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TIBERIUS CAESAR

David Shotter provides a concise and accessible survey of the character and life of Tiberius Caesar, heir of Augustus Caesar and emperor of Rome from AD 14 to AD 37. Tiberius Caesar sheds light on many aspects of the reign of this enigmatic emperor, including the influential and often problematic relationships Tiberius maintained with the senate, his heir Germanicus, his wife Agrippina, and Sejanus. Other key topics discussed include:

•

Tiberius’ rise to power

•

Tiberius’ struggles to meet the demands of his role

•

How far Tiberius’ policies differed from those of Augustus

•

Why Tiberius retired from official duties in AD 26.

Taking into account the latest research on the subject, David Shotter has updated this second edition of Tiberius Caesar throughout. Also included is a revised and expanded Bibliography and a new index.

David Shotter is Emeritus Professor in Roman Imperial History at the University of Lancaster. His many books include Augustus Caesar (2nd edition, 2005), The Fall of the Roman Republic (2nd edition, 2005) and Roman Britain (2nd edition, 2004).

LANCASTER PAMPHLETS IN

ANCIENT HISTORY

GENERAL EDITORS: ERIC J. EVANS AND P.D. KING

Hans Pohlsander, Emperor Constantine

David Shotter, Augustus Caesar

David Shotter, The Fall of the Roman Republic

David Shotter, Nero

David Shotter, Roman Britain

David Shotter, Tiberius Caesar

Richard Stoneman, Alexander the Great

John Thorley, Athenian Democracy

Sam Wilkinson, Caligula

TIBERIUS CAESAR

Second Edition

David Shotter

First published 1992

by Routledge

2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada

by Routledge

270 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016

Second edition published 2004

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group

This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2004.

reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic,

mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter

invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any

information storage or retrieval system, without permission in

writing from the publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Shotter, D. C. A. (David Colin Arthur)

Tiberius Caesar / David Shotter. – 2nd ed.

p. cm – (Lancaster pamphlets in ancient history)

Includes bibliographical references and index

1. Tiberius, Emperor of Rome, 42 B.C.–37 A.D.

2. Rome – History –

Tiberius, 14–37.

3. Emperors – Rome – Biography.

I. Title.

II. Series.

DG282.S46 2004

937′.07′092–dc22

[B]

ISBN 0-203-62502-1 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0-203-34475-8 (Adobe eReader Format)

ISBN 0–415–31945–5 (hbk)

ISBN 0–415–31946–3 (pbk)

FOR

SIMON

(1966–2004)

CONTENTS

LIST OF FIGURES

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

FOREWORD

XIII

1 Introduction

2 Tiberius’ early life

3 The new princeps

4 Tiberius, the senate and the nobility

5 Tiberius and the family of Germanicus

6 Sejanus

7 Tiberius and the Empire

8 Tiberius’ retirement from Rome: his later years

9 The succession

10 Conclusion

APPENDIX I THE ACCOUNTS OF TIBERIUS’ LIFE AND REIGN

APPENDIX II THE EVIDENCE OF INSCRIPTIONS AND COINS

APPENDIX III CHIEF DATES IN THE LIFE OF TIBERIUS

APPENDIX IV GLOSSARY OF LATIN TERMS

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

102

INDEX

107

FIGURES

Stemma illustrating Tiberius’ connections with

members of the republican nobility

Stemma of Augustus and the Julio-Claudian emperors

Sestertius c. 35–36

Divus Augustus c. 22–30

Dupondius c. 16–22

Dupondius c. 22–23

The Roman Empire in AD 14

Sestertius c. 22–23

Map of Italy

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

My thanks are due to Peter Lee, formerly of the Lancaster University

Archaeology Unit, who prepared the maps which appear as figures

3 and 4; also to my wife, Anne, for her help in the preparation of the

manuscript.

FOREWORD

Lancaster Pamphlets offer concise and up-to-date accounts of

major historical topics, primarily for the help of students preparing

for Advanced Level examinations, though they should also be

of value to those pursuing introductory courses in universities and other institutions of higher education. Without being all-embracing, their aims are to bring some of the central themes or

problems confronting students and teachers into sharper focus

than the textbook writer can hope to do; to provide the reader with

some of the results of recent research which the textbook may not

embody; and to stimulate thought about the whole interpretation

of the topic under discussion.

INTRODUCTION

Tiberius Caesar was an enigma to his contemporaries; subsequent

generations have found this taciturn and reclusive figure no

easier to fathom. When in ad 14, at the age of 56, he succeeded

Augustus as princeps, he was a man of considerable – mostly

military – experience; yet despite this, there were serious anxieties

as to whether his character really suited him to the demands of

the job, anxieties which he himself appears in some measure to

have shared. According to Tacitus, some felt that Augustus had

adopted him as his successor either because there was no satis-

factory alternative or even so that a poor successor would shed

a particularly favourable light on his own memory. To many,

Tiberius’ reserved nature concealed haughtiness and arrogance,

perhaps even a tendency to cruelty and perversion.

Once in power, Tiberius expressed reluctance to exercise the

responsibilities and take the opportunities which it offered. Had

he been unwillingly projected to prominence by events or by the

machinations of his scheming mother, Livia Drusilla? Or was it

due to the backing of members of the senatorial nobility who

thought they recognised in Tiberius a man of ‘republican’ senti-

ments, who would restore to them the kinds of privileges their

families had enjoyed in the old republic? Indeed, Tiberius’ early

actions and pronouncements as princeps seemed to suggest that

he might perform such a role and that he believed the Augustan

I N T R O D U C T I O N

respublica to represent too sharp a departure from the traditions of the past.

Part of the enigma lay in the fact that evidently such senti-

ments were genuinely felt by Tiberius; yet at the same time he had

an inordinate reverence for Augustus, his achievements and his

form of government, despite the fact that prior to ad 14 Tiberius’

life had been dominated to the point of near-destruction by

adherence to Augustus’ wishes and requirements. Such, however,

was the self-effacement of the new princeps that not only did he express distaste for the trappings of power but he would not

even willingly accept the name Augustus on the grounds of his

unworthiness to hold it.

A further element of the enigma of Tiberius Caesar was the fact

that, despite such sentiments, his reign did not in fact mark any

kind of reversion to the practices of the old republic. On the

contrary, it eventually represented a descent into tyranny, in

which Tiberius came under the influence of the unscrupulous

prefect of the praetorian guard, Lucius Aelius Sejanus, and was

persuaded to live out a bitter and frustrated retirement in iso-

lation, much of it spent on the island of Capreae (Capri), whilst

Rome and its politics were dominated first by Sejanus himself and

subsequently by his equally corrupt successor, Sutorius Macro.

How did Tiberius fall under the malicious influence of such

men? Why was his dependence on them not prevented by the

influence and support of members of his own family or of his long-

standing friends? There is again an apparently baffling inconsis-

tency in the fact that a man who rarely shared confidences could

fall under such totally dominating influences. Frustration at this

inconsistency was keenly felt by Tiberius’ contemporaries. ‘What

hope is there for the young Caligula, if even Tiberius with all his

experience has been deranged by his exercise of supreme power?’

was the pertinent question posed by the respected Tiberian

senator, Lucius Arruntius, who committed suicide shortly before

Tiberius’ own death (Tacitus Annals VI. 48).

The purpose of the present work is to examine the life and

career of Tiberius Caesar and to illuminate the influences upon

him; it will also highlight Tiberius’ own ideas on government

and the reasons for the ultimate frustration and failure. Indeed, it

will seek to answer questions which in all probability oppressed

I N T R O D U C T I O N

Tiberius as he increasingly immersed himself in the occult

towards the end of his life.

Much of the controversy which over the years has surrounded

the life and principate of Tiberius has derived from differing

interpretations of the contemporary and later classical sources;

for this reason, especial attention will be paid to these writers in

an attempt to clarify their views of Tiberius Caesar. One thing,

however, is certain: the good reputation with his own and sub-

sequent generations which at one stage he stated as his ultimate

ambition eluded him, and the accolade of posthumous deification,

granted readily enough to his predecessor, was denied to him.

TIBERIUS’ EARLY LIFE

Tiberius Claudius Nero, later to become Tiberius Caesar, was born

on 16 November, 42 bc; this was the year which saw Octavian

and Marc Antony inflict defeat upon Brutus and Cassius, thus

finally avenging the murder of Julius Caesar two years previously.

As a member of the Claudian family ( gens Claudia), Tiberius could look back to a long line of famous, often brilliantly talented,

ancestors. Few generations of the Roman republic had failed to

experience a Claudian exercising a dominant or maverick role;

they were a family firmly at the centre of the network of aristo-

cratic patronage which had been the life-blood of the respublica.

Tiberius’ parents were in fact both Claudians, though from differ-

ent branches of the family. His father was, like Tiberius himself,

called Tiberius Claudius Nero; his branch of the family was

comparatively undistinguished. Some members had been active at

the time of the Punic wars in the third century bc; more recently,

only Tiberius’ paternal grandfather, also called Tiberius Claudius

Nero, appears to have played an active role in politics (see

Figure 1).

Tiberius’ mother was Livia Drusilla; she derived her name from

another influential republican family, the Livii Drusi. However,

her father was a Claudius Pulcher who had been adopted in

infancy by Marcus Livius Drusus, a tribune in 91 bc. Under the

terms of adoption, Livia’s father took the name of Marcus Livius

’ connections with members of the republican nobility

iberius

Stemma illustrating T

Figure

T I B E R I U S ’ E A R LY L I F E

Drusus Claudianus. He played an active part in the politics

of the late republic as a partisan of Pompey, Crassus and Caesar in

the First Triumvirate of 59 bc. Later, in 43 bc, he was outlawed

(proscribed) by Octavian, Antony and Lepidus during the Second

Triumvirate, joined Brutus and Cassius, and committed suicide

the following year during the battle of Philippi. These con-

nections tied Tiberius to families which in the late republic had

proved to be the most outspoken opponents of domination and

Caesarism. Livia’s branch of the gens Claudia could boast even

more momentous figures over the years: Appius Claudius Pulcher,

consul in 143 bc, had been the leader of a faction which contained

his son-in-law, Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus. The activities

of this faction and of Gracchus as tribune in 133 bc are usually

assumed to mark the beginning of the descent into chaos which

characterised the late republic. Another kinsman, Publius Clodius

Pulcher, tribune in 58 bc and arch-enemy of Cicero, played a

major part in the death throes of the republic. It is little wonder,

therefore, that an eagerness for the glory of the gens Claudia was a strong motivating factor behind the conduct of Tiberius’ mother

and serves to explain her determination that her son should

inherit the mantle of Augustus Caesar.

Tiberius’ father first achieved prominence as a supporter of

Caesar in the civil war against Pompey and as a partisan of the

dictator in the early 40s. By 44 bc, however, he had become one

of Caesar’s most extreme opponents, not only supporting Brutus

and Cassius but endeavouring to win for them a vote of thanks

as tyrannicides. After Philippi he first of all joined the abortive

rebellion of Lucius Antonius (Antony’s brother) against Octavian’s

control of Italy, then (briefly) in Sextus Pompey’s attempts to

destabilise Octavian from his bases on Sicily. Finally, Nero and his

wife joined Antony in Greece before returning to Italy under the

terms of the Treaty of Misenum in 39 bc, which was intended to

introduce a new spirit of co-operation between Octavian, Antony,

Lepidus and Sextus Pompey.

The agreement did not bring harmony for long, but it did

provide the opportunity for many disillusioned republican aris-

tocrats to return to Italy; this in its turn helped to lend an

air of legitimacy and respectability to Octavian’s dominance of

Italy and the west. It was to prove a crucial step in the process

T I B E R I U S ’ E A R LY L I F E

of establishing Octavian and his faction as the true defenders of

liberty and the republic.

Even more important, both politically and personally, was

Octavian’s decision to divorce his wife, Scribonia, and facilitate a

divorce between Tiberius Nero and Livia. Despite the fact that

Livia was pregnant with her second son, Octavian ignored the

moral and religious objections and married her. This marriage

served to bind Octavian with the core of the republican nobility,

and provided a social respectability which was lacking in his

own more humble origins. It was probably the most important

decision of Octavian’s life, and the marriage was one of the most

influential in the history of Rome. Livia’s sons were now the

stepsons of the man who would soon rule the Roman world as

Augustus Caesar.

Tiberius and his brother, Nero Drusus, were brought up in

Octavian’s household as his stepsons, although Tiberius at least

maintained a contact with his father – to the extent that it was

natural for him, still only 9 years old, to pronounce his father’s

funeral eulogy in 32 bc. It cannot reasonably be expected that

these domestic and political upheavals failed to leave their mark

on the young Tiberius Nero, and they may well help to explain

the great desire for stability that was to be so prominent a feature

of Tiberius’ aspirations as princeps.

Tiberius’ development from childhood to manhood occurred

during a crucial period for the respublica, which saw the inexorable progress towards the battle of Actium in 31 bc and the subsequent establishment of the Augustan principate. It is evident

from his own accession as princeps in ad 14 that Tiberius found no difficulty in reconciling the ideas of the traditional respublica and the nature of the powers vested in Augustus to restore and

stabilise it. Augustus’ massive prestige ( auctoritas), which derived from his leadership of the Caesarian faction, from his victory at

Actium, and from his reconciliation with the descendants of

the republican nobility, made him the natural person to save the

republic from what had seemed for most of the first century bc its

inevitable disintegration. The young Tiberius was associated with

the new order of things as he took part prominently in the victory

parades that followed Actium.

It was not long before Augustus began his protracted and

T I B E R I U S ’ E A R LY L I F E

chequered search for a successor to his power and position, the

complexities of which are documented in the stemma which

appears as Figure 2. A major purpose was to weld together a

faction of disparate elements – family, republican nobility, and

‘new men’ who had risen in his service in the years between

Caesar’s murder and the battle of Actium. The primacy of this

faction, however, he determined should reside within his own

family, the Julii; it was for the same principle that he had decided in 44–43 bc that he, and not Marc Antony, was Caesar’s true

political heir.

It seems likely that, in the aftermath of Actium, the respublica

was in the hands of three principal ‘power-brokers’ – Augustus

Caesar himself, his long-term associate, Marcus Agrippa, and his

wife, Livia Drusilla. Whilst this in no way had official expression,

it has been likened to a covert ‘triumvirate’. It has further been

suggested that Agrippa and Livia may have been co-operating to

‘marginalise’ Augustus – an error that others had made before. It

could be that the marriage of Tiberius to Agrippa’s daughter,

Vipsania Agrippina, should be viewed against such a background

– a marriage which, incidentally, proved to be the happiest and

most rewarding feature of Tiberius’ life.

Augustus’ decision in 25 bc to arrange a marriage between

his only daughter, Julia, and his sister’s son, Gaius Claudius

Marcellus, should, then, perhaps be seen as a dynastic attempt to

counterbalance the influence of Agrippa and Livia. At any rate,

the popular story that Agrippa was deeply offended and left Rome

for the East, whilst possibly true in part, represented an attempt

by Agrippa to capitalise on the military potential of the East – as

Pompey and Antony had done before him – and construct for

himself a bargaining-weapon to prevent his own marginalisation.

Gaius Marcellus did not, however, live to inconvenience

Agrippa for long; on his death in 22 bc, Agrippa returned, and

Augustus then moved to bind his old friend closer to him by

arranging a marriage for him with the now-widowed Julia. By so

doing, Augustus was making it clear that there was no ‘dynastic

prize’ for Agrippa himself; nor, indeed, for Tiberius, now that

Livia had been marginalised. Whilst Agrippa and Tiberius might

‘work for’ the regime, the inheritors of power were patently to be

the sons that Augustus hoped would be produced by the marriage

Stemma of Augustus and the Julio-Claudian emperors

Figure

T I B E R I U S ’ E A R LY L I F E

of Agrippa and Julia. When his hope was fulfilled, the princeps

showed his intention by straightaway adopting the two eldest

boys as his own sons. They are known to us by their adopted

names of Gaius Julius Caesar and Lucius Julius Caesar. Once

again, Augustus Caesar had triumphed over the factional

manoeuvres of others.

None of this appears to have caused Tiberius any problems. As

the stepson of Augustus, Tiberius’ role appears to have been firmly

rooted in the service of the princeps. In the late 20s bc, he was fully involved in the diplomatic and military activities which led to

the recovery from the Parthians of the legionary standards lost by

Crassus in 53 bc and by Decidius Saxa in 36 bc. By this success,

Roman pride in the east was salvaged and Rome’s superiority over

Armenia and Parthia established.

From then until 7 bc, it was the battlefields of Europe that

exercised Tiberius – first in Gaul and then as part of a ‘triple

spearhead’ along with his brother, Nero Drusus, and Marcus

Agrippa in the attempt to establish Roman sovereignty as far east

as the River Elbe, as part of the scheme to create an Elbe–Danube

frontier for the empire in Europe. It was a period which marked

Tiberius out as an efficient commander, yet a self-effacing and

retiring man. It was evidently also a satisfying period that

allowed Tiberius to enjoy close contact with his men and to form

associations of friendship that were to last. The comradeship of

the battlefield is well conveyed in the nickname which Suetonius

ascribes to this period – Biberius Caldius Mero, which referred to

Tiberius’ reputation as a drinker. It is evident that Tiberius liked

the ‘anonymity’ of the battlefields, which kept him away from the

brittle and dangerous world of dynastic politics and which gave

him a context in which he was confident of performing soundly.

Widely popular he may not have been, but he was respected for

his cautious efficiency and achievement. It is also apparent that

when Tiberius did not approve of the way in which a job was

being done, he made it clear; one enemy deriving from this

period, and who was to bear a grudge, was Marcus Lollius, whom

Tiberius replaced in Gaul in 16 bc.

Physically remote though the battlefields of northern Europe

were, domestic politics could never be far away from a stepson of

the princeps. Augustus’ hopes for the future were centred on Gaius T I B E R I U S ’ E A R LY L I F E

and Lucius, the sons of Agrippa and Julia. Agrippa’s premature

death in 12 bc not only deprived Tiberius of a man who was his

father-in-law and his friend, it also left Gaius and Lucius without

a father to supervise their development to manhood. It was to

Tiberius that Augustus turned at this moment of need, despite

Tiberius’ own happy marriage to Vipsania and the fact that they

had a son of their own, Drusus. Tiberius was required to abandon

his family and step in as Julia’s new husband and as guardian

of her two young sons. How far Livia may have influenced her

husband in adopting this course is not clear, but she may have

seen her son’s marriage to the widowed daughter of the princeps as the most effective path to promotion for the gens Claudia. For

Tiberius, however, the change was a disaster; not only did he give

up the family he loved, but before long he was recalled from

Germany to take his place in the political arena in Rome. This

brought him face to face with the reality of the sacrifice he had

been called upon to make. According to Suetonius, he once

followed Vipsania in the street, trying to talk to her; Augustus

made sure that this did not happen again. Like Agrippa before

him he had no alternative but to bear the insult to his pride

contained in Julia’s promiscuity; in addition, it appears from the

account of Dio Cassius ( Roman History, LV. 9) that Tiberius did not enjoy a good relationship with his new stepsons.

Despite his elevation to a second consulship in 7 bc and

Augustus’ decision to confer upon him the following year a grant

of the tribunician power, which effectively marked out Tiberius as

having achieved the standing of Agrippa, Tiberius decided in 6 bc

to turn his back on everything and retire to the island of Rhodes –

alone apart from a few friends and the company of an astrologer,

named Thrasyllus, who was to exercise a considerable influence

over Tiberius in later years. It is evident that Rome was taken

by surprise by Tiberius’ retirement; indeed Augustus evidently

regarded it as desertion and dereliction of duty. Tiberius at the

time explained his decision as due to his own fatigue and to

the status of his stepsons and his wish not to impede their pro-

gress; many, however, thought that the real reason lay in his

unhappiness at his wife’s behaviour. More recently, a psychiatric

study of Tiberius has regarded this ‘island psychology’ as an

expression of his feelings about his own inadequacy and inability

T I B E R I U S ’ E A R LY L I F E

to relate to people. It is evident that his close relationships

were few in number, yet he committed himself deeply on those

few occasions; not only was his relationship with Vipsania an

example, but so too was his devotion to his brother, Nero Drusus.

Following the latter’s death in Germany in 9 bc, Tiberius had

accompanied the cortège all the way to Rome on foot. As emperor,

Tiberius’ unquestioning allegiance to Sejanus provides another

example of such a commitment.

Even on Rhodes, however, Tiberius could not escape from

domestic politics; Augustus’ anger soon turned Tiberius’ retire-

ment into an enforced exile, and it was clearly ‘fashionable’

amongst Augustus’ associates to regard Tiberius with contempt.

One of them, Tiberius’ old enemy, Marcus Lollius, now elevated

to the role of companion ( comes) to Gaius Caesar, offered at a dinner party to go to Rhodes and bring back the exile’s head. Another

particularly personal reminder of his changing fortunes came with

the nearby presence, as proconsul of Asia (within whose ‘juris-

diction’ the island of Rhodes fell), of Gaius Asinius Gallus, the

son of the historian Pollio. Gallus had married Vipsania and was

trying to adopt Drusus as his son. Until Gallus’ death in ad 33

the bitter hostility between himself and Tiberius was barely

concealed.

In 2 bc Augustus seems finally to have become aware of his

daughter’s waywardness; he acted against her in the harshest way

open to the father of an adulterous daughter, punishing her with

exile and ignoring Tiberius’ distant attempts to intercede on

behalf of a wife for whom he can have had little regard. In

requiring a divorce between Tiberius and Julia, Augustus was of

course severing a significant link between himself and Tiberius,

which would have left Tiberius more than ever dependent for his

survival upon his mother’s influence with Augustus.

Again, however, fortune was to intervene decisively in the plans

of both Augustus and Tiberius. Despite the eclipse of Julia, the

career progress of her sons was unimpeded; offices and honours

were bestowed upon them and the future primacy of Augustus’

faction seemed assured. Yet by ad 4 both were dead, apparently

innocently, though some saw the involvement of Livia who was

concerned to protect and advance her son. After Lucius’ death in

ad 2, Augustus allowed Tiberius to return to Rome, though on

T I B E R I U S ’ E A R LY L I F E

the understanding that this was not to mean a return to politics.

Following the death of Gaius two years later, Augustus’ options

were much reduced, and it may well be that Livia and some

elements of the older senatorial nobility sought to take advantage

– evidently to check the rise of the new senatorial families whose

progress Augustus had fostered.

These older elements of the nobility possibly saw in Tiberius a

potential champion – because of the antiquity of his own family so

deeply rooted in the republican past. Dio Cassius relates amongst

the events of ad 4 a long – and presumably largely fictitious –

discussion between Augustus and Livia on the subject of the fate

of one Cnaeus Cornelius Cinna Magnus, a descendant of Pompey

whose name was naturally associated with the republic’s cause

against Caesar. It is possible that Dio has conjoined Cinna’s name

to the crisis over the succession question merely because of the

coincidence of Cinna’s elevation to the consulship of ad 5; it is

true that Seneca ( On Clemency I. 9) places Cinna’s offence earlier in the reign. However, even if the connection should not be pressed,

it remains likely that, at this very testing moment in the history

of the succession, Augustus was subject to pressure in making his

choices exerted by some powerful figures amongst the senatorial

nobility.

It is clear that in his dynastic reconstruction in ad 4 Augustus

could have continued to ignore Tiberius in favour of Agrippa

Postumus, the last surviving son of Agrippa and Julia, and

Germanicus, Tiberius’ nephew who was married to Agrippina, a

daughter of Agrippa and Julia. Tradition says that Augustus

would have liked to place his hopes fairly and squarely on

Germanicus’ shoulders. Instead, he created a more complex

dynastic ‘package’. Tiberius and Agrippa Postumus were formally

to be adopted as Augustus’ sons; officially Tiberius would now be

known as Tiberius Julius Caesar. Tiberius himself was required to

adopt Germanicus as his son and heir, ignoring the expectations of

his own son, Drusus.

Augustus had therefore compromised; realising the power of

Livia, Tiberius and the older nobility, he had acknowledged their

force as a faction. However, he had ensured that although his

Julian faction might temporarily have to live in the shadows

of the Claudians, it would on the death of Tiberius once again

T I B E R I U S ’ E A R LY L I F E

come into its own through Germanicus, Agrippina and their

children. Further, should Tiberius once again prove ‘unreliable’,

the dynastic balance could point in two alternative directions –

Germanicus or Agrippa Postumus; both of these were by birth or

marriage firmly anchored within Augustus’ Julian faction.

