at the shortlived addition of letters to the alphabet', the affectation of archaic spelling 2, the attempt to rescue from deserved decay the obsolete lore of the aruspices 3, might also have the satisfaction of pointing out that their august professor did not after all know the ancient meaning of the term 'libertinus,' and had forgotten his own researches on the computation of an Etruscan saeculum ".' Again, much as we may set down to a conscientious intention to discharge a public duty, and to a desire of emulating Augustus", we must ascribe also in no small degree to vanity and self-conceit that passion for the personal exercise of judicial functions which all authorities attest, and which, notwithstanding the record that many of his decisions were shrewd and original, and that some of the principles of law embodied in his judgments or legislative enactments are quoted with approval long afterwards by juristic writers, could not have worked generally for the public benefit. Even in ordinary cases such encroachment by the princeps in Rome and by his procurators elsewhere on the ordinary tribunals was an injudicious weakening of their authority; nor could all the assiduity of Claudius prevent accumulation of arrears and harassing delays, shortened (if we are to believe our authors) by very summary modes of expedition "; while, in cases involving graver charges, 'a prince who centred in himself all functions of law and magistracy 12 was but calling into existence and enriching a crowd of accusers to whom condemnations and collusive acquittals alike were profitable 13. They felt they had only to study the humours of a single person, devoid of 3, 1; Cod. Just. 5. 30, 3. 10 10 On this extension of their jurisdiction towards the end of his rule, perhaps a consequence of the organisation of the 'fiscus' (p. 28), but prompted no doubt by his freedmen in the interest of their order, see 12. 60, and notes. It must have involved the evil of making the same person prosecutor and judge. 11 The statement of Suet. (1. 1.), ‘absentibus, secundum praesentes facillime dabat,' may perhaps be the sober truth under the satire of Seneca (Lud. 12. 3, 37; 14, 2), that he decided after hearing one side or often neither; which itself even is probable in an irresponsible judge, surrounded by courtiers applauding his acumen and despatch. 12 'Cuncta legum et magistratuum munia in se trahens princeps materiam praedandi patefecerat' (11. 5, 1). 13 On their venality, and the attack made upon them in the senate, see 11. 5-7. mental equilibrium 1, deciding without publicity and without appeal, and subject to opportunities of domestic pressure beyond anything which could be applied to even the most subservient senate 2. The result is a general sense of scandalous injustice, which it is one of the most popular acts of his successor to remove 3. Nor was it only as an inspired judge or legislator, but also among the conquerors of the world, that his own vanity or the language of flatterers led him to aspire to fill a niche in history. That the British expedition should be commemorated in magniloquent words and stately memorials, and by claiming the right, so rarely exercised, to extend the 'pomerium', and that he should consider that his own campaign of sixteen days entitled him to the honour of a full triumph, was perhaps to be expected: it is more characteristic of the man, that in the space of some twelve years he should have twenty-seven times received the title of 'imperator' for victories, many of which seem to defy all attempt at identification 3, and should have kept up the fiction of incessant military glories by the prodigality with which he showered triumphal distinctions on his subordinates". Other qualities resulting equally from his antecedents were still more mischievous. It was a standing anomaly of the constitution that many offices which in a modern state would be important departments of the civil service were regarded as no more than posts in the chief citizen's household, unworthy of the dignity of any person above the rank of a freedman 1o. The consequent exaltation of the importance of persons of no recognised political status, checked at first by the aristocratic sympathies of Augustus and Tiberius ", and hardly gaining time for full growth under Gaius 12, 11 8 Lehmann endeavours diligently to trace the occasions, but hardly succeeds in convincing. 9 See 11. 20, 5, and note; Suet. Cl. 24. 10 The chief instance is that of the three great departments (see above, p. 35) entrusted to Pallas, Narcissus, and Callistus (on whom see 11. 29, 1, and note). 11 Cp. 4. 6, 7 (modesta servitia, intra paucos libertos domus '), and note. Even under Tiberius a freedman became, at least for a time, praefect of Egypt (Dio, 58. 19, 6); and instances occur, both under him and under Augustus, of vast wealth gained by freedmen of the imperial household: see Friedl. i. 76, 77. 12 Callistus had already attained under him a position of immense influence (Jos. Ant. 19. 1, 10). finds its complete development under a prince who had been taught by fifty years of seclusion to hold little intercourse with statesmen and to be swayed by domestic counsels. Hence the intrigues of the palace play a part unknown before in the history of the government, and important events turn on the schemes of freedmen 1; who, themselves excluded from the highest privileges of citizenship, had not the responsibility of public men and were not often likely to have patriotic aims, and who form a league under the baleful leadership of Messalina, for the gratification of her caprice and lust and for her and their own enrichment. Those who desired magistracies or other dignities had to beset the doors of these influential persons 2 and to win their support by bribes ; a system of universal corruption, outstripping all previous experience, sets in, and the 'avarice of the Claudian times' becomes a by-word. Many of the wise schemes which have been mentioned to this emperor's credit become tainted with the prevailing venality; the extension of civic privileges degenerates into a sordid traffic; great public works furnish opportunities for the peculations of the directing freedman. Agrippa wins by bribery a boon destined to cost streams of blood a generation later, the indulgence of his regal ambition to fortify Jerusalem'. After his death, whatever good had been done in Judaea by a conciliatory policy is undone by the misgovernment of Cumanus and Felix; the latter of whom especially was enabled by the overwhelming influence 1 That the influence of his three principal freedmen (see above, p. 38) was in no way restricted to their department, is evident from their action in respect of his last marriage (see 12. 