Tiberius the Tyrant

by John Charles Tarver

The same historian who tells us nearly all that is known of the lives of these men, and who fixes the dates of their deaths, also informs us that they were the objects of the suspicion of Tiberius, that their lives were rendered miserable by him, and that they all, with the exception of Lepidus, “soon” came to a bad end. Allowing that six years is a term to which the word “soon” can be applied, we may admit that Gnæus Piso soon came to a bad end; we shall see later on who was responsible for his afflictions. Lepidus lived to a good old age, and died a natural death not long before Tiberius himself; and though the ends both of Asinius Gallus and Arruntius were miserable, they did not occur “soon,” periods of twenty years and upwards not being usually so described.

The facts relating to these men are an excellent illustration of the reckless inconsistency of statement which is indulged in by Tacitus. Fortunately, the historian prided himself upon his impartiality, and does not suppress facts which happen to be in contradiction with his main contention. Stripped of its comments and insinuations, as also of its rhetoric, his narrative gives a favourable picture of Tiberius and his reign, but Tacitus possessed such a mastery of innuendo that his statements of facts are forgotten, while his comments are remembered.

It is, unfortunately, not the custom of modern scholars to read the Latin stylists for the purpose of acquiring information, or in large masses; and while they are minutely perpending the significance of isolated phrases, or enumerating instances of unusual grammatical constructions, they forget that any other interest attaches to the works upon which their industry is expended. The stylist and grammarian alike find so much material for their own special industries in Tacitus that his claims as a historian are forgotten, and in fact he is not a historian; he is a bitter pamphleteer of consummate ability; his affectation of impartiality is a well-considered pose, whose insincerity becomes manifest as soon as we study the effect produced by his writing upon the minds of his readers. When we have read the first six books of the Annals, we are left with a very strong impression of horror; we seem to have waded through seas of misery, and to have assisted at the ruin of the Roman Empire. In the midst of the gloomy scene stalks the gaunt figure of Tiberius, equally terrifying in anger or in silence; his very virtues are more horrible than the vices of other people, for there is no knowing what hideous wickedness they were assumed to conceal.

The question may reasonably be asked, why should Tacitus have directed his bitterness especially against Tiberius? Surely Nero or even Claudius would have been a better target for his venomed sentences. But to begin with, there was no object in further damaging the reputation of an Emperor universally acknowledged to be a villain or a fool. So far as Caligula, Claudius, and Nero were concerned, judgment had been passed in the sense in which Tacitus wished it to be passed, but there were numerous documents in evidence of the fact that Tiberius had been a good Emperor, and that Greater Rome, if not the City of Rome, had prospered under his rule.

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; in fact, the Tiberius of Tacitus was not Tiberius at all, but Domitian. The curse of the reign of Domitian had been attacks upon the lives and property of eminent men, conducted by paid informers. There was some evidence that the system of rewarding informers had first been extensively used in the reign of Tiberius, and Tacitus believed that he could find abundant material for drawing up a strong indictment against the practice of employing informers in the records of the reign of Tiberius. We shall see how far he was justified in his confidence.

But it was not enough to damage a system, it was also necessary to annihilate the man; and here too Tacitus had found the instrument which he required; he had access to certain memoirs written by the younger Agrippina, the daughter of Agrippina, the wife of Germanicus. He tells us of a fact which he mentions:—“This is not recorded by any of the historians, but I found it in the memoirs of the daughter of Agrippina, who was the mother of the Emperor Nero, and handed down to posterity her own life and the misfortunes of her family.” There is not much in the life of the mother of Nero and sister of Caligula which would incline us to suspect her memoirs of being a liquid fount of veracity, but there is a great deal which would tempt us to suspect her of a bitter animosity against the memory of Tiberius and all members of the Claudian stock not closely related to herself.

