Imperial Inquisitions

Prosecutors and Informants from Tiberius to Domitian

Steven H. Rutledge

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2002
• ISBN:
  9781134560592
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Ancient History
• Index: History

Delatores (political informants) and accusatores (malicious prosecutors) were a major part of life in imperial Rome. Contemporary sources depict them as cruel and heartless mercenaries, who bore the main responsibility for institutionalising and enforcing the 'tyranny' of the infamous rulers of the early empire, such as Nero, Caligula and Domitian. Stephen Rutledge's study examines the evidence to ask if this is a fair portrayal.
Beginning with a detailed examination of the social and political status of known informants and prosecutors, he goes on to investigate their activities - as well as the rewards they could expect. The main areas covered are:
* checking government corruption and enforcing certain classes of legislation
* blocking opposition and resistance to the emperor in the Senate
* acting as a partisan player in factional strife in the imperial family
* protecting the emperor against conspiracy.
The book includes a comprehensive guide to every known political informant under the early empire, with their name, all the relevant primary and secondary sources, and an individual biography.

Part I

1
INTRODUCTION

And when they had bound him, they led him away, and delivered him to Pontius Pilate the governor. Then Judas, which had betrayed him, when he saw that he was condemned, repented himself, and brought again the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and elders, saying, I have sinned in that I have betrayed the innocent blood. And they said, What is that to us? see thou to that. And he cast down the pieces of silver in the temple, and departed, and went and hanged himself.

(Matthew 27.2–5)

One would be hard pressed to find a better or more significant example of an informant under the Roman Empire than Judas Iscariot. By denouncing Jesus before the local authorities in Jerusalem, Judas unwittingly planted a seed that was fundamentally to change western society. Yet Judas was only part of a much larger phenomenon, for it was during Tiberius’ reign (AD 14–37), according to our sources, that informants and accusers – delatores and accusatores – began to ply their trade as they viciously attacked those suspected of disloyalty towards their emperor. If Roman authors portray the Early Principate as the establishment of the repressive rule of one man, then delatores were the instruments through which Rome and the emperors actively implemented that suppression. The primary aim of the present study is to examine the function and role of delatores and accusatores under the Early Principate from Tiberius to Domitian. Our sources depict them as a phenomenon unique to the Early Principate, an important part of the terror and despotism Tiberius, Gaius, Claudius, Nero, and Domitian imposed. Yet scholars, with few exceptions, have neglected to undertake any closer examination of this phenomenon, and no work, to date, has subjected the oft-distorted picture our sources draw of delatores and accusatores to a close and general scrutiny. Nor have they thought to place them in their larger historical, social, and political context.

The central premise of this study is that delatores and accusatores are reflective of enduring cultural and political values in Roman society; often their actions and motives would have been perfectly understood by Cicero and his republican counterparts. What had changed was the political and legal structure under which prosecutors worked: the shift to an autocratic form of government, new laws, the makeup of the courts, these were the new structures under which prosecutors functioned. The chief aims of the present study, therefore, are twofold: the first is to offer the reader a particular perspective on Roman history which has not been offered before, that of the Roman who collaborated with the regime and who felt his own interests were closely tied to the imperial court. The second aim is to throw into relief deeper and more enduring aspects of Roman society and politics which, I believe, inevitably leads us to modify the picture of delatores and accusatores as presented by our sources. Certain aspects of their behavior reflect deeper cultural and political dynamics little changed from the Republic, and both the motives and actions of numerous prosecutors would have been perfectly familiar to their republican forebears. While delatores certainly were, at times, a manifestation of the servitude apparently inherent in the Early Principate and sought to curry imperial favor, many who acted as delatores and accusatores under the early emperors were by no means purely the instruments of tyranny; other factors were at work. The ethos and social forces which drove this activity, including personal enmity (inimicitia), a sense of duty towards one’s friends or family (pietas), the client–patron “system,” and the desire for political and social clout and authority (auctoritas and dignitas), were deeply embedded in Roman society, during both the Republic and the Principate, as were the social prejudices and ethical reservations which lead our sources to depict delatores so negatively.¹ Of these, inimicitia had a particularly stubborn presence in Roman politics, and was to be a significant factor in prosecutions throughout the course of the Principate.² Moreover, the need for oversight in the workings of government and for state security always created a demand for the prosecutor’s services throughout Rome’s history. The Principate, however, brought with it its own changes which naturally facilitated the activity of delatores: the princeps’ (i.e. emperor’s) assumption of patronage, the need to protect his person, dynastic politics, a superabundance of new legislation, new legal prerogatives bestowed on the senate along with a changing set of demographics in that body, and other factors, introduced a set of new dynamics for the prosecutor. Such a reassessment cannot help but to highlight the palimpsest of social and political considerations which could potentially impel the delator’s activity. More importantly, delatores are generally considered to have contributed significantly to making the Principate a repressive institution. Yet, even given the significant changes within the changed structural contexts in which Roman prosecutors now worked, a closer examination of the activity of delatores shows that during the Early Principate the delator played only a limited part in curtailing the freedoms of others – political or civic – over what they were during the Republic.

