children by sight, and at night by their shrieks and moans. The news brought the absent to the scene — one lamenting a brother, one a kinsman, another his parents. Even those whose friends or relatives had left home for a different reason still felt the alarm, and, as it was not yet known whom the catastrophe had destroyed, the uncertainty gave wider range for fear.

63 1 When the fallen materials came to be removed, the watchers rushed to their dead, embracing them, kissing them, not rarely quarrelling over them, in cases where the features had been obliterated but a parity of form or age had led to  p113 mistaken identification. Fifty thousand persons​14 were maimed or crushed to death in the disaster; and for the future it was provided by a decree of the senate that no one with a fortune less than four hundred thousand sesterces should present a gladiatorial display, and that no amphitheatre was to be built except on ground of tried solidity. Atilius was driven into banishment. It remains to be said that, on the morrow of the accident, the great houses were thrown open; dressings and doctors were supplied to all comers; and Rome throughout those days, however tragic her aspect, yet offered a parallel to the practice of the ancients, who were accustomed, after a stricken field, to relieve the wounded by their liberality and their care.

64 1 The disaster had not yet faded from memory, when a fierce outbreak of fire affected the city to an unusual degree by burning down the Caelian Hill.​15 "It was a fatal year, and the sovereign's decision to absent himself had been adopted under an evil star" — so men began to remark, converting, as is the habit of the crowd, the fortuitous into the culpable, when the Caesar checked the critics by a distribution of money in proportion to loss sustained. Thanks were returned to him; in the senate, by the noble; in the streets, by the voice of the people: for without respect of persons, and without the intercession of relatives, he had aided with his liberality even unknown sufferers whom he had himself encouraged to apply. Proposals were added that the Caelian Hill should for the future be known as the Augustan, since, with all around on fire, the one thing to remain unscathed had been a bust of Tiberius in the house of the senator Junius. "The same,"  p115 it was said, "had happened formerly to Claudia Quinta;​16 whose statue, twice escaped from the fury of the flames, our ancestors had dedicated in the temple of the Mother of the Gods. The Claudian race was sacrosanct and acceptable to Heaven, and additional solemnity should be given to the ground on which the gods had shown so notable an honour to the sovereign."

65 1 It may not be out of place to state that the hill was originally named the "Querquetulanus,"​17 from the abundance of oak produced on it, and only later took the title of "Caelius" from Caeles Vibenna, an Etruscan chief; who, for marching to the aid of Rome, had received the district as a settlement, either from Tarquinius Priscus or by the gift of another of our kings. On that point the authors disagree: the rest is not in doubt — that Vibenna's numerous forces established themselves on the level also, and in the neighbourhood of the forum, with the result that the Tuscan Street has taken its name from the immigrants.

66 1 But while the good-will of the nobles and the liberality of the emperor had been able to mitigate accidents, the violence of the informers, more pronounced and more venomous every day, ran riot without a palliative. Quintilius Varus,​18 a rich man and a relation of the Caesar, had been attacked by the same Domitius Afer who procured the condemnation of his mother Claudia Pulchra. No surprise was felt that Afer, who after years of indigence had now  p117 made a scandalous use of his recently earned reward,​19 should be girding himself to fresh enormities: the astonishing point was that Publius Dolabella should have come forward as his partner in the accusation: for, with his high descent and his family connection with Varus, he was now setting out to destroy his own nobility and his own blood. The senate, however, stood its ground, and decided to await the emperor, the only course offering a momentary respite from the imminent horrors.

67 1 Meanwhile, the Caesar, after dedicating the temples in Campania; though he had warned the public by edict not to invade his privacy, and the crowds from the country-towns were being kept at distance by troops appropriately disposed; yet conceived so intense a loathing for the municipalities, the colonies, and all things situated on the mainland, that he vanished into the Isle of Capreae,​20 which three miles of strait divide from the extreme point of the Surrentine promontory.​21 The solitude of the place I should suppose to have been its principal commendation, as it is surrounded by a harbourless sea, with a few makeshift roadsteads hardly adequate for small-sized vessels, while it is impossible to land unobserved by a sentry. In winter, the climate is gentle, owing to the mountain barrier which intercepts the cold sweep of the winds; its summers catch the western breeze and are made a delight by the circling expanse of open sea; while it over­looked the most beauti­ful of bays, until the activity of Vesuvius​22 began to change the face of the landscape. The tradition goes that Campania was held by Greek  p119 settlers, Capreae being inhabited by Teleboans.​23 At this time, however, the islet was occupied by the imposing fabric of the twelve villas — with their twelve names​24 — of Tiberius; who, once absorbed in the cares of state, was now unbending with equal zest in hidden vice and flagitious leisure.

