In September of 8 B.C., Maecenas died. Two months later Horace fulfilled his promise, only a little late, and followed him. He was buried close to his friend’s tomb.
The deaths of Agrippa and Drusus within four years of each other transformed Roman politics. The ages of the key players throw light on the realities of the situation. The princeps was fifty-four years old (a year younger than Julius Caesar had been when he died). Tiberius was thirty-three and in his prime. The young hopeful gentlemen, Gaius and Lucius Caesar, were eleven and eight respectively; it would be a good ten years before they were ready to play a full part in public life, by which time Augustus would be in his mid-sixties, a ripe old age for the period.
Two things must have been clear to Augustus. If his dynastic plans were to succeed, then, by hook or by crook, he needed to survive for another decade, for if he did not Tiberius would have to succeed him, just as Agrippa would have done rather than Marcellus in far-off 23 B.C. And Tiberius was the only senior and experienced adult on hand to help Augustus run the empire. His stepson was essential, for now.
Augustus was an autocrat who valued and acted on advice, but the persons on whom he depended emotionally and professionally were falling away. Agrippa; Octavia, who had died in 11 B.C.; Drusus; Maecenas—all gone. The astute Livia was on hand, of course, and the taciturn Tiberius, more experienced on the battlefield than at court. But from now on one senses a growing rigidity of mind in the princeps.
XXII
A FAMILY AT WAR
7 B.C.–A.D. 9
In 7 B.C., Augustus’ powers were renewed, this time for ten years. Tiberius held his second consulship, but, despite the fact that he was tacitly expected to assume Agrippa’s role as deputy to the princeps, he received no official acknowledgment that he had become collega imperii, or sharer of power.
He had plenty of work to do, taking over Drusus’ command and campaigning for two years on the German frontier. (Meanwhile Augustus went to Gaul to monitor events from close at hand, taking with him Gaius, now twelve years old.) As usual Tiberius, who was winning a considerable record as a commander, was victorious. Repeating his treatment of the Alpine tribes in 15 B.C., he deported forty thousand Germans to the Gallic side of the Rhine, where they could more easily be supervised and controlled.
At last he was allowed the distinction of celebrating a full triumph. However, the land between the Rhine and the Elbe remained contested territory. Rome could march about, win battles, and build forts, but it failed to extinguish resistance. Its armies continued to winter on the western bank of the Rhine.
The most notable and far-reaching development at this time was a process rather than a single happening: the boys were growing up. Their adoptive father devoted time and energy to their education. He gave them reading, swimming, and other simple lessons, and behaved as if he were their professional tutor. Whenever they dined in his company, he had them sit at his feet, and when they accompanied him on his travels they rode either in front of his carriage or on each side of it.
During their childhood, Augustus took care to keep Gaius and Lucius in the public eye, and they became darlings of the people. This was politically important, for Augustus could recall that when he entered public life in his late teens, he inherited Julius Caesar’s popular support and from it drew much-needed auctoritas. The same protection would be invaluable if he, Augustus, were to die before the boys were old enough to have established themselves in power.
One result of this policy was that Gaius and Lucius began to behave badly—something the princeps had hoped to prevent. They showed little inclination to model themselves on Augustus. It is easy to imagine that his omnipresence in their lives became stifling and unbearable. A loving father is not necessarily a good teacher of his own children. Dio reports:
They not only lived in an excessively luxurious style, but also offended against decorum; for example, Lucius on one occasion entered the theatre unattended. Virtually the whole population of Rome joined in flattering the two…and in consequence the boys were becoming more and more spoiled.
The Roman tradition was to keep the young on a tight leash, so, on the face of it, it is hardly credible that the princeps was unable to discipline two small boys, if he really wanted to. He may have feigned irritation to allow Gaius and Lucius to acquire public identities independent of his own in the popular mind.
Unfortunately, the people went one step too far. At the elections for 5 B.C., Augustus stood for consul so that he could preside over the fifteen-year-old Gaius’ coming-of-age ceremony. He was of course voted in without trouble, but the people unexpectedly elected Gaius as his colleague in office. The princeps never nominated the boys for offices of state without adding the qualification “provided they deserve this honor.” On this occasion, Gaius was obviously too young to be deserving, but while vetoing the election Augustus conceded that he could hold the consulship in A.D. 1, when he would be twenty. For now, he awarded Gaius a priesthood, and allowed him to attend Senate meetings and sit in the seats reserved for senators at public spectacles and banquets. A year later he appointed Gaius princeps iuventutis (literally “leader of youth”), or honorary president of the equites.
The publicity surrounding the boys unsettled Tiberius. He had come to detest Julia and his labors were only too clearly designed to benefit a couple of inexperienced and annoying teenagers.
Augustus chose this moment at last to promote him to Agrippa’s position as collega imperii by awarding him tribunician status and imperium maius. Perhaps he recognized and wished to appease his stepson’s discontents, perhaps he wanted to deliver a warning to the unruly Gaius and Lucius that they were not, after all, indispensable. More probably, being a supreme realist, the princeps saw it was time to recognize facts. He had no choice but to yoke himself to a man who, while he no longer seemed to be the enthusiastic collaborator of earlier years, was essential to good governance of the empire.
Augustus dispatched Tiberius, equipped with full powers, to settle unrest in Armenia. This client kingdom had been quiet since the successful negotiations between Rome and the Parthian empire in 20 B.C., but now Augustus’ appointee as king, Dikran II, died. A struggle ensued between two pretenders to the vacant throne, one of them a Roman nominee and the other a nationalist.
Tiberius then did an extraordinary thing. Before setting off from Rome to take up his commission, he announced without warning his immediate retirement from public life. The official reason he gave was that “he was weary of office and needed a rest.” Everyone was bemused. How was it that a thirty-six-year-old man, in excellent health, famous and successful, had decided to throw in his cards?
Tiberius’ personality and motives are confusing and in many ways irrecoverable. A gloomy fatalist, he was more used to wielding power than ambitious to win it. If not a republican, he was a believer in senatorial government, and he seems to have been oppressed by the responsibilities he shouldered as Augustus’ stepson. He took well to warfare and was more at ease among the simplicities of military life than the soiling compromises of politics.
A popular explanation at the time, and still the most plausible, was that he voluntarily resigned his place to make way for Gaius and Lucius, as Agrippa was supposed to have done for Marcellus. But was he acting from self-effacement, or frustrated anger? We do not know. The situation may not have been as simple as our inadequate sources imply. One fact to be borne clearly in mind is that Tiberius’ abdication was partial and provisional. He resigned activity, not office. He retained the imperium and tribunician status he had just been awarded. He could have handed his powers back, and presumably Augustus could have arranged for their removal. Neither man did so.