Tiberius the Tyrant

by John Charles Tarver

We may dismiss once and for all as unfounded, and indeed absurd, the stories of unmentionable obscenities and hideous cruelties practised by the Emperor upon his lonely island. No man after reaching the age of sixty-eight could suddenly fling himself into such an orgy of lust as is described by Suetonius, and then live for nine years, the thing is a physical impossibility. Again, Tiberius, though always stern, had never been cruel. Instances of his humanity are not wanting during his residence at Capreæ; he again gave lavish assistance to the sufferers from a fire on the Aventine, and was at considerable pains to relieve the distress of poor debtors, though the measures which he adopted were not such as would commend themselves to rigid political economists.

Again, as has been observed in an earlier portion of this narrative, up to the time of the retirement to Capreæ Tiberius is known to us only as an absolutely chaste man, as chaste as Agrippina herself. There is no record, no insinuation even, of the presence of sensual favourites in his camp or at his Court; he is not even accused of that politic amorousness which is ascribed to the sainted Augustus, or of the warmer amours which invest the life of the great Julius Cæsar with an atmosphere of romance. That a man close on seventy should suddenly change his habits is incredible, unless we are to assume the existence of a hideous form of senile dementia, whose victim is to be pitied rather than condemned. There are such cases, but the patients are most commonly those who have continuously led impure lives, not those who have been distinguished by self-restraint. We may be asked, how then did such stories originate? It is impossible to track these falsehoods back to their source; a reason for one of them may, however, be suggested. Among the scandals of Capreæ was said to be the presence of a large number of young people of both sexes who were sacrificed to the Emperor’s lusts; they were of the noblest blood of Rome, a fact which was supposed to have constituted their chief attraction. Now the two grandchildren of Tiberius were quite young when the Emperor went to Capreæ. Owing to his position he was guardian to many other such children, and it would have been entirely in accordance with Roman practice to educate all these young children together. We know that the suite which accompanied the Emperor contained professional teachers. For the sinister interpretation put upon the arrangement we have only to recall the ineffable prurience of the Italian imagination in ancient times. There are works of art, there are fragments of literature, there are household ornaments dating from this period, and earlier periods and later periods, which are simply indescribable in modern language. The mystery of the Emperor’s seclusion was in itself enough to set the foul tongues wagging and to stimulate the impure inventiveness of the brothel-keepers in the capital; and there were men of rank, and possibly women, only too glad to note down in their diaries evidence collected from the mouths of slaves and other dependents. Similarly with the stories of cruelty. The disturbed condition of political life after the fall of Sejanus created an atmosphere of terror. Tiberius had always been dreaded, and the sensation-mongers could find ready credence for tales of atrocities, for which there was no such obvious contradiction as would have existed had Tiberius been spending his days in the full sight of his countrymen. These tales were believed because everybody wished to believe them, and because there was no evidence to the contrary. Because nothing was seen, anything was imagined.

Similarly in the sensational narrative of judicial murders and vexatious prosecutions with which Tacitus adorns his account of the last seven years of Tiberius, the record is so imperfect, the animus is so clear, that we may excusably suspend our judgment. In none of these cases are we given the full evidence against the prisoner; in all everything is told us that can be urged against the judge. It was further the practice of the historians of the time to attribute to Tiberius himself acts which were done by his agents even when he had certainly not ordered the act in question. Suetonius, for instance, states that Tiberius knocked out the eye of the obstreperous Agrippina—he has the grace to add “by the agency of a centurion,” but the story is told in such a way that the odium rests upon the Emperor, and not upon the participants in an undignified scuffle. Similarly there is a ghastly tale of the death of Drusus, the son of Agrippina, by starvation, a process which is said to have lasted for two or three years, during which every word uttered by the prisoner, every groan, was faithfully reported to Tiberius; it is even represented that the miserable man in the extremity of his anguish devoured his cushions. That an official report was forwarded to Tiberius at regular intervals of the conduct of this prisoner of State is what we should naturally expect, nor is it impossible that an overzealous gaoler abounded in details, nor again is it impossible that Agrippina the younger, the sister of the prisoner, left an exceedingly harrowing, though improbable, story in her memoirs.

It is worthy of note that the elder Agrippina and her son Nero were not recalled from their respective islands after the fall of Sejanus. Seclusion in an island did not of itself involve any serious degree of suffering, and we have mention of occasions on which Tiberius selected for his exiles islands which were healthy or otherwise attractive. The exiles were, in fact, simply removed to places from which they could no longer disturb the public peace. Though it had transpired that Agrippina and Nero were to some extent the victims of Drusus and Sejanus, they had shown themselves inclined to be dangerous, and the situation with regard to the succession was now such as to demand exceptional precautions. In his dealings with Agrippina, Tiberius surprises us by his forbearance rather than by his severity.

