第68章 A.D.23-28(11)

Sejanus, no longer thinking of his marriage but filled with a deeper alarm, rejoined by deprecating the whispers of suspicion, popular rumour and the gathering storm of odium.That he might not impair his influence by closing his doors on the throngs of his many visitors or strengthen the hands of accusers by admitting them, he made it his aim to induce Tiberius to live in some charming spot at a distance from Rome.In this he foresaw several advantages.Access to the emperor would be under his own control, and letters, for the most part being conveyed by soldiers, would pass through his hands.Caesar too, who was already in the decline of life, would soon, when enervated by retirement, more readily transfer to him the functions of empire; envy towards himself would be lessened when there was an end to his crowded levies and the reality of power would be increased by the removal of its empty show.So he began to declaim against the laborious life of the capital, the bustling crowds and streaming multitudes, while he praised repose and solitude, with their freedom from vexations and misunderstandings, and their special opportunities for the study of the highest questions.

It happened that the trial at this time of Votienus Montanus, a popular wit, convinced the hesitating Tiberius that he ought to shun all assemblies of the Senate, where speeches, often true and offensive, were flung in his very face.Votienus was charged with insulting expressions towards the emperor, and while the witness, Aemilius, a military man, in his eagerness to prove the case, repeated the whole story and amid angry clamour struggled on with loud assertion, Tiberius heard the reproaches by which he was assailed in secret, and was so deeply impressed that he exclaimed that he would clear himself either at once or on a legal inquiry, and the entreaties of friends, with the flattery of the whole assembly, hardly restored his composure.As for Votienus, he suffered the penalty of treason;but the emperor, clinging all the more obstinately to the harshness with which he had been reproached in regard to accused persons, punished Aquilia with exile for the crime of adultery with Varius Ligur, although Lentulus Gaetulicus, the consul-elect, had proposed that she should be sentenced under the Julian law.He next struck off Apidius Merula from the register of the Senate for not having sworn obedience to the legislation of the Divine Augustus.

Then a hearing was given to embassies from the Lacedaemonians and Messenians on the question of the temple of Diana in the Marshes.

The Lacedaemonians asserted that it had been dedicated by their ancestors and in their territory, and appealed to the records of their history and the hymns of poets, but it had been wrested from, they said, by the arms of the Macedonian Philip, with whom they had fought, and subsequently restored by the decision of Caius Caesar and Marcus Antonius.The Messenians, on the contrary, alleged the ancient division of the Peloponnesus among the descendants of Hercules, in which the territory of Denthelia (where the temple stood) had fallen to their king.Records of this event still existed, engraven on stone and ancient bronze.But if they were asked for the testimony of poetry and of history, they had it, they said, in greater abundance and authenticity.Philip had not decided arbitrarily, but according to fact, and king Antigonus, as also the general Mummius, had pronounced the same judgment.Such too had been the award of the Milesians to whom the arbitration had been publicly entrusted, and, finally, of Atidius Geminus, the praetor of Achaia.And so the question was decided in favour of the Messenians.

Next the people of Segesta petitioned for the restoration of the temple of Venus at Mount Eryx, which had fallen to ruin from its antiquity.They repeated the well-known story of its origin, which delighted Tiberius.He undertook the work willingly, as being a kinsman of the goddess.After this was discussed a petition from the city of Massilia, and sanction given to the precedent of Publius Rutilius, who having been legally banished from Rome, had been adopted as a citizen by the people of Smyrna.Volcatius Moschus, also an exile, had been received with a similar privilege by the inhabitants of Massilia, and had left his property to their community, as being now his own country.

Two men of noble rank died in that year, Cneius Lentulus and Lucius Domitius.It had been the glory of Lentulus, to say nothing of his consulship and his triumphal distinctions over the Gaetuli, to have borne poverty with a good grace, then to have attained great wealth, which had been blamelessly acquired and was modestly enjoyed.Domitius derived lustre from a father who during the civil war had been master of the sea, till he united himself to the party of Antonius and afterwards to that of Caesar.His grandfather had fallen in the battle of Pharsalia, fighting for the aristocracy.He had himself been chosen to be the husband of the younger Antonia, daughter of Octavia, and subsequently led an army across the Elbe, penetrating further into Germany than any Roman before him.For this achievement he gained triumphal honours.

Lucius Antonius too then died, of a most illustrious but unfortunate family.His father, Julius Antonius, was capitally punished for adultery with Julia, and the son, when a mere youth, was banished by Augustus, whose sister's grandson he was, to the city of Massilia, where the name of exile might be masked under that of student.Yet honour was paid him in death, and his bones, by the Senate's decree, were consigned to the sepulchre of the Octavii.

While the same consuls were in office, an atrocious crime was committed in Nearer Spain by a peasant of the Termestine tribe.