He did it; and the feet of his soul were indeed washed in the blood of his heart. He said no word; he divorced Vipsania and explained nothing. But for months afterwards, if he should chance to meet her, or see her in the street far off, he could not hide the fact that his eyes filled with tears.--Then Rome in its own kindly way took upon itself the duty or pleasure of helping him out a little: gossip got to work to soothe the ache of his wound. "Vipasania," said gossip;--"you are well rid of her; she was far from being all that you thought her." Probably he believed nothing of it; but the bitterness lay in its being said. A shy man is never popular. His shyness pa.s.ses for pride, and people hate him for it. Tiberius was very shy. So society was always anxious to take down his pride a little. The truth was, he was humble to the verge of self-distrust.
He did his best for Julia: lived under the same roof with her for a few agonized months, and discovered what everyone knew or suspected about her. The cup of his grief was now quite full; and indeed, worse things a man could hardly suffer. Austere, reserved, and self-controlled as he was, at sight of Vipsania he could not hide his tears. But it is written:
_"Before the eyes can see, they must become incapable of tears."_
--He was the b.u.t.t of Roman gossip: in all rancorous mouths because of the loved Vipsania; in all tattling mouths because of the loathed Julia; laughed at on both accounts; sympathized with by n.o.body; hearing all whispers, and fearfully sensitive to them. But
_"Before the ear can hear, it must have lost its sensitiveness."_
The storm was upon him; the silence was ahead; he was rocked and shaken and stunned by the earthquakes and thunders of Initiation: when a man has to be hopeless, and battered, and stripped of all things: a naked soul afflicted with fiery rains and torments; and to have no pride to back him; and no ambition to back him; and no prospect before him at all, save such as can be seen with the it may be unopened eyes of faith. This is the way Tiberius endured his trials:--
All Rome knew what Julia was, except Augustus. So it is said; and perhaps truly; for here comes in the mystery of human duality: a thing hard enough to understand in ourselves, that are common humanity; how much harder the variety that appears in one such as Augustus! You may say, He must have known. Well, there was the Adept Soul; that, I doubt not, would have known.
But perhaps it is that those who have all knowledge at their beck and call, have the power to know or not know what they will?--to know what shall help, not to know what shall hinder their work?
Julia was not to be saved: was, probably, tainted with madness like so many of her descendants:--then what the Adept Soul could not forfend, why would the human personality, the warn-hearted father, be aware of? Had that last known, how should he escape being bowed down with grief: then in those years when all his powers and energies were needed? Octavian had gone through storm and silence long since: in the days of the Triumvirate, and his enforced partnership in its nefarious deeds;--now his personal mind and his hands were needed to guide the Empire: and needed clear and untrammeled with grief... Until Tiberius should be ready; at least until Tiberius.... So I imagine it possible that the soul of Augustus kept from its personality that wounding knowledge about Julia.
Tiberius was not the one to interfere with its purposes. Why did he not get a divorce? The remedy was clear and easy; and he would have ceased to be the laughing stock of Rome. He did not get a divorce; or try to; he said no word; he would not lighten his own load by sharing it with the Teacher he loved. He would not wound that Teacher to save himself pain or shame.
Augustus had made severe laws for punishing such offenses as Julia"s; and--well, Tiberius would bear his griefs alone. No sound escaped him.
But, as no effort of his could help or save her, live with Julia, or in Rome, he could not. His health broke down; he threw up all offices, and begged leave to retire to Rhodes. Augustus was (apparently) quite unsympathetic; withheld the permission until (they say) Tiberius had starved himself for four days to show it was go or die with him. And no, he would not take Julia; and he would give no reason for not taking her. Well; what was Augustus to do, having to keep up human appearances, and suit his action to the probabilities? What, but appear put out, insulted, angry? Estrangement followed; and Tiberius went in (apparent) disgrace. I find the explanation once more in _Light on the Path;_ thus--
"In the early state in which a man is entering upon the silence he loses knowledge of his friends, of his lovers, of all who have been near and dear to him: _and also loses sight of his teachers._"
So in this case. "Scarce one pa.s.ses through," we read, "without bitter complaint." But I think Tiberius did.
