Emperor Tiberius

“ He was both sensible and modest: he restrained the worship of Augustus, "lest through being too common it should be turned into an idle ceremony;" he refused the worship of himself, except in one temple dedicated equally to the Senate and to the Emperor. Tiberius could be pathetic, too: "I bewail my son, and ever shall bewail him," he says of Germanicus; and again, "Eloquence is not measured by fortune, and it is a sufficient honour, if he be ranked among the ancient orators." "Princes are mortal;" he says again, "the Commonwealth, eternal." ”

“ But when he steadfastly refused this petition (for he was a man of a very inflexible disposition, and very merciless as well as very obstinate) , they cried out: 'Do not cause a sedition; do not make war upon us; do not destroy the peace which exists. The honour of the emperor is not identical with dishonour to the ancient laws; let it not be to you a pretence for heaping insult on our nation. Tiberius is not desirous that any of our laws or customs shall be destroyed. ”

“ The father of Livia had been a political and possibly personal friend of Tiberius Nero; he fought on the losing side at the battle of Philippi, and was among those who killed themselves after their cause seemed to be irreparably lost; immediately afterwards Tiberius Nero married Livia, who, if she was eighty-six at the time of her death in A.D. 29, can have been little more than fourteen at the time of her first marriage. According to Paterculus the historian, the Emperor Tiberius was less than two years old when his parents fled to Naples after the fall of Perusia in B.C. 40 ”

“ At the same time, a vehement distemper having seized Livia, obliged the Emperor to hasten his return to Rome; seeing hitherto the mother and son lived in apparent unanimity; or perhaps mutually disguised their hate: for, not long before, Livia, having dedicated a statue to the deified Augustus, near the theatre of Marcellus, had the name of Tiberius inscribed after her own. This he was believed to have resented heinously, as a degrading the dignity of the Prince; but to have buried his resentment under dark dissimulation. ”

“ No man's life was safe at Rome from this moment, and the purest and wisest citizens were exposed to the attacks of an infinite number of delators. Tiberius encouraged the informers. Ælius Saturninus was flung from the Tarpeian Rock for a libel upon the emperor. Silanus was banished for "disparaging the majesty of Tiberius."
Tiberius, who professed to imitate the policy of Augustus in every particular, seems to have governed with firmness and ability. ”

“ Livia had procured the death of prince after prince who stood between her son Tiberius and the throne. Tiberius did indeed become Emperor, but ‘had Zimri peace who slew his master’? Pliny calls Tiberius ‘confessedly the gloomiest of men.’ He himself wrote to the Senate that he felt himself daily destroyed by all the gods and goddesses. And, after all, his only son died, and he was succeeded by Caligula, the bad and brutal son of the hated and murdered Germanicus and the hated and murdered Agrippina the elder. ”

“ That was the kind of emperor into whose hands the Romans had now fallen. Hence the deeds of Tiberius, though they were felt to have been most grievous, were still as far superior to those of Gaius as the deeds of Augustus were to those of his successor. For Tiberius always held the power in his own hands and used other people to help him carry out his wishes: Gaius, on the other hand, was ruled by charioteers and by gladiators; he was the slave of dancers and other theatrical performers. ”

“ The grammarian Diogenes, who used to lecture every Sabbath at Rhodes, would not admit Tiberius when he came to hear him on a different day, but sent a message by a common slave of his, putting him off to the seventh day. When this man waited before the Emperor's door at Rome to pay his respects, Tiberius took no further revenge than to bid him return seven years later. To the governors who recommended burdensome taxes for his provinces, he wrote in answer that it was the part of a good shepherd to shear his flock, not skin it. ”

“ We only deplore the fact that he is no longer the great Emperor he was in the beginning of his reign.”
“You are mistaken,” said the stranger. “Every one hates and detests Tiberius. Why should they do otherwise? He is nothing but a cruel and merciless tyrant. In Rome they think that from now on he will become even more unreasonable than he has been.”
“Has anything happened, then, which will turn him into a worse beast than he is already?” queried the vine-dresser. ”

“ For as Augustus was now very aged, she had over him obtained such absolute sway, that for her pleasure he banished into the Isle of Planasia his only surviving grandson, Agrippa Postumus; one, in truth, destitute of laudable accomplishments, in his temper untractable, and stupidly conceited of his mighty strength, but branded with no misdemeanour or transgression. The Emperor had withal set Germanicus, the son of Drusus, over eight legions quartered upon the Rhine, and obliged Tiberius to adopt him, though Tiberius had then a son of his own, one of competent years ”

“ One of the first victims in the sanguinary reign of the present emperor, was Germanicus, the son of Drusus, Tiberius's own brother, and who had been adopted by his uncle himself. Under any sovereign, of a temper different from that of Tiberius, this amiable and meritorious prince would have been held in the highest esteem. At the death of his grandfather Augustus, he was employed in a war in Germany, where he greatly distinguished himself by his military achievements ”

“ He had proposed "that the Praetorian soldiers, having accomplished their term of service, should thence acquire the privilege of sitting in the fourteen rows of the theatre allotted to the Roman knights." Upon him Tiberius fell with violent wrath, and, as if present, demanded, what business had he with the soldiers? men whose duty bound them to observe only the orders of the Emperor, and from the Emperor alone to receive their rewards. Gallio had forsooth discovered a recompense which had escaped the sagacity of the deified Augustus? ”

“ Verily, they look it. Judging merely by their general style, and without other evidence, one might easily suspect that self-righteousness was their specialty.
From various authorities I have culled information concerning Tiberias. It was built by Herod Antipas, the murderer of John the Baptist, and named after the Emperor Tiberius. It is believed that it stands upon the site of what must have been, ages ago, a city of considerable architectural pretensions, judging by the fine porphyry pillars that are scattered through Tiberias and down the lake shore southward. ”