Thus Tiberius once again emerged into political prominence;

however, Augustus, perhaps recognising where Tiberius’ real

strength lay, committed him for much of the next five years to

military projects in Europe. Initially the intention was probably

to breathe new life into the dream of an imperial frontier on the

Elbe. However, progress towards this was first hampered by

the need for Tiberius to go to the Danube between ad 6 and 9,

in the wake of the Pannonian rebellion, and then finally destroyed

by the loss of Quinctilius Varus and three legions in the great

disaster near Osnabrük in ad 9. This dealt the final blow to an

Elbe–Danube frontier, and left Augustus and Tiberius having to

settle for a European frontier based upon the Rhine and the

Danube. It should not, however, be forgotten how close to disaster

the empire had been between ad 6 and 9 and that it was Tiberius’

military strength which had saved the day.

Between ad 4 and 14 it is likely that Augustus’ ability to

govern began to diminish, and that greater responsibility fell on

to the shoulders of others. Foremost amongst these was of course

Tiberius, and correspondence between Augustus and Tiberius,

quoted by Suetonius, indicates the degree of reliance which the

princeps placed upon his stepson. The fact that Tiberius enjoyed the same powers as Augustus – the proconsular power and the

tribunician power – indicates that he was in a position to act for

Augustus. Yet others too were important, and rivalries still

existed within the imperial family.

Germanicus, for example, for a time read the speeches of the

princeps to the senate, and after Tiberius’ successful stabilising of the Rhine in ad 9 it was to Germanicus that supreme power in

that area was given. Not surprisingly, people readily imagined

a rivalry between Germanicus and Tiberius, particularly in view

of the way in which they had been forced together in the ‘package’

of ad 4 and the great difference that was perceived in their

characters. Comparison between the two probably served to

heighten the public perception of Tiberius as reclusive; this

T I B E R I U S ’ E A R LY L I F E

remoteness was seen by some as a screen behind which Tiberius

practised acts of cruel perversion.

Included too in the ‘package’ of ad 4 was Agrippa Postumus,

though his role is none too clear. Some kind of scandal in ad 7 led

to his banishment, along with his sister and the poet, Ovid; it is

not clear whether this was political in nature or had anything to

do with continuing rivalry between the factions within the

imperial family. Livia, however, feared that Tiberius’ position

could be weakened by the fact that in the last two years of his life

Augustus appears to have attempted reconciliation with his

grandson; although it is not clear what Augustus intended, some

people evidently expected a new twist in the plans for succession.

Despite this, however, in Augustus’ last years Tiberius was the

most powerful man in the empire after the princeps himself;

and with him had risen his own partisans – to the extent that

one historian has talked of the empire being already ruled by a

‘government-in-waiting’. However, the real test was still to come;

for many people Augustus had taken on a kind of immortality,

and it was scarcely possible to imagine Rome and the empire

without him. Indeed, Augustus had himself helped to foster the

illusion by portraying himself on the coinage as perpetually

youthful.

His death in August ad 14, after forty-five years in power,

precipitated a crisis both for the principate and for the man who

had guarded it for the previous decade. Could Augustus’ personal

mantle be passed on? Could Tiberius match up to the auctoritas of the late princeps? How was power to be transmitted? Amidst so

much doubt and diffidence, one person retained a determined

ambition: Livia, Augustus’ widow and Tiberius’ mother, knew

that the moment of her family, the Claudians, had come. Signifi-

cantly, Tactius shows that in Livia’s report of Augustus’ death and

Tiberius’ accession, she stressed that the new man at the centre of

affairs was named not Tiberius Julius Caesar (as Tiberius had

been known since his adoption in ad 4) but Tiberius Claudius

Nero, the head of the gens Claudia, and presumed champion of the respublica.

The year ad 14 would provide searching tests for the system of

Augustus and for its new presumed leader; the traumas of his

early life and the crises induced by Augustus’ dynastic policy will

T I B E R I U S ’ E A R LY L I F E

not have failed to leave scars on the personality of Tiberius Caesar.

Not least amongst Tiberius’ difficulties was the fact that whilst

most people readily acknowledged his military competence, they

did not really know him as a political leader and suspected that

his eventual emergence at the top had not been managed without

a certain amount of suspect or even criminal behaviour, involving

political manipulation and even murder. This reputation was sig-

nificant, and Tiberius himself recognised it as a millstone around

his neck. Moreover, whilst he had been on the political scene in

one way or another for more than three decades, to most he was

still unknown – and therefore an object of both suspicion and

fear. In this way, Tiberius carried into his own principate a heavy

legacy from his earlier years.

Figure 3 Sestertius of Tiberius, c. ad 35–36, showing on the obverse face the Temple of Concordia which Tiberius had restored in ad 10. Although ‘pride of place’ goes to Concordia, the Temple bears the figures of most of the Olympian deities. The reverse has Tiberius’ name and titles around S C.

THE NEW PRINCEPS

The previous chapter has made frequent – and unquestioning –

references to Augustus’ ‘dynastic’ or ‘succession’ policy; in

the later years of the first century ad, with the benefit of

hindsight, Augustus’ policy was recognised for what it really

was – the establishment of a hereditary monarchy, built

around the Julian and Claudian families. As we have seen, it

was Augustus’ earliest hope that the former – his own family –

would predominate. Augustus knew, however, that it would

have been self-defeating to have proclaimed such an intention

openly. He had come to power as a faction leader; despite

appearances, carefully orchestrated by himself, that he was

making war on Marc Antony in pursuance of a ‘national crusade’,

he was in fact at the battle of Actium inflicting a defeat on

the one man who could have realistically challenged him as a

faction leader.

After the battle of Actium, Augustus’ primacy rested partly on

his undisputed factional dominance and partly on the near-

universal recognition that he was at the time the only man of

sufficient wealth and prestige ( auctoritas) to be able to act as the centre of a stable government and prevent a return to civil strife.

He ensured, therefore, that the government of the respublica

depended upon him and the network of supporters who followed

him. In other words, he was a faction leader, a leading citizen

T H E N E W PRINCEPS

( princeps) to whom, because of the unusually dangerous and

confused situation that existed following Caesar’s murder in

44 bc, had been entrusted with a special mandate to govern in

order to save and restore the respublica although many may have seen it as retrospective legalising of Octavian’s having usurped an

army-command. In effect, Augustus had instituted not an open

autocracy, but a ‘republican principate’ which, with the benefit of

a longer perspective, can be seen as an intermediate stage between

the ‘Old Republic’ ( vetus respublica) and the open autocracy of Gaius and those who followed him.

Strictly, of course, Augustus, role and position could not be

passed on by way of inheritance; auctoritas could exist in a man only by a combination of birth, status and personal achievement, whilst the actual powers by which the princeps governed

were in the gift of the senate, the populus and the plebs. The truth of this was in fact recognised by Augustus when he was

said by Tacitus to have mentioned the names of a number of

consular senators who might be considered adequate to continue

his role. In ad 14, in any case, there was no precedent for the

transmission of power; indeed, the formal transmission of it

would call into question the whole façade of the ‘restored repub-

lic’. It is little wonder, therefore, that at the time of Augustus’

death in ad 14 Tiberius found himself on the horns of a

dilemma – or, as he himself is said by Suetonius to have put it,

to be ‘holding a wolf by its ears’. Yet he appreciated too that

government had to continue, and on certain significant issues he

made immediate use of the proconsular and tribunician powers

that had been properly bestowed upon him at Augustus’

instigation.

Yet, to continue in his use of those powers, he needed a

demonstration that he, like Augustus, was a man of auctoritas,

so that if the special mandate was to continue he could be seen

as the man to take it on. In addition, for a private and diffident

man like Tiberius, who was already 56 years of age, there was a

further question: whether he himself really wanted or was per-

sonally suited to a role which had, after all, been moulded by

the circumstances, the position and the personality of Augustus

Caesar. As Tiberius himself is said to have observed, ‘only

Augustus was capable of bearing this burden’; he was clearly

T H E N E W PRINCEPS

aware that he could neither inherit nor match his adoptive

father’s auctoritas.

Further, the intrigues and uncertainties that had surrounded

Augustus’ dynastic policies only made matters more difficult

for Tiberius. Many believed that Augustus had not wanted to

adopt Tiberius and that it was only, as he himself stated in his

will, the workings of a ‘cruel fortune’ that had prevented him

handing his position on to others. It was felt too that it was only

thanks to his mother that Tiberius had survived to be elevated to

the principate. Tiberius was paying the price for the vicissitudes

of his years under Augustus and the generally low profile he

had enjoyed during that time. In short, Tiberius in ad 14

needed to know that he was ‘called by the republic’ rather

than stand accused of having crept into his position largely as

a result of Livia’s manipulative pressure on her increasingly

senile husband.

Thus, if Tiberius was to take on Augustus’ role, he needed to

receive the kind of unequivocal acclamation that had greeted

Augustus when, in 27 bc, he had seemed to be trying to lay his

powers aside. That, after all, was the only precedent which he had

to follow.

For Tiberius in ad 14, such an ‘acclamation’ was more crucial

than it had been for Augustus in 27 bc, for not only had Tiberius

not won the right to rule, but, unlike Augustus, he was perceived

as having rivals to his position. These were not to be found

amongst consular senators, one of whom at least acknowledged

the superior auctoritas of Tiberius; rather, Tiberius’ rivals were to be found within Augustus’ family. One of these was Agrippa

Postumus, whom in ad 4 Augustus had adopted as his son along

with Tiberius. As we have seen, Agrippa had been banished by

Augustus in ad 7, although in Augustus’ last years speculation

had centred on the possible implications of a rumoured

reconciliation.

Germanicus Caesar had also figured in the same adoption

arrangements – as Tiberius’ new son. Whilst Tiberius, following

his stabilising of the critical situation in Germany in ad 9, had

been brought back to Rome, Germanicus had been appointed

by Augustus to the overall command of the eight Rhine

legions. It was Tiberius’ fear that this young man, who enjoyed

20 THE NEW PRINCEPS

a wide, if rather ill-founded, popularity, might prefer the reality

to the expectation of power. It is Tacitus’ contention that it was

his fear of rivals that led Tiberius to make use of the powers

which he held, and thus act in a manner inconsistent with his

own professed wishes. For many, this was the proof that

Tiberius Caesar was indeed the hypocrite that popular opinion

alleged.

The days that followed the death of Augustus represented for

Tiberius a series of public relations disasters. First, the news

reached Rome of the murder of Agrippa Postumus; the chain of

events which led to the murder remains unclear, although

Tiberius protested his own innocence, offering other, but not very

credible, alternatives. He even tried to force the officer who had

conveyed the execution order to make a personal report to the

senate. This attempt to implicate a subordinate in such a public

way in the responsibility for his actions was seen as unwise, and

Tiberius was given the memorable piece of advice by a senior

member of his household staff that ‘the accounts would balance

only if they had a single auditor’. Whatever the truth, Tiberius’

attempts to clear his own name were seen as damaging to the

stability of government.

Even the discussions on Augustus’ funeral, which perhaps

should not have been controversial, found Tiberius at odds with

senators who, he thought, failed to respond to the situation with

sufficient dignity. The demand of some of them to be permitted

to carry the coffin of the dead princeps was brusquely set aside by Tiberius, who clearly felt that the memory of his predecessor

deserved better than to become the catalyst of unseemly clam-

our. This was just one of many occasions when the obsessive

nature of Tiberius’ respect for Augustus’ memory was to lead

him into difficulties. For this reason too, Tiberius is unlikely

to have been much impressed by some of the discussion of

Augustus’ life that took place at this time; whilst many gave

Augustus’ achievements a wide measure of praise, others saw more

cynical motives for much that had been done over the previous

half-century.

Worse was to follow after the funeral of Augustus, when

discussions naturally turned to the future of the government. In

fact, this stage of discussions was not as protracted as some-

T H E N E W PRINCEPS

times alleged; the idea that Tiberius continued cavilling in the

senate into late September is due to a misunderstanding of

Tacitus’ references to Augustus’ deification which took place on

17 September. Tacitus, in his account, has slipped chrono-

logically directly from the discussion of Augustus’ funeral

to the deification of the late princeps, in order to demonstrate the obsequiousness involved in granting this honour despite the

real reservations about Augustus still felt by some. It has, in

fact, been demonstrated that the discussion of the future of the

government were not prolonged beyond the first two or three

days of September. Nonetheless, the fact that the period was

shorter than sometimes thought does nothing to limit the dam-

age that Tiberius’ stance during the discussions occasioned

amongst senators.

The framework of the discussions appears to have been a

motion in the names of the consuls that Tiberius should be

granted the powers necessary for him to carry on the government

– in other words, a confirmation of the powers that he had already

been exercising over the previous decade under the umbrella of

Augustus’ auctoritas. As we have seen, an acclamation in his own right was of great significance to Tiberius and his own auctoritas, for only to have exercised such powers under the responsibility of

Augustus was a very different matter.

The discussions in the senate were uncomfortable and

ill-humoured. They were made the more difficult for Tiberius

since, without doubt, there was in him at least some genuine

reluctance to assume the burden at all and a very sharp feeling of

his own inferiority when measured against the achievements

of Augustus. For this reason, even when he did become emperor,

he tried to discourage the application to himself of the name

Augustus – to no effect, as the reign’s inscriptions amply

demonstrate.

Besides this, however, there was an element of falsehood in

his performance, for he was trying in a very gauche way to

bring about the kind of acclamation that would for him confirm

others’ confidence in his abilities. However, Tiberius always

found it difficult to conceal his true feelings; Tacitus points out

on a number of occasions that when Tiberius was speaking sin-

cerely his words had an easy flow to them, but when he was

T H E N E W PRINCEPS

covering up what he really felt in diplomatic falsehoods, then

his words became more and more clumsy and awkward. He

did not find it easy to lie in the service of political expediency, and his audiences could always tell when he was attempting such

concealment; they did not, however, wish to be seen to have

detected it. So, many had recourse simply to flattery which

Tiberius found both useless and distasteful. Others tried to

argue on his own terms, suggesting alternatives to his assump-

tion of sole power; they too found themselves in difficulties – in

particular, Asinius Gallus, with whom, as we have seen,

Tiberius had a long-standing personal antagonism, and who,

Tiberius felt, was using the occasion to cause personal embar-

rassment. Others simply became exasperated at what they saw

as a useless and embarrassing charade; ‘let him take it or leave

it’, one is said to have shouted out. More damaging, however,

was the observation that if Tiberius did not wish to take on the

position, then all he had to do was to use his tribunician power,

which he had already employed for other purposes, to veto the

consuls’ motion. This of course highlighted the falseness of

Tiberius’ position – or, as some would have it, his malicious

hypocrisy. Many assumed that the purpose of this hypocritical

show was to trap senators into indiscretions which could later

be used against them.

In the end, therefore, the discussions achieved nothing beyond

a decided sourness in the relations between Tiberius and the

senate. He did not receive his acclamation, for, as Tacitus shows,

Tiberius became emperor simply by tiring of these exchanges and

letting the consular motion proceed. It no doubt made matters a

good deal worse for Tiberius that his mother, Livia, received

under the terms of Augustus’ will the honorific name of Julia

Augusta. As a traditionalist, Tiberius did not like the public

display of women’s influence in politics and will have been even

more mortified by the suggestion that he should himself be styled

‘son of Livia’; he felt his mother’s domination keenly enough

anyway.

Tiberius thus became princeps, but the ‘accession discussions’

had proved disastrous to his morale and to his relationship

with the senatorial nobility, for whom he probably had a far

greater respect than had Augustus. Relations between the

T H E N E W PRINCEPS

new princeps and the senate, once soured in this way, did not

improve.

Nor were Tiberius’ early problems limited to his dealings with

the senate. Although it has been shown that chronologically his

attitude towards accepting Augustus’ position could not have

been affected by the mutinies which broke out amongst the

legions on the Rhine and Danube, these did nonetheless pose a

very serious problem for the new princeps. It would appear unlikely that the mutinies were initially connected or had anything

intrinsically to do with Tiberius himself. Rather, they represented

a reaction to the deteriorating service conditions in the wake of

the problems in the two areas during Augustus’ last decade. The

two situations were probably made worse by the necessity for

emergency recruitment into the legions of people who might

otherwise have been considered undesirable. There is in any case

no doubt that both armies contained troublemakers, as well as

those with genuine grievances at being retained under arms much

longer than they should have been.

Both mutinies, however, rapidly took on political overtones –

not least because the ringleaders realised that the change of

princeps provided a situation favourable for the application of pressure. Tiberius also had difficulty in deciding how to handle the

outbreaks: he was already anxious about Germanicus’ intentions,

and it did not enhance his confidence to hear that some of the

mutineers had offered to put themselves at Germanicus’ disposal

should he wish to make a bid for power. In fact, Germanicus’

loyalty to Tiberius was not in question, although Tiberius was

later made more anxious by Germanicus’ decision to try to

defuse the trouble by paying out of his own pocket Augustus’

bequests to his troops: strictly – and Tiberius emphasised the

point – only Augustus’ successor had the right to distribute

these.

Tiberius was further exercised by the problem of whether

he should expose his own authority by a visit to the centres

of trouble, and, if so, which he should attend first – for fear of

giving offence to the other army. He avoided this dilemma –

though he was severely criticised for it at home – by going to

neither troublespot, but rather leaving Germanicus to handle the

Rhine mutineers and sending his son Drusus, in the company of

T H E N E W PRINCEPS

Lucius Aelius Sejanus, the prefect of the praetorian guard, to the

Danube.

Both situations were potentially ugly, but Drusus was more

fortunate in that the happy coincidence of an eclipse of the moon

shocked the mutineers, who feared that the gods were angry at

their disloyalty, back into obedience. Germanicus’ problems,

however, proved more severe and testing: as the situation

deteriorated, he and his family came in danger of their lives, and

finally he felt compelled to sanction a campaign on the east bank

of the Rhine. Not only was this contrary to the instructions

Augustus had on his death-bed laid upon Tiberius – that of

keeping the empire within its present frontiers – but it also took

Germanicus and his legions back into the territory where only five

years previously Varus and his three legions had been totally

annihilated in one of the worst disasters ever inflicted upon a

Roman army.

On this occasion, the tactic worked, and Germanicus brought

his army back in better order and unscathed. Tiberius, however,

no doubt armed with his own military experience, worried –

rightly as events were to show – that cheap success in this instance

might convince Germanicus that earlier dreams of an Elbe fron-

tier could be revived. Tiberius was not prepared to sanction this,

and the issue was to cause friction between the princeps and his heir.

The formal close of these mutinous episodes was a report by

Tiberius to the senate. Although he attempted to deal even-

handedly with Germanicus’ and Drusus’ actions, the fact

remained that Drusus had not compromised his position by major

concessions to the troops whereas Germanicus had. The princeps, no matter how hard he might try, could not praise both with

equal conviction: his attempts to be diplomatic in Germanicus’

case were vitiated by his customary inability to tell half-truths

convincingly.

As on earlier occasions at the time of the accession, Tiberius’

awkwardness was obvious, and it was put down to hypocrisy.

This impression was to have a significant bearing on the future

course of relations between Tiberius and Germanicus, and –

even more importantly – on people’s interpretation of that

relationship.

T H E N E W PRINCEPS

In all, therefore, the events of the early weeks and months

of Tiberius’ principate created impressions that would prove

impossible to change, and were to cast an indelible shadow over

the rest of the reign both for the princeps himself and for his subjects.

Figure 4 As of Tiberius, c. ad 22–30, showing on the obverse face the radiate head of the Deified Augustus, his Father (DIVVS AVGVSTVS PATER) and on

the reverse an altar, with the legend S C ( Senatus Consulto / ‘By Decree of the Senate’) PROVIDENT ( Providentia).

TIBERIUS, THE SENATE AND

THE NOBILITY

The key to Augustus’ success had been his ability to work with,

and find meaningful roles for, the senate as a body and for the

nobles as individuals. Although, formally, much law-making

remained the business of the assemblies of the populus and the

plebs, the senate’s role as the body by which laws were formulated and discussed became regular; both the princeps himself and the consuls were responsible for passing a great deal of legislation

through the senate, with popular participation becoming

increasingly a formality. The passage of a senatus consultum was virtually the making of law. Under Augustus, the senate had

already acquired completely new judicial functions, which it had

taken over from the people.

A significant feature in the Augustan settlement was the

manner in which the princeps managed to reconcile the noble

families to the notion of his primacy in government; his prestige

and consequent patronage not only bound large numbers of the

nobility to him, but also enabled him to retain the old ‘promo-

tions system’ ( cursus honorum) as part of the machinery by which the restored republic was administered. Thus, the nobility could

compete for his patronage and, as before, climb the ladder of a

senatorial career, aiming ultimately at the consulship and the

great army commands reserved for ex-consuls and effectively in

the gift of the princeps.

T I B E R I U S , T H E S E N AT E A N D T H E N O B I L I T Y

Augustus’ success was due in part to the strength of his auctori-

tas and in part also to the overwhelming desire for ‘peace with honour’ which followed the upheavals which culminated in the

battle of Actium. The unique power of his position enabled him

to bring new families into the senate under his patronage and

support their promotion to consular status, and to offer the older,

noble, families a convincing means of keeping their historic

prestige alive.

A further reminder of the old Republic was the continued

existence amongst senatorial families of rival factions: in the last

years of Augustus’ reign there appear to have been two substan-

tial factional groupings of senators. One of these consisted

mostly, but by no means entirely, of newer senatorial families,

many of whom had been ‘promoted’ by Augustus and looked

directly to him as their faction leader. This ‘Julian’ faction was

in some ways the descendant of the populares of the republic.

The other faction contained more of the older families and

seems increasingly to have looked to Tiberius as its figurehead,

presumably believing that his inclinations and antecedents gave

him a greater proximity to families whose roots were deeply

embedded in Rome’s traditions. This ‘Claudian’ group was the

successor to the optimates of the republic. These were not, however, political parties in a modern sense with programmes for the

electorate to choose; rather, they were groupings within which

senators sought to fulfil their ambitions and reach the consulship.

Tacitus’ account of senatorial business during Tiberius’ reign

indicates that individual senators still strove with each other

for superiority. Moreover, some sign of factional groupings of

senators emerges in accounts of major trials in the senate where it

is possible to see particular senators rallying to the support of

friends and factional colleagues in trouble.

Tiberius certainly had particular senatorial friends and sup-

porters, most of whom were men of older families, like Marcus

Lepidus and Cnaeus Piso, with whom the princeps had been on

good terms since his early days. However, the history of Tiberius’

relationship with the senate has less to do with his dealings with

individual senators – important though these often were – than

with his views on the roles of senate and senators, and how viable

these were.

T I B E R I U S , T H E S E N AT E A N D T H E N O B I L I T Y

We have already seen that Tiberius’ encounters with the senate

at the opening of his reign were disastrous for their relationship; a

spirit of fear, suspicion and hostility was thus early implanted in

their dealings. Yet Tiberius seems genuinely to have desired to see

a senate which could take the role of an independently-minded

and honest partner in the business of government. His chief

desire, as he himself said, was to enjoy a good reputation with his

peers. In deprecating the excessiveness which he saw in the

practice of erecting temples to emperors and treating them as

gods, Tiberius eloquently stated that a good reputation would, for

him, constitute a temple in the hearts of those who admired him.

Tiberius may not have worked out a senatorial role in any

detail, but his view of the senate and the magistrates was rooted in

the republican past. He made way for the consuls in the street;

he deprecated references to himself as ‘Master’ and said that he

thought of the senators as his masters. He detested the sycophancy

of some members, remarking on more than one occasion that they

were ‘men fit to be slaves’. He was irritated when they referred to

him matters which he felt to be within their own competence.

That the senators were deferential to Tiberius even in the early

years of the reign is demonstrated in the senatus consultum passed in the case of Cnaeus Calpurnius Piso, the comes of Germanicus

Caesar in the east. All of this confirms Tacitus’ judgement that the

first half of the reign was marked by sound administration in

which Tiberius strove to maintain the integrity of the senate

and the magistrates. Tiberius clearly believed himself to be a

traditional princeps – the senate’s most prestigious member, able to sway by virtue of his seniority and prestige but not dominating by

his powers. Indeed, the situation sharply recalls that enunciated

by Augustus, that he ‘excelled all by virtue of his prestige, but of

actual powers he possessed no more than his colleagues in the

magistracies’.

