Tiberius the Tyrant

by John Charles Tarver

Both the leading Claudian families were united in the person of the Emperor; his father was a Nero, his mother was a Pulcher, for though her father belonged legally to the Livian Gens, he had been adopted from the Claudian. The family enumerated among its distinctions thirty-three consulships, five dictatorships, seven censorships, six triumphs, and two ovations.

In the last century and a half of the Republic the Neronic branch was less distinguished than that of Pulcher; no records survive of the immediate ancestors of the Emperor on the father’s side, and no Claudius Nero appears in the consular list after 204 B.C. When Horace wished to remind the Romans of their debt to the Neros, he had to go back to the battle of the Metaurus. The family had become so obscure that the genuine descent of the Emperor from the conqueror of Hasdrubal has been questioned; but it was not questioned by his contemporaries, who would have been only too glad to add the reproach of an obscure ancestry to the other indignities which they fastened upon him. It would be in accordance with the pride, and even rectitude of conduct, ascribed to the Claudians, that this branch of the family preferred comparative poverty to taking part in the scrambles for office, and interested intrigues, which marked the decadence of the Senate; and that its successive chiefs chose the dignified life of a Roman noble of the old-fashioned type, concentrating their energies rather upon the management of their ancestral domains than upon pushing themselves into the inner circle of Senators who sped to exploit the Roman conquests.

Tiberius Claudius Nero, the father of the Emperor, appears first in the party of Cæsar; he was already a quæstor, and while holding that office commanded the fleet which besieged Alexandria, and rescued Cæsar from the insurrection of the Alexandrians; he was rewarded by being made a Pontifex, and entrusted with the establishment of colonies in Gaul, at Narbonne and Arles among other places. This was work which required considerable tact; it was not always easy to satisfy both the veterans who formed the colony and the population whom they displaced. Cæsar was not in the habit of employing incompetent agents, and the selection of Tiberius Nero for this work is an evidence of his capacity. After the assassination of Cæsar he became a warm partisan of the Liberators; he is even said to have proposed in the Senate that the Tyrannicides should be rewarded, when others thought that an amnesty was sufficient for their deserts. It is not clear whether he was Prætor at this time or shortly afterwards, but he certainly held that office when Lucius Antonius and Fulvia making a diversion against Octavian at Præneste; before the fall of Præneste he had slipped away to Campania, and endeavoured to form an army from the proprietors in that district who were threatened with the confiscation of their land for the benefit of Octavian’s soldiers; in this enterprise he was unsuccessful, and had to flee for his life to Sicily, where he took refuge for a short time with Sextus Pompeius.

As we afterwards find Tiberius Nero in the closest association with Octavian under circumstances which, judged by our standards of conduct, are discreditable, it is advisable to stop to consider whether a man could with any measure of consistency serve under Cæsar, and then join hands with his murderers; on the solution of this question depends the claim of Tiberius to be considered an honourable man; for in this relation we can measure him by standards which are applicable to ancient and modern life alike.

Velleius Paterculus, the historian to whom we owe a conception of the early days of the Empire different from that suggested by Cicero and Tacitus, was hereditarily associated with the family of Tiberius Nero; his grandfather was his most intimate friend; he calls Tiberius Nero a man of generous spirit, and strongly inclined to learning. A man of this nature would be attracted to Cæsar by a similarity of character and tastes. The ambition of Cæsar was a generous ambition; he was one of those born organizers to whom muddling is a painful and personal annoyance; he valued power for no vulgar reason, but because it gave him the opportunity of realizing his conception of a well ordered world. Endowed with an enormous intellectual ability, inexhaustible physical vitality, an irresistible personal charm, Cæsar attracted to himself all the men who really meant work. Cicero himself very nearly succumbed, and would have done so entirely had his uneasy vanity allowed him to work in a subordinate position. There is a limit to the incompetence of constituted authorities; a time comes when all earnest men in a State, whose public business has gradually been monopolized by respectable incompetents, look eagerly for a deliverer; such men do not welcome the noisy reformer, or the narrow doctrinaire, and so long as these alone present themselves, the earnest men hold back, but as soon as the really capable hard-working man appears, they give him their confidence, and pass naturally into his service. Cæsar’s campaigns in Gaul enabled him to select his men; at first the fashionable young men of Rome hurried to his standards attracted by the prospect of a pleasant picnic in charming country with an agreeable climate; no serious danger was anticipated, and there was a pleasing prospect of loot. The behaviour of these gentlemen, when it was realized that the advance of Ariovistus meant serious business, supplies the one comic interlude in Cæsar’s commentaries. During the nine years which Cæsar gave to the conquest of Gaul, the earnest workers found their leader; the intercourse between Cæsar’s camp and the capital was constant; men learned to contrast the vigorous administration of the Governor of the two Gauls with the imbecility of the Senate; it was not foreseen that the contrast would result in the absorption of the powers of government by this one man. When the time came at which Cæsar had either to abandon all his work or force the Senate to give him a continuance of office, his fellow workers were naturally disposed to give him their continued support. Men who had learned what good work was, and had had their share in it, were inclined to hope for the best; there were many self-seekers, doubtless, but it was possible to follow the fortunes of Cæsar under the influence of the highest motives. The man who had done such magnificent work in the two Gauls might be trusted to reorganize the Government. The reaction came, when the continuance of opposition at Rome forced Cæsar to become an autocrat; his work was only half done when he had beaten the Senatorial armies in Macedonia, in Egypt, in Africa, in Spain, in Asia Minor; he had further to clear away all the obstructions, get rid of all customs and precedents by which the machinery of the administration was impeded; it was root and branch work; and Cæsar was impatient; he attacked everything at once; no ties of affection, no sentimental associations were spared, no prejudices; he saw everything in the clear light of reason; he knew what was best for the Empire, and he was determined to have his own way.

