Tiberius Tiberius Caesar Augustus, born Tiberius Claudius Nero (November 16, 42 BC – March 16 AD 37), was the second Roman Emperor, from the death of Augustus in AD 14 until his own death in 37. Tiberius was by birth a Claudian, son of Tiberius Nero and Livia. His mother divorced his father and remarried to Augustus in 39 BC. Tiberius would later marry Augustus' daughter (from an earlier marriage) and even later be adopted by Augustus and by this act he became a Julian. The subsequent emperors after Tiberius would continue this blended dynasty of both families for the next forty years; historians have named it the Julio-Claudian dynasty. Tiberius deserves recognition as one of Rome’s greatest generals, whose campaigns in Pannonia, Illyricum, Rhaetia and Germany laid the foundations for the northern frontier. But he came to be remembered as a dark, reclusive, and sombre ruler (tristissimus hominum – ‘the gloomiest of men’, by one account), who never really desired to be Emperor. After the death of Tiberius’ son Drusus in AD 23, the quality of his rule declined, and ended in a Terror. In AD 26 Tiberius exiled himself from Rome and left administration largely in the hands of his unscrupulous Praetorian Prefects Lucius Aelius Sejanus and Quintus Naevius Macro. Caligula, Tiberius’ adopted grandson, succeeded the Emperor on his demise. 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 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. In 16 BC he discovered the sources of the Danube, and soon afterwards the bend of the middle course. 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, who was also Augustus' daughter. The union was not a happy one and produced one child who died as an infant (see Suetonius, "Tiberius"). Tiberius had been happily married to Vipsania and, following an embarrassing display in public, care was taken that their paths should never again cross. 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 Tiberius himself confounded everyone's calculations. Retirement to Rhodes 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. The motives for Tiberius's withdrawal are unclear, but they are likely to have been connected with Augustus’s grandchildren Gaius and Lucius, whom Augustus had, in the absence of sons of his own, adopted. They, and not Tiberius, would preserve Augustus’s line. When they became of age, Tiberius would be superfluous, even a hindrance. Hence the commission in the East, a pretext to remove Tiberius from Rome, while Gaius and Lucius would be further promoted. Doubtless, the flagrant behaviour of Julia also played a role (Tacitus calls it Tiberius's intima causa, his innermost reason for departing for Rhodes). As the daughter of Augustus and the mother of prospective emperors, she believed that her future was assured. Tiberius found himself in the predicament of being married to a woman who disdained him as an unequal match, and whom he could not divorce. But whatever Tiberius's motives, the move was not only a snub to Augustus, 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 would have descended into anarchy. 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 Suetonius, he was expecting a ship bearing the order for his death. When the ship arrived in 2, however, it brought quite different tidings. Heir to Augustus Tragedy worked for the benefit of Tiberius. In 2, 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 to 14 Tiberius was clearly Augustus’s successor. When he was adopted, he also received grants of proconsular power and tribunician power; and in 13 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, 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 Emperor Tiberius enamelled terracotta bust at the Victoria and Albert Museum, 19th century.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. However, this too caused confusion, as Augustus had bestowed almost all of the imperial titles and powers on Tiberius, save for auctoritas, Augustus, Pater Patriae, and the Civic Crown (a crown made from laurel and oak, in honor of Augustus having saved the Roman state). 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 and Suetonius, he refused to bear the titles Pater Patriae, Imperator, and Augustus, and declined the most solid emblem on the Princeps, the Civic Crown. 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, and that they had not received bonuses promised to them by Augustus. At that time, troops were paid from the Imperial treasury, as well as being allowed to supplement this income with a share of the captured booty from campaigns; however, Augustus had suspended military campaigns outside of Roman territory, and in his will had left instructions behind that the Empire was to expand no more. The generals Germanicus (a Claudian adopted by Augustus into the Julian line, and thought by many to have been his preferred heir over Tiberius) and Tiberius's son, Drusus, were dispatched with a small force to quell the uprising. Rather than simply quell the mutiny however, Germanicus rallied the mutineers and lead them on a short campaign across the Rhine into Germanic territory, stating that whatever booty they could grab would count as their bonus. Germanicus's forces smashed across the Rhine and quickly occupied all of the territory between the Rhine and the Elbe. Additionally, Tacitus records the capture of the Teutoburg forest and the reclaiming of standards lost years before when four Roman legions had been ambushed by a band of Germans. 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. After being recalled from Germania, Germanicus celebrated a triumph in Rome in 17. While legally speaking, Germanicus had disobeyed orders from both Tiberius and Augustus, and the Roman Emperor was the only one technically allowed to receive a Triumph, the popularity that Germanicus received from his exploits across the Rhine and from retreiving the lost standards was more than Tiberius, as a new and comparatively less popular Emperor, could possibly hope to compete with. In the same year, Germanicus was granted imperium maius over the East and, in 18, after being consul with Tiberius as his colleague, he was sent East, just as Tiberius himself had been almost four decades earlier, clearly indicating that Germanicus was to be considered the heir to Tiberius. The elevation of Germanicus was perhaps nothing more than a show to placate the Roman populace and remove Germanicus from Rome; Germanicus died in 19 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, a Claudian, to replace him as the Imperial successor. Relations with Germanicus’s family (mostly Julians) 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 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. 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 or 18. 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 Tacitus, 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 poisoned 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. 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, but later put it about that he had withdrawn his objections so that, in 30, the betrothal went ahead. The Prefect's family connection to the Imperial house was now imminent. In 31 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 have become fully associated with the Emperor and his "heir", such as he could be under the Principate. Instead, however, Tiberius' letter to the Senate completely unexpectedly requested the destruction of Sejanus and his faction. A bloody purge then erupted in Rome, most of Sejanus' family and followers sharing his fate. Among the innocent victims of the purge were Sejanus' young children. Upon learning of their deaths, Sejanus' former wife Apicata committed suicide (October 26), but not before addressing a letter to Tiberius claiming that Drusus had been poisoned, with the complicity of Livilla. Drusus’ cupbearer Lygdus and Livilla's physician Eudemus were now tortured, and seemed to confirm Apicata’s allegation. Livilla too perished, whether by execution or suicide. 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. Upon closer inspection of the purges of both Tiberius and of Sejanus, another possible explanation surfaces. The Senators and individuals persecuted by Tiberius, including Sejanus himself, were all either supporters or prominent members of the Julian line. Whether substantiated or not, Tiberius seems to have been reacting to a movement to have him, as a Claudian, overthrown and replaced by a member of the more popular and more powerful Julian line, specifically a relative of Germanicus. Whether the conspiracy theory is true or not, the purges had a profound affect on the politics of Rome. Senators who had been supporters of a Julian emperor were also the Senators who were most in support of the Princeps and the system of the Principate in general. Tiberius's inactivity seems to have been part of a plan to force the Senate to take up some of its former powers and responsibilities lost to the Princeps under Augustus. Thus, at the end of the reign of Tiberius, the Senate was comprised of individuals who were unsupportive of the Julii in particular and the Principate in general. See Caligula for further analysis. Final Years The Sejanus affair appears to have greatly depressed Tiberius, even to the point of undermining his reason. 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 , 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. Similarly, the "Tribute Penny" referred to in Matthew 22:19 and Mark 12:15 is popularly thought to be a silver denarius coin of Tiberius, although this association, like others, has been based only on the emperor's reign coinciding with the ministry of Jesus, since the title of Caesar on coinage was very ambiguous at the time. 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), The Robe (played by Ernest Thesiger), and I, Claudius (played by George Baker).