Tiberius
Categories: 42 BC births | 37 deaths | Ancient Jewish Roman history | Julio-Claudian Dynasty | Roman emperors | Adoptive parents
For the city in Israel, see Tiberias.
Tiberius Caesar Augustus, born Tiberius Claudius Nero (November 16, 42 BC–March 16, AD 37), was the second Roman Emperor, succeeding the popular and successful Caesar Augustus. Tiberius was also the continuation of the Julio-Claudian dynasty, ruling for 23 years, from 14 AD until his death in (37 AD). Tiberius was by birth a Claudian – son of Tiberius Nero and Livia, but through the marriage of his mother to Augustus and Augustus's adoption of him, he became a Julian. The subsequent emperors after Tiberius would continue this blended dynasty of both families for the next forty years.
Tiberius is remembered as a dark, reclusive, and depressed ruler who never truly desired the right to rule. His reign is marked by terror and mayhem in which the Emperor exiled himself from Rome and left administration in the hands of Lucius Aelius Sejanus, who used his influence over Tiberius and his position in the Praetorian Guard to push his own political agenda and personal revenges. Eventually, Tiberius died, and his grandson by adoption Caligula followed him as the next Roman Emperor.
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Early Life
Tiberius Claudius Nero was born on 16 November 42 BC to Tiberius Nero and Livia Drusilla. From his birth in a noble family¹, Tiberius was destined for public life. But during his boyhood the old Roman Republican system of rule by Senate and magistrates, which had been tottering for decades, was finally toppled and replaced by an autocracy under the able and ambitious Octavian (later known as Caesar Augustus). It proved fateful for Tiberius when, in 39 BC at age three, his mother divorced his father Tiberius Nero and married Octavian, thereby making the infant Tiberius the stepson of the future ruler of the Roman Empire.
Tiberius's early life was relatively uneventful, even if the times were not. In 32 BC, as civil war loomed between Mark Antony and Octavian, Tiberius made his first public appearance at the age of nine and delivered the eulogy at his natural father's funeral. In the years following the Battle of Actium in 31 BC, as Octavian secured his position as Roman Emperor and became Augustus, Tiberius grew to maturity and took his first real steps in public life. In 29 BC, he took part in Augustus’s triumph for the Actium campaign, riding on the left of Augustus in the triumphal chariot. Five years later, at the age of seventeen, he became a quaestor and was given the privilege of standing for the praetorship and consulship five years in advance of the age required by law.
He then began appearing in court as an advocate and was sent by Augustus to the East where, in 20 BC, he oversaw one of his stepfather's proudest successes. The Parthians, who had captured the standards of the legions lost in the failed Eastern campaigns of Marcus Crassus (53 BC), Decidius Saxa (40 BC), and Mark Antony (36 BC), formally returned them to the Romans. After returning from the East, Tiberius was granted praetorian rank and, in 13 BC, he became consul. Between his praetorship and consulship, he was on active duty with his brother, Nero Claudius Drusus, combating the tribes in the Alps. His personal life was also blessed at this time by a happy marriage to Vipsania Agrippina, the daughter of Augustus’s life-long friend and right-hand man, Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa. The marriage probably took place in 20 BC or 19 BC and during his consulship of 13 BC, his wife produced a son, Julius Caesar Drusus.
When Agrippa died in 12 BC, Tiberius, on Augustus’s insistence, divorced Vipsania and married Agrippa's widow, Julia Caesaris. The union was not a happy one and produced no children. Tiberius had been happily married to Vipsania and, following an embarrassing display in public, he was ultimately forbidden by Augustus even to see her. Nevertheless, Tiberius's elevation in his stepfather's succession scheme continued. He received important military commissions in Pannonia and Germania between 12 BC and 6 BC and proved very successful in the field. He was consul for a second time in 7 BC, and, in 6 BC, he was granted tribunician power (tribunicia potestas) and an extensive commission in the East. In essence, Tiberius had replaced Agrippa as Augustus’s successor. He was Julia's husband, the leading general in the state, and he enjoyed a share of the emperor's power. Everything seemed settled, until the darker side of Tiberius's personality intervened.
Without warning, in 6 BC Tiberius announced his withdrawal from public life and went to live on Rhodes with some personal friends and an astrologer. Whatever his motivation, the move was not only a snub to Augustus, but it was also highly inconvenient to his succession plans. Gaius Caesar and Lucius Caesar were still too young to assume the heavy responsibilities of the Principate, and Augustus now had no immediate successor to assume power and see the boys to maturity, since Tiberius's brother Drusus had died of an illness in 9 BC. If anything had befallen Augustus during that time, the Principate could have been washed away.
