by Suetonius
Augustus clearly had reservations about his stepson. A consummate aristocrat, Tiberius was a capable general but he loathed the day-to-day politics of Rome. He had little time for the religious festivals or games of the city. He spent almost nothing on public buildings. Though a handsome man with broad shoulders and chest, he was constantly frowning and spoke only reluctantly and with great severity. “Let them hate me, so long as they accept!” Suetonius quotes him as saying.
Frustrated by the duties Augustus piled on him, years before his adoption he had sailed off to the isle of Rhodes in a huff. His retreat to Capri in A.D. 26 may similarly have been the result of what he saw as an unbearable situation. But according to Suetonius, what the secluded island really offered Tiberius was the chance to give free rein to the vices that he had long—and not entirely successfully—concealed. This biography is a warning of how immense power can draw out the very worst qualities in a human being.
38. For two whole years after he became emperor, he did not set foot outside the city gates. After that, he never was gone except for trips to nearby towns—Antium being the farthest—and this was quite rare and only for a few days. Yet often he announced that he would go back to see the provinces and the armies and nearly every year he prepared an expedition, obtaining vehicles, arranging provisions in the towns and colonies, finally allowing prayers to be made for his departure and return. As a result, people jokingly called him Callippides, a man known from a Greek proverb for running around a lot yet not advancing much more than a foot.
39. But after having lost both of his sons—Germanicus died in Syria, Drusus in Rome—he sought refuge in Campania.1 Almost everyone kept thinking and saying that he never would return and that he even would die soon. Both things pretty nearly came true: he did not return to Rome again, and just a few days after he left, near Tarracina, in a residence known as “The Cave,” a number of large rocks accidently fell from above as he was dining. Though many of the guests and servers were struck, he unexpectedly escaped.
40. He traveled through Campania and, once he had dedicated the Capitolium at Capua and the Temple of Augustus at Nola—the stated reason for the journey—he went to Capri. He took particular pleasure in the island because it was approached by a single, small shore and was protected on all sides by precipitous rocks of immense height and by deep water. But the people at once asked him to come back, continually begging because of the disaster at Fidenae in which over 20,000 men died in the collapse of an amphitheater during a gladiatorial show. He crossed over to the mainland and granted everyone the opportunity to see him. People were all the more amazed because, upon leaving the city, he had decreed that nobody should disturb him and, during his whole journey, he had cleared from his path everyone coming to see him.
41. Returning to the island, he gave up his concern for public affairs. He never afterward brought to full strength the equestrian jury pools; he did not replace any of the tribunes of the soldiers, the prefects, or the provincial governors; he left Spain and Syria for a number of years without consular governors; he let Armenia be overrun by the Parthians, Moesia laid waste by the Dacians and Sarmatians, the Gallic provinces by the Germans. The dishonor to the empire was as great as the danger.
42. Moreover, now that he had gained the freedom offered by seclusion, it was as if the public had turned their eyes away. He at once gave free rein to all of the vices that he had badly concealed for so long. I will go through these one by one from the beginning.
When still a newly recruited soldier in camp, because of his excessive fondness for wine he was called “Biberius” instead of Tiberius, “Caldius” instead of Claudius, and “Mero” instead of Nero.2 Later, as emperor, right in the midst of his efforts to improve public morals he spent a night and two whole days feasting and drinking with Pomponius Flaccus and Lucius Piso. He immediately afterward gave one of them the province of Syria, the other the prefecture of Rome, and even stated in his letters of appointment that these men were the best company, fit for all occasions.
(2) Then there was Cestius Gallus, a lecherous and wasteful old man, once censured by Augustus. Tiberius, after reproaching him in the Senate, a few days later agreed to have dinner with him on this condition: Cestius should not change or omit any of his usual practices, and at the dinner they should be served by naked girls.
