535. Emperors of Rome: Tiberius, Slaughter and Scandal (Part 2)
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A few days after his arrival on Capri, Tiberius was enjoying his seclusion when a fisherman unexpectedly came up to him and presented him with an enormous mullet, whereupon, alarmed that someone had been able to negotiate the most inaccessible reaches of the island by climbing a pathless cliff, he ordered that the man's face should be scrubbed with the fish. I only thank my lucky stars, cried out the fisherman as he was enduring this punishment, that I didn't bring Caesar the huge lobster that I also caught. Whereupon Tiberius gave orders that the lobster should be used to grate the man's face to shreds. So what a shameful moment in Roman history this is. It's a notorious incident in the life of the Emperor Tiberius, who, of course, ruled from AD 14 to AD 37. And it's recorded in Suetonius's great biography of the Caesars. now translated by our very own Tom Holland. So, Tom, this is a very famous story.
It's the story that sort of captures the capriciousness and the cruelty of the aged Tiberius as he sits there on his pleasure island in the Bay of Naples. So what's going on here? Unpack this story for us. So...
Capri, you say, is in the Bay of Naples and it had been appropriated by Augustus to serve him as a kind of retreat. And actually he kept his collection of fossils there. So he had a brilliant collection of sea monsters, which were fossils that had been brought to him. And shortly before his death in AD 14, Augustus had gone there to kind of get a bit of rest. And then he'd gone back to the mainland and traveled down the road from Naples. And that was where he died. So Tiberius had inherited Capri along with all of Augustus' other properties, all his titles and his ranks, and of course his status as ruler of the Roman Empire. because Tiberius had been adopted by Augustus. So Tiberius gets the whole lot.
So just to remind everybody, Tiberius is the second Roman emperor. Augustus has been the first, and now Tiberius has succeeded. So he spends time in Rome, and then he arrives in Capri, and he settles there in the year 27, doesn't he? When he's quite old.
Yeah, so he's about 70. And by Roman standards, I mean, that's very old. And... Tiberius essentially is doing what great statesmen who've reached the end of their lives, you know, it's perfectly legitimate. You retire to your villa, your country villa. You escape the kind of the clamor and smoke of Rome and you enjoy what the Roman elites would call otium cum dignitate, which is basically a kind of leisure with dignity, a dignified retirement. Sounds nice. Sounds lovely. It does. But what Suetonius is doing in his biography is revealing the sordid truth that lies behind these seemingly impeccable motivations. And he lists them.
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