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GRIM HUMOUR.

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by publicly adopting Nero and Drusus, his youthful children, a deplorable distinction, which insured their ultimate ruin.

The death of Germanicus took place in the sixth year of the reign of Tiberius, and it was the turning-point of his life. Previous to that event, fear of being supplanted by his popular rival kept his evil passions tolerably in check. He observed a strict economy in managing the finances of the Empire; was so impartial in the administration of justice, and proof against bribery, that even Tacitus gives him the rough praise of being 'firm enough against money.' He exhibited moderation and dignity in his dealings with the Senate, and treated the nobles with marked distinction. He would not allow himself to be called Dominus, or Lord, as the style of a slave towards his master; never entered the Senate-house with guards; and rebuked a provincial governor for addressing despatches to himself and not to the Senate. His grim humour, however, would sometimes appear, to the intense mortification of the flatterers who sought to melt him to the easy condescension of Augustus. When it was ingeniously proposed by one of them to call the month of November, in which he was born, after his name; as July and August had derived their names from his predecessors; he asked, with his cold, unpleasant smile, 'What will you do if there be thirteen Cæsars?' When the people of Ilium sent an embassy to condole with him on the death of his son Drusus, some months after his decease, Tiberius' grinned horribly a ghastly smile,' and condoled with them in turn for the death of their excellent countryman Hector. To a courtier smoothly congratulating him on the dutiful obedience of the Roman people, his sarcastic answer was, 'I have a wolf by the ears.' Now, however, he drew forth the arm of power from the fold of his specious disguise, and exhibited to the awed citizens the stern Emperor in the fullness of his

established authority. But two human beings appeared to have influence over him-the Empress Mother, for whom he felt an habitual awe, without love, to the last day of her long life; and Sejanus, the prefect of the prætorian guards, a man like himself, able, ambitious, and cruel, whose powers were rendered more formidable by the military force at his command. In order to have his chosen troops-as redoubtable at Rome as our Guards at London-ever ready at hand, Sejanus prevailed upon the Emperor to take the bold and novel step, which Augustus had never ventured on, of establishing the Prætorian Camp of 10,000 men beyond the north-east angle of the city, ostensibly for its protectiona measure productive of the most direful consequences to the future destiny of the Empire; for the soldiers soon learnt that they had all the imperial power in their own hands, and could sell it to whom they would.

Tiberius now found himself free to encroach still further on the shadow of liberty left to the Romans by Augustus. He had been sixteen years a Tribune, and in deliberate violation of his oath of office, he now surrendered the slight power thus invested in him, for the benefit of the people, into the hands of the Senate. He next reduced the Senate more fully than ever to puppet-like obedience, and devolved on it the odium of his own crimes by obtaining from it a decree, denouncing every offence, in word or deed, against the majesty of his person, as high treason-a crime hitherto regarded as one affecting the republic. This measure instantly called forth from their lurking-places a host of spies and informers, who lived upon the price of blood-a class of miscreants always discouraged by the honest and honourable magistrates of Rome. These wretches so systematically and boldly plied their infamous trade, that no one of rank or influence felt safe in Rome, the Emperor's gloomy suspicions

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A BEAUTIFUL RETREAT.

39

were tenfold increased by the black list supplied to him, and the Senate, to whose judgment each accusation was referred, gradually got into the habit of condemning every one brought before them, with an alacrity which passed for vehement loyalty.

