Tiberius

Tiberius (42 BCE– 37 CE)

Tiberius
Roman Emperor
Bust of Tiberius
Reign	18 September 14 – 16 March 37
Full name	Tiberius Caesar Divi Augusti filius Augustus
Born	16/11/42BC
Birthplace	Rome,
Died	16 March 37 (aged 77)
Place of death	Rome
Buried	Mausoleum of Augustus, Rome
Predecessor	Augustus,
Successor	Caligula
Consort	Vipsania Agrippina Julia the Elder
Issue	Drusus Julius Caesar Tiberillius Germanicus Nero Julius Caesar Drusus Caesar
Father	Tiberius Claudius Nero
Mother	Livia

Great Roman General to Perverted Old Man?

To sum up Tiberius' life the consensus is that he was generally regarded a great General whose victories laid the foundations of the expansion of the Empire northwards. When it seems he has reached the apogee of his career he retires to Rhodes in 6 AD thinking he can live out his years as a wealthy well-connected Roman just enough steps away from the center of power to be of no threat to anyone seeking to become Augustus's successor. As Suetonius somewhat mockingly writes He also gave up his usual exercises with horses and arms, and laying aside the garb of his country, took to the cloak and slippers

His great plans for his future, if indeed this was what was in his mind, had started to go awry years earlier. With the death of Agrippa and Marcellus he and his brother Drusus were getting closer to the succession. He was also forced by Augustus to divorce his first wife Vipsania Agrippa for the promiscuous Julia in 11BC.

Watching the George Baker portrayal in BBC's I-Claudius by Robert Graves, one sees a physically powerful man, dominated by his mother Livia who has been poisoning and plotting away through Rome 's "great and the good" since Augustus rise to power. A tortured soul who was reluctant to assume power, he came contemptuous of it during his 22 years as Emperor.

Suetonius implies that despite his reluctance he was implicated in the murder of the young Agrippa soon after Augustus' death, but this was undertaken more to stabilize power than to seize it. it is not known whether Augustus left this letter when he died, to remove a future source of discord, or whether Livia wrote it herself in the name of her p329 husband; and in the latter case, whether it was with or without the connivance of Tiberius

So he returned in the eighth year after his retirement, with that strong and unwavering confidence in his destiny, which he had conceived from his early years because of omens and predictions

Moreover, having gained the licence of privacy, and being as it were out of sight of the citizens, he at last gave free rein at once to all the vices which he had for a long time ill concealed; and of these I shall give a detailed account from the p353 beginning. Even at the outset of his military career his excessive love of wine gave him the name of Biberius, instead of Tiberius, Caldius for Claudius, and Mero for Nero

He had a dinner given him by Cestius Gallus, a lustful and prodigal old man, who had once been degraded by Augustus and whom he had himself rebuked a few days before in the senate, making the condition that Cestius ….[have] nude girls should wait upon them at table.

Tacitus represents Tiberius as a hypocrite, a man who continually hid his real thoughts, while pretending to think some- thing quite different. Tiberius moral spirals now hill and he indulges in greater and greater cruelty and vice more and more as the restraining influence of various persons was removed by death.

On retiring to Capri he devised a pleasance for his secret orgies: teams of wantons of both sexes, selected as experts in deviant intercourse and dubbed analists, copulated before him in triple unions to excite his flagging passions. Its bedrooms were furnished with the most salacious paintings and sculptures, as well as with an erotic library, in case a performer should need an illustration of what was required. Then in Capri's woods and groves he arranged a number of nooks of venery where boys and girls got up as Pans and nymphs solicited outside bowers and grottoes:

he trained little boys (whom he termed tiddlers) to crawl between his thighs when he went swimming and tease him with their licks and nibbles; and unweaned babies he would put to his organ as though to the breast, being by both nature and age rather fond of this form of satisfaction

Left a painting of Parrhasius's depicting Atalanta pleasuring Meleager with her lips.... [and] hung it in his bedroom. Unfortunately, no surviving copies of this painting exist

At another event held had his villa in Capri he was..

attracted by the acolyte's beauty, he lost control of himself and, hardly waiting for the ceremony to end, rushed him off and debauched him and his brother

When the boys complained he had their legs broken!

Mallonia. When she was brought to his bed and refused most vigorously to submit to his lust, he turned her over to the informers, and even when she was on trial he did not cease to call out and ask her "whether she was sorry"; so that finally she left the court and went home, where she stabbed herself

And this point it maybe a good idea to poor scorn on at least the last anecdote. [[1]] Edward Champion would like as to believe this is all word play. This 'unknown' woman Mallonia just happens to have a name similar to wool. And Mallonia happens to make reference that Tiberius is like a smelly old goat, who like to have oral sex with she-goats. Capris can also be translated as she-goat. Not to mention that there is no record of court proceedings at Capri and Tiberius was not travelling back to Rome for court either. And somehow has time to run away and commit suicide. So do we have just a piece of word-play/satire about a goaty old man who gets his rocks off having oral sex on an island called goats with as may references to goats as possible. If true then the interesting question is whether Suetonious is having a joke on his readers or someone is having a joke at Suetonius' expense?

