058 - Partner of my Labors

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Hello, and welcome to the History of Rome, episode 58, Partner of My Labors. Last week, we followed the aborted career of Germanicus, who died under mysterious circumstances in 19 AD. Whether the charges were true or not, Tiberius was widely believed to have played a role in the death of the popular young prince and the emperor's popularity with the people suffered as a result. Never personable to begin with, Tiberius did not enjoy the kind of respect Augustus had garnered so naturally. With the death of Germanicus, the distance between the emperor and his people only widened, but even still through these early years, Tiberius was a prudent and dedicated ruler. He had taken to heart Augustus' injunction not to embroil the empire in foreign wars and did his best to resolve border disputes peacefully without resorting to the kind of military adventurism that Germanicus pursued with such zeal. The money saved by not having to keep up active campaigns on numerous fronts was spent elsewhere, improving the infrastructure of the empire and the efficiency of its governing apparatus.

But that does not mean that Tiberius enjoyed his work. If you believe some sources, Tiberius never wanted to become emperor to begin with, and had been pushed into becoming princeps by his mother, Livia, who was living her ambition through her son. If on the other hand, he actually did seek to become emperor, then it's clear he quickly became disenchanted with the prize he had sought. I personally get the feeling that Tiberius would have been content to simply command a few legions by day and read Greek literature in his tent by night. But despite his own personal unhappiness, a sense of honor and duty seems to have kept Tiberius functioning as a thoughtful ruler for a few years, even after the people really turned on him following the death slash assassination of Germanicus.

But the underlying misery of Tiberius would eventually overtake him and turn him into the paranoid, debauched and cruel emperor we all know and love today. Tiberius was only able to hold off his demons for so long, and after the death of his son Drusus in 2380, which we'll get to in a moment, Tiberius seems to have allowed them free reign over his psyche. Stoking the gloomy fires in Tiberius's heart was a man of great personal ambition who saw Tiberius's growing paranoia as an opportunity for advancement, the prefect of the Praetorian Guard, Lucius Sejanus.

Before we get too far into the drama of the 20 ADs though, we should probably take a moment to understand what the Praetorian Guard was at this point and how Sejanus was able to leverage his role as their captain into a position of power that for a few years probably exceeded that of Tiberius himself. I mentioned the Praetorians thus far only in passing, but as they will play a key role in practically every important episode for the next few centuries, they are worth taking the time to understand. The guard had existed in various incarnations going back to the 200s BC and was generally understood to be little more than an elite cohort of soldiers who served as bodyguards for a general. The name Praetorian is derived from the Latin word Praetorium, which was the name for the general's tent within a legionary camp, around which these elite soldiers would be stationed. During the civil wars, the major figures involved all had cohorts of Praetorian guards serving them.

But it wasn't until Octavian emerged triumphant that a single, quote, Praetorian guard emerged as a formal institution within the state. During the reign of Augustus, the guard were stationed in and around Rome and were used as a combination police force, intelligence service, and of course, bodyguard for the imperial family. Augustus set their number at nine cohorts of 500 men each, which he later up to a thousand. But conscious of appearances, he did not station them at a central base within Rome. Instead, he scattered the men in lodgings throughout Italy. Augustus wanted their presence known and felt, but not so much so that it put light at his claims of Republican legitimacy. So at any given time, only three cohorts would be on active duty in the capital itself. During the Augustan period, the Praetorian was a fairly benign force, but once Augustus was dead, the guard seems to have grown aware of the power it could easily possess if it simply pushed a little.

Tiberius really gave them a glimpse of the apple when he decided to eschew Augustus' policy of keeping the troops scattered and instead lodge them in a single barrack just outside of Rome. At the same time, he upped their ranks by three more cohorts, bringing their total to some 12,000 men. Tiberius also let slip the policy of keeping two prefects at all times in charge of the guard, mimicking the pattern of the consulship, which had for so long prevented power from accumulating in the hands of one man. The first man to serve as sole prefect, the aforementioned Sejanus, had a ruthless Machiavellian personality, and from this point on, the Praetorian became a political force as well as a military one.

