proceedings were taken against any of the persons implicated, except Valerius Asiaticus 1.

CHAPTER III.

ON THE VIEW GIVEN BY TACITUS OF THE CHARACTER

AND GOVERNMENT OF GAIUS, CLAUDIUS, AND NERO.

THE few scattered allusions in the extant works of Tacitus to the rule of Gaius and events which occurred under it receive some light from what is said in the first six Books of his earlier life and the circumstances which tended to form his character up to the time when he assumed the government.

We hear of him as, at two years old, the unconscious sharer in the perils of the German mutiny, carried off in his mother's arms to find a safer refuge among the Treveri than in the heart of the Roman legions. We are also given to understand that the sight of the 'fosterchild of the legions,' wearing the tiny sandal modelled on that of the common soldier of the ranks, contributed most of all to the revulsion of feeling that turned the arms of the mutineers, in rude camp justice, against each other. The incident had not escaped the watchful eyes of Tiberius, or of Seianus, who nursed the seeds of suspicion in his master's mind, as to the motives of a mother who could allow a Caesar to bear such a nickname as Caligula "', one which, we may believe, long stood him in good stead in the mind of the soldiers.

7

1 Such is the statement of Dio (60. 29, 4), which, if true, must refer to the charge made against him of intending to fly to the German armies (11. 1, 2). At some time before the beginning of the extant part of the Eleventh Book of the Annals must also have taken place the putting to death of M. Licinius Crassus Frugi, his wife Scribonia, their son Cn. Pompeius Magnus (the husband of Antonia, daughter of Claudius), and other mem

bers of that family (Sen. Lud. II. 2, 5);

The boy, with his brothers and sisters, shared the triumph of his father', was one of the two with him at his death in Syria, and followed the mournful procession of his mother with the remains. After this, Tacitus makes no mention of him for several years, during which time we are told by Suetonius that he was under the tutelage first of his mother, then of his great-grandmother Augusta 3, and, after the death of the latter, under that of his grandmother Antonia.

The far-reaching aims of Seianus are stated to have included a plan for his assassination at the same time with that of Tiberius *.

He assumed the toga virilis at a later age than his brothers and without the distinctions granted to them; and then or soon afterwards received in marriage Junia Claudilla, daughter of M. Silanus, and accompanied Tiberius to Capreae, where most of his next four years were spent, years which must have done much to form his character. We are to think of him as at once schooling his violent and impulsive temper 7 to live under the suspicious glance of those penetrating eyes, as 'veiling the ferocity of his spirit under a mask of submission', and 'learning every artifice of falsehood in the intimacy of his grandfather". The successive stages in the fate of his mother and brother failed to elicit a word from his lips and appeared to make no impression on his mind: his one aim from day to day was to study the mood of Tiberius and adapt every word and look to it; so that the witticism spread that 'never was there man who would be a better slave or a viler master 10. Tiberius, who himself had under Augustus passed through a similar period of disguise and repression, while to outward appearance satisfied with his submissiveness, was not likely to be really deceived by it. He gave him no higher magistracy than the quaestorship" (carrying with it admission to the lowest rank of senators), and no other mark of honour but the pontificate 12, and not seldom let fall expressions which showed

1 2. 41, 4.

2

3. 1, 5; cp. 2. 70, 2, and note.

3 The statement of Suetonius (Cal. 10) that he passed into her household on Agrippina's banishment, is inconsistent with the narrative of Tacitus, who places the latter event after the death of Augusta (5. 3, 2): but Agrippina was already in disgrace (see 4. 54, 3, and note), and may have been deprived of the custody of the boy; who seems certainly to have stood in some close relation to Augusta, as he was selected, in preference to either of his elder brothers, to pronounce the 'laudatio' at her funeral (5. 1, 6).

• 6.3, 4.

that he had read his character rightly: 'He would have Sulla's vices without his virtues',' 'He would be a serpent to the Roman people, a Phaethon to the world'.'

The old man would gladly have so ordered the succession as to set aside the adoptive grandson for the grandson by blood; but the knowledge that Tiberius Gemellus was too young, and that in any case the tide of popular favour would run high for the son of Germanicus, led him to leave the future to take its own course, though he could see from the scowl with which the elder looked on the younger what that course would be *.

