Tiberius (14 page)

Tiberius' chief astrologer was still Thrasyllus. A man who had been deft enough to save his life on Rhodes and agile enough to remain the Emperor's advisor in all the tricky years since was a man who possessed a definite ability to land on his feet. Thrasyllus knew that Tiberius would demand his interpretation of the ominous events. He also knew that it was dangerous to tell the truth.

When Tiberius asked for die latest bulletin from the stars, Thrasyllus was all joy. Look, he said, casting the horoscope, the signs are all favorable, the constellations are all working for you. You will live a long time yet! There is no threat to you at all!

It was a lie but the Emperor was willing to believe it. So, unwarned, Tiberius went to perform a few ceremonial duties on the mainland. There were games to attend. As Emperor he was expected to take a certain part in the fun, so he took a few javelins and threw them at a wild boar. He wrenched his shoulder. That was a small thing, but he went to bed to recover, didn't recover, grew worse, became very sick, and went into a coma.

His physicians examined him, as they had not been allowed to do for nearly half a century. They clucked over his terribly emaciated body and the ravaged, scrofulous skin. It was astounding to them that the imperial lecher had survived so many decades of abandoned life without their ministrations; but they took sober comfort in the thought that he was now paying the price. He was hopeless. He was dying. His breathing was terribly faint and uneven; death could be no more than a few hours away.

The physicians sent out the word.

At once there was pandemonium. Caligula hurried forward to claim the throne. The Pretorian Guard hurrahed the new
Emperor; a letter was sped to th
e Senate to announce the death of the old man and the accession of the b
alding young favorite of
the armies. In the dungeons the word flashed to the doomed; there was hope; the tyrant was gone! In widening waves the news reached every ear on Capri, on the Italian shore, up and down the peninsula. Tiberius' favorites blanched and began to try to make their peace with the new order; his enemies rejoiced and swarmed toward Capri and Rome and their triumph.

And suddenly old Tiberius stirred.

His eyes opened. He sat up and looked around. He asked for something to eat.

He had decided not to die just yet, after all. It was a terribly inconvenient thing for him to do.

XVI

The people were swarming around Caligula, delirious with joy. "My star, my baby!" they cried. "My chicken! My pet!" He was twenty-five years old, spindle-legged and pale; b
ut he had been the darling of th
e legions as a toddler and he looked very good after Tiberius. The mob screamed its affection and pelted him with flowers; and tiien, in the middle of great joy, the word came from the death watch.
Tiberius was alive.

Caligula flew into a panic. The world had been bis for a moment, but a revived Tiberius would surely snatch it away. Even though he had chosen Caligula as his heir, he would not like the young man's being in such a hurry. The mobs whispered, moaned, and fled. The celebration turned into
a rout. The cohorts of Pretorian
s halted in their tracks, muttering.

Only Macro, the new Pretorian commander, kept his wits about him.

The succession had passed, and
those few skulking targets
of Tiberius' anger who had survived could begin to draw breath. Macro had pinned his future to Caligula. The old man could not be allowed to spoil things now! Macro hurried back to the sickroom. Tiberius sat glowering and sullen. Where had everyone gone? Where was his seal ring, that should have been on his finger? The old man was weak but he was certainly mending, and his mood was furious.

Macro did not pause. He stepped to the bed of Tiberius and caught up a heap of blankets. Tiberius had no chance to stop him. Macro was on him, thrusting him down with the smothering blankets, leaning on him with all his weight; the lean, sick old man struggled like a giant, but he was helpless. The struggle stopped.

And so Tiberius did die that day, after all. He was murdered by the man to whom he had given control of Rome during his lifetime, for the sake of the man to whom he had bequeathed it after death. The day was March 15th—the Ides of March—and the year was 37
a.d.

The life of Tiberius Caesar spans Rome's transition from tottering Republic to firmly based Empire. He was born into a world where parties of giants contended for power. When he died the world had grown smaller by this much: It had room in it for only one giant.

Was he a good Emperor? A bad one?