Ostensibly, the guard relied upon the emperor to keep the Ostensibly, the guard relied upon the emperor for their status and as such should remain perfectly loyal to him. But in practice, Tiberius and all of his successors found that it was far more the other way around. The emperor relied upon the Praetorian for his position. As such, the guard began to wield something of a de facto veto over state affairs, because what was the emperor going to do, cross them? They guarded the imperial family while they slept. For the next few hundred years, the Praetorian guard would sit fat and comfortable in roomy barracks with their double pay and lax discipline and dare anyone to challenge them. Anytime they took a dislike to a sitting emperor, they would simply assassinate or depose him and elevate a man they thought would treat them better. They went so far at one point as to actually auction off the job of emperor to the highest bidder after murdering the previous occupant of the office. This model of using the monopoly they held on the use of force within Rome to maintain their own status and push their own agenda was invented by Lucius Sejanus, a man who, at his height, was arguably the most powerful man in the empire.

Sejanus was born into the equestrian class, the socioeconomic level just beneath that of the senatorial class. His family was connected to the regime by his grandfather's marriage to Macinus' sister, but they were by no means in the upper echelon of Roman society. Sejanus' father caught the eye of Augustus while the former was still a young man, and he was brought into the Petrorian guard and eventually made one of its two prefects. After Augustus died, young Sejanus was appointed to serve as his father's colleague, but critically, when the elder man was appointed to serve as governor of Egypt, an appointment which speaks volumes about the trust Tiberius had in this particular family, Sejanus was left as the sole prefect and Tiberius appointed no colleague to serve with him.

It seems that right away, Sejanus was a slave to ambition and immediately set his sights on elevating himself above the ceiling placed on him by his equestrian status, and for years, Tiberius was content to allow Sejanus' ambition to flourish. Now, what exactly Sejanus was ultimately aiming for has been a topic of great debate over the years. Numerous ancient sources claim that he had his sights set squarely on making himself emperor, but the modern consensus is that he was looking to be named regent for one of Tiberius' young heirs once Tiberius himself was dead. But of course, when Sejanus began to scheme after attaining sole control of the Petrorian guard in 15 AD, there was one giant obstacle in his way. Tiberius' son, Drusus. With Drusus the obvious heir to the throne, there was no room for Sejanus at the top, as young Drusus was not young enough to require an overbearing regent to rule in his name.

Now, you might be saying, okay, well, we're about to see that Sejanus was able to do a pretty good job worming his way into Tiberius' favor. Why not just keep on keeping on and be the power behind the throne of the eventual emperor, Drusus as well? The answer is that Drusus hated Sejanus. He found the manipulative prefect absolutely despicable, and Sejanus in turn hated Drusus, even more so after the hot-tempered heir had actually hit him during one of their frequent meetings. If Drusus did become emperor, Sejanus would probably be lucky if he was simply removed from office. Exile would not be out of the question, nor would force suicide, nor execution. I think it's safe to say that nothing would have been more disastrous to the life and career of Lucius Sejanus than the ascension of emperor Drusus. While he was wondering how to get around Drusus, Sejanus was also thinking about how to get around the fact that he was the only heir to the throne. He was also thinking about how to get around the fact that he was merely an equestrian, and had likely risen as high as his status would ever permit. Finally, the prefect hit upon an answer that would take care of both of his problems simultaneously, an elegant, if sinister, little solution.

At the time, Drusus was married to Lovilla, the daughter of Tiberius's brother Drusus, and Antonia, the daughter of Octavia and Mark Antony. If Drusus were to suddenly die, and the widowed Lovilla was allowed to marry Drusus, then he would become a member of the imperial family, and any children he sired would themselves become potential heirs to the throne. So he set about seducing Lovilla, in the hopes that she would not only welcome him as her husband, but also that she might help him eliminate Drusus. Luckily for Sejanus, Lovilla was more than open to cheating on her persistently absentee husband. Once the affair got going, it did not take much for Sejanus to convince Lovilla of the hindrance to them both. If Drusus were eliminated, Sejanus would whisper in her ear, then they could be together in the open, Sejanus would be in a much more powerful position politically, and together they might eventually rule the empire. Clearly, Lovilla had no great love for Drusus, because in 23 AD, she agreed to secretly administer poison to her unsuspecting husband. Apparently, she and Sejanus did such a good job that no one ever suspected that Drusus' sudden illness and death was the result of foul play. It would be years before the truth came out.

