|
Sunday, August 15, 2010 - 5:26 PM
In the fifth consulship of Tiberius Claudius with Sextius Cornelius
Orfitus for his colleague, Nero was prematurely invested with the dress
of manhood, that he might be thought qualified for political life. The
emperor willingly complied with the flatteries of the Senate who wished
Nero to enter on the consulship in his twentieth year, and meanwhile, as
consul-elect, to have pro-consular authority beyond the limits of the capital
with the title of "prince of the youth of Rome." A donative was also given
to the soldiery in Nero's name, and presents to the city populace. At the
games too of the circus which were then being celebrated to win for him
popular favour, Britannicus wore the dress of boyhood, Nero the triumphal
robe, as they rode in the procession. The people would thus behold the
one with the decorations of a general, the other in a boy's habit, and
would accordingly anticipate their respective destinies. At the same time
those of the centurions and tribunes who pitied the lot of Britannicus
were removed, some on false pretexts, others by way of a seeming compliment.
Even of the freedmen, all who were of incorruptible fidelity were discarded
on the following provocation. Once when they met, Nero greeted Britannicus
by that name and was greeted in return as Domitius. Agrippina reported
this to her husband, with bitter complaint, as the beginning of a quarrel,
as implying, in fact, contempt of Nero's adoption and a cancelling at home
of the Senate's decree and the people's vote. She said, too, that, if the
perversity of such malignant suggestions were not checked, it would issue
in the ruin of the State. Claudius, enraged by what he took as a grave
charge, punished with banishment or death all his son's best instructors,
and set persons appointed by his stepmother to have the care of
him.
Still Agrippina did not yet dare to attempt her greatest scheme,
unless Lusius Geta and Rufius Crispinus were removed from the command of
the praetorian cohorts; for she thought that they cherished Messalina's
memory and were devoted to her children. Accordingly, as the emperor's
wife persistently affirmed that faction was rife among these cohorts through
the rivalry of the two officers, and that there would be stricter discipline
under one commander, the appointment was transferred to Burrus Afranius,
who had a brilliant reputation as a soldier, but knew well to whose wish
he owed his promotion. Agrippina, too, continued to exalt her own dignity;
she would enter the Capitol in a chariot, a practice, which being allowed
of old only to the priests and sacred images, increased the popular reverence
for a woman who up to this time was the only recorded instance of one who,
an emperor's daughter, was sister, wife, and mother of a sovereign. Meanwhile
her foremost champion, Vitellius, in the full tide of his power and in
extreme age (so uncertain are the fortunes of the great) was attacked by
an accusation of which Junius Lupus, a senator, was the author. He was
charged with treason and designs on the throne. The emperor would have
lent a ready ear, had not Agrippina, by threats rather than entreaties,
induced him to sentence the accuser to outlawry. This was all that Vitellius
desired.
Several prodigies occurred in that year. Birds of evil omen perched
on the Capitol; houses were thrown down by frequent shocks of earthquake,
and as the panic spread, all the weak were trodden down in the hurry and
confusion of the crowd. Scanty crops too, and consequent famine were regarded
as a token of calamity. Nor were there merely whispered complaints; while
Claudius was administering justice, the populace crowded round him with
a boisterous clamour and drove him to a corner of the forum, where they
violently pressed on him till he broke through the furious mob with a body
of soldiers. It was ascertained that Rome had provisions for no more than
fifteen days, and it was through the signal bounty of heaven and the mildness
of the winter that its desperate plight was relieved. And yet in past days
Italy used to send supplies for the legions into distant provinces, and
even now it is not a barren soil which causes distress. But we prefer to
cultivate Africa and Egypt, and trust the life of the Roman people to ships
and all their risks.
In the same year war broke out between the Armenians and Iberians,
and was the cause of very serious disturbances between Parthia and Rome.
Vologeses was king of the Parthians; on the mother's side, he was the offspring
of a Greek concubine, and he obtained the throne by the retirement of his
brothers. Pharasmanes had been long in possession of Iberia, and his brother,
Mithridates, ruled Armenia with our powerful support. There was a son of
Pharasmanes named Rhadamistus, tall and handsome, of singular bodily strength,
trained in all the accomplishments of his countrymen and highly renowned
among his neighbours. He boasted so arrogantly and persistently that his
father's prolonged old age kept back from him the little kingdom of Iberia
as to make no concealment of his ambition. Pharasmanes accordingly seeing
the young prince had power in his grasp and was strong in the attachment
of his people, fearing too his own declining years, tempted him with other
prospects and pointed to Armenia, which, as he reminded him, he had given
to Mithridates after driving out the Parthians. But open violence, he said,
must be deferred; artful measures, which might crush him unawares, were
better. So Rhadamistus pretended to be at feud with his father as though
his stepmother's hatred was too strong for him, and went to his uncle.
While he was treated by him like a son, with excessive kindness, he lured
the nobles of Armenia into revolutionary schemes, without the knowledge
of Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire, who was actually loading him with honours.
He then assumed a show of reconciliation with his father, to whom
he returned, telling him all that could be accomplished by treachery was
now ready and that he must complete the affair by the sword. Meanwhile
Pharasmanes invented pretexts for war; when he was fighting with the king
of the Albanians and appealing to the Romans for aid, his brother, he said,
had opposed him, and he would now avenge that wrong by his destruction.
At the same time he gave a large army to his son, who by a sudden invasion
drove Mithridates in terror from the open country and forced him into the
fortress of Gorneas, which was strongly situated and garrisoned by some
soldiers under the command of Caelius Pollio, a camp-prefect, and Casperius,
a centurion.
|