For his rashness of suspicion and belief remained, and Sejanus, who even in the capital had habitually encouraged it, was now more actively unsettling his mind; for there was no longer any concealment of his plots against Agrippina and Nero. Soldiers dogged their steps, and recorded their messages, their interviews, their doings open and secret, with the exactitude of annalists; while agents were even set at work to advise the pair to take refuge with the armies of Germany, or, at the most crowded hour of the forum, to clasp the effigy of the deified Augustus and call the senate and people to aid. And, since they rejected any such action, it was imputed to them as in contemplation.

68 1 With the consulate of Junius Silanus​25 and Silius Nerva, the opening year came charged with disgrace; and the great Roman knight, Titius Sabinus,​26 was dragged to the dungeon to expiate his friendship with Germanicus. For he had abated nothing of his scrupulous attentions to the widow and children of the dead, but remained their visitor at home, their companion in public — the one survivor of that multitude of clients, and rewarded, as such, by the admiration of the good and the hatred of the malevolent. He was singled out for attack by Latinius Latiaris, Porcius Cato, Petilius Rufus, and  p121 Marcus Opsius, ex-praetors enamoured of the consulate: an office to which there was no avenue but through Sejanus, while the complaisance of Sejanus was only to be purchased by crime. The arrangement among the four was that Latiaris, who was connected with Sabinus by some little intimacy, should lay the trap; that the rest should be present as witnesses; and that only then should the accusation be set on foot. Latiaris, therefore, began with casual remarks in conversation, then passed to eulogies on the constancy of Sabinus, who, unlike the rest, had not abandoned in its affliction the house to which he had been attached in its prosperity: at the same time, he referred to Germanicus in terms of honour, and to Agrippina in a strain of pity. Then, as Sabinus, with the usual weakness of the human heart in sorrow, broke into tears coupled with complaints, he grew bolder and showered reproaches on Sejanus, his cruelty, his arrogance, his ambition. Even Tiberius was not spared, and these conversations, regarded as an exchange of forbidden sentiments, gave the appearance of intimate friendship. — And now Sabinus began himself to seek the company of Latiaris, to frequent his house, and to convey his griefs to that seemingly faithful breast.

69 1 The partners, whom I have mentioned, now discussed the means of ensuring that these conversations should have a wider audience. For the trysting-place had necessarily to retain an air of solitude; and, if they stood behind the doors, there was a risk of detection by sight, by sound, or by a casually roused suspicion. Between roof and ceiling — an ambuscade as humiliating as the ruse was detestable — three senators inserted themselves, and  p123 applied their ears to chinks and openings. Meanwhile, Latiaris had discovered Sabinus in the streets, and, on the pretext of communicating news just received, dragged him home and into the bedroom, where he rehearsed a list of troubles past and present — there was no paucity of material! — accompanied by newly-arisen motives of terror. Sabinus replied in the same vein, but at greater length: for grief, when once it has overflowed, becomes more difficult to repress. The accusation was now hurried forward; and in a letter to the Caesar the associates exposed the sequence of the plot together with their own degradation. In Rome, the anxiety and panic, the reticences of men towards their nearest and dearest, had never been greater: meetings and conversations, the ears of friend and stranger were alike avoided; even things mute and inanimate — the very walls and roofs — were eyed with circumspection.

