第53章 A.D.20-22(13)

Formerly rich or highly distinguished noble families often sank into ruin from a passion for splendour.Even then men were still at liberty to court and be courted by the city populace, by our allies and by foreign princes, and every one who from his wealth, his mansion and his establishment was conspicuously grand, gained too proportionate lustre by his name and his numerous clientele.After the savage massacres in which greatness of renown was fatal, the survivors turned to wiser ways.The new men who were often admitted into the Senate from the towns, colonies and even the provinces, introduced their household thrift, and though many of them by good luck or energy attained an old age of wealth, still their former tastes remained.But the chief encourager of strict manners was Vespasian, himself old-fashioned both in his dress and diet.Henceforth a respectful feeling towards the prince and a love of emulation proved more efficacious than legal penalties or terrors.Or possibly there is in all things a kind of cycle, and there may be moral revolutions just as there are changes of seasons.Nor was everything better in the past, but our own age too has produced many specimens of excellence and culture for posterity to imitate.May we still keep up with our ancestors a rivalry in all that is honourable!

Tiberius having gained credit for forbearance by the check he had given to the growing terror of the informers, wrote a letter to the Senate requesting the tribunitian power for Drusus.This was a phrase which Augustus devised as a designation of supremacy, so that without assuming the name of king or dictator he might have some title to mark his elevation above all other authority.He then chose Marcus Agrippa to be his associate in this power, and on Agrippa's death, Tiberius Nero, that there might be no uncertainty as to the succession.In this manner he thought to check the perverse ambition of others, while he had confidence in Nero's moderation and in his own greatness.

Following this precedent, Tiberius now placed Drusus next to the throne, though while Germanicus was alive he had maintained an impartial attitude towards the two princes.However in the beginning of his letter he implored heaven to prosper his plans on behalf of the State, and then added a few remarks, without falsehood or exaggeration, on the character of the young prince.He had, he reminded them, a wife and three children, and his age was the same as that at which he had himself been formerly summoned by the Divine Augustus to undertake this duty.Nor was it a precipitate step; it was only after an experience of eight years, after having quelled mutinies and settled wars, after a triumph and two consulships, that he was adopted as a partner in trials already familiar to him.

The senators had anticipated this message and hence their flattery was the more elaborate.But they could devise nothing but voting statues of the two princes, shrines to certain deities, temples, arches and the usual routine, except that Marcus Silanus sought to honour the princes by a slur on the consulate, and proposed that on all monuments, public or private, should be inscribed, to mark the date, the names, not of the consuls, but of those who were holding the tribunitian power.Quintus Haterius, when he brought forward a motion that the decrees passed that day should be set up in the Senate House in letters of gold, was laughed at as an old dotard, who would get nothing but infamy out of such utterly loathsome sycophancy.