Tiberius the Tyrant

by John Charles Tarver

Thus in one of its aspects, and not its least important aspect, a Roman family was a community in itself, with many and far-reaching interests; the capacity of its chief personage was a matter of importance to a very large number of men and women; his failure involved the ruin of a hierarchy of relatives and dependents. Even in the earlier and simpler days of Rome the sons of the family were carefully trained to represent the family in the Forum and the Senate, to manage its estates, to conduct its financial relations and the extension of the family connexions, to hold office, to command armies. Greek culture added to the conception of obligation to the family, obligation to the state; Greek and Roman ideals alike forbade the young Roman noble to neglect himself. Even his deportment, his manners, his gestures were serious matters; he could not afford to be ungainly, or to express himself awkwardly. If a son proved to be physically or morally incapable of receiving the required training, Roman sentiment was not shocked by his supersession or removal. We have a curious illustration of this in the story of the Emperor Claudius. He was the younger brother of Germanicus, the son of Drusus, the grandson of Livia. In the ordinary course of events he would have been introduced to public life like his brother, but he was awkward, he rolled in his gait, his tongue was too large for his mouth, he stammered and sputtered, his family, and even his mother, were ashamed of him, he was kept in the background, and practically pensioned off. He was, however, a serious student, a linguist, or at any rate a philologist; as Emperor he planned and carried out works of great public utility; he was an extensive writer, an industrious worker. He may have been of feeble character, easily led by favourites and women, but his reign was by no means a disastrous one. No ancient writer, however, protests against the prejudice, which deprived Claudius of all opportunities of advancement, till a supposed freak of the soldiers made him Emperor; they unanimously accept with approval the verdict of Augustus, that he was unfitted by his personal defects for public life. Similarly the youngest son of Agrippa and Julia, the youngest grandson of Augustus himself, was removed from Rome, and sequestered in an island “on account of his intractability”; but though his subsequent fate is one of the many counts in the process against the reputation of Tiberius, no fault is found with Augustus for thus eliminating a member of his family who did not prove amenable to discipline.

Duty to the family, duty to the State, or it might be first duty to the State, then duty to the family, were impressed upon the young Roman noble as the conditions of his existence; he lived, like the heir-apparent to a throne, in a court which forced upon him the traditions and observances which the maintenance of the court demanded. If the father neglected his children, and evaded the responsibility of training them, there were numerous other persons ready and willing to undertake his work. The presiding genius of a Roman family was not infrequently an aged lady, or a trusted freedman, deeply imbued with the importance of the house and the sanctity of its traditions.

For the first nine years of his life Tiberius lived with his father—a man serious, fond of learning, full of the republican tradition. It is not impossible that, in spite of the association with Octavian through Livia, the house was to some extent a meeting place of the remnant of the Republican party. We at least know that one of these men made the young Tiberius his heir, and adopted him by his will; he seems to have been allowed to take the succession, but had to refuse the adoption, because his benefactor was anti-Cæsarian. The elder Tiberius, not being engaged in public business, would have plenty of time to give to his children, and Roman children in a Roman family of the old-fashioned type were much with their parents. We are told that Tiberius was very carefully educated; at his father’s death he was already sufficiently well advanced in recitation to pronounce the customary eulogy at his funeral. Up to this time everything in his surroundings would tend to encourage a naturally severe temperament; it can hardly have been a cheerful home, this house of the lost cause. The affections of the boy expanded themselves upon his brother Drusus, his junior by more than two years, to whom his attachment was deep and lasting.

On the death of their father the two boys were transferred to the care of their mother and stepfather, who was now their guardian. Tiberius was old enough to resent such an arrangement, but there is no evidence that he did so; he accepted his stepfather loyally, and Octavian himself was scrupulously careful of the interests of his stepsons. Diplomatic divorces and re-marriages were of such common occurrence in the Roman houses at this period that no slight was felt or intended, and as a rule the divorced parties maintained friendly relations. Octavia, the sister of Octavian, was neglected and eventually repudiated by Antonius, but she nevertheless took good care of his children by a former marriage, the children of the tigress Fulvia.