His attitude to individual senators was similar to this; he

detested any behaviour that stressed an overwhelming superiority

on his part – such as the practice of self-prostration in his

presence. He showed a righteous anger at those senators who

attempted to gain wealth or influence by undermining their

colleagues in the senate. He tried to ensure that in a traditional

fashion the senator could better himself on the basis of his merits

T I B E R I U S , T H E S E N AT E A N D T H E N O B I L I T Y

and connections. In the case of elections for both praetorships and

consulships, he did his best – as he saw it – to prevent his own

wishes becoming dominant in the procedure. Indeed, that he suc-

ceeded at least in part is shown by the fact that one of the senate’s

reactions, when Tiberius transferred elections from the people to

the senate in ad 15, was that it would not have to expend so much

money to secure the election of the candidates it favoured.

Thus, the conduct of the princeps at least during the first half of his reign appears to have been directed towards securing a

co-operation in government with the senate which was based

on his traditional respect for them and on their fair-minded

independence of spirit. It is clear, however, from a study of the

accounts of Tiberius’ reign that such genuine co-operation was a

rarity – even during Tiberius’ first decade as princeps. Why did Tiberius’ good intentions come to so little in practice?

It is clear that a number of factors contributed. Not least

among these was the reputation with which Tiberius succeeded

Augustus; he was held to be arrogant, secretive and a hypocrite

who had become emperor against the better judgement of

Augustus. A personal auctoritas, which was essential to Tiberius’

successful relationship with the nobility, was thus undermined

before his principate had even started. Further, we have seen that

much residual goodwill was damaged beyond repair in the bizarre

and embarrassing fiasco that constituted the ‘accession debate’.

What, however, was even more damaging was that whilst

Tiberius succeeded Augustus with many good intentions, it is

clear that much of what he did was ill-thought-out. He had not

taken proper account of the nature of the senate and the nobility

after half a century of Augustus’ domination; it obviously, for

example, did not occur to him that his acceptance and use of the

powers of a censor to regulate the senate’s membership, reluctantly

employed by Augustus, gave him a dominance over the senate

which no amount of moderate behaviour could ameliorate. Nor

did Tiberius make any allowance at all for the effects of his own

views and prejudices.

Tacitus’ account of Tiberius’ early years as princeps provides

ample evidence of what might be called a failure by default on

Tiberius’ part. For example, Tiberius’ contribution to the ‘acces-

sion debate’ was flawed by his own failure to be honest and

T I B E R I U S , T H E S E N AT E A N D T H E N O B I L I T Y

straightforward and by his lack of understanding of how far the

senate had grown used to domination; it had in effect forgotten

how to initiate.

As Tacitus shows, Tiberius’ domination of the senate was not

deliberate or malicious but unintended and arbitrary. In practice,

the senate found this harder to handle, because it was inconsistent,

and because it did not know how far it could or should trust

the princeps. Indeed, Tacitus brings together in his account of the events of ad 15 a number of senatorial discussions which illustrate

the growth of what might be called a ‘credibility gap’ between

princeps and senate.

Included in this are two instances of individuals who were

accused of disrespect to the memory of Augustus. In one case,

Tiberius was contemptuously dismissive of the charges, announ-

cing that ‘injuries done to gods are for gods to avenge’ and that

‘Augustus had not been decreed a place in heaven so that this

could be used to ruin his former fellow citizens’. In this, Tiberius

acted in a clear-headed and fair-minded way. But shortly after-

wards a similar charge found the princeps so incensed against the accused that he tried to stampede the senate into voting for his

condemnation. It took a very strong-minded senator and friend of

the princeps, Cnaeus Piso, to point out the impossibility of the position in which the senate was thus placed.

Similarly ill-judged was Tiberius’ plan to ‘sit in’ on the prae-

tor’s court; he took trouble to occupy an unobtrusive position on

the platform, and, according to Tacitus, induced some good ver-

dicts by his presence. However, the larger issue – the integrity and

independence of the praetor’s chairmanship of the court – seems

not to have occurred to the princeps.

Just as Tiberius’ prejudices had come to the fore in the second

of the cases involving an insult to the dead Augustus, so too they

vitiated a senatorial debate on the subject of theatrical rowdyism.

The discussion flowed back and forth in apparent freedom until at

a late stage Tiberius intervened to announce the outcome which

he required. This was based on Augustus’ views on the subject,

which, he said, he could not disregard; the senate was left with

the feeling that it had been cheated by a sham debate and that

its apparent freedom to debate such matters was completely

illusory.

T I B E R I U S , T H E S E N AT E A N D T H E N O B I L I T Y

It is hardly surprising, therefore, that the senate should have

shrunk from involving itself openly in matters where the princeps

might have an interest. This is well illustrated in the context of a

discussion in ad 22 over the question of the appointment of a

proconsul of Africa – a province within the senate’s remit. Partly

because a war in the province had necessitated the dispatch to

Africa of a legion from an imperial province and partly because one

of the contenders for the post was an uncle of Tiberius’ favour-

ite, Sejanus, the senate asked Tiberius to make an appointment.

Angrily he referred it back to them, completely unable to under-

stand the senate’s difficulty. Yet we can also find instances in

which, by accident or design, Tiberius did apparently come to

exercise greater power over the senate and its members. For

example, in the election of magistrates, although Tiberius evi-

dently tried to leave some room for freedom of choice, the practices

which he adopted were designed to secure the election of the can-

didates he wanted. What is more, particularly with the consular

elections, the procedures which he initiated were so tortuous and

secretive that, whatever his intention may have been, he height-

ened the impression of arbitrariness and domination and, accord-

ing to Tacitus, eroded the senate’s freedom. Moreover, in ad 16,

Tiberius successfully resisted attempts, initiated by his old adver-

sary, Asinius Gallus, to prevent the princeps from exercising an on-going appraisal in the matter of the choice of candidate for office.

Encroachments on the senate’s perceived freedom, therefore,

did occur; and although these were not with the aim of imposing a

dictatorial government, the effect was to leave the senate under-

standably feeling that its activities were subject to an intervention

which seemed the more tyrannical because it was arbitrary. The

growing sense of powerlessness which resulted from this made

senators more servile and less inclined to respond positively to

Tiberius; for his part, Tiberius failed to grasp how far it was his

behaviour that was the cause of a deteriorating relationship. The

developing gulf between princeps and senate was one of the reasons why, after ad 23, Tiberius began to leave more of the day-to-day

administration to his friend, Sejanus, and eventually entrusted it

to him entirely when in ad 26 he decided to retire from Rome.

Such episodes as these contributed to the gradual souring of

relations between Tiberius and the nobility. However, the feature

T I B E R I U S , T H E S E N AT E A N D T H E N O B I L I T Y

of the reign which most obviously demonstrated the dominance of

the princeps and precariousness of the positions of senators was the operation of the law of treason ( Lex Julia de maiestate).

Of course, the existence and use of a treason law were not

features unique to the principate; a law had existed in the later

republic which comprehended actions which ‘diminished the

majesty of the Roman senate and people’ ( maiestas minuta).

Augustus had revised the law in his Lex Julia and had also been responsible for its development; the law, the application of which

had originally been restricted to actions, was under Augustus

expanded to include treasonable words, written or spoken. Also,

although the law could be used to deal with actions against any

part of the state’s interests, it tended increasingly to be restricted

in its application to actions or words which were alleged to have

damaged the princeps or his family.

There is certainly no evidence to suggest that, in his early years

at least, Tiberius used this law as a means of protecting himself.

Indeed, it can be shown that he was frequently dismissive of

charges that concerned himself. The problems arose partly out

of the uncomfortable nature of the relationship between Tiberius

and the senate, which we have already described, and partly

out of the way in which the law operated. So serious was this

combination of features that Tacitus singled out the operation of

this law and the fear that Tiberius’ behaviour during cases often

inspired as the most damaging developments in the early part of

Tiberius’ reign.

Cases were heard in either of two courts. There was a perman-

ent court ( quaestio de maiestate) over which a praetor presided; in addition, since Augustus’ time the senate had enjoyed a judicial

function, and could hear serious cases brought against its own

members. According to Tacitus, Tiberius created a bad impression

early in his reign by giving permission for treason cases to be

heard; he could, like some of his successors, have put the operation

of the law ‘on ice’, and many took his decision not to do this as

evidence of his tyrannical purpose. Further, he believed that the

courts could reach impartial verdicts and that intervention on his

part was inappropriate. In principle, this was reasonable, except

that, as we have seen, in this matter as in others, senators were

bound to try to accommodate the wishes of the princeps; if he chose T I B E R I U S , T H E S E N AT E A N D T H E N O B I L I T Y

not to state his views, then senators were left to do what

they imagined he wanted – a sensitive matter in cases which

concerned allegations of actions or words directed against him.

We should not forget that his presence in the senate as a

member was bound to have an intimidating effect, especially

if, as so often, he sat silent. A similar effect will have been

created in the permanent court by his decision to ‘sit in’ on its

sessions. Tiberius, however, characteristically was completely

oblivious to this, evidently regarding his behaviour as liberal

and fair-minded.

The other damaging effect of the operation of this law was

caused by the nature of prosecution procedures in Rome. There

was no official prosecution service, and prosecutions were initiated

by private individuals ( delatores) who put information before the relevant authorities. Such information led to an accusation and

trial. However, two factors made this a damaging system. First,

the reward for the laying of information was measured in terms of

a proportion of the property of a convicted person; it was thus

worthwhile to initiate the prosecution of rich and influential

citizens. Second, many of the informers understood the fears and

suspicions of Tiberius and played upon them by bringing to him

reports of men who were allegedly conspiring against, or who had

made uncomplimentary remarks about, the princeps. Emotionally,

if not always institutionally, he became involved. Tacitus and

others regarded the informers as a cancer in society, and thought

that, although Tiberius did on occasion encourage action against

over-zealous informers, in the main his inaction encouraged them.

Tiberius indeed did seem blind to the dangers when, in a particu-

larly unsavoury instance, he refused to deal with the informers

and remarked that it would be ‘better to revoke the laws than

remove their guardians’. Undoubtedly, Tiberius had to bear some

responsibility for the ‘reign of terror’ to which these activities

eventually led.

Tiberius certainly did not regard his behaviour as culpable;

indeed he probably saw himself as vigilant in the checking of

abuse without realising that the very need for such a role was

symptomatic of a serious problem. It is undeniable that the

princeps did check what he regarded at the time as abuse, but

he did so in a way which was thought to be highly arbitrary.

T I B E R I U S , T H E S E N AT E A N D T H E N O B I L I T Y

Ironically, Tiberius’ general principle was one of non-

interference once the process of justice had started: he argued

that he could not intervene if information on charges had

already been laid and that he could not try to influence the

senate’s deliberation of a case, since, as we have seen, he liked

to think that there was nothing to inhibit the proper process of

justice. Indeed, on occasion he adhered so rigidly to this that

even the ten-day moratorium between sentence and execution,

which was intended as a ‘cooling-off ’ period, proved ineffective

because the senate remained under the pressures which had

led it to its original decision and Tiberius did not see fit to

say what he thought whilst the process of justice was still in

motion.

Despite the appearance of a non-interventionist policy, the real-

ity was often otherwise; Tiberius did in fact intervene frequently,

and although this was usually done with respectable motives, the

effect was arbitrary and tyrannical. Sometimes, the princeps intervened to quash cases if he thought a prosecution trivial or mali-

cious, though little consistency appears to have been attached to

these interventions. For example, we have already seen the

inconsistency evident in his treatment of cases concerning alleged

insults to the memory of Divus Augustus. In cases concerning

allegations of slander or libel against himself or members of his

family, he generally intervened to obtain the dropping of charges

concerning himself, though allowing members of his family to

reach their own decisions. On one occasion, however, he became

so angry as the evidence was recited that he demanded the chance

to clear his name, thus virtually turning the case into a trial of

himself. Tacitus reports that after this experience Tiberius deter-

mined to attend the senate less, and the experience probably

played a part in his eventual decision to retire from Rome

altogether.

Such arbitrariness could not but damage relations between the

princeps and the senate; for the senate was anxious to do what the princeps wished but often lacked any clear notion of what that was.

Further, cases such as these, where the charges concerned allega-

tions of insults made against the princeps, inevitably worked to elevate Tiberius on to a pedestal above his fellow senators, making

them the more anxious to act as he wished and giving him less

T I B E R I U S , T H E S E N AT E A N D T H E N O B I L I T Y

chance of achieving the ‘equal co-operation’ between himself and

the senate which was plainly his objective.

We have seen that Tiberius did not like to intervene during

the process of a case, though it should be said that a number of

defendants, including the princeps’ friend, Cnaeus Piso, earnestly wished that Tiberius would break through his self-imposed

and measured impartiality, believing that an intervention from

Tiberius on their behalf would put other senators under an

obligation to follow. The lack of realism in Tiberius’ conduct is

highlighted by the interventions which he made after the comple-

tion of cases in order to pardon defendants. It is a matter of record

that Tiberius liked to appear as the saviour of defendants and that

he complained that those who (in desperation) committed suicide

during their trials robbed him of the chance to bring deliverance.

This was less cynical in intention than it sounds, though under-

standably the impression it created did little for the image of the

princeps. The true irony of Tiberius’ position is that had he not been so obstinately impartial when it really mattered, he could

have exercised his clemency earlier to far better effect. It was no

doubt partly to counter bad publicity on this matter and partly to

record Tiberius’ genuine beliefs about his stance that in ad 22 he

caused two coin-issues to be struck which commemorated his

clemency (clementia) and his moderation (moderatio).

In short, Tiberius’ relations with the senate were blighted by

the operation of the treason law. At best his behaviour could

be seen as generally well-intentioned but short-sighted and

damaging in its effects; at worst his actions could be interpreted

as part of a cynical and sinister plot to achieve the ruin of rich and

influential senators – the kind of men who could, it might be

thought, pose a danger to him. This served only to confirm the

interpretation that many already had applied to his general

approach to his relationship with the senate. Again, a lack of

realism had led him into appearing to expect an unrealistic degree

of senatorial independence which many of his own actions served

to undermine.

Ironically, many senior senators were prepared to recognise him

as a man of auctoritas; his striving to achieve it, however, made many lose faith in his capabilities and in his sincerity. The crisis of confidence that ensued played a major part in creating the sense of

T I B E R I U S , T H E S E N AT E A N D T H E N O B I L I T Y

frozen powerlessness amongst senators, the effects of which were

to be so often deplored by Tiberius. This failure in his relationship

was a contributory cause of Tiberius’ decision to retire from Rome

and active politics – a decision which, as we shall see later, ushered

in a far more thorough-going tyranny when Tiberius was no

longer on the spot to cajole the senate and check abuses of indi-

vidual and corporate freedom. Contrary, however, to the belief of

many, it was Tiberius’ blindness and obstinacy, and not tyrannical

intentions, that caused this to happen.

Figure 5 Dupondius of Tiberius, c. ad 16–22, showing on the obverse face the head of Tiberius (TI CAESAR DIVI AVG F AVGVST IMP VIII / ‘Tiberius

Caesar Augustus, son of the Deified Augustus, saluted as Imperator for the eighth time’). The reverse has, in the centre, a small head (probably of Tiberius), surrounded by borders and the legend, MODERATIONI S C (‘In recognition of his Moderation’). Moderation here probably indicates Tiberius’ view of his conciliatory attitude to the senate.

TIBERIUS AND THE FAMILY

OF GERMANICUS

The material contained within this chapter has had important

new light shed on to it by the discovery since 1982 in the Roman

province of Baetica (in southern Spain) of two bronze documents of major significance: the Tabula Siarensis, contains the texts of senatorial decrees of December ad 19 honouring Tiberius’ adoptive

son and heir, Germanicus Caesar, who had died some two months

previously (on 10 October); the second document provides a text

of a senatorial decree (dated 10 December, ad 20) recording

decisions reached as a result of the trial of Cnaeus Piso on charges

which included that of murdering Germanicus.

As we shall show in the revision of this chapter, these docu-

ments inform an understanding of events, but also give rise to

some problems of their own. Bibliographical material on this

specific subject is now plentiful; some of the most significant

items will be included in the Select Bibliography at the end of the book.

Throughout the principate of Tiberius, an atmosphere of

suspicion and conflict blighted relations between the princeps

and his nephew, Germanicus, and his family. The long-term

significance of this lay in the fact that public interpretation of

the relationship led to deep suspicion of Tiberius’ intentions and

consequently increased unpopularity for the princeps. Besides this, the disunity within Tiberius’ family contributed greatly to the

T I B E R I U S A N D T H E F A M I LY O F G E R M A N I C U S

isolation of the princeps and thus provided an opportunity for

Sejanus, the prefect of the praetorian guard, to insinuate himself

into Tiberius’ favour – with disastrous results (see Chapter 6).

Germanicus was born in approximately 15 bc, the son of

Tiberius’ brother, Nero Drusus, and Marc Antony’s daughter,

Antonia; we do not know his full name, as references to him

consistently employ the honorific name (Germanicus), which he

inherited from his father. Nero Drusus and Antonia appear to

have enjoyed a widespread popularity, which was based partly on

their affability, partly on the affection for them supposedly shown

by Augustus, and partly on the prevailing belief that Nero Drusus

disliked the ‘monarchy’ and desired a return to the ways of the

old republic. There was little evidence to support the latter

contention, although the story of it was sufficiently durable for

Germanicus’ reputation to benefit from his father’s supposed

‘republicanism’. Two other children of the family survived to

adulthood – the future emperor, Claudius, and Livilla, who

married Tiberius’ son, Drusus, but was later accused of murdering

him in complicity with Sejanus.

Although Germanicus was around 30 years of age when

Tiberius succeeded Augustus, the princeps probably did not know his nephew well, as their circumstances had kept them apart for

much of Germanicus’ life. Evidently Augustus entertained high

hopes for Germanicus and was presumably responsible for his

marriage to Julia’s daughter, Agrippina, of whom he was

especially fond and who was always to show a powerful enthusi-

asm for the fortunes of the Julian family, comparable to that

which Livia entertained for the Claudians.

Augustus’ favour was again made obvious in the adoption

arrangements undertaken in ad 4 (see Chapter 2, pp. 13 and 14).

Rumour held that, had Germanicus been older in ad 4, he would

have been Augustus’ own preferred heir. There may have been

truth in this, although Augustus was sufficiently realistic to know

that such a course of action would not have been acceptable

to many of the nobility. One member of this group, Cnaeus

Calpurnius Piso, is said by Tacitus to have acknowledged the

superior auctoritas of Tiberius but to have been quite unimpressed by the standing of the next generation of the imperial family –

that is, Germanicus and Drusus. The fact that Augustus forced

T I B E R I U S A N D T H E F A M I LY O F G E R M A N I C U S

Tiberius to recognise Germanicus as his heir caused resentment

in Tiberius and helped further to polarise the imperial family into

the two ‘camps’ – Claudians and Julians.

Even after the formalisation of the adoption arrangements,

Tiberius had little opportunity of working with and getting to

know his ‘new son’. Tiberius himself was away, first in Pannonia

and then in Germany between ad 5 and 10, whilst Germanicus

himself took up his command of the Rhine legions shortly after

this. Such was the effect of Augustus’ favour towards Germanicus

and Tiberius’ diffidence about his own standing that at the time of

Augustus’ death in ad 14 Tiberius is said to have been afraid that

Germanicus might use the base of support which his legions rep-

resented and attempt to win power. The fact that Germanicus

remained loyal to his adoptive father did little to assuage Tiberius’

anxieties: indeed, the suspicions of the princeps were exacerbated by his fears of the ulterior motives of Agrippina, as is shown by his

reaction to her high-profile behaviour in greeting the legionaries

on their return from campaigning across the Rhine in ad 15.

The mutiny amongst the Rhine legions that followed

Augustus’ death put Germanicus’ abilities severely to the test.

There is no doubt that the situation was extremely dangerous and

required a more experienced hand than Germanicus’ to settle it.

In Tiberius’ eyes, the popularity amongst the legions enjoyed by

Germanicus and his family was a further cause for anxiety; how-

ever, whilst Germanicus’ judgement could certainly be called

into question, his loyalty could not. At a number of points in the

episode Germanicus showed his lack of experience, and in all of

these his actions gave Tiberius reason for worry.

First, Germanicus showed the histrionic side to his character

when he threatened to kill himself if the mutineers did not return

to obedience. This characteristically extravagant gesture nearly

ended in disaster. Second, the granting of financial concessions to

the mutineers was an act which strictly was beyond Germanicus’

competence – a point certainly not lost on the princeps. Third, the exposing of his family to danger was ill-considered and again will

have worried Tiberius on account of the high profile being

afforded to Agrippina and her children. Fourth, the decision to

allow the mutineers to work off their anger on each other was in

the event recognised by Germanicus himself as little short of a

40 TIBERIUS AND THE FAMILY OF GERMANICUS

catastrophe. His final ‘solution’, that of taking the legions across

the Rhine to absorb their energies in a worthwhile project, was

contrary to the advice Augustus had given Tiberius about frontier

stability, and thus worried the princeps on account of its possible motives and certainly on account of the risks it incurred.

Even so, Tiberius made none of these criticisms or anxieties

public, though, as often in such circumstances, he was unable to

conceal them. Instead, presumably to avoid confrontation with his

adopted son, he reluctantly allowed the campaigning across the

Rhine to continue. In the event, Tiberius’ misgivings were com-

pletely vindicated; despite Germanicus’ obvious conviction that

success could be won at no great cost, little was achieved, and

losses were incurred both at the hands of the enemy and as a

result of atrocious weather conditions. Further, conditions were so

unpredictable that one of Germanicus’ battle-groups very nearly

suffered the same fate as that of Varus six years previously – and at

the hands of the same enemy, Arminius, chief of the Cherusci

tribe. Indeed, Germanicus himself encountered the grisly remains

of Varus’ shattered army and the emotion generated by this in

Germanicus and amongst his troops again gave Tiberius reason for

gravely doubting the soundness of Germanicus’ judgement.

Germanicus emerged from the whole episode as loyal and

honourable but also as unsuited to such a post, due to lack of

experience and his rather histrionic turn of character. Such a

description explains both his widespread popularity as a likeable,

even gallant, young man, and Tiberius’ misgivings about him. In

view of the fact that Tiberius did not make public any of his

misgivings, people not only contrasted his grim and serious per-

sonality unfavourably with that of Germanicus, but also suspected

that behind imperial reticence lay sinister intent. Public opinion,

therefore, was serving to enhance the confrontational elements

that were clearly present in this relationship.

In ad 16, Tiberius decided to call a halt to the German

campaigning which he had never wanted: an opportunity was

provided by the seriously disturbed state of affairs in the east,

where the occupancy of the throne of Armenia had once again

become a bone of contention between Rome and the King of

Parthia. Augustus had placed on the Armenian throne Vonones,

who had spent time in Rome and who had clearly become

T I B E R I U S A N D T H E F A M I LY O F G E R M A N I C U S

‘semi-Romanised’ by this experience. The Armenians resented

Vonones, and the king of Parthia wished to negotiate arrange-

ments over the Armenian throne. As a consequence, Vonones

was removed but, despite the requests of the Parthian king,

not to a distance that would preclude his meddling. This was an

immensely delicate situation, and following Augustan precedent

in sending significant figures such as Marcus Agrippa and Gaius

Caesar to this troublespot, Tiberius decided to invest his adopted

son with a special commission to settle the eastern problems. As is

made clear in the senatus consultum regarding Cnaeus Piso, this was at the time regarded as a job either for Tiberius himself or for one

of his two sons. Further, it emerges from the document that the

‘special commission’ gave Germanicus an imperium superior to

those of all proconsuls in the region, and that only the imperium of Tiberius himself was superior to his.

The princeps was, however, faced initially with two difficulties: first, he had to remove Germanicus from the Rhine without

causing major affront to him, his family and supporters; second,

he had to provide Germanicus with an adviser in the east who

presumably would rein in his enthusiasms as well as keep an eye

on the propriety of his and Agrippina’s conduct. In both of these

difficulties, Tiberius himself made disastrous miscalculations.

Not that the whole responsibility for the ensuing chain of events

should be put at the door of the princeps: Germanicus, for example, refused to heed Tiberius’ advice that events had shown German

campaigning to be costly in effort and manpower and low in

results. The princeps had in the end to instruct his adopted son to return home, and, in what can only be described as a serious

diplomatic blunder, he added for good measure that if campaign-

ing had to continue Germanicus should allow Drusus (Tiberius’

son) to have an opportunity to prove himself. This self-evident

inconsistency in Tiberius’ arguments convinced Germanicus

and others that the motives of the princeps were sinister, even malicious.