Tiberius the Cruel Emperor

Tiberius was they say a reluctant Emperor. As much as he tried to not take the same roles and titles of Augustus, the senate prevailed. His ethos was, at least as he interpreted, was to rule a 'servant' to the Empire and the senate and delegate the running of Rome and the provinces to the Senate. But this only succeeded in causing mayhem and he agreed to take on more titles and assuming a greater degree of control. Having said that the military successes of his adopted son Germanicus took some of the heat off his poor stewardship of the Empire but with Germanicus suspicious death he was robbed of services of a great general who was thought of as a modern day Alexander the Great. Many Romans believed that Tiberius was envious of the popularity of Germanicus and was behind a plot by Piso to poison Germanicus. [see also and not to be confused with Piso who was behind to bring down Nero]. Tiberius tried to distance himself from the controversy telling the senate that on the one hand Piso was a loyal and trusted confidante of Augustus but on the other hand

For my part, I sorrow for my son and shall always sorrow for him; still I would not hinder the accused from producing all the evidence which can relieve his innocence or convict Germanicus of any unfairness, if such there was

However, after Tacitus fleetingly gives some defense of Tiberius he goes on to tell his readers

I remember to have heard old men say that a document was often seen in Piso's hands, the substance of which he never himself divulged, but which his friends repeatedly declared contained a letter from Tiberius with instructions referring to Germanicus, and that it was his intention to produce it before the Senate and upbraid the emperor, had he not been deluded by vain promises from Sejanus .

Piso was convicted but his wife Plancina was not implicated, given her strong friendship with Livia. Tiberius would later reinstate the charges after Livia's death in AD29 and subsequently committed suicide. Tiberius went as far as reversing some of the punishments meted out by the Senate yet Piso had already died by his own hands. Suetonius and Tacitus both believe that the document that was aforementioned was a smoking gun or more appropriately for the time bloodied sword so Tiberius put...

the man himself to be put to death. Because of this the words, "Give us back Germanicus," were posted in many places, and shouted at night all over the city. And Tiberius afterwards strengthened this suspicion by cruelly abusing the wife and children of Germanicus as well. .

Tacitus just a little less assertive suggests

Nor did he perish, they said, by his own hand, but by that of one sent to be his executioner. Neither of these statements would I positively affirm; still it would not have been right for me to conceal what was related by those who lived up to the time of my youth

The reluctant emperor was now a more unpopular Emperor, and Tiberius become further reclusive. After sharing much of his duties with his son Drusus he retired for longer periods to Campania. Yet a year later in AD 23 Drusus died. Yet again the suspicion was poisoning. It was said that Sejanus (think of Star Trek's Captain Picard for a second) seduced Drusus' wife Livilla and had her poison him. That is what Cassio Dio believed. It took 8 years for the truth to come out but with Sejanus' downfall he was executed along with his closest relatives so that no heirs would survive.

Illustration of the Germonian Stairs where traitors like Sejanus were flung

Apicata (ex-wife of Sejanus by now)... on learning that her children were dead, and after seeing their bodies on the Stairway, she withdrew and composed a statement about the death of Drusus, directed against Livilla .

If that was not bad enough, virgins, who undoubtedly the little girl was, were not allowed to be executed so the executioner had to rape her before the execution for good measure. Apicata then committed suicide and when Tiberius read the letter, he had Livilla tried, convicted and either, privately executed, or given the choice of suicide or the story preferred by Cassio Dio, given to her mother, locked in the room and starved to death!

The downfall of Sejanus as Cassio Dio recounts it is interesting. Much like the Piso controversy years earlier, Tiberius is careful not to denounce Sejanus in straightforward terms. Sejanus lest it be forgot was a powerful leader of the Republic and had many in the Senate and Praetorian Guard on his side. Tiberius letter to the senate at first praises Sejanus then line by line suggests some flaw here, some misguided policy there.

