Tiberius

Roman emperor (r. 14-37 c.e.)

• Born: November 16, 42 b.c.e.
• Birthplace: Rome (now in Italy)
• Died: March 16, 37 c.e.
• Place of death: Misenum (now in Italy)

As the second emperor of Rome, Tiberius solidified and firmly established the new system of power—but not without devastating impact on his personal life and the Roman upper classes.

Early Life

Tiberius (ti-BIHR-ee-uhs) Claudius Nero, the second emperor of Rome, came from a very ancient family of Sabine origin, the Claudians, who had moved to Rome shortly after the foundation of the city. Among the most patrician of Rome’s residents, the Claudians expressed an aristocratic disdain for the other, less ancient, less noble inhabitants of Rome.

Tiberius’s father, also named Tiberius Claudius Nero, was an associate of Julius Caesar and served as a quaestor (a sort of deputy) under him. The elder Tiberius fought with Caesar during the campaign in Egypt, which ended the civil war between Caesar and Pompey the Great, but after the murder of Julius Caesar in 44 b.c.e. he went over to the side of the republicans.

This decision made the Claudian family enemies of Octavian (later Augustus), Marc Antony, and Marcus Aemilius Lepidus, the three men who formed the so-called Second Triumvirate which succeeded Caesar in power. The triumvirs were anxious to eliminate any traces of republican sentiment, and Tiberius the elder, his wife Livia, and his young son were forced into flight, often coming close to capture and death.

When Tiberius was only four years old, even stranger events happened. Augustus imposed a divorce between Livia and her husband, and soon married Livia—although she was pregnant at the time. Despite the adverse early influences, Tiberius was reared to be a loyal and dutiful servant of Augustus, ready to serve him in civil, military, and personal capacities. For twenty-two years Tiberius was an associate of Augustus; Tiberius was to be emperor himself for an equal period of time.

He began his service early. In 26 b.c.e., while only a teenager, he was sent to Spain on military service. Two years later, he was made quaestor in charge of the grain supply in Rome. Later, he served primarily in military positions, commanding armies in the east and in Europe. During several hard-fought campaigns, Tiberius subdued Illyricum and Pannonia (modern Yugoslavia and Hungary) and helped secure the Empire’s northern border with the dangerous German tribes. For these efforts, he was awarded a triumph, the highest honor bestowed on a victorious general.

His personal life was less triumphant. He was forced by Augustus to divorce his beloved wife, Agrippina, and marry Julia, the daughter of Augustus. The match was arranged to strengthen the chance of succession of a descendant of Augustus to power; it failed, for Tiberius and Julia were incompatible and soon lived apart. For this reason, because Augustus was advancing his grandsons, and perhaps because of simple fatigue with his exhausting duties, Tiberius retired to the island of Rhodes in 6 b.c.e. He remained there for eight years, until the premature deaths of Augustus’s grandsons forced his return, and he was adopted by the emperor as his son and heir.

There followed more campaigns in the north, interspersed with time at Rome. During the latter years of Augustus’s reign, Tiberius seems to have been virtual co-emperor, and in 14 c.e., when Augustus died, Tiberius assumed sole power of the whole Roman world.

Tiberius was a large, strong man, well above average height. He had a fair complexion, which was sometimes marred by outbreaks of skin disease. According to the ancient historian Suetonius, he wore his hair long in back, an old-fashioned style perhaps adopted in memory of his distinguished ancestry.

For most of his life, Tiberius enjoyed excellent health, although he was reported to have indulged in excessive drinking and an astounding number and variety of sexual pleasures. He was stiff and formal in manner and seemed ill at ease in the senate chambers. He was quite well educated in Latin and Greek literature and was devoted to astrology.

Life’s Work

Tiberius came to the throne at the age of fifty-six. He had served Augustus all of his adult life, helping to establish the political system of the Roman Empire, also known as the principate (after one of Augustus’s titles, princeps, or first citizen). The new system was a delicate and highly personal one, in which Augustus balanced traditional Roman republican forms with the new reality of one-man rule; the creation and maintenance of this balance required considerable skill and tact.

