Give Us Back Germanicus — Tiberius: Capri and Paranoia
For three years, from AD 14 to 16, Germanicus wages war in Germania. His soldiers recover the eagles of the legions that perished with Varus. Rome has a hero.
Tiberius replies calmly. In his letters he orders him to return: enough successes, enough defeats. He reminds him that he himself had been to Germania nine times and achieved more by prudence than by arms (Tacitus 2.26).
On May 26, AD 17, Germanicus rides into Rome in triumph. Five children ride in his chariot. Tacitus notes that many watched with dread. The Roman people loved their favorites only briefly, and Germanicus’s father and uncle had both died young.
Soon after, Tiberius sends him to the East with power greater than other governors have. In Syria he installs Gnaeus Piso, a haughty and hot-tempered man. Piso believes he was given the province to hinder Germanicus. Some in Rome believe he has secret orders from the emperor to do so. Tacitus says only that this was what people thought.
In AD 19 Germanicus also visits Egypt. He opens the granaries, grain prices fall, and Germanicus walks around Alexandria without soldiers, in Greek dress. Tiberius sharply rebukes him. Augustus forbade senators and senior equestrians from entering Egypt without the emperor’s leave, because whoever holds Egypt can threaten Italy with famine (Tacitus 2.59, Suetonius 52).
Germanicus returns from Egypt and finds his orders canceled. Piso has rescinded them throughout Syria. They quarrel more and more fiercely until Germanicus breaks off their friendship. Then his illness returns. In the walls and under the floor of his house they find lead tablets with his name and human remains (Tacitus 2.69). Germanicus is certain that someone is poisoning him or casting curses on him.
He dies in Antioch in October AD 19. He was thirty-three. Tacitus writes that in his farewell he begged his wife not to provoke those more powerful than herself once she was back in Rome. He whispered something more as well, which people took as a sign of his fear of Tiberius.
Was he poisoned? Tacitus himself does not vouch for it. He writes that when the body lay in the forum at Antioch, there was no certainty whether it bore signs of poison. Some took the side of pity, others the side of Piso. The senatorial decree on the trial of Piso, engraved in bronze, found in Spain and published in 1996, says not a word about poison. It is a suspicion, not proof.
Germanicus’s widow, Agrippina, sails to Italy with the urn and the children. In Brundisium the whole port waits. People stand on the walls and roofs. As she steps off the ship, a single groan rises, and it is impossible to tell relatives from strangers. Tiberius sent two cohorts of Praetorians to honor the ashes. No flattery is heard, writes Tacitus, because everyone knows the emperor can hardly hide his joy.
When the ashes are placed in the mausoleum of Augustus, torches burn in Rome, and soldiers, magistrates and people cry with one voice that the state is lost. Nothing, writes Tacitus, stung Tiberius more than the adoration of Agrippina, whom they called the ornament of the fatherland. At night a cry travels through the city, and in many places inscriptions appear: give us back Germanicus (Suetonius 52).
In AD 20 the Senate tries Piso. Before a verdict is reached, Piso dies: in the morning they find him with his throat cut. Tacitus records it as suicide, but also cites old stories that someone killed him. He vouches for neither version. Tiberius sits in the Senate motionless and lets the trial take its course.
Rome asks, and historians do too: what if Germanicus had lived? Try to answer.
Tiberius is left with one son, Drusus, and with one adviser whom he trusts like no one else. His name is Sejanus.