Again, Tiberius’ choice as ‘assistant’ to Germanicus in the east

was his old friend, the experienced, outspoken and independently

minded Cnaeus Calpurnius Piso, whom he appointed governor

of the major imperial province of Syria. Tiberius chose Piso

presumably because he trusted him as a friend and knew him

T I B E R I U S A N D T H E F A M I LY O F G E R M A N I C U S

to be a man unlikely to be overawed by Germanicus’ rank. The

princeps will hardly have expected the bald insubordination and corruption displayed by Piso. Piso was accompanied in his

appointment by his wife, Plancina, a close friend of Livia. We

may assume that both Livia and Tiberius, in view of their known

misgivings about Agrippina, will have seen Plancina as an ideal

foil to Germanicus’ headstrong wife.

It is reasonable to argue that, in the event, Piso’s conduct repre-

sented a caricature of what Tiberius intended his mission to have

been: he criticised Germanicus’ behaviour and actions at every

turn; he and Plancina tried to compete with Germanicus and

Agrippina for the loyalty of the army. Further, as it emerged, he

was in corrupt contact with Vonones to reinstate the latter on

the Armenian throne. The new documentation indicates that

Germanicus moved Vonones out of Syria not, as Tacitus suggests,

to spite Piso, but to make it more difficult for Piso to engineer his

return to Armenia. It is hardly conceivable that Tiberius intended

any of this, though the secrecy that continued to surround Piso’s

orders clearly invited speculation. Piso, indeed, might have been

checked by Tiberius, had not the whole mission suddenly erupted

completely out of control.

Germanicus and his family decided to take a break from duty

with a sight-seeing trip to Egypt. Although this sounds innocent

enough, Germanicus completely overlooked the special status of

Egypt as the private property of the princeps which nobody could enter without specific permission. According to Tacitus’ account,

Tiberius criticised Germanicus for this, and for the informality of

his behaviour there. Documentary evidence survives in the form

of papyrus fragments which show that Germanicus was totally

oblivious of protocol; not only did he refer wrongly to Egypt

as a province within his competence but he gave practical effect

to this by issuing edicts. He even, in an impromptu speech at

Alexandria, appears rather unwisely to have compared himself

to Alexander the Great.

Piso evidently used the opportunity of Germanicus’ absence to

break protocol by leaving Syria; there is no suggestion in the new

documentation that Germanicus ordered Piso out of the province;

it is unclear whether he could in any case have done that. Rather,

Germanicus appears to have done all that he could to maintain a

T I B E R I U S A N D T H E F A M I LY O F G E R M A N I C U S

civilised and proper relationship with his assistant. Piso further

succeeded in having Artaxias III (Zeno), the king of Armenia

appointed by Germanicus, thrown out of the kingdom in favour

of Vonones.

Amidst this tension, Germanicus fell ill and died at Antioch.

There is little doubt that his death was due to his illness, although

there were many, principally Germanicus’ family and staff and

even Germanicus himself, who believed that it was due to poison

administered at Piso’s instigation, and further that Piso was

acting on the instructions of Tiberius and Livia. Such suspicions

magnified to near-hysteria in Rome, where few believed that

Germanicus had died a natural death and many suspected

that Tiberius feared and hated Germanicus enough to have caused

his removal. The gross and untimely outburst of celebration by

Piso and Plancina served only to fan the flames of indignation.

The new senatus consultum not only confirms this heartless and

unsavoury behaviour on Piso’s part, but adds that he even wrote

insultingly and accusingly to Tiberius about Germanicus. It has

been in the past suggested by some that Tacitus, in his account

of Germanicus’ death in Annals II, exaggerated the degree and

extent of public grief in order to heighten the contrast between

perceptions of Tiberius and Germanicus. The Tabula Siarensis,

however, confirms Tacitus’ picture of this aspect as a totally

accurate reflection of what happened.

Emotion and confusion governed the aftermath: Germanicus’

staff illegally appointed a new governor of Syria, but Piso made

the crucial error of incurring Tiberius’ anger by trying to regain

the imperial province by force, an act seen as tantamount to civil

war. Public opinion demanded a scapegoat, and the trial of Piso

for Germanicus’ murder duly provided one. For most, the only

relevant question requiring clarification was how far Tiberius’

hand in the episode would be revealed. Tiberius did not alleviate

the suspicion by his own studied impartiality at the trial, though

he was no doubt correct in his conviction that the only proper

questions to be considered concerned Piso’s aggravatory behaviour

to Germanicus and his use of force to try to regain Syria. Suspicion

was compounded by the refusal of the princeps to release relevant documents pertaining to Piso’s appointment. Piso, disheartened

by the obduracy of the princeps and even more by Livia’s protection 44 TIBERIUS AND THE FAMILY OF GERMANICUS

of Plancina, committed suicide before his trial was over. Whilst

some ancient accounts indicate that the evidence against Piso on

the murder charge was weak, the course and outcome of the trial

served only to confirm people’s suspicion that it was the dark,

malicious hand of Tiberius which had removed the great hope for

the future – Germanicus Caesar.

The senatus consultum on Cnaeus Piso provides a clear indication that Tacitus’ account of Piso’s trial in Annals III is broadly

accurate; as we have seen, it also fills out details of dealings

between Germanicus and Piso, whilst the pair were in the east,

highlighting the highhanded behaviour of Piso and the degree of

his insubordination; in particular, in detailing Piso’s conduct in

relation to his post in Syria, the new document makes very clear

the reasons and justifications for the depth of Tiberius’ anger on

this matter.

The punishments meted out to Piso (posthumously) and his

family are given in greater detail than by Tacitus, although the

broad thrust is very similar. Interesting is the confiscation of an

estate in Illyricum, a previously unknown gift to Piso from

Augustus; Tiberius is shown to have acted in a similar fashion

in similar circumstances in ad 24 with regard to a gift from

Augustus to Gaius Silius, who had been enmeshed in treason

proceedings by Sejanus. In the present case, Tiberius is shown to

have been acting as he did partly because of his desire to rectify

the damage that Piso had done to his neighbours in Illyricum.

Nowhere in Tacitus’ account of Cnaeus Piso’s activities, does

this friend of the princeps appear in any way congenial. The new documentation shows that Piso’s behaviour went well beyond

arrogance to insubordination and treachery. His intelligence, too,

may be called seriously into question, if he really hoped that

Tiberius would approve of his behaviour.

In a comparison with Tacitus’ account, the most difficult ques-

tion to arise is that of chronology: the senatus consultum on Cnaeus Piso is dated to December of ad 20; yet, Tacitus appears to place

the trial much earlier in the year. Either Tacitus has misplaced it,

or Tiberius and the senate have allowed time to elapse after the

conclusion of the trial in order, perhaps, that bruised sensibilities

might settle and a line be drawn beneath this devastating episode.

In this case, the very public and widespread communication of the

T I B E R I U S A N D T H E F A M I LY O F G E R M A N I C U S

senatus consultum provides a clear indication that, through the latter two-thirds of ad 20, this had not happened.

Indeed, the fall-out from this episode was powerful in its

depressive effect both upon Tiberius and, not surprisingly, upon

his public standing. Further, not only had the conviction that foul

play had occurred not been shaken, but it provided Germanicus’

widow, Agrippina, with a cause – the avenging of her husband’s

death and the restoration of the status of Augustus’ descendants.

The implacable hatred which she thereafter entertained for

Tiberius contributed greatly in his advancing years to his growing

sense of isolation and his ill-starred dependence on Sejanus. In the

event, this proved as disastrous for Agrippina and her family as it

was for Tiberius and his.

At this time, whilst Germanicus’ death represented a political

trauma, it was not necessarily a disaster in terms of the continuity

of the dynasty. Tiberius himself, of course, had a son, Drusus,

who was married to Germanicus’ sister, Livilla; they had twin

sons, born probably in ad 20, of whom one, Tiberius Gemellus,

survived beyond childhood. Germanicus and Agrippina had

six surviving children – Nero, Drusus and Gaius (Caligula),

Agrippina, Livia and Drusilla.

On the face of things, it was to his own son, Drusus, that

Tiberius, in line with the senate’s advice as given in the senatus

consultum, turned in the aftermath of the death of his heir; in ad 22 he conferred the tribunician power upon Drusus and gave his

son a guardianship over Germanicus’ two older sons. Whilst this

might suggest that Drusus was now the de facto heir, it should be remembered that twenty-five years earlier Tiberius himself had

received an apparent promotion – but only to allow him to act as a

guardian of Gaius and Lucius Caesar. In the event, such specula-

tion became meaningless, because in ad 23 Drusus died; there is

little reason to doubt the story which was later told by Sejanus’

estranged wife, Apicata, that Drusus had in fact been murdered by

Livilla and Sejanus. It would appear, therefore, that Sejanus at

least expected Drusus to succeed his father.

However, to show respect for Augustus’ wishes was character-

istic of Tiberius, and he may have intended to honour the spirit of

Augustus’ dynastic policy – that in the wake of Germanicus’

death the expectation of power should pass to his sons, Nero and

46 TIBERIUS AND THE FAMILY OF GERMANICUS

Drusus. Certainly, following his son’s death, Tiberius made his

intentions clear by formally entrusting Nero and Drusus into

the care of the senate. This apparently careful guardianship of the

interests of Germanicus’ sons might have offered some stability

for the future. That it did not was largely due to the bitterly

vengeful stance of Germanicus’ widow, supported by friends in

the senate. Whilst Tiberius and Agrippina were trading insults

and suspicions, Sejanus was able to utilise the mutual hostility

and launch a plan for his own self-advancement which came close

to destroying both the Julii and the Claudii; ultimately, this was the legacy of the unhappy relationship between Tiberius and his

heir, Germanicus Caesar. The trauma of Germanicus’ death was

allowed to become nothing short of a dynastic catastrophe.

Figure 6 Dupondius of Tiberius, c. ad 22–23, showing on the obverse face the veiled and diademed bust of Pietas (‘Piety’); it has been suggested that the bust may have been modelled either on Livia (Tiberius’ mother) or Livilla (Tiberius’

niece and daughter-in-law). The reverse has the name and titles of Tiberius’ son, Drusus (DRVSVS CAESAR TI AVGVSTI F TR POT ITER / ‘Drusus Caesar,

Son of Tiberius Augustus, holding tribunician power for the second year’).

SEJANUS

When Augustus died in ad 14, the praetorian guard was com-

manded by two men of equestrian status, Lucius Seius Strabo and

his son, Lucius Aelius Sejanus. The guard made up most of the

troops actually stationed in Italy, as Augustus had decided that

the permanent garrison posts for the legions and auxiliary contin-

gents should be in the provinces. The purpose of this had been

partly, of course, to guarantee peace in the provinces but partly

also to avoid the impression of military dictatorship which the

presence of large numbers of troops in Italy would have given. The

praetorian guard, which in republican times had been the body-

guard given to holders of imperium, was assigned to Augustus and arranged into nine cohorts of 1,000 men each. The troops were

billeted in the small towns around Rome, presumably to keep

their profile low. Further, to avoid the potential danger to himself

posed by such troops, Augustus ensured that there would be two

commanders (prefects) and that these would be of equestrian,

rather than senatorial, status.

In ad 15, however, Seius Strabo was appointed by Tiberius to

the most prestigious post open to equestrians – the prefecture of

Egypt; his son, Sejanus, was thus left in sole command of the

praetorian guard. Although he was of equestrian rank, Sejanus

had impressive senatorial connections; through his father he was

related to the consular Terentii and through his father’s complex

48 SEJANUS

‘extended’ marital family, he had a number of consular step-

brothers, his mother, Cosconia Gallitta, was connected with the

Lentuli and with Q. Junius Blaesus, who at the time of Tiberius’

accession was governor of the imperial province of Pannonia and

its legions. All of this will clearly have enhanced Sejanus’ career

aspirations.

In Tacitus’ account of Tiberius’ reign in his Annals, Sejanus

appears to ‘explode’ on to the political scene in ad 23. This

impression is, however, misleading; his seniority of rank will

have brought him close to the counsels of the princeps long

before this. We know, for example, that he accompanied Tiberius’

son, Drusus, in ad 14 on his mission to put down the mutiny

amongst the Pannonian legions. He is shown shortly afterwards as

sufficiently close to the princeps to be able to warn him of the influence of Agrippina over the Rhine legions, and he was considered to be of sufficient importance to be ‘chosen’ as the pro-

spective father-in-law of a son of the future emperor, Claudius.

Tiberius valued Sejanus, as he himself said, as the ‘partner’ of his

labours.

How then was Sejanus able to make so strong an impression

upon Tiberius? The answer to this lay partly in the difficulties

which Tiberius experienced in his relations with others – for

example, his family and the senate. We have also to remember

that Tiberius was not a young man when he came to power, and

was in his late sixties by the middle of his reign; because of this,

many of his friends and contemporaries were dying, leaving

Tiberius increasingly in isolation. All of these factors left an

emperor, who was not readily trusting, increasingly reliant upon a

man in whom he did feel confidence. On the positive side, it is

clear from sources that, outwardly, Sejanus’ character earned him

the trust of the princeps, for he appeared loyal and hard-working, yet did not descend to the sycophancy which, in Tiberius’ eyes,

disfigured the behaviour of many others. In other words, Sejanus

came across to Tiberius as a man who was both efficient and

independent of mind.

The precise nature of the prefect’s ambitions has been a matter

of considerable debate, though broadly it would appear to have

been his aim to isolate Tiberius, to undermine those who might

have helped him, and increasingly to dominate an emperor who

S E J A N U S

was less capable of handling the tasks of government than himself.

Finally, perhaps, through marriage into the family of the princeps, he may have hoped to become Tiberius’ logical successor.

However, the nature both of contemporary politics and of the

source material makes a precise account hard to achieve – not least

because the text of Tacitus’ Annals is missing for the crucial period in ad 30–1 that saw Tiberius turn on his one-time confidant and

destroy him.

In Tacitus’ account – the only one with true chronological

coherence – two significant and dramatic events mark the escal-

ation of Sejanus’ plans. First, he persuaded Tiberius that in the

interests of efficiency the guards’ cohorts should be brought

together into one fortress in the city of Rome itself. Clearly, the

prefect’s ability to intimidate would be greatly enhanced by this

act. Second, as we have seen, Sejanus seduced Drusus’ wife, Livilla,

and together they planned and executed Drusus’ murder. The

relationship between Drusus and Sejanus had never been good,

and in all probability Drusus resented the prefect’s influence over

his father.

Drusus’ death not only devastated Tiberius – though

outwardly he took it stoically – but also called into question

the future direction of the principate. It is clear that after

Germanicus’ death Tiberius had hoped that Drusus would be able

to hold the imperial family together through his guardianship of

Germanicus’ older sons. This arrangement would carry the added

advantage of marginalising Agrippina and her circle. No doubt

recalling the attempt by Asinius Gallus, after his marriage to

Vipsania, to adopt Drusus, Tiberius did not want Germanicus’

sons, the heirs to his position, to come under the control of

Agrippina and a new husband, particularly if, as seemed possible,

that husband was, ironically, to be the same Asinius Gallus.

So after Drusus’ death Tiberius committed the young Nero and

Drusus Caesar to the care of the senate.

The next moves in Sejanus’ plans were to increase the isolation

of Tiberius and Agrippina and above all to prevent any chance of

their reconciliation. His method was simple but effective; he

engineered judicial attacks on those friends of Agrippina whose

views or activities were such as to prevent the likelihood of any

sympathy for them on Tiberius’ part; the purpose of this was

S E J A N U S

clearly to secure the isolation of Agrippina by persuading the

princeps that her friends were treacherous towards him. Most

spectacular was the attack in ad 24 on a respected senator,

Gaius Silius, and his wife, Sosia Galla. Both were long-standing

associates of Germanicus and Agrippina from their time together

on the Rhine earlier in the reign.

Significantly, Sejanus excused his attack to Tiberius on the

grounds that some senators had shown too ready an enthusiasm

for Agrippina’s sons and that what he called ‘Agrippina’s party’

should be cut down to size before it embroiled the state in civil

war. Silius was vulnerable to a ‘smear campaign’ alleging sym-

pathy with the leaders of a Gallic revolt three years previously,

and he forfeited Tiberius’ sympathy particularly because of his and

his wife’s rapacious and high-handed actions in Gaul. Sejanus

chose his prosecutor well; Visellius Varro, consul of ad 24, was

the son of one of Silius’ colleagues in Germany and bore Silius a

grudge from those days. Not only that, but when Silius objected

to this biased prosecutor who was protected by his office, he

incurred the impatience of Tiberius, who argued, with an

irrelevant reference to republican precedent, that the consuls had a

duty to defend the state against its enemies. In this way, Tiberius

demonstrated his blindness to the fact that it was he, and

not the consuls, who had a duty to protect the state. Thus

Sejanus’ manipulation of particular aspects of this case enabled

him to blind Tiberius to the real issue, and, importantly, to make

it look as if the attack on Silius emanated from Tiberius himself.

This was bound to convince Agrippina that it was Tiberius,

rather than Sejanus, who was orchestrating the attack on her

and her friends. Silius anticipated condemnation by committing

suicide.

In ad 26, an attack was launched upon Agrippina’s cousin,

Claudia Pulchra. Again, Agrippina saw Tiberius as responsible,

and rather pointedly chided him for attacking the descendants of

Augustus. Any imputation that Tiberius was demeaning Augus-

tus’ memory was bound to anger the princeps; he in his turn

accused Agrippina of envy solely because she did not enjoy power

and influence. Another example of Sejanus’ planning is to be seen

in his success in convincing both Tiberius and Agrippina that

each was trying to poison the other; skilfully, because of their

S E J A N U S

isolation, he was able to pose as the trustworthy confidant of each

of them.

During these years, Sejanus also tried to advance his cause by

seeking Tiberius’ permission to marry his mistress, the widowed

Livilla. Sejanus clearly had two motives for such a marriage. First,

it would have brought him into the family of the princeps and

given him some quasi-parental control over Tiberius’ grandson,

Tiberius Gemellus. Second, a new marriage for Livilla was bound

to heighten Agrippina’s isolation and sense of vulnerability.

Tiberius recognised that this would be the effect but not that it

was Sejanus’ intention. Although he did not forbid the marriage,

he made it clear that he did not favour it.

By this time, Tiberius was growing increasingly weary of the

cares of office, and looking towards withdrawing from Rome. In

Tacitus’ view, it was an incident in one particular trial which

pushed Tiberius into his decision to retire: he was forced to listen

to a witness, who was probably hand-picked by Sejanus, recount-

ing singularly unpleasant remarks about Tiberius which were

alleged to have been made by the accused. Although Tacitus

introduces a number of possible reasons for Tiberius’ decision to

withdraw to Capreae, he recognised Sejanus’ intrigues as the

principal force. Sejanus’ plan was that the retired emperor would

be entirely dependent on him for loyal service and indeed even for

information. Sejanus intended effectively to be the censor of news

to and from Capreae; he hoped too that, with Tiberius away from

Rome, he would have a freer hand to promote his scheme of

undermining Agrippina, her family and friends. At the same

time, it would be easier to ensure that the blame for what he did

actually fell upon Tiberius. By chance, Sejanus was at a crucial

moment able to reinforce Tiberius’ trust in and dependence on

him, when he saved the life of the princeps during a rockfall at a cave at Sperlonga (near Naples).

With Tiberius remote and introspective on Capreae, Sejanus

had a freer hand to accelerate his plans against Agrippina; he

singled out particularly her eldest son, Nero, for harassment and

intimidation, and was even able to work upon the jealousies that

existed between Nero and his brother, Drusus, using the latter to

spy upon Nero. His clandestine methods brought the added

advantage of leaving Agrippina extremely uncertain as to who

S E J A N U S

were her friends and who were her enemies, particularly since

Sejanus continued to pose as her friend. This state of affairs had an

important consequence in the aftermath of Sejanus’ fall in ad 31;

for many on Agrippina’s side, including Agrippina herself, found

it difficult, if not impossible, to convince the hyper-suspicious

Tiberius that they were not in some way associated with Sejanus.

Indeed, even whilst Sejanus was still in favour, Tiberius is said

to have become sensitive to the apparent connections between

Sejanus and some of Agrippina’s friends, including, prominently,

Tiberius’ old rival, Asinius Gallus.

In ad 28, another of Agrippina’s friends, Titius Sabinus,

was judicially attacked in a case that presented a particularly

unedifying example of spying and information collection, but

in which the accusers emphasised a real and strong connection

between treachery and Agrippina’s group. The ground was by

now prepared for the launching of an attack on Agrippina herself;

events, moreover, played into Sejanus’ hands through the death in

ad 29 of the octogenarian Livia. Although no friend of Agrippina,

her presence in Rome did, the sources imply, exercise some

element of restraining control over Sejanus. As a result of the

attack, Agrippina, Nero, Drusus and a number of their supporters

were incarcerated; Nero committed suicide in prison in ad 30.

The course of events over the following year is far from clear,

but from a position in which few Romans of any class of society

would dare incur his wrath, Sejanus fell to disgrace and his death

on 18 October, ad 31, following the reading in the senate of what

Juvenal, the satiric poet, called the ‘long and wordy letter from

Capreae’. The reason for the difficulty in understanding these

events stems from the fact that the text of Tacitus’ Annals is lost for this period. As a result, it is not clear what Sejanus was

planning in these last months of his life, or why Tiberius turned

on and destroyed him.

Tiberius himself is said to have stated in his own autobiography

that he destroyed Sejanus because of the latter’s plots against the

children of Germanicus. Little serious consideration, however, has

ever been given to this claim because Sejanus’ fall brought no

alleviation for Agrippina, for her second son, Drusus, nor for

Agrippina’s friend, Asinius Gallus. However, we should bear

in mind that some time in ad 30, apparently on the advice of

S E J A N U S

Antonia, his sister-in-law, Tiberius had Gaius Caligula and his

sisters moved from Rome to Capreae – perhaps to offer them

improved protection. Also Tacitus records that in the wake of

Sejanus’ fall, a charge was brought against at least one man

of having been Sejanus’ accomplice in his plots against Caligula.

Further, the deaths of Agrippina, Drusus and Asinius Gallus

are less damaging to Tiberius’ version of events than might at first

sight appear. When Drusus died in ad 33, Tiberius launched a

savage posthumous attack on him for the damage he had done to

Rome and to his family; we should recall that Sejanus had enlisted

the help of the uncongenial Drusus in bringing about the ruin of

his unsuspecting brother, Nero. Tiberius might then justifiably

have regarded Drusus as an accomplice of Sejanus. Again, when

Agrippina died on 18 October, ad 33, Tiberius took some

satisfaction in noting the coincidence that it was two years to the

day from Sejanus’ own death. Sejanus’ strategy of appearing to

befriend Agrippina may in retrospect have left some suspicion in

Tiberius’ mind of an association between her and Sejanus; he had,

after all, come to see both as bent on his own destruction. Finally,

in the case of Asinius Gallus, Tiberius had long suspected this

long-serving senator of trying to undermine him; Dio Cassius

reports a rather strange accusation which Tiberius made against

Gallus – that he was trying to ‘steal’ Sejanus from him. This

would indicate that Tiberius suspected a liaison between the two.

In any case, so many senators had tried to ingratiate themselves

with Sejanus that there must have been many of Agrippina’s

friends who had made contacts with Sejanus which in the

aftermath of the prefect’s fall must have been very hard to explain.

There is, then, no insurmountable objection to accepting

Tiberius’ own explanation of Sejanus’ fall. Indeed the prefect’s

continued attacks on Agrippina and her family would, if success-

fully completed, have left only Gemellus and his mother, Livilla;

if Sejanus had been successful in his effort to marry Livilla, he

would have been left as the guardian of Tiberius’ sole surviving

heir – surely an unassailable position. It is also clear that during

ad 30 and 31 Sejanus tried to build further support for himself –

amongst the plebs of Rome and amongst the armies; it seems that he had made approaches to the commanders of the armies in both

Upper and Lower Germany. Such troops would have supported

S E J A N U S

him not perhaps in a plot against Tiberius, for which there is no

good evidence, but in the fluid situation that might have followed

Tiberius’ death. However, it would seem that Sejanus’ best chance

of continued advancement lay with Tiberius remaining princeps

until his natural death; after all, by ad 30 the princeps was in his early seventies.

The fact that Tiberius was evidently put on his guard

against Sejanus in ad 30 but took no action until close to the end

of ad 31 indicates that the princeps perceived no immediate danger emanating from Sejanus; he could afford to play a waiting game.