Tacitus marks the death of Drusus as the turning point in Tiberius' reign. The emperor had shared a consulship with his son in 21 AD, and was in the process of transferring a great deal of administrative authority to Drusus at the time of the young man's death. Tiberius had failed to get the senate to help him with his increasingly unwelcome burdens of office, and had ever since viewed Drusus as the answer to his unhappiness. When Drusus died, Tiberius suffered the blow not just as a father who had lost a son, but also as a prisoner who had been denied parole. Now, a faction of ancient historians, led by Suetonius, report that Tiberius cared very little for his son, and actually cut short the customary mourning period and returned to work because he had nothing really to mourn at all. But I am more convinced by Tacitus that the death was a personal and professional disaster for Tiberius, given everything else we know about the emperor, and the fact that Suetonius, wonderful writer that he is, tends to traffic in unflattering gossip.

The murder of Drusus was a crime that remained hidden for close to a decade, and for that stretch, things went almost completely according to plan for Sejanus. Tiberius, who was still looking for someone to help him govern, turned to his willing prefect for support, and found Sejanus' administrative skills and general cunning to be a valuable resource. The emperor began to rely on him more and more to actually run the empire. With Tiberius trusting in him completely, Sejanus acted as a sort of super-executive assistant who controlled the flow of information into and out of the imperial quarters. Tiberius only saw callers approved by Sejanus, only read letters approved by Sejanus, and only issued orders approved by Sejanus. The prefect became so influential that Tiberius called him nothing less than the partner of my labors.

But Sejanus' plan was only half fulfilled. He was now one of the most powerful men in the empire, and no longer had to worry about the wrath of a potential emperor Drusus. But his attempt to marry into the imperial family was blocked by the emperor. After waiting a suitable amount of time following the death of Drusus, Sejanus asked Tiberius for the widow Lovilla's hand in marriage in 25 AD. However, unlike just about every other decision the emperor made, he refused to consider the matter. As important as Sejanus was, he was still, after all, merely an equestrian. When a daughter of the imperial family married, it had better be to a man of at least senatorial rank. Anything less would be beneath her. Come now, Sejanus, be serious. What would the neighbors think? Afraid that pressing the issue would cause him to lose favor, Sejanus was forced to swallow his pride and drop the matter. Not forever, just for now.

With his plan to enter the Julio-Claudian dynasty temporarily thwarted, Sejanus turned all of his attention to accumulating as much power for himself as possible. To this end, he decided to lean hard on Tiberius' natural paranoia, and drive a physical as well as psychological wedge between Tiberius and the people of Rome. Ever since the death of Germanicus, Agrippina and her allies in the Julian wing of the Julio-Claudian dynasty made no secret of the fact that they blamed Tiberius for Germanicus' death. Sejanus decided to play up the threat they might pose to Tiberius, and began trumping up treason charges against various high-ranking officials allied with Agrippina. It was all political theater, of course, acted out for an audience of one. Already inclined to believe that everyone was out to get him, when Sejanus began showing him evidence that they really were all out to get him, Tiberius withdrew even further from the public realm. He began holing up in Campania on extended vacations that kept him out of Rome for longer and longer periods of time with each passing year. Pretty soon, living in the bubble created by Sejanus, Rome began to loom in Tiberius' imagination as a mortally dangerous city packed with treacherous and dangerous people. Treacherous vipers and hostile mobs.

In 26 AD, he decided to retreat to his villa on the island of Capri and leave Rome to its own devices. No one knew it at the time, but when he left the city that year, it would be the last time Tiberius would actually set foot in Rome. He would constantly send word that he was coming back soon, that he would be there any day, but excuses always delayed travel, and he just never got around to it. The truth is that Tiberius was probably terrified of returning to the city, convinced as he was that as soon as he did, the mobs would riot and tear him limb from limb. For the last eleven years of his reign, Tiberius ruled in absentia from Capri. His man on the ground, of course, was Sejanus, who promised to look after Tiberius' interests in Rome until it was safe for the emperor to return.