Sejanus now conceived the ambition of securing the succession to himself, by cutting off all the natural heirs to the throne. So Drusus, the son of the Emperor by his first wife Visponia, was poisoned, and Sejanus secretly sought the hand of his widow. His next step was to obtain the retirement of Tiberius from Rome to Capua, thence to Nola, and finally to the island of Capri. Tiberius was astute enough to see that his retirement from Rome was a great step in development of despotism, for it made the imperial power an accomplished fact, and no longer the creature of popular caprice; besides it secured him against the assassin's dagger. The Romans, however, imputed it either to his wish to exercise in secret the cruelty and sensuality to which he was utterly abandoned; or to a dislike to exhibit to the public gaze the ungraceful leanness of his prematurely bent and shrivelled figure, the baldness of his forehead-a supposed defect from which even Julius sensitively shrank, and to hide which he wore his laurel wreath-and his countenance deformed by spots and pimples, or the patches which he used to conceal them. Capri was then an island so little frequented as to be inhabited only by wild goats, from which it derived its name, and it was only eleven miles in circuit; but it lay in the most beautiful part of the Bay of Naples, within two hours' row of Misenum, the great Roman naval station on the lower sea, whose stupendous ruins on land, and stretching far into the deep, still exist to amaze the stranger, and display the pomp and power of the 'Great City, that sitteth as a Queen upon many waters.' Capri was almost impregnable, being surrounded for the most part by sheer pre

cipices plunging directly into the deep sea, and furrowed here and there by caverns, still celebrated for the curious play of coloured light in their recesses. From its heights the eye caught at a single glance the outline of that loveliest bay of the whole world, melting away into the whole range of the Italian coast, clearly visible through that transparent atmosphere, teeming with the noblest vineyards of the peninsula, limited by the far-off Apennines, looking so 'deeply, darkly, beautifully blue,' while Vesuvius reared its then level crest, yet unscarred by lava, directly in the centre. No cone of

ashes rose then from its bosom; and cities and villages clustered peacefully at its foot, or hung upon its flanks, unconscious of the elements of convulsion and ruin hushed in grim repose above and around them, awaiting the Divine command to burst forth in judgment upon their guilty heads. The worn-out soldier and statesman had formerly visited Capri, and observed the restorative charms of its climate, the freshness of its evening breeze, the coolness of its summers, the agreeable mildness of its winters, and its happy combination of perfect solitude and difficulty of access with actual vicinity to the seat of government. Returned thither now, he erected twelve villas on the fairest sites, so skilfully as to command every variety of prospect, catch every breath of air, and receive the rays of the sun at every point of his progress. Reclining on the slopes of Capri, and gazing on the glorious landscape before him, Tiberius might dream of the fairy land of the Roman Milton's creation. We know our own Milton borrowed his ideal Paradise from the Italian Vallombrosa. He might well seek some moments of repose from the hard realities of government, and while away some pleasant minutes, as we are told he did, in perplexing the courtly Greek scholars who waited upon him, with curious questions and arithmetical puzzles, which might well delight

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THEIR NOTION OF STARVATION.

41

a Zulu divine—such as, 'What was the subject of the sirens' ?' and 'What the name of Hecuba's mother?' None had courage to put Hamlet's practical question,

songs

'What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba ?'

But the Emperor seldom indulged in these idle dreams, for a regular service of couriers day by day brought despatches from Rome, and he never relaxed from the business habits in which he had been so well trained by Augustus. He must have spent several hours daily in labouring over the political papers sent to him by his ministers; entering into most minute details, and giving his directions on every question of finance and police, of home and foreign interest.

The Empress Livia's death, at 86, increased the ferocity of Tiberius, for her moderate counsels had hitherto some influence in restraining his violence; and Sejanus was now incessant in tracking out and destroying suspected traitors. But the Emperor's dissimulation was as base as ever, and his complacent exclamation, 'Now, at last, I have taken him back to favour,' was often the first intimation of the death of a suspected minister or magistrate. Thus fell his adopted sons Nero and Drusus, with their mother Agrippina, the two latter by starvation. Tiberius details minutely, in a letter to the Senate, the miserable death of young Drusus, with an unctuous hypocrisy totally inconceivable by those ignorant of the frightful Roman notion, that putting to death by starvation was no murder, but a simple letting nature take her course, and leaving to the care of the gods, forsooth, those whom it was inconvenient or impolitic to care for oneself! They did not deem it even a judicial punishment, for no drop of blood was shed, no spark of divine spirit was extinguished by the executioner's hand! So Tiberius gives thanks to the while he shows how the poor

gods for punishing this traitor,