Introduction
The Annals is a collection of sixteen books that survive, written by Cornelius Tacitus who was an historian of the Roman Empire as well as a Roman senator. In what remains of his final writings, Tacitus describes the Roman Empire beginning with Tiberius’ reign in 14 AD 14 up to and including Nero’s reign in 68 AD. The estimated date of the Annals is around 166 AD. The personages and events described in the Annals include Caligula, Claudius, Tiberius Nero, and Messalina. While Tacitus was writing from the perspective of an elitist and a scholar, it is evident in his work that he felt free to try to uncover the flaws and a few terrible truths when he discussed personages such as the Tiberius family, especially Nero. Tacitus perspective is that the people of the Roman emperor’s household and the people of Rome in general were well aware of Tiberius’ chilling cruelty. The people in the household and the citizens of Rome remarked on the cruelty of Tiberius Nero when they were allowing for the imminent death of the elderly Augustus.
Tiberius Nero
Tiberius Nero was one of the most infamous Roman emperors although his actual rule only lasted from 54 AD to 68 AD. He was the final emperor in the succession of Julio-Claudian royalty. He ended his reign much despised for his brutality, tyranny, and lack of interest in the affairs of Rome. His father was Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus and his mother was Agrippina Minor. Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus died when Tiberius was very young. His mother Agrippina then made an incestuous marriage with her uncle Claudius Caesar Augustus, then emperor of Rome. Claudius Caesar Augustus officially adopted Tiberius thereby putting him in line to become a Roman Emperor. Tiberius Nero became a proconsul and actively participated in the business of Rome which was often war. Some of the remaining works of ancient scholars accuse Agrippina of poisoning her uncle-husband Claudius in an effort to get power for herself and the rule over Rome for her son Tiberius. Thus, Tiberius Nero became emperor at 17 years old. His mother tried to rule through her son and apparently made many demands on him in her efforts to gain power. Eventually Tiberius Nero had Agrippina killed. Tiberius’ life has been much maligned with accusations of wild extravagance, cruelty to his subjects, and sexual deviance. Whether or not everything Tacitus wrote about Tiberius is true or not, the fact remains that he was so despised as a ruler that the Roman senate declared him an enemy of the public enemy and condemned to death in 68 AD. Rather than go through the death sentence, Tiberius Nero committed suicide. According to various readings of Tacitus and other ancient texts by modern scholars, the death of Tiberius Nero’s first wife Octavia seems to have been a result of Tiberius’ lust for a married woman named Poppaea. Octavia was banished, her attendants tortured, and she was eventually killed. Tiberius then married Poppaea who was pregnant. There is some debate about how she died. Tacitus writes that Poppaea’s death occurred after “Quinquennial Neronia” and was caused by the violence typical of Tiberius Nero; specifically he kicked the pregnant woman in the abdomen. Tacitus contends that there were some who mistakenly thought Tiberius had her poisoned. The ancient scholar and historian Suetonius wrote that Nero then became the bride in a marriage ceremony with a man named "Doryphorus." However, Tacitus records the name as "Pythagoras." This ceremony aside, Tiberius married Statilia Messalina, his third wife. Tiberius later conducted some kind of ceremony with a boy named Sporus who committed suicide. The details of these relationships are convoluted. However, the interpersonal life of Tiberius Nero was dysfunctional to say the least and offensive to the Roman people who expected a great deal more morality from their emperor. Members of the royal household and the citizens of Rome viewed Tiberius Nero as a hardened warrior who could barely suppress his cruel nature, even in the face of supreme leadership responsibilities. Throughout the six books that deal with Tiberius, there is an awareness on the part of Tacitus that those in service performed their duties at their own peril. Tiberius emerges as an uncomfortable master who was cunning and deceitful, mouthing the importance of Roman virtues while Drusus and Germanicus were still alive. However, as insiders, those in the household knew him to be lustful and vicious. As he grew older and closer to the ultimate power of the Roman Empire, he controlled his violence less and less. He apparently did not feel ashamed of things he did, and as time passed, he did not even try to hide his crimes, sexual perversion, or his basic brutality. The individuals who were on the scene daily in the imperial household seem to have known that Tiberius was trying to conceal his real habits and morals from Romans at large. In the beginning of