How else to explain the incident I cannot guess. Or indeed, his whole life. Tacitus" account does not hang together at all; the contraditions trip each other up, and any mud is good enough to fling. Mr. Baring-Gould"s version goes far towards truth; but the well is deep for his tackle, and only esotericism, I think, can bring up the clear water. Whether Augustus knew all personally, or was acting simply on the promptings of his inner nature, or of Those who stoood behind him,--he took the course, it seems to me, which as an Occult Teacher he was bound to take.
His conduct was framed in any case to meet the needs of his disciple"s initiation. He, for the Law, had to break that disciple"s outer life; and then send him lonely into the silence to find the greater life within. Truly these waters are deep; and one may be guessing with the utmost presumption. But hear _Light on the Path_ again; and judge whether the picture that emerges is or is not consistent. It says:
"Your teacher or your predecessor, may hold your hand in his, and give you the utmost sympathy the human heart is capable of. But when the silence and the darkness come, you lose all knowledge of him: you are alone, and he cannot help you; not because his power is gone, but because you have invoked your great enemy."
--Tiberius was alone, and Augustus could not help him; and he went off, apparently quite out of favor, to seven years of voluntary exile in Rhodes, there to don the robe of a philosopher, and study philosophy and "astrology," as they say.
Let us put it, the Esoteric Wisdom; I think we may.
The truth about Julia could not be kept from Augustus forever.
It came to his ears at last; when his work was by so much nearer completion, and when Tiberius was by so much nearer his illumination. The Princeps did his duty, thought it made an old man of him: he banished Julia according to his own law. Then it was the wronged husband who stepped in and interceded; who wrote pleading letters to his stepfatehr, imploring him to have mercy on the erring woman: to lighten her punishment; to let her mother, at least, be with her in her exile. He knew well what tales Julia had been telling her father about him; and how Augustus had seemed to believe them; but "a courageous endurance of personal injustice" is demanded of the disciple; and very surely it was found in him. Rome heard of his intercession, and sneered at him for his weak-spiritedness; as kindly letter-writers failed not to let him know.
"Look for the flower to bloom in the silence that follows the storm, not till then."
The flower bloomed in this case during those seven years at Rhodes; then Tiberius was fit to return. Outer events shaped themseves to fit inner needs and qualifications: here now at last was the Man who was to succeed Augustus, duly and truly prepared, worthy and well-qualified: initiated, and ready to be named before the world Heir to the Princ.i.p.ate. Within a few months of each other Caius and Lucius, the hitherto supposed successors designate, died; their brother Agrippa Postumus was already showing signs of incipient madness. True, there were many of the Julian line still alive and available, were Augustus (as had been thought) bent on making Julian blood the qualification necessary: there was Germanicus, married to Agrippina; he the son of Drusus and Antonia, Octavia"s daughter; she the daughter of Julia, and so grand-daughter of Augustus himself: there were these two with their several children. But all else might wait upon the fact that Tiberius, the real man, was now ready. The Princeps adopted him, and no one was left to doubt who was to be the successor. The happiest years in Tiberius"s life began: he had at last the full, unreserved, and undisguised friendship of his Teacher. His portarait-busts taken at this period show for the fist and only time a faint smile on his gravely beautiful face.
Also he was given plenty of work. His great German campaigns followed quickly; and the quelling of the Pannanian insurrection that called him back from the Rhine; and Varus" defeat while Tiberius was in Pannonia; and Tiberius"s triumphant saving of the situation. It was then, when the frontier was broken and all the world aquake with alarm, that he consulted his generals; the only time he ever did so. Says Velleius Paterculus, who served uner him:--"There was no ostentation in his conduct; it was marked by solid worth, practicality, humaneness. He took as much care of any one of us who happened to be sick, as if that one"s health were the main object of his concern." Ambulances, he continues, were always in attendance, with a medical staff, warm baths, suitable food, etc., for the sick. "The general often admonished, rarely punished; taking a middle part, dissembling his knowledge of most faults, and preventing the commission of others.... He preferred the approval of his own conscience to the acquisition of renown."