On the basis of statistics he must be called good. Whatever his perverse cruelties and wild extravagances at home, he was, after all, the Emperor of a hundred million souls. His Empire was almost all the known world—the boundaries were the Rhine, the Danube, and the Euphrates. Except for barbarians and the semi-legendary Far East, all the world paid tribute to Tiberius. A map of his Empire shows the Mediterranean Sea surrounded, like a great mouth. Greece is an uvula, the Italian peninsula a fang, the hps are the Pillars of Hercules at Gibraltar. Ail the Mediterranean world is engorged, and the mouth reaches out for more. In this great teeming heartland only a few thousand suffered directly under Tiberius, and the others had cause to bless him. He fought no great wars, he imposed no new taxes, he exterminated no subject races. He was vicious and perverted, but the fury that turned Rome into a stew and made Capri a shambles left tens of millions of human beings untouched.

But this was no altruism of Tiberius. It was only another form of his stinginess. He would not waste gold except on his personal pleasure. And he would not waste suffering, except where he could enjoy it.

When Rome heard that Tiberius had died there was an eruption of joy. "To the Tiber with Tiberius!" cried the mob, and some of them went for hooks to drag his body away, as so many victims of Tiberius' torturers and trials had been dragged. Caligula would not allow this. He wore robes of deep mourning, though there was joy in his heart, and he treated the dead Emperor's corpse with great respect. It was his way of setting an example to Rome; he wanted to be quite sure that no Roman got the notion that an Emperor who happened to be a monster was any less entitled to respect.

Rome breathed freely. It was only one gasp, and then Caligula was upon them; but it tasted good that March day. Whatever young Caligula might turn out
to be, he could be no worse, they thought, than that w
ooden-tongued, icily-staring golem of a man, Tiberius.

In the middle of the rejoicing the crowds learned of one last horror. A group of convicted plotters had been sentenced to death for some crime or other against the dead man. Then, for technical reasons, their executions had been postponed for a period of ten days. Tiberius had died on the ninth day. Astonishing good fortune. Now their
lives were saved! Or so they th
ought. But the jailers were hard professionals. They knew that Caesar's orders had to be carried out. The new Caesar could free the condemned men if he wished, of course. But the new Caesar had not yet formally assumed his office, and thus could not or would not act.

On this technicality the last victims of Tiberius were strangled and thrown upon the Stairs of Mourning. The crowd howled imprecations on the dead Tiberius. "His cruelty lives after him!"
they cried; but then in a littl
e while Caligula began to teach them what cruelty really meant.

Dramatis Personae

Roman marriage habits were complex, and so were Roman names. Nearly every major f
igure in Roman history of Tiber
ian times has more than one marriage; many have more than one name; the situation becomes confusing when one attempts to keep the various relationships in mind.

What particularly complicates recalling the names of many Romans is that they change before one's eyes. A new name might be awarded to celebrate a great victory—Germanicus in our period, Britannicus a little later—or to denote special virtue, as Augustus. A Roman name may have a number of spellings: Caius may be Gaius, Cnaeus may be Cneius. The Roman custom of adoption may change a name—Octavius becoming Octavian—or it may not—Tiberius remaining Tiberius. In Augustus, for example, we have all these factors operating at once. He was born Gaius (or Caius) Octavius; when he became Julius Caesar's heir he took the name Gaius (or Caius) Julius Caesar Octavianus; when he became clearly the ruler of Rome, the Senate voted him the title, quickly becoming the name, Augustus.

To help sort out the family relationships of the Julio-Claudians and their in-laws, these notes are appended concerning a few of the more important ones in our story.

Agrippa
. (Marcus Agrippa.) He was the husband of Augustus' only child, Julia. She bore him a number of children of whom five survived to maturity: Agrippina (who married Germanicus), Gaius and Lucius (Tiberius' favored rivals for the succession at the time of his exile in Rhodes), Julia the Younger, and Agrippa Postumus (born to Julia just after Agrippa's death, and murdered by a Roman centurion shortly after Tiberius succeeded to the principate). Agrippa in his own right was a great admiral, statesman, and builder.

Augustus
. (Gaius Octavius; Gaius Julius
Caesar

Octavianus.) He was the second Emperor of Rome, the nephew of Julius Caesar and, after the round of civil wars that followed Julius' assassination, his successor. Augustus married Scribonia, who bore him his only child, Julia, born the day Augustus divorced Scribonia in order to marry Livia (the mother of Tiberius). Augustus is the architect of the Roman Empire. Julius Caesar cleared the way for it, Tiberius gave it a necessary breathing space, but Augustus set its limits, defined its policies, and organized its government.

