Julio César Tiberio

Tiberius Claudius Nero

Segundo emperador de Roma (14-37d.C)

Nació en el 16 de noviembre del 42 a.C en Roma. Hijo mayor de Livia Drusilla y del pontífice
Tiberio Claudio Nerón.

Cuando tenía cuatro años su madre se casó de segundas nupcias con el triunviro Octavio, más
tarde el emperador Augusto.

Mandó una expedición a Armenia en el 20a.C., y luchó contra los retios y los panonios (12-9 a.C.).
En el 11 a.C., siguiendo órdenes de su padrastro, disolvió su matrimonio con Vipsania Agripina,
hija del general romano Marco Vipsanio Agripa, y se casó con la hija de Augusto, Julia, viuda de
Agripa. En el 2 d.C., Julia estaba desterrada por adulterio, y Augusto tras la muerte de sus dos
nietos, Lucio y Cayo, se vio obligado a reconocer a Tiberio como único sucesor al título imperial y a
adoptarle oficialmente en el 4 d.C.

Ese mismo año partió para dirigir una expedición en el norte de Germania contra los marcomanos.
Acompañado de Julio César Germánico, su sobrino e hijo adoptivo, realizó otras dos marchas a
Germania. Tras la muerte de Augusto en Nola, cerca de Nápoles, en el 14 d.C., heredó el trono.

Mejoró los servicios civiles y ejerció un mayor control sobre los gobernadores de las provincias. Sin
embargo, estallaron sublevaciones y revueltas en Panonia, Germania, Galia, y otros territorios. La
última época de su reinado estuvo marcada por las conspiraciones y las ejecuciones. Durante su
reinado se crucificó a Jesucristo. En el 26 d.C. dejó Roma. Se dio cuenta de que Sejano intentaba
hacerse con el poder imperial, por lo que mandó ejecutarle junto con sus partidarios en el 31.
Continuó viviendo en Capri hasta el 37. Tiberio murió el 16 de marzo del 37, en Misena, cerca de
Nápoles.

Biography

Tiberius, in full Tiberius Caesar Augustus or Tiberius Julius Caesar Augustus, original name
Tiberius Claudius Nero, (born November 16, 42 BCE—died March 16, 37 CE, Capreae [Capri], near
Naples), second Roman emperor (14–37 CE), the adopted son of Augustus, whose imperial
institutions and imperial boundaries he sought to preserve. In his last years he became a tyrannical
recluse, inflicting a reign of terror against the major personages of Rome.

Background And Youth

Tiberius’s father, also named Tiberius Claudius Nero, a high priest and magistrate, was a former
fleet captain for Julius Caesar. His mother, the beautiful Livia Drusilla, was her husband’s cousin
and may have been only 13 years old when Tiberius was born. In the civil wars following the
assassination of Julius Caesar, the elder Tiberius gave his allegiance to Mark Antony, Caesar’s
protégé. When Augustus, Caesar’s grandnephew and heir, fell out with Antony and defeated him in
the ensuing power struggle, the elder Tiberius and his family became fugitives. They fled first to
Sicily and then to Greece, but by the time Tiberius was three years old an amnesty was granted and
the family was able to return to Rome.

In 39 BCE Augustus had the power, if not yet the title, of emperor. Attracted by the beauty of Livia,
who was at that time pregnant with a second son, Augustus divorced his own wife, who was also
pregnant, and, forcing the elder Tiberius to give up Livia, married her. The infant Tiberius remained
with his father, and, when the younger brother, Drusus, was born a few months later, he was sent to
join them. At the death of his father, Tiberius was nine years old, and, with Drusus, he went to live
with Livia and the emperor. The two boys and the emperor’s daughter, Julia, between them in age,
studied together, played together, and took part in the obligatory ceremonials of temple dedication
and celebration of victories. They were joined by their cousin Marcellus, the son of Augustus’s
sister, Octavia.

In the absence of a clear law designating Augustus’s successor as emperor, all three boys were
trained accordingly. They were instructed in rhetoric, literature, diplomacy, and military skills, and
soon they also began taking a ceremonial role in the affairs of state. As oldest, Tiberius was the first
to do so. In the triumph following Augustus’s victory over Cleopatra and Antony at Actium, the 13-
year-old Tiberius rode the right-hand horse of Augustus’s chariot in the procession. Though not a
striking figure, he conducted himself well.

