Tiberius the Tyrant

The death of Germanicus occupies a larger space in the annals of Tacitus than the actual importance of the event would seem to require. The space given to the transactions in the East by which it was preceded, and the trial of Piso by which it was followed, amounts to nearly a sixth part of the books dealing with the reign of Tiberius; or perhaps it would be more correct to say that the aspects of the premature death of Germanicus, which were really important, receive small attention in comparison with those which were less important.

The death of Germanicus opened the way to the long series of plots which rendered the life of Tiberius intolerable, and eventually overwhelmed him in the disastrous events of the year 30 A.D. When Germanicus started for the East in the year 18 A.D., he was the destined successor of Tiberius, with a possible coadjutor in the person of his first cousin Drusus, the two men being legally brothers by the process of adoption. If Tiberius had any personal preference, he unquestionably inclined to Germanicus, to whom he showed every mark of favour, and whose political training he was now completing by sending him to study the Oriental difficulties of the Empire. Drusus at the same time was promoted to his brother’s former position in the West, the still disturbed provinces on the frontiers of the Rhine and Danube being entrusted to his care. Had both these men lived, there would have been no Sejanus, and probably no Caligula. Tiberius himself would have permanently enjoyed for ever the excellent reputation which he won during the first sixteen years of his reign, but an unkind destiny willed it otherwise.

There was no reason why Tiberius should dislike Germanicus, to whose father, as we have seen, he was attached by an affection remarkable even between brothers, and Germanicus himself had on an occasion, which strongly tested his loyalty, shown that it could stand the test. All the authorities, Paterculus included, speak highly of Germanicus; he was an able general and a lovable man. Drusus was a less attractive character, somewhat rough, severe and passionate, but whatever his weaknesses, he had the merit of being attached to his cousin and nominal elder brother; there is no trace of any jealousy between the two men, and their unity was further cemented by the fact that the sister of Germanicus was the wife of Drusus.

While the three representative men of the Imperial family were thus in harmony, and lived on terms of mutual trust and helpfulness, the case was different with the women. Livia, the widow of Augustus, and Agrippina, the daughter of Julia, were separated by ancient hatreds and fresh causes of offence. If the whole private diary and correspondence of Agrippina had been preserved to us, we should probably be in a position to compare Livia with Madame de Maintenon, as she is exhibited to us in the lively letters of that sturdy little hater, Charlotte Elizabeth, Duchess of Orleans, for the memoirs of Agrippina, filtered through her daughter’s editing, and the mind of a man of letters indicate no want of a proper animosity, no desire to bury old grudges.

Livia did not acquiesce willingly in her diminished glories as dowager; if she had proposed to herself—and there is every reason to suppose that she did so propose—to continue to be the power behind the throne in her son’s reign, as in her husband’s, she was disappointed. While studiously paying every sign of respect to his mother as his mother, and even stretching points in her favour, Tiberius refused to acknowledge her as a politician; such honours as might decorously be paid to the widow of Augustus, such consolations of her affliction as expressions of public sympathy could afford, he readily sanctioned, but he no less resolutely drew the line at the point at which complimentary and consolatory decrees seemed to involve the recognition of a governing Empress Dowager. Few things can have been more distasteful to Livia than the reversion to the Senatorial Constitution attempted by Tiberius. She could no longer inspire “transactions of Cæsar,” to which the Senate was pledged in anticipation, nor was Tiberius inclined to let the foreign policy of Rome slip out of his own hands into that of the Jews and Greeks who enjoyed the confidence of the august lady. A king of Cappadocia, of whom Tiberius disapproved, accepted an invitation from Livia to come to Rome and depend on her influence to win the favour of her son. The result was so disappointing that the aged monarch died of distress of mind; his kingdom was turned into a province. Tiberius would stand no tampering with “native” princes. Nor was Livia allowed to put herself above the laws at Rome. A lady named Urgulania, who was a friend of hers, incurred debts, and was proceeded against in the court of the Prætor Urbanus. She took refuge with Livia, who urged her son to defend the lady’s cause. Tiberius undertook to do so, but by very deliberate walking, and exceptional graciousness to the friends whom he encountered on the way, contrived to arrive too late. Urgulania lost her case, and Livia had to pay her friend’s debt. The Prætor in this case was Lucius Piso. Shortly afterwards this same Urgulania refused to give her evidence in a court of law, and required the officials to take it in her own house, a privilege which belonged to the Vestal virgins. Urgulania was not a Vestal virgin “emerita,” determined to retain the advantages of her previous position with the help of Livia, for we find her later on sending a dagger as a significant hint to a scandalous grandson.