Tiberius favored a completely obscure candidate for the quaestorship over men of the noblest families because, when Tiberius proposed a drinking challenge at a dinner, the man drained an amphora of wine. He gave 200,000 sesterces to Asellius Sabinus, in recognition of a dialogue that staged a contest between a mushroom, a fig-pecker, an oyster, and a thrush.3 Finally, he created the new office of minister of pleasures and put the equestrian Titus Caesonius Priscus in charge.
43. In the seclusion of Capri he also devised “privies,” a place for his secret desires. Bands of female and male prostitutes and the originators of unnatural intercourse whom he called “squeezers” joined up in threes and took turns debauching themselves in front of him, to arouse his flagging appetite for sex.
(2) He decorated his bedrooms with a wide arrangement of paintings and statuettes showing the most risqué scenes and subjects. He also equipped them with the books of Elephantis so that when a service was offered, an illustration of the required position would be available.4 In addition, he contrived “spots for Venus” throughout the woods and glades and had boys and girls, dressed up as satyrs and nymphs, working as prostitutes in caves and grottoes. People openly referred to it all as “the Old Goat’s Home,” playing on the name of the island.5
44. Tiberius acquired greater and more shameful notoriety yet for something that can barely be mentioned or heard mentioned, much less believed. While he swam, he had boys of a tender young age—he called them “fishies”—pass between his thighs and make a game of going after him with licks and bites. He also took babies who were somewhat grown but still weaning and placed them to his groin as if it were a breast: this form of gratification suited him better because of both his natural inclinations and his age. (2) For the same reason, when a painting by Parrasius that showed Atalanta orally gratifying Meleager was bequeathed to Tiberius on condition that if he were offended by the subject he could take 1,000,000 sesterces instead, not only did he prefer the painting, he put it on display in his bedroom.
It is even reported that once when he was sacrificing, he was so taken by the appearance of the attendant carrying the incense box that he could not stop himself, the moment the ceremony was over, from leading the boy off and raping him, along with his brother, a flute-player. Later, when they jointly reproached him for this appalling deed, he broke their legs.
45. He took great pleasure in oral sex with women, and respectable women at that, as was clearly shown by the death of a certain Mallonia. Summoned to his bed, she resolutely refused to endure anything more and so he turned her over to the informers. Even during her trial, he would not stop interrupting her and kept asking if she really had any regrets, until finally she left the court, ran home, and stabbed herself, loudly reproaching the hairy and stinky old man for his foul mouth. This gave rise to a line in an Atellane farce at the next games that got lots of applause and became widely known: “The little old he-goat licks the she-goats’ parts.”
46. He spent little and was tightfisted. To the men who accompanied him on his foreign tours or military campaigns he never gave a salary, only food. Just once did he show generosity—and then it was through the gift of his stepfather Augustus. He created three classes based on each man’s rank, and gave to the first 600,000 sesterces; to the second 300,000; and to the third, which he called not his friends but the Greeks, 200,000.
47. As emperor, he did not build any structures of splendor. The only ones that he did undertake—a temple of Augustus and a restoration of the Theater of Pompey—he left unfinished after many years. Nor did he put on any shows, and those that were put on by somebody else he rarely attended so that nothing would be demanded
of him—especially after he had been forced to manumit the comic actor Actius.
Having provided assistance to a few senators who lacked means, to avoid having to furnish aid to more, he refused to help others unless they demonstrated to the Senate good reasons for their hardship. Thus, through their sense of dignity and shame, he stopped most from asking, including Hortalus, grandson of the orator Quintus Hortensius, who though of very limited means had raised four children at the urging of Augustus.
48. Just twice did he show generosity to the people, once when he offered a loan for the sum of 100,000,000 sesterces for three years without interest, and a second time when he reimbursed some owners of apartments that had burned down on the Caelian Hill. The first of these acts was forced on him by the people’s demand for help during a currency crisis. Tiberius had prescribed through a decree of the Senate that moneylenders invest two-thirds of their holdings in land and debtors pay at once the same amount of debt—but this did not resolve the problem. The second act was to relieve temporary misery, yet he so valued his generosity here that he ordered the Caelian Hill to have its name changed to the Augustan Hill.
