The Annals by Cornelius Tacitus;

Author:Cornelius Tacitus;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: OUP Premium
Published: 2008-06-15T00:00:00+00:00

BOOK THIRTEEN

1. The first death* under the new principate was that of Junius Silanus,* proconsul of Asia, and it was brought off by the machinations of Agrippina, without Nero’s knowledge. Silanus had not provoked his own downfall because he had a violent nature; he was an indolent man, and despised under the earlier regimes, to the point that Gaius Caesar used to call him ‘the golden sheep’. It was rather that Agrippina, having engineered the killing of his brother Lucius Silanus, feared vengeance from him. For it was now common talk that Silanus was to be preferred to Nero who was scarcely beyond boyhood and had gained power by a crime. Silanus, it was said, was a man of mature age,* innocent character, and noble birth, who was also one of the descendants of the Caesars, a point then regarded as important (Silanus was also a great-great-grandson* of the deified Augustus).

This was the motive for his murder. The perpetrators were Publius Celer,* a Roman knight, and the freedman Helius,* who were responsible for the emperor’s affairs in Asia. By them the proconsul was given poison at dinner, too obviously for them to escape notice.

No less speedy was the death of Claudius’ freedman Narcissus (whose quarrels with Agrippina I have related above*), which was forced on him by a pitiless imprisonment and the most dire of circumstances. This was against the wishes of the emperor, to whose as-yet hidden vices Narcissus’ avarice and extravagance were admirably suited.

2. The general slide towards carnage was opposed only by Afranius Burrus and Annaeus Seneca. These were the men guiding the emperor’s youth and (a rare phenomenon when power is shared) they acted in harmony, exercising equal influence, but in different spheres, Burrus with his military interests and strict morality, Seneca with his oratorical teaching and principled cordiality. The two worked together so they could the more easily confine the unsteady age of the emperor (if he rejected virtue) to acceptable diversions.

The one struggle both faced was with Agrippina’s headstrong character. Ablaze with all the passions of a criminally acquired rule, she had on her side Pallas, the man responsible for Claudius’ ruining himself with his incestuous marriage and disastrous adoption. But it was not in Nero’s nature to defer to slaves, and by his surly arrogance Pallas had exceeded the parameters of a freedman’s conduct, making himself offensive to the emperor. In public, however, all sorts of honours were heaped on Agrippina, and when the tribune, following military routine, asked for the password, Nero gave him ‘excellent mother’. By decree of the Senate, she was also granted two lictors,* a priesthood* of the cult of Claudius, and, along with these, a public funeral for Claudius, with deification* to follow.

3. On the day of the funeral, Nero proceeded with the eulogy of Claudius. While he held forth on the antiquity of his family, and his ancestors’ consulships and triumphs, he and everyone else remained serious. His comments on Claudius’ cultural pursuits,* and the fact that during his rule there had been no mishap in external affairs, also received a favourable hearing.

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