ABSTRACT
The fall of Sejanus is marked by Tacitus as a turning point in Tiberius’ life and principate.1 That is correct. In politics the period that followed saw the question of the succession settled and Gaius Caligula, the main contender, consolidating his position with the Princeps, his chief partisan, Macro, eliminating rivals to his own influence through the senatorial court. More striking was the wreaking of vengeance on Sejanus’ followers, which created a reign of terror very suitable for Macro’s purpose. These developments can be made out from the sources. It is more difficult to imagine the state of mind of Tiberius himself; the initial shock of discovering that his only reliable friend was a murderous schemer who gave no loyalty and no affection to his master must have been intensified almost beyond bearing when Tiberius read the letter from Apicata, whatever he came to believe when he had finished torturing Livilla’s alleged accomplices to find out the truth. There is a whining tone of self-pity, a demand for sympathy, common to that part of the denunciation of Sejanus quoted by Suetonius, in which he asks the Senate to send one of the consuls to escort ‘an old man all on his own’ into their presence, and the inscription in which Tiberius appeals to his fellow tribesmen, the people of Rome, in the aftermath.2 Sharp though the blow was, the agony of his family’s misbehaviour had been going on for more than four years before that, and had forced Tiberius in the end to adopt a plan that cannot have been agreeable to him. Now, one decisive and brilliantly thought out and executed action had rid him of the upstart. There were no more choices to make. By the beginning of 32 Tiberius was in a mood to tease the Senate in his usual manner,3 and it would be wise to hesitate before taking the famous words of another letter quoted by Tacitus and Suetonius to be what they claim them to be, the utterance of a man in the depth of despair. R.S.Rogers noticed that they came at the beginning of the letter in which he dissuaded the Senate from convicting M.Cotta Messallinus.4 What Rogers regarded as signs of irritation and impatience I see as a game with words taken for the purpose from the comic poets: ‘What I am to write to you, conscript fathers, or how I am to write it, or what I am to refrain from writing at this time, may the gods and goddesses all send me to perdition quicker than I feel I’m going already, if I know.’