70 1 However, in a letter read on the first of January,​27 the Caesar, after the orthodox prayers for the new year, turned to Sabinus, charging him with the corruption of several of his freedmen, and with designs against himself; and demanded vengeance in terms impossible to misread. Vengeance was decreed without loss of time; and the doomed man was dragged to his death, crying with all the vigour allowed by the cloak muffling his head and the noose around his neck, that "these were the ceremonies that inaugurated the year, these the victims that bled to propitiate Sejanus!" In whatever direction he turned his eyes, wherever his words reached an ear, the result was flight and desolation, an exodus from street and forum. Here and there a man retraced  p125 his steps and showed himself again, pale at the very thought that he had manifested alarm.​28 "For what day would find the killers idle, when amid sacrifices and prayers, at a season when custom prohibited so much as an ominous word, chains and the halter come upon the scene? Not from want of thought had odium such as this been incurred by Tiberius: it was a premeditated and deliberate act, that none might think that the new magistrates were precluded from inaugurating the dungeon​29 as they did the temples and the altars." — A supplementary letter followed: the sovereign was grateful that they had punished a man who was a danger to his country. He added that his own life was full of alarms, and that he suspected treachery from his enemies. He mentioned none by name; but no doubt was felt that the words were levelled at Agrippina and Nero.

71 1 If it were not my purpose to enter each event under its year, I should be tempted to anticipate, and to record at once the endings made by Latinius and Opsius and the remaining inventors of this atrocity, not only after the accession of Gaius Caesar, but in the lifetime of Tiberius;​30 who, disinclined though he was to see the ministers of his villainy destroyed by others, yet often wearied of their ministrations, and, when fresh workers in the same field presented themselves, struck down the old and burdensome. However, these and other punishments of the guilty I shall chronicle at their proper time. Now, Asinius Gallus, of whose children Agrippina was the aunt,​31 proposed that the emperor should be requested to disclose his fears to the senate and permit their removal. Of all his virtues, as he regarded them, there was none which Tiberius held  p127 in such esteem as his power of dissimulation; whence the chagrin with which he received this attempt to reveal what he chose to suppress. Sejanus, however, mollified him; not from love of Gallus, but in order to await the issue of the emperor's hesitations: for he knew that, leisurely as he was in deliberation, once he had broken out, he left little interval between ominous words and reckless deeds.

About this time, Julia​32 breathed her last. Convicted of adultery, she had been sentenced by her grandfather Augustus, and summarily deported to the island of Trimerus, a little way from the Apulian coast. There she supported her exile for twenty years, sustained by the charity of Augusta; who had laboured in the dark to destroy her step-children while they flourished, and advertised to the world her compassion when they fell.

72 1 In the same year, the Frisians,​33 a tribe on the further bank of the Rhine, violated the peace, more from our cupidity than from their own impatience of subjection. In view of their narrow resources, Drusus had imposed on them a moderate tribute, consisting in a payment of ox-hides for military purposes. No one had given particular attention to their firmness or size, until Olennius, a leading centurion appointed to the Frisian governor­ship selected the hide of the aurochs​34 as the standard for the contributions. The demand, onerous enough to any people, was the less endurable in Germany; where the forests teem with huge animals, but the  p129 domesticated herds are of moderate size. First their cattle only, next their lands, finally the persons of their wives or children, were handed over to servitude. Hence, indignation and complaints; then, as relief was not accorded, an appeal to arms. The soldiers stationed to supervise the tribute were seized and nailed to the gibbet. Olennius forestalled the rage of his victims by flight, finding shelter in a fort by the name of Flevum,​a where a respectable force of Romans and provincials was mounting guard on the coast of the North Sea.

73 1 As soon as the intelligence reached Lucius Apronius,​35 the governor of Lower Germany, he summoned detachments of legionaries from the Upper Province, with picked bodies of auxiliary foot and horse, and conveyed both armies simultaneously down the Rhine into Frisian territory; where the siege of that fortress had already been raised, and the insurgents had left for the defence of their own possessions. He therefore provided a solid road of causeways and bridges through the neighbouring estuaries, to facilitate the transit of his heavy columns: in the meantime, as a ford had been discovered, he gave orders for the Canninefate cavalry,​36 with the whole of the German foot serving in our ranks, to work round the rear of the enemy; who, now drawn up in order of battle, forced back the auxiliary squadrons​37 and the legionary horse​38 despatched to their help. Next, three light-armed cohorts, then two more, and finally, after some time had intervened, the whole of the mounted auxiliaries​39 were thrown into the struggle. The forces were power­ful enough, if they had been launched on the enemy simultaneously; but, arriving as they did at  p131 intervals, so far from communicating steadiness to the broken troops, they were on the point of being carried away by the panic of the fugitives, when Apronius put the last of the auxiliaries under the command of Cethegus Labeo, the legate of the fifth legion. Labeo, whom the critical position of his side involved in serious danger, sent off messengers with an urgent request for the full strength of the legions. The men of the fifth dashed forward in advance of the others, drove back the enemy in a sharp engagement, and brought off the cohorts and cavalry squadrons in a state of exhaustion from their wounds. The Roman general made no attempt at revenge; nor did he bury his dead, though a considerable number of tribunes, prefects, and centurions of mark had fallen. Shortly afterwards, it was ascertained from deserters that nine hundred Romans, who had prolonged the struggle till next day, had been despatched in the so‑called Grove of Baduhenna;​40 while another detachment of four hundred, after occupying the villa of Cruptorix, formerly a soldier in our pay, had been driven by fears of treachery to die on each other's swords.

