TIBERIUS tī bĭr’ ĭ əs (Τιβέριος, G5501). Tiberius Claudius Caesar Augustus, second emperor of Rome, and ruler at the time of Christ’s ministry, was born in 42 b.c., the son of Tiberius Claudius Nero and Livia. Livia, shortly to become the mother of a second son, Drusus, was divorced in 38 b.c. in order to marry Octavian, the future Emperor Augustus. Augustus’ lack of an heir, and his tragic frustrations in his search for a competent successor, are outlined in the opening chapters of Tacitus’ Annals. His stepson Tiberius was groomed for this role with a strange reluctance on Augustus’ part, which lacks a full explanation, for he was not potentially an unworthy choice. He was a brilliant military commander, and from 12 to 6 b.c., contributed effectively to Augustus’ long program of stabilizing the frontiers. On the difficult Rhine and Danube frontiers he successfully established security (Cambridge Ancient History 10, 12 describes these constructive campaigns).

That Tiberius was still sole heir in Augustus’ mind in 11 b.c. is shown by the fact that Augustus compelled Tiberius in that year to divorce Vipsania Agrippina, whom he loved, and marry Julia, the twice widowed daughter of Augustus. The marriage proved unhappy, and Julia was banished for adultery in 2 b.c. Four years before that date, at the conclusion of his northern campaigns, Tiberius suddenly retired to Rhodes. Stress with Julia, and Augustus’ obvious intention at this time to train Julia’s two sons, by her second husband Agrippa, as his successors, may have occasioned this act of withdrawal. He returned to Rome in a.d. 2. In a.d. 4, both Gaius and Lucius, Julia’s sons, having died untimely deaths, Augustus was forced to recognize Tiberius as his heir. He was given “tribunician power,” one of the devices by which Augustus maintained the fiction of republican rule, as a mark of this recognition. Augustus also adopted Tiberius as his son, forcing him to adopt in the same way his nephew Germanicus. On adoption Tiberius received “proconsular authority,” another astute constitutional device by which Augustus retained republican form, and disguised his real autocracy.

Augustus died in August a.d. 14, and, in virtue of his “proconsular authority,” Tiberius was able to step smoothly into his place. He was proclaimed Augustus’ successor in the following month, and reigned for twenty-three years. He died in March, 37. Controversy has surrounded his principate. Following Augustus’ behest to hold the empire firmly within its existing lines (Tac. Ann. I. 11), Tiberius abandoned the hope of thrusting the Ger. frontier to the Elbe. He gave his attention to consolidation. This austere and cautious policy earned the wrath of the opposition, and there were still many in the senatorial class who had not accepted the coming of the veiled autocracy of the principate. Tiberius himself, soured by long years of rejection and unhappy home circumstances, exerted himself little to win popularity. He was a morose man, obsessed by fears of treachery. This accounts for the spate of trials for treason which marred his reign (Tac. Ann. I. 72, 73; IV. 6). It was an abuse of a facet of Rom. law that was imitated toward the end of the cent. by Domitian, an admirer of Tiberius. Tacitus, the great historian, himself a member of the senatorial aristocracy, endured Domitian’s principate, and used his mordant style to cleverly denigrate Tiberius who, in his view had shown the later emperor the way to tyranny. Seianus, prefect of the household troops in Rome, was also to blame for some of the evils of Tiberius’ generation. It is characteristic of the pathologically suspicious that they will sometimes too readily trust the untrustworthy. Seianus plotted to replace Tiberius, but was cleverly struck down by the old emperor from his retirement on Capri. The news of Tiberius’ death was welcomed in Rome. The aristocracy hated him for the treason trials, the proletariat for his austerity and contempt for games. Modern scholarship has gone far to rehabilitate Tiberius, but admits the possibility of some mental decay in his declining years.

Bibliography F. B. Marsh, The Reign of Tiberius (1931); CAH, X. xix. (M. P. Charles-worth) (1934).