Tiberius was certainly in a very difficult position with regard to his mother. His natural sense of decorum, and possibly his natural affection, made him shrink from the very appearance of treating her with disrespect; but her domineering tendency, encouraged by years of unquestioned sway during her husband’s lifetime, tempted her to exaggerate the real claims which she had upon his dutiful affection; nor were the ladies of her household backward in regretting the change of circumstances, and in pointing out how different things had been in the lifetime of the sainted Augustus. Delicate as they were in any case, the relations between mother and son were rendered still more susceptible to disagreeable incidents by the presence of the aggrieved Agrippina, to whom mother and son alike were detestable usurpers, enjoying as the result of their nefarious intrigues the inalienable rights of the true Julians. Thus both the belligerent parties were opposed to Tiberius; his mother because he prevented her from continuing to enjoy a power which she had long exercised, his daughter-in-law, stepdaughter and niece, because in her opinion he usurped a power which she ought to have enjoyed, and because she had learned to regard her mother as a saint martyred by the agency of her stepfather in the cause of the Julian dynasty. There was no reason why Livia should like Drusus better than Germanicus; both her grandsons were alike leagued with her undutiful son to keep the shadow of petticoats off the Senate House.

Tiberius made his arrangements without taking the ladies into consideration. There was one member of the family whom he may have been glad to please, the beautiful Antonia, the widow of his brother Drusus and the mother of Germanicus. It is to the credit of this lady that her name is never mentioned in the list of intriguers; she escapes both praise and censure, though her persistent determination to live in retirement as a widow might have attracted the attention of those who found so much to admire in the “impenetrable chastity” of Agrippina. Perhaps the fortress of her virtue was less frequently assailed by those storms, assaults, blockades, and circumvallations which, we may presume, rendered the epithet no hyperbole in the case of her daughter-in-law.

The affairs of the East needed a comprehensive survey. Achaia and Macedonia had recently passed into the Emperor’s hands; the Senatorial Government had been defective in Bithynia; several of the Greek cities on the Ægæan had suffered severely in a disastrous earthquake; Cappadocia was being organized as a province; there were dynastic troubles in Armenia; the Parthians were showing signs of restlessness; the native princes on the Syrian frontier were also unsettled by questions of succession; Judæa was more than usually unquiet. Germanicus was therefore despatched to the East with proconsular powers, which gave him an authority higher than that of all proconsuls or governors in their own provinces, and with a commission to settle all differences on the spot according to his own judgment. So large a share of power had never been entrusted to any one except Augustus and Pompeius. On a previous occasion when the same services were required, Augustus had himself visited the East and conducted the business in person, but he was then a younger man than Tiberius was now, and he was able to leave behind him in the person of Mæcenas a more experienced, or at least more trustworthy, statesman than any who were within reach of Tiberius. Drusus, though a good soldier, had not shown statesmanlike qualities.

At the same time a new Governor was required for Syria, the richest of the Imperial Provinces, for its capital, Antioch, was the second city of the Empire, the emporium where East met West. To this post Tiberius appointed Gnæus Piso. Gnæus Piso belonged to a family which had long maintained its opposition to the Cæsars, although the last wife of Julius Cæsar, Calpurnia, had been a daughter of the house. Republican ideals were still cherished in this, one of the most ancient and noble of Roman families. The efforts of Tiberius to restore the Senate had not had a happy influence upon the two leading members of this house; one brother, Lucius, threatened to retire from public business altogether, disgusted with the obsequiousness of the Senate; the other, Gnæus, had distinguished himself by an aggressive outspokenness which threatened to breed unnecessary difficulties. Lucius was the Prætor who had refused to allow Urgulania to avoid paying her just debts, and for this reason it is improbable that Gnæus was in the confidence of Livia. He had rendered himself undesirable at Rome, but Tiberius had no doubt of his integrity, and thought that if he were honourably withdrawn for a time from the centre of affairs, public business would march more smoothly. Tiberius in fact was beginning to learn that it was not altogether wise to revive the pretensions of the old families.

Unfortunately Tiberius did not foresee the possibility of friction between Germanicus and Piso; still less did he take into account the results of the juxtaposition of two such explosive fireships as Agrippina and Plancina the wife of Piso; and he forgot that Plancina was among the devoted friends of Livia, who had a long-standing personal interest in the affairs of Syria and its adjacent principalities. It was the scene of her first diplomatic triumphs, the place where she had cemented by the interchange of presents a friendship with that worthy pater-familias Herod the Great, whose posterity shared with Jerusalem the honour of being a meeting point of the intrigues of the Jews of all nations.