1, 2), and from many other places. Other names of note belonging to this rank are those of Polybius, Felix, Harpocras, and Posides (Suet. Cl. 28). See also Friedl. i. 78. * Seneca states (Ep. 47, 9) that he had seen the former master of Callistus waiting at his doors in vain. 3 Μεσσαλίνα οἵ τε ἀπελεύθεροι τὰς στρατείας καὶ τὰς ἐπιτροπείας καὶ τὰς ἡγεμονίας καὶ τἄλλα πάντα ἀφειδῶς ἐπώλουν Kai Kanýλevov (Dio, 60. 17, 8): see also Suet. Cl. 29; and the flattery of Pallas by the senate related in 12. 53, 2. tunnel in 12. 57, 4. The accusing authority (that of Agrippina) is the worst possible; but the vast wealth amassed by Narcissus makes any such charge probable in itself. The fact that the great Claudian aqueduct had already fallen out of repair in 815, A.D. 62 (see the insc. of Vespasian, Or. 55), suggests a similar story. 7. Per avaritiam Claudianorum temporum empto iure muniendi, struxere muros in pace tamquam ad bellum' (H. 5. 12, 3). The two statements of Josephus, that Agrippa was forbidden to go on with his work by Claudius, on the information of the legatus of Syria (Ant. 19. 7, 2), and that the walls were left unfinished by his death (B. I. 2. 11, 6) are perhaps reconcileable with each other and with Tacitus. That much had been previously done for the restoration of what had been destroyed by Pompeius (H. 5. 9, 1), is evident from the history of the siege. 8 See 12. 54. Both these governors are represented as making profit out of the brigandage which they permitted. of his brother Pallas to persist for years in 'exercising the right of a king with the nature of a slave'; nor is it to be wondered at that from the death of Agrippa the originating causes of the Jewish rebellion are to be traced 2. In another part of the East, a Roman officer is bought to connive at the atrocities of Radamistus, and bribes his own soldiers to do the same; and the governor, apparently one of the freedman class, is similarly induced to support that prince's seizure of Armenia, with the result of throwing the whole country again into the power of Parthia. M. Silanus, a man of the highest rank, is stated to have made a sordid traffic of his proconsulate of Asia, in 808, a.d. 54. But in the case of Claudius, as in that of Tiberius, far the gravest evils rose from timidity armed with an absolute power". Messalina and Narcissus had learnt even at the outset, in the case of Appius Silanus, the ease with which, by playing upon his fears, he could be got to take the life of any eminent citizen. Nor was it long before graver causes of fear took hold of him. An organised conspiracy, such as Tiberius, and afterwards Nero, had to face at a late period of their rule, befel him in his second year, and launched him at once on a course of sanguinary terrorism in which constitutional privileges were cast aside 1o; and the ease with which one man of mark after another was struck down taught him the despot's well-known lesson, how far he could safely venture. Those known by name to us were probably only the most prominent among many victims. At another time a noble household was wrecked at a blow, by the execution of his own son-in-law Pompeius Magnus, together with his father Crassus, his mother Scribonia, and others 12. 11 10 Messalina, the prime mover in most of these cruelties 13, is described by Tacitus (to judge from the fragment remaining to us) in much the same terms as by others; as one whose unbridled profligacy made a pastime of the interests of the state1, whose influence was used solely to exalt her favourites or to destroy those who disdained her advances, or in any way crossed her path. Of the many murders perpetrated at her bidding', we may take as a sample the case with which the Eleventh Book opens, in which, to appease the mere jealousy of wantonness and the further promptings of cupidity, four lives at once are sacrificed 3. It is her will to destroy a rival in the affections of a pantomimist, and yet to spare her favourite himself; and the coveted possessions of the senator on whom the charge is shifted make him all the more a welcome victim. Men of the highest rank are ready in a moment to effect her purpose; a consular accuser rakes together all the antecedents of the accused to secure a conviction, and when even the intimidation exercised by her own presence 4 was insufficient to coerce her husband's judgment, when the graver charges are on the point of ignominiously breaking down, and the defence had even extorted some touch of womanly feeling from herself 5, the most influential senator of the day steps in to gratify her still relentless purpose by ensuring the fate of the accused through a ready stratagem, while she herself, by mere force of threats, terrifies Poppaea into suicide: two eminent knights are attacked by the well-worn artifice of a dream story, and condemned by a subservient senate to complete her vengeance; and the dotard, who had even forgotten that any charge against Poppaea existed, has instilled into him a vindictive hatred of the memory 10 of the man whom, if left to himself, he would have acquitted, and is persuaded to heap rewards on those who had taken even an insignificant share in the transaction 11. To such a narrative the only fitting climax is supplied by that of her last catastrophe; in relating which Tacitus pauses for a moment to bespeak the readers' credence by an earnest protestation that he has added nothing to the record of his authorities 12. The story as it stands is indeed of so astounding a character that it has been thought that in some of its most important particulars we have an audacious 1 12. 7, 5. 2 11. 28, 2. Among those specified are those of Appius Silanus (see above, p. 40), Julia, the daughter of Germanicus (Dio, 60. 8, 5), her husband, M. Vinicius (Id. 27, 4), Julia, daughter of Drusus (Id. 18, 4), Justus Catonius, the praefect of the praetorians (Id. 18, 3), Polybius (Id. 31, 2). Dio also states that she made the conspiracy of Camillus a pretext for destroying those obnoxious |