“ The policy this of the late reign, when Tiberius frustrated every request of the soldiers, by referring all to Augustus; now Drusus was come with the same artifices to delude them: were they never to have a higher visit than from the children of their Prince? It was, indeed, unaccountable, that to the Senate the Emperor should leave no part in the direction of the army, only the rewarding of the soldiery: ought not the same Senate to be consulted as often as a battle was to be fought, or a private man to be punished? ”

“ Everything which was said in the senatorial circles or in the palaces of the emperor or of his relatives was quickly repeated among the cohorts, and the memory of Drusus and Germanicus was deeply venerated by the pretorians. If the guard could have been persuaded that the emperor was a poisoner of his kindred, their loyalty would have been exposed to numberless intrigues and attempts at seduction. In such a condition of affairs, a commander of the guard who could inspire Tiberius with a complete and absolute trust might easily acquire a great influence over him. ”

“ In the imperfect fifth and in the sixth book of the 'Annals' the history of Tiberius is completed. It is little more than the chronicle of suspicions and fears, and consequently increasing cruelty. An emperor, designed by nature for great and salutary ends—some of which in the first nine years of his reign he carried out—gradually sank into a tyrant, who was at once miserable himself, and terrible to at least the higher order of his subjects. Not until after the death of Sejanus did he learn the real story of his son's death. ”

“ Tiberius was once more associated with Augustus in the tribunician power for ten years. [255] There could be no longer any doubt who would succeed. At the death of Augustus there would be, if Tiberius survived, a man already possessed of the most [169] important of his functions; and his position was still farther strengthened in the last year of the Emperor’s life by being associated also in his imperium proconsulare. ”

“ The new men were employed less in Italy than in the imperial provinces, where indeed it was important that the officials should be attached to the person of the Emperor rather than to the abstraction called the Senate and the people of Rome. Neither Augustus nor Tiberius were afraid to entrust the really effective powers of Prefect of the City of Rome to members of the old aristocracy. ”

“ She was alone with the emperor when death overtook him on a journey, at Nola in Lower Italy, in the seventy-sixth year of his age; and by carefully guarding the house and spreading false reports she concealed the fact of his decease until her son, who for several years had been associated with his adoptive father as coadjutor in the empire, could be summoned from Illyricum. Then the world was startled by the double announcement that Augustus was dead and that Tiberius had assumed the reins of power. ”

“ That two parties were not formed was due very largely to the fact that Germanicus was sufficiently reasonable not to allow himself to be carried too far by the current which favored him, and possibly also to the fact that during the entire reign of Tiberius his mother Antonia was the most faithful and devoted friend of the emperor. After his divorce from Julia, Tiberius had not married again, and the offices of tenderness which a wife should have given him were discharged in part by his mother, but largely by his sister-in-law. ”

“ Her children by Drusus were adopted by the complying emperor; and, that she might make the succession of her son Tiberius more easy and undisputed, Livia is accused of secretly involving in one common ruin the heirs and nearest relations of Augustus. Her cruelty and ingratitude are still more strongly marked, when she is charged with having murdered her own husband to hasten the elevation of Tiberius. If she was anxious for the aggrandizement of her son, Tiberius proved ungrateful, and hated a woman to whom he owed his life, his elevation, and his greatness. ”

“ With respect to Sejanus, it is impossible to acquit Tiberius of blame. If he was deceived in his favourite he must have been willing to be deceived. He conferred on Sejanus a position as great as had been held by Agrippa during the reign of Augustus, and the minister was actually, and all but formally, joint emperor. ”

“ We are not told whether this letter was written by Livia or by Augustus; but it was surely written at the instance of Livia. No man was more willing to forgive and to forget than the Emperor; his whole life had been a record of successful conciliation of declared enemies; both by policy and inclination he was averse to the maintenance of personal feuds. Livia, too, may have seen in the stiffness of Tiberius a reason for advancing the young Cæsars, over whom, as more pliable, she hoped to secure influence. ”

“ Now, the reign of Tiberius may be considered as commencing at the time he became sole emperor, in August of the year of Rome 767; or (as there is some reason to suppose that Augustus made him partner in the government two years before he died) , we may begin his reign in the year of Rome 765. The fifteenth year of Tiberius will therefore be either the year of Rome 781 or 779. From which deduct 30, and we have the year of Rome 751 or 749 for the year of Christ's birth; the former two and the latter four years earlier than the Dionysian computation. ”

“ Then the armies of Spain set up one Emperor, and the armies of Gaul another, and the armies of Syria a third; for two years a reversion to anarchy seemed inevitable. The perpetual intrigues of jealous ladies ambitious for their sons or husbands did not contribute to the pleasures of existence in the Imperial households, but they were less evil than the disruption of the Empire or the emergence of military adventurers. Tiberius sacrificed his domestic comfort to the interests of the State ”

“ Tiberius, in a speech to the people, pointed out eloquently all the germs of destruction in the Roman power, and traced the picture of the deplorable condition of the citizens spread over the territory of Italy without an asylum in which to repose their bodies enfeebled by war, after they had shed their blood for their country. He cited revolting examples of the arbitrary conduct of certain magistrates, who had caused innocent men to be put to death on the most futile pretexts. ”

“ Tacitus was interested in proving that till the reigns of Nerva and Trajan there never had been a good Emperor. Augustus was beyond the reach of attack; that reputation could not be damaged by malignant epigrams, but the end of the reign of Tiberius had been involved in a strange catastrophe, whose unquestioned horrors would lend credibility to misrepresentations of the events by which it had been preceded, and when Tacitus wrote, the Senate had just emerged from a similar, or apparently similar, persecution at the hands of Domitian ”