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Page 29
But having arrived at this height, Sejanus's head was turned, and he
asked himself why he should exercise the rule and have all its burdens
and dangers while he left to others the pomp, the honors, and the
advantages. Although Tiberius allowed the senate to heap honors upon
his faithful prefect of the pretorians, and though he himself showed
his gratitude to him in many ways, even going to the point of being
willing to give him the widow of Nero in marriage, he never really
expected to take him as his colleague or to designate him as his
successor. Tiberius was a Claudian, and that a knight without ancestry
should be placed at the head of the Roman aristocracy was to him
unthinkable; after the exile of Nero he had cast his eyes upon Caius,
another son of Germanicus, as his possible successor. Nor had he
hidden his intention: he had even clearly expressed it in different
speeches to the senate. Therefore Sejanus must finally have come to
the conclusion that if he continued to defend Tiberius and his
interests, he could no longer hope for anything from him, and might
even compromise the influence and the popularity which he had already
acquired. Tiberius was hated and detested, there was a numerous party
opposed to him in the senate, and he was extremely unpopular among the
masses. Many admired Sejanus through spiteful hatred of Tiberius, for
it amounted to saying that they preferred to be governed by an obscure
knight rather than by an old and detested Claudian who had shut himself
up in Capri.
And thus Sejanus seems to have deluded himself into believing that if
he succeeded in doing away with the emperor, he could easily take his
position by setting aside the young son of Germanicus and profiting by
the popularity which the fall of Tiberius would bring him. Little by
little he came to an understanding with the enemies of Tiberius and
prepared a conspiracy for the final overthrow of the odious government
of the son of Livia. Many senators had agreed to this, and certainly
few conspiracies were ever organized under more favorable auspices.
Tiberius was old, disgusted with everything and everybody, and alone in
Capri; he had virtually not a single friend in Rome; what happened in
the world he knew only through what Sejanus told him. He was therefore
entirely in the hands of the man who was preparing to sacrifice him to
the tenacious hatred of the people and the senatorial aristocracy.
Young, energetic, and the favorite of fortune, Sejanus had with him a
formidable party in the senate, he was the commander of the pretorian
guard,--that is, of the only military force stationed in Italy,--and he
had terrified with his implacable persecutions all those whom he had
failed to win over through his promises or his favors. Could the duel
between this misanthropic old man and this vigorous, energetic,
ruthless climber end in any other way than with the defeat of the
former?
[Illustration: Bust, supposed to be of Antonia--daughter of Mark Antony
and Octavia--and mother of Germanicus.]
But now stepping forward suddenly from the shadows to which she had
retired, a lady appeared, threw herself between the two contestants,
and changed the fate of the combat. It was Antonia, the daughter of
the famous triumvir, the revered widow of Drusus.
After the death of Livia, Antonia was the most respected personage of
the imperial family in Rome. She still watched, withdrawn but alert,
over the destiny of the house now virtually destroyed by death,
dissensions, the cruelty of the laws, and the relentless anger of the
aristocracy. It was she who scented out the plot, and quickly and
courageously she informed Tiberius. The latter, in danger and in
Capri, displayed again the energy and sagacity of his best period. The
danger was most threatening, especially because Sejanus was the
commander of the pretorian guard. Tiberius beguiled him with friendly
letters, dangling in front of him the hope that he had conceded to him
the tribunician power.--that is, that he had made him his
colleague,--while at the same time he secretly took measures to appoint
a successor for him. Suddenly Sejanus learned that he was no longer
commander of the guard, and that the emperor had accused him before the
senate of conspiracy. In an instant, under this blow, the fortunes of
Sejanus collapsed. The envy and the latent hatred against the parvenu,
the knight who had risen higher than all others, and who had humiliated
the senatorial aristocracy with his good fortune, were reawakened, and
the senate and public opinion turned fiercely against him. Sejanus,
his family, his friends, his accomplices, and those who seemed to be
his accomplices, were put to death after summary trials by the fury of
the mob; and in Rome blood flowed in torrents.
Antonia might now have enjoyed the satisfaction of having saved through
her foresight not only Tiberius, but the entire family, when suddenly
one of the surges of that fierce tempest of ambitions and hatreds tore
from her side even her own daughter, Livilla, the widow of Drusus, and
cast her as a prey into that sea of blind popular frenzy. The reader
has perhaps not forgotten that eight years before, when Sejanus was
hoping to marry Livilla, he had repudiated his first wife, Apicata.
Apicata had not wished to outlive the ruin of her former husband, and
she killed herself, but only after having written Tiberius a letter in
which she accused Livilla of having poisoned Drusus through connivance
with Sejanus, whom she wished to marry. I confess that this accusation
seems to me hardly probable, and I do not believe that the denunciation
of Apicata is sufficient ground for admitting it. Above all, it is
well to inquire what proofs Apicata could have had of this crime, and
how she could have procured them even if the crime had been committed.
Since the two accomplices would have been obliged to hide their
infamous deed from all, there was no one from whom they would have
concealed it more carefully than from Apicata. We must further note
that it is not probable that a cautious man, as Sejanus was in the year
23, would have thought of committing so serious a crime as that of
poisoning the son of his protector. For what reason would he have done
so? He did not then think of succeeding Tiberius; by removing Drusus,
he would merely have improved the situation of the family of
Germanicus, which at that time was already hostile to him and with
which he was preparing to struggle. Instead, might not this accusation
_in extremis_ be the last vengeance of a repudiated woman against the
rival who for a moment had threatened to take the position from which
she herself had been driven? Apicata did not belong to the
aristocracy, and, unlike the ladies of the senatorial families, she had
not therefore been brought up with the idea of having to serve docilely
as an instrument for the political career of her own husband. Perhaps
her denunciation was the revenge of feminine jealousy, of that passion
which the lower orders of Roman society did not extinguish in the
hearts of their women as did the aristocracy.
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