Serious by nature, he had become a shy youth, though he was sometimes called sullen. His great
talent was application. With the best teachers in the empire at his disposal and, above all, as a
participant in life at the palace, the centre of the civilized Western world, he learned rapidly. By age
14 Tiberius was used to dining with kings of the empire, to conducting religious services over the
heads of powerful men five times his age, and even to seeing his own form in marble statues.

Years In The Shadow Of Augustus

Tiberius was not handsome. As a teenager, he was tall and broad-shouldered, but his complexion
was bad. His nose had a pronounced hook, but that was typically Roman. His manner was
disconcerting. He had a slow, methodical way of speaking that seemed intended to conceal his
meaning rather than make it plain. But he was diligent. He may not have known he would be
emperor, but he cannot have doubted that he would be at least a general at a rather early age and
thereafter a high official in the government of Rome. In 27 BCE, when Tiberius was 15 years old,
Augustus took him and Marcellus to Gaul to inspect outposts. They experienced no fighting, but
they learned a great deal about how to rule the marches, keep fortifications intact, and keep
garrisons alert. When they returned, Augustus gave Marcellus his daughter Julia as wife.

Then Tiberius himself married. Love matches were infrequent in imperial Rome, but Tiberius’s
marriage to Vipsania Agrippina was one. She was the daughter of Marcus Agrippa, Augustus’s son-
in-law and lieutenant. Besides his love for his wife—and for his brother, Drusus, now growing into
manhood—he was occupied with important work. His first military command, at age 22, resulting in
the recovery of standards of some Roman legions that had been lost decades before in Parthia,
brought him great acclaim. As a reward, he asked for another active command and was given the
assignment of pacifying the province of Pannonia on the Adriatic Sea. Tiberius not only conquered
the enemy but so distinguished himself by his care for his men that he found himself popular and
even loved. When he returned to Rome, he was awarded a triumph.

Tiberius’s happy years were coming to an end, however. His beloved brother, Drusus, broke his leg
in falling from a horse while campaigning in Germany. Tiberius was at Ticinum (Pavia)—on the Po
River, south of what is now Milan—400 miles away. He rode day and night to be with his brother
and arrived just in time to see Drusus die. Tiberius escorted the body back to Rome, walking in front
of it on foot all the way. He also had to give up his wife, Vipsania, the other person he loved.
Augustus’s daughter Julia had become a widow for the second time. Her first husband, Marcellus,
had died, and the emperor had married her to Agrippa (who, as Vipsania’s father, was Tiberius’s
father-in-law). When Agrippa died in 12 BCE, Augustus wanted her suitably married at once and
chose Tiberius as her third husband. Tiberius had no more choice than his father had had when
Augustus decided to marry Livia. Tiberius was as obedient as his father. He divorced Vipsania and
married Julia.

Tiberius’s new wife has come down in history with a reputation for licentiousness. It is not certain
how much of the reputation she deserved. Roman historians often dealt in gossip, inventing scandal
when there was none; but in Julia’s case they had good reason for their opinion. When Julia
married Tiberius, he was 30. She was 27, twice a widow, the mother of five children (not all
surviving). She was pretty and light-minded and liked the society of men. She did not get along with
her mother-in-law (who was also her stepmother), Livia, and after the first few months she tired of
Tiberius. It is certain that she committed adultery, and this presented Tiberius with an immense
problem, not only personal but also political. A law of Augustus himself required a husband to
denounce a wife who committed adultery. But Julia was the emperor’s beloved child, and, as
Augustus knew nothing of her vices, to denounce her would be to wound him, and that was
dangerous.

With no good course of action to follow, Tiberius asked for and received fighting commands away
from Rome. When once in Rome between battles, he chanced to see Vipsania at the home of a
friend. She had, at Augustus’s orders, been remarried to a senator. Tiberius was so overcome with
sorrow that he followed her through the streets, weeping. Augustus heard of it and ordered Tiberius
never to see her again. Although Augustus heaped honours on Tiberius, they did not compensate
for Julia’s behaviour. In 6 BCE Tiberius was granted the powers of a tribune and shortly thereafter
went into a self-imposed exile on the island of Rhodes, leaving Julia in Rome.

