Tiberius the Tyrant

by John Charles Tarver

Drusus, the son of Tiberius, died in A.D. 23, under circumstances which it will be more convenient to consider at a later period. From this event Tacitus dates the perversion of Tiberius, forgetting that he has already ascribed to him every unamiable quality except avarice. After enumerating the various legions, and recording their distribution, Tacitus says: “I hope I am not wrong in believing that it is relevant to review the other departments of State as well, to say how they were managed up to that time, since this year marked the beginning of a change for the worse in the Emperor’s administration. Now first, public business and the most important concerns of private men were dealt with before the Senate, and the chief men were allowed to make speeches, and he checked them himself, where they slipped into flattery; and he used to confer office by taking into consideration nobility of descent, brilliance in the field, distinguished service at home, so that it was agreed that there were no men with higher claims. Consuls and Prætors enjoyed their proper dignity, the lesser magistrates also were in the full exercise of their powers, and the laws, with the exception of the “Lex Majestatis,” were well administered. Moreover, the corn supply and tribute, and the rest of the public revenues, were managed by associations of Roman knights. Cæsar entrusted the management of his own affairs to the most distinguished men, to some who were unknown, on hearing of their reputation; and when once he had adopted a man he retained him indefinitely, for most of his officers grew old in the same departments. The commonalty certainly suffered from a dear market, but the Prince was not responsible for that; indeed, he met the failure of crops, or the difficulties of navigation, as far as expense and care could help him. And he took measures that the Provinces should not be disturbed by fresh burdens, and that they should be able to endure the old ones exempt from the avarice or cruelty of officials. There was no such thing as personal outrages or confiscations of property. The estates of Cæsar were few in Italy, his establishments of slaves were modest, his household confined to a few freedmen; and if ever he was at variance with a private person, he resorted to the ordinary processes of law, the ordinary courts. All this he kept up until things were changed by the death of Drusus, not indeed graciously, but with a repellent manner, so that he was generally an object of terror.”

These words, except for the last sentence, differ but little from those employed by Paterculus in enumerating the blessings enjoyed by the Roman people under the sway of Tiberius, though Paterculus does not limit the good administration of the Emperor to the period which ended with the death of Drusus.

It is indeed difficult, when we read the record of the actual transactions of the Senate, to form any other opinion than that advanced by Tacitus in the foregoing summary; even in the case of the “Lex Majestatis” it is the Senate, not Tiberius, who show a tendency to abuse the powers which it conferred, and the rare occasions on which the Emperor himself allows an accusation under this law to be pressed are those on which the strictest republican virtue would have demanded its application, viz., when the misconduct of a provincial governor had impaired the dignity of the State. It is true that this extension of the operation of the “Lex Majestatis” had not been familiar to the Republic, and that the provincials had been held to be protected sufficiently by the laws against extortion, but it might reasonably be held that a Roman magistrate disgraced his country no less by maladministration in the Provinces than by cowardice in the field, or a disgraceful treaty. In fact, this probably was the real grievance which caused the Senatorial Annalists, whose diaries were read by Tacitus, to fill their memoirs with bitter animadversions on the abuse of the “Lex Majestatis,” and the professional advocates who were a terror to delinquent Senators. Incapable or corrupt governors, who might have escaped punishment on some technical plea, if they had been accused formally of extortion, were now confronted with a fuller examination into their conduct under the vaguer charge of having impaired the dignity of the State. Tiberius constituted himself the guardian of the dignity of the State; it was his duty to do so. In upholding the purity of the administration, he was upholding the Empire, but he was also declaring an emphatic negative to the theory that the Roman Senate was at liberty to deal as it pleased with its Provinces. The restoration of the Senate, begun in some degree by Augustus and continued by Tiberius, was attended by this inconvenience, that it revived the pretensions of the survivors of the Oligarchy, and though the majority of the Senate were distinguished rather by an inclination to hand over all their responsibilities to the Emperor than by an uncompromising attitude towards his government, there were a minority who were disgusted because fuller advantage was not taken of the opportunities afforded, and because the liberal policy of the Emperor brought them little nearer to the cherished abuses of the old oligarchical government.

