But Augustus doomed that marriage, too. He insisted that Tiberius, as future successor, divorce his beloved wife Vipsania in order to marry his only offspring, Julia, instead—so desperately did Augustus want his personal bloodline to continue. Yet Julia soon became Rome’s civic personification of vice, a woman so adulterous and vile that Augustus himself banished her for life to a Mediterranean island.
Only his son was left to Tiberius, Drusus, the promising heir apparent, but he had died of a strange illness three years earlier. Tiberius Caesar, sovereign of seventy million people in an empire extending from the English Channel to the gates of Mesopotamia, was a man quite alone.
He beckoned to a servant, pondered for a moment, and said, “Send word to Sejanus that I’ll see him this afternoon at the eighth hour.” The domestic delivered the message to one of the praetorian bodyguards, who hurried off eastward toward the mansion of Sejanus on the slopes of the Esquiline.
L. Aelius Sejanus was prefect, or commander, of the Praetorian Guard, that corps of elite troops who protected the emperor and served as Rome’s government police. A swarthy, muscular figure of large build, Sejanus was today flawlessly draped in a white woolen public toga. The prefect was middle-aged—though ageless in the eyes of the women of Rome—and he betrayed Etruscan ancestry in his non-aquiline features, so unlike the typical, high-bridged Roman face.
The inner Sejanus, his real loyalties and true political motives, was a storm center of controversy. Many claimed that Rome never had a more selfless and public-minded official, certainly never a more efficient one. But his opponents hinted darkly that Sejanus was a true Etruscan of old pre-Republic stock, and, as such, Rome’s mortal enemy, a ghost of Tarquin risen up to haunt the Empire.
His rise had been meteoric. Though only of equestrian, or middle-class, status, Sejanus now possessed powers which made blue-blooded, patrician senators scurry to join his following, or sulk jealously outside it. Part of his attainment was inherited. Augustus had named his father, Seius Strabo, prefect of the Praetorian Guard, and Tiberius had appointed Sejanus to the same post, sending Strabo abroad to govern Egypt.
In the decade since that time, Sejanus had gradually enhanced his office; no longer was it merely a steppingstone to authority, but now represented poised, concentrated power itself. His brilliant reorganization of the praetorians had accomplished it. He had proposed to unite the nine praetorian cohorts, or battalions, scattered throughout Italy into one large barracks near Rome, where the elite home guard would be far more readily available to the emperor in any emergency. Tiberius had approved the idea, and a sprawling new Castra Praetoria was erected on the Viminal Hill, just outside the northeast city walls of Rome. But these troops were loyal to their prefect, and when Sejanus spoke, nine thousand guardsmen listened and obeyed.
Too much power in the hands of one man? Tiberius thought not. He needed this instant security, and he had never detected in Sejanus a shred of disloyalty to himself or “the Senate and the Roman People,” as the Empire officially designated itself. Tiberius judged that a man like Sejanus was indispensable at this stage of Rome’s governmental evolution. No longer a republic, not yet a fully developed empire, Rome badly needed a strong administrative bureaucracy in place of her hodgepodge of commissions. Tiberius had this problem in mind when he urged Sejanus to serve also as his deputy in supervising the developing civil service of the Empire.
The message from the Palatine was delivered to Sejanus just as the two consuls for the year 26 A.D. were leaving his house. They had come to sound him out on rumors about Tiberius’s plans for an extended vacation away from Rome. Characteristically, Sejanus would neither confirm nor deny the news. As the honor guard of ten lictors quickly shouldered their fasces and rattled to attention to escort the consuls through the streets of Rome, the two could be heard arguing over Sejanus, Calvisius whining his objections to the man, and Gaetulicus just as stubbornly defending him, a mirror in miniature of Rome’s collective sentiments in the matter.
From the library where he conducted his official business, Sejanus looked into the atrium, or entrance court, of his mansion and saw the imperial messenger threading through the crowd of officials, clients, and functionaries, all waiting to see him. Upon reading the note from Tiberius, Sejanus rose quickly from his chair and took a few steps off to one side, turning his back to the noisy throng in the atrium in order to give himself a few moments of concentration. With shoulders hunched and chin to his chest, he remained motionless for perhaps half a minute, gathering together in his mind all the diverse factors bearing upon one of his latest political moves. Yes, he decided, the time was right to approach the emperor. But there was at least one step necessary before that. Grasping a stylus, he inscribed the following on a wax tablet:
L. Aelius Sejanus to Pontius Pilatus, greeting. I should like to see you early this afternoon, perhaps about the seventh hour. Had I not promised lunch to Domitius Afer, we could have dined together. Another time. Farewell.
The message written, he turned briskly to summon his next visitor.
A guardsman returning to the Castra Praetoria brought the note to the tribune of the first praetorian cohort, acting camp commander whenever Sejanus was absent, Pontius Pilatus. Pilate read the message and frowned slightly. Not that he disliked Sejanus—quite to the contrary—but he felt saturated with embarrassment over what had happened the previous night. At a party in honor of the praetorian officers’ staff, when everyone had imbibed freely, Pilate had proposed a toast to “Biberius Caldius Mero” instead of “Tiberius Claudius Nero,” a too-clever pun on the emperor’s given name, which meant “Drinker of Hot Wine.” Everyone roared with approving guffaws except Sejanus, who merely stared at Pilate, a shivering, superior stare which the tribune spent much of the morning trying to forget.
If Tiberius got word of his indiscretion, he could lose more than his praetorian rank. Just the year before, he recalled with a shudder, a history published by Senator Cremutius Cordus had dared to eulogize the Caesar-slayers Brutus and Cassius as “the last of the Romans.” Accused of treason, Cordus starved himself to death and his writings were burned. Speech was no longer so free as it had been in Rome’s republican era. With an inner chill, Pilate prepared for the confrontation with Sejanus.
The message from Sejanus had been civil enough, but the time for the appointment was extraordinary, just after lunch when most Romans took a brief nap. This had to be important. After a quick—and wineless—meal, Pilate decided to change to civilian garb. His tunic sported the angusticlavia, a narrow bordering strip of purple running the length of the garment and indicating that the wearer was a member of the equestrian order, a class second only to the senatorial, which boasted the laticlavia, a wider purple strip. In public, the tunic was largely covered by a toga, and draping the toga was nearly an art. Every fold had to hang properly, gracefully, and just the right amount of purple had to show from the tunic: too much would be ostentatious, too little would betray false modesty. Pilate let several folds of purple appear near the shoulder, a compromise in good taste.
Accompanied by an aide, Pilate made his way down Patrician Street, a major axis leading southwest from the Castra Praetoria toward the heart of Rome. Except for his attire, he was not distinguishable from the milling Romans of all classes using that thoroughfare. Less than middle-aged and in the prime of his years, Pilate was of medium build, and his square-cut face was topped with curly dark hair duly pomaded with olive oil. He looked more typically Roman than Sejanus, but, like his superior, Pilate was also not of purely Roman stock. His clan, the Pontii, were originally Samnites, hill cousins of the Latin Romans, who lived along the Apennine mountain spine farther down the Italian peninsula, and who had almost conquered Rome in several fierce wars. The Pontii were of noble blood, but when Rome finally absorbed the Samnites, their aristocracy was demoted to the Roman equestrian order. Still, the Pontii had the consolation of ranking as equites illustriores, “more distinguished equestrians,” and members of Pilate’s clan had served Rome in numerous offices, both civil and military. Some had entered the business world, made fortunes, and even regained senatorial status in the Empire.