He returned to Rome in triumph in the autumn of A.D. 12; and dismissed his chief captives with present, instead of butchering them in the fine old Roman way. He was at the height of his fame; undeniably Rome"s savior, and surely to be Princeps on his Teacher"s death. Augustus, in letters that remain, calls him "the only strength and stay of the Empire." "All who were with you," says he, "admit that this verse suits you:"
"One man by vigilance has restored the state."
Whenever anything happens that requires more than ordinary consideration, or when I am out of humor, then, by Hercules, I long for the presence of my dear Tiberius; and Homer"s lines rise in my mind:
"Bold from his prudence, I could e"en aspire To dare with him the burning rage of fire."
"When I hear that you are worn out with incessant fatigue, the G.o.ds confound me if I am not all in a quake. So I entreat you to spare yourself, lest, should we hear of your being ill, the news prove fatal to your mother and myself, and the Roman people be alarmed for the safety of the Empire. I pray heaven to preserve you for us, and bless you with health now and ever,--if the G.o.ds care a rush for the Roman people. ....Farewell, my dearest Tiberius; may good success attend you, you best of all generals, in all that you undertake for me and for the Muses."
Two years later Augustus died, and Tiberius became emperor; and the persecution broke out that was not to end till his death.
Let us get the whole situation firmly in mind. There was that clique in high society of men who hated the Princ.i.p.ate because it had robbed them of the spoils of power. It gathered first round Scribonia, because she hated Augustus for divorcing her; then round Julia, because she was living in open contempt of the principles her father stood for. Its chief bugbear of all was Tiberius, because he was the living embodiment of those principles; and because Julia, the witty and brilliant, hated him above all things and made him in the salons the b.u.t.t for her shafts. Its darling poet was Ovid; whose poetic mission was, in Mr. Stobart"s phrase, "to gild uncleannes with charm." Presently Augustus sent him into exile: whiner over his own hard lot. But enough of unsavory him: the clique remained and treasured his doctrine. When Caius and Lucius died, it failed not to whisper that of course Tiberius had poisoned them; and during the next twenty-five years you could hardly die, in Rome, without the clique"s buzzing a like tale over your corpse.--A faction that lasted on, handing down its legends, until Suetonius and Tacitus took them up and immortalized them; thus creating the Tiberius of popular belief and "history," deceiving the world for twenty centuries.
The Augustan system implied no tyranny; not even absolutism:--it was through no fault of its founder, or of his successor, that the const.i.tutional side of it broke down. Remember the divine aim behind it all: to weld the world into one. So you must have the provinces, the new ones that retaineed their national ident.i.ty, under Adept rule; there must be no monkeying by incompetents there. Those provinces were, absolutely all in the hands of Caesar. But in Rome, and Italy, and all quiet and long-settled parts, the senate was to rule; and Augustus" effort, and especially Tiberius" effort, was to make it do so. But by this time, you may say, there was nothing resembling a human ego left among the senators: when the Manasaputra incarnated, these fellows had been elsewhere. They simply could not rule.
Augustus had had constantly to be intervening to pull them out of sc.r.a.pes; to audit their accounts for them, because they could not do the sums themselves; to send down men into their provinces to put things right whenever they went wrong. Tiberius was much more loath to do this. At times one almost suspects him of being at heart a republican, anxious to restore the Republic the first moment it might be practicable. That would be, when the whole empire was one nation and some few souls to guide things should have appeared. At any rate (in his latter years) it must have seemed still possible that the Princ.i.p.ate should continue: there was absolutely no one to follow him in it. So the best thing was to leave as much as possible the senate"s duty to the senate, that responsibility might be aroused in them. For himself, he gave his whole heart and mind to governing the provinces of Caesar. He went minutely into finances; and would have his sheep sheared, not flayed. His eyes and hands were everywhere, to bring about the Brotherhood of Man. There is, perhaps, evidence in the Christian Evangels: where we see the Jewish commonalty on excellent good terms with the Roman soldier, and Jesus consorting freindily with Tiberius" centurions and tax-gatherers; but the Jewish national leaders as the enemies of both--of the Romans, and of the democratic Nazarene. If this emperor"s life had come down through provincial, and not metropolitan, channels, we should have heard of him as the most beneficent of men. Indeed, Mr. Baring-Gould argues that among the Christians a tradition came down of him as of one "very near the Kingdom of G.o.d." It may be so; and such a view may even be the reflexion of the Nazarene Master"s own opinion as to Tiberius. At any rate, we must suppose that at that time the Christian Movement was still fairly pure: its seat was in the provinces, far from Rome; and its strength among humble people seeking to live the higher life. But those who were interested to lie against Tiberius, and whose lies come down to us for history, were all metropolitans, and aristocrats, and apostles of degeneracy. I do not mean to include Tacitus under the last head; but he belonged to the party, and inherited the tradition.