Now, there is a loose variable in all of this that I have thus far neglected to mention, who kept Sejanus' power from becoming complete at this point, and who also may have played a part in Tiberius' second and final self-imposed exile, his mother Livia, now known as the Augusta. During the early years of Tiberius' reign, there seems to have been a cordial, if distant, relationship between mother and son. She did not lack for valuable advice, and there is no denying that she was a fierce advocate for her son's interests. But she also exuded a sort of omnipresence that began to wear on Tiberius. There was no end to the snide gossip that Tiberius had been placed on the throne by his mother, and it was she who really pulled the strings of power. Tiberius struggled to become his own man, and tried to only consult with his mother when absolutely necessary. He wanted to demonstrate that he ruled in his own right, but the Augusta had her own base of support, and there would always be those who saw Tiberius as a necessary figurehead in patriarchal Rome, and that in fact the empire was actually being ruled by its first empress.

Though he gave as much latitude to his mother as he felt he could, there were times when the two butted heads publicly. Sometimes she got her way, and sometimes he got his way, but Tiberius was a man of his his way, but Tiberius seemed unable to escape the perception that when he got his way, it was because the Augusta had relented to a petulant child, and when she got her way, it was because, well, she was the real power in Rome. Tiberius just could not win. And of course, the Augusta did little to disabuse anyone of the notion that all of it wasn't true. Almost all the ancient sources agree that when Tiberius withdrew from Rome in 26 AD, it was at least in part to get away from his overbearing mother. The depth of the enmity toward her that had grown in Tiberius by the end is amply demonstrated by the fact that when she finally died in 29 AD, he claimed that he was too busy with work to return to Rome for her funeral.

But as I've said, the Augusta was a fierce advocate for her son, whether it was in pursuit of her own interests or not. When it came to Tiberius, she was always on the watch for potential dangers to his regime. Thus, when Sejanus wormed his way into the emperor's confidence and began his de facto rule of Rome when Tiberius retired to Capri, he was prevented from wielding absolute control over the empire because the Augusta had her own direct lines of communication to her son that Sejanus was unable to block. The prefect was smart enough not to cross the Augusta, so though he was poised to completely dominate the empire, he wasn't quite there yet. Eventually, Sejanus planned to eliminate anyone who threatened his rise, but a good number of those threats sat in the Augusta's sphere of influence. It would be monumentally stupid to stir up that hornet's nest when he didn't have to. He had plans, lots of plans, but as long as the Augusta was alive, he would have to sit on them.

So when, in 29, the Augusta finally passed away, Sejanus put on a public face of mourning, but inside was ecstatic. He could now, finally, make his move. One of those main centers of opposition to him that Sejanus wanted to quickly destroy had grown up around Agrippina. Luckily, eliminating her would not ruffle any imperial feathers, as Tiberius himself hated her and wanted her out of the picture. Not only was she still beating the Tiberius killed my husband drum, but she also actively promoted her own sons as the true heirs to the imperial throne. Augustus had wanted Germanicus to follow Tiberius, she said, so it was only logical that Germanicus's sons stand as the rightful heirs. It was Augustus's will that the Julians return to power and not allow Rome to be ruled by a gag me with a spoon, a succession of Claudians, or that snake in the grass, Sejanus.

Acting nothing like the good little Roman woman, Agrippina very publicly inserted herself into politics and gathered around her family and friends to protest against Sejanus. Sejanus and her family, something of an opposition party to the standing regime. Her distrust of the emperor was so great that at a dinner party one night, he offered her some fruit and she refused to eat it, convinced that he was trying to poison her. Tiberius himself claimed that the entire scene was prearranged to test her loyalty, a test that she failed spectacularly. Agrippina, unwilling as ever to back down, told her supporters that Tiberius had in fact and then concocted the story of a loyalty test after the fact, once she escaped his murderous clutches.

When the Augusta died, Sejanus went straight away after Agrippina on the explicit order of Tiberius. Whether the idea of trying Germanicus's family for treason was originally planted in the emperor's head by Sejanus or not, there is no doubt that Tiberius fully supported their persecution. Agrippina and her two eldest sons, Nero Caesar and Drusus Caesar, were tried and convicted on trumped-up charges of attempting to overthrow the regime. The fates of all three were gruesome. The elder son, Nero Caesar, was murdered shortly after the trial, while his brother was left to rot in prison for four years before being intentionally starved to death in 33 AD. It is reported that by the end, he was reduced to eating the stuffing from his bedding in a vain attempt to survive. Agrippina herself was exiled to a desolate island, and after enduring years of beatings, she too died in 33 AD, broken and malnourished. The only one of Germanicus's sons to survive was young Gaius, known to all by the nickname Caligula, who was too young to be considered a threat.