74 1 Thus the Frisian name won celebrity in Germany; while Tiberius, rather than entrust anyone with the conduct of the war, suppressed our losses. The senate, too, had other anxieties than a question of national dishonour on the confines of the empire: an internal panic had preoccupied all minds, and the antidote was being sought in sycophancy. Thus, although their opinion was being taken on totally unrelated subjects, they voted an altar of Mercy and an altar of Friendship with statues of the Caesar and Sejanus on either hand, and with reiterated  p133 petitions conjured the pair to vouchsafe themselves to sight. Neither of them, however, came down so far as Rome or the neighbourhood of Rome: it was deemed enough to emerge from their isle and present themselves to view on the nearest shore of Campania. To Campania went senators and knights, with a large part of the populace, their anxieties centred round Sejanus; access to whom had grown harder, and had therefore to be procured by interest and by a partner­ship in his designs. It was evident enough that his arrogance was increased by the sight of this repulsive servility so openly exhibited. At Rome, movement is the rule, and the extent of the city leaves it uncertain upon what errand the passer-by is bent: there, littering without distinction the plain or the beach, they suffered day and night alike the patronage or the insolence of his janitors, until that privilege, too, was vetoed, and they retraced their steps to the capital — those whom he had honoured neither by word nor by look, in fear and trembling; a few, over whom hung the fatal issue of that infelicitous friendship, with misplaced cheerfulness of heart.

75 1 For the rest, Tiberius, after personally conferring on Gnaeus Domitius​41 the hand of his grandchild Agrippina, ordered the marriage to be celebrated in Rome. In Domitius, to say nothing of the antiquity of his family, he had chosen a blood-connection of the Caesars: for he could boast Octavia as his grandmother, and, through Octavia, Augustus as his great-uncle.


The Loeb Editor's Notes:

1 The house in which he had died was consecrated (D. Cass. LVI.46).

2 The grandfather of the future emperor: for his death, see VI.26.

3 II.59 n.

4 A friend of Ovid, who addresses a couple of letters to him (ex P. II.4 and 7). He succumbed later to the enmity of Sejanus (VI.10).

5 For the half-belief of Tacitus in the profession, as distinct from its practitioners, the locus classicus is VI.20‑22.

6 Golfo di Terracina.

7 Fondi. — Strabo notices the great caves of the district, accommodating κατοικίας μεγάλας καὶ πολυτελεῖς (V.3.6). The name of the villa survives in the modern Sperlonga.

8 Drusus's daughter, Julia (III.29). As there is no hint of reprobation in the mention of her at VI.27, Nipperdey charitably inferred that her disclosures were made with the best of motives.

9 Consul two years previously (chap. 34). The reference to his ancestry bears upon his two famous grandfathers, M. Agrippa and Asinius Pollio, the former of obscure, the latter of undistinguished origins.

10 Q. Haterii cursum, suis temporibus oratoris celeberrimi, longe abesse ab homine sano volo. Nunquam dubitavit,º nunquam intermisit: semel incipiebat, semel desinebat (Sen. Ep. 40). Similar verdicts are passed by the elder Seneca and Jerome.

11 M. Licinius Crassus Frugi; conjectured to be the adoptive name (with his old cognomen) of the younger of the Pisos, to whom Horace addressed the Ars Poetica.