As we do not know the exact nature of the conspiracy of Sejanus, so we do not know the exact degree of guilt of the younger Drusus. Since he was treated with exceptional rigour we may surmise that he was implicated in a plot to depose the Emperor and enter at once upon the coveted succession. After his death Tiberius wrote a letter to the Senate giving a full account of his misdemeanours, an act which is represented to have been scandalous, but was probably necessary. It must be remembered that Sejanus was disgraced because of his practices against Agrippina and Nero; he was immediately killed by the Senate. After his death a deeper plot, and indeed a series of plots, was revealed.

An attempt was made to implicate Caligula in the guilt of these dark transactions, but unsuccessfully. It was on this occasion that Tiberius wrote that despairing cry to the Senate in which Tacitus savagely triumphs—“If I know what I am to write to you, Conscript Fathers, or how I am to write to you, or what indeed I should not write to you at such a time, may the gods and goddesses drag me even into greater depths than those into which I feel that I am sinking day by day.”

In spite of the perplexities that assailed him, Tiberius did not relax his hold upon Greater Rome. Encouraged by rumours of the Emperor’s failure, the Parthians began to intrigue to reverse the order established on the Eastern frontier of the Empire, but they quickly learned that Tiberius, though aged and beaten upon, had not forgotten his diplomacy and still knew where to find, and how to choose, an able officer who could effectually quell any attempt to trifle with the dignity of the Roman name. The general appointed to settle affairs in the East was Lucius Vitellius, whose son was one day to enjoy a short and very inglorious career as Roman Emperor.

During the last three years of the Emperor’s life Caligula rapidly advanced in his favour. He was formally adopted, and was continually named as the Emperor’s heir along with the young Tiberius. The adviser and friend of Caligula at this time was the Jewish prince Agrippa, the half-brother of Herodias, the incestuous wife of Herod Antipas, and grandson of Herod the Great. The election of Caligula as successor to Tiberius is a somewhat puzzling circumstance. Tacitus says that he always showed signs of insanity, but at the same time credits him with great astuteness in winning the old man’s favour. It is more probable, from other accounts, that the madness of Caligula was the result of an illness to which he fell a victim almost immediately after his succession, for that he was technically mad is undeniable. We have a curious picture of him from the pen of Philo the Jew, who arrived from Alexandria with a deputation of Jews to protest against being required to worship Caligula exclusively as a god. The envoys found Caligula superintending the building of one of his palaces at Baiæ. They were introduced to the half-finished edifice, where the Emperor was hurrying from one room to another, feverishly running up and down stairs. He suddenly observed his visitors, and remarking, “So you are those atheists,” vanished; presently he reappeared, and after saying “Why don’t you eat pork?” finally disappeared. It is not likely that Tiberius would have entrusted the fate of the civilized world to a man whose intellect was so obviously disturbed. If, however, we ask who had an interest in the succession of Caligula, the answer is, Agrippa, who, according to Josephus, had found men to finance him in order that he might push his fortunes at Rome. In this he had been somewhat imprudent, and an impatient remark he made to Caligula was reported to Tiberius, who put him under guard for the rest of his reign; on the death of Tiberius he exchanged captivity for the throne of Herod the Great. There is a story that Tiberius, being in doubt as to whether he should nominate his own grandson, the younger Tiberius, or his adopted son Caligula, consulted his diviners, who told him to appoint the one of the two children who should first enter the room after both had been summoned; the Emperor fell in with the suggestion, and the parties interested then contrived that Caligula should be the first to arrive.

The historians do not allow Tiberius even to die in peace. We are told that when he became aware that his health was failing, he was nervously anxious to conceal the fact; he left Capreæ and took up his quarters in the villa of Lucullus on the mainland opposite the island. Having discovered that his physician had surreptitiously felt his pulse, he ordered a better dinner than usual, and ostentatiously enjoyed himself, but the effort was too much for him; he fainted, and a report was immediately spread through the household that he was dead. Caligula was receiving the congratulations of all, and was proceeding to act as Emperor, when there was a rumour that the old man had recovered. At the suggestion of Macro, orders were at once given to smother him beneath a pile of mattresses. The story is finely sensational, but it is to be hoped that it is not true.

Whatever was the exact nature of his end, Tiberius died in the seventy-eighth year of his life, and the twenty-third of his reign, having lived through such vicissitudes of fortune, and such a continuity of hard work, as have rarely fallen to the lot of any human being; but far stranger than the events of his life is the horrible reputation that has attached to the memory of the man who held that in all things princes were bound to consider their good name.