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AVENGERS IN DYNASTIC CONFLICTS
emphasises as emanating from the crisis following Nero the realisation that
‘emperors could be made elsewhere than in Rome’. 43 Readers of the ‘Annals’
were, of course, already aware of the history of 69, and so able to make the
connections that Tacitus wanted them to without further prompting and,
thanks to so plausible a potential for disaster, were able to believe fully in
his introductory comment on the Clemens incident, that the state came close
to being rocked by discord and civil war. 44 The link with 69 is signalled both
by the phrase exercitus Germanici 45 and by another line of thinking, concerning
the events which occurred on the Rhine after the death of Augustus. 46
Instead of Tiberius, the Rhine army had demanded Germanicus as the new
princeps. Germanicus prudently eschewed the attempt, and even managed to
pacify the rebellious legions. If Clemens really had planned to free Agrippa
Postumus from exile and take him to the Rhine, he made the right choice;
if the idea was Tacitus’, he framed a likely scenario for usurpation.
Whoever devised the scheme to rescue Agrippa Postumus wittingly or
unwittingly followed the example of Lucius Audasius and Asinius Epicadus
some years earlier. Before the death of Augustus, these two had conspired to
attempt to free Julia and Agrippa Postumus from their respective places of
banishment and bring them to the troops. 47 The plan failed, but it showed
that in the dynastic struggles within the imperial family ‘Julians’ suppressed
by ‘Claudians’ could call upon certain dependants who might well mobilise
in their aid. 48 Rival branches of a ruling family, embroiled in a dynastic
contest which a slave of the ruling house seeks to influence as avenger of the
losing side – none of this is purely fortuitous. We shall meet its like again
in the family of king Herod.
In assessing Clemens it is important to note that he gave thought to
personal vengeance only after he had learned of the death of his master.
Until then he wished only to liberate Agrippa and, in order to give him a
flying start, to assist him to a military power base. All this indicates Clemens’
unconditional loyalty to Agrippa and makes it at least probable that he
followed no personal political agenda. He must have regarded the situation
in which he found himself on Agrippa’s murder as extremely awkward since,
being of servile status, he had no legal competence to take action against his
master’s killer. He was put in a further dilemma by the law of inheritance,
according to which a slave on the death of his master became the property
of the heir. 49 Originally the slave of Agrippa Postumus, Clemens had since
ad 6 belonged to the familia of Augustus as a result of the latter’s deciding,
at the same time as he banished his nephew-by-blood and adopted son,
Agrippa, also to confiscate his property and debit it officially to the Military
Treasury (Aerarium Militare). 50 With Augustus dead, Clemens for the second
time received a new master to whom, of course, he owed exactly the same
loyalty as to the old. But this new master was none other than Tiberius,
heir of Augustus and prime suspect as the perpetrator of or accessory to the
murder of Agrippa. 51
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