(2) To the army, after doubling the bequests Augustus left in his will, Tiberius never showed generosity. The only exceptions were the 4,000 sesterces he paid to each of the praetorians, because they had not lent their support to Sejanus, and certain gifts to the Syrian legions, because they alone had not worshipped the statue of Sejanus among their standards.6 Moreover, he discharged veterans extremely rarely, seeking their death from old age, and savings from their death. The provinces received no financial support from him, except for Asia, after its cities were destroyed by an earthquake.
49. Then, as time wore on, he turned to forcible expropriations. The following is widely agreed upon. Gnaeus Lentulus the augur, who had a very large fortune, was driven by Tiberius through fear and apprehension to take his life and leave the emperor as his sole heir. Lepida, a woman of noble birth, was condemned to please Quirinus, an exceedingly rich ex-consul without children who divorced her and then, twenty years later, accused her of once trying to poison him. (2) Leading men of the Gauls, the Spains, Syria, and Greece had their fortunes confiscated on a flimsy and shameless set of charges; against some the accusation was nothing more than that they held part of their wealth in cash. Many communities and individuals were deprived of old exemptions and the right of mining and of collecting duties. The Parthian king Vonones, driven out by his people and thinking he had Rome’s protection, took refuge in Antioch with a great treasure and was treacherously robbed and killed.
50. Tiberius showed his hatred for family members first with his brother Drusus, disclosing a letter in which Drusus pleaded with him to force Augustus to restore freedom. Then came the others. To his wife Julia, after her exile, he was so opposed to showing any kindness or affection—the least one might expect—that he forbade her, already confined to one town by decree of her father, to leave her house or enjoy any human company. He also deprived her of the property her father let her have and her yearly allowance—on a legal pretext, namely that Augustus had made no provision about these matters in his will.
(2) Annoyed with his mother Livia for demanding a share in power equal to his, he avoided regular contact with her as well as lengthy and private conversations. He did not want to seem controlled by her views—on which, nevertheless, every now and then he did rely. He also was highly indignant when the Senate moved that, in addition to the “son of Augustus” he be named “the son of Livia” in inscriptions. (3) For this reason, he would not allow her to be called “Parent of Her Country” or to receive publicly any special honor. He also frequently warned her to stay out of important matters that did not concern a woman, especially after he noticed that at a fire by the Temple of Vesta she had personally stepped in and urged the people and the soldiers to help more vigorously (she had been in habit of doing this under Augustus).
51. Afterward he reached the point of actual enmity toward her, for the following reason they say. When she kept pressing him to appoint a man who had not been born a citizen to the equestrian jury pools, he said he would make the appointment only if he were allowed to have it entered in the album that his had been extorted from him by his mother. Enraged, she took out of the shrine where they were kept some old letters from Augustus to her about Tiberius’ nastiness and insufferable character and she read them aloud. He was so upset that these had been kept so long and were used against him in such a hostile way that some people think that, among the causes for his retirement, this was the most important one. (2) Certainly during the three whole years in which he was gone from Rome while his mother still lived, he saw her only once, and it was for no more than a couple of hours on a single day. And then, when she was ill, he did not arrange to be there. After she died, there was a delay for several days while he held out hope that he was coming, until finally, her body decomposing and rotting, she was buried. He kept her from being deified, claiming that this was in keeping with her instructions. At the same time, he considered her will null and void and within a short time brought ruin upon all of her friends and companions, even those she had asked on her deathbed to arrange her funeral. One of them, a man of the equestrian order, was even condemned to the treadmill.
52. He loved neither his natural son Drusus nor his adopted son Germanicus with a father’s affection, hating the virtues of the one, the faults of the other (for Drusus’ lifestyle was rather loose and relaxed). And so, even when Drusus died, Tiberius was not particularly affected but went back to his ordinary routine almost as soon as the funeral ended. A longer period of mourning was forbidden. (2) Even when envoys from Troy came a little later offering condolences, he smiled, as if the memory of his grief were already gone, and replied that he grieved on their account too, because they had lost their distinguished fellow citizen Hector.
