I should at this point, I think, describe his personal appearance. He was a tall, dark-haired, fair-skinned, heavily built man with a magnificent pair of shoulders, and hands so strong that he could crack a walnut, or bore a tough skinned green apple through, with thumb and forefinger.
If he had not been so slow in his movements be would have made a champion boxer: he once killed a comrade in a friendly bout--bare-fisted, not with the usual metal boxing-gloves--with a blow on the side of the head that cracked his skull. He walked with his neck thrust slightly forward and his eyes on the ground.
His face would have been handsome if it had not been disfigured by so many pimples, and if his eyes had not been so prominent, and if he had not worn an almost perpetual frown. His statues make him extremely handsome because they leave out these defects. He spoke little, and that very slowly, so that in conversation with him one always felt tempted to finish his sentences for him and answer them in the same breath.
But, when he pleased, he was an impressive public speaker.
He went bald early in life except at the back of his head, where he grew his hair long, a fashion of the ancient nobility. He was never ill.
Tiberius, unpopular as he was in Roman society, was nevertheless an extremely successful general. He revived various ancient disciplinary severities, but since he did not spare himself when on campaign, seldom sleeping in a tent, eating and drinking no better than the men and always charging at their head in battle, they preferred to serve under him than under some good-humoured, easy-
going commander in whose leadership they did not have the same confidence.
Tiberius never gave his men a smile o a word of praise and often overmarched and overworked them. "Let them hate me," he once said, "so long as they obey me."
He kept the colonels and regimental officers in as strict order as the men, so there were no complaints o his partiality. Service under Tiberius was not unprofitable he usually contrived to capture and sack the enemy's camp and cities. He fought successful wars in Armenia, Parthia Germany, Spain, Dalmatia, the Alps, and France.
My father was, as I say, one of the best Claudians. He was as strong as his brother, far better looking, quicker of speech and movement and by no means less successful as a general. He treated all soldiers as Roman citizens and therefore as his equals, except in rank and education. He hated having to inflict punishment on them: he gave orders that as far as possible all offences against discipline should be dealt with by the offender's own comrades, whom he assumed to be jealous for the good name of their section or company. He gave it out that if they found that any offence was beyond their corrective powers, for he did not allow them to kill a culprit or incapacitate him for his daily military duties, it should be referred to the regimental colonel; but so far as possible he wished his men to be their own judges. The captains might flog, by permission of their regimental colonels, but only in cases where the offence, such as cowardice in battle or theft from a comrade, showed a baseness of character that made flogging appropriate; but he ordered that a man once flogged must never afterwards serve as a combatant, he must be degraded to the transport or clerical staff. Any soldier who considered that he had been unjustly sentenced by his comrades or his captain might appeal to him; but he thought it unlikely that such sentences would need to be revised. This system worked admirably, because my father was such a fine soldier that he inspired the troops to a virtue of which other commanders did not believe them capable. But it can be understood how dangerous it was for troops who had been handled in this way to be commanded afterwards by any ordinary general. The gift of independence once granted cannot be lightly taken away again. There was always trouble when troops who had served under my father happened to be drafted for service under my uncle. It happened the other way about too: troops who had served under my uncle reacted with scorn and suspicion to my father's disciplinary system. Their custom had been to shield each other's crimes and to pride themselves on their cunning in avoiding detection; and since under my uncle a man could be flogged, for example, for addressing an officer without being first addressed, or for speaking with too great frankness, or for behaving independently in any way, it was an [41] honour rather than a disgrace for a soldier to be able to show the marks of the lash on his back.
My father's greatest victories were in the Alps, France, the Low Countries, but especially in Germany, where his name will, I think, never be forgotten. He was always in the thick of the fighting. His ambition was to perform a feat which had only been performed twice in Roman history, namely, as general to kill the opposing general with his own hands and strip him of his arms. He was many times very close to success but his prey always escaped him.
Either the fellow galloped off the field or surrendered instead of fighting, or some officious private soldier got the blow in first. Veterans telling me stories of my father have often chuckled admiringly: "Oh, Sir, it used to do our hearts good to see your father on his black horse playing hide-and-seek in the battle with one of those German chieftains. He'd be forced to cut down nine or ten of the bodyguard sometimes, tough men too, before he got near the standard, and by then the wily bird would be flown.
The proudest boast of men who had served under my father was that he was the first Roman general who had marched the full length of the Rhine from Switzerland to the North Sea.
IV
MY FATHER HAD NEVER FORGOTTEN MY GRANDFATHER'S teaching about liberty. As quite a small boy he had fallen foul of Marcellus, five years his senior, to whom Augustus had given the title "Leader of Cadets". He had told Marcellus that the title had been awarded to him only for a specific occasion [a sham-fight called "Greeks and Trojans" fought on Mars Field between two forces of mounted cadets, the sons of knights and senators] and that it did not carry with it any of the general judicial powers which Marcellus had since assumed; and that, for himself, as a free-born Roman, he would not submit to such tyranny.
He reminded Marcellus that the opposing side in the sham fight had been led by Tiberius, and that Tiberius had won the honours of the engagement. He challenged Marcellus to a duel. Augustus was very much amused when he heard the story and for a long time never referred to my father except playfully as "the free-born Roman".
Whenever he was in Rome now my father chafed at the growing spirit of subservience to Augustus that he everywhere encountered, and always longed to be back in arms.
While acting as one of the chief City magistrates during an absence of Augustus and Tiberius in France he was disgusted by the prevalence of place-hunting and political jobbery. He privately told a friend, from whom I heard it years later, that there was more of the old Roman spirit of liberty to be found in a single company of his soldiers than in the whole senatorial order. Shortly before his death he wrote Tiberius a bitter letter to this effect from a camp in the interior of Germany. He said that he wished to Heaven that Augustus would follow the glorious example of the Dictator Sulla, who, when sole master of Rome after the first Civil Wars, all his enemies being either subjugated or pacified, had only]