No More Learning

Some of the cities voluntarily
relinquished the nominal privileges, which they had arbitrarily assumed:
many confided in their rights; a confidence grounded on the antiquity of
their superstitions, or on the merits of their kind offices to the Roman
People. Glorious to the Senate was the appearance of that day, when
the grants from our ancestors, the engagements of our confederates, the
ordinances of kings, such kings who had reigned as yet independent of
the Roman power; and when even the sacred worship of the Gods were now
all subjected to their inspection, and their judgment free, as of old,
to ratify or abolish with absolute power.

First of all the Ephesians applied. They alleged, that "Diana and Apollo
were not, according to the credulity of the vulgar, born at Delos: in
their territory flowed the river Cenchris; where also stood the Ortygian
Grove: there the big-bellied Latona, leaning upon an olive tree, which
even then remained, was delivered of these deities; and thence by their
appointment the Grove became sacred. Thither Apollo himself, after his
slaughter of the Cyclops, retired for a sanctuary from the wrath of
Jupiter: soon after, the victorious Bacchus pardoned the suppliant
Amazons, who sought refuge at the altar of Diana: by the concession of
Hercules, when he reigned in Lydia, her temple was dignified with an
augmentation of immunities; nor during the Persian monarchy were they
abridged: they were next maintained by the Macedonians, and then by us. "

The Magnesians next asserted their claim, founded on an establishment
of Lucius Scipio, confirmed by another of Sylla: the former after the
defeat of Antiochus; the latter after that of Mithridates, having, as
a testimony of the faith and bravery of the Magnesians, dignified their
temple of the Leucophrynaean Diana with the privileges of an inviolable
sanctuary. After them, the Aphrodisians and Stratoniceans produced a
grant from Caesar the Dictator, for their early services to his party;
and another lately from Augustus, with a commendation inserted,
"that with zeal unshaken towards the Roman People, they had borne the
irruption of the Parthians. " But these two people adored different
deities: Aphrodisium was a city devoted to Venus; that of Stratonicea
maintained the worship of Jupiter and of Diana Trivia. Those of
Hierocaesarea exhibited claims of higher antiquity, "that they possessed
the Persian Diana, and her temple consecrated by King Cyrus. " They
likewise pleaded the authorities of Perpenna, Isauricus, and of many
more Roman captains, who had allowed the same sacred immunity not to
the temple only, but to a precinct two miles round it. Those of Cyprus
pleaded right of sanctuary to three of their temples: the most ancient
founded by Aerias to the Paphian Venus; another by his son Amathus to
the Amathusian Venus; the third to the Salaminian Jupiter by Teucer, the
son of Telamon, when he fled from the fury of his father.

The deputies too of other cities were heard. But the Senate tired with
so many, and because there was a contention begun amongst particular
parties for particular cities; gave power to the Consuls "to search into
the validity of their several pretensions, and whether in them no fraud
was interwoven;" with orders "to lay the whole matter once more before
the Senate. " The Consuls reported that, besides the cities already
mentioned, "they had found the temple of AEsculapius at Pergamus to be a
genuine sanctuary: the rest claimed upon originals, from the darkness of
antiquity, altogether obscure. Smyrna particularly pleaded an oracle
of Apollo, in obedience to which they had dedicated a temple to Venus
Stratonices; as did the Isle of Tenos an oracular order from the same
God, to erect to Neptune a statue and temple.
Sardis urged a later
authority, namely, a grant from the Great Alexander; and Miletus
insisted on one from King Darius: as to the deities of these two cities;
one worshipped Diana; the other, Apollo. And Crete too demanded the
privilege of sanctuary, to a statue of the deified Augustus. " Hence
diverse orders of Senate were made, by which, though great reverence
was expressed towards the deities, yet the extent of the sanctuaries was
limited; and the several people were enjoined "to hang up in each
temple the present decree engraven in brass, as a sacred memorial, and a
restraint against their lapsing, under the colour of religion, into the
abuses and claims of superstition. "

At the same time, a vehement distemper having seized Livia, obliged the
Emperor to hasten his return to Rome; seeing hitherto the mother and son
lived in apparent unanimity; or perhaps mutually disguised their hate:
for, not long before, Livia, having dedicated a statue to the deified
Augustus, near the theatre of Marcellus, had the name of Tiberius
inscribed after her own. This he was believed to have resented
heinously, as a degrading the dignity of the Prince; but to have buried
his resentment under dark dissimulation. Upon this occasion, therefore,
the Senate decreed "supplications to the Gods; with the celebration of
the greater Roman games, under the direction of the Pontifs, the Augurs,
the College of Fifteen, assisted by the College of Seven, and the
Fraternity of Augustal Priests. " Lucius Apronius had moved, that "with
the rest might preside the company of heralds. " Tiberius opposed it; he
distinguished between the jurisdiction of the priests and theirs; "for
that at no time had the heralds arrived to so much pre-eminence: but
for the Augustal Fraternity, they were therefore added, because they
exercised a priesthood peculiar to that family for which the present
vows and solemnities were made," It is no part of my purpose to
trace all the votes of particular men, unless they are memorable for
integrity, or for notorious infamy: this I conceive to be the principal
duty of an historian, that he suppress no instance of virtue; and that
by the dread of future infamy and the censures of posterity, men may be
deterred from detestable actions and prostitute speeches. In short,
such was the abomination of those times, so prevailing the contagion
of flattery, that not only the first nobles, whose obnoxious splendour
found protection only in obsequiousness; but all who had been Consuls,
a great part of such as had been Praetors, and even many of the
unregistered Senators, strove for priority in the vileness and excess
of their votes. There is a tradition, that Tiberius, as often as he went
out of the Senate, was wont to cry out in Greek, _Oh men prepared for
bondage! _ Yes, even Tiberius, he who could not bear public liberty,
nauseated this prostitute tameness of slaves.




BOOK IV

A. D. 23-28.


When Caius Asinius and Caius Antistius were Consuls, Tiberius was in
his ninth year; the State composed, and his family flourishing (for the
death of Germanicus he reckoned amongst the incidents of his prosperity)
when suddenly fortune began to grow boisterous, and he himself to
tyrannise, or to furnish others with the weapons of tyranny. The
beginning and cause of this turn arose from Aelius Sejanus, captain of
the Praetorian cohorts.