It was on the provinces that Tiberius had his hand, not on the metropolis. He hoped the senators would do their duty, gave them every chance to; he rather turned his eyes away from their sphere, and kept them fixed on his own. We must understand this well: the histories give but accounts of Roman and home affairs; with which, as they were outside his duty, Tiberius concerned himself as little as he might.
But the senate"s conception of duty-doing was this: flatter the Caesar in public with all the ingenuity and rhetoric G.o.d or the devil has given you; but for the sake of decency slander him in private, and so keep your self-respect.--I abased my soul to Caesar, I? Yes, I know I licked his shoes in the senate house; but that was merely camouflage. At Agrippina"s _at home_ I made up for it; was it not high-souled I who told that filthy story about him?--which, (congratulate me!) I invented myself. How dare you then accuse me of being small-spirited, or one to reverence any man soever?--So these maggots crawled and tumbled; untill they brought down their own karma on their heads like the a.s.syrian in the poem, or a thousand of bricks. Const.i.tutuionalism broke down, and tyranny came on awfully in its place; and those who had not upheld the const.i.tution suffered from the tyranny.
But it was not heroic Tiberius who was the tyrant.
He was unpopular with the crowd, because austere and taciturn; he would not wear the pomps and tinsels, or swagger it in public to their taste. He was too reserved; he was not a good mixer: if you fell on your knees to him, he simply recoiled in disgust.
He would not witness the gladiatorial games, with their sickening senseless bloodshed; nor the plays at the theatre, with their improprieties. In these things he was an anomaly in his age, and felt about them as would any humane gentleman today. So it was easy for his enemies to work up popular feeling aginst him.
At the funeral of Augustus he had to read the oration. A lump in his throat prevented him getting through with it, and he handed the paper to his son Drusus to finish. "Oh!" cried his enemies then and Tacitus after them, "what dissimulation! what rank hypocrisy! when in reality he must be overjoyed to be in the dead man"s shoes." When that same Drusus (his dear son and sole hope) died some years later, he so far controlled his feelings that none saw a muscle of his face moved by emotion while he read the oration. "Oh!" cried his enemies then and Tacitus after them, "what a cold unfeeling monster!" Tiberius, with an absolute eye for reading men"s thoughts, knew well what was being said on either occasion.
When Augustus died, his one surviving grandson, Agrippa Postumus, was mad and under restraint in the island of Planasia, near Elba.
A plot was hatched to spirit him away to the Rhine, and have him there proclaimed as against Tiberius by the legions. One Clemens was deputed to do this; but when Clemens reached Planasia, he found Agrippa murdered. Says Suetonius:
"It remained doubtful whether Augustus left the order (for the murder) in his last moments, to prevent any public disturbance after his death; or whether Livia issued it in the name of Augustus, or whether it was issued with or without the knowledge of Tiberius."--Tacitus in the right,--though truly this Agrippa Postumus was a peculiarly violent offensive idiot, and Augustus knew well what the anti-Claudian faction was capable of. Nor can one credit that gracious lady Livia with it; though it was she who persuaded Tiberius to hush the thing up, and rescind his order for a public senatorial investigation. For an order to that effect he issued; and Tacitus, _more suo,_ puts it down to his hypocrisy. Tacitus" method with Tiberius is this: all his acts of mercy are to be attributed to weak-spiritedness; all his acts of justice, to blood-tyranny; everything else to hypocrisy and dissimulation.