At first, before it was read, they had been lauding Sejanus, thinking that he was about to receive the tribunician power...first some other matter, then a slight censure of his conduct, then something else, and after that some further objection to him...first some other matter, then a slight censure of his conduct, then something else, and after that some further objection to him

It's worth digressing a little to know a little about Livilla. Firstly, she was named (somewhat appropriately given the future events) after her grandmother Livia wife of Augustus (i.e. Little Livia) She was beautiful but was compared unfavourably with *CITE* Agrippina the Elder who herself was the 'not so proud' mother of Caligula and Agrippina the Younger. Livilla was married to two potential Emperors, including Drusus. She was also the embarrassed sister to the stuttering Claudius. She had an affair with the son of Marcus Agrippa he of Pantheon fame. Among her children was Gemellus who Caligula had murdered as soon as he became emperor so that he would not have to rule jointly. She also had a daughter Julia. Who her uncle Claudius had executed (or allowed to pick suicide) based upon unsubstantiated charges of incest and immorality by his wife Valeria Messalina

Although Livilla was an arch schemer, who tried her best to push her family into positions of power she never really succeeded like Livia or the more famous Agrippinas.

Agrippina the Elder or Vipsania the Elder (14BC - 33AD) was the well-connected wife of Germanicus, second granddaughter to Augustus; sister-in-law, stepdaughter and daughter-in-law to Tiberius; mother to Caligula; maternal second cousin and sister-in-law to Claudius and maternal grandmother to Nero. The second daughter and fourth child of Agrippa and Julia the Elder, Agrippina married her second maternal cousin Germanicus between 5 and 1BC. In 29AD, Agrippina and her sons Nero and Drusus, were arrested on the orders of Tiberius, and she was banished with her sons to the island of Pandataria (modern Ventotene) in the Tyrrhenian Sea off the coast of Campania.

Tiberius had a thin skinned prickly personality. Germanicus was a hero in the Roman Empire but that did not help his widow. After complaining after Germanicus' death (we are not told what about)she is banished.

At last, falsely charging her with a desire to take refuge, now at the statue of Augustus and now with the armies, he exiled her to Pandataria, and when she loaded him with reproaches, he had her beaten by a centurion until one of her eyes was destroyed. Again, when she resolved to die of starvation, he had her mouth pried open and food crammed into it.

Agrippina eventually succeeded in starving her to death but Tiberius continued to assail her in almost derogatory terms and congratulated himself for resisting the temptation to personally strange her

Earlier in the new century Augustus had his daughter and Tiberius' wife Julia the Elder exiled to Pandataria for adultery. She stayed there for 2 years. After Augustus' death she may have had some hope that Tiberius would free her. For he had shown some sympathy for her incarceration. Yet Tiberius inflicted even harsher conditions including starvation. She died soon after but no one is sure how. This allows the historians to rely on rumour. Cassio Dio says she starved to death. Tacitus says her health declined after the execution of Postumus on the orders of either Augustus on the event of his death or Tiberius himself. Either way she is never heard of again.

This final torture reminds one of the scene in the ill-feted movie Caligula where....well let Suetonius tell the story...

And he would trick men into drinking vast amounts of wine, and when they were tortured he would have their penises tied up so they were unable to urinate

In the movie the men are forced to drink gallons of wine and eventually their stomachs are cut open to let the wine burst out. Gruesome!

Tiberius - Fact or Fiction?

Tacitus, Suetonious and by extension Cassio Dio each have their reasons to criticize Tiberius for their own agenda as noted elsewhere. It plays to the 'rise and fall' anti-Caesar arc of their stories of a great general seduced quite literally in later years by wealth boredom and sex. A reluctant Emperor who by the time of Drusus's death was by Pliny the Elder's account very morose. A once happily married man, ready to retire to Rhodes, who is railroaded by his mother to take on an overwhelming yet tedious task of running an empire rife with factions and in-house quarrelling and double-dealing. It was said that filial duty and State necessity were merely assumed as a mask

If executions did take place then was that not just a sign of the times. Just enough gore to keep potential plotting and intrigue to a minimum. In contrast Velleius Paterculus writes of Tiberius during his lifetime in glowing but also sycophantic terms so he is not reliable either

It would be double-standards indeed to have erotic paintings removed, public kissing banned and other acts of public decency only to be a cruel and closet pervert. Would it stretch the imagination to think the worst of an Emperor turning his back on the affairs of state that he maybe indulging in crude sexual acts and monstrous torture away from public gaze?

So we are left with a conundrum. He started life as an able general, became a reluctant emperor who would rather let the affairs of state rest with the senate or some trusted lieutenant, He was not profligate in the way that Nero was and the economy hummed along pretty good. He trusted Sejanus who either undertook his ruthless suppression orders from Tiberius or by himself. A miscalculation or just negligence. And its not just exaggerated accounts by Tacitus, at al that lead us to believe that he brought the accusation of Treason as a way of convicting then executing detractors by throwing them off cliff sides. Yet by the end of his reign Romans rejoiced at his death and were clearly eager for a young good-looking progressive son of Germanicus, Caligula!