• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 10023 0

the joke by falling at Tiberius' feet and pleading for pardon for not having been warm enough. Tiberius started back in disgust, but Haterius grabbed at his knees and Tiberius went over, catching the back of his head a bang on the marble floor. Tiberius' German bodyguard did not understand what was happening and sprang forward to slaughter their master's assailant; Tiberius only just stopped them in time, Haterius excelled in parody. He had an enormous voice, a comic face, and great fertility of invention. Whenever Tiberius in his speeches introduced any painfully farfetched or archaic phrase Haterius would pick it up and make it the key-word of his reply. [Augustus had always said that the wheels of Haterius' eloquence needed a dragchain even when he was driving uphill.] The slow-witted Tiberius was no match for Haterius. Callus' gift was for mock zeal. Tiberius was extremely careful not to appear a candidate for any divine honours and refused to allow himself to be spoken about as if he had any superhuman attributes: he did not even allow the provincials to build him temples. Gallus was therefore fond of referring, as if accidentally, to Tiberius as "His Sacred Majesty". When Haterius, who was always ready to carry on the gag, rose to rebuke him for this incorrect way of speaking he would apologise profusely and say that nothing was farther from his mind than to do anything in disobedience of the orders of His Sacred... oh, dear, it was so easy to fall into that mistaken way of speaking, a thousand apologies once more ... he meant, contrary to the wishes of his honoured friend and fellow-senator Tiberius Nero Caesar Augustus.

"Not Augustus, fool," Haterius would say in a stage whisper. "He's refused that title a dozen times. He only uses it when he writes letters to other monarchs."

They had one trick which annoyed Tiberius more than any other. If he made a show of modesty when thanked by the Senate for performing some national service—such as undertaking to complete the temples which Augustus had left unfinished—they would praise his honesty in not taking credit for his mother's work, and congratulate Livia on having so dutiful a son. When they saw that there was nothing that Tiberius hated so much as hearing Livia praised they kept it up. Haterius even suggested that just as the Greeks were called by their fathers' names, so Tiberius should be named after his mother and that it should be a crime to call him other than Tiberius Liviades—or perhaps Livigena would be the more correct Latin form.

Gallus found another weak spot in Tiberius' armour, and that was his hatred of any mention of his stay at Rhodes.

The most daring thing he did was to praise Tiberius one day for his clemency—it was the very day that news reached the city of Julia's death—and to tell the story of the teacher of rhetoric at Rhodes who had refused Tiberius' modest application to join his classes, on the ground that there was no vacancy at present, saying that he must come back in seven days. Gallus added, "And what do you think His Sacred... I beg your pardon, I should say, what do you think my honoured friend and fellow-senator Tiberius Nero Caesar did on his recent accession to the monarchy, when the same impertinent fellow arrived to pay his respects to the new divinity? Did he cut off that impudent head. and give it as a football to his German bodyguard? Not at all: with a wit only equalled by his clemency he told him that he had no vacancies at present in his corps of flatterers and that he must come back in seven years." This was an invention, I think, but the Senate had no reason to disbelieve it and applauded so heartily that Tiberius had to let it go by as the truth.

Tiberius at last silenced Haterius by saying very slowly one day: "You will please forgive me, Haterius, if I speak rather more frankly than it is usual for one senator to speak to another, but I must say that I think you are a dreadful bore and not in the least witty." Then he turned to the House: "You will forgive me, my lords, but I have always said and will say again