C
aligula
. (Gaius Caesar; by the legions nicknamed affectionately "Caligula" or "Little Boots.") As a small child Caligula was brought up by the legions and retained their affections even for the first year or so of his reign, when he retained no one else's. Caligula's father was Germanicus, poisoned by Piso; his mother was Agrippina, once Tiberius' stepdaughter and later starved to death in his prisons. Caligula succeeded Tiberius as Emperor and, though he ruled only four years, almost made the Romans want Tiberius alive again,

Drusus
. Of Drususes we have a goodly, supply. The principal ones in our story are:

(1)
Drusus Senior, Tiber
ius' loved younger brother, who
was born to Livia three months after her marriage to
Augustus. This Drusus died
of a fall from horseback during
a frontier campaign, his death being one of the two great losses which drove Tiberius to exile in Rhodes.

Germanicus
. He was the great-nephew of Augustus and the husband of Agrippina. He was the father of Caligula (who became Rome's third Emperor when Tiberius died), and also the brother of Claudius (who became Rome's fourth Emperor, on the death of Caligula). Germanicus was a first-rate general who had the loyalty of the legions. In spite of this he did not challenge Tiberius for the throne. As a reward, he was poisoned by Piso—an act which Tiberius may not have incited, but which he certainly enjoyed. Germanicus' sister Livilla, in turn, poisoned Tiberius' son, Drusus Junior.

Julia
. Julia was the daughter of Augustus, his only child. She married Marcellus, her cousin, who died young; then Agrippa (by whom she had five children who lived to maturity); then Tiberius, by whom she had one child who died in infancy; Tiberius fled to Rhodes before they could have more. One of her daughters was Julia the Younger (Julilla), who, like her mother, was ultimately exiled by Augustus for immorality.

Livia
. (Livia Drusilla; later Augusta.) As the wife of Tiberius Claudius Nero, she bore one son—Tiberius—and conceived another—Drusus—who was not born until after she had divorced her first husband and married Augustus. Her marriage with Augustus lasted half a century, ending only with his death. She was Augustus' equal partner in most of the affairs of Empire, though operating behind the scenes; and the Senate, recognizing her importance, voted her the title Augusta by which she is sometimes known.

Tiberius
. (Tiberius Claudius Nero Minor; later Tiberius Caesar.) Born November 26, 42
b
.C.;
died March 15, 37
a.d
. He was the third Roman to hold supreme imperial power and the first to show to what depths such power could descend.

About This Book

It would be possible to write a quite different story of Tiberius by a change in the selection of sources. The one important source written by a contemporary of Tiberius, for example, is the history by Velleius Paterculus. It shows nothing of Tiberius the Monster. It calls even Sejanus
"a
most excellent coadjutor in all the toils of government
...
a
man of pleasing gravity, and of unaffected cheerfulness . . . assuming nothing to himself."

This is preposterous. To understand Velleius Paterculus it must be remembered that he lived and wrote at the very pinnacle of Sejanus' power; every word he dictated was spoken with the knowledge that the slave who wrote it down was quite capable of betraying him to the tyrant. What Velleius Paterculus wrote was untrue and he knew it.

For the present work the author has relied most heavily on two ancient writers, Tacitus and Suetonius. It may be that they are not altogether reliable. Some of their data have been shown to be errors; some, it is said, may be malicious lies. We know that Tacitus wrote a full century after Tiberius came to the throne and Suetonius even later; both have been called slanderers and gossips; it has even been said that both Tacitus and Suetonius wrote as they did for political purposes, to curry favor, or stir up opinion. Will Durant, for example, thinks Tiberius a wronged emperor; as Durant puts it, "Almost every misfortune had come to him during his life; and after his death he fell upon the pen of Tacitus."

Yet what these men have to say cannot be dismissed. They had access to sources which have long been lost to other historians; Suetonius particularly, as private secretary to
a
later emperor, had the use of all manner of secret state documents; they had the private diaries of Livia (now lost), the correspondence of both Augustus and Tiberius (only a few scraps now remain), and most of all they had the host of inscriptions, the records of punishments and lawsuits, the family memories of how one grandfather had died or another been rewarded. Nothing of this remains. Wha
t few fragments survive do sup
port the picture given us by these two writers. Tiberius certainly was a monster. Durant, defending him, concedes the rape and execution
of Sejanus' little daughter, th
e banishment of Agrippina, the persecutions on the charge of
lese-majeste.
"Probably his mind was disordered," Durant says charitably; but this is an excuse, not a denial.

