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BANDITS IN THE ROMAN EMPIRE
Tacitus gave this conflict of loyalties a positive aspect by drawing Clemens
as a sympathetic character. To be sure, the avenger of Augustus’ nephew is
a slave (mancipium) whose presumption (audacia) almost triggered civil war
and whose methods were deceit ( fraus) and violence (vis). Yet, despite all
this, according to Tacitus there was nothing servile in Clemens’ thinking
(non servili animo), 52 which may as its opposite inspire in his reader’s mind
the phrase magno animo: ‘noble of soul’. Tacitus treats Clemens’ intention
of avenging the murder of his master implicitly as an act of pietas, and so
allows him certain points in mitigation. Thus, although to begin with he
was joined only by shady characters, in the end Clemens could count colleagues
of the emperor, senators and equestrians among his sympathisers and
helpers. 53 Though the false Agrippa had come close to shaking the state to
its foundations, the moral blame for his crime was laid at the door of the
killer of the real Agrippa. Tiberius (or rather, that is, Tiberius as depicted by
Tacitus) knew this and it was for this reason that he had his challenger
secretly done away with, after having been able to defeat him only by deceit.
And yet, at the dramatic climax of Tacitus’ tale, Clemens, though defeated,
was able firmly to cast doubt on the legitimacy of his conqueror: Tiberius
was as much a true princeps as Clemens was the real Agrippa Postumus.
3 The avenger of Drusus, son of Germanicus
There was a second troublemaker under Tiberius who, in the manner of
Clemens, looked to political unrest. This was the false Drusus, 54 already
mentioned as having sought the support of the Syrian army group as the
basis for an attempt at usurpation. At first glance, at any rate, his case is
so similar to that of the false Agrippa Postumus that one might suspect a
doublet. Our informant is again Tacitus, 55 in his capacity as critic of the
Principate intent again on discreetly seeding his account of the reign of
Tiberius with yet another example of this emperor’s progressive depravity.
It could be that the man who appeared as Drusus in ad 3156 had been
inspired by the story of Clemens. The imposter, whose real identity remains
a mystery, gave himself out to be Drusus, son of Germanicus. In choosing
Drusus he chose someone who was as much of a victim of Tiberius’ regime
as had Clemens in Agrippa Postumus. At the time the real Drusus was in
Rome under arrest or already being starved to death in prison. He had fallen
prey to the machinations of Sejanus, 57 who was himself overthrown in the
same year as the one in which the false Drusus played out his charade. 58
This time the scene was set not in Rome but in Greece, the Cyclades and
Asia Minor. The imposter was joined by imperial freedmen in the sincere
belief that he was Drusus. Their testimony gave him credibility, enabling
him to recruit the ignorant, attracted by a famous name, into his ranks.
This, remarked Tacitus, exemplified the naïve credulity of the Greeks; but
how could they have known what or what not to believe? In the end the
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