12 L. (originally, Cn.) Calpurnius Piso (III.17 n).

13 A Sabine town some five miles from Rome, but sunk to little more than a hamlet (Gabiis desertior atque/Fidenis vicus, Hor. Ep. I.11.7).

14 The killed, according to Suetonius (Tib. 40), exceeded 20,000; but the figures will not bear a moment's examination.

15 The second ward (Caelimontium) of the fourteen into which the capital was divided by Augustus (10 B.C.).

16 Probably a grand-daughter of Appius Claudius Caecus, and possibly a Vestal. The miracle, which vindicated her chastity on the arrival of the Mother of the Gods from Pessinus in 204 B.C., is accorded a hundred lines by Ovid (Fast. IV.247 sqq.).

17 This passage is the sole authority for the name. The conflicting legends as to the hill and the vicus Tuscus (between the Capitoline and the Palatine) may be seen in Nipperdey: the only version with some slight accidental interest is that of Claudius in the Lyons fragment of his speech on the ius honorum of the Gauls.

18 Son of Augustus' ill-starred general, and once affianced to a daughter of Germanicus (M. Sen. Contr. 3.10). For his mother's connection with the imperial family, see chap. 52.

19 The accuser's legal bounty (chap. 20). The archaeologists have discovered a more reputable source of income in the shape of his extensive brickyards — the industry ranked as agricultural, and was therefore open to a senator — which ultimately became the property of the mother of Marcus Aurelius.

20 Capri. — The island had been imperial property since 29 B.C., when Augustus acquired it from Naples in exchange for Ischia (Suet. Aug. 92; D. Cass. LII.43).

21 Sorrento.

22 In the great eruption of 79 A.D., which destroyed Pompeii and Herculaneum.

23 From the Echinades off Acarnania: the legend is casually mentioned by Vergil (Aen. VII.735).

24 They were probably named, as Lipsius saw, after the Twelve Gods: one, at all events, was the villa Iovis (Suet. Tib. 65).

25 Ap. Junius Silanus, son presumably of C. Silanus (III.6669), and later the stepfather of Messalina (D. Cass. LX.14). His death (Appiana caedes XI.29), in 42 A.D., was one of the earliest scandals of Claudius' principate (Suet. Claud. 27, D. Cass. l.l.).

26 Marked down for destruction four years earlier, then respited (chap. 18 sq.).

27 Chap. 17 n.

28 On Robespierre's principle:— 'Quiconque tremble est coupable' (Discours à la Convention du 31 mars 1794).

29 By the first execution.

30 For Latiaris, see VI.4. Of Cato, it is known from Frontinus (Aq. 102) that he was curator aquarum for one month in 38 A.D., and the brevity of his term of office may obviously have a sinister explanation.

31 She was the half-sister of Tiberius' first wife Vipsania, who, after her divorce, had married Gallus (I.12 fin.).

32 Daughter of M. Vipsanius Agrippa and the elder Julia, therefore sister to Agrippa. Her banishment for the intrigue with D. Silanus (III.24) synchronized with that of Ovid, but the theories spun from the coincidence are highly doubtful.

33 On the North Sea coast, west of the Chauci, between the Zuyderseeº and Ems (Friesland). They had remained consistently loyal to Rome since their submission to Tiberius' brother Drusus (12 B.C.).

34 The extinct European wild ox, which survived in Lithuania up to the sixteenth century.

35 I.56; III.21.

36 Recruited from the Canninefates (the orthography is variable) in the Kennemerº district of North Holland (Hist. IV.15 etc.).

37 The ala C.

38 The regular legionary cavalry — four turmae of thirty men apiece to each of the four legions (the army of Lower Germany) at the disposal of Apronius.

39 The whole body, of which the Canninefates formed part.

40 Presumably a goddess — of war, according to Grimm.

41 Father, by the younger Agrippina, of the emperor Nero, and "detestable in every point of his life," according to Suetonius, who produces satisfactory evidence Ner. 5). — For his connection with the imperial family, see chap. 44.


Thayer's Note:

a Flevum may now have been identified. Whether the identification is certain or not, the page at Livius is full of information, including a map and a photo of the skull of a Roman soldier killed there, with the metal portions of his gear (seen in the larger image after clicking on the thumbnail).


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Page updated: 26 Oct 18