Because of his nature, Tiberius found it impossible to adopt his predecessor’s role completely. Although he assumed actual power, he seemed to do so unwillingly and refused most of the titles that the senate offered him. Many, including the eminent Roman historian Cornelius Tacitus, have seen this as hypocrisy; others believe that Tiberius was genuinely reluctant to become an autocrat. During the early years of his rule, he made a great show of consulting the senate on all matters, great and small. After years of Augustus’s rule, however, the old methods were simply inadequate to govern a worldwide empire, and increasingly Tiberius was forced to assume and exercise absolute powers.

At first, these powers were used for the common good. In matters of religion and morals, Tiberius took firm steps against foreign beliefs, which he believed threatened traditional Roman virtues: He expelled adherents of the Egyptian and Jewish religions from Rome and banished astrologers on pain of death—although he firmly believed in the practice himself. Perhaps he was protecting himself against possible conspiracies inspired by favorable horoscopes; such things were taken very seriously in ancient Rome.

Tiberius was also firm in his suppression of riots and other civil disturbances, which often afflicted Rome and the other large cities of the Empire. Many of these problems were caused by an excessively large unemployed population, which was fed by the public dole and amused by public games; with little to lose, this group was easily incited to violence. As one measure against this violence, Tiberius established a central camp for the Praetorian Guard in Rome, so this elite military unit could be called out to quell civil violence. At the same time, this concentration of troops gave enormous potential power to its commander, and soon that man, Lucius Aelius Sejanus, made a bold play for power.

Sejanus came from the equestrian order, the group below the senate in social standing and generally ineligible to hold the higher offices of the state. From about 23 c.e., however, Sejanus worked on the psychological and political insecurities of Tiberius, increasing his own hold over the emperor. It seems possible that Sejanus may even have aimed at the Imperial power for himself—or, at least, as regent over Tiberius’s successor. Sejanus aspired to marry Livia Julia, Tiberius’s daughter, and worked to increase the emperor’s fear and distrust of other members of his family. At the instigation of Sejanus, many senators (and others) were accused and condemned on charges of treason.

During this time, Tiberius left Rome, never to return. He settled on the island of Capri, off the coast of Naples. It was a spot well chosen for a man grown increasingly paranoid: No boat could approach it without being seen, and there were only two landing places, both easy to defend. By 31 c.e., Sejanus was named to a shared consulship with Tiberius and was at the height of his powers.

That same year saw the abrupt fall of Sejanus. Tiberius had become convinced that the Praetorian commander was aiming to become ruler of the state, and in a carefully worded letter to the senate, read while the unsuspecting Sejanus sat in the chamber, Tiberius bitterly denounced him. Sejanus’s former lieutenants and others privy to the plot quickly acted, and Sejanus and his family were brutally executed, and his aspirations ended.

After this incident, Tiberius continued to rule Rome and the Empire from the isolation of Capri. Important appointments were left unmade or, if made, were not allowed to be filled: Provincial governors sometimes spent their entire terms in Rome, having been denied permission to leave for their posts. Governing by letters, Tiberius often confused and mystified the senate, which was often unable to decipher his enigmatic messages.

His fears were clear enough, however, and resulted in an endless series of treason trials. During the latter years, a virtual reign of terror descended on the Roman upper classes, as they were accused of the vague but heinous crime of maiestas (roughly, treason). Executions of prominent Romans became commonplace, and many of those accused by professional informers chose not to wait for the show of a trial, committing suicide instead.

Meanwhile in Capri, Tiberius is reported by Suetonius to have engaged in a series of gaudy vices and perversions. His character, weakened first by years of hard work and worry and then the intense pressures of solitary rule, gave way to tyranny, debauchery, and paranoid suspicion. Having outlived his own sons, he settled the succession on his nephew Gaius (later the emperor Caligula). Tiberius died on March 16, 37 c.e.; there was widespread rejoicing instead of mourning in Rome, and it was not until April 3 that his body was cremated and his remains interred in the Imperial city he had vacated so many years earlier.

Significance

When Augustus adopted Tiberius as his son and heir, he took a formal oath that he did so only for the good of the Roman state and people. Historians have puzzled over this statement ever since. Some have argued that Augustus meant it as a sincere compliment, underscoring Tiberius’s high qualifications for rule and indicating Augustus’s confidence in his abilities. Others, however, have perceived a darker meaning in the words: that the action was one Augustus would have preferred not to take but was forced to by the lack of other, more preferable candidates.