Tiberius was now 36 years old and at the pinnacle of his power. He was capable of ruling an
empire, conducting a great war, or governing a province of barbarians. In Rhodes he had nothing to
do, and all of his ability and strength appear to have turned inward, into strange and unpleasant
behaviour. Although the histories of Tiberius’s reign—written either by flatterers, like his old war
comrade Velleius Paterculus, or by enemies—are not wholly trustworthy, there can be no question
that a change took place in Tiberius at this time. What emerged was a man who seemed interested
only in his own satisfactions and the increasingly perverse ways to find them. On Rhodes Tiberius
became a recluse—unassuming and amiable at first, resentful and angry later on. Though Tiberius
had left Rome of his own free will, daring the emperor’s wrath, he could not return without
Augustus’s permission. Augustus withheld that permission for the better part of a decade.

Eventually, Livia secured proofs of Julia’s many adulteries and took them to Augustus, who was
furious. Under his own law she should have been executed, but he did not have the heart for that;
instead, he exiled her for life to the tiny island of Pandateria. But even then Tiberius was not
recalled. There were three young men whom the emperor appeared to favour as heirs, all sons of
Julia. One of them, Postumus, reportedly no more than a boor, fell into disfavour with Augustus and
was sent into exile with his mother. The other two, Lucius and Gaius, were clearly candidates to
succeed. But in 2 BCE Lucius died in Massilia (Marseille), and the emperor relented. He called
Tiberius back to Rome. By 4 CE Tiberius was in possession of all his honours again, and in that
year Gaius was killed in a war in Lycia. Tiberius had become the second man in Rome. Augustus
did not like him, but he adopted him as his son. He had no choice, and he was growing old. Tiberius
was the least objectionable successor left.

Tiberius became proud and powerful. His statues had been torn down and defaced while he was in
Rhodes. Now they were rebuilt. He was given command of an army to quell Arminius, who had
destroyed three Roman legions in Germany in 9 CE; he succeeded wholly. He was succeeding at
everything now, and in 14 CE, on August 19, Augustus died. Tiberius, now supreme, played politics
with the Senate and did not allow it to name him emperor for almost a month, but on September 17
he succeeded to the principate. He was 54 years old.

Tiberius

QUICK FACTS

Marble bust of Tiberius.

TITLE / OFFICE

Emperor, Roman Empire (14-37)

HOUSE / DYNASTY
Julio-Claudian dynasty

NOTABLE FAMILY MEMBERS

Spouse Julia

Mother Livia Drusilla

Brother Nero Claudius Drusus Germanicus

Reign As Emperor

Although the opening years of Tiberius’s reign seem almost a model of wise and temperate rule,
they were not without displays of force and violence, of a kind calculated to secure his power. The
one remaining possible contender for the throne, Postumus, was murdered, probably at Tiberius’s
orders. The only real threat to his power, the Roman Senate, was intimidated by the concentration
of the Praetorian Guard, normally dispersed all over Italy, within marching distance of Rome.

Apart from acts such as these, Tiberius’s laws and policies were both patient and far-seeing. He did
not attempt great new conquests. He did not move armies about or change governors of provinces
without reason. He stopped the waste of the imperial treasury, so that when he died he left behind
20 times the wealth he had inherited, and the power of Rome was never more secure. He
strengthened the Roman navy. He abandoned the practice of providing gladiatorial games. He
forbade some of the more outlandish forms of respect to his office, such as naming a month of the
calendar after him, as had been done for Julius Caesar and Augustus.

There were, to be sure, occasional wars and acts of savage repression. Tiberius’s legions put down
a provincial rebellion with considerable bloodshed. In Rome itself, on the pretext that four Jews had
conspired to steal a woman’s treasure, Tiberius exiled the entire Jewish community. The most
ominous and least defensible aspect of Tiberius’s first years as emperor was the growth of the
practice called “delation.” Most crimes committed by well-to-do citizens were, under Roman law,
punished in part by heavy fines and confiscations. These fines contributed in large part to the
growth of the imperial treasury, but the money did not all go to the fiscus. Because there were no
paid prosecutors, any citizen could act as a volunteer prosecutor, and, if the person he accused
was convicted, he could collect a share of the confiscated property. These volunteers, called
delatores, made a profitable career of seeking out or inventing crime. Many of the prosecutions
were based on rumour or falsified evidence, and there were few Romans who were so honoured or
so powerful that they did not need to fear the attack of the delatores on any suspicion, or on none at
all.

In 23 CE Tiberius’s son Drusus died. He had not been particularly loved by his father, but his death
saddened Tiberius. From then on he spared less and less thought to the work of empire. More and
more he delegated his authority in the actual running of affairs over to the man he had entrusted
with the important command of the Praetorian Guard, Sejanus. Before long Tiberius was emperor
only in name.