The story of the events which followed is so obviously coloured by the partisanship of the chief actors that much of it must be far from the truth. It is not, for instance, easy to believe that Piso, having no authority outside his own province, would follow Germanicus to Athens, where Germanicus had authority, and take a pleasure in reversing his compliments to the Athenians. There is no inherent improbability in the action ascribed to Piso inside his own province, where he practically refused to recognize the proconsular power of Germanicus, but he could hardly with safety have followed the footsteps of Germanicus eastwards, loudly proclaiming his insubordination in places where he had no more right to express an opinion than a private citizen; had he done so, a swift Liburnian galley would have brought his letters of recall. Idle stories of this kind probably took their origin at a later period, and were communicated with mistaken zeal to Agrippina by her sympathizing friends.

At first all went well with Germanicus, and his commission bore the appearance of a holiday progress. He met his brother Drusus at Nicopolis, the city which had been built to commemorate the victory off the promontory of Actium, and they celebrated the glorious event in company; he then went to Athens, and up the Ægæan into the Euxine, redressing grievances and visiting holy places. In the course of the tour Agrippina’s youngest daughter Julia was born at Lesbos, destined afterwards to marry M. Vinicius, the friend of Paterculus. On the return journey southwards Germanicus met the convoy of Piso at Rhodes on its way to Syria, where, the historian tells us, that Germanicus, though well aware of the persecution of Piso, saved his ship from destruction in a storm. Germanicus made his way from thence to Armenia and the frontiers of the Empire, where he conducted his negotiations with success. Meanwhile Piso hurried on his way to Syria, and at once began to make favour with the army and the residents. His indulgences to the troops were such that the soldiers called him “father of the legions”; while Plancina, to the horror of Agrippina, forgetting the limitations of her sex, took part in drills and parades.

The first overt act of insubordination on the part of Piso was a neglect to forward some cohorts to Germanicus in Armenia. On the return of Germanicus he met Piso, and an attempt to adjust their mutual differences was rendered ineffective by the mischievous offices of friends. Germanicus himself was inclined to take a lenient view, but he was influenced by the suggestions of those who told him exaggerated stories about Piso and his sons and Plancina. A private conference was held, but the two men left it open enemies. After this Piso publicly resented all honours paid to Germanicus, and Plancina was particularly annoyed because her somewhat lucrative protégé Vonones, a former aspirant to the Parthian crown, was removed by Germanicus at the request of the Parthians to a safer distance from the frontier.

Germanicus finding that the best part of his work was accomplished, and that life in Syria was not pleasant, made a tour in Egypt, going up the Nile as far as Elephantine and Syene, then the limit of Roman rule. It is pleasing to find him visiting the same sights that attract the modern traveller, over whom he had an advantage in that the priests were able to read the inscriptions for him.

In visiting Egypt, Germanicus inadvertently broke a decree of Augustus, which forbade any Roman Senator or Equestrian to enter that private domain of the Emperor without special permission. Tiberius had written to bring this to his notice, but the letter arrived too late.

On returning from his holiday tour in Egypt, Germanicus found that all his arrangements in Syria had been reversed by Piso, his disposition of the legions had been changed, and his formal alliances with the cities modified. Stormy scenes followed, and Piso decided to leave Syria, so says our narrative; but the more probable order of events is that Piso was ordered by Germanicus to withdraw, and was at Seleucia on his way home when news reached him of the illness of Germanicus. We are not told the nature of this illness. Agrippina and possibly Germanicus himself jumped to the conclusion that poison and spells were the cause of the sickness. Horrible things were found in the house; fragments of human remains embedded in the floors and walls; bits of parchment covered with spells; leaden tablets inscribed with the name of Germanicus, and other mystic apparatus with which it was customary to consign the spirit of an enemy to the shades. The illness seems to have been a lingering one. Piso hovered off the coast, approaching or withdrawing as the symptoms were declared to be better or worse. In the end Germanicus died. Agrippina and her friends were so fully persuaded that he had been the victim of poison or witchcraft, that they exposed his body naked in the market place at Antioch, confident that the flames of the funeral pyre would fail to devour his heart, for it was well known that the heart of a man who had been poisoned was incombustible. When the ceremony was over, Agrippina gathered up the ashes and started with her youngest children for Rome.

