Oratory and Terror

Tacitus points out that liberty fell with the coming of Augustus and the principate, but suggests that circumstances, still, were not so bad. People still had a fair degree of individual freedom, even into reign of Tiberius. But with the ascension of Sejanus, the ambitious and treacherous head of the Praetorian Guard, the terrors began. According to Tacitus, Sejanus secretly poisoned Drusus, the only son of Tiberius, so that he might have sole and unimpeded access as a counsellor to Tiberius. After the death of Drusus in 23 AD, the role of delatores, or political informants who stood to gain a portion of the estates of those upon whom they informed, grew considerably in Roman political life. As Tacitus remarks, “the informers, a class invented to destroy the commonwealth, and never enough controlled even by legal penalties, were stimulated by rewards” (138), and “every day a stronger and fiercer host of informers pursued its victims, without one alleviating circumstance” (156). Sejanus cultivated a wide network of these delatores, who he used to take out his numerous political enemies, “and the good will of Sejanus was to be gained only by a crime” (157). Tiberius, in 27 AD, retreated to his twelve villas on the island of Capri, leaving Sejanus effectively in charge of Rome, and “Never was Rome more distracted and terror-stricken. Meetings, conversations, the ear of friend and stranger were alike shunned; even things mute and lifeless, the very roofs and walls, were eyed with suspicion” (158).

There then comes a lacuna in the text of the Annales, covering a term of almost three years. We understand from other sources, however, that Sejanus — after earning the consulship in 31 AD — took matters too far, and initiated a plot against Tiberius, with the goal of taking power for himself. The plot was discovered and revealed to Tiberius, who took swift and ruthless action, putting Sejanus to death and purging the Senate of any who might have allied themselves with him. What follows is deeply disturbing to modern sensibilities: “It was next decided to punish the remaining children of Sejanus, though the fury of the populace was subsiding, and people generally having been appeased by the previous executions. [. . .] Historians of the time tell us that, as there was no precedent for the capital punishment of a virgin, [the daughter] was violated by the executioner, with the rope on her neck. Then they [she and her brother] were strangled and their bodies, mere children as they were, were flung down the Gemoniae” (165). (The Scala Gemoniae were “a flight of steps leading up to the Capitoline past the carcer [prison], on which the bodies of certain criminals, who had been executed, were thrown and left exposed for a time