Tiberius
Born, 42 B.C.—Suffocated, 37 A.D.
Ruled 14-37 A.D.
Tiberius came to a position of power through circumstances that surely made his childhood painful. Caesar Augustus fell in love with his mother when Tiberius was three. He forced Tiberius’ father to divorce her so he could marry her, leaving Tiberius with his father. When the father died six years later, Augustus brought Tiberius and a younger brother to live with him and their mother. This inter-family chaos was a probable factor in his seriously introverted personality.
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Political marriages continued to haunt him. When Marcus Agrippa, the naval commander of Caesar Augustus, died, Tiberius was forced to marry Agrippa’s widow—Julia—who was Caesar's daughter. Her blatant public debaucheries eventually forced Tiberius to divorce her and go into voluntary exile. This exile continued until her escapades became so blatant that Caesar banished her. Eventually, with the death of Augustus’ potential heir, his oldest grandson, and at the behest of Tiberius’ mother, Caesar recalled Tiberius from exile. With the death of Augustus’ second grandson, Tiberius was declared Caesar’s heir. Tiberius became emperor at age fifty-seven.
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He ran a disciplined administration. He left the rule of the provinces under military leadership, providing a stable society. Mistrusting the Roman aristocracy, he intensified the power of the Praetorian guard. Upon the death of his son in 23 A.D., Tiberius seems to have lost interest in ruling. At age sixty-five, he placed Lucius Sejanus, the head of the Praetorian guard, in charge of Rome and retired to Capri in 27 A.D.
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The last decade of his life was one of increasing self-indulgence, paranoia, and sadistic repression. Anyone accused was assumed guilty, tortured, and executed. In his final reign of terror, the whole Jewish community of Rome was expelled. When he was seventy-nine, the head of his own Praetorian bodyguard suffocated him. His legacy was the movement of the totalitarian state he inherited into a police state.
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