To Cæsar the Senate was the embodiment of obstruction and incompetence; he did not propose to repeat the mistake of Sulla and give it a new lease of power, for his contempt for the Senators was unbounded; but the Senate had a name; it could not be disbanded; the better course seemed to be to swamp the Senate of Rome in the Senate of the Empire, to make it almost a titular body. He enlarged its numbers, added to it distinguished provincials, his personal adherents among the noblemen of Gaul. The figures that are given us may not be absolutely trustworthy, but there can be no doubt that the Senate was increased to a number which destroyed its capacity for united action. By this measure Cæsar alienated the affection and destroyed the confidence of the liberal members of the old aristocracy; they had been prepared to pay a heavy price for good government; they were at one with Cæsar in recognizing the expansion of Rome, but they had not anticipated a time when a Julius Florus or Cornelius Gallus would not only be dignified with Roman names, but would have the same social rank as a Claudian or Sempronian. So determined was Cæsar to convince the Senate that its day was over, that in transacting business with it he neglected even the ordinary courtesies, and received its deputations without rising from his seat. The dagger of Brutus was the result.

In some respects the assassination of Cæsar was fortunate for his reputation; there was no widespread conspiracy; his government had been of so short a duration that the disaffected men had no time to find one another out; their victim had never realized that there was a formidable opposition, and he fell before his qualities of clemency and moderation were put to the severest test, which tries the virtue and capacity of a successful reformer. The men who murdered him were his chosen friends and servants, many of them were either holding or were awaiting their turn for holding important provincial appointments. The conspiracy was not organized; no provision was made for carrying on the Government after the keystone of the fabric had been removed; it was enough to kill the tyrant. In one respect the conspirators had correctly estimated the result; there were men who, bound to Cæsar by various ties, would not take an active part in any conspiracy against his person, but who, if once that obstacle to the restoration of the Senatorial Government were removed, would declare their detestation of autocracy, and assist in remodelling the State. Tiberius Nero was one of these; Cicero was another, and there were many others who, during the last four years, had been ill at ease in the attempt to reconcile their personal affection for Cæsar and confidence in his ability with their conception of what constituted political righteousness. Unfortunately for these men, they were but few in number; within three months’ time it had become clear that neither the Army, nor the provincials, nor the subordinate officials had any objection to an autocrat; the myth of the Senate had been replaced by the myth of Cæsar; the only question was who would become the centre of the cult.

Two men considered themselves most likely to attract to themselves the passionate adoration with which the soldiers of Cæsar had regarded their general; they were his trusted lieutenants, Marcus Lepidus and Marcus Antonius, the former a Proconsul in command of an army, the latter Cæsar’s colleague in the Consulship at the time of his death, and his intimate friend; Cæsar’s widow placed all her husband’s papers in his hands. Antonius had the advantage of being constitutional head of the Government, and as soon as it was clear that the popular feeling at Rome was strongly adverse to the Liberators, he procured a decree from the frightened Senate sanctioning all Cæsar’s arrangements. Any other course would in fact have produced intolerable confusion. The most important consequence of this measure was that the Liberators were put into positions of great power and influence by the voice of the man they had killed, and were protected from the consequences of their own imprudence. Cicero threw aside his literary work and rushed to Rome, to assist in the restoration of the Republic, and to revive the party of Pompeius. Antonius, however, had no intention of letting the reins of Government slip from his grasp; being possessed of the dead Cæsar’s papers, he was able to produce at his pleasure decrees which the constitutional party had already sanctioned by anticipation, and the partisans of the dead man were bound to support. Moderation was no part of the character of Antonius; he prepared himself to enjoy thoroughly the wealth which was poured into his hands; with Cæsar’s soldiers at his back, he felt that he could do what he pleased. An unexpected event shook his self-confidence, and revived the prospects of the constitutional party by dividing the Cæsarians.

The young Octavian crossed from Apollonia and landed at Brundisium.

Cæsar had left no direct descendants except an illegitimate son by Cleopatra, but he had distinguished his great-nephew Octavius by such indications of his confidence and affection as a Roman would bestow upon his destined heir. The year before his death he had taken the young man with him to Spain, on the expedition against the sons of Pompeius, which ended in their defeat at Munda; he had attached him closely to his person, shared his tent with him, conducted all his business in his presence, had in fact begun his political apprenticeship. Apparently Cæsar came to the conclusion that his nephew’s education was inadequate, and on the return from Spain he sent him to Apollonia on the Illyrian coast, a Greek town of considerable commercial importance, which was the seat of a University largely frequented by Roman students. So far Cæsar had not taken the final step of adopting Octavius, but he did so by his will.