As for Tiberius, his body was now wasted and his strength exhausted, but his dissimulation did not fail him. He exhibited the same inflexibility of mind, the same energy in his looks and discourse; and even sometimes by affected vivacity tried to hide his decaying strength, though too manifest to be concealed. And after much shifting of places, he settled at length at the promontory of Misenum, in a villa which Lucullus once owned. There it was discovered that his end was approaching, in the following manner: In his train was a physician, named Charicles, noted in his profession, not indeed to prescribe for the prince in cases of indisposition, but that he might have some one to consult if he thought proper. Charicles, as if he were departing to attend to his own affairs, and taking hold of his hand under pretence of taking leave, felt his pulse. But he did not escape detection, for he instantly ordered the entertainment to be renewed; whether incensed, and therefore the more concealing his displeasure, is uncertain; but at table he continued beyond his wont, as if to do honour to his friend on his departure. Charicles, however, assured Macro that life was ebbing fast, and could not outlast two days. Hence the whole court was in a bustle with consultations, and expresses were despatched to the generals and armies. On the seventeenth, before the calends of April, he was believed to have finished his mortal career, having ceased to breathe; and Caligula, in the midst of a great throng of persons, paying their congratulations, was already going forth to make a solemn entrance on the sovereignty, when suddenly a notice came, “that Tiberius had recovered his sight and voice, and had called for some persons to give him food to restore him.” The consternation was universal; the concourse about Caligula dispersed in all directions, every man affecting sorrow or feigning ignorance; he himself stood fixed in silence—fallen from the highest hopes, he now expected the worst. Macro, undismayed, ordered the old man to be smothered with a quantity of clothes, and the doorway to be cleared. Thus expired Tiberius, in the seventy-eighth year of his age.[d]
This story of the last moments of Tiberius is questioned by Merivale,[f] who comments on the fact that Tacitus, writing long after the event, gives no authority for his version of the affair as just quoted, and says: On the other hand, a contemporary of the event seems to describe the old man’s death as simply natural. “Feeling himself sinking,” said Seneca,[l] “Tiberius took off his ring, and held it for a little while, as if about to present it to some one as an instrument of authority; but he soon replaced it on his finger, and lay for a time without motion. Then suddenly he called for his attendants, and when no one answered, raised himself from his bed with failing strength, and immediately fell lifeless beside it. This account was distorted by others into the denial of necessary sustenance, and actual death by exhaustion, while some did not scruple to affirm that Caius had caused the sick man to be poisoned.”
SUETONIUS CHARACTERISES TIBERIUS
Tiberius was in his person large and robust, of a stature somewhat above the common size, broad in the shoulders and chest, and in his other parts proportionable. He used his left hand more readily than his right; and his joints were so strong that he would bore a fresh sound apple through with his finger, and would wound the head of a boy, or even a young man, with a fillip. He was of a fair complexion, and had his hair so long behind that it covered his neck, which was observed to be a mark of distinction affected by the family. He had a handsome face, but often full of pimples. His eyes, which were large, had a wonderful faculty of seeing in the night time, and in the dark, but for a short time only, and immediately after awaking from sleep; for they soon grew dim again. He walked with his neck stiff and unmoved, commonly with a frowning countenance, being for the most part silent; when he spoke to those about him it was very slowly, and generally accompanied by an effeminate motion of his fingers. All those things being disagreeable, and expressive of arrogance, Augustus remarked in him, and often endeavoured to excuse to the senate and people, assuring them that “they were natural defects, which proceeded from no viciousness of mind.” He enjoyed a good state of health, and without any interruption, almost during the whole time of his government; though, from the thirtieth year of his age he managed himself in respect of his health according to his own discretion, without any medical assistance.
In regard to the gods, and matters of religion, he discovered much indifference; being greatly addicted to astrology, and full of a persuasion that all things were governed by fate. Yet he was extremely afraid of lightning, and in cloudy weather always wore a laurel crown on his head; because an opinion prevails among many, that the leaf of that tree is never touched by the lightning.