Scribonia, the divorced wife of Octavian, continued to be on sufficiently friendly terms with his family to watch over her daughter Julia, not altogether to the latter’s advantage, and eventually accompanied her into exile. Where marriage was treated entirely as a business arrangement, there was no room for wounded feelings, and children were not tempted to feel themselves aggrieved by a change of parents, or to cherish resentment. When a wife was repudiated on account of infidelity, and therefore disgraced, there was room for ill-feeling, but not otherwise.

As Octavian at a later date set up a school in his own house for the benefit of his grandchildren and the children of friends, it is not improbable that a somewhat similar arrangement was adopted for the young Neros; the course of grammar, the course of rhetoric, the course of philosophy would be duly followed out. Except in the far greater attention paid to elocution, the formal education will have differed little from that of an Eton boy in the middle of the nineteenth century. Both Roman and English boy learned Greek, and the Roman boy had the advantage of learning it as a spoken language; neither had a systematic instruction in mathematics, though the Roman had the advantage of being drilled in keeping accounts. But far more valuable than the formal instruction was the informal education given by the circumstances of the family. The Romans kept early hours, and it was customary for the children to dine in the same room with their parents, though at different tables. Octavian, partly from choice, partly from necessity imposed upon him by weak health, was not given to large entertainments. His table was a simple one, old-fashioned observances were rigorously maintained, but the company was choice. The children could sit and listen while the conversation was being conducted by Horace and Virgil; all the latest inventions, all the newest literature, everything that did not pertain to secret diplomacy, was discussed at that table. There was Mæcenas with his charming manners and casual dress; Agrippa, somewhat silent as a rule, but animated enough when the roof of the Pantheon or the model of a light galley had to be described to an appreciative audience; there too was Cornelius Gallus, the brilliant gentleman and poet, betraying by his passionate vivacity his Gallic origin; Varius too would be there ready to recite his last heroic poem. After dinner there would be amusements, sometimes games of chance for small stakes, sometimes recitations; or the last fashionable preacher, some Greek or Greek-speaking Jew, would discourse of virtue to the admiration of Livia and the ladies. Chieftains from Gaul and Spain, Princes from the East or Africa, wealthy citizens from Antioch or Alexandria or the cities of Asia Minor, were all to be met at that simple table, wondering at the exiguity of the repast, but none the less impressed by the personality of their host. The opportunity was a rare one for a youth who was bent on self-improvement, and it was not neglected by Tiberius or his brother.

Along with them was brought up Julia, the spoiled child of the family, and cousin Marcellus with his two sisters, the children of Octavia, whose other daughter, Antonia, was to be the wife of Drusus, and the lifelong friend of Tiberius, perhaps the most beautiful of Roman women.

There could be no better preparation for a life devoted to the public service than this household, in which power only served to increase the sense of responsibility, in which the routine of every day was a routine of duty, and the command of the resources of the civilized world did not add a dish to the table, a garment to the wardrobe, or a superfluous slave to the servants’ hall.

The atmosphere of the household of Augustus is not to be found in the scandalous gossip occasionally repeated by Suetonius or Tacitus, but in the works of Horace and Virgil; both poets repeatedly insist on the merits of simplicity, not because they were commissioned to do so, but because their own personal tastes and habits fell into line with those of the master of the civilized world.

The education of a young Roman was not confined to his home; he accompanied his father to war when he was old enough, and on peaceful expeditions at all times, where a great train did not involve inconvenience. Tiberius was probably still too young to attend Octavian on his Eastern tour after the battle of Actium, but when he was only seventeen he accompanied him to Spain, and there took his first lessons in the field, just as Octavian himself had previously been trained under Cæsar. A Roman was considered to be of age when he was sixteen, and he was quickly tested by being called upon to undertake minor responsibilities. In all departments of public life Tiberius had the advantage of the example and precept of the best authorities. The staff of Agrippa, and perhaps Agrippa himself, were ready to instruct him in the latest developments of the art of war; for finance and diplomacy he could go to Mæcenas. Octavian was a practised and careful orator; no one of these men could afford to slumber on his laurels; they were all hard at work modifying the old, organizing the new. The secrets of the Empire so frequently alluded to by Tacitus were not so very mysterious; hard work, discretion, tact, public spirit, formed the bulk of them. The time for intriguing came after the apprenticeship of Tiberius was finished, and the intriguers were not the men who had taught him his business.