第139章 A.D.32-37(5)

Hence followed a scarcity of money, a great shock being given to all credit, the current coin too, in consequence of the conviction of so many persons and the sale of their property, being locked up in the imperial treasury or the public exchequer.To meet this, the Senate had directed that every creditor should have two-thirds his capital secured on estates in Italy.Creditors however were suing for payment in full, and it was not respectable for persons when sued to break faith.So, at first, there were clamorous meetings and importunate entreaties; then noisy applications to the praetor's court.And the very device intended as a remedy, the sale and purchase of estates, proved the contrary, as the usurers had hoarded up all their money for buying land.The facilities for selling were followed by a fall of prices, and the deeper a man was in debt, the more reluctantly did he part with his property, and many were utterly ruined.The destruction of private wealth precipitated the fall of rank and reputation, till at last the emperor interposed his aid by distributing throughout the banks a hundred million sesterces, and allowing freedom to borrow without interest for three years, provided the borrower gave security to the State in land to double the amount.Credit was thus restored, and gradually private lenders were found.The purchase too of estates was not carried out according to the letter of the Senate's decree, rigour at the outset, as usual with such matters, becoming negligence in the end.

Former alarms then returned, as there was a charge of treason against Considius Proculus.While he was celebrating his birthday without a fear, he was hurried before the Senate, condemned and instantly put to death.His sister Sancia was outlawed, on the accusation of Quintus Pomponius, a restless spirit, who pretended that he employed himself in this and like practices to win favour with the sovereign, and thereby alleviate the perils hanging over his brother Pomponius Secundus.

Pompeia Macrina too was sentenced to banishment.Her husband Argolicus and her father-in-law Laco, leading men of Achaia, had been ruined by the emperor.Her father likewise, an illustrious Roman knight, and her brother, an ex-praetor, seeing their doom was near, destroyed themselves.It was imputed to them as a crime that their great-grandfather Theophanes of Mitylene had been one of the intimate friends of Pompey the Great, and that after his death Greek flattery had paid him divine honours.

Sextus Marius, the richest man in Spain, was next accused of incest with his daughter, and thrown headlong from the Tarpeian rock.To remove any doubt that the vastness of his wealth had proved the man's ruin, Tiberius kept his gold-mines for himself, though they were forfeited to the State.Executions were now a stimulus to his fury, and he ordered the death of all who were lying in prison under accusation of complicity with Sejanus.There lay, singly or in heaps, the unnumbered dead, of every age and sex, the illustrious with the obscure.Kinsfolk and friends were not allowed to be near them, to weep over them, or even to gaze on them too long.Spies were set round them, who noted the sorrow of each mourner and followed the rotting corpses, till they were dragged to the Tiber, where, floating or driven on the bank, no one dared to burn or to touch them.The force of terror had utterly extinguished the sense of human fellowship, and, with the growth of cruelty, pity was thrust aside.

About this time Caius Caesar, who became his grandfather's companion on his retirement to Capreae, married Claudia, daughter of Marcus Silanus.He was a man who masked a savage temper under an artful guise of self-restraint, and neither his mother's doom nor the banishment of his brothers extorted from him a single utterance.Whatever the humour of the day with Tiberius, he would assume the like, and his language differed as little.Hence the fame of a clever remark from the orator Passienus, that "there never was a better slave or a worse master."I must not pass over a prognostication of Tiberius respecting Servius Galba, then consul.Having sent for him and sounded him on various topics, he at last addressed him in Greek to this effect: "You too, Galba, will some day have a taste of empire." He thus hinted at a brief span of power late in life, on the strength of his acquaintance with the art of astrologers, leisure for acquiring which he had had at Rhodes, with Thrasyllus for instructor.This man's skill he tested in the following manner.

Whenever he sought counsel on such matters, he would make use of the top of the house and of the confidence of one freedman, quite illiterate and of great physical strength.The man always walked in front of the person whose science Tiberius had determined to test, through an unfrequented and precipitous path (for the house stood on rocks), and then, if any suspicion had arisen of imposture or of trickery, he hurled the astrologer, as he returned, into the sea beneath, that no one might live to betray the secret.Thrasyllus accordingly was led up the same cliffs, and when he had deeply impressed his questioner by cleverly revealing his imperial destiny and future career, he was asked whether he had also thoroughly ascertained his own horoscope, and the character of that particular year and day.After surveying the positions and relative distances of the stars, he first paused, then trembled, and the longer he gazed, the more was he agitated by amazement and terror, till at last he exclaimed that a perilous and well-nigh fatal crisis impended over him.Tiberius then embraced him and congratulated him on foreseeing his dangers and on being quite safe.Taking what he had said as an oracle, he retained him in the number of his intimate friends.