He maliciously criticized Germanicus, dismissing his splendid deeds as a waste of time and attacking his glorious victories as harmful to the state. Furthermore, he complained in the Senate that Germanicus had gone to Alexandria because of a sudden, massive food shortage without consulting him. (3) Tiberius is even believed to have caused Germanicus’ death, acting through Gnaeus Piso, the governor of Syria. Some believe that Piso, on trial for the crime, was going to produce these orders—except that when he secretly showed them, Tiberius took them away and arranged for him to be killed. This is why “Bring back Germanicus!” was written up everywhere and shouted out constantly during the night. Tiberius himself added to the suspicion when, afterward, he cruelly brought down the wife and children of Germanicus too.
53. When his daughter-in-law Agrippina was a little too outspoken in her complaints after the death of her husband, he grabbed her by the hand and quoted the Greek verse: “Dear child, if you don’t rule, do you think you’ve been wronged?” After that, he did not even deign to speak to her. Indeed, after he once offered her an apple at dinner and she dared not taste it, he stopped inviting her to meals, pretending that he was being accused of poisoning her. In fact, the situation had been deliberately set up—his offering the apple as a test and her refusing it on the grounds that it was sure to kill her. (2) He ultimately accused her of planning to take refuge, first at a statue of Augustus, then with the armies, and he banished her to Pandataria. When she hurled abuse at him, he had a centurion flog her and one of her eyes gouged out. When she resolved to starve herself to death, he had her mouth pried open violently and ordered food to be crammed in. And when she persisted and died as a result, he railed on about her, urging that her birthday should be counted as one of the unholy days. He even considered it to his credit that he had not strangled her with a rope and thrown her to the Steps of Mourning. In recognition of such an act of clemency, he allowed a decree to be passed that thanked him and dedicated a gift of gold to Capitoline Jupiter.
54. Even when deprived of his two sons, he had three grandsons from Germanicus, named Nero, Drusus, and Gaius; and one from Drusus, name
d Tiberius. He recommended the eldest boys of Germanicus, Nero and Drusus, to the Senators and celebrated their coming-of-age ceremonies with a gift to the people. But when he found out, at the start of the new year, that vows had been undertaken publicly for their wellbeing, in addition to his, he pleaded with the Senate that such benefits ought only to be extended to men who were experienced and older. (2) With his inner feelings fully exposed from that time on, he left the boys open to accusations from all sides and, by a variety of tricks, caused them to attack him and so to betray themselves. Tiberius accused them in a letter in which he heaped up the insults, and after both were judged public enemies, he starved them to death, Nero on the island of Pontia, Drusus in the lowest part of the Palatine. It is thought that Nero was driven to suicide when an executioner, pretending to have come by authority of the Senate, presented him with nooses and hooks, while Drusus had his food reduced so much that he tried to eat the stuffing of a cushion. The remains of both were so scattered that only with difficulty could they be gathered.7
55. In addition to his old friends and close associates, he had demanded that twenty leading members of the state serve as his advisors on public affairs. Out of the whole group, he hardly left two or three unscathed and the rest he destroyed for one reason or another, including Aelius Sejanus, who fell with a great many others. Tiberius had raised this man to the height of power not so much out of warm feelings as to have his services and wiles to do away with the children of Germanicus and secure the succession for Tiberius’ own natural grandson, the son of his son Drusus.
56. He showed no more mercy to his Greek companions, upon whom he lavished much attention. A certain Xeno was holding forth in rather precious language and was asked by Tiberius what that painful dialect was. “Doric,” he answered, and Tiberius banished him to Cinara, believing that this was a criticism of his earlier retirement, since on Rhodes they speak Doric.8 Tiberius was in the habit, too, of posing questions over dinner derived from his day’s reading. Seleucus, a grammarian, had been grilling Tiberius’ attendants on which authors the emperor was working on and so came prepared; upon finding this out, Tiberius first banished him from his circle and then also drove him to death.