Clementia Caesaris: Augustus and Tiberius

Augustus institutionalised Clementia Caesaris. Its enhanced status was announced at the very beginning of the Principate. In 27 BC, in return for his â€?restoration of the Republic’, Augustus received a number of honours, including a golden shield commemorating his valour, clemency, justice and piety—virtus, clementia, iustitia, pietas.⁴² He was also awarded a civic crown to be fixed to his door.

The awards were designed to put an end to the recriminations in regard to the punishment of Caesar’s murderers. The Republicans claimed that â€?Cassius and Brutus⁴³ had fallen to an inherited feud,⁴⁴ but private enmities should be subordinated to the public interest [publicae militates]’ (Tac. Ann. 1.10.2). Augustus himself claimed that he had driven them into exile by due process of law.⁴⁵ His propaganda machine was more explicit: â€?It was in keeping with clementia Caesaris⁴⁶ that none of those who had borne arms against him was put to death by him, or at his order; Antony’s cruelty had been responsible for that.’⁴⁷ The rider about Antony was aimed at an even more embarrassing criticism. Octavian (Augustus) had been a member of the triumvirate that mounted the notorious proscriptions after Caesar’s death.⁴⁸ Putting the blame on Antony, but without using the dread word â€?proscriptions’, was as close as Augustus ever got to apologising for his part in that tenebrous episode.

Augustus’ clemency moved ahead of Caesar’s in one important respect. He did not confine it to the treatment of political offenders. Common law criminals were also shown consideration. This is well illustrated by the case of a man whom the emperor tried for parricide.

The institutionalisation of clementia continued under Tiberius, but in a somewhat different way. Clementia was shown on coins, and an Ara Clementiae, an Altar of Clemency, was dedicated.⁵⁰ But the altar tended more to commemorate public clementia than that of the emperor.⁵¹

Tiberius took some important steps in respect of clemency to enemies. Augustus had focussed primarily on clementia as an institution for the benefit of citizens, and in regard to enemies he had laid down that foreign nations were only to be saved rather than destroyed if that could be done without jeopardising the public interest.⁵² Tiberius began applying this policy even before Augustus’ death. In AD 12, having brought the Pannonian campaign to a successful conclusion, he sent the Pannonian leader, Bato, to comfortable retirement at Ravenna on the Italian Adriatic coast, instead of putting him to death. During the campaign Bato had surrendered in fidem, thus Tiberius simply honoured the fides due to a surrendered foe.⁵³ Technically the case is not one of dementia, but it has a general humanitarian flavour.

The year AD 18 produced a case that stands closer to actual dementia. The Suebian leader, Maroboduus, was driven out of his kingdom and found that his only resource was to appeal to the misericordia of his old enemy, Tiberius. The emperor offered him a home in Italy, which he would be allowed to leave if it became expedient for him to do so. But in the senate Tiberius said that Maroboduus was more dangerous than Pyrrhus; he was being held as a hostage for the good behaviour of the Suebi.

There was nothing new about libera custodia, the comfortable house arrest given to Bato and Maroboduus.⁵⁵ In a general sense it was clementia, provided that it served Rome’s interests. But it was only to citizens that dementia was available as of right.⁵⁶ But the question is, whose dementia? For this we must turn to the court situation. Two cases arise. In AD 16 Libo Drusus was charged with using occult arts against the dynasty. He killed himself before the senate reached a verdict, but Tiberius told the senate that he would have spared Libo’s life even if he had been guilty.⁵⁷ The emperor made his statement on oath in order to give it the force of an exemplum, a precedent that was persuasive even if not formally binding. Five years later Clutorius Priscus was charged with practising black magic by composing a premature elegy for Tiberius’ son Drusus, who had been ill but recovered. Most senators favoured the death penalty under an ancient XII Tables rule, but Marcus Lepidus tried to have the case subsumed under the maiestas law in order to give Priscus access to voluntary exile:

The crime is atrocious, but his punishment should be tempered by the emperor’s moderatio and by old exempla. There is room for a sentence that neither leaves the crime unpunished nor causes us to regret either clementia or severitas. I have often heard the emperor complain when someone forestalled his misericordia by taking his own life.⁵⁸ I propose that Priscus leave Rome, that his property be confiscated, and that he be interdicted from water and fire. This I propose as if he were bound by the lex maiestatis.⁵⁹

Lepidus’ proposal failed and Priscus was executed. Tiberius was out of Rome at the time, but on his return he criticised the senate’s haste and got it to decree that in future its sentences were not to be carried out until the tenth day after pronouncement, so as to give the emperor time to veto them.⁶⁰

There were two competing claims to clementia at this time. Clementia publica, which had come down from the Republic,⁶¹ was being exercised by the senate.⁶² But there was also the matter of the emperor’s clementia. Lepidus balanced it against the senate’s clementia in his speech. But Clementia Caesaris did not get as far as inclusion in the Altar of Clemency.⁶³

Caligula tried to end the concurrence of two claims to clementia. When he revived charges of maiestas in 39, the senate voted annual sacrifices to his clemency; and a golden image of the emperor was to be carried up to the Capitol (Dio 59.16.8-11). But this travesty of Augustus’ golden shield did not succeed in eliminating the dichotomy. There would be a major confrontation between Nero and his senate, and another between Domitian and that body.