MURENA. THE years 24 and 23 before Christ mark the culmination of the fortune of Augustus and a crisis in the history of the Roman state. When the emperor, after holding his eleventh (and ninth successive) consulship for a small part of the year 23, resigned it with the usual forms, and appointed in his place a man conspicuous for piously cultivating the memory of the regicides Brutus and Cassius, a speculator upon the political future might well have supposed, that the great revolution was successfully accomplished and that, if anxiety was not over, the labour of restoration and reconstruction throughout the wasted territory of the republic might henceforward be carried on in peace. Mere lapse of time had done much. Since the assumption of power by the first Caesar nearly a quarter of a century had passed. To the best part of the living generation the idea of a personal chief ruler had been familiar and even attractive from their earliest recollection. Few men still in the full vigour of life could remember much of the consulship of Cicero (forty years distant) and the last days of a truly independent senate. Varro, the illustrious antiquary and the last Ciceronian', was gone, after a long old age of literary work in the service of the new government. The survivors of Pharsalia, or such of them as had escaped the ordinary and extraordinary casualties of the triumvirate, were grey-headed men; and even the youngest survivors of Philippi, whom ambition or youthful enthusiasm for a name had drawn to the losing side, might be supposed to share the feelings so adroitly suggested by their comrade Horace, and like him, as they witnessed the joyful reception of the emperor on his return from Spain in the year 24, and endeavoured in the security of a general peace to recall the republican ardours of the year 42, might say to themselves, between a smile and a shrug, that in more senses than one they were no longer the men they had been "in the consulship of Plancus1". The final struggle with Antonius was indeed recent, but in this, as in the war with Sextus Pompeius, Rome and Italy had been almost universally on the Caesarean side2, and even clients and intimate friends of Antonius had to excuse themselves for not taking active part against him. Those who finally adhered to him were not merely beaten but discredited and effaced. The popularity of the emperor, tested by his severe illness and recovery during the Spanish campaign, received the amplest testimony in votes of congratulation and general rejoicing. For many years past, since Maecenas, before the return of Augustus from the conquest of Cleopatra, had detected and crushed the conspiracy of the younger Lepidus, no attempt, as far as we know, had been made upon the emperor's life, and Augustus was provided with the best shield against assassins in the person of the young Marcellus, heir to the blood of the Julii and to the veneration of the people towards the martyr of the democracy, the dictator Julius Caesar, and promising to sustain worthily his hereditary part. When we consider what was the prospect at this time and what was the actual sequel, it is not surprising but highly significant to find that the Autobiography of Augustus concluded here, being continued as far as the Cantabrian war, and no further1'. At the close of that war, warned by the sickness which had confined him to his bed at Tarraco for the greater part of the campaign, he had notified, as it were, his retirement to the functions of peace by the foundation and title of Augusta Emerita (Merida). He might well hope that under the government of himself or of his most probable successor the celebration of the birthdays of Brutus and Cassius in the houses of great noblemen holding office by his appointment would soon become as harmless a ceremony as the wearing of the 'royal oak' by the subjects of King George the Third. The point of most danger was the possibility of collision between Marcellus and Agrippa, but against this either time or the disinterested fidelity of Agrippa himself might be expected to guard'. Under these auspices was drawn the settlement between the republican past and the imperial present, from which the new time may in one sense be said to begin. The one feeling from which opposition was to be feared was the restlessness of the aristocratic families deprived of the natural prey of their ambition, the republican offices and especially the consulship. To the public at large these offices were perfectly indifferent; indeed for many reasons, political and superstitious, they would have felt more comfortable if Augustus would have made himself perpetual sole consul or dictator at once. Not so the representatives of the old senatorial families. To them it seemed the natural object of life to become one of the two coequal magistrates of the commonwealth, and a Rome in which only one man could be consul in each year, and that with a 'colleague' who was also generalissimo of the army from year to year without intermission, was not at all a Rome to their mind. To satisfy this sentiment as far as possible, Augustus resigned the consulship for the year 23 as already mentioned, and in his thirty-six subsequent years, except on two occasions of special religious interest to the impérial family, never accepted the office again3. The traditional offices of the city were to be open as before to the traditional competitors without rivalry or interference from the monarch, who on his part took security for the exercise of those 1 It was at this time that Agrippa was sent or retired to the East. The anxiety of Augustus after his recovery from his second illness in 23 to prove that he had not taken upon himself actually to name a successor is easily 3 Dion 53. 