He applied himself with great diligence to the liberal arts, both Greek and Latin. In his Latin style, he affected to imitate Messalla Corvinus, a respectable old man, whose company he had much frequented in his youth. But he rendered his style obscure by excess of affectation and niceness; so that he was thought to talk better extempore, than in a premeditated discourse. He composed likewise a lyric ode, under the title of A Lamentation upon the Death of L. Cæsar, as also some Greek poems in imitation of Euphorion, Rhianus, and Parthenius. These poets he greatly admired, and set up their works and statues in the public libraries, amongst the eminent authors of antiquity. On this account, most of the learned men of the time vied with each other in publishing observations upon them, which they addressed to him. What he chiefly attended to was the knowledge of the fabulous history; and this he prosecuted with a zeal that might justly be deemed ridiculous. For he used to try the grammarians, a class of people which I have already observed he much affected, with such questions as these: “Who was Hecuba’s mother? What had been Achilles’ name amongst the young women? What song were the Sirens used to sing?” And the first day that he entered the senate house, after the death of Augustus, as if he intended to pay a respect both to the memory of his father and the gods, in imitation of Minos upon the death of his son, he made an offering of frankincense and wine, but without any music.
Though he was ready and conversant with the Greek tongue, yet he did not use it everywhere, but chiefly declined it in the senate house; insomuch that having occasion to use the word monopolium (monopoly), he first begged pardon for being obliged to trouble the house with a foreign word. And when in a decree of the senate, the word emblema (emblem) was read, he advised to have it changed, and that a Latin word should be substituted in its room; or if no proper one could be found, to express the thing in a circumlocutory manner. A soldier who was examined, as a witness upon a trial, in Greek, he would not allow to make any answer but in Latin.
The people rejoiced so much at his death, that, upon the first news of it, they ran up and down the city, some crying out, “Away with Tiberius into the Tiber”; others exclaiming, “May the earth, the common mother of mankind, and the infernal gods, allow no place for the dead, but amongst the wicked.” Others threatened his body with the hook and the scalæ gemoniæ, their indignation at his former cruelty being increased by a recent instance of the same kind. It had been provided by an act of the senate, that the punishment of persons condemned to die should always be deferred until the tenth day after the sentence. Now it happened that the day on which the news of Tiberius’ death arrived, was the time fixed by law for the execution of some persons that had been sentenced to die. These poor creatures implored the protection of all about them; but because Caius was not in town, and there was none else to whom application could be made in their behalf, the men who were charged with the care of their execution, from a dread of offending against that law, strangled them, and threw them down the scalæ gemoniæ. This excited in the minds of the people a still greater abhorrence of the tyrant’s memory, since his cruelty subsisted even after his death. As soon as his corpse began to move from Misenum, many cried out for its being carried to Atella, and broiled there in the amphitheatre. It was however brought to Rome, and burned with the usual ceremony.[c]
MERIVALE’S ESTIMATE OF TIBERIUS
Cæsar, the high-handed usurper, met an usurper’s death, by open violence in the light of day. Augustus, after fifty years of the mildest and most equitable rule the times admitted, sank at last by a slow and painless decay into the arms of those dearest to him, amidst the respectful sympathies of an admiring people. The end of Tiberius, whether consummated by treachery or not, was shrouded in gloom and obscurity; the chamber of mortality was agitated to the last by the intrigues and fears of the dying man and his survivors. The fellow-countrymen of the detested tyrant seem to have deemed it fitting that one whose life was to them an enigma should perish by a mysterious death. It seems preferable to represent him as a man whose character was sufficiently transparent, the apparent inconsistencies in whose conduct, often exaggerated and misrepresented, may generally be explained by the nature of his position, and the political illusions with which he was required to encircle himself. It is the character of the age in which he was placed, an age of rapid though silent transition, rather than of the man himself, which invests him with an historical interest. This is the point to which it will be well to direct our attention, before letting the curtain drop upon the personage with whom the forms of the republic perished, and the despotism of the Cæsars finally dropped its mask.