Meanwhile the Senators and other officials who had been in the train of Germanicus treated the Province of Syria as though it were vacant, and appointed Gnæus Sentius, one of their number, Governor in the place of Piso. There was no time to send to Rome for orders. Germanicus had cashiered Piso, but had died before appointing his successor, and it was necessary that there should be some one in authority, in case Piso returned and attempted to resume the government of Syria.

Piso had travelled on his homeward journey as far as Cos, when the news of the death of Germanicus reached him. He made thanksgiving offerings to the gods, and Plancina, who had recently lost a sister, threw off her mourning. Consultations were held as to the best course to pursue. Marcus Piso, the younger of his two sons, urged his father to return to Rome. So far he had done nothing unpardonable, but an attempt to resume the government of the province meant nothing less than civil war. Other and less prudent friends advised Piso not to recognize the appointment of Sentius, and to rely on his popularity with the legions. Tacitus puts into the mouth of these advisers the following astounding statement, which he probably found in those memoirs of Agrippina which are not evidence: “You have the complicity of Livia, the favour of Cæsar though hidden, and none mourn more loudly for Germanicus than those who are best pleased at his death.”

Piso and Plancina proved to have miscalculated the affection of the legions, and an attempt to recover Syria by force was defeated by Sentius, who gave the unhappy candidate for power ships and a safe conduct to Rome.

Agrippina meanwhile had traversed the seas and arrived at Brundisium with the vase containing her husband’s ashes early in the year 20 A.D. The illness and death of Germanicus had excited much feeling in the city and Italy, though we are not bound to believe in the dark suggestions of the historian that the populace had assumed the complicity of Tiberius in his nephew’s death. The widow made the best of her affliction, and contrived to give the procession to the Mausoleum of Augustus, in which her husband’s ashes were deposited, the aspect of a public demonstration in favour of the Julian race. Neither Tiberius himself, nor Livia, nor even the mother of Germanicus, were present at this ceremony. Doubtless they had sufficient reasons, but their absence unfortunately favoured the credulity of those who at a later time listened to the lamentations of Agrippina, and her passionate assertions that her husband had been done to death with the connivance of his own kith and kin.

Piso returned slowly to Rome. He sent his son ahead with letters to Tiberius, in which he represented himself as the aggrieved party, and accused Germanicus of debauchery and arrogance; he sought on his way an interview with Drusus, who had returned to Illyria after his brother’s funeral. Drusus received him coldly, and dismissed him with words so politic that they were thought to have been suggested by a cooler head. The day after he arrived in Rome, Fulcinius Trio, the prosecutor of Scribonius Libo, took the first formal steps in a process against him.

The story of this famous trial is so narrated by Tacitus as to convey the impression that there was a serious miscarriage of justice, and that the oppressors of Germanicus were protected by the influence of Livia and Tiberius; but, as usual, the narrative, wherever it depends upon accessible documentary evidence, does not support such a view of the case.

Accusers and accused alike pressed Tiberius to hear the case himself, knowing “that he was impervious to the influence of rumour,” and fearing the excitability of a large court. Tiberius, after hearing the evidence, referred the whole case to the Senate. Five of the most respected men in Rome refused to act as counsel for the defence. Among the three who did eventually defend Piso was Marcus Lepidus, whom we have already seen in possession of the full confidence of the Emperor. On the day of the trial Tiberius opened the proceedings in the Senate; he said that Piso had been a trusted officer and friend of Augustus, that he had himself assigned him as an assistant to Germanicus in the administration of the East with the authority of the Senate. It was the duty of the court to decide without prejudice whether he had exasperated the young man by insubordination and opposition and rejoiced over his death, or had killed him with malice and aforethought, “for if the subordinate officer exceeded the limits of his office, if he refused to pay proper respect to his superior, and rejoiced over his death, and my sorrow, I shall hate him, and shall exclude him from my house, and punish his enmity as a private matter, not with the power I hold as Princeps. But if it is discovered that a crime in bringing about the death of any man requires punishment, then do you confer upon the children of Germanicus and us his relatives our proper consolation. And at the same time you must carefully consider this point, whether Piso handled the armies in an insubordinate and seditious fashion, whether he tampered disloyally with the affections of the soldiers, whether he attempted to recover the province by force of arms, or have the accusers exaggerated these charges? I may say that I have good reason to be annoyed with their exercise of partisanship. For was it proper to strip the body, to expose it to the eager scrutiny of the eyes of the vulgar, and even to allow statements to spread among foreigners that he had been poisoned, if this was still uncertain and a subject of inquiry? I mourn for the loss of my son, and always shall mourn, but I do not prevent the accused from advancing every fact by which his innocence may be supported, or his guilt extenuated if there was any provocation on the part of Germanicus; and I implore you not to take accusations for proved facts, because the case touches me nearly personally. I beg those who have been led by the ties of kindred or faithful friendship to act as counsel for the defendant, to help him in his danger as far as their eloquence and diligence allows; and I invite the prosecution to similar efforts and similar firmness. In one point only we raise Germanicus above the law, viz., in trying the case in the Senate House rather than in the forum, before the Senate and not before a jury. Let everything else be handled with a like moderation. I would have no one pay regard to the tears of Drusus and my own sorrow, nor to any fictitious charges made against us.”

