Tiberius

Tiberius’ father, Nero, as quaestor of Gaius Caesar, was put in charge of the fleet in the Alexandrian War and contributed very greatly to the victory. For which reason, he was both substituted as pontifex in place of P. Scipio and sent to lead out colonies into Gaul, among which were Narbo and Arelate. Nevertheless, when Caesar was slain, while all, through fear of disturbances, were decreeing the oblivion of the deed, he even proposed that a motion should be made concerning rewards for the tyrannicides. Having then performed the praetorship, when at the close of the year discord arose among the triumvirs, retaining his insignia beyond the lawful time, he followed the consul Lucius Antonius, brother of the triumvir, to Perusia, and when surrender was made by the rest, he alone remained in his faction, and escaped first to Praeneste, thence to Neapolis; and having in vain called the slaves to the felt cap of liberty, he fled to Sicily. But taking it ill that he was not immediately admitted to the presence of Sextus Pompeius and was prohibited from the use of the fasces, he crossed over to M. Antonius in Achaea. With whom peace being reconciled among all in a short time, he returned to Rome, and surrendered his wife Livia Drusilla, both pregnant at the time and having already previously borne him a son, to Augustus when he requested her. And not long after he died, with both of his children surviving, Tiberius and Drusus Neros.

Some have believed that Tiberius was born at Fundi, following a slight conjecture, because his maternal grandmother was of Fundi and because soon after a statue of Felicitas was publicly established there by a decree of the senate. But as more and more reliable authorities hand down, he was born at Rome on the Palatine, on the sixteenth day before the Kalends of December, in the second consulship of M. Aemilius Lepidus and that of L. Munatius Plancus, during the Philippene War. For so it has been recorded in the calendars and the public acts. Nor yet are there wanting those who write that he was born partly in the preceding year, in the consulship of Hirtius and Pansa, and partly in the following year, in the consulship of Servilius Isauricus and Lucius Antonius.

He had a troublesome and tried infancy and childhood, being everywhere a companion of his parents’ flight; whom indeed near Neapolis, when they were secretly seeking a ship under the sudden inroad of the enemy, he almost twice betrayed by his crying, once when he was being snatched away from his nurse’s breast, and again from his mother’s bosom, by those who, according to the necessity of the time, were trying to relieve the poor women of their burden. Led about also through Sicily and through Achaea, and publicly committed to the Lacedaemonians because they were under the protection of the Claudii, on departing from there by a night journey, he entered into danger of his life, a flame suddenly arising from the woods on all sides and so surrounding the whole company that part of Livia’s clothing and her hair were singed. The gifts with which he was presented in Sicily by Pompeia, the sister of Sextus Pompeius—a cloak and a clasp, likewise golden bullae—still survive and are shown to this day at Baiae. After his return to the city, being adopted by the testament of M. Gallius, a senator, and having entered upon the inheritance, he soon abstained from the name, because Gallius had been of the party opposed to Augustus. Born nine years, he praised his deceased father before the rostra. Then, growing up, at the triumph of Actium, he accompanied the chariot of Augustus on the left-hand trace-horse, while Marcellus, the son of Octavia, rode on the right-hand horse. He also presided over the city games and played Troy at the circus games, as leader of the squadron of the older boys.

Having assumed the manly toga, he passed all his youth and the space of his subsequent life up to the beginning of his principate in about these pursuits. He gave a gladiatorial show in memory of his father, and another in memory of his grandfather Drusus, at different times and places, the first in the forum, the second in the amphitheater, with even some retired gladiators recalled at a contract of one hundred thousand sesterces each; he also gave games, but in his absence: all magnificently, at the expense of his mother and stepfather. He married Agrippina, daughter of Marcus Agrippa and granddaughter of Caecilius Atticus, a Roman knight, to whom there are letters of Cicero; and having begotten by her a son, Drusus, although she agreed well with him and was pregnant again, he was compelled to divorce her and immediately to marry Julia, the daughter of Augustus, not without great anguish of mind, since he was both held by affection for Agrippina and disapproved of Julia’s character, as one whom he had perceived to have a desire for him also under her prior husband, which indeed was also commonly believed. But he grieved to have sent Agrippina away even after the divorce, and having seen her only once from a chance meeting, he followed her with eyes so intent and wet with tears, that care was taken that she should never come into his presence hereafter. With Julia, at first he lived harmoniously and with mutual love, but soon they disagreed, and somewhat more gravely, so that he even slept apart from her permanently, after the pledge of their common son was cut off, who, born at Aquileia as an infant, died. He lost his brother Drusus in Germany, whose body, walking before it on foot during the whole journey, he conveyed all the way to Rome.