Hmm, I wonder if this thoroughly traumatized boy, who just watched his mother and brothers be murdered by his adoptive grandfather, is going to grow up to be a sociopathic monster. Stay tuned, we'll all find out together. But the persecution of Germanicus's family was only the beginning. Rome under Tiberius was already suffering from far more restrictions on individual liberty than it had under the confident and permissive Augustus. Throughout the 20s, Tiberius had begun to elevate every real or perceived slight against the regime to the level of capital-T treason. Now, with Sejanus in total control of Tiberius, the cruel paranoia of the aging emperor was given free reign. Where once maybe a few men a year were tried and convicted of treason, now it became a daily event. Treason trials ran continuously, and a bloody purge not seen since the days of the second triumvirate overtook the city. With Sejanus overseeing the proceedings, it became clear early that those charged with treason were overwhelmingly personal enemies of the praetorian prefect. Under the guise of protecting Tiberius, Sejanus was actually killing off his opponents and putting everyone else on notice that they had better not cross him.

But in 31 AD, Justice Sejanus stepped into a shared consulship with Tiberius, finally achieving the formal power he had sought for so long. He was undone. Unfortunately for us, the sections of Tacitus's annals that deal with the fall of Sejanus have been lost, so we don't have the same level of detail for this episode that we do for the rest of Tiberius's reign. It seems, though, that Tiberius finally realized just how much Sejanus was usurping his authority after a few letters critical of the prefect made it through Sejanus's screening process. Believing that Sejanus had allied himself with elements of the Julian clan and was planning to overthrow him, Tiberius decided to divest himself of the backstabbing prefect. He called an unsuspecting Sejanus to stand before the Senate to attend to some invented business outlined in a letter from the emperor that was to be read aloud to the assembled senators. To the prefect's shock, amidst the tedium of imperial business, Tiberius's letter suddenly veered into a denunciation of his new consular colleague. Tiberius called for Sejanus to be tried and executed for treason. The Senate, who had suffered mightily under Sejanus's heavy and bloody hand, immediately obliged. Sejanus had no recourse, as Tiberius had already sent notice to the Praetorians that their leader had been replaced and that Navius Sutorius Macro was their new prefect. Suddenly, without power or allies, Sejanus was tried, sentenced, and strangled. His death sparked riots in Rome. Suddenly free of the tyrant, they tore his body to pieces and then went off in search of anyone who had collaborated with the fallen prefect in his reign of terror.

Among those who were swept up in the immediate aftermath of Sejanus's death was Lovilla. A slave with knowledge of her crime waited until he was sure Sejanus was dead and then addressed a letter to Tiberius outlining her involvement in the murder of Jerusalem. Lovilla turned up dead shortly thereafter, and though a definitive account of her death does not exist, the most dramatic account has Tiberius handing Lovilla over to her mother Antonia for punishment, whereupon mother locked up daughter and starved her to death.

Next week, we will trace the final bloody and debauched years of Tiberius's reign. As so often happens, the purge machine was turned on those who had initiated it, and Tiberius sought to eliminate anyone suspected of ever coming into contact with anyone who had ever considered being a friend of Sejanus. It was a dark time for Rome, and when Tiberius finally died in 37 AD, the people cheered his death. Not only was their hated master dead, but ascending to the throne was the beloved Caligula, son of noble Germanicus. If anyone could put the horrible final years of Tiberius's reign behind them, it was this shining young prince. Yeah, not so much.

I will close this week by mentioning around this time a man claiming to be the son of God was executed in the far-off province of Judea. The crucifixion of the man, Jesus Christ, had absolutely no immediate impact on anything. But in just a few years, after a dramatic, revelatory vision on the road to the Syrian city of Damascus, a man by the name of Saul will turn the execution into one of the most important events in world history. Even simply keeping our focus strictly on Roman history, the emergence and spread of Christianity is a huge development. At first, the early Christians will be ruthlessly persecuted by the Romans, who will find themselves baffled by the Christian unwillingness to treat the emperors as divine. But eventually, Christianity will entrench itself as the official religion of the state, and from there, become the dominant religion of the entire western world.