Such a speech was doubtless disappointing to Agrippina, who had already in her own mind condemned Piso and the amazonian Plancina without benefit of clergy; she knew Germanicus had been poisoned, and bewitched; she knew how it had all been done by means of a celebrated poisoner named Martina, who had been fetched from the East to give evidence, and had died mysteriously at Brundisium on the way. Had not the poison been found after her death tied up in her hair? What further evidence was wanting? And why did the woman die so conveniently for the purposes of those who wished to shield the enemies of Germanicus? The poor lady had troubles enough, left a widow with a family of six young children, marked out for the enmity of a malignant and all powerful grandmother-in-law, but her inclination to regard herself as the victim of persistent ill-usage is not evidence; and though her contemporaries would have had no difficulty in believing in the effects of witchcraft, the case against Piso is rendered weak to us by the introduction of this element; and the more so that the prosecution was not able to prove the use of poison, or even to suggest a favourable opportunity for its administration.

As the case proceeded it became quite clear that the charge of poisoning could not be sustained, but that Piso had been guilty of serious political offences. Meanwhile there was considerable agitation among the people, to whom the sensational side of the trial alone appealed, and who threatened violence if the murderer of Germanicus escaped by the votes of the Senate. This at least we are told by Tacitus, though here again it is more than probable that the public excitement existed chiefly in the imagination of Agrippina, who always saw herself playing the part of injured heroine to a sympathetic audience of the Roman people. Riots were not dreaded at Rome since the police of the city had been organized and the Prætorian guards placed in barracks.

As the case became exclusively political, Plancina naturally dropped out of it; “machinations of Livia,” shrieked Agrippina, and Tacitus has repeated the shriek.

The case had an abrupt and tragic termination. Piso, seeing that the hostile evidence steadily accumulated, and that Tiberius preserved an absolutely impartial and judicial attitude, killed himself, leaving a letter to Tiberius, from which the following extract has been preserved: “Crushed by a conspiracy of my private enemies, and the hatefulness of a false accusation, inasmuch as no opportunity is left for the truth and the establishment of my innocence, I call heaven to witness, Cæsar, that I have lived loyally to you, and dutifully to your mother; and I implore you to take charge of my children, of whom Gnæus Piso was certainly not concerned in my fortunes whatever may have been their character, for he spent the whole time at Rome, and Marcus Piso dissuaded me from returning to Syria. And I wish that I had rather given way to the counsels of my young son than he to those of his aged father. I beg the more earnestly that his innocence may not pay the penalty of my perversity. I beg for the safety of my unhappy son in the name of forty-five years of loyal duty, of a consulship shared with yourself, of the confidence placed in me by Augustus, of the friendship with yourself, and as a last request.” He made no mention of his wife in this dying petition. Tiberius exempted Marcus Piso from any complicity in the charges brought against his father, and also spoke on behalf of Plancina. A two days’ inquiry was held into her conduct, but to the disgust of Agrippina she was acquitted. Her escape was attributed to the influence of Livia.

The Senate passed severe sentences upon the sons of Piso, which Tiberius, as usual, considerably modified. Honours and rewards were bestowed on the accusers, but Tiberius, in promising Fulcinius Trio office later on, significantly hinted that he was in danger of spoiling his eloquence by excessive violence. It had been in the power of Tiberius to confiscate the property of Piso, but he bestowed it upon his son Marcus. Tacitus comments in characteristic fashion—“Superior to the temptation of money, as I have often recorded, and the more readily appeased at that time through an uneasy conscience about the acquittal of Plancina.”