The year ad 31 opened with Tiberius and Sejanus as consuls,

Tiberius rarely held the consulate during his reign, and Sejanus

evidently expected that a consulate with Tiberius as his colleague

indicated the likelihood of promotion for himself – perhaps a

grant of tribunician power along with the princeps, or permission at last for his marriage to Livilla. In the event, Tiberius resigned

his consulship in May, having given no indication of new favour –

an omission which must surely have caused Sejanus to doubt the

security of his position. Indeed, it may have been fear of what

Sejanus might do out of desperation that led Tiberius secretly to

instruct that, in the event of an armed insurrection, the young

Drusus Caesar should be released from prison and established as a

kind of emergency figurehead for the Caesars.

As it turned out, nothing went awry; Tiberius took few people

into his confidence beyond Sutorius Macro (Sejanus’ replacement

as prefect) and the consul, Memmius Regulus. The letter of

denunciation was evidently equivocal in tone until the last

moment, and Sejanus until then appears to have continued expect-

ing to hear of his long-awaited promotion. In the event, nobody

stood on ceremony; the prefect was dragged off to his death,

whilst, according to Juvenal’s masterly description, the people

threw themselves into destroying Sejanus’ statues with as much

zest as they had shown in his support only hours before.

Sejanus’ death was followed by a witch-hunt for anyone who

was suspected of having supported him; few could escape the

inference, though the accusers must have used the highly charged

atmosphere to bring down many whose crimes were no greater

than that of the princeps himself. After all, so long as Tiberius trusted Sejanus there would have seemed no good reason for

S E J A N U S

anyone to act otherwise. Sejanus’ family was treated with especial

violence, and his estranged wife Apicata at last told the full story

of her husband’s relationship with Livilla. Whilst such evidence as

she gave should have been treated with caution, the revelation of

Sejanus’ murder of Drusus would have hit Tiberius hard, further

exacerbating the bitterness and disillusion he was feeling already.

Whilst we cannot be certain how far Sejanus’ approaches to

army commanders had proceeded, the whole episode – particu-

larly with the concentration of the praetorian guard within Rome

itself – would have highlighted the extreme sensitivity of the

relationship between the princeps and the army. There were of

course special reasons why Tiberius became so dependent upon

Sejanus – the isolation forced upon Tiberius by his age, his char-

acter, his unpopularity, his poor relationships with members of

his family. However, whilst few emperors would have gone so far

as to call their prefects ‘partner of my labours’, few either would

have risked antagonising such a potentially powerful servant. It

was with good reason that the emperor Vespasian (ad 69–79) later

experimented with locating the prefecture within his own family.

The legacy of Sejanus was the near-destruction of the imperial

family, the accelerated sycophancy of the senatorial order, and a

princeps who could never again face returning from an exile to

which Sejanus’ machinations had consigned him. The legacy of

Sejanus’ fall was fear and suspicion amongst the nobility, and a

new prefect who, if anything, was more cruel, depraved and

power-hungry than Aelius Sejanus himself.

TIBERIUS AND THE EMPIRE

Shortly before Augustus’ death in ad 14 he had allegedly

instructed his successor not to engage in imperialist adventures

but to retain the empire within its existing frontiers. Some

regarded this as the words of a princeps jealous of his own reputation being surpassed; in reality, the recent Varus disaster had

highlighted the delicate balance which existed between the size of

the army and the fulfilment of current garrison duties. In short,

without an enlargement of the army, which would have been

politically and economically risky, the possibility of imperial

expansion was minimal. The trauma of the Varus disaster had left

a healthy respect for those who faced the legions across the

frontiers.

It is unlikely in any case that Augustus’ advice seriously

conflicted with Tiberius’ natural inclinations. His own military

reputation was that of a cautious commander, and it was of course

he who in the decade before his accession had had to cope with

both the Pannonian rebellion (ad 6–9) and the Varus disaster

itself in ad 9. In any case, the Rhine army was clearly still, in

ad 14, in an uncertain state because of the programme of

crash-recruitment that had been necessary to restore its numbers

after ad 9. The simultaneous mutinies in ad 14 on both the Rhine

and the Danube provided a sober warning that much still needed

to be done before the legionary army was again worthy of its

T I B E R I U S A N D T H E E M P I R E

reputation. Circumstances and inclination therefore pointed

Tiberius Caesar in the same direction.

Such considerations made Tiberius’ principate an unusually

inactive period from the military point of view; as Tacitus noted,

this gave the historian particular problems in his account of the

reign. Historians of Rome produced their works initially for a

listening audience, and Tiberius’ principate lacked the dramatic

military episodes which lent embellishment and colour to the

historian’s production. It was probably the artist’s reaction which

led to Tacitus’ dismissive description of a ‘peace that was not

disturbed’ and a ‘ princeps uninterested in imperial expansion’.

Nonetheless, the reign had its share of military and imperial

problems, although the warfare between ad 14 and 37 was for the

most part reactive, and concerned with preventing disturbance to

the prosperous development of provinces. Of such a kind was the

lengthy war against the guerrilla leader, Tacfarinas, in north

Africa (ad 17–24); though ultimately Roman success was not in

doubt, it was not won without political embarrassment over the

choice of Sejanus’ uncle, Quintus Junius Blaesus, to command

the war.

In ad 21–2, the Rhine legions had to be mobilised to deal with

a tribal outbreak in Gaul; the name of one of its leaders, Julius

Sacrovir (‘Holy man’), suggests that the tribal nationalism may

have been inspired by Druidic priests, displaying the same blend

of political and religious fervour which Caesar had seen in Britain

nearly a century before. Since both its leaders bore the Roman

name of Julius, indicating their enfranchisement, this outbreak

highlighted the dangers of nationalism which might in the

relatively early days of a province’s development be concealed

behind a façade of Romanisation and waiting to be provoked

by high-handed behaviour on the part of Roman officials. It

should be remembered too that, although not a Roman citizen,

Arminius, the destroyer of Varus’ army, had also been regarded as

Romanised – and thus trustworthy. This war too had political

overtones in Rome, since Sejanus was able to utilise for his

own ends jealousy between the Roman commanders involved,

Visellius Varro and Gaius Silius, who was a friend of Germanicus

and Agrippina. Further, it is possible that some of the

Druidic priests, after their defeat in Gaul, fled to Britain where

T I B E R I U S A N D T H E E M P I R E

they worked to undermine the delicate political balances

established by Augustus. The client-kingdom of Thrace was also

disturbed and required an armed intervention in ad 26 to secure

the position of Rhoemetalces, the pro-Roman occupant of the

Thracian throne.

The Rhine and the east, Rome’s most sensitive frontier areas,

both saw action during Tiberius’ reign. Activity east of the Rhine

between ad 14 and 16 was unique in this period, since it was the

only episode of warfare which was not genuinely forced upon

Rome. In this case, Germanicus sought relief from the troubles of

mutiny in the cheap success which he hoped he would win across

the Rhine. It is not clear whether Germanicus had revived the

Augustan dreams of an Elbe frontier, but his reckless attitude in

the face of those who had destroyed Varus caused Tiberius great

anxiety – not least when in an emotional mission Germanicus

brought his recently-mutinous legions face to face with the

remains of Varus’ army. Despite Germanicus’ confidence, Tiberius

was sufficiently worried by the dangers posed by the German

leader, Arminius, and the hazards produced by environment and

climate to call a halt to these activities. Again, this episode caused

a significant reaction in Rome, as people judged between Tiberius

and Germanicus, whilst Sejanus issued sinister warnings to the

princeps concerning the conduct of Germanicus and Agrippina.

In the east, Tiberius’ reign witnessed two periods of significant

disturbance – in ad 16 and again twenty years later. Ever since

Pompey’s settlement of the region in 62 bc, the provinces and

client-kingdoms of Asia Minor had enjoyed an uneasy relation-

ship with the Parthian kingdom to their east; crucial to the state of

this relationship was the stance of the government of the kingdom

of Armenia. The Parthians won psychological advantages with the

reverses suffered by Crassus in 53 bc and by Antony’s general,

Decidius Saxa, in 36 bc, though these defeats had been retrieved

by Augustus and Tiberius in the late 20s bc, through a combin-

ation of diplomacy and the threat of military force.

Dynastic politics in the area, however, remained turbulent, and

by the end of Augustus’ reign the region was again becoming

unstable. To some extent, the preoccupation of the princeps and his advisers with the European frontiers in Augustus’ last decade

had allowed an unacceptable deterioration to occur. By ad 16,

The Roman Empire in

Figure

60 TIBERIUS AND THE EMPIRE

according to Tacitus, both Syria and Judaea were troubled with

internal unrest which had financial origins, and the client-

kingdoms of Cilicia, Cappadocia and Commagene had vacant

thrones. Most serious of all, Vonones, the pro-Roman king of

Parthia, had been driven from the kingdom by Artabanus but,

much to Artabanus’ annoyance, had been accepted on to the

throne of Armenia. Vonones, however, under pressure, had fled,

leaving the Armenian throne vacant also.

As always, Tiberius preferred a diplomatic solution; so, follow-

ing Augustan precedent, he sent to the area his heir, Germanicus

Caesar, whom, according to Tacitus, he was glad to be able to prise

away from the Rhine legions. The political repercussions in Rome

of Germanicus’ mission and of his disastrous relationship with

Cnaeus Piso, the governor of Syria, have already been discussed

(see Chapter 5). However, the mission successfully stabilised Asia

Minor; Commagene was made into a province, whilst new kings

were settled on the thrones of Cappadocia and Cilicia. Further,

Germanicus installed the durable Zeno (Artaxias) as king of

Armenia, and he was to retain the position until his death in ad

34 or 35. This brought stability and reduced any threat from

Parthia; in the main, Rome had by this time lost any taste for

intervention in Parthia and preferred to leave the area to dynastic

squabbling.

However, the death of Zeno precipitated new disturbance,

possibly promoted on the part of Artabanus, the Parthian king, in

the expectation that the old and reclusive emperor would be slow

to respond. He placed his son, Arsaces, on the throne of Armenia,

and demanded that Tiberius surrender a considerable amount of

territory in Asia Minor. A diplomatic solution was again achieved,

on this occasion through the agency of Lucius Vitellius, the newly

appointed, youthful governor of Syria. It says a great deal for

Tiberius’ continued sharpness on major issues that he could have

made such an imaginative appointment.

Thus, Tiberius avoided direct intervention in the area, but

rather manipulated the situation towards the conclusion he

desired. He supported the pretensions to the Armenian throne of

Mithridates of Iberia and caused Artabanus sufficient anxiety to

bring him to heel; he thereby initiated another period of stability

in the region which lasted until shortly before the death of

T I B E R I U S A N D T H E E M P I R E

Claudius in ad 54. The Jewish historian, Josephus, informs us of

an imaginative intervention by Vitellius in Judaea too, which led

to the removal of the much despised procurator, Pontius Pilate.

In all, Tiberius’ dealings with the eastern provinces and

kingdoms showed firmness and imagination, which enabled the

princeps on two occasions to secure effective solutions without recourse to major military intervention, thus honouring the

spirit of Augustus’ advice not to tamper unnecessarily with

existing arrangements. In the day-to-day management of existing

provinces, Tiberius’ principate was acknowledged as a period in

which high standards were sought and generally enforced; officials

who overstepped the mark were usually dealt with firmly, and

Tiberius’ subsequent attitude to such people was generally hostile.

We have seen in a previous chapter that, following the trial of

Cnaeus Piso, the princeps recovered the estate in Illyricum which Augustus had gifted to Piso. The princeps’ reason, in part at least, was to show neighbouring estate owners that not all Roman

landlords descended to the appalling ‘bad-neighbourliness’ that

they had experienced from Piso.

Tacitus remarks on the maintenance of fair levels of taxation,

and the observation of the princeps that ‘my sheep should be

clipped, not shaved’ is well known. It was a wise policy, since

restlessness over tax burdens complicated problems in the east,

was at least a pretext for Sacrovir’s rebellion in Gaul, and drove

the Frisii of north Germany to a short, but violent, rebellion

in ad 28.

Tiberius’ commitment to high standards led him on one

occasion to exclude Gaius Galba, the brother of the future

emperor, from participation in the drawing of lots for pro-

consulships, on the ground that he had squandered his inherit-

ance; presumably it was feared that he might seek to rebuild his

fortune at the expense of his province. Further, the view of the

princeps that, if given long periods of office, governors might be less tempted to corrupt practices is adduced as a possible explanation for the extremely lengthy governorships enjoyed by some –

most notably Poppaeus Sabinus, who remained in charge of

Moesia and the Greek provinces for twenty-four years.

Tiberius’ provincial appointments were generally sound; the

few exceptions stand out in sharp contrast, such as Cnaeus Piso in

62 TIBERIUS AND THE EMPIRE

Syria (ad 17–20), Pontius Pilate in Judaea (ad 26–36), Gaius

Silius in Germany (ad 14–21). Increasing concern was also shown

over the behaviour of governors’ wives during their husbands’

provincial appointments; whilst Tiberius may have been particu-

larly concerned with the exceptional case of Agrippina, he clearly

recognised a more general problem, as is shown by his attitude to

Plancina (wife of Cnaeus Piso), Sosia Galla (wife of Gaius Silius),

and the wife of Pomponius Labeo in Moesia. The onus of

responsibility was placed on their husbands’ shoulders by the

enactment that offences committed in the provinces by officials’

wives would be treated as if they had been committed by the

husbands themselves.

Tiberius was strict rather than innovative, preferring to stay

with well-tried methods. We should, however, mention the rather

curious cases of two governors, Aelius Lamia (Syria) and Lucius

Arruntius (Spain), who were appointed but apparently not

permitted to go to their provinces. Suetonius even says that their

deputies were given the instructions relevant to the governing of

their provinces, which tends to argue against Tacitus’ explanation

that Tiberius had forgotten that he had made the appointments. It

is unlikely that the princeps felt that he had any need to doubt the loyalty of the two individuals concerned, and the possibility

remains that these cases were experimental in the sense that

the ‘departmental head’ was being kept in Rome where he could

be directly and immediately answerable to the princeps on

questions relating to his province. If, however, this does represent

‘cabinet government’ in embryonic form, then the experiment

did not proceed; only one other case is known during the early

principate – a governor of Syria who was retained in Rome

by Nero.

The distinction between imperial and public provinces was

generally maintained, although Tiberius might interfere to secure

good government. Normally, he encouraged the senate to exercise

a proper responsibility for its provinces and officials, and tried

to halt the apparently growing practice of governors of public

provinces filing their reports with him rather than with the

senate. He also showed irritation when the senate referred to him

provincial matters which he regarded as being within its proper

competence.

T I B E R I U S A N D T H E E M P I R E

Tiberius did not make extraordinary demands of Rome’s pro-

vincial subjects; he did not require ‘worship’ of himself. Indeed,

he reined in what he regarded as extravagant requests. Tacitus

recounts his refusal of the request made by the people of Hispania

Ulterior to be permitted to set up a shrine to himself and Livia.

The princeps pointed out correctly that cases quoted by the

Spaniards as precedents were in fact inappropriate since Augustan

practice had been to combine worship of the princeps with that of the personified Roma, and Augustus himself had previously acceded to a request only because it combined worship of himself

with that of the senate. Characteristically, Tiberius felt bound to

follow Augustan precedent in the matter but was resolved to stop

short of condoning flattery which he felt would only devalue the

honours already given to Augustus. The sentiments which Tacitus

ascribes to Tiberius in his repudiation of the Spanish request are

precisely echoed in a surviving letter which Tiberius wrote on the

same subject to the Greek town of Gytheum. The monument

which Tiberius desired above all was a reputation for having

governed the empire well.

As we have seen, he was certainly alert to the need for

fair-minded and efficient officials, and we may assume that

for most of his principate he was alert also to requests for advice

and assistance, of the type referred to later in Pliny’s correspon-

dence with Trajan (ad 98–117) from the province of Bithynia.

Surviving inscriptions show that, throughout his reign, Tiberius

continued his predecessor’s close care and attention to matters

affecting the prosperity and well-being of provinces, even those

most distant from Rome; in particular, road construction and

public building were vigorously pursued. There is little evidence

that this slackened in the later years, although a surviving rescript

of Claudius’ reign concerning the legal status of certain Alpine

communities indicates that Claudius was solving a problem

which had been neglected because of his ‘uncle’s persistent

absence’.

Tiberius responded generously to natural disasters in the

provinces, as is shown dramatically by the grants of money and

remission of taxes which were made to twelve cities of Asia

devastated by an earthquake in ad 17. This act of generosity,

which was commemorated on the coinage, was the cause of the

64 TIBERIUS AND THE EMPIRE

request, which Tiberius granted, that his generosity be

acknowledged through the dedication of a temple to him at

Smyrna.

As was so often the case with Rome’s early emperors, Tiberius’

unpopularity in Rome contrasts strongly with his reputation in

the provinces. He may not have had the same vision as Caesar

and Augustus of an empire bound together by rapidly rising

provincial status and self-esteem; indeed, presiding as he did over

a period which saw little warfare or territorial expansion, he may

not have appreciated the socio-political necessity of enhancing

the status of provincials. He did, however, have a traditional,

‘patronal’ interest in the prosperity of his subjects, which, though

it may not have appealed to the more progressive instincts of an

emperor such as Claudius, none the less secured the appreciation

of the subject-populations. Tiberius was viewed in the provinces

as a monarch anxious for their well-being and alert to the actions

which would secure this.

Figure 8 Sestertius of Tiberius, c. ad 22–23, showing on the obverse face the seated figure of Tiberius within the legend CIVITATIBVS ASIAE RESTITVTIS; this refers to the help that Tiberius had given to communities in the province of Asia, following the earthquake of ad 17. The reverse gives Tiberius’ name and titles around S C.

TIBERIUS’ RETIREMENT FROM

ROME: HIS LATER YEARS

In ad 26, Tiberius left Rome, ostensibly to dedicate temples in

Campania. However, from there he went across to Capreae, taking

up a retirement in the Villa Iovis; he never returned to Rome.

Contemporary and subsequent generations, because they could

not understand the reasons for this retirement, have surrounded it

with speculation, often of the most malevolent kind. Yet, as we

have seen (in Chapter 7), many of the policies and actions of

Tiberius in the empire which have been seen as sound, even

inspired, date from this period. It is clear, therefore, that whatever

the reasons for and the course of that retirement, Tiberius Caesar

did not lose his grip on affairs.

There was, of course, nothing extraordinary in a member of

Rome’s nobility having a villa in southern Italy. The Bay of

Naples had been the site of numerous luxurious retreats ever since

the last century of the republic. Augustus had a number of such

villas, including perhaps twelve on Capreae, named after the gods

of the pantheon of Olympus. The Villa Iovis (Villa of Jove) was

perhaps the finest of these, situated on a rocky and almost

unapproachable headland at the eastern end of the island.

By the standards of villas depicted on wall-paintings at

Pompeii and Herculaneum, or castigated for their exotic archi-

tecture by the poet Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus), the Villa

Iovis was not out of the ordinary. It consisted of suites of rooms on

66 TIBERIUS’ RETIREMENT FROM ROME

each of four sides of a square courtyard. Architecturally, the most

remarkable features are the huge vaulted water-cisterns beneath

this courtyard, and the numerous ramps and staircases necessi-

tated by the uneven nature of the terrain on which the villa was

built. The grounds contained some conceits, such as a summer

dining-room, but otherwise the site is essentially modest, and,

apart from its remoteness of approach from land and sea, has little

to fuel the speculation about Tiberius’ use of it.

The reasons for the retirement have been summarised by Taci-

tus. He believed that the principal reason was pressure exerted on

the princeps by Sejanus. Yet Tacitus observed a collection of other factors which pointed the princeps in the direction in which

Figure 9 Map of Italy

T I B E R I U S ’ R E T I R E M E N T F R O M R O M E

Sejanus was pushing him. In the first place, he was growing

increasingly sensitive about his reputation for cruelty and sexual

perversion. It was perhaps inevitable that such a construction

should have been placed on the activities of a man who was by

nature isolated and reclusive. Indeed, Tiberius already had such a

reputation before he became princeps, for on an earlier occasion (in 6 bc), his sense of frustration had led him to seek a physical

isolation on the island of Rhodes (see Chapter 2, p. 11). It is

undoubtedly true that Tiberius was sensitive to such gossip, as

is shown by his outburst during the trial of Votienus Montanus

shortly before his retirement; as we have seen, it is not unlikely

that the course of that trial was deliberately engineered by

Sejanus, who probably primed a crucial witness to make the

maximum impact upon the princeps. The result of it was said to

have been a determination on Tiberius’ part to cut himself off

from the senate. However, the company which he took with him

into retirement does little to confirm such suspicions; besides

Sejanus, this included two old friends, Cocceius Nerva and

Curtius Atticus, and teachers with whom he could relax. For

Tiberius the most important member of the company, as on

Rhodes, was probably the astrologer, Thrasyllus, with whom no

doubt the princeps pondered the frustrations of the past and looked morbidly to the future. This is clearly shown by the much-quoted

preface of a letter which he wrote from Capreae to the senate,

displaying a preoccupation with failure, guilt and retribution: ‘If I

know what to write to you, senators, or how to write it, or what

not to write, may heaven plunge me into a worse ruin than I feel

overtaking me each day.’

A second problem concerned the physical appearance of the

princeps. Although not necessarily a truthful guide, Tiberius’ coin-portraits and sculptural representations show him as a tall and

good-looking man, with no features which would obviously cause

great sensitivity. It does seem, however, that he was suffering

from a skin complaint which had unsightly consequences, and

which both ancient and modern medical opinion has seen in

the light of an ‘epidemic’ current at the time, rather than as

something peculiar to the princeps.

Tacitus also mentions Tiberius’ relationship with his aged

mother, Livia, as a cause of his decision to retire; she is said to have 68 TIBERIUS’ RETIREMENT FROM ROME

harassed him, particularly reminding him of the debt which she

claimed he owed her for her services over his elevation. She stated

that it was due solely to her efforts that Augustus had eventually

preferred Tiberius to Germanicus as his successor. It is quite likely

that by ad 26 Tiberius’ weariness with the problems of his office

had left him less than grateful for her efforts; in any case, however,

as Tacitus observed in another context, services are welcome only

so long as they are capable of repayment.

Even at the opening of his principate, Tiberius had expressed an

interest in the possibility that he might one day be relieved of the

burdens of office. Although much of the domestic and foreign

administration had functioned smoothly, he clearly found his

duties increasingly wearisome, particularly in the light of the

treason trials and especially because of the constant difficulties in

his relationship first with Germanicus and subsequently with his

widow. In ad 26, Tiberius was nearing 70 years of age; death had

removed many of his older friends, leaving him increasingly

isolated. He had already indicated how welcome it was to have

Sejanus as his partner, and it must have seemed logical for Sejanus’

share of the workload to increase as time passed by.

However, it is clear that in some ways the retirement did him

no good at all, as all the energy which had previously been used in

his conscientious attention to his duties was now devoted to

credulous and malignant suspicions which Sejanus deliberately

encouraged. Unable to stand company, yet unable to handle

the solitude, Tiberius had subsided into a state of cringing

withdrawal. More than once he came to the mainland and spent

considerable periods in residence in his villas around the Bay of

Naples; yet he could not steel himself to return to Rome itself. It

is an indication of Tacitus’ appreciation of the mental state of the

princeps that he used the word abscessus (‘cowering departure’) to describe the retirement, rather than absentia, which would more properly be used of a passive state of absence.

In one sense, the retirement from Rome indicated a govern-

mental crisis; a prerequisite of the Augustan principate was the

active participation of the princeps in the deliberations of the senate, which had in the past felt peculiarly powerless if left to its

own devices. Both Augustus and Tiberius prior to ad 26 had been

present for debates, able to answer and to contribute, even to veto

T I B E R I U S ’ R E T I R E M E N T F R O M R O M E

when necessary. In place of this active participation, imperial

orders contained in letters were substituted, which many senators

found more intimidating than the imperial presence and which

certainly seemed to admit of much less dissent.

More immediately, the power of Sejanus was increased;

Tiberius heard only what Sejanus wanted him to hear, and the

prefect clearly had great scope to pursue his designs with less

fear of being checked or rebuked by Tiberius. Similarly, it

was easy for Sejanus to make sure that the full odium for his

actions should fall upon Tiberius himself and thus to sever the

princeps more completely from those who might have saved him

from Sejanus. For example, although the campaign to destroy

Agrippina and her family was ultimately the work of Sejanus, few

would have placed the blame for it anywhere but on the shoulders

of the princeps.