Whatever had been Augustus’s opinion of Tiberius, he seems to have had little patience with, or affection, for him after his exile. Something of Augustus’s irritation is revealed by his repeated refusal to allow Tiberius to return to Rome after Tiberius realized the delicacy of his position on Rhodes; and this in spite of pressure brought to bear on Augustus by his influential and persuasive wife, Livia. When Tiberius's tribunican powers ran out in 1 BC, they were not renewed, and his situation became even more precarious. According to Tacticus, he was expecting a ship bearing the order for his death. When the ship arrived in 2 AD, however, it brought quite different tidings.
Heir to Augustus
Tragedy worked for the benefit of Tiberius. In 2 AD, Lucius Caesar died of an illness at Massilia. Augustus, resistant to the idea of allowing Tiberius to return, finally yielded to the requests of Livia and Gaius Caesar. Tiberius returned to Rome and lived as a private citizen when, unexpectedly, Gaius Caesar died of a wound received during a siege in Armenia. Augustus, devastated, was left without his adoptive sons and, more importantly, without an heir and successor. His careful planning for the succession had come to nothing. In the crisis, he turned once more to Tiberius.
Tiberius was summoned from private life and adopted as Augustus’s son. Also adopted by Augustus was Postumus Agrippa, the third son of Julia Caesaris and Marcus Agrippa. Tiberius, despite having a natural son, was required to adopt his nephew, Germanicus, the son of his brother Drusus. Augustus seemed to be re-establishing a slate of candidates, with Tiberius at its head and the others as potential substitutes in the event of disaster. Tiberius's forced adoption of Germanicus appears to have been Augustus’s attempt to mark out the succession in the third generation of the Principate.
From 4 AD to 14 AD Tiberius was clearly Augustus’s successor. When he was adopted, he also received grants of proconsular power and tribunician power; and in 13 AD his proconsular power was made co-extensive with that of Augustus’s. In effect, Tiberius was now co-emperor with Augustus so that when the latter finally died on 19 August, 14 AD, Tiberius's position was unassailable and the continuation of the Principate a foregone conclusion. After fifty-five years living in the shadow of his stepfather, Tiberius finally assumed the mantle of sole ruler.
Early Reign
The accession of Tiberius proved intensely awkward. After Augustus had been buried and deified, and his will read and honored, the Senate convened on 18 September to inaugurate the new reign and officially "confirm" Tiberius as emperor. Such a transfer of power had never happened before, and nobody, including Tiberius, appears to have known what to do. Tacitus's account is the fullest of what happened. Tiberius came to the Senate to have various powers and titles voted to him. Perhaps in an attempt to imitate the tact of Augustus, Tiberius donned the mask of the reluctant public servant -- and botched the performance. Rather than tactful, he came across to the Senators as obdurate and obstructive. He declared that he was too old for the responsibilities of the Principate, said he did not want the job, and asked if he could just take one part of the government for himself. The Senate was confused, not knowing how to read his behavior. Finally, one senator asked pointedly, "Sire, for how long will you allow the State to be without a head?" Tiberius relented and accepted the powers voted to him, and according to Tacticus, he refused to bear the title Pater Patriae, being the only Emperor to do so.
The first meeting between the Senate and the new Emperor established a blueprint for their later interaction. Throughout his reign, Tiberius was to baffle, befuddle, and frighten the Senators. He seems to have hoped that they would act on his implicit desires rather than on his explicit requests. There was trouble not only at Rome, however. The legions posted in Pannonia and in Germania, the most powerful concentration of troops in the Empire, took the opportunity afforded by Augustus’s death to voice their complaints about the terms and conditions of their service. Matters escalated into an all-out mutiny that was only repressed by the direct intervention of Tiberius's sons, Germanicus and Drusus. There was bloodshed at both locations, but in Germanicus’s sector of Germania, there was particularly chaotic disorder and frightful scenes of mayhem as the legions revolted against Tiberius.
Despite his difficult relationship with the Senate and the Rhine mutinies, Tiberius's first years were generally good. He stayed true to Augustus’s plans for the succession and clearly favored his adopted son Germanicus over his natural son, Drusus, as did the Roman populace. On Tiberius's request, Germanicus was granted proconsular power and assumed command in the prime military zone of Germania, where he suppressed the mutiny there and led the formerly restless legions on campaigns against Germanic tribes from 14 to 16 AD.
