Thyus, a satrap of Paphlagonia, who revolted from Artaxerxes, and was seized by Datames. Cornelius Nepos, Datames.
Tiasa, a daughter of the Eurotas, who gave her name to a river in Laconia. Pausanias, bk. 3, ch. 18.
Tibarēni, a people of Cappadocia, on the borders of the Thermodon.——A people of Pontus. Mela, bk. 2, ch. 20.
Tiberias, a town of Galilee, built by Herod, near a lake of the same name, and called after Tiberius. Pliny, bk. 5, ch. 16.—Josephus, Antiquities, bk. 18, ch. 3.
Tiberīnus, son of Capetus, and king of Alba, was drowned in the river Albula, which on that account assumed the name of Tiberis, of which he became the protecting god. Livy, bk. 1, ch. 3.—Cicero, de Natura Deorum, bk. 2, ch. 20.—Varro, de Lingua Latina, bk. 4, ch. 5, &c.—Ovid, Fasti, bk. 2, li. 389; bk. 4, li. 47.
Tibĕris, Tyberis, Tiber, or Tibris, a river of Italy on whose banks the city of Rome was built. It was originally called Albula, from the whiteness of its waters, and afterwards Tiberis, when Tiberinus king of Alba had been drowned there. It was also named Tyrrhenus, because it watered Etruria, and Lydius, because the inhabitants of the neighbourhood were supposed to be of Lydian origin. The Tiber rises in the Apennines, and falls into the Tyrrhene sea, 16 miles below Rome, after dividing Latium from Etruria. Ovid, Fasti, bk. 4, lis. 47, 329, &c.; bk. 5, li. 641; Ibis, li. 514.—Lucan, bk. 1, li. 381, &c.—Varro, de Lingua Latina, bk. 4, ch. 5.—Virgil, Æneid, bk. 7, li. 30.—Horace, bk. 1, ode 2, li. 13.—Mela, bk. 2, ch. 4.—Livy, bk. 1, ch. 3.
Tibērius Claudius Drusus Nero, a Roman emperor after the death of Augustus, was descended from the family of the Claudii. In his early years he commanded popularity by entertaining the populace with magnificent shows and fights of gladiators, and he gained some applause in the funeral oration which he pronounced over his father, though only nine years old. His first appearance in the Roman armies was under Augustus, in the war against the Cantabri; and afterwards, in the capacity of general, he obtained victories in different parts of the empire, and was rewarded with a triumph. Yet, in the midst of his glory, Tiberius fell under the displeasure of Augustus, and retired to Rhodes, where he continued for seven years as an exile, till, by the influence of his mother Livia with the emperor, he was recalled. His return to Rome was the more glorious; he had the command of the Roman armies in Illyricum, Pannonia, and Dalmatia, and seemed to divide the sovereign power with Augustus. At the death of this celebrated emperor, Tiberius, who had been adopted, assumed the reins of government; and while with dissimulation and affected modesty he wished to decline the dangerous office, he found time to try the fidelity of his friends, and to make the greatest part of the Romans believe that he was invested with the purple, not from his own choice, but by the recommendation of Augustus, and the urgent entreaties of the Roman senate. The beginning of his reign seemed to promise tranquillity to the world. Tiberius was a watchful guardian of the public peace; he was the friend of justice, and never assumed the sounding titles which must disgust a free nation, but he was satisfied to say of himself that he was the master of his slaves, the general of his soldiers, and the father of the citizens of Rome. That seeming moderation, however, which was but the fruit of the deepest policy, soon disappeared, and Tiberius was viewed in his real character. His ingratitude to his mother Livia, to whose intrigues he was indebted for the purple, his cruelty to his wife Julia, and his tyrannical oppression and murder of many noble senators, rendered him odious to the people, and suspected even by his most intimate favourites. The armies mutinied in Pannonia and Germany, but the tumults were silenced by the prudence of the generals and the fidelity of the officers, and the factious demagogues were abandoned to their condign punishment. This acted as a check upon Tiberius in Rome; he knew from thence, as his successors experienced, that his power was precarious, and his very existence in perpetual danger. He continued as he had begun, to pay the greatest deference to the senate; all libels against him he disregarded, and he observed that, in a free city, the thoughts and the tongue of every man should be free. The taxes were gradually lessened, and luxury restrained by the salutary regulations, as well as by the prevailing example and frugality of the emperor. While Rome exhibited a scene of peace and public tranquillity, the barbarians were severally defeated on the borders of the empire, and Tiberius gained new honours, by the activity and valour of Germanicus and his other faithful lieutenants. Yet the triumphs of Germanicus were beheld with jealousy. Tiberius dreaded his power, he was envious of his popularity, and the death of that celebrated general in Antioch was, as some suppose, accelerated by poison, and the secret resentment of the emperor. Not only his relations and friends, but the great and opulent, were sacrificed to his ambition, cruelty, and avarice; and there was scarce in Rome one single