For Tacitus, the translation employed in the present work is that by Alfred John Church and William Jackson Brodribb, published by The Modern Library in New York. For Suetonius, several translations have been consulted, but by all odds the most literate, and the one which serves as a source for all the quotations from Suetonius employed in the present work, is that by Robert Graves, published by Penguin Books, Inc., under the title
The Twelve Caesars.
Those whose interest in the period of the early Empire has been quickened by the present book can do no better than to secure
The Twelve Caesars.
(The prolific Robert Graves has also produced three fascinating novels of the same period,
King Jesus, Claudius the God
and
I
,
Claudius.)

Other ancient sources on which the author has drawn are Plutarch, Juvenal, Seneca, both the Elder and the Younger Pliny, Macrobius, Flavius Josephus, Dio Cassius, Strabo, Petroniu
s Arbiter, the aforementioned Ve
lleius Paterculus and the autobiography of Augustus himself. Augustus' autobiography is based on a Latin reconstruction of the fragmentary inscriptions made by Professor T. Mommsen, translated for the Grolier Society and published in
The Book
of
Literature,
Volume 6. The other authors are available in many translations. The Juvenal used was John Dryden's classic verse translation. A particularly useful Younger Pliny is Volume 9 of The Harvard Classics,
Letters and Treatises
of
Cicero and Pliny,
wh
ere the footnotes provide a wealt
h of background material. Much the same can be said of the translations of Ovid and Catullus used by the author of the present work; here the source is
Three Roman Poets: Plautus, Catullus, Ovid,
by F. A. Wright. Wright's supplementary studies are worth more than the translations themselves—particularly his clear description of Roman marriage and related customs. But the translations are excellent in their own right.

Of the modern writers whose books have been examined in preparing this one, Will Durant is the one who can most surely be recommended to the lay reader. His
Caesar and Christ
is so persuasive in its conjectures and so imposing
in its
marshalling of facts that the present writer, at least, found
it
hard to resist some of his conclusions. Those who read for enjoyment need not try. What is most astonishing about Will Durant is that the seventy-odd years covered in the present volume form but a tiny fraction of the centuries he writes of in
Caesar and Christ;
and that, brilliant and informed as that book is, it is only one of several volumes in what
is, in
fact, a history of all civilization everywhere.

Almost as commendable as Durant is E. T. Salmon's
A History of the Roman World
(published by Methuen
in
London), of which Volume 6, covering the period 30
b.c.
to 138
a.d.,
includes most o f the lives of Tiberius and Augustus. The present writer's understanding of
the
nature of Roman offices and the relationship of Roman classes, as well as much miscellaneous information, derives from
this
book.

A more specialized work, but indispensable, is Gugliermo Ferrero's
The Women of the Caesars.
This life of Tiberius would be a radically different and lesser book without Ferrero's informative material and persuasive suggestions—not all of which, however, have been followed.

John Buchan's
Augustus
is an exact and rewarding
biog
raphy of Tiberius' predecessor. Agnes Repplier's essay
on
Horace (found in her book,
Eight Decades),
Homer W. Smith's
Man and His Gods,
Crawford's
Ave Roma Immor
talis,
Lady Magnus'
Outlines of Jew
ish History,
Margolis and Marx's
A History of the Jewish People,
Theodor H. Gaster
's
New Year,
Mark
Graubard
's
Astrology and Alchemy: Two Fossil Sciences,
and a number of encyclopedia entries in
the
Americana, the Britannica, and the Funk & Wagnalls volumes have contributed specialized sidelights. The descriptions of Roman scenes, when not from the above sources, were mainly from periodical accounts of archeological excavations, supplemented by the author's own notes made in Rome, Pompeii, and elsewhere.

Finally there in one volume which is devoted entirely
to
Tiberius
himself. That is Gregorio Marano
n
's
Tiberio: Historia de un resentimiento,
which since
the
present author
com
pleted his first draft of this work
has become available in