Allan Massie: Tiberius

"There," she said, "I have proved my own confidence in your continuing virtue, for if I had spoken in this manner to a man who was really as they describe, I fear I should not see tomorrow."

"If you have spoken truth, Antonia," I said, "I would wish that I might not."

I yielded nothing to her suspicions in our conversation, and struggled to yield nothing in my sleepless hours. If Sejanus were false then the rock on which I had built my life — not the certainty of his loyalty, but rather my own faith in my knowledge of men — would crumble. For two days I could not bring myself to do anything either to confirm or disprove Antonia's allegations. I pretended that she was here simply on a friendly visit, but I also took the opportunity to watch Gaius Caligula closely. My scrutiny failed to reassure me. Apart from anything else, the boy was obviously unreliable; he would argue a point vehemently, and a few hours later — at the next meal for instance — assert the contrary, without seeming to be aware of any contradiction. So at lunch he quoted Homer, and remarked that there was "Nothing on earth finer than Homeric verse or a Homeric hero", and at dinner remarked that the best thing he knew about Plato was his decision to exclude Homer from The Republic because, as the boy put it, "Poets are liars who tell us life is noble".

Perhaps it isn't, but it is better that young men should think it so, and Gaius was very young, only nineteen.

Then he said that no one should enter marriage a virgin, only to state with quite unnecessary ardour a few hours later that if he discovered that his bride was not a virgin, he would smother her with the pillow of the marriage bed.

I could not ignore Antonia's words, simply because the young man had an unpleasant character. (Another displeasing aspect of this was that, as a result of being educated at Rome with a number of Thracian princes, he had imbibed all sorts of notions about a royal state, and what was due to royalty, that I found offensive.) Accordingly, I wrote to Sejanus in guarded terms. Antonia had brought Gaius here on a visit, I said, and I would be grateful if Sejanus would send me, under seal, a copy of the lad's dossier. There were things about him which I found disturbing, I said.

The courier returned directly. Sejanus wrote that he was alarmed to hear of Gaius' visit. I would see that he was not to be trusted. He was ill-disposed towards me and had often talked of his longing for my death. I should be on my guard against assassination.

He named his witnesses. They were those young noblemen whom, according to Antonia, he had employed to spy on Gaius and, as she insisted, to provoke him to treasonable utterances. "These young men," Sejanus wrote, "were so shocked by the language of the young prince (as he chooses to style himself) that without any prompting on my part, they came voluntarily forward to denounce him."

Once, campaigning in Illyria, I came on a village which had just suffered a small earthquake. Not many people had been killed, but the physical damage was still astonishing. I remember one old woman gazing in wonder at a crevasse which had appeared in the floor of her cottage. The walls still stood, the roof had remained in place, but there was this chasm, but two feet wide, and more than a spear-length deep; her hens and a cockerel had been swallowed up. Some of them had perhaps been smothered; others clucked and squawked in indignant puzzlement, which reproduced, as it were, exactly the expression on the old woman's face. I now shared the sensations of the old woman and her cockerel; life had lost its foundation.

It came to me that I was isolated as never before. I was myself a prisoner, for I had put myself in Sejanus' power. There was not an officer on my staff whom he had not appointed. I could not be certain that my correspondence with provincial governors and military commanders was not subject to scrutiny by Sejanus' agents. Nor indeed could I have any confidence that I received all the letters addressed to me; it was possible that any which Sejanus deemed unsuitable for one reason or another were intercepted and destroyed. Almost everything I knew was what he had allowed me to know, and my knowledge of the world was his.

He had nurtured my every suspicion and now I found myself, as a result of the revelation Antonia had forced upon me, redoubling suspicions. I realised I could be certain of nothing. A few months previously, for example, I had invited an old friend, Pomponius Flaccus, whom I had formerly made Governor of Syria, to spend a few weeks of his retirement as my guest. The invitation was declined: Flaccus was too ill to travel. Now I found myself wondering whether the invitation had been received, or the reply concocted. My suspicions might be unjust in this case; that made no difference to the fact that they were there.

He had taught me to fear others. We had hardly had a single conversation in recent years in which he had not raised the problem of my security or offered me the names of those who were plotting my assassination. Now I learned to fear him in his turn.

I had only one advantage. Sejanus had to believe that 1 still trusted him absolutely. It was necessary to confirm him in his confidence. I therefore wrote thanking him for warning me against Gaius and his friends, and for his continued efforts on my behalf. "The only thing," I said, "which enables me to bear the ingratitude and unreliability of men is the trust which I repose in you — the one man who has never let me down." In the same letter I confirmed that he would be my partner in the consulship the following year, and reminded him that I had been sparing in my assumption of that dignity: sharing consulships only with Germanicus and my son Drusus. The implication was, I hoped, clear; they had been my chosen, indeed designated, successors. I had no need to spell out the import of this honour to Sejanus. I held out hints of the tribunician power — "when the time is ripe". I was tempted to satisfy his desire to be granted this, in the hope that such a gift would swathe him in grateful security; but I hesitated, held back by a new fear. Sejanus had schemed to isolate and control me; might he not decide, if protected by this power and assured of this authority, that I had become redundant, and could be safely eliminated? So I promised more than I performed; let him still, I said to myself, have something to hope for from my hand.

It was necessary to reanimate support for my person among the senators. I therefore ordered that the trial of Lucius Arruntius, accused by Sejanus' agents of treason, should be abandoned. There was not, I wrote, sufficient evidence. Taking a risk, I had this letter conveyed to Rome by Sigmund and handed to the consul Memmius in person. Since Memmius was a cousin by marriage of Arruntius I trusted he would obey my instructions without consulting Sejanus. But I had days of alarm till I learned that he had done so, and even more till Sigmund returned safe to Capri.

Let me confess too that I had hesitated before trusting even Sigmund with this message. I felt a warm and tender love for the young man, in the happiness of whose marriage I delighted, and of course I was sure that my confidence in his virtue was well founded. And yet at the same time, I could not be sure. I tormented myself by elaborating methods, cajolements and threats which Sejanus might have employed to suborn the boy. When Sigmund returned, I called him before me in private and heard his report, and embraced him with a warmth that sprang from relief as much as from affection.

I wrote to Sejanus saying tha t I had heard rumours of mutter ings against my authority, even of conspiracies against my person, among the officers of the Praetorians. I would be grateful to him if he would investigate this matter and, before acting, supply me with the names of any whom he had reason to suspect of such disaffection. He replied that he had absolute confidence in almost all these officers whom, he reminded me, he had himself appointed after the most careful scrutiny. Nevertheless any barrel might contain a bad apple, and he could not deny the presence of such. He mentioned a number of names, the chief of which, he said, was one Macro, a Calabrian, "… the sort of man who is discontented with life because no regard which he is paid can ever measure up to his own estimation of his qualities". Moreover, he added, this Macro had been a familiar of first Nero and now Gaius. He was an associate of some of those turbulent young men who had been inciting Gaius to disaffection, and to that treasonable course which he had been pursuing till my invitation to Capri temporarily removed him from such evil influences.