After being recalled from Germania, Germanicus celebrated a triumph in Rome in 17 AD. In the same year, he was granted imperium maius over the East and, in 18 AD, after being consul with Tiberius as his colleague, he was sent East, just as Tiberius himself had been almost four decades earlier. Unfortunately for Tiberius, Germanicus died there in 19 AD and, on his deathbed, accused the governor of Syria, Gnaeus Calpurnius Piso, of murdering him at Tiberius’s orders. Piso was a long-time friend of Tiberius and his appointee to the Syrian governorship, so suspicion for Germanicus’s death ultimately came to rest at the palace door.
When Germanicus’s widow, Agrippina the Elder returned to Italy carrying her popular husband's ashes, she publicly declared Piso guilty of murder and hinted at the involvement of more hidden agents. Piso was put on trial in the Senate, where he expected some help from his friend, Tiberius. Instead, Tiberius sat statue-like and let the proceedings take their course. In Tacitus's account, Piso realized his peril and threatened to make public certain documents that would embarrass the Emperor. The ploy failed and Piso committed suicide; the documents were never made public.
With Germanicus dead, Tiberius began elevating his own son Drusus to replace him as the Imperial successor. Relations with Germanicus’s family were strained, but they were to reach a breaking point when Tiberius allowed a trusted advisor to get too close and gain a tremendous influence over him. That advisor was the Praetorian Prefect, Lucius Aelius Sejanus, who would derail Tiberius's plans for the succession and drive the emperor farther into isolation, depression, and paranoia.
Tiberius and Sejanus
Sejanus hailed from Volsinii in Etruria, from the equites family of Lucius Seius Strabo, who also shared the Praetorian Prefecture until 15 AD when his father was promoted to be Prefect of Egypt, the pinnacle of an equestrian career under the Principate. Sejanus enjoyed powerful connections to Senatorial houses and had been a companion to Gaius Caesar on his mission to the East, from 1 BC-4 AD. Through a combination of energetic efficiency, fawning sycophancy, and outward displays of loyalty, he gained the position of Tiberius's closest friend and advisor.
Tiberius, whom historians depict by this stage as an old, bitter, and tired man, left more and more of the day-to-day running of the Empire to Sejanus. Sejanus created an atmosphere of fear in Rome, controlling a network of informers and spies whose incentive to accuse others of treason was a share in the accused's property after their conviction and death. Treason trials became commonplace; few members of the Roman aristocracy were completely safe. The trials played up to Tiberius' growing paronoia, which made him more reliant on Sejanus, as well as satisfying his greed (since the emperor could confiscate the majority of the accused's property after their execution or suicide); they also allowed Sejanus to eliminate potential rivals.
One development that favored Sejanus was the concentration of all nine cohorts of the Praetorian Guard into a single camp at Rome. Augustus had billeted these troops discreetly in small towns around Rome, but now Tiberius -- undoubtedly with Sejanus's encouragement -- brought them into the city, probably in 17 AD or 18 AD. Sejanus, therefore, commanded some 9,000 troops within the city limits. As Sejanus's public profile became more and more pronounced, his statues were erected in public places, and, according to Tacticus, Tiberius openly praised him as "the partner of my labors." But Sejanus had his own ideas. He had used his influence over Tiberius to destroy the Emperor's relationship with his son Drusus; in 23 Drusus died. It is generally accepted that he was poisioned by Livilla, his wife, at the instigation of Sejanus, who was her lover. Tiberius did not suspect this, however. The death of his son meant he had now a stark choice to make in designating his heir: between the sons of his enemies (in his mind at least) Germanicus and Agrippina, or Sejanus.
Self Imposed Exile Sejanus’s attacks against Agrippina and his proposal to marry Drusus's widow, Livilla, (who was also Tiberius' niece) suggest that he was attempting to follow the precedent of Agrippa, that is, an outsider who became the emperor's successor through a combination of overt loyalty, necessity, and a family alliance forged by marriage. Tiberius, perhaps sensitive to this ambition, rejected Sejanus's initial proposal to marry Livilla in 25 AD, but later put it about that he had withdrawn his objections so that, in 30 AD, Sejanus was betrothed to Livilla's daughter (Tiberius' granddaughter). The Prefect's family connection to the Imperial house was now imminent. In 31 AD Sejanus held the consulship with the emperor as his colleague, an honor Tiberius reserved only for heirs to the throne. Furthermore, when Sejanus surrendered the consulship early in the year, he was granted a share of the emperor's proconsular power. When he was summoned to a meeting of the Senate on 18 October in that year he probably expected to receive a share of the tribunician power; with that he would, after all, have become Tiberius's Agrippa. Instead, however, Tiberius' letter to the Senate completely unexpectedly requested the destruction of Sejanus and his faction. A bloody purge followed, in which Sejanus and his most prominent supporters were killed.