Assessments of Tiberius as emperor similarly take two differing views. There are those who believe that, on the whole, he was a fairly good emperor, maintaining peace at home and security along the borders. While there is little doubt that after the fall of Sejanus Tiberius turned increasingly suspicious and vengeful, these dark elements cloud only the latter part of his rule, and the so-called reign of terror affected only a handful of the Empire’s inhabitants. It was only the senatorial and equestrian orders in Rome itself that felt the weight of the treason trials, and their hostility to Tiberius and the Imperial system was to a large extent responsible for these events.

On the other hand, there are those who believe that from the first Tiberius was a cruel and tyrannical ruler, one who delighted in the suffering of his victims and whose life was given over to vice and debauchery. Foremost of these critics is the celebrated Roman historian Tacitus, whose brilliant writings paint a vivid portrait of Tiberius as a completely evil despot, a ruler who used his unlimited powers to destroy his supposed enemies. So great is Tacitus’s genius that his version of history and his view of Tiberius seem almost irrefutable. Yet it must be remembered that Tacitus was a firm believer in the virtues of the vanished Republic and hated the Empire that replaced it. In a sense, he used Tiberius as a symbol of an entire system that he believed to be evil and unjust.

Those with a more balanced view maintain that Tiberius was a man of considerable abilities, both military and political. While serving under Augustus, Tiberius used these abilities to the benefit of Rome and, following his own succession to power, continued for many years to provide effective, proper rule for the Empire. A series of causes—plots against him, the hostility of the upper classes, mental and physical exhaustion caused by overwork—wrought profound and disastrous changes in his personality. In the end, the task of ruling the Roman Empire proved too great a burden for one man to bear alone.

Bibliography

Grant, Michael. The Roman Emperors: A Biographical Guide to the Rulers of Imperial Rome, 31 B.C.-A.D. 476. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1985. Reprint. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1996. For a fast-paced yet comprehensive introduction to Tiberius and his reign, the relevant section in this volume is unsurpassed. Grant, an outstanding historian of Rome, combines information and explanation in a narrative that provides as much pleasure as knowledge.

Grant, Michael. The Twelve Caesars. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1975. Working from the base of Suetonius’s historical scholarship, Grant approaches Tiberius from the perspectives of psychology, power politics, and common sense. He asks intriguing questions about what it must have been like to be the sole ruler of the vast Roman Empire, and his answers are thought-provoking. An excellent place to start a study of this enigmatic emperor.

Levick, Barbara. Tiberius the Politician. Rev. ed. New York: Routledge, 1999. An exhaustive and scholarly account of Tierius’s life, from his ancestry to the impact of his reign after his death. Includes bibliographical references and an index.

Marsh, Frank Burr. The Reign of Tiberius. 1931. New York: Barnes and Noble, 1959. Still the definitive modern biography of Tiberius, this volume brings together an impressive amount of scholarship in a generally readable and often entertaining fashion. Especially good in its knowledge of the detail and connections of ancient Roman political life.

Seager, Robin. Tiberius. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972. A balanced and scholarly (but not pedantic) biography that shows how, under the early Roman Empire, the personality of the ruler had a profound impact on the state. Seager is careful to place Tiberius within the context of his times and his position, both of which were unique and difficult.

Smith, Charles Edward. Tiberius and the Roman Empire. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1942. Reprint. Port Washington, N.Y.: Kennikat Press, 1972. A work more concerned with Tiberius the ruler than Tiberius the man or tyrant, this book is strong on events and happenings outside the arena of Rome itself and is thus useful to counteract the popular image of that time created by Tacitus, that of unrelieved terror.

Suetonius. Lives of the Twelve Caesars. Edited, notes, and introduction by Joseph Gavorse. New York: Modern Library, 1959. This is one of the enduring classics of the ancient world, and it combines shrewd personal insight, revealing anecdotes, and a contemporary point of view. The section on Tiberius also has a long-famous description of his alleged sexual escapades on the isle of Capri; readers unfamiliar with Latin should be careful to choose an unexpurgated version, such as this one.

Tacitus, Cornelius. The Complete Works. Edited and introduction by Moses Hadas, translated by Alfred Church and William Brodribb. New York: Modern Library, 1942. The Annals of Tacitus covers the period of Tiberius’s reign, and this work is perhaps the most impressive production of classical history. Tacitus has fashioned a Tiberius who is a monster of deceit, hypocrisy, tyranny, and cruelty. This view may be distorted, but its impact has profoundly influenced history and historians ever since its conception.