As a river slowly and silently undermines the dikes erected against it and finally overthrows them in a moment, flooding the countryside they protected, so in the same way the sovereign power that acted insensibly under Augustus overthrew things violently under Tiberius.
There was a law of majesty [a] against those who committed some crime against the Roman people. Tiberius seized upon this law and applied it, not to the cases for which it had been made, but to anything that could serve his hatred or suspicion. Not only did actions fall within the scope of this law, but words, signs and even thoughts -- for what is said in those outpourings of the heart occasioned by the conversation of two friends can only be regarded as thoughts. Consequently, there no longer was any liberty at banquets, any confidence among kindred, any fidelity in slaves. With the dissimulation and melancholy of the prince spreading everywhere, friendship was regarded as a danger, frankness as impudence, virtue as an affectation that could recall the happiness of earlier times to the mind of the peoples.
No tyranny is more cruel than the one practiced in the shadow of the laws and under color of justice -- when, so to speak, one proceeds to drown the unfortunate on the very plank by which they had saved themselves.
And since a tyrant never lacks instruments for his tyranny, Tiberius always found judges ready to condemn as many people as he might suspect. In the days of the republic, the senate, which as a body did not judge the cases of individuals, was informed by a delegation of the people of the crimes imputed to allies. In the same way Tiberius referred to it the judgment of everything he called a crime of lese-majesty against himself. This body fell into a state of unspeakable baseness. The senators actually sought servitude, and under the patronage of Sejanus, the most illustrious among them practiced the trade of informer.
It seems to me that I see several reasons for the spirit of servitude which then reigned in the senate. After Caesar had vanquished the party of the republic, both his friends and his enemies in the senate agreed to remove all the limits the laws had set to his power and to confer excessive honors upon him. The former sought to please him, the latter to make him odious. Dio tells us [b] that some went so far as to propose that he be permitted to enjoy all the women he pleased. This was the cause of his not distrusting the senate, and brought about his assassination. But it was also the reason, in the following reigns, why there was no act of flattery lacking a precedent or capable of revolting the mind.
Before Rome was governed by one man, the riches of the leading Romans were immense, whatever the means employed to acquire them. Almost all these riches were taken away under the emperors. The senators no longer had great clients who heaped wealth upon them, and in the provinces little could be taken except for Caesar, especially once his procurators, who were almost like our intendants today, were established there. But even though the source of riches was cut off, expenses remained constant; the course of life was set, and only the emperor's favor could now sustain it.
Augustus had taken the power of making laws and judging public crimes away from the people, but he bad left them, or at least had seemed to leave them, the power of electing the magistrates. Tiberius, who feared the assemblies of so numerous a people, took away even this privilege and gave it to the senate -- that is, to himself [1]. Now it is hardly credible to what extent this decline of the people's power debased the souls of the great. When the people disposed of dignities, the magistrates who solicited them did many base things, But these were joined to, and hidden by, a certain magnificence displayed in the games or meals they gave the people, or the money or grain they distributed. Although the motive was base, the means had something noble about them because it is always fitting for a great man to obtain the favor of the people by his liberality. But when the people no longer had anything to give, and the prince, in the name of the senate, disposed of all offices, the latter were sought and obtained by contemptible means. Flattery, infamy, and crime were the arts necessary for success.
It does not appear, however, that Tiberius wanted to degrade the senate. He complained of nothing so much as the inclination of this body to servitude; all his life he expressed disgust with it. But like most men he wanted contradictory things; his general policy was not in accord with his personal passions. He would have desired a senate that was free and capable of winning respect for his government, but he also wanted a senate which at every moment satisfied his fears, jealousies, and hatreds. In short, the statesman yielded continually to the man.
We have said that the people had formerly gotten the patricians to concede them plebeian magistrates who would defend them against the insults and injustices they might receive. In order that these magistrates might be in a position to exercise this power, they were declared sacred and inviolable, and it was decreed that whoever mistreated a tribune by deed or word would immediately be punished by death. Now once the emperors were vested with the power of the tribunes, they obtained their privileges. And it is on this basis that so many men were put to death, that informers could ply their trade with complete ease, and that the charge of lese-majesty -- the crime of those to whom no crime can be imputed, as Pliny says [c] -- was extended to cover whatever one wished.
I believe, however, that some of these grounds of accusation were not as ridiculous as they appear to us today. I cannot think that Tiberius would have indicted a man for having sold a statue of the emperor with his house, that Domitian would have condemned a woman to death for having disrobed before his image, and a citizen because he had a picture of the whole earth painted on the walls of his room, if these actions had only aroused in the mind of the Romans the idea they convey to us at present. I believe this is partly explained by Rome's having changed government, so that what does not appear to us to be of any consequence may have been so then. I judge by what we see today in a nation that cannot be suspected of tyranny, where it is forbidden to drink to the health of a certain person [d].
I cannot overlook anything that serves to reveal the genius of the Roman people. So thoroughly accustomed were they to obeying and to making their happiness depend completely on the difference between one master and another, that after the death of Germanicus they gave evidence of mourning, regret, and despair such as could never be found among us. It is necessary to see how the historians describe so great, so long, and so immoderate a public desolation [2]. Nor was it feigned, for the whole body of the people does not pretend, flatter or dissimulate.
Since the Roman people no longer took part in the government, and were almost all freedmen, or men without an occupation who lived at the expense of the public treasury, they were conscious of nothing but their impotence. They grieved like children and women, who are distressed by their feeling of weakness. They were ill. They set their fears and hopes on the person of Germanicus, and when this was snatched from them they fell into despair.
No people fear unhappiness so much as those who ought to be reassured by the wretchedness of their condition, and who should say, with Andromache [e]: May God let me fear! In Naples today there are fifty thousand men who live on herbs alone, and have as their sole possession only half a cotton garment. These people, the most unhappy on earth, fall into frightful despondency at the slightest smoke from Vesuvius. They are foolish enough to fear becoming unhappy.