Annals, Tiberius is careful to avoid angering his stepfather the emperor Augustus. He works to maintain be “outstanding in lifestyle and reputation” so that he is not nudged out of the succession. At the end of the Annals, there is an obituary for Tacitus Nero. The perspective reveals that no one was fooled by Nero’s false claims to virtue; people could see that he was a cruel man unworthy of his family and of the position of Roman emperor. Once he achieved the coveted position of supreme ruler, Nero’s actions were fraught with hesitancy, suspense, withdrawal, and sometimes a complete nonattendance to duty. Nero would fail to attend the senate debates, which were his domain. When he did attend, he would apparently sit nearly motionless. Failing to provide the required leadership. His behavior was designed to disguise his baser nature and therefore his decisions and orders were fraught with ambiguity. After doing nothing relevant to his responsibilities, he would fly into a rage at the slightest criticism and was apparently prone to hysterical outbursts. These outbursts punctuated by what appear to have been sulks, did not meet the requirements of Roman public life. Nero lacks the grace and eloquence that was expected of Roman rulers. Tacitus reports on Tiberius Nero’s physical description based on the observations of men in the Roman senate. They apparently criticized the emperor’s bearing because his facial expressions and lack of gestures indicated that he was suppressing ignoble sentiments in public. At times Tiberius total lack of attendance, in particular when the body of Germanicus was returned to Rome, meant that the emperor was hiding something. Tacitus speculates that Tiberius thought it was beneath him to mourn Germanicus publically. It was possible that in fact he did not mourn Germanicus death at all and therefore refused to appear in public because observers would realize he was callous about the situation. Apparently in this he followed the lead of others who may have deemed themselves too imperial for such a public display of grief. Tacitus writes, “Tiberius and Augusta kept out of public view, thinking it beneath their majesty if they were to lament openly, or in case, with the eyes of everyone examining their faces, they might be understood to be faking.” In the same section Tacitus explains, “Tiberius and Augusta did not go out of their house.” Hiding one's feelings can be effective accomplished by completely absenting oneself from the scene rather than trying to maintain an appropriate expression. However, according to Tacitus, Tiberius’ removing himself from the scene completely lest there be an antagonistic public reaction to his manner meant the ruler intended to deceive. That meant that in person Tiberius would have given himself away, so he avoided the possibility of public scrutiny by withdrawing from public altogether. Tacitus argues that this meant the emperor’s usually deadpan facial expressions could not necessarily be maintained for long stretched of time. Because Tiberius does not feel what a good Roman ruler should rightly feel, he must hide away. Tiberius’ emotional eruptions had already been reported. Tacitus portrays a man who vacillates between uncontrollable anger and a total lack of feeling and proper emotion. Tiberius was a man without pity. His held his anger close most of the time, because he could not trust himself to behave as a noble ruler of Rome ought to behave. He closed himself off from the appeals of Roman citizens and according to Tacitus; he was disconnected from close relatives. Tiberius’ detachment from Piso’s actions against Germanicus are central to Tacitus argument that the emperor was abnormal. He withdrew from regular society and from social interactions. The impenetrability and general silence of Tiberius is seen as evidence that underneath there always lay a despotic nature. The trials, the maiestas, are proof of Tiberius’ tyrannical nature and repressive rule. According to Tacitus, maiestas trials were used to persecute Romans for possible treason. They were a thing that had existed in very ancient times and were revived by Tiberius with great force and malevolent intent. The trials are depicted as a period in Rome in which people were in general fearful and lived in terror of being accused of treason. It is possible that Tacitus took at least some of his information about the trials from Virgil. Of the maiestas, Tacitus writes, “For they illustrate the beginnings of this disastrous institution - which Tiberius so cunningly insinuated, first under control, then bursting into an all-engulfing blaze.” These terrible He trials are covered extensively by Tacitus, “He had brought back the law of maiestas. It had the same name among the ancients, but came into trials in other ways: if anyone diminished the army by betrayal or the plebs by seditions, or generally diminished the majesty of the Roman people by any corrupt deed: actions were accused, words were unpunished.”