When we reflect that the first six books of the Annals of Tacitus cover a period of twenty-three years, and that he had access to the Senatorial archives no less than to private memoirs, we are astonished at the meagreness of his information. If we remove from these books all that refers to the campaigns in Germany, Thrace, and Africa, all that is concerned with the death of Germanicus, all that has to do with the personal history of the Imperial family, singularly little remains to tell us how the Senate administered the Provinces which had been left to its care, and the two great questions in which statesmen are profoundly interested, the questions of Revenue and Defence, are hardly touched upon.

For this there are two reasons, apart from the fact that Tacitus was an incompetent historian; one is that Tacitus avowedly interested himself only in recording events which seemed to him striking illustrations of good or bad behaviour, history to him being merely a primer of morals and a collection of examples; the other is that very little business actually was transacted before the Senate.

We may take as an example the case of Cappadocia. This country was annexed by Germanicus, its native rulers were deposed, and it passed from the status of an allied kingdom to that of a province. It might be anticipated that we should have a record of discussions in the Senate as to the terms upon which this new Province was to be added to the Empire, as to whether it was to be Imperial or Senatorial, as to its probable cost and revenue; but we have nothing of the kind, we have not even the innuendo of a grievance based on the fact that Tiberius fixed its tribute at half the usual amount, and treated it as an Imperial Province from the outset. Similarly the Government of Achaia passed into the hands of the Emperor at the request of the Province itself, without any debate in the Senate, so far as we are informed by Tacitus. Africa was a Senatorial Province; the moment that trouble between the Roman inhabitants and a native prince declared itself, the Senate practically threw the whole responsibility on Tiberius by asking him to nominate a Governor. With all its pretensions, and in spite of all the encouragement given to it by Tiberius to assume the position of an advisory council to the Emperor, if not of a representative assembly of the Empire, the Senate reverted more and more to its old position of a domestic council representing the best families at Rome and attending to little beyond their interests.

It was fortunate for the Empire that Tiberius failed in his attempt to restore the Senate, for no tyranny can be worse than that of the direct government of dependencies by an irresponsible debating society, divided into parties more or less organized, which intrigue abroad to further their interests at home, and the Senate itself showed a sounder political insight than the Emperor in refusing to assume responsibilities for which it was eminently unfit.

If, however, the greater political questions are passed over by Tacitus, some of the minor subjects with which the Senate dealt are not uninteresting; it retained the position of guardian of the public morals, or at the least of the morals of those families of whom it was composed or whose members were employed in the government of the city and Empire. Adultery under the Julian laws passed by Augustus was not a sin but a crime, and we accordingly have some cases in which Roman ladies of high rank are arraigned before the Senate along with their paramours.

The number of these cases is not great, and in comparison with similar cases in our own divorce courts remarkably small, from which we may conclude either that the Senate was a lenient censor of morals, or that the standard of morality was high; it is further possible that the Senate was only called upon to intervene when the family of the culprit had failed in its duty.

Actors seem to have been a source of trouble to the fathers of the city, but it is not altogether certain in what the “licence” of actors consisted. At first sight it might appear that they were guilty merely of a laxity of morals which is not uncommonly attributed, with or without justice, to the theatrical profession, and that the decrees prohibiting Senators and Equestrians from public and private intercourse with actors were directed against purely private scandals; but there is also evidence that the stage occupied to some extent the position of the modern press, and that the licence of the actors consisted in public and private derision of eminent men, and in the exhibition of caricatures, which if not dangerous to public order, were at least offensive. The fragments of references made on the stage to Tiberius, preserved by Suetonius, are sufficient to indicate a freedom of criticism which in our own day would be considered intolerable. Our own habits allow our public men to be caricatured weekly in the comic papers in a manner which is not found equally acceptable in Germany, but lenient though we are in such matters, even Englishmen have failed to tolerate the caricatures of eminent statesmen on the stage, and “the Happy Land,” in which three Cabinet Ministers appeared under their own names, and in a very successful counterfeit presentment of their persons, was modified by the then Lord Chamberlain.