Tiberius himself later claimed that he turned on Sejanus because he had been alerted to Sejanus's plot against Germanicus’s family. This explanation has been rejected by most ancient and modern authorities, since Sejanus's demise did nothing to end Tiberius' persecution of that family: Agrippina and her eldest son Nero were both exiled to tiny islands, her second son Drusus was still imprisoned in the Palatine's basement, and all three died violently within years of Sejanus’s fall. Tiberius is also said to have discovered Sejanus's part in his own son's death in 23 AD; the source of this information, however, is unclear. Possibly, in the highly charged atmosphere surrounding Sejanus's fall, the news acted as a catalyst, but its truth cannot be verified. Whatever the precise reasons, Sejanus's career and demise, and that of those around him, was an object lesson in the dangers of Imperial politics.
Final Years
The Sejanus affair appears to have greatly depressed Tiberius. A close friend and confidant had betrayed him. His withdrawal from public life seemed more complete in the last years. Letters kept him in touch with Rome, but it was the machinery of the Augustus’s administration that kept the Empire running smoothly. According to writers such as Suetonius, Tiberius spent much of his time indulging his perversities on Capri. He also became all but paranoid in his dealings with others and spent long hours brooding over the death of his son, Drusus, which had now been revealed to him as the work of his friend Sejanus; all who were implicated, he had executed in barbaric fashion. As a result, no measures were taken for the succession, beyond vague indications of favor to his great-nephew Caligula, Germanicus' and Agrippina's only surviving son, and his grandson Tiberius Gemellus, the son of Drusus and Livilla, who was still only a child.
Rome’s second Emperor died at the port town of Misenum on March 16, 37 AD, at the age of seventy-eight. In a reign of 23 years, Tiberius, despite all his faults, proved a successful continuation of Augustus’s Principate. Later writers suggested that he was smothered at the behest of Caligula (who was never really sure if he was the official heir), but such accusations are to be expected in the political climate of the time. Regardless, Tiberius was old and in poor health at his death. His complete unpopularity is proven by the failure of the Senate to vote him divine honours. Caligula never pushed for it, and his successor Claudius, who did force the deification of Tiberius’s mother Livia, certainly wasted no effort on Tiberius’s behalf. Tacitus, Dio Cassius and Suetonius certainly painted a bleak picture of Tiberius and his reign. According to Suetonius: "the people were so glad of his death, that at the first news of it some ran about shouting, "To the Tiber with Tiberius!," (a form of punishment reserved for criminals) while others prayed to Mother Earth and the Manes to "allow the dead man no abode except among the damned."
In his will, Tiberius left the empire to both Caligula and Tiberius Gemellus, but soon after becoming Emperor, Caligula had Tiberius's will declared void and later had Gemellus killed, thus he become Tiberius’s sole heir and successor as the Roman Emperor.
Continuing legacy
In the Bible, Tiberius is mentioned by name only once, in Luke 3:1 (stating that John the Baptist entered on his public ministry in the fifteenth year of his reign). However, since it was during his reign that Jesus preached, many references to Caesar (or the emperor in some other translations), without further specification, actually refer to Tiberius. It was during the reign of Tiberius that Jesus was put to death by crucifixion under the authority of the Roman governor of Judea at the time, Pontius Pilate.
The town Tiberias on the western shore of the Sea of Galilee was named in Tiberius's honour by Herod Antipas.
Tiberius has appeared in the movies Ben-Hur, Caligula (played by Peter O'Toole), and I, Claudius (played by George Baker).
Footnotes
- For the etymology of the name, see under List of Roman praenomina.
See also
External links
Primary sources
- Suetonius' biography of Tiberius, Latin text with English translation
- Cassius Dio's Roman History: Books 57-58, English translation
- Velleius Paterculus, Latin text with English translation
Secondary material
Biographical sketches
Other material
- Tacitus and Tiberius
- Suetonius and the reign of Tiberius: a comparison with other sources
- Pictures of Tiberius' villa on Capri
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