The History of Rome: Rise and Fall of the Empire. John Bagnell Bury
man by her arts and charms. The sharp old Emperor observed the policy of the prefect, and said to him, “You leave the setting sun, to court the rising”. In the seventy-eighth year of his age, in the first months of 37 A.D., Tiberius quitted his island, never to return. He travelled slowly towards Rome and advanced along the Appian Way within seven miles of the city. He gazed for the last time at the tops of the distant buildings, but frightened by some evil omen, turned back, and retraced his steps southward. He was failing fast. At Circeii, in order to hide his we illness, he presided at military exercises, and in consequence of the over-exertion became worse. He tried till the last to conceal his condition from those who were with him, and his physician Charicles had to resort to an artifice to feel his pulse. He breathed his last in the villa of Lucullus at Misenum, on March 16, 37 A.D.. It was whispered that his end was hastened by Macro, who, seeing him suddenly revive, stifled him.
In estimating Tiberius, we must take into account the circumstances of his life, and also the character of the witnesses who have recorded his reign. A Claudian, both on the father’s and on the mother’s side, descended from the Neros to whom, as Horace sang, Rome owed so much, he had all the pride of his patrician house. He was strong, tall, well-made, and healthy, with a fair complexion, and long hair profuse at the back of his head—a characteristic of the Claudii. He had unusually large eyes, and a serious expression. In his youth he was called “the old man”, so thoughtful was he and slow to speak. He had a strong sense of duty, and a profound contempt for the multitude. The spirit of his ancestress, the Claudia who uttered the wish that her brother were alive again, to lose another fleet and make the streets of Rome less crowded, had in some measure descended upon Tiberius. He was, as the originally Sabine nameNero signified, brave and vigorous; and had a conspicuous aptitude for the conduct of affairs. But he was too critical to have implicit confidence in himself; and he was suspicious of others. His self-distrust was increased by the circumstances of his early manhood. His reserved manner, unlike the geniality of his brother Drusus, could not win the affection of his stepfather Augustus, who regarded his peculiarities as faults; and when he was young enough to have ambition, he was made use of indeed, but he never enjoyed Imperial favor. Kept, when possible, in the second place, he was always meeting rebuffs. He was forced to divorce Vipsania and marry Julia, who brought him nothing but shame. Thus the circumstances of his life, and his relations to his stepfather were calculated to deepen his reserve, to embitter his feelings, and produce a habit of dissimulation; so that there is little wonder that a man of his cold, diffident nature, coming to the throne at the age of fifty-five, should not have won the affections of subjects whom he did not deign to conciliate. All his experiences tended to develop in Tiberius that hard spirit, so clearly stamped on his features in the large sitting statue which has been preserved. On the other hand his diffidence made him dependent on others, first on Livia, and then on Sejanus, who proved his evil genius.
In regard to the darker side of his policy as a ruler, we must remember that he had undertaken a task which necessarily involved inconsistencies. He undertook to maintain the republican disguise under which Augustus had veiled the monarchy. The wearing of a mask well suited his reserved and crafty nature, but the success of this pretence depended far more on personal qualities than Tiberius realized. It had been a success with Augustus, because he was popular and genial. It was a failure with Tiberius because he was just the opposite. After Tiberius, the mask was dropped. The system of delation and the law of maiestaswere provided by Tiberius as a substitute for the popularity which had shielded his predecessor from conspiracy. Owing to the spread of delation, the reign of Tiberius was to some extent a reign of tenor. Hardly any important works of literature were produced, for men did not care to write when they could not write freely. We have already seen the fate of the historian Cremutius Cordus. Two other historians whose works have come down to us, escaped censure by flattery. In the case of one, the flattery was probably sincere. Velleius Paterculus, whose short “Roman History” in two Books was published in 30 A.D., had served under Tiberius in the Pannonian war, and afterwards risen to the rank of quaestor, and then of praetor. He had conceived a deep admiration and affection for his general, and lauds him with extravagant superlatives. He also speaks in very high terms of Sejanus, who had not yet fallen. Valerius Maximus was more clearly a time-server. In his “Nine Books of Memorable Deeds and Words”, a collecton of anecdotes of Roman history, writen in a tasteless, pretentious style, he is servile to the Emperor, but as the work appeared after the fall of Sejanus, a vehement declamation against that minister is introduced. The Spaniard, Anneus Seneca of Corduba, not to be confounded with his more famous son, was active under Tiberius as well as under Augustus. He wrote a history extending from the beginning of the civil wars almost to the day of his death (about 39 A.D.) unfortunately not preserved; but his works on rhetorical subjects are partly extant. The terror of delation did not affect jurists like Masurius Sabinus, men of science like Celsus, or gastronomists like Aricius, owing to the politically indifferent nature of their subjects. It is not easy to see how it affected poetry, but Virgil and Horace had no immediate successors. The only poetical writer of the reign was the freedman Phaedrus, and he tells us that he was persecuted. He was the author of five Books of Aesopian fables, in iambic trimeters. Pomponius Secundus wrote tragedies, but perhaps did not publish them till after the death of Tiberius. The Emperor was himself imbued with letters. He wrote a lyric poem on the death of Lucius Caesar, and Greek verses in the style of the Alexandrine school. He also wrote memoirs of his own life. He was a strict purist in language, and resolutely refused to use words borrowed from Greek.
This negative testimony of literature shows that delation was a very real danger and that the government of Tiberius was in some respects tyrannical. But he was not such a tyrant as he has been painted by the later writers Tacitus and Suetonius. Over against the dark picture of Tacitus we must set the opposite picture of the inferior artist Velleius, and we must allow for the bias of both authors. We must remember that Velleius had seen Tiberius at his best, in the camp conducting a campaign, that he received promotion from him, and was prejudiced in his favor; in addition to this, he was writing in the Emperor’s lifetime. On the other hand Tacitus wrote under the influence of a reaction against the imperial system, and he lays himself out to blacken the character of all the Emperors prior to Nerva. The dark character of Tiberius, and a certain mystery which surrounded his acts and motives, lent themselves well to the design of the skillful historian, who gathered up and did not disdain to record all sorts of popular rumors and stories imputing crime to the exile of Capri. Apart from the measures which he adopted for his own safety, or at the instigation of Sejanus, and which mainly concerned his own family and nobles connected with them—apart from the consequences of the system of delation, which were felt almost exclusively at Rome—there can be no question that the rule of Tiberius was wise, and maintained the general prosperity of the Empire. Augustus was not deceived, when, in adopting his stepson into the Julian family, he said “I do it for the public welfare”;" nor, on the other hand, was he mistaken when he prophetically pitied the fate of the people of Rome which he was committing to be masticated in the “slow jaws” of his adopted son.
Chapter XIV.
The Principate of Gaius (Caligula) (37-41 A.D.)
SECT. I. — POPULAR BEGINNINGS OF THE REIGN OF GAIUS
We have seen that Tiberius had made Gaius and Gemellus co-partners in the inheritance of his private fortune, thus recommending them to the senate and people as co-partners in the Principate. He seems to have intended for them a joint rule like that which Augustus intended for his grandchildren Gaius and Lucius Caesar. Perhaps he did not believe that such a rule was possible; but he left the decision to fate. The power and the initiative naturally devolved on Gaius, who was older than his cousin by seven years and had already entered on public life. He was supported by the favor of the populace and the strength of the praetorians with Macro at their head; so that his succession seemed certain. But it is to be observed that from a constitutional point of view Gaius did not occupy as strong a position on the death of Tiberius as Tiberius had occupied on the death of Augustus. Tiberius had been already invested with the tribunician power and the most important of the imperial prerogatives during the lifetime