Despite the vast output of material on Roman history and society of the Principate, scholars to date have not given delatores as comprehensive an examination as is warranted for so significant an aspect of Roman culture. The innumerable works on Roman law and history (in particular those studies dealing with the lex maiestatis and Augustus’ social legislation) tend to deal with delatores only peripherally, although a number of studies, notably Bauman’s contributions on Roman law, have helped to fill in some of the gaps.³ Several recent imperial biographies give delatores only a cursory examination, with the distinguished and important exception of Rudich’s study of dissidents under Nero (1993), although a number of studies, including Jones’s on Domitian (1992), Levick’s on Claudius (1990), Barrett’s on Caligula (1989) and Agrippina the Younger (1996), and Bauman’s on women in Roman politics (1992), include sober and thoughtful treatments of various trials as they relate to their subjects. More recently, Patrick Sinclair’s work on Tacitus (1995) has helped somewhat to place delatores in their social and cultural context. Rogers’ study of criminal trials under Tiberius (1935) still stands as an important resource, though his focus is almost entirely political; his study is lacking in detailed source criticism and he does not set this phenomenon in its larger cultural context. Schumacher’s recent work, Servus Index, is an excellent (and exhaustive) study, though, as the title of this magisterial book implies, it is limited in its scope. Then there are the numerous works, the disiecta membra, as it were, offering scattered bits and pieces analyzing the individual lives and careers of delatores, and the trials in which they were involved; as many of these have been brought together as were felt likely to prove useful to the reader, and as were deemed pertinent in reconstructing the individual biography of a particular delator. To date, there exists no detailed study in English of delatores, and the French and Italian studies which have treated this subject are almost exclusively legal in focus (and Boissier’s studies are now rather out of date).⁴ Moreover, the studies of Fanizza and Boissier omit any source criticism. The present study, therefore, is primarily a social and political history, which also makes use of literary and source criticism to reconstruct this activity; it is only tangentially a legal study.

The course and context of the study

This study has two parts. The first part constitutes a social and political history of delatores. The subject is structured thematically, with each chapter presented chronologically in order to follow the development of this phenomenon. The present chapter introduces the study, examining problems in our sources, and difficulties in defining and identifying just who would be considered a delator by a Roman. The difficulty is that we are frequently dealing with a rhetorical construct as much as a historical phenomenon. How do we recognize our subject? Chapter 2 examines delation as a means of social and political advancement: we first examine the social prejudices that inform our sources’ depiction of delation. We then look at the financial and political rewards available to accusers with a view to placing the activity in its larger historical context, under both the Republic and the Empire. Set against one another, the Republic and Empire show a general continuity in the rewards – both political and economic – available to prosecutors throughout Rome’s history. In Chapter 3 we argue that imperial accusatores were necessary for the smooth and effective workings of government, such as law enforcement at home or checking corruption in the provinces. Delatores are much maligned for their prosecution of cases for extortion in the provinces (repetundae), yet the numerous accusations under this charge during the Early Principate represent a genuine improvement from the Republic, as Tacitus himself acknowledges. In this chapter, too, we examine the delator’s role in implementing Augustus’ social legislation; while we do not take exception to the fact that laws such as the Julian law concerning adultery (lex Julia de adulteriis) meant that the state intruded into private life as never before, we do try to set such legislation in its larger cultural and historical context. The fourth and fifth chapters consider the role of delatores in meeting opposition and resistance to the princeps in the senate and how delatores functioned in the context of “factional” politics, such as it was, during the Principate. In these areas the delator’s role is difficult to assess, often because the nature and aims of what little opposition there was elude us. What these chapters do show, however, is that there tends to be a general lack of serious organized opposition to the princeps within the senate, and that the attempts of delatores to “create” opposition, particularly early in the reigns of Tiberius and Nero, generally fail. Political opponents who do fall by the accuser’s sword often do so with good reason. Powerful connections (sometimes with entire provinces or armies) which threaten the princeps, inherited enmities, attempts to destabilize the emperor’s regime through various means, and political allegiances contrary to imperial interests, could all mark a man if he did not watch his step. The sixth chapter looks, similarly, at the role the delator had as a partisan player in the factional strife that could sometimes tear at the fabric of the imperial house, as was the case during the protracted conflict which set Tiberius and Sejanus at odds against Agrippina the Elder and her family in the late 20s, or the rivalry for succession which caused innumerable difficulties under Claudius. The seventh chapter looks at the delator’s role in protecting the emperor’s personal security (and by connection the Empire’s stability) by uncovering immediate threats to the princeps’ life; conspiracies such as those of Libo’s in 16, Camillus Scribonianus’ in 42, or Piso’s in 65, all had to be checked. Readers with some familiarity with this subject will note that this study does not attempt to set delatores – some of whom were orators of great repute – in the context of the development of Roman oratory; the reason for this is that we have already discussed in detail delatores as orators elsewhere (Rutledge 1999: 555–73). It suffices to point out that it has long been held that delatores established a new, more violent type of oratory in the first century. Set in their larger context, however, the style of oratory attributed to them in the first century AD differed little from that of their republican forebears. In the Epilogue we look briefly at the continuation of delation under the later Empire, and touch on points of contact between delation and analogous forms of behavior in other societies, including our own, with a view to setting this subject in its larger ethical, historical, and political context.