32. Suet. Aug. 26. offices in harmony with the requirements of the empire, and not, as in the close of the republic, for private aggrandisement and public confusion, by the general veto conferred under the name of the tribunician power', and the abnormal power of consulting the senate granted without respect to the special privileges of office'. Presuming loyalty, there was no reason why this compromise should not work; the functions conceded to the aristocracy, real and not merely titular, afforded a sufficient field for all but purely mischievous ambition; and for a few months the 'felicissimus status', as it is called by the imperialist Velleius2, showed a fair promise. This was in the spring. In the autumn Marcellus died, and the balance on which the public peace depended was destroyed. Caesar was now without an heir, infant or major. Tiberius, the elder of his stepsons, was already entering upon public life, and had long ago taken on occasions of ceremony the second place after Marcellus, but though the legal forms might convert a Claudius into a Julius, they could not transfer the veneration of the populace to a representative of the most unpopular of Roman families, and there is no sign that Tiberius1 was at this time regarded as a possible successor, indeed, the contrary is implied by the prompt marriage of the emperor's daughter to Agrippa and the hasty adoption of their infant children—a striking proof how strong and how important was the Julian sentiment in the popular mind. By the death of Marcellus the prospect of the small but wealthy and unscrupulous clique, who desired the full restoration of the republican forms, was entirely changed. Now, if the emperor could be removed, the chances were strongly in their favour, and for the next twenty years, assassinationplots followed each other in rapid succession. The brief period which separated the first of these from the death of the heir was occupied in fruitless attempts at conciliation. In spite of the popular clamour, and almost at personal risk, Augustus refused to assume either the dictatorship or the office of perpetual censor, and procured the appointment as censors, in pursuance of the new policy, of two men conspicuous for sufferings inflicted by the enemies of the aristocracy. He did not however satisfy, as may be supposed, either the populace, whose dislike to a magistracy of nobles found an evil omen in trivial accidents, or the nobility, who saw that the competence of their magistrates did not exclude the activity of the monarch'. His behaviour, studiously civil, even to the acceptance of public affronts, was taken by the more rash spirits as a proof of conscious weakness2, and the affectation of friendship was terminated within the year 22 by the detection of a formidable plot. Of this event, the history of Dion Cassius, our only continuous account of the period, tells us much indeed in proportion to the scale of the work, but by no means as much as we have good reason for wishing to know; and the incidental notices of other writers do not repair the deficiency. The exact date is not given, but the general order of the narrative seems to imply that it was in the earlier part of the year3. The principal in the plot was a Fannius Caepio, of an aristocratic family, and apparently a senator. From the silence of Velleius, who sketches the political antecedents of Egnatius, the leader of the next conspiracy in the year 19, it may be inferred that neither Fannius, nor his unnamed accomplices, had borne any important part in public 1 Dion 54. 2. 2 Dion 54. 3. 3 The dedication of the temple of Jupiter Tonans, which from the circumstances would probably fall in the summer season, followed the suppression of the conspiracy. Dion ibid. 4. 4 That the leaders of the plot were senators is suggested by the language both of Dion and Velleius. Dion l.c. ὑπὸ τῶν εὖ φρονούντων [ὁ Αὔγουστος] ἐπηνεῖτο, ὥστε καὶ τὸ τὴν βουλὴν ἀθροίζειν ὁσάκις ἂν ἐθελήσῃ λαβεῖν (this of course must have been a senatorial vote), τῶν δὲ ἄλλων τινὲς κατεφρόνησαν αὐτοῦ......Φάννιος μὲν γὰρ Καιπίων κ.τ.λ. Ας οἱ εὐφρονοῦντες were part of the senate, the Twés would seem to be another part. Vell. II. 91 cognomen [Augusto] Planci sententia consensus universi senatus populique Romani (i.e. a senatorial vote) indidit. erant tamen qui hunc felicissimum statum odissent: quippe L. Murena et Fannius Caepio diversis moribus etc....neque multo post Rufus Egnatius, per omnia gladiatori quam senatori propior, etc. |