Neither Augustus, nor yet Livia, then, had Agrippa killed; must we credit it to Tiberius? Less probably, I think, it was he than either of the others: I can just imagine Augustus taking the responsibility for the sake of Rome, but not Tiberius criminal for his own sake. Here is an explanation which incriminates neither: it may seem far-fetched; but then many true things do.
We know how the children of darkness hate the Messengers of Light. Tiberius stood for private and public morality; the Julian-republican clique for the opposite. He stood for the nations welded into one, the centuries to be, and the high purposes of the Law. They stood for anarchy, civil war, and the old spoils system.--Down him then! said they. And how?--Fish up mad Postumus, and let"s have a row with the Legions of the Rhine.--Yes; that sounds pretty--for you who are not in the deep know of the thing. But how far do you think the Legions of the Rhine are going to support this young revolting-habited madman against the first general of the age? You are green; you are crude, my friends;--but go to it; your plot shall do well. But we, the cream and innermost of the party,--we have another. Let the madman be murdered,--and who shall be called the murderer?
I believe they argued that way;--and very wisely; for Tiberius still carries the odium of the murder of Agrippa Postumus.
Why did he allow himself to be dissuaded from the public investigation? Was it weakness? His perturbation when he heard of the murder, and his orders for the investigation, were natural enough. One can perhaps understand Livia, shaken with the grief of her great bereavement, fearing the unknown, fearing scandal, fearing to take issue with the faction whose strength and bitterness she knew, pleading with her son to let the matter be.
Was it weakness on his part, that he concurred? This much must be allowed: Tiberius was always weak at self-defense. Had he taken prompt steps against his personal enemies, it might have been much better for him, in a way. But then and always his eyes were upon the performance of his duty; which he understood to be the care of the empire, not the defense of himself. We called Augustus the bridge; Tiberius was the shield. He understood the business of a shield to be, to take shafts, and make no noise about it. Proud he was; with that sublime pride that argues itself capable of standing all things, so that the thing it cares for--which is not its own reputation--is unhurt. You shall see.
We might call it unwisdom, if his work had suffered by it; but it was only his peace, his own name--and eventually his enemies-- that suffered. He brought the world through.
Detail by detail, Mr. Baring-Gould takes the incidents of his reign, and show how the plot was worked up against him, and every happening, all his deeds and motives, colorless or finely colored, given a coat of pitch. We can only glance at one or two points here: his relations with Germanicus, and with Agrippina; the rise and fall of Seja.n.u.s.
Germanicus, his nephew, was fighting on the Rhine when Tiberius came to the throne. There was a mutiny; which Germanicus quelled with much loss of dignity and then with much bloodshed.
To cover the loss of dignity, he embarked on gay adventures against the Germans; and played the fool a little, losing some few battles. Tiberius, who understood German affairs better than any man living, wanted peace in that quarter; and recalled Germanicus; then, lest there should be any flavor of disgrace in the recall, sent him on a mission to the East. Your textbooks will tell you he recalled him through jealousy of his brilliant exploits. Germanicus being something flighty of disposition, the emperor sent with him on his new mission a rough old fellow by the name of Calpurnius Piso to keep a weather eye open on him, and neutralize, as far as might be, extravagant actions. The choice, it must be said, was a bad one; for the two fought like cat and dog the better part of the time. Then Germanicus died, supposing that Piso had poisoned him; and Agrippina his wife came home, an Ate shrieking for revenge. She had exposed her husband"s naked body in the marketplace at Antioch, that all might see he had been poisoned; which shows the kind of woman she was. Germanicus was given a huge funeral at Rome; he was the darling of the mob, and the funeral was really a demonstration against Tiberius. then Piso was to be tried for the murder: a crabbed but honest old plebeian of good and ancient family, who Tiberius knew well enough was innocent.
There were threats of mob violence if he should be acquitted; and the suggestion studiously sown that Piso, guilty, had been set on to the murder by the Princeps. Tiberius, knowing the popular feeling, did not attend the funeral of his nephew. It was a mistake in policy, perhaps; but his experience had been unpleasant enought at the funeral of Augustus. Tacitus says he stayed away fearing lest the public, peering into his face thus from close to, might see the marks of dissimulation in it, and realize that his grief was hypocrisy. How the devil did Tacitus know? Yet what he says comes down as gospel.