The second part of this work is a prosopographical survey of those who acted or may have acted as delatores from the reign of Tiberius through Domitian.⁵ This is intended primarily to be a reference guide for the reader, and will be cited frequently throughout the course of this study.⁶ In the interest of reducing excessive inter-textual references, I advise readers that any information or assertion not documented in the course of the first part of this study can be found complete with source citations in the individual vita of a delator. Throughout the whole of the study all translations are my own, with the exception of translated passages from the King James version of the Bible. Some, but not all, of the Latin and Greek has been translated in the notes, and passages left in the original Greek have been transliterated. The reason for this is that while the body of the work as a whole is aimed at a general audience, footnotes are directed at a more specialized reader. Dates, unless otherwise noted, are AD.

We concentrate on this time period (AD 14–96) not only because of the relatively abundant documentation for it, but because our sources, such as Tacitus, Pliny, and Dio, give particular attention to the activities of delatores throughout their works. There are instances, however, where this chronological framework will be broken; this is necessary, most obviously, because one of the central premises of this study is that the activities of delatores and accusatores reflect abiding cultural and political trends in Roman society. In revising our view of their activities, it is necessary not only to look occasionally at their forebears under the Republic, but also to consider this activity under so-called “good” emperors, such as Augustus and Trajan. It should be noted, however, that this work will not attempt to analyze the vast number of criminal prosecutions from the Republic, many of which were politically inspired; nor will it attempt to scrutinize the scope of maiestas (treason) laws in both periods, unless immediately relevant to our discussion, since these areas have received ample (not to mention recent) attention.⁷ It will be necessary, however, to make periodic references to the republican period, and occasionally detailed discussion will be required. Finally, it must be noted that this study is not a comprehensive survey of all the criminal trials that took place during the Early Principate. We will only investigate those depicted as delationes or in which delatores or accusatores took part, i.e. prosecutions which our sources depict as in some way malicious or vindictive, or which supposedly contribute in some way to the repressive nature of the Early Empire.

Sources

Our sources for delatores and accusatores are numerous, diverse, and often far from well disposed towards them; each of these sources and the problems they present will be discussed at the relevant points of this study, but some initial words of caution are necessary. For the Republic our major sources include Cicero, Livy, and Sallust. Each of these writers has certain encumbrances of a political, historical, or literary nature. There is no doubt, for example, that Cicero’s depiction of accusers from the time of Sulla in his rhetorical treatise, the Brutus, was influenced by his own experiences with certain characters from that period, such as Chrysogonus and Erucius. Livy’s representation of informants in the Early Republic is generally anachronistic, at times clearly influenced by more recent events; hence the conspiracy to recall Tarquin in 509 BC reveals the influence of both Cicero’s and Sallust’s depiction of the Catilinarian conspiracy of 63 BC (see Appendix 3, p.). Other sources for ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Preface and Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations
• Part I
• Part II: Delatores: A prosopographical survey