It is not proposed to examine in detail every innuendo made by Tacitus in the course of his indictment against Tiberius, though from time to time it will be entertaining to expose glaring instances of misrepresentation or deliberately malicious inference; but one example of the methods employed by Tacitus may be profitably given as an illustration of the way in which he wrote what has passed for sober history.

In A.D. 25, eleven years after the accession of Tiberius, a deputation arrived from further Spain with the request that leave might be given to build a shrine in honour of Tiberius and his mother, as had been done in Asia. “On this occasion Cæsar, who was at other times also firm in rejecting honours of this kind, and thought some answer should be given to those who accused him by public rumour of ambitious inclinations, made a speech to the following effect:—‘I know, Conscript Fathers, that many have noted a want of consistency in my conduct, because on a recent occasion I failed to oppose the cities of Asia when preferring an identical petition. Therefore I will at once declare my defence of my former silence, and of the line which I propose to adopt in the future. Whereas the sainted Augustus did not forbid a temple to be built to himself and the city of Rome at Pergamus, I, for whom all his acts and words are like a law, followed a precedent, already sanctioned, the more readily because veneration of the Senate was united with the devotion to be paid to myself. However, although there may be an excuse for a solitary acceptance of such honours, it would be presumptuous and arrogant in me to consent to being worshipped in divine form all over the provinces; and indeed the honour paid to Augustus will disappear if it is made cheap by promiscuous flattery of this kind. I both protest to you, Conscript Fathers, and I wish posterity to be mindful, that I am a man, and hold purely human responsibilities, and that I have enough, if I worthily hold the first position in the State; posterity will give enough, and more than enough, to my memory if men believe me to have been worthy of my ancestors, careful of your concerns, firm in danger, and not fearful of contracting unpopularity in defence of the public welfare. So shall I have temples in your minds, so the finest and most lasting statues. For those memorials which are built of stone are despised as mere tombs if the judgment of posterity proves adverse. Therefore I implore the allies, the citizens, and the gods themselves, the latter to grant me to the end of my life a calm intelligence and understanding of human and divine law; the former, that whenever I may leave the stage, they may pursue my deeds and the fame of my name with praise and kindly memories.’ And he persisted afterwards, even in private conversation, in his contempt of such adoration of himself. This some interpreted as moderation, many as a sign of mistrust of himself, some as an indication of a degenerate spirit; for, said they, the best of men aim at the highest honours; thus among the Greeks Hercules and Liber, among ourselves Quirinus, had been added to the number of the gods. Augustus had done better in setting his hopes higher. Princes have everything else in this life; the one thing they should compass with avidity is a lasting memory of themselves. For the contempt of fame means the contempt of virtue.”

It is impossible not to admire the consummate art with which the effect of a really noble statement of Tiberius is wiped away, and the picture of a man devoid of sound ambition substituted. The ingenuity with which Tacitus puts in the mouths of presumed contemporaries his own perversion of the facts, and concludes his chapter with a concise damnation, is equally admirable. To us there is, however, something tragic in the fact that subsequent events and the arts of a supreme master of style were to rob Tiberius even of the modest fame for which he prayed.

Tiberius had hardly settled down to business when the threatened mutiny of the legions in the Illyrian quarter broke out, accompanied by an even more serious disturbance among the armies of the Rhine. These events throw much light on the condition of the Roman army at the time, and upon the characters of Agrippina and Germanicus. The latter, though a far more formidable rival than Agrippa Postumus, had been invested with Proconsular power at the request of Tiberius on his accession. Previously he had only been a legate, a lieutenant-general in command of the troops on the German frontier; he was now Governor of Gaul as well. It is not customary, for usurpers who have recently mounted rickety thrones to add to the powers of those whose rivalry they have good reason to anticipate. The Proconsulate of Gaul had on a well-known occasion been the stepping-stone to the Empire. Tiberius clearly had no mistrust of the loyalty of Germanicus, and at this period could afford to smile at the restless impetuosity of Agrippina, pattern of matrons.