Tacitus on Tiberius Nero: the Debate
Most scholars throughout the ages have considered Cornelius Tacitus to be the supreme historian of Rome. Tacitus’ career included politics; he was by most accounts an aristocrat. He held the office of praetor in 88 AD and consul in 97 AD. His career included being assigned administrative duties at military locations. Tacitus was a member of the college of priests (quindecimviri sacris faciundis). According to records, he was governor of a portion of the Roman Empire that included modern Turkey and was therefore referred to as the governor of Asia for a short time. Tacitus acted as a prosecutor with Pliny the Younger against Marius Priscus whom they accused of corruption in Africa. He married the daughter of Julius Agricola (governor of Britain) whom he wrote about in his later works. His most comprehensive extant works are the Histories and the Annals. Many scholars for centuries took Tacitus literally. The veracity of the stories he wrote about Tiberius Nero became the stuff of legend and infamy. However, not all scholars today will to accept Tacitus’ arguments about Tiberius’ innate evil nature at face value. Professor of Classics Holly Haynes contends that Tacitus was writing a literary and somewhat imaginative work on Tiberius, as well as the politics and culture of imperial Rome. In Haynes’ book, The History of Make-Believe: Tacitus on Imperial Rome, she claims that Tacitus’ seemingly powerful insights into the circumstances surrounding his subjects were at least fictional and highly embellished. According to this interpretation, the Annals as well as other writings by Tacitus are not historically objective. Some scholars note that Tacitus’ depiction of Nero as sometimes absent and sometimes maniacal are at odds with each other. There have also been observations that the chronology of the history as depicted in the Annals does not match Tacitus’ earlier works. There seems to be a chronological gap between his texts, especially as it relates to Nero’s death. In Haynes book, the author seems to feel that Nero is misrepresented by Tacitus. However, other scholars point out that Tacitus was relying on Virgil and other scholars for at least some of his information. As a scholar he was responding to other scholars. Timothy Joseph in Tacitus the Epic Successor: Virgil, Lucan, and the Narrative of Civil War in the Histories, claims that this scholar to scholar response was typical of Roman historians and historians from other periods. These men were writing to each other and to other scholars, not to the general public. Modern scholars, according to Joseph, often view descriptions of Tiberius Nero and others in Tacitus’ writings as being in line with the epic poems that described Roman history. For the most part historians and scholars agree that there were contradictory elements in Tacitus’ works but that these types of conflicts also occur in the writings left by Suetonius, Virgil and other Roman writers of history. The writers were influenced by their own training and tutors that was a result of the political and scholarly environment and the scholarly traditions of their time. Tacitus was possessed of a superior education and had access to the most vital records of the day, therefore even though his Annals takes a poetical perspective, it is presumed to be based on facts and solid evidence. When he writes about the decline, or rather the complete abandon of principle by Nero after approximately 62 AD, he is relying on the historical record.
Conclusion
Toward the last part of his reign, Tiberius Nero seems to have withdrawn from his regular duties as emperor into a strange life fraught with interpersonal and sexual drama. Poppaea plays a major role in this change. She seems to encourage or at least exacerbate Nero’s decadence. The emperor is depicted as not only perverted and cruel but also chronically discontented and not a little bit paranoid. His reinstatement of the trials for treason may be presented by Tacitus in an inflammatory manner but the fact remains that Nero ordered many executions including that of Sulla. His very public and unpopular divorce from Octavia caused riots in Rome, with people marching in the streets demanding her return. Nero reacted to this by ordering her assassinated in a vicious and painful fashion. At the same time, he was raiding Rome’s financial reserves. His greed was not satisfied with all the money and land he took from people whom he brought up on treason charges. One of the most famous episodes in Tacitus Annals about Tiberius concerns a huge fire that spread thorough Rome in 64 AD. Despite the disaster, Nero continued to act in a removed fashion and did not do his duty by attempting to restore order to the region. Tacitus explains that Nero did little to relieve the suffering of his subjects and writes about how the emperor was partying and singing about the fall of Troy while Rome was being consumed in flames. The fire occurred almost four years before Nero was finally taken down by the Roman senate, but it is still the zenith in historical records of his unpopularity. First, he tried to blame Christians for setting the fire and then he tried to commandeer the burned out areas of Rome for himself. Increases in taxes, trials of aristocrats, and all around unpopular with the people, Tiberius Nero was removed from office and only escaped being executed because he committed suicide. His reported last words revealing an egomania and delusion that was epic in nature, “Qualis artifex pereo!” meaning that his death was that of a great artist. Tiberius Nero apparently considered himself a rare talent despite massive evidence to the contrary.
Bibliography
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