Free The Twelve Caesars by Matthew Dennison Page B

‘criminal obscenities... almost too vile to be believed’, according to Suetonius, foremost
among them that little boys called ‘minnows’ were trained to follow him when he swam and, darting between his legs, nibble and lick and suck his genitals. Similar tittle-tattle plagued
Tiberius in life. During the trial of Votienus Montanus, he was forced to listen to a witness recount just such calumnies. It was the price he paid for his compulsive secrecy. The Tiberius of the
ancient sources is more lecherous hypocrite than seer, paranoid and cruel, irresponsible in government, without visionary qualities.
    As time would show, his concerns were well placed. The burdens of Augustus’ ‘restored Republic’ were too great for this first hereditary princeps , Rome’s third
Caesar. We will never know the truth of his sex life but understand already that, in cataloguing sexual misdemeanours, the ancients exacted recompense from their great men. In the accounts of bothSuetonius and Tacitus, Tiberius emerges as tyrannous and cold-hearted. He delights in torture and the arbitrary exercise of power. In order to enjoy firm, young flesh without
protest, he breaks the legs of those who resist his fetid advances. It is a metaphor for his treatment of dissent at the highest levels of Roman society. His punishment is to be castigated with
depravity: paedophilia, incontinent lusts, joyless rape, urges too terrible for satisfaction anywhere but in exile – the stuff of film-makers and warped voyeurs, the shadow side of the sun,
nightmarish and, with a degree of detachment on the reader’s part, impossible to countenance given what else we can deduce of his character. Such smears would become a repeating pattern in
the historiography of the twelve Caesars. In this instance, Suetonius is the prime offender.
    This man who loved trees and hard liquor (hot wine without water, the origin of his nickname among his troops: Biberius Caldius Mero) was nevertheless diligent and assiduous in the discharge of
his duty. He was commonsensical and practical. When the Tiber burst its banks, he did not echo the widespread response that here was an omen, but ‘thinking that it was due to the great
over-abundance of surface water, appointed five senators, chosen by lot, to constitute a permanent board to look after the river, so that it should neither overflow in winter nor fail in summer,
but should maintain as even a flow as possible all the time’. 3 He required provincial governors to act with moderation, avoiding greedy plunder, instructing them ‘that it was the part of
a good shepherd to shear his flock, not skin it’. He understood power not as his right or privilege but as a responsibility, himself ‘the servant of the senate, often of the citizens as
a whole, and sometimes even of individuals’. Even before his accession he enjoyed rare distinction – dignitas and the foundations of personal auctoritas (which could
increaseonly with Augustus’ death). Successful campaigns in Illyricum, Pannonia and Germany made Tiberius the foremost general of his generation. His hard-won victories
erased the shame of those Roman standards lost in Germany by Varus; earlier, his diplomatic efforts had secured the return of standards lost by Crassus in Parthia in 53 BC .
‘Most charming and valiant of men and most conscientious of generals,’ Augustus acclaimed him in a letter preserved by Suetonius. ‘I have only praise for the conduct of your
summer campaigns, dear Tiberius, and I am sure that no one could have acted with better judgement than you did amid so many difficulties and such apathy of your army.’ Tiberius’ reply
does not survive.
    ‘I treat all his actions and words as if they had the force of law,’ he claimed after Augustus’ death. We ought not to overlook the possibility of irony, an element of
dissembling. Faithful in public to Augustus’ formula for power, Tiberius privately discounted that genius humbug’s