This sort of thing went on continually, and provided him a poor atmosphere in which to do his great and important work. As he grew older, he retired more and more. He trusted in his minister Seja.n.u.s who had once heroically save his life: an exceedingly able, but unfortunately also an exceedingly wicked man. Seja.n.u.s became his link with Rome and the senate; and used that position, and the senate"s incompetence, to gather into his own hands a power practically absolute in home affairs. Home affairs, be it always remembered, were what the Princeps expected the senate to attend to: their duty, under the const.i.tution.
Instead, however, they fawned on Seja.n.u.s _ad lib._ Seja.n.u.s murdered Tiberius" son Drusus, and aspired to the hand of Livilla, his widow: she was the daughter of Germanicus and Agrippina; and she certainly, and Agrippina probably, were accessories to the murder of Drusus. For Agrippina was obsessed with hatred for Tiberius: with the idea that he had murdered her husband, and with thirst for revenge. Seja.n.u.s was thus in a fair way to the ends of his ambition: to be named the successor to the Princ.i.p.ate.
Then Tiberius found him out; and sent a message to a senate engaged in Seja.n.u.s-worship, demanding the punishment of the murderers of Drusus.
Seja.n.u.s had built up his power by fostering the system of delation. There was no public prosecutor in the Roman system: when any wrong had been done, it was anyone"s business to prosecute. The end of education was rhetoric, that you might get on in life. The first step was to bring an accusation against some public man, and support it with a mighty telling speech. If you succeeded, and killed your man,--why, then your name was made. On this system, with developments of his own, Seja.n.u.s had built; had employed one half of Rome informing against the other. It took time to bring about; but he had worked up by degrees a state of things in which all went in terror of him; and the senate was eager perpetually to condemn any one he might recommend for condemnation. When Tiberius found him out, they lost their heads entirely, and simply tumbled over themselves in their anxiety to accuse, condemn, and execute each other.
Everyone was being informed against as having been a friend of Seja.n.u.s, and therefore an enemy of their dear Princeps; who was away at Capri attending to his duty; and whose ears, now Seja.n.u.s was gone, they might hope to reach with flatteries. You supped with your friend overnight; did your best to diddle him into saying something over the wine-cups;--then rose betimes in the morning to accuse him of saying it: only too often to find that he, (traitorly wretch!) had risen half an hour earlier and accused you; so you missed your breakfast for nothing; and dined (we may hope) in a better world. Thus during the last years of the reign there was a Terror in Rome: in the senate"s sphere of influence; the senatorial cla.s.s the sufferers and inflictors of the suffering. Meanwhile Tiberius in his retirement was still at his duty; his hold on his provinces never relaxed. When the condemned appealed to him, the records show that in nearly every case their sentences were commuted.
Tiberius" enemies were punishing themselves; but the odium of it has been fastened on Tiberius. He might have interfered, you say?--What! with Karma? I doubt.
His sane, balanced, moderate character comes out in his own words again and again: he was a wonderful anomaly in that age. Rome was filled with slanders against him; and the fulsome senate implored him to punish the slanderers. "We have not much time to spare," Tiberius answered; "we need not involve ourselves in this additional business." "If any man speaks ill of me, I shall take care so to behave as to be able to give a good accound of my words and acts, and so confound him. If he speaks ill of me after that, it will be time enough for me to think about hating him." Permission was asked to raise a temple to him in Spain; he refused to grant it, saying that if every emperor was to be worshiped, the worship of Augustus would lose its meaning. "For myself, a mere mortal, it is enough for me if I do my duties as a mortal; I am content if posterity recognises that... This is the only temple I desire to have raised in my honor,--and this only in men"s hearts."--the senate, in a spasm of flattery, offered to swear in advance to all his acts. He forbade it, saying in effect that he was doing and proposed to do his best; but all things human were liable to change, and he would not have them endorsing the future acts of one who by the mere failure of his faculties might do wrong.