Gaius again had shrewdness enough to see that, whether Tiberius intended to attempt to provide for the succession or not, the real masters of the situation were the praetorians, and that their praefect would be his best ally. Nor was Macro in his turn slow to 'worship the rising instead of the setting sun,' and even to sacrifice his wife's honour to cement the alliance".

All could see the direction in which affairs were tending; and the eminent senator, L. Arruntius, is represented as choosing immediate suicide, rather than await a more rigorous slavery, under the rule of an ignorant youth brought up under the vilest influences, with Macro to guide him "'.

The end came in due course, not without dark stories of the personal share of Macro and Gaius in its acceleration; and from this point the guidance of Tacitus is lost to us.

We are led however to believe, from what has been already noted, that Tacitus would have regarded his subsequent conduct, as he has that of Tiberius, as that of a natural tendency revealing itself, though by less gradual stages, on the mere removal of enforced disguise. We should suppose him to have entirely disbelieved that the popular acts and professions of the young prince at the beginning of rule showed any sincere intention to govern justly and moderately, or that the succeeding insanity, whatever its nature and degree, which by most accounts was as much

the effect as the cause of reckless profligacy, had any other effect on his moral character than so far as it led him more completely to drop the mask, cast away the last restraints of common decency and prudence, and follow the bent of a nature long since thoroughly vitiated1.

When however we consider that, out of the four Books and a half given to the events of the ten years succeeding the death of Tiberius (a larger amount than is ever elsewhere allotted to a similar space within the period of the Annals), probably two Books were occupied with those of this principate of hardly four years' duration, we may feel sure that so weighty a historian found in it material of more historical importance than such as survives to us in Suetonius or Dio 2.

It is also to be borne in mind that his purpose professed at the beginning of his work, of holding a balance between the extravagances of adulation and abuse, and his belief that he has succeeded in doing so, applies to Gaius as well as to the other princes contained in it, and makes it probable that in his case, as we have already seen in that of Tiberius, some of the scandals and outrages which other historians have raked together would have been discredited, and many incredible exaggerations reduced to their just dimensions.

One general trait of considerable interest has been preserved to us in the incidental mention that the disordered intellect of Gaius was nevertheless consistent with considerable oratorical vigour; a statement which may well be illustrated by the epigrammatic point of some of his personalities, and the shrewd, however merciless, logic pervading his repartees and other reported utterances.

Some of the principal remaining allusions to his acts show that Tacitus followed the general account of the absurd fiasco of the German expedition, and considered that its failure, combined with the characteristic caprice of Gaius himself, caused the abandonment of what he believed to have been a seriously entertained project of invading Britain. It is disappointing that we have here no suggestion of a rational explanation

of these events which seems not impossible. Lentulus Gaetulicus, legatus of Upper Germany, already formidable under Tiberius, and influential with the army of Lower Germany, as well as master of his own', was apparently organising a conspiracy, connived at by perhaps both the surviving sisters of the Emperor, and supported by Lepidus, his brother-in-law and kinsman2. It is possible to suppose that this treason on foot was already known, and that the projected German and British expeditions were no more than the alleged object for collecting in Gaul such an army as would suffice to cow the German legions, and suppress the danger without bloodshed; and that in all the rest we have only some clumsy attempts to sustain the pretext *.

We have also a criticism by Tacitus on the blundering manner in which Gaius, suspicious of the eminence of M. Silanus, corrected the anomaly, previously deemed harmless, by which, in Africa alone among all the senatorial provinces, the proconsul had command of a legion and of the auxiliaries attached to it. His introduction of a dual government, by placing the legion under a 'legatus Augusti,' whose authority clashed with that of the proconsul, was fruitful, as might have been expected, in jealousy and discord; but the change so far commended itself to his successors that the old anomaly was never restored, though care was taken at a subsequent time to remove the evil of an 'imperium in imperio,' by constituting Numidia as a separate province under the legatus, and concentrating the whole military force within it7.

A single sentence relating to the insane command of Gaius that his statue should be set up in the temple at Jerusalem, may be quoted as so far showing a difference from Josephus as apparently to represent an outbreak to have actually commenced.