There certainly does not seem to have been any miscarriage of justice, for even if Piso was sincere in his protestations of innocence, and really was innocent of the technical offence of waging civil war, his case was never concluded, and he was never condemned. It pleased Agrippina and her friends, and it pleased the sensation mongers of the capital, to see in the case not a political trial, but a demand for vengeance on the murderers of Germanicus. In this demand they were disappointed, for Plancina, the supposed culprit, escaped altogether, Piso died uncondemned by his own hand, and whatsoever punishment fell upon his two sons was inflicted on them as the sons of a man who had been disloyal to the State, not as the sons of the murderer of Germanicus. It was therefore superfluous on the part of two Senators to propose that altars should be erected to Vengeance, and of another that thanks should be returned to certain members of the Imperial family because Germanicus had been avenged.

There is, in fact, absolutely no evidence that Germanicus was murdered, while there is abundant evidence that the relations between him and Piso, both personal and political, were exceedingly unsatisfactory, and that Piso was so injudicious as to endeavour to set aside his authority. Piso was by many years the older man of the two, he had had long experience of public affairs, had enjoyed the confidence of Augustus, and acquiesced very unwillingly in the arrangements which put Germanicus, a much younger man, over his head. It is quite possible that he had private instructions from Tiberius to give Germanicus the benefit of his experience in friendly fashion, and that he interpreted these instructions wrongly, believing them to amount to a declaration of his own independence of Germanicus, and he would be the more ready to believe this because he was touchy on the subject of his own dignity; but that he actually carried authority to thwart and annoy Germanicus is as improbable as that he had instructions to poison him. Tiberius was guilty of a mistake in not anticipating the friction that would necessarily arise between an older man and a younger man when the former was placed in subordination to somewhat indefinite powers wielded by the latter. If the two men had been left to settle their differences alone, there would probably have been little trouble, for Germanicus began with courtesy and forbearance, but the ladies insisted on taking an active part in the quarrel. Agrippina saw Livia written large all over Plancina, with whom she had doubtless enjoyed several preliminary skirmishes at Rome; and Plancina met her on her own field and fought her with her own weapons, for, reprehensible though Plancina’s military performances appeared in the eyes of a pattern Roman matron, Agrippina had herself set the fashion in Germany. The atmosphere of the East was a particularly unwholesome one for two ladies thus mutually breathing out threatenings and slaughters, and listening to tales depreciatory of one another. The East swarmed with sorcerers and necromancers, and supple intriguers of all kinds used to the internecine feuds of the ladies who lived in the palaces of their princes.

The most unfortunate result of the death of Germanicus was that it left Agrippina an embittered and vindictive woman. Even her husband had occasionally deprecated the violence of her temper. Time did nothing to cure her grievances, indeed the legend of her many sorrows seemed to grow steadily as the events receded into the distance, and she handed her quarrel on to her children with its vitality undiminished.

One possible solution of the part played by Piso, and of the difficulty of reconciling it with his last protestation of innocence, is that Plancina was actually in the confidence of Livia, from whom she held such a commission as Livia could give her to make arrangements desired by her patroness. The Oriental princes had learned to rely on secret influence rather than on open negotiations with Tiberius and the Senate; the stern impartiality of the Emperor drove them to subterranean manœuvres, and Livia was by no means disinclined to let it be understood that her influence was paramount. Thus while Piso as Governor of Syria was the properly constituted representative of Tiberius, his wife was the accredited plenipotentiary of the power behind the throne. The charges against Plancina were really charges against Livia, and the case which was hushed up was the case which would have exposed the unauthorized political intrigues of the Empress Dowager. Tiberius could either allow his mother’s interference with State affairs to be a subject of public inquiry, or he could allow Plancina to be tried on the frivolous charge of poisoning with the certainty that she would escape conviction. He preferred the less heroic course, with the result that both he and his mother were credited with having been concerned in a criminal conspiracy against a near relative.

The tradition repeated by Tacitus, that Piso was in possession of documents which would have established his innocence by demonstrating the complicity of Tiberius and Livia, and that he refrained from producing them on being assured of his safety by Sejanus, is not incompatible with this view of the case. Tiberius would certainly not have been involved, but instructions given by Livia to Plancina may very well have existed, and have led to those reversals of the policy of Germanicus which produced the ultimate quarrel. On this assumption the suicide of Piso becomes intelligible, he could not defend his grave political misconduct without exposing the still graver misconduct of the Empress Dowager, and when he saw that no other means of escape was open to him, he took a course which, to the Romans, did not seem to be devoid of heroism. Tiberius may have been weak in not dismissing his mother to an island, but he was certainly not responsible for the death of Piso, or concerned in a plot to poison Germanicus.