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Page 25
Sejanus belonged to an obscure family of knights--to what we should now
call the _bourgeoisie_. He was not a senator, and he held no great
political position; for his charge as commander of the guard was a
purely military office. In ordinary times he would have remained a
secondary personage, exclusively concerned with the exacting duties of
his command; but the party of Agrippina with its intrigues, and the
weakness and uncertainty of Tiberius, made of him, however, for a
certain time, a formidable power. It is not difficult to see whence
this power arose. The loyalty of the pretorian guard, upon which
depended the security and the safety of the imperial authority, was one
of the things which must seriously have preoccupied Tiberius,
particularly in the face of the persistent and insidious intrigues and
accusations of the party of Agrippina. The guard lived at Rome, in
continual contact with the senate and the imperial house. Everything
which was said in the senatorial circles or in the palaces of the
emperor or of his relatives was quickly repeated among the cohorts, and
the memory of Drusus and Germanicus was deeply venerated by the
pretorians. If the guard could have been persuaded that the emperor
was a poisoner of his kindred, their loyalty would have been exposed to
numberless intrigues and attempts at seduction. In such a condition of
affairs, a commander of the guard who could inspire Tiberius with a
complete and absolute trust might easily acquire a great influence over
him. Sejanus knew how to inspire this trust. This was partly by
reason of his origin, for the equestrian order, on account of its
ancient rivalry with the senatorial nobility, was more favorably
inclined than the latter toward the imperial authority; and partly also
on account of certain reforms which he had succeeded in introducing
into the pretorian guard.
[Illustration: A Roman feast in the time of the Caesars.]
Once he had acquired the emperor's confidence, the ambitious and
intelligent prefect of the pretorians proceeded to render himself
indispensable in all things. The moment was favorable; Tiberius was
becoming more and more wearied of his many affairs, of his many
struggles, of his countless responsibilities; more and more disgusted
with Rome, with its society, with the too frequent contact with the men
whom it was his fate to govern. He was in the earlier stages of that
settled melancholy which grew deeper and deeper in the last ten years
of his life, and which had grown upon him as the result of long
antagonisms, of great bitterness, and of continual terrors and
suspicions; and if it is true that Tiberius was addicted to the vice of
heavy drinking, as we hear from ancient writers, the abuse of wine may
also have had its part in producing it. The tyrant, as historians have
been pleased to call him, did actually seem to weaken in the fight for
those ideals in which he had so long and so ardently believed. He
tried to please the people by advocating no measures that might seem
harsh or excessive to them. He even resisted, in the year 22 A.D., the
pressure that his own party--his own puritan party--brought to bear
upon him to apply with the utmost severity and discipline the laws
against the fast increasing luxury of the men and women of his day.
His reply to such pressure was a letter to the senate in which he
deplored, among other things, the passion that so many women were
showing for jewels and precious stones imported from distant countries.
He maintained that it was the fault of such women that so much gold
left the country and pointed out how much more wisely the money could
be spent in fortifying the boundaries of the empire.
In view of all this it is not difficult to understand why the man who
for many years had done everything for himself, who had never wished to
have either counselors or confidants about him, now that he was growing
old needed the support of younger energies and of stronger wills. But
in his family he could rely only upon his son Drusus, who had now
become a serious and trustworthy man, and in the year 22 A.D. he asked
the senate that it concede to his son the tribunician power; that is,
that they make him his colleague. But the son did not suffice, and
Sejanus therefore succeeded in making himself, together with Drusus, in
fact, if not in name, the first and most active and influential
collaborator and counselor of Tiberius. He was even more active and
influential than Drusus, for the latter was frequently absent on
distant military missions to the confines of the empire, while Sejanus,
as commander of the pretorian guard, was virtually always at Rome,
where the emperor now appeared less and less frequently.
Such was the origin of the anomalous power of this man, who was not
even a senator--a power which was the result of the weakness of
Tiberius and of the fierce discords which divided the aristocracy; and
it was a power which must of necessity prove disastrous, especially to
the party of Agrippina and Germanicus. Although indications are not
lacking that there was no great harmony or friendship between Sejanus
and Drusus, it is evident that Sejanus, as the energetic representative
of the interests of Tiberius, must have directed all his efforts
against the friends of Agrippina, who was arousing the fiercest
opposition to the emperor. But in the year 23, an unforeseen event
seemed suddenly to change the situation and to render possible a
reconciliation between Tiberius and the party of Agrippina. In this
year, Drusus also, like so many other members of his family, died
prematurely, at the age of thirty-eight, and on this occasion, for the
time being, at least, no one raised the cry of poisoning. This
unexpected misfortune moved Tiberius profoundly, for he dearly loved
his son, and it seemed for a moment to determine the triumph of
Agrippina's party. Now that his son had been taken from him, where, if
not among the sons of Germanicus and Agrippina, could Tiberius look for
a successor? And, as a further proof that Tiberius desired as far as
possible to avoid conflict in the bosom of his family, he did not
hesitate a moment, despite all the annoyances and difficulties which he
had suffered at the hands of Agrippina and her friends. He officially
recognized that in the sons of Germanicus were henceforth placed the
future hopes of his family and of the empire. Of the two elder, Nero
was now sixteen and Drusus was somewhat younger, though we do not know
his exact age. These he summoned to appear before the senate, and he
presented them to the assembly with a noble discourse the substance of
which Tacitus has preserved for us, exhorting the youths and the senate
to fulfil their respective duties for the greatness and the prosperity
of the republic.
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