Ironically, the death of Drusus, the event that brought Sejanus to power, may have been Sejanus’s
own doing. Apparently Sejanus had seduced the wife of the younger Drusus, Livilla, and induced
her to become his accomplice in murdering her husband. The evidence is not absolute and has
been questioned by many historians, but it was not questioned by Tiberius. In 27 CE, at age 67,
Tiberius left Rome to visit some of the southern parts of Italy. En route he paused to go to the island
of Capri. His intention appears to have been only to stay for a time, but he never returned to Rome.
It is the remaining decade or so of Tiberius’s life that has given rise to the legend of Tiberius the
monster. It seems probable, to begin with, that Tiberius, never handsome, had become repulsively
ugly. First his skin broke out in blotches, and then his complexion became covered with pus-filled
eruptions, exuding a bad smell and causing a good deal of pain. He built himself a dozen villas
ringing Capri, with prisons, underground dungeons, torture chambers, and places of execution. He
filled his villas with treasure and art objects of every kind and with the enormous retinue appropriate
to a Caesar: servants, guards, entertainers, philosophers, astrologers, musicians, and seekers after
favour. If the near-contemporary historians are to be believed, his favourite entertainments were
cruel and obscene. Even under the most favourable interpretation, he killed ferociously and almost
at random. It is probable that by then his mind was disordered.

Tiberius had not, however, lost touch with the real world. He came to realize just how strong he had
made Sejanus and how weak he had left himself. In 31 CE he allowed himself to be elected consul
of Rome for a fifth time and chose Sejanus as his co-consul. He gave Sejanus permission to marry
Livilla, the widow of Tiberius’s son. Now Sejanus not only had the substance of power but its forms
as well. Golden statues were erected to him, and his birthday was declared a holiday. But Tiberius
had come to fear and mistrust him. With the aid of Macro, Sejanus’s successor as commander of
the Praetorians, Tiberius smuggled a letter to the Senate denouncing Sejanus and calling for his
execution. The Senate was shocked and taken aback by the swift change, but it complied instantly
—perhaps moved by the justice of Tiberius’s charges or by the strength of the Praetorian Guard.

Apparently Tiberius now reached a peak of denunciation and torture and execution that lasted for
the remaining six years of his life. In the course of this reign of terror his delatores and torturers
found evidence for him of the murder of his son, Drusus, by Livilla and Sejanus. Many great Roman
names were implicated, falsely or not, and while that inquisition lasted no one on Capri was safe.
Tiberius’s chief remaining concern for the empire was who would rule it when he was gone. There
were few living successors with any real claim, and Tiberius settled, as Augustus had done before
him, on the least offensive of an undesirable lot. His choice was Gaius Caesar, still a young boy and
known by the nickname the Roman legions had given him when he was a camp mascot, Caligula,
or Little Boots. Caligula, a great-grandson of Augustus through Julia and her daughter, had a claim
to the throne as good as any. If his morals and habits were less than attractive, Tiberius did not
seem to mind. “I am nursing a viper in Rome’s bosom,” Tiberius observed, and named Caligula his
adopted son and successor.

In the spring of 37 CE, Tiberius took part in a ceremonial game that required him to throw a javelin.
He wrenched his shoulder, took to his bed, became ill, and lapsed into a coma. His physicians, who
had not been allowed to examine him for nearly half a century, now studied his emaciated body and
declared that he would die within the day. The successor, Caligula, was sent for. The Praetorian
Guard declared their support for the new emperor. The news of the succession was proclaimed to
the world. Then Tiberius recovered consciousness, sat up, and asked for something to eat. The
notables of Rome were thrown into confusion. Only the Praetorian commander, Macro, kept his
head, and on the next day he hurried to Tiberius’s bed, caught up a heap of blankets, and
smothered Tiberius with them.

Legacy

As an infant, Tiberius had been a fugitive and then a pawn. As a man, he had been a popular and
victorious general and then an exile. He came to supreme power already growing old. When he
died, he left the Roman Empire prosperous and stable, and the institution of the principate was so
strong that for a long time it was able to survive the excesses of his successors. Without him the
later history of Rome might have been less colourful, but probably it would also have been far
shorter.

Spanish information: Collazos, D. (2018). Tiberio. Historia-biografia. Extraído de https://historia-

biografia.com/tiberio/

Pohl, F. (2019). Tiberius ROMAN EMPEROR.Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. Extraído de

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Velleius-Paterculus