The retirement from public contact generated its own

mythology, and it is now impossible to tell what credence should

be placed in the stories of Tiberius’ perversions and extravagances;

there were certainly those who, like Suetonius, were active in

compiling them. Yet, whilst some of the stories tell of Tiberius’

cruelty, more indicate his exasperation if the privacy of his retreat

was invaded; he guarded his solitude with great jealousy. We lack

detailed evidence for his state of mind in the early years of retire-

ment, and most of what survives concerns the period after the fall

of Sejanus in ad 31, when the princeps was devoured with frustration and disillusion, and fanatically suspicious of anyone – and

there were many – who might have had a link with Sejanus;

58 per cent of the major judicial proceedings recorded during

Tiberius’ reign occurred between ad 31 and the death of the

princeps in March, ad 37.

Yet, despite his desire to have a clear distance imposed between

himself and his subjects, Tiberius was throughout this last period

of his life clearly abreast of events in the outside world, and cap-

able of handling them firmly and fairly. If, as seems likely, he was

aware of the perfidy of Sejanus for at least eighteen months before

he administered the coup de grâce, he was certainly capable of maintaining a consistent deception throughout that period. Further,

the moves he made with regard to Germanicus’ daughters and his

youngest son indicate a firm grasp of his duty as emperor and, in

70 TIBERIUS’ RETIREMENT FROM ROME

settling the daughters in respectable marriages with members of

the senatorial nobility, a firm and imaginative grasp also of his

duty as a substitute parent. The careful arrangement of events

which terminated in Sejanus’ fall shows a clarity of thinking

and planning which contrasts markedly with the uncritical fears

which he displayed in the face of those who might have been

involved with Sejanus.

He was capable too of prompt and fair-minded action in the

face of national disaster. After his decision to quit Rome, three

major disasters found him as attentive to his subjects’ interests

as he had been at the time of the Asian earthquake in ad 17.

Following the collapse of the amphitheatre at Fidenae in ad 27,

he actively encouraged people to come to the aid of those affected.

In the wake of a financial crisis in ad 33, in which strict enforce-

ment of the usury laws had led to a great deal of harsh privation

and loss of confidence, he made a large sum of treasury money

available to relieve the immediate distress and allow time for

confidence to return. Again, in ad 36, following a disastrous

fire on the Aventine Hill in Rome, the princeps showed great

generosity and established a commission to investigate the losses

properly. Such a combination of generosity and prudence had

always been a characteristic of Tiberius.

As we have seen (in Chapter 7), the great issues of foreign

policy also found him alert, even imaginative, in his reactions; his

handling of the renewed difficulties in the east in ad 34, through

the agency of Lucius Vitellius, was little short of masterly.

Tiberius’ fears and suspicions in these last years led to many

trials, convictions and suicides as some people exploited the

opportunities these provided. Others despaired of the state of

Tiberius and his government. Yet the princeps showed himself capable of perceptiveness in small matters as well as large: he could

still, as in his younger days, see through a malicious prosecution

and bring relief to an accused person. He was still capable of

seeing where idle suspicions were misplaced, as in the case of the

talented Cornelius Gaetulicus who, as commander of the Upper

German legions, was suspected by some of complicity with

Sejanus.

But, if we certainly cannot charge Tiberius with a wholesale

neglect of his duties during the last decade of his life, and if we

T I B E R I U S ’ R E T I R E M E N T F R O M R O M E

can see signs of alertness and attention, clearly all was not well, as

the frequency of trials and suicides of men who, like Cocceius

Nerva and Lucius Arruntius, were old associates of the princeps, shows. Tiberius was inconsistent, veering from perceptiveness,

fairness and generosity to doubt, gloom and suspicion. Few could

tell how he might react in any particular circumstance; the ease

with which vague suspicions might lead to trial and death will

have left many pondering their futures with grave anxiety. This

anxiety, which removed the last vestiges of spirit from the

nobility, was the real cancer of Tiberius’ last years. Yet those who

could apply cool thought to his reign, and assess it in its entirety,

would have seen that such inconsistency and credulity had always

been aspects of the principate of Tiberius Caesar.

In spite of his experience and maturity, Tiberius had shown

himself throughout his reign as incapable of withstanding the

pressures of office. For Tiberius Caesar this was the legacy of

the deified Augustus; the price which Tiberius paid was a tortured

life as princeps and, despite the many positive aspects of his reign, a public esteem so low that when the princeps died on 16 March, ad 37, at the age of 78, he was consigned to rapid oblivion. Rome

turned with relief and anticipation to the rising star, Gaius

Caligula, the youngest son of Germanicus.

THE SUCCESSION

Tiberius’ own succession to the principate had been unexpected;

throughout his life, Augustus had shown a strong inclination to

be succeeded by a member of his own – the Julian – family.

Tiberius’ own emergence had been the result of premature deaths

amongst Augustus’ preferred nominees. Finally, in ad 4, despite

the fact that Augustus was said to have been inclined in favour

towards his granddaughter’s husband, Germanicus, he decided to

place his ultimate succession hopes upon Tiberius. Even so, the

hopes of the Julian family were kept alive through Augustus’

instruction to Tiberius that his heir should be Germanicus (whom

he was required to adopt as his son) in preference to his own

son, Drusus.

Germanicus, of course, died in ad 19, but there is every indica-

tion that Tiberius intended to honour the spirit of Augustus’

wishes. Drusus was, it is true, given a grant of tribunician power

in ad 22, but there is some evidence to suggest that, as in

Tiberius’ own case in 6 bc, this was to equip him better to

act as a present helper and guardian of the real heirs. Drusus

was to safeguard the interests of Nero and Drusus, the sons of

Germanicus, presumably as they were prepared for the likelihood

of power. Tiberius’ decision in ad 23, after Drusus’ death, to

entrust the two boys to the care of the senate suggests that he

continued to take their future elevation seriously. It is equally

T H E S U C C E S S I O N

evident that Sejanus’ motive in organising Drusus’ murder

was to ensure that Tiberius’ heirs were left in a dangerously

exposed position.

Despite his continued expectation of their promotion, Tiberius

was unwilling to see this happen too swiftly: for example, in

ad 24, he strongly rebuked the priests for including Nero and

Drusus within the new year’s prayers for the emperor’s safety. His

warning that they might be ruined by such premature adulation

was not the excuse that it is sometimes alleged to have been, but

probably represents real anxiety based on his own unhappy mem-

ories as a stepfather responsible for Gaius and Lucius Caesar. It is

worth noting that the senatus consultum on Cnaeus Piso makes the point that, in the display of grief over the death of Germanicus,

the participation of the children of the imperial family had been

modest and proper. The document contains praise offered to the

‘senior’ members of the imperial family for having trained

the younger members well in this respect.

Sejanus’ plans were based upon the elimination of the sons of

Germanicus from consideration for the succession. Because of his

withdrawal from the centre of political life in Rome, Tiberius

denied himself access to the truth of this until after it was too late

to save Nero; further, he came to understand the deadly role that

the young Drusus had played in the removal of his brother.

The princeps refused reconciliation with Drusus, though he did temporarily acknowledge his possible usefulness during the

working-out of his own plans to trap and ruin Sejanus. Tiberius

took seriously the damage done by Sejanus to the children of

Germanicus; as we have seen, he ensured the safety of Caligula and

his sisters, and encouraged the prosecution of at least one man,

Sextius Paconianus, for the part that he was alleged to have played

in Sejanus’ plots against Caligula.

Although in his last years Tiberius was still alert and capable of

statesmanlike responses to major matters of state, it is less clear

how actively he pondered the succession question. By ad 33, two

serious candidates remained – Caligula and Tiberius Gemellus,

the surviving grandson of the princeps. Tiberius’ assessments of these two are not clear, though he may have recognised the

destructiveness of Caligula and sought to safeguard his grandson

by not pushing him forward as either the equal or the superior of

T H E S U C C E S S I O N

Caligula. It is similarly possible that he looked towards Caligula

for positive reasons – namely that he represented the last

opportunity to honour the spirit of the intentions which

Augustus had made clear in ad 4. Alternatively, it could be that

Tiberius, who had often (though not always) baulked at seeming

to usurp the senate’s authority, did not wish to impose either of

the young men upon the respublica and did not go beyond making

arrangements for the disposal of his own property. In this case,

Caligula’s elevation would have owed much to the support of

Sutorius Macro, the new praetorian prefect.

Whatever Tiberius’ views on the succession, he did not provide

Caligula with any of the ‘apprenticeship’ which he himself had

served under Augustus. In ad 33, he received a quaestorship and a

priesthood, which may have been an indication of the intentions

of the princeps; beyond that, however, Tiberius seems to have done nothing but to provide Caligula with a companion in the person

of the Jewish prince, Herod Agrippa, who could hardly have

offered Caligula much of a training in the delicate business of the

management of the principate.

It is unclear how far Caligula was maligned by the stories that

were circulated about life with the reclusive princeps, though Tacitus records him as a faithful mirror of Tiberius’ moods – ‘never a

better slave or a worse master’. It is said that a praetorian senator,

Sextus Vistilius, was ‘excluded from the emperor’s friendship’ for

criticisms made about Caligula’s morals, and that the unfortunate

Vistilius committed suicide as a result.

Tiberius is credited with many prescient observations on the

likely nature of life in Rome under Caligula – that he was ‘nursing

a viper in Rome’s bosom’ and that Caligula would have ‘all of

Sulla’s vices, and none of his virtues’. Lucius Arruntius, who

committed suicide shortly before Tiberius’ own death, did so

because he saw no hope for Rome under a Caligula guided by

Macro, a man whom Arruntius regarded as more dangerous than

Sejanus.

In Tacitus’ account, Tiberius finally was unable to make a

choice between Gemellus and Caligula, though he is said to have

recognised that Caligula would murder Gemellus, unable pre-

sumably to brook such a rival. Tiberius is even said to have given

consideration to Claudius and, as a last resort, to the passing of

T H E S U C C E S S I O N

power to men outside the imperial family – rather as Augustus is

once said to have done. However, Tiberius put the suggestion

aside as likely to bring contempt and humiliation to Augustus’

memory and to the name of the Caesars. Macro at any rate

assumed that Caligula was to be the next emperor; he was accused

by Tiberius of deserting him for the ‘rising sun’.

Tiberius was not spared rumour and gossip even in death.

There was a story that, assuming the aged princeps to be dead,

Caligula had taken on the trappings of his new role, only to find

that Tiberius had only fainted. Macro, showing his dependence on

Caligula’s success, rapidly smothered Tiberius to death to put the

issue beyond doubt. Tiberius’ death caused unrestrained joy

in Rome; his subjects called for ‘Tiberius to the Tiber’, but they

were soon to learn that ‘the best day after a bad emperor is the

first one’.

CONCLUSION

When Tacitus summarised Tiberius’ life at the end of his account,

he concentrated on the deterioration of Tiberius’ personality,

which he perceived as a gradual process in which the ‘true

character’ of the princeps was revealed by stages. These were

determined by Tiberius’ relationship with various members of his

family and entourage, and only after the death of Sejanus in ad 31

did his character become fully apparent.

Although the detail of Tacitus’ analysis may be regarded as an

artificial imposition, most commentators would attach consider-

able importance to Tiberius’ personality. Tacitus reports anxieties

which were entertained on this score even before Tiberius became

princeps. Since Roman politics in the early Julio-Claudian period still revolved, as during the period of the old republic, around

the relatively small circle of the senatorial nobility, the character

of the leading member of that nobility is bound to have been of

considerable significance. Tiberius and the senate were in almost

daily contact and, as we have seen, how they reacted to each other

could often be crucial. Tiberius’ personality was such that the

senate frequently did not know how it should react to him.

Most modern historians would consider Tacitus’ character

assessment as a significant part of the problem of understanding

the principate of Tiberius, and, like Lucius Arruntius, would

reflect upon the apparently destructive effect on this man of the

C O N C L U S I O N

exercise of supreme power (Tacitus Annals VI. 48). It should be recognised, however, that there were other elements necessary to

an analysis of Tiberius’ reign. These were to some extent reflected

in the review which Tacitus conducted at the opening of Annals

IV, at the halfway point in Tiberius’ principate. Tacitus pointed to

the essentially sound nature of much of the administration,

though he reflected on the damaging effect of Tiberius’ manner of

conducting business and the harm done by the operation of the

law of treason.

An objective analysis would point to the fact that the princi-

pate devised by Augustus to suit his own circumstances was

successfully transmitted to a successor even though Tiberius found

the actual process traumatic. The new princeps demonstrated that the Augustan system could stand independently of its founder.

Moreover, the general soundness of Tiberius’ administration

allowed power to be transmitted again after his death – and to the

part of the family that Augustus favoured. This might indicate

that to a degree the senatorial nobility could regard the spirit of

the old republic as still alive in a system where power was in the

hands of the leading faction, but where theoretically it could pass

to other factions and families. This is the true significance of the

plan to ‘restore the republic’ at the time of the death of Caligula in

ad 41. In other words, as Galba was later to point out, there was

no inherent irreconcilability between principatus and libertas (‘principate’ and ‘liberty’).

There were during Tiberius’ reign few major changes to the

Augustan system; indeed Tiberius set great store by following

Augustan precedents and principles. It is not clear whether this

represented an obsession about Augustus, the conservatism of the

new princeps, or even a genuine feeling that he was personally unworthy and no more than a ‘caretaker’ for the gens Julia.

The senate remained the main forum for the conduct of public

business, and Tiberius may even have wished to enhance its

powers; that he could not was partly the fault of the system and

partly the result of his own lack of diplomacy in handling sensi-

tive matters. The administration of the empire was still exercised

largely through senatorial agents, though senators may have felt

restricted by their obvious lack of military opportunities. In

truth, however, this was the legacy not so much of Tiberius as of

C O N C L U S I O N

the painful lessons of Augustus’ last years. In this sense, those

of our sources – and Tacitus may have been one of them – who

knew of Hadrian’s reign may have thought that they saw in the

comparison between Augustus and Tiberius something similar

to that between Trajan and Hadrian. Hadrian’s generally non-

expansionist approach made him unpopular in senatorial circles,

even though his stewardship was generally sound and careful.

Tiberius’ retirement to Capreae obviously cast the adminis-

tration in a somewhat different light. He now depended less on

discussion and more on imperial instruction. It is less clear how

far this represented a change in the principle of the government or

whether it was simply one of style. It did, however, demonstrate

how the authority of a princeps could easily become the domination of a master – something which in his earlier days Tiberius would

have attempted to avoid.

One change of this period which was of major significance for

Tiberius himself and for the future of the principate concerned

the role and organisation of the praetorian guard and its prefect.

Tiberius dispensed with the dualism in the guard’s command and

acceded to Sejanus’ arguments concerning the enhanced efficiency

which would result from concentrating the guard into a single

location. The logic of this argument would obviously appeal to a

man of Tiberius’ military experience, though the princeps lacked the judgement to be able to see through to Sejanus’ intentions.

The move certainly enabled Sejanus, when it mattered, to

intimidate far more effectively.

Tiberius has been described as ‘the victim of Augustus’. He

certainly was so in the sense of being unable effectively to

deploy the diplomacy that was an essential feature of Augustus’

management technique; dissimulation, which Tacitus says was a

virtue highly prized by Tiberius, was no substitute for diplomacy.

Tiberius was also Augustus’ victim in the matter of the dynastic

aspirations of members of the Julian and Claudian families.

Augustus had been ruthless in his use of his family and not least of

Tiberius himself; his approach was direct and straightforward.

Tiberius was never happy about his family relationships, and,

unfortunately for him, those tensions that existed within the

imperial family, which required Augustus’ brand of directness,

were not capable of being handled with the cold remoteness

C O N C L U S I O N

that was characteristic of Tiberius. Under these circumstances,

ambitions went unchecked and unspoken suspicions abounded.

The importance of this is ultimately that it provided a climate in

which Sejanus’ schemes could prosper.

The reign degenerated into fear, suspicion and recrimination;

few would have rated the principate of Tiberius a success and few

regretted his passing in ad 37, though even Caligula may have

come to see that Tiberius was more often the victim than the

perpetrator. A failure of communication led inevitably to the per-

ceived failure of Tiberius’ principate, despite the many sound fea-

tures that attended it. Thus even his own modest anticipation of

posterity’s judgement was not to be fulfilled:

Senators, I am a human being, performing human tasks, and it

is my ambition to fulfil the role of princeps. I want you to understand this, and I want future generations to believe it; you and

they will do more than adequate service to my reputation if I

am held to be worthy of my forebears, careful for your interests, steadfast in danger, and not afraid to be unpopular if I am

serving the national good. As far as I am concerned, if you

hold these opinions of me, they will stand as my temples and

my finest statues, and they will last. For if posterity’s judgement turns adversely, then stone structures are regarded as if

they were the tombstones of people who do not deserve

respect. So my prayer to the gods is that so long as I live they

should grant me an easy conscience and a mind that knows its

duty to gods and men. To provincials and Roman citizens, I

pray that when I am dead my actions and reputation should be

praised and well remembered.

[Tacitus, Annals IV. 38]

Tiberius was being sincere about his aspirations; it was a measure

of his failure, however, that posterity has rarely been able to see

him as he wished. Galba said later that a problem for emperors

was the tendency of people to react to the emperor’s position

rather than to the emperor himself. Tiberius Caesar would not

have disagreed.

In a sense, the principates of both Augustus and Tiberius

represented a transitional – but vital – stage in the change from

the old republic to a much more centralised and authoritarian

80 CONCLUSION

state. Both men set great store by being seen to conduct much of

their government in the senate and through its members. It

was not a dyarchy, but it demonstrated that the new system was

obviously descended from the old. Birth, wealth and auctoritas

still counted for a great deal.

But these rulers were ‘men of the republic’: Augustus born in

63 bc, Tiberius twenty-one years later; they were part of a system

where many of those with whom they worked were descended

from families deeply rooted in the republic’s history. Yet, Tacitus

recognised a reality; in his reference to the two ruling families,

Julian and Claudian, as domus regnatrix (‘royal household’), he was demonstrating how even these conservative and traditional principes were moving away from the real republic of the days before men had both ambition and the opportunity to pander to it. Inevitably,

yet disturbingly, the concentration of so much real power in the

hands of one man tended towards regnum (‘kingship’), the ‘crime’

that could cost a man his life in the old republic.

Gaius Caligula was no aberration, no madman: after a short

period of conciliatory behaviour after his accession in ad 37, he

demonstrated for all to see that he was the ruler – flamboyant,

determined, authoritarian. There was no reason why this should

have caused surprise; after all, he combined characteristics that

were apparent in his parents – the self-indulgent and popularist

theatricality of Germanicus and the determined and ambitious

Agrippina. The imagery of Caligula throughout his reign, as dis-

played on his coinage, was that of his family – the ‘royal family’.

Augustus and Tiberius may have steered the ‘republican princi-

pate’ through its transition phase: the principate in Caligula’s

hands could be seen for what it was – a monarchy – where people

enjoyed imperial patronage rather than inalienable rights.

Tiberius Caesar would not have seen himself as responsible for

that; yet, in the constant tension between his desire to be the

republic’s servant and his determination to do what he saw as

necessary, the freedom of individuals was bound to falter. It was

no act of tyrannical intent which brought this about, but it

was the inevitable result of the concentration of power in the

hands of one man. The restoration of the republic had done its

job: when Tiberius Caesar transmitted power to Caligula, the

transformation of the republic was complete.

APPENDIX I

THE ACCOUNTS OF TIBERIUS’ LIFE AND REIGN

Students of the reign of Tiberius are fortunate in the variety of

surviving source material, though it represents of course only a

small portion of what was written, which itself will have consti-

tuted the evidence upon which surviving accounts were based.

Of the accounts of Tiberius’ reign the most coherent is

found in the first six books of the Annals of Cornelius Tacitus, which were written probably between c. ad 106 and 117. A near-contemporary of Tacitus was the biographer, Suetonius, whose Life

of Tiberius was published probably in the 120s. Much later is the Roman History (written in Greek) of the Severan senator, Dio

Cassius, who published his work probably in the 220s. Finally, a

brief account, contemporary with Tiberius himself, was written

by Velleius Paterculus, who published his work c. ad 30 – that is, before the disgrace and fall of Sejanus. Besides these, there are of

course important references in other surviving writers, of which

the most dramatic is the account of the fall of Sejanus in the tenth

satire of Juvenal, another near-contemporary of Tacitus.

Obviously, these works have undergone close and lengthy

scrutiny in an effort to determine their reliability and usefulness.

Between the obsequious efforts of Velleius and the much more

critical appraisals of Tacitus, Suetonius and Dio Cassius, it has

been generally agreed that posterity has probably not been served

particularly well; as Syme has put it, with reference to Tacitus,

those writing in the reigns of Trajan and Hadrian – that is, early

in the second century ad – were probably ‘blocked’ in their efforts

to reveal the truth by the ‘consensus of educated opinion’ ( Tacitus, p. 421). In other words, an ‘orthodox’ view existed, which was

hard to check, let alone correct.

Such a view may, however, be unduly pessimistic; despite

Velleius’ urgings to the contrary, we may assume from the absence

of posthumous deification in Tiberius’ case that the tradition of

the unpopularity of the princeps, at least in senatorial circles, is generally correct. In any case, Tacitus shows in the introductory

sections to both his Histories and his Annals that he was well aware of the pitfalls inherent in the accounts of earlier writers whose

A P P E N D I X I

works he needed to consult: not only did the growing secrecy of

the principate cloud issues and obscure the truth, but writers

contemporary with their subjects were prone to fawn and flatter

and those who, like Cremutius Cordus under Tiberius, did not,

could find their positions vulnerable to attack by those who

played upon the fears and suspicions of the princeps. On the other hand, those who wrote later might display a liverish tendency

which could easily be mistaken for a genuinely critical approach.

The surviving account of Velleius certainly confirms the first part

of Tacitus’ observation.

The career of Velleius Paterculus was predominantly military;

an equestrian officer who entered the senate after his election to

the quaestorship in ad 7, he rose to the praetorship, along with

his brother, in ad 15. This appears to have been the summit of

his political progress, though, like many senators of praetorian

standing, he may have enjoyed a number of subsequent provincial

commissions. It is to be assumed that his writing, which was

dedicated to Marcus Vinicius, consul in ad 30 and who in ad 33

was chosen by Tiberius as a husband for his grand-daughter,

Drusilla, was done mostly in the decade and a half between ad 15

and 30.

Velleius produced a compendium of Rome’s history in two

volumes and the nature of the work is far more personal than, for

example, that of Tacitus. He was particularly interested in events

in which he was involved, and, since he served alongside Tiberius

on military campaigns prior to Tiberius’ accession, he had come to

know the future princeps in a context in which by all accounts

he excelled. Tiberius is uncritically eulogised throughout the

relevant sections, and it is a eulogy which was born of genuine

admiration. Significantly, there is little (if any) falsification in

Velleius’ work; if the modern reader feels uncomfortable with

the praise lavished upon both Tiberius and Sejanus, it should be

remembered that Velleius was writing at a time when Sejanus

was still in favour with the princeps, and of a period of which Tacitus too was broadly approving. From his distance, however,

Tacitus could also recognise the effects of the grim demeanour

of a princeps whom Velleius knew in a far more personal way.

Indeed, the positive virtue of Velleius is the detail that comes

from the immediacy which our other surviving sources lack.

A P P E N D I X I

Tacitus’ senatorial career was far more impressive than that of

Velleius; he went through its earlier stages under the Flavian

emperors (ad 69–96), and reached the consulship in ad 97, the

year which nearly saw a repetition of the bloody civil war which

followed the death of Nero. Despite such a favoured career,

however, Tacitus claims not to have been influenced by it in the

matter of his historical judgements. It is usually assumed that in

this he failed and that he used his career as a writer of history to

denigrate individual emperors and the system of the principate

in general.

Although Tacitus makes few personal statements in his works,

just sufficient may be gathered from what he does say and from

the apparent development of his writing career to hypothesise

concerning his views of the material which he was handling. It is

certainly clear from his biography of his father-in-law, Agricola

(published in ad 98), that he, like many senators, had found

Domitian’s reign difficult to bear. However, despite his clearly

critical evaluation of that period, he did not assume that every

emperor was necessarily similar to Domitian, nor, importantly,

that the principate was a flawed institution. On the contrary, his

remarks about Nerva (ad 96–8) and Trajan (ad 98–117) indicate

that he saw in their reigns a resolution of difficulties that had in

earlier reigns been painfully apparent. These difficulties centred

around what Tacitus referred to as the long irreconcilability of

‘principate’ and ‘liberty’. In this he recognised two problems: first,

the princeps needed to be able to work with the senate without dominating its members; second, the position of princeps should be open to the aspirations of any senator. Nobody’s expectations

should be dimmed because they did not belong to a particular

family. In other words, the greatest enemy of liberty was a

hereditary monarchy and the arrogant and capricious rulers that resulted. This view is stated explicitly in an important oration

which Tacitus put into the mouth of the emperor, Galba, in ad 69

( Histories I.15–16).