family that did not reproach Tiberius for the loss of a brother, a father, or a husband. He at last retired to the island of Capreæ, on the coast of Campania, where he buried himself in unlawful pleasures. The care of the empire was entrusted to favourites, among whom Sejanus for a while shone with uncommon splendour. In this solitary retreat the emperor proposed rewards to such as invented new pleasures, or could produce fresh luxuries. He forgot his age, as well as his dignity, and disgraced himself by the most unnatural vices and enormous indulgencies, which can draw a blush even upon the countenance of the most debauched and abandoned. While the emperor was lost to himself and the world, the provinces were harassed on every side by the barbarians, and Tiberius found himself insulted by those enemies whom hitherto he had seen fall prostrate at his feet with every mark of submissive adulation. At last, grown weak and helpless through infirmities, he thought of his approaching dissolution; and as he well knew that Rome could not exist without a head, he nominated, as his successor, Caius Caligula. Many might inquire, why a youth naturally so vicious and abandoned as Caius was chosen to be the master of an extensive empire; but Tiberius wished his own cruelties to be forgotten in the barbarities which might be displayed in the reign of his successor, whose natural propensities he had well defined, in saying of Caligula that he bred a serpent for the Roman people, and a Phaeton for the rest of the empire. Tiberius died at Misenum the 16th of March, A.D. 37, in the 78th year of his age, after a reign of 22 years, six months, and 26 days. Caligula was accused of having hastened his end by suffocating him. The joy was universal when his death was known; and the people of Rome, in the midst of sorrow, had a moment to rejoice, heedless of the calamities which awaited them in the succeeding reigns. The body of Tiberius was conveyed to Rome, and burnt with great solemnity. A funeral oration was pronounced by Caligula, who seemed to forget his benefactor while he expatiated on the praises of Augustus, Germanicus, and his own. The character of Tiberius has been examined with particular attention by historians, and his reign is the subject of the most perfect and elegant of all the compositions of Tacitus. When a private man, Tiberius was universally esteemed; when he had no superior, he was proud, arrogant, jealous, and revengeful. If he found his military operations conducted by a warlike general, he affected moderation and virtue; but when he got rid of the powerful influence of a favourite, he was tyrannical and dissolute. If, as some observe, he had lived in the times of the Roman republic, he might have been as conspicuous as his great ancestors; but the sovereign power lodged in his hands, rendered him vicious and oppressive. Yet, though he encouraged informers and favoured flattery, he blushed at the mean servilities of the senate, and derided the adulation of his courtiers, who approached him, he said, as if they approached a savage elephant. He was a patron of learning; he was an eloquent and ready speaker, and dedicated some part of his time to study. He wrote a lyric poem, entitled, “A Complaint on the death of Lucius Cæsar,” as also some Greek pieces in imitation of some of his favourite authors. He avoided all improper expressions, and all foreign words he totally wished to banish from the Latin tongue. As instances of his humanity, it has been recorded that he was uncommonly liberal to the people of Asia Minor, whose cities had been destroyed by a violent earthquake, A.D. 17. One of his officers wished him to increase the taxes. “No,” said Tiberius; “a good shepherd must shear, not flay, his sheep.” The senators wished to call the month of November, in which he was born, by his name, in imitation of Julius Cæsar and Augustus, in the months of July and August; but this he refused, saying, “What will you do, conscript fathers, if you have thirteen Cæsars?” Like the rest of the emperors, he received divine honours after death, and even during his life. It has been wittily observed by Seneca, that he never was intoxicated but once all his life, for he continued in a perpetual state of intoxication from the time he gave himself to drinking till the last moment of his life. Suetonius, Lives, &c.—Tacitus, Annals, bk. 6, &c.—Dio Cassius.——A friend of Julius Cæsar, whom he accompanied in the war of Alexandria. Tiberius forgot the favours he had received from his friend; and when he was assassinated, he wished all his murderers to be publicly rewarded.——One of the Gracchi. See: [Gracchus].——Sempronius, a son of Drusus and Livia the sister of Germanicus, put to death by Caligula.——A son of Brutus, put to death by his father, because he had conspired with other young noblemen to restore Tarquin to his throne.——A Thracian made emperor of Rome in the latter ages of the empire.
Tibēsis, a river of Scythia, flowing from mount Hæmus into the Ister. Herodotus, bk. 4, ch. 49.
Tibiscus, now Teisse, a river of Dacia, with a town of the same name, now Temeswar. It falls into the Danube.
Tibris. See: [Tiberis].