Having identified a problem, the development of Tacitus’

writing career indicates his search for its solution; despite his

stated intention of eventually writing a history of the reigns of

Nerva and Trajan, Tacitus seems instead to have pushed his

probing ever further back in time, with the ultimate realisation

84 APPENDIX I

that to understand the principate he would need to fathom the

policies and times of Augustus Caesar.

Tacitus was not, therefore, seeking to denigrate Tiberius and

his government – indeed, in many aspects he clearly did not

do so. Rather, he wished to examine Tiberius’ reign to discover its

contribution to the relationship between principate and liberty.

Despite its many good qualities, the reign of Tiberius ultimately

made a negative contribution, partly because Tiberius was the

product of a dynastic system, and partly because, despite his

obviously honourable intentions, the behaviour of the princeps was arbitrary; arbitrariness in government was a feature of domination

( dominatio), not of principate.

In his study of Tiberius, Tacitus was aware of a damaging

inconsistency in an emperor who pursued policies that were

generally sound and fair, but who, particularly in his dealings

with the senate, could create by his manner a far from favourable

impression. It was desirable, therefore, that Tacitus’ treatment

should concentrate upon trying to expose this inconsistency and

demonstrate its effects; it was for this reason that much of Tacitus’

narrative was concentrated on the personal interaction of the

princeps with those around him. By including rumour (for which

he has often been castigated) and dramatically reconstructing the

reactions of princeps and senators, reporting their words and

thoughts, Tacitus attempted to demonstrate the interaction as it

happened. Tacitus has often been accused of thereby making an

action appear less favourable than he should have done. But in

reality he demonstrated why senators found the words and actions

of the princeps, which on the face of things might appear sound, not only damaging but even intimidating. It was essentially

within the context of these personal encounters that Tiberius’

failure seems to have occurred, and it was there that it had to be

demonstrated; rumour very often conveyed the essence of an

immediate – and significant – reaction.

The Tiberius whom Tacitus recorded was essentially the

Tiberius as he was seen by his contemporaries. For example, in his

treatment of Tiberius’ dealings with Germanicus, Tacitus has

often been accused of glorifying Germanicus to the detriment of

Tiberius, and so blackening the princeps. In fact, Tacitus rightly recognised the fear and suspicion that dominated the relationship,

A P P E N D I X I

but the glorification of Germanicus that is obvious in the narra-

tive is a record of the contemporary glorification which helped to sour the relationship further and cause, for example, the rumours

which proliferated around Germanicus’ posting to the east in

ad 17 and his subsequent death.

Tacitus recognised Tiberius’ good qualities; his account was not

constructed to denigrate the princeps, but to demonstrate through the highlighting of successive episodes how the gulf between

principate and liberty, already harmed by the dynastic succession,

deepened as a result of the inability of Tiberius and his con-

temporaries to relate to one another. The anxiety to do right and

the simple modesty of the princeps were both lost sight of as the character of the reign deteriorated and men came to fear for

their lives. On the whole, however, it was Tacitus’ view that it was

the blindness of the princeps which led to this; it was no act or intention of tyranny.

Tacitus rarely indicates the sources of his information, though

the senatorial records ( acta senatus) are generally reckoned to have been important to him. These will have contained records

of debates and speeches, and from this source Tacitus may

have drawn the items of vocabulary and phraseology that have

been recognised as characteristically Tiberian. It has recently been

shown through the study of bronze documents unearthed in Spain

that Tacitus was certainly aware of what was in the acta senatus

and, on occasion, evidently made close use of it.

It is known that the Elder Pliny wrote an account of Rome’s

German Wars which will have provided information on the cam-

paigning of Germanicus. Many of Tiberius’ contemporaries wrote

accounts of their lives, including the younger Agrippina, who, it

may be assumed, was a rather tendentious source, though Tacitus

does cite her for a detail concerning her mother. Tiberius, too,

wrote his memoirs, and they are cited by Suetonius and known

to have been read by the later emperor, Domitian (ad 81–96).

Further, the works of ‘serious’ historians, such as Valerius

Maximus, Aufidius Bassus, Servilius Nonianus, and the emperor

Claudius, covered the period in question. That Tacitus will have

consulted these is not in doubt; how he used them is far more

speculative.

Suetonius’ Life of Tiberius was published in the 120s, probably 86 APPENDIX I

after the biographer’s fall from favour in the early years of

Hadrian’s reign, and forms Book III of the Lives of the Caesars.

Suetonius’ career was different from that of Velleius and Tacitus in

that he remained of equestrian status and did not enter the senate.

Much of what we know of Suetonius is derived from references in

the Letters of his friend and contemporary, the Younger Pliny.

For much of his life, Suetonius was a schoolmaster, following a

profession which required an almost encyclopaedic knowledge,

gained from the collection of examples of grammatical and

rhetorical oddities which were the Roman schoolmaster’s

stock-in-trade. The mind of the compiler is always evident in

Suetonius – both in the list of his published works and in the way

in which he treated his individual subjects. Pliny’s evidence shows

Suetonius to have been a staid and rather fussy man who, because

of his excessively superstitious nature, found it very difficult to

act decisively. Yet, perhaps through the influence of Pliny, he

eventually reached the important secretarial posts which he held

under Trajan and Hadrian. These posts would not only have

required the great thoroughness which his works and earlier

career suggest, but would also have given great scope for research

in the imperial archives which he was able to put to such

good use. For example, his knowledge and use of Augustus’

correspondence allowed him to demonstrate the reliance which

Augustus placed upon Tiberius and even the affection that

may have played its part in their relationship – something at

which Velleius hinted but did little to prove, and which most

contemporaries believed to be far from the truth.

Suetonius’ access to his ‘privileged’ material came to an end in

about ad 122 when, along with Septicius Clarus (the prefect of

the praetorian guard), he was sacked by Hadrian. From what is

said by Hadrian’s biographer, ‘Spartianus’ (in the Writers of the

Augustan History), the cause of this would seem to have been a

lapse in propriety rather than anything more serious. It is, how-

ever, apparent that once Suetonius was divorced from his source

material, the standard of his writing deteriorated; his later

imperial biographies are very sketchy by comparison with the

first three.

Suetonius is often castigated on the irrelevant ground that he

was not a historian; biography required a different perspective, in

A P P E N D I X I

which the life of the subject was inevitably the dominant

theme. After the manner of Roman orators, Suetonius displayed

his subject by gathering material under various ‘headings’

without necessarily giving any attention to chronological devel-

opment. Typical of such ‘headings’ (which are not of course

explicitly indicated) are family history, omens preceding the birth

of the subject, life prior to accession, reign, physical character-

istics, death and relevant omens. Occasionally it may be hard to

detect these ‘headings’ fully, as in the Life of Caligula, in which the only clear division is that between the acts of the princeps and those of the monster.

The Life of Tiberius is regarded as being amongst the biogra-

phies of better quality, probably researched whilst Suetonius

still enjoyed privileged access to his material; for instance, the

correspondence of Augustus is used to good effect to show a

view of Augustus’ relationship with Tiberius different from

that normally accepted. We can see clear evidence of Suetonius’

pleasure in compilation – in particular in his account of the

previous history of the Claudian and Livian families and in

his description of the perversions alleged to have characterised

the retirement of the princeps. In general, however, despite the volume of information, Suetonius’ account of Tiberius is not

penetrative; its anecdotal approach tends to superficiality, and

lacks the depth achieved by the rigorous analysis offered by

Tacitus.

As is the case with the account of Dio Cassius, one of

Suetonius’ chief values is that of supplying gaps in our

knowledge caused by the loss of portions of Tacitus’ manu-

script. As a sole source, however, for particular events, Suetonius’

account carries considerable dangers for the modern historian;

where he can be checked we observe a tendency to turn particular

incidents, whatever the peculiar nature of their circumstances,

into illustrations of general characteristics. As an example

we may cite the observation that, during the reign of Tiberius,

young virgins who were to be executed were first raped by the

executioner; other evidence makes it clear that this observation

was based upon an isolated incident – the execution of Sejanus’

daughter, which was of course deeply embedded in special

circumstances.

A P P E N D I X I

Thus, whilst Suetonius undoubtedly adds to the body of

information available, he does not bear comparison with Tacitus

in terms of his ability to analyse that information.

The Roman History of Dio Cassius was written approximately a

century later than the works of Suetonius and Tacitus. Dio was an

unusual figure in that his family was not only Greek but already of

consular standing. He reached a first consulship around ad 205

and remained high in the favour of the Severans, although enter-

taining a clear distaste for some of the family – for example, the

eminently uncongenial Caracalla. He reached a second consulship

in ad 229, with the emperor Severus Alexander as his colleague,

but died shortly afterwards.

Dio records clearly his reasons for writing the Roman History:

having early on published an account of the signs portending

Severus’ rise to power, and having (not surprisingly) found the

favour of the emperor for this, he turned as a result of his own

inspiration and imperial prompting to write a full account of

Roman history. Dio goes on to say that he spent ten years

researching the material up to the death of Severus in ad 211 and

a further twelve years putting it together.

We do not know precisely Dio’s view of historiography, since

his preface is now lost, but it would appear to encompass the aims

of both entertaining and informing. His preoccupations were

those of his class: he dwelt particularly on the effects of the

principate and its institutions on the senatorial order, and was

not concerned to elucidate the rapid social and economic

developments witnessed across the empire. Some of the thinking

which depended upon the experiences of his own life and career

was particularly appropriate to the early principate: he had seen

the effects of disastrous dynastic arrangements, as when Com-

modus succeeded Marcus Aurelius and as when Caracalla

succeeded his father, Septimius Severus. He was familiar also with

an emperor (Septimius Severus) who promised respect for the

corporate senate and security for its members and failed to keep

the promise. He was aware of the contrast between the principate

and the respublica, but not obsessed by it to the extent of regarding the former as a travesty of the latter.

Events had moved on through the first two centuries ad, so

that men of Dio’s day, as is shown by the long speech put into the

A P P E N D I X I

mouth of Augustus’ friend, Maecenas, in Book LII, appear to have

been content with their monarch, so long as he was benevolent.

Such a benevolence is clearly to be seen in Dio’s famous report of

Tiberius’ objection to the title dominus (‘lord’): ‘I am lord to my slaves, general to the armies, and princeps to the senate.’ Dio shared the view propounded by others in the second century ad that the

Roman Empire was an almost ideal organisation in which every-

one, great and small, was guaranteed due rights by the natural

beneficent wisdom of the ruler. No mechanism is envisaged for

either the education or the controlling of the emperor, though it

has been suggested that Maecenas’ speech may have been intended

as an educative tract for the youthful Severus Alexander. It is

significant that the experiences and times of Augustus may have

been used for this purpose; similarly, Dio may have had in mind

the gradualist approach of Augustus when he criticised the

honourable and decent Pertinax (ad 192) for trying to put right

too quickly the wrongs of Commodus’ reign.

In institutional terms the principate had moved on from its

foundation by Augustus, and it is not appropriate to see the

military despotism of Severus in the same light as the principates

of Augustus or of Tiberius. Similarly, much had changed in the

detail of imperial administration. The Severan senate was not

like that of the early principate; nor were the early distinctions

between senators and equestrians still appropriate in the early

third century ad. In view of this, it is inevitable that Dio should

display anachronistic lapses.

Dio certainly believed that the writer of history should enter-

tain. Like Tacitus, Dio tried to achieve the smoothly running

narrative that would keep the attention of a listening audience,

not one interrupted by citation of sources and references to the

kinds of detail which would have rendered many episodes –

particularly those of a military nature – more intelligible. Like

Tacitus again, Dio set out to follow an annalistic framework, yet

his interest in a ‘story’ frequently led him to ignore it, whereas

Tacitus in his Tiberian books adhered to the framework almost

without exception.

Finally, the effect of the predominance of rhetoric in education

led to the enhancing beyond any reasonable verification of

individual episodes, so as to make them dramatic, entertaining

90 APPENDIX I

and worthy of Dio’s theme. Rhetorical embellishment is to be

seen also in the composition of speeches for historical personages.

This, of course, had a long history in Graeco-Roman histori-

ography, though Dio’s efforts are freer compositions than those of

most of his predecessors – not only in length but also in their use

as vehicles for the historian’s own thoughts.

Dio’s account of Tiberius’ reign is preserved in a very frag-

mentary form, and adds little of substance to what is available in

Tacitus and Suetonius. However, he does provide a continuous

source for the crucial two years prior to Sejanus’ fall which are

missing from the transmitted manuscript of Tacitus’ Annals. In particular, he offers some clue to what may have lain behind

Tiberius’ turning on Sejanus. He also shows the lack of clarity that

may have attached to the allegiances of various of the protagonists

in the period preceding Sejanus’ fall, when he reports Tiberius’

complaint to Asinius Gallus over the latter’s alleged interference

in the relationship between Sejanus and the princeps. It is Dio, too, who reports upon elements of Tiberius’ contingency planning in

the months leading up to his denunciation of Sejanus. Although

not all of this is clear, it does offer, as no other surviving account

does, a basis for understanding the course of this momentous

episode between ad 29 and 31.

In all, this varied source material allows us to trace the course of

a reign which was bound to exhibit considerable strains due to

Tiberius’ personality and to the fact that he was the first successor

to the principate of Augustus. The contribution of each of the

four main sources is invaluable; without any of them there

would be considerable impairment of our ability to understand

the personality and principate of Tiberius Caesar.

APPENDIX II

THE EVIDENCE OF INSCRIPTIONS AND COINS

Although the quantity of surviving inscriptions relating to the

reigns of the early emperors is less impressive than for their

later successors, some highly significant documents remain

from the Julio-Claudian period. Many of these offer important

information to put alongside that of the written sources for the

life and principate of Tiberius.

Many record honours offered by loyal communities to various

members of the imperial family, and in some cases the imperial

replies are preserved. A particularly interesting one concerns an

offer of divine honours for Augustus, Tiberius and Livia made by

the civic leaders of Gytheum in Greece. In his reply Tiberius

adopted an approach which is also evident in the written sources:

no honour was too great for Augustus, whilst Tiberius himself

was content with honours which were more moderate and

befitting a mere human, and Livia would have to come to her

own decision. This is paralleled in Tacitus’ accounts of Tiberius’

refusal of the request made by inhabitants of the province of

Further Spain to be permitted to build a temple to him ( Annals

IV. 37–8), and of the attitude taken by Tiberius in a case in which

insults were alleged to have been made against himself, Augustus

and Livia ( Annals II. 50).

The surviving cenotaph inscription for Gaius Caesar (in

Pisa) referred to the cruelty of fate in words that echoed

Augustus’ own reference in his will to the loss, and indicates

the depth of despair felt at a time when Augustus’ dynastic

policy appeared devastated. Inscriptions survive which give

expansive information on the honours given to Germanicus

and Drusus after their deaths, whilst a coin from Asia Minor

indicates the apotheosis of these ‘new gods of brotherly love’.

Personal and public inscriptions show individuals and com-

munities recording their vows for the continued health and safety

of the princeps (‘pro salute Ti. Caesaris’). Many, from all parts of the empire, record the gratitude of communities to Tiberius for his

encouragement and help in the erection of public buildings and

services, showing that, whilst Tiberius was in no sense a prolific

92 APPENDIX II

builder in Rome, his record in the provinces was far more

impressive.

The hatred generated in the reign, however, is also demon-

strated through the practice of erasing from public inscriptions

the names of those who had fallen seriously from favour; among

those from Tiberius’ reign are (not surprisingly) Sejanus, Cnaeus

Piso ( legatus of Syria during Germanicus’ eastern commission),

and (posthumously) Tiberius himself. A number of inscriptions

record the gratitude of individuals and communities for the

punishing of Sejanus for his ‘wicked plans’, and one from Rome’s

Aventine Hill (the traditional home of the plebs) recalls an earlier attempt to arouse enthusiasm for Sejanus some months before his

disgrace. Important new documents on bronze which have

come to light in Spain in the last two decades are the Tabula

Siarensis and the Senatus Consultum issued following the trial of Cnaeus Piso.

Perhaps the most enlightening and entertaining documents to

have survived are papyrus fragments relating to Germanicus’ visit

to Egypt shortly before his death – a visit which occasioned severe

criticism from the princeps (see Chapter 5). First, a papyrus which appears to give an on-the-spot account of Germanicus’ arrival in

Alexandria offers confirmation of the informal, even histrionic,

behaviour of the young man, which is evident in Tacitus’ account

of many of his actions during the mutiny amongst the Rhine

legions. It also indicates that it had never occurred to Germanicus

that his entry into Egypt, the private domain of the princeps,

would be frowned upon: not only that, but his use of the Greek

word equivalent to provincia (‘province’) shows that without

thinking he treated Egypt as if it was a normal province covered

by his command. Further, two other papyri carry the texts of

edicts issued by Germanicus in Egypt, showing that he gave

instructions which he thought necessary without referring to

Tiberius. There is irony in the fact that Germanicus instructed the

Egyptians not to afford him divine honours which would cause

envy, without considering that it was his mere presence in Egypt

that gave cause for offence.

Tiberius’ reign was not prolific in the variety of its coin-types,

though many of them are extremely instructive. Commemor-

ations of the deified Augustus are unremitting, which serves to

A P P E N D I X I I

confirm the picture given by the sources of the extreme respect

always offered by Tiberius to his predecessor. Both Livia and

Drusus also find prominent places on Tiberius’ coinage.

However, some of the most striking issues are those concerned

with events of the reign or with the qualities of Tiberius’ princi-

pate. A series of personifications commemorate Justice (ivstitia),

Augustan Health (salvs avgvsta) and Piety (pietas), with busts

on the obverse of the coins which may have used Livia as ‘model’.

Two further ‘virtues’, Clementia and Moderatio, figure on reverse designs, and in all probability reflect Tiberius’ own view of his

treatment of treason cases in the senate in the early part of

his reign.

Two issues commemorate the Temples of Vesta and Concord,

which Tiberius was involved in rebuilding, though before he

became princeps. The generosity of the princeps to the Asian cities following the earthquake of ad 17 is recorded. Finally, a fine and

unusual design with the heads of two infants on the tops of

crossed cornucopiae records the birth of twins to Drusus and Livilla.

In all, whilst there is not sufficient numismatic material to

provide a documentation parallel to that of the written sources,

clear evidence is given of the view which Tiberius took of his

principate and of the ideas which were important to him.

APPENDIX III

CHIEF DATES IN THE LIFE OF TIBERIUS

Assassination of Julius Caesar (15 March)

Formation of triumvirate between Octavian, Antony

and Lepidus

Battle of Philippi; deaths of Brutus and Cassius; birth

of Tiberius (16 November)

Perusine war

Treaty of Misenum; return of Tiberius’ family to

Rome; Livia’s divorce from Ti. Nero and marriage

to Octavian

Birth of Tiberius’ brother, Nero Drusus

Death of Ti. Nero

Battle of Actium

First settlement of the principate

Second settlement of the principate

22–21

Augustus and Tiberius win diplomatic settlement

with Parthia

16–7

Tiberius in Gaul and Germany

First consulship of Tiberius

Death of Agrippa; Tiberius required to divorce

Vipsania and marry Julia

Death of Nero Drusus in Germany

Second consulship of Tiberius

Tiberius given a grant of tribunician power (−1bc);

retires to Rhodes

Julia scandal; Tiberius required to divorce her

Death of Gaius Caesar; Tiberius returns to Rome

Death of Lucius Caesar; Augustus adopts Tiberius as

his son (Tiberius Julius Caesar); Tiberius given grants

of tribunician power and proconsular power

6–9

Pannonian revolt

Banishment of Agrippa Postumus and the younger

Julia

Varus disaster in Germany

Tiberius given ‘co-regency’ with Augustus (?)

Death of Augustus; accession of Tiberius; death of

Agrippa Postumus; mutinies amongst the Rhine and

Danube legions

14–16

Germanicus’ campaigns in Germany

A P P E N D I X I I I

Sejanus becomes sole prefect of the praetorian guard

Earthquake shatters cities in Asia Minor

17–20

Germanicus’ proconsular power in the east

17–24

Rebellion of Tacfarinas in north Africa

Death of Germanicus; birth of Drusus’ twins

Trial and suicide of Cnaeus Piso

Tribunician power given to Drusus

21–22

Rebellion of Sacrovir in Gaul

Death of Drusus; concentration of the praetorian

guard within Rome (as dated by Tacitus, but probably

a little earlier)

Opening of Sejanus’ campaign against Agrippina, her

friends and family

Thracian insurrection

26–27

Tiberius’ decision to retire from Rome

Prosecution of Agrippina, Nero, Drusus and Asinius

Gallus; death of Livia

Tiberius supposedly warned by Antonia concerning

the true aims of Sejanus; suicide of Nero

Joint consulship of Tiberius and Sejanus;

denunciation and death of Sejanus (18 October)

Financial crisis in Rome; deaths of Agrippina, Drusus

and Asinius Gallus

34–36

Death of Artaxias of Armenia, followed by

resettlement of the east

Fire on the Aventine Hill

Suicide of Lucius Arruntius; death of Tiberius and

accession of Gaius Caligula (16 March)

APPENDIX IV

GLOSSARY OF LATIN TERMS

Auctoritas

This concept, which was central to the Augustan

principate, is hard to render precisely; it means ‘influence’ and

‘prestige’, and embraces the idea of acquiring these through

a combination of heredity, personality and achievement.

Importantly, it implies the ability to patronise on a large scale.

Clementia

This means ‘clemency’, or being sparing to political

adversaries: whilst it might on particular occasions be welcome

in its effects, in principle it was a ‘virtue’ related to men of

overwhelming (and, thus, unwelcome) power, which could be

denied as capriciously as it was exercised.

Consul

The consul was the head of the executive branch of

government during the republic; two were elected each year, and

were accountable to the electorate for their tenure of office. They

presided over meetings of the senate and assemblies of the populus

(whole people), and, until the late-third century bc, regularly

commanded the armies in battle, until this function was

increasingly taken over by promagistrates ( proconsul, propraetor).

Under the principate, whilst prestige still attached to the office,

its importance came to relate more to the provincial and army

commands for which it represented a ‘qualification’. Also under

the principate it became normal for the consuls who took office on

1 January ( ordinarii), and who gave their names to the year, to resign midway through the year in favour of replacements ( consules

suffecti) This was a method of increasing the numbers of men

qualified for senior commands.

Cursus Honorum

The ladder of office climbed during the

republic by senators in their quest for the consulship; it was

subject to a number of organising laws (e.g. the Lex Villia of

180 bc, and a Lex Cornelia of Sulla), which laid down intervals between offices as well as the proper order for holding them.

Under the principate, the cursus remained in place, though a man’s progress along it was affected by imperial favour (or the lack of it),

A P P E N D I X I V

and by the number of his legitimate children. The chief offices

under the principate (and ages of tenure) were:

Office

Age

Vigintivirate (board of twenty)

Military tribune

21–2

Quaestor

Tribune of the plebs (often omitted)

Aedile (often omitted)

Praetor

30–5

Legionary commander ( legatus legionis)

30+

Consul

37+

Proconsul or legatus Augusti

38+

Dignitas

This ‘dignity’ referred specifically to the holding of

offices of the cursus honorum. It was, for example, an affront to Caesar to be barred from competing for a second consulship,

which by 50 bc he was entitled to do. Similarly, Tiberius took it

as an affront to his dignitas that in 6 bc he was given tribunician power simply to annoy Gaius and Lucius Caesar.

Dominatio

The state of being a master ( dominus): the word

originally and properly referred to the state of being a master of

slaves, but is increasingly used to describe the position and

behaviour of Julius Caesar and (by some) of Augustus.

Equites

Members of the equestrian order were during the

principate Rome’s second social class. Originally a rather

disparate body, the order acquired coherence through its

commercial activities following the expansion of empire from the

second century bc. Companies formed within the order ( societates) undertook (for profit) many tasks during the republic of a civil

service nature. Augustus re-organised the order so that it had

a career structure in which it carried out similar tasks but for

salaries rather than profits.

Imperium

The executive power bestowed on consuls and

praetors during the republic, through which they ‘controlled’

the state. Imperium was tenable as it was defined – consular,

98 APPENDIX IV

proconsular. Augustus under the first settlement controlled Gaul,

Spain and Syria under a proconsular imperium, which was enhanced to superiority over others ( maius) under the second settlement. He had a permanent ‘residual’ imperium, which could be temporarily redefined to enable him to undertake other tasks, censorial duties

for example, such as regulating the membership of the senate.

Legatus

Originally a man to whom ‘assistant’ power was

delegated; Pompey, for example, conducted his eastern campaigns

with a number of legati in attendance. Under the principate, a

man became a legatus of a legion after the praetorship, but the term was usually employed of those to whom the emperor

delegated de facto control of his provinces ( legatus Augusti pro praetore), where the term ‘propraetore’ was used by ex-consuls in order visibly to subordinate them to the emperor’s proconsular

imperium.

Lex

A law, which has been passed either by one of the

assemblies ( comitia) of the whole people ( populus), or by the assembly of the plebeians ( concilium plebis). Under the principate, the participation of these bodies became a mere formality.

Libertas

‘Freedom’ had a wide range of meanings in

Rome, though that most frequently mentioned was the traditional

freedom of the nobility to progress along the cursus honorum without undue interference from others. It was this libertas that was seen as being in conflict particularly with the principle of hereditary

succession.

Nobilis

Literally, one who was ‘known’; the nobiles (aristocracy)

defined themselves as deriving from families which had reached

the consulship in earlier generations, and regarded the consulship

as virtually their birthright.

Optimates

The optimates (or self-styled ‘best men’) during the

republic were those nobiles who felt that their factional dominance should be exercised primarily through an influential senate taking

the leading role in government. It was effectively the optimates, with their blinkered view of Rome and its Empire, who forced

A P P E N D I X I V

Caesar and Pompey to war in 49 bc, and who were instrumental

in Caesar’s assassination five years later. In the early principate

they and their descendants found the family of the Claudii a more

suitable ‘rallying point’ than that of the Julii.

Patrician

Traditionally the oldest part of Rome’s aristocracy

who in the republic’s early days exercised the decisive role in

government, maintaining a stranglehold through law and patron-

age over the political, military, legal and religious machinery of

the state. The ‘struggle of the orders’ (traditionally 509–287 bc)

gave more equality to rich plebeians, so that the real effectiveness of the distinction between the classes was eroded. Subsequently,

the main factional groups ( optimates and populares) each contained members of both classes. Augustus tried to revive the patriciate

as the central core of his patronised aristocracy. Patricians were

debarred from holding plebeian offices, such as the tribunate of

the plebs and the plebeian aedileship.

Pietas

The ‘sense of duty’ to gods, state and family that

represented the traditional loyalties of the Roman noble, and

which Augustus tried to exemplify and revitalise.

Populares

The term, meaning ‘mob-panderer’, was coined by

the optimates to describe the way in which their opponents

appeared to devalue the senate’s role in government, and to place

their emphasis on manipulating the popular assemblies. The first

notable popularis was Ti. Sempronius Gracchus (tribune of the

plebs in 133 bc). Although the term fell into disuse after

the republic, nobles of this view tended to identify with the

Julian family of Augustus, perhaps reflecting Caesar’s position of

primacy amongst the populares in the 50s and 40s bc.

Praefectus

Under the principate, the term ‘prefect’ was applied

to various grades within the reformed equestrian order, from the

commands of auxiliary army units to some of the highest officers

in the order ( praefecti of Egypt and of the praetorian guard).

Praetor

This was the office second in importance to the

consulship, although the praetors may in the earliest days have

100 APPENDIX IV

been the chief magistrates – prae-itor meaning ‘one who goes in front’. From Sulla’s time they had an increasing importance

as the presiding officers in the courts ( quaestiones); the post led on to legionary commands and/or governorships of second-rank

provinces.

Princeps

The term ‘chief man’ was favoured by Augustus

as a form of address; it did not imply a particular office, but

throughout the republic had been applied to those who, in or out

of office, were deemed to be prestigious, influential and disposers

of patronage.

Princeps senatus

A republican term applied to the man who

in terms of seniority (however conceived) was placed at the

head of the list of senators, as Augustus was after the lectio senatus of 28 bc.

Proconsul

The term was originally applied to a consul whose

imperium had been extended beyond his term of office as consul to enable him to continue command of an army; by the second

century bc, it was regularly applied to those who commanded

provinces after their year of office in Rome: during the principate

it was used of the governors (whether ex-consuls or ex-praetors) of

public provinces.

Procurator

The term was used of various grades of equestrian

in the emperor’s financial service – from the chief agents in the

provinces, down to quite minor officials in their departments.

They were officially distinguished by an adjective describing

their different salary levels.

Respublica

This word, often used emotively to describe the

nature of the state which Augustus supplanted after Actium,

means simply ‘the public concern’. By definition, therefore, it

would be negated by anyone with overwhelming and capriciously

exercised power ( dominatio).

Senatus consultum

The decree issued at the end of a senatorial

debate which was not legally binding, but an advisory state-

A P P E N D I X I V 101

ment passing on the senate’s opinion to those popular bodies

responsible for making the final decisions and passing laws.

Tribune of the plebs

Originally appointed, according to

tradition, in 494 bc, the tribunes were officers charged with

defending their fellow plebeians against injustices perpetrated

by patricians. The decisive elements in their ‘armoury’ were the

‘veto’, by which they could bring any business (except that of a

dictator) to a halt, and the ‘sacrosanctity’, by which all plebeians

were bound by oath to defend an injured or wronged tribune.

Gradually, the tribunes were drawn into the regular business of

office-holding – almost, but not quite, part of the cursus honorum; their veto was employed increasingly as a factional weapon, and they became potentially powerful through their ability to

legislate with the plebeian assembly without prior consultation

with the senate. Under the principate, little of their power

remained, dominated as it was by the emperor’s tribunician power

( tribunicia potestas). Augustus, because he was by adoption a

patrician, could not hold the office of tribune, though between

36 and 23 bc, he acquired most of the powers of the office, and

outwardly used them as the basis of his conduct of government in

Rome. The power served to stress his patronage and protection of

all plebeians.

Triumvirate

Any group of three men; the first triumvirate of

60 bc was the informal arrangement for mutual assistance

between Pompey, Crassus and Caesar; the second triumvirate

of 43 bc was the legally based ‘office’ of Octavian, Antony and

Lepidus. The term continued to be used of occasional groups of

three, and regularly of the three mint officials ( triumviri (or tresviri) monetales) and the punishment officials ( triumviri (or tresviri) capitales), both of which groups were sections of the board of

twenty, or vigintivirate, the first posts on the senatorial cursus

honorum.

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

ABBREVIATIONS

AJP

American Journal of Philology

Cl. Phil

Classical Philology

Classical Quarterly

G and R

Greece and Rome

JRS

Journal of Roman Studies

Rhein. Mus.

Rheinisches Museum

TAPA

Transactions of the American Philological

Association

ZPE

Zeitscrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik

PRIMARY SOURCE MATERIAL

The chief classical literary sources for Tiberius’ reign have all been

translated into English:

Dio Cassius, Roman History, Books LVI–LVII, translated by E. Cary, Loeb Classical Library, London: Heinemann, 1924.

Suetonius, The Twelve Caesars (Lives of the Caesars), translated by Robert Graves, London: Penguin Classics, Pelican, 1957.

Tacitus, The Annals of Imperial Rome, Books I–VI, translated by M. Grant, London: Penguin Classics, Pelican, 1996.

Velleius Paterculus, Roman History, Book II, 87–131, translated by F.W. Shipley, Loeb Classical Library, London: Heinemann,

1924.

These classical authors and their views on Tiberius have generated

a considerable bibliography over the years; representative are:

A.R. Birley, The Life and Death of Cornelius Tacitus, Historia 49

(2000), 230–247.

R.H. Martin, Tacitus, London: Batsford, 1981.

R. Mellor, Tacitus, London: Routledge, 1993.

F. Millar, A Study of Cassius Dio, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1964.

J. Percival, Tacitus and the Principate, G and R 27 (1980), 119–133.

D.C.A. Shotter, Tacitus’ Views of Emperors and the Principate,

pp. 3263–3331 in W. Haase and H. Temporini (eds), Aufstieg

und Niedergang der Römischen Welt II. 33,5, Berlin: De Gruyter, 1991.

S E L E C T B I B L I O G R A P H Y 103

R. Syme, Tacitus (2 vols), Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1958.

——, Ten Studies in Tacitus, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970.

——, Tacitus: Some Sources of his Information, JRS 72 (1982), 68–82.

G.V. Sumner, The Truth about Velleius Paterculus: Prolegomena,

Harvard St. in Class. Phil. 74 (1970), 257–297.

G.B. Townend, Suetonius and his Influence, pp. 79–111 in T.A.

Dorey (ed.), Latin Biography, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1967.

A. Wallace-Hadrill, Suetonius: The Scholar and His Caesars, London: Duckworth, 1983.

A.J. Woodman, Velleius Paterculus: The Tiberian Narrative, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977.

The evidence of contemporary coins is discussed in:

C.H.V. Sutherland, Coinage in Roman Imperial Policy, 31 BC–AD 68, London: Methuen, 1951.

——, The Emperor and the Coinage, London: Spink, 1976.

——, The Roman Imperial Coinage, vol. I (revised edition) London: Spink, 1984.

Collections of relevant inscriptions are available in:

V. Ehrenberg and A.H.M. Jones, Documents Illustrating the Reigns of Augustus and Tiberius, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1955.

S.J. Miller, Inscriptions of the Roman Empire, AD 14–117, Lactor No. 8: London, London Association of Classical teachers,

1971.

R.K. Sherk (ed.), Translated Documents of Greece and Rome: The Roman Empire from Augustus to Hadrian, Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 1988.

The new documents, recovered in Spain, have themselves led to a

substantial bibliography; representative are:

W. Eck, A. Caballos and F. Fernandez, Das Senatus Consultum de Cn.

Pisone Patre, Munich, Beck, 1996.

J. Gonzalez, Tabula Siarensis, Fortunales Siarenses et Municipia Civium Romanorum, ZPE 55 (1984), 55–100.

M.T. Griffin, The Senate’s Story, JRS 87 (1997), 249–263.

104 SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

SECONDARY MATERIAL

The reign of Tiberius, and particularly Tacitus’ treatment of it, has

prompted an exceptionally large bibliography, of which a selection

is given below. The best surveys which treat Tiberius within the context of the early principate are:

Cambridge Ancient History, vol. X (revised edition) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.

A. Garzetti, From Tiberius to the Antonines, London: Methuen, 1974.

Treatments of Tiberius and of aspects of his life and reign:

A.A. Barrett, Caligula and the Corruption of Power, London: Batsford, 1989.

——, Agrippina, London: Batsford, 1996.

——, Livia: First Lady of Imperial Rome, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002.

R.A. Bauman, Impietas in Principem, Munich: Beck, 1974.

——, Women and Politics in Ancient Rome, London: Routledge, 1992.

H.E. Bird, Aelius Sejanus and his Political Significance, Latomus 28

(1969), 61–98.

A. Boddington, Sejanus. Whose Conspiracy? AJP 84 (1963), 1–16.

P.A. Brunt, The Role of the Senate in the Augustan Régime, CQ 34

(1984), 423–444.

C.W. Chilton, The Roman Law of Treason under the Early

Principate, JRS 45 (1955), 73–81.

J.A. Crook, Consilium Principis, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1955.

M. Durry, Les Cohortes Prétoriennes, Paris: Boccard, 1968.

M. Gelzer, The Roman Nobility, Oxford: Blackwell, 1969.

M. Grant, Aspects of the Principate of Tiberius, New York: American Numismatic Society, 1950.

M. Hammond, The Augustan Principate, Cambridge (MA): Harvard

University Press, 1933.

A.H.M. Jones, Augustus, London: Chatto and Windus, 1970.

A. Kokkinos, Antonia Augusta, London: Routledge, 1992.

B. Levick, Drusus Caesar and the Adoptions of A.D. 4, Latomus 25

(1966), 227–244.

——, Imperial Control of elections under the Early Principate:

Commendatio, suffragatio and ‘nominatio’, Historia 16

(1967), 207–230.

——, Julians and Claudians, G and R 22 (1975), 29–38.

——, (ed.), The Ancient Historian and his Materials, Farnborough: Gregg, 1975.

——, Tiberius The Politician, London: Thames and Hudson, 1976.

S E L E C T B I B L I O G R A P H Y 105

H. Lindsay, A Fertile Marriage: Agrippina and the Chronology of her

Children by Germanicus, Latomus 54 (1995), 3–17.

T.J. Luce and A.J. Woodman (eds), Tacitus and the Tacitean Tradition, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993.

D. Magie, Roman Rule in Asia Minor, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1950.

G. Maranon, Tiberius: A Study in Resentment, London: Hollis and Carter, 1956.

F.B. Marsh, Tacitus and Aristocratic Tradition, Cl. Phil. 21 (1926), 289–310.

——, The Reign of Tiberius, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1931.

J.I. McDougall, Tacitus and the Portrayal of the Elder Agrippina, Echos du Monde Classique 25 (1981), 104–108.

F.G.B. Millar, The Emperor in the Roman World, London: Duckworth, 1977.

N.P. Miller, Tiberius Speaks, AJP 89 (1968), 1–19.

J. Nicols, Antonia and Sejanus, Historia 24 (1975), 48–58.

A.E. Pappano, Agrippa Postumus, Cl. Phil. 36 (1941), 30–45.

C. Rodewald, Money in the Age of Tiberius, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1976.

R.S. Rogers, The Conspiracy of Agrippina, TAPA 62 (1931), 141–168.

——, Criminal Trials and Criminal Legislation under Tiberius, Middletown (CT): American Philological Association, 1935.

——, Studies in the Reign of Tiberius, Baltimore (MD): Johns Hopkins University Press, 1943.

D.O. Ross, The Tacitean Germanicus, Yale Class. St. 23 (1973), 209–227.

L. Rutland, The Tacitean Germanicus, Rhein. Mus. 130 (1987), 153–164.

R. Seager, Tiberius, London: Methuen, 1972.

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(1961), 97–114.

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D.C.A. Shotter, Elections under Tiberius, CQ 60 (1966), 321–332.

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INDEX

(The names of Emperors are given in anglicised form and shown in capital letters) Actium 7, 8, 17, 27

Baetica (Spain) 37

Aelius Lamia, Lucius (cos AD 3) 62

Bithynia 63

Aelius Sejanus, Lucius 2, 24, 31, 38, 45,

Britain 57

46, 47ff, 57, 58, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 73,

74, 76, 78, 79, 81, 82, 87, 90, 92

Calpurnius Piso, Cnaeus (cos 7 BC) 27,

Aemilius Lepidus, Marcus (triumvir) 6

28, 30, 35, 37, 38, 41, 42, 43, 44, 60,

Aemilius Lepidus, Marcus (cos AD 6)

61, 62, 73, 92

Campania 65

Africa 31, 57

Cappadocia 60

Agrippa Postumus 13, 14, 15, 19, 20

Capreae 2, 51, 52, 53, 65, 67, 78

Agrippina (daughter of Germanicus) 45,

CARACALLA 88

69, 73, 85

Cassius Longinus, Gaius 4, 6

Agrippina (wife of Germanicus) 13, 14,

Cherusci tribe 40

38, 39, 41, 42, 44, 45, 46, 48, 49, 50,

Cilicia 60

51, 52, 53, 57, 58, 62, 69, 80, 85

Cilnius Maecenas, Gaius 89

Alexander the Great 42

Claudia Pulchra 50

Alexandria 42, 92

CLAUDIUS 38, 48, 61, 63, 64, 74, 85

Alps, The 63

Claudius Marcellus, Gaius (husband of

Antioch 43

Julia) 8

Antonia (daughter of Marcus Antonius)

Claudius Nero, Tiberius (father of

38, 53

Tiberius) 4, 6, 7

Antonius, Lucius (cos 41 BC) 6

Claudius Nero, Tiberius (grandfather of

Antonius, Marcus (triumvir) 4, 6, 8, 17,

Tiberius) 4

Claudius Pulcher, Appius (cos 143 BC) 6

Apicata (wife of Sejanus) 45, 55

Clodius Pulcher, Publius (tr. pl. 58 BC) 6

Armenia 10, 40, 41, 42, 43, 60

Cocceius Nerva, Marcus (cos AD 21/22)

Arminius 40, 57, 58

67, 71

Arruntius, Lucius (cos AD 6) 2, 62, 71,

Commagene 60

74, 76

COMMODUS 88f

Arsaces 60

Concordia, Temple of 16

Artabanus 60

Cornelius Cinna Magnus, Cnaeus (cos

Asia 12, 58, 60, 63, 64, 70, 91, 93

AD 5) 13

Asinius Gallus, Gaius (cos 8 BC) 12, 22,

Cornelius Lentulus Gaetulicus, Cnaeus

49, 52, 53, 90

(cos AD 26) 70

Asinius Pollio, Gaius (cos 40 BC) 12

Cornelius Sulla, Lucius (cos 88 BC)

Aufidius Bassus 85

AUGUSTUS 1, 2, 4, 6, 7, 8, 10, 11, 12, 13,

Cornelius Tacitus, Publius 1, 15, 18, 20,

14, 15, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24,

21, 22, 27, 28, 30, 31, 32, 34, 42, 43,

25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 32, 38, 39, 40,

44, 48, 49, 51, 52, 53, 57, 60, 62, 63,

41, 44, 45, 47, 50, 56, 58, 61, 63, 64,

66, 68, 74, 76, 78, 79, 80, 81ff

65, 67, 72, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80,

Cosconia Gallitta 48

84, 86, 87, 91

Cremutius Cordus 82

Aventine Hill 70, 92

Curtius Atticus 67

108 INDEX

Danube, river 10, 14, 23, 24, 56

Julia (daughter of Julia) 15

Dea Roma 63

Julia Livia (daughter of Germanicus) 45,

Decidius Saxa, Lucius 10, 58

69, 73

Dio Cassius 11, 13, 53, 81, 87ff

Julius Agricola, Cnaeus 83

DIVUS AUGUSTUS 34, 71

Julius Caesar, Gaius (cos 59 BC) 4, 6, 8,

DOMITIAN 83, 85

18, 57, 64

Druids 57

Julius Caesar, Gaius (son of Julia) 10, 11,

Drusilla (daughter of Germanicus) 45,

12, 13, 41, 45, 73, 91

69, 73, 82

Julius Caesar, Lucius (son of Julia) 10,

Drusus (son of Germanicus) 45, 46, 49,

11, 12, 45, 73

51, 52, 53, 54, 72, 73

Julius Sacrovir 57, 61

Drusus (son of Tiberius) 11, 12, 13, 23,

Junius Blaesus, Quintus (cos AD 10) 48,

24, 38, 41, 45, 46, 48, 49, 55, 72, 73,

91, 93

Junius Brutus, Marcus 4, 6

Juvenal 52, 54, 81

Egypt 42, 47, 92

Elbe, river 10, 14, 58

Lex Julia de Maiestate 32

Licinius Crassus, Marcus (cos 70 BC) 6,

Fidenae 70

10, 58

Frisii 61

Livia Drusilla 1, 4, 7, 8, 11, 12, 13, 15, 19,

22, 38, 42, 43, 46, 52, 63, 67f, 91, 93

GAIUS CALIGULA 2, 18, 45, 53, 59, 71,

Livilla (sister of Germanicus) 38, 45, 46,

73, 74, 75, 77, 79, 80

49, 51, 53, 54, 55, 93

GALBA 61, 77, 79, 83

Livius Drusus, Marcus (tr. pl. 91 BC) 4

Gaul 10, 50, 57, 61

Livius Drusus Claudianus, Marcus 4

Gens Claudia 4, 6, 11, 13, 15, 17, 27, 38,

Lollius, Marcus (cos 21 BC) 10, 12

39, 46, 78, 80, 87

Gens Julia 8, 13, 14, 17, 27, 38, 39, 46, 72,

Maecenas (s.v. Cilnius)

77, 78, 80

MARCUS AURELIUS 88

Germanicus Caesar 13, 14, 19, 23, 24, 28,

Memmius Regulus, Publius (cos AD 31)

37ff, 49, 50, 52, 57, 58, 60, 68, 69, 71,

72, 73, 80, 84f, 91, 92

Misenum 6

Germany 11, 12, 19, 39, 41, 53, 61, 62, 70,

Mithridates (of Iberia) 60

Moesia 61, 62

Greece 6, 61, 63, 91

Gytheum 63, 91

Naples 51, 65, 68

NERO 62, 83

HADRIAN 78, 81, 86

Nero (son of Germanicus) 46, 49, 51,

Herculaneum 65

52, 53, 72, 73

Herod Agrippa 74

Nero Claudius Drusus (brother of

Hispania Ulterior 63, 91

Tiberius) 7, 10, 12, 38

Horatius Flaccus, Quintus (Horace) 65

NERVA 83

Illyricum 44, 61

Osnabrük 14

Italy 6, 47, 65, 66

Ovid 15

Josephus 61

Pannonia 14, 39, 48, 56

Judaea 60, 61f

Parthia 10, 40, 41, 58, 60

Julia (daughter of Augustus) 8, 10, 11,

PERTINAX 89

13, 38

Philippi 6

I N D E X 109

Plancina 42, 44, 62

Sosia Galla 50, 62

Plinius, Gaius (the younger Pliny) 63, 86

Spartianus 86

Plinius Secundus, Gaius (the elder

Sperlonga 51

Pliny) 85

Suetonius Tranquillus, Gaius 10, 11, 14,

Pompeii 65

18, 62, 69, 81, 85ff

Pompeius Magnus, Cnaeus (cos 70 BC)

Sulpicius Galba, Gaius (cos AD 22) 61

6, 8, 13, 58

Sutorius Macro 2, 54, 74, 75

Pompeius, Sextus 6

Syria 41, 42, 43, 44, 60, 62

Pomponius Labeo 62

Pontius Pilate 61f

Tabula Siarensis 37, 43, 85, 92

Poppaeus Sabinus, Gaius (cos AD 9) 61

Tacfarinas 57

Praetorian Guard 38, 47, 49, 55, 86

Thrace 58

Thrasyllus 11, 67

Quinctilius Varus, Publius (cos 13 BC)

Tiber, river 75

14, 24, 40, 56, 57, 58

Tiberius Gemellus (grandson of

Tiberius) 45, 51, 53, 73, 74

Rhine, river 14, 19, 23, 24, 39, 40, 41, 48,

Titius Sabinus 52

56, 57, 58, 60

TRAJAN 63, 78, 81, 83, 86

Rhodes 11, 12, 67

Tullius Cicero, Marcus (cos 63 BC) 6

Rhoemetalces 58

Rome 2, 11, 12, 19, 33, 34, 36, 40, 43, 47,

Valerius Maximus 85

49, 51, 52, 53, 58, 62, 63, 64, 65, 68,

Velleius Paterculus, Gaius 81, 82f, 86

70, 92

VESPASIAN 55

Vesta, Temple of 93

Scribonia 7

Villa Iovis 65

Scriptores Historiae Augustae 86

Vinicius, Marcus (cos AD 30) 82

Seius Strabo, Lucius 47

Vipsania Agrippina 8, 11, 12, 49

Sempronius Gracchus, Tiberius (tr. pl.

Vipsanius Agrippa, Marcus (cos 37 BC)

133 BC) 6

8, 10, 11, 13, 41

Seneca 13

Visellius Varro, Lucius (cos AD 24) 50,

Septicius Clarus, Gaius 86

SEPTIMIUS SEVERUS 88f

Vistilius, Sextus 74

Servilius Nonianus, Marcus (cos AD 35)

Vitellius, Lucius (cos AD 34) 60, 61,

SEVERUS ALEXANDER 88f

Vonones 40, 41, 42, 43, 60

Sextius Paconianus 73

Votienus Montanus 67

Sicily 6

Silius, Gaius (cos AD 13) 44, 50, 57, 62

Zeno (Artaxias III) 43, 60

Document Outline

Book Cover

Title

Contents

LIST OF FIGURES

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

FOREWORD

Introduction

Tiberius' early life

The new princeps

Tiberius, the senate and the nobility

Tiberius and the family of Germanicus

Sejanus

Tiberius and the Empire

Tiberius' retirement from Rome: his later years

The succession

Conclusion

THE ACCOUNTS OF TIBERIUS' LIFE AND REIGN

THE EVIDENCE OF INSCRIPTIONS AND COINS

CHIEF DATES IN THE LIFE OF TIBERIUS

GLOSSARY OF LATIN TERMS

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

INDEX