Tiberius

Tiberius (42 BCE–date::37 CE)

Tiberius
Roman Emperor
Bust of Tiberius
Reign	18 September 14 – 16 March 37
Full name	Tiberius Caesar Divi Augusti filius Augustus
Born	16/11/42BC
Birthplace	Rome,
Died	16 March 37 (aged 77)
Place of death	Rome
Buried	Mausoleum of Augustus, Rome
Predecessor	Augustus,
Successor	Caligula
Consort	Vipsania Agrippina Julia the Elder
Issue	Drusus Julius Caesar Tiberillius Germanicus Nero Julius Caesar Drusus Caesar
Father	Tiberius Claudius Nero
Mother	Livia

Great Roman General to Perverted Old Man?

To sum up Tiberius' life the consensus is that he was generally regarded a great General whose victories laid the foundations of the expansion of the Empire northwards. When it seems he has reached the apogee of his career he retires to Rhodes in 6 AD thinking he can live out his years as a wealthy well-connected Roman just enough steps away from the center of power to be of no threat to anyone seeking to become Augustus's successor. As Suetonius somewhat mockingly writes He also gave up his usual exercises with horses and arms, and laying aside the garb of his country, took to the cloak and slippers

His great plans for his future, if indeed this was what was in his mind, had started to go awry years earlier. With the death of Agrippa and Marcellus he and his brother Drusus were getting closer to the succession. He was also forced by Augustus to divorce his first wife Vipsania Agrippa for the promiscuous Julia in 11BC.

Watching the George Baker portrayal in BBC's I-Claudius by Robert Graves, one sees a physically powerful man, dominated by his mother Livia who has been poisoning and plotting away through Rome 's "great and the good" since Augustus rise to power. A tortured soul who was reluctant to assume power, he came contemptuous of it during his 22 years as Emperor.

Suetonius implies that despite his reluctance he was implicated in the murder of the young Agrippa soon after Augustus' death, but this was undertaken more to stabilize power than to seize it. it is not known whether Augustus left this letter when he died, to remove a future source of discord, or whether Livia wrote it herself in the name of her p329 husband; and in the latter case, whether it was with or without the connivance of Tiberius

So he returned in the eighth year after his retirement, with that strong and unwavering confidence in his destiny, which he had conceived from his early years because of omens and predictions

Moreover, having gained the licence of privacy, and being as it were out of sight of the citizens, he at last gave free rein at once to all the vices which he had for a long time ill concealed; and of these I shall give a detailed account from the p353 beginning. Even at the outset of his military career his excessive love of wine gave him the name of Biberius, instead of Tiberius, Caldius for Claudius, and Mero for Nero

He had a dinner given him by Cestius Gallus, a lustful and prodigal old man, who had once been degraded by Augustus and whom he had himself rebuked a few days before in the senate, making the condition that Cestius ….[have] nude girls should wait upon them at table.

On retiring to Capri he devised a pleasance for his secret orgies: teams of wantons of both sexes, selected as experts in deviant intercourse and dubbed analists, copulated before him in triple unions to excite his flagging passions. 2 Its bedrooms were furnished with the most salacious paintings and p355 sculptures, as well as with an erotic library, in case a performer should need an illustration of what was required. Then in Capri's woods and groves he arranged a number of nooks of venery where boys and girls got up as Pans and nymphs solicited outside bowers and grottoes:

he trained little boys (whom he termed tiddlers) to crawl between his thighs when he went swimming and tease him with their licks and nibbles; and unweaned babies he would put to his organ as though to the breast, being by both nature and age rather fond of this form of satisfaction

Left a painting of Parrhasius's depicting Atalanta pleasuring Meleager with her lips.... [and] hung it in his bedroom

attracted by the acolyte's beauty, he lost control of himself and, hardly waiting for the ceremony to end, rushed him off and debauched him and his brother

Mallonia. When she was brought to his bed and refused most vigorously to submit to his lust, he turned her p357 over to the informers, and even when she was on trial he did not cease to call out and ask her "whether she was sorry"; so that finally she left the court and went home, where she stabbed herself

Tiberius the Cruel Emperor

AggripinaAt last, falsely charging her with a desire to take refuge, now at the statue of Augustus and now with the armies, he exiled her to Pandataria, and when she loaded him with reproaches, he had her beaten by a centurion until one of her eyes p369 was destroyed. Again, when she resolved to die of starvation, he had her mouth pried open and food crammed into it.

, emperor Julius Caesar Augustus (14–37 CE), son of Tiberius Claudius Nero and Livia. He first marries Vipsania Agrippina, the daughter of Marcus Agrippa, and fathers two children by her, but, after Agrippa’s death in 12, he is forced by Augustus to DIVORCE and marry JULIA MAIOR, Agrippa’s widow and Augustus’s daughter. After she gives BIRTH to a child that dies soon after, Tiberias stops having sex with her. He retires to Rhodes in 6, out of favor with Augustus. After Julia’s banishment in 2, Augustus procures Tiberius a divorce. He returns to Rome in 2 CE. Early in his reign, in 27, he retires to the island of Capri. There, Tiberius reportedly acquires infants to nurse on his penis, and boys and girls, whom he called pisciculi, “little fishes,” to arouse him by nibbling at him when he goes BATHING, or to play Pan and nymphs in special groves called Caprinea. He converts the latrines (sellaria; pl. 37) of Capri into male BROTHELS for which he procures “fancy boys,” sellarii (CINAEDI), one of whom is the future emperor Vitellius (Suetonius, Caligula 16.1, Vitellius 3.2). He also acquires “men of gigantic proportions, whom he called spintriae, to copulate in threes to excite his failing DESIRES.” He compiles an erotic library and art gallery, SEX MANUALS by Elephantis and paintings by Parrhasius, especially one that depicted ATALANTA FELLATING Melcager. And in his OLD AGE, he is accused of being a CUNNILICTOR; one woman kills herself afterwards, complaining of “the bad breath of the goat,” capri in Latin, a phrase that became popular in Atellan farces (THEATER). Once, at a sacrifice, he lusted after the incense bearer and had him brought to his chamber to rape both him and his flute-playing brother; when they complained, he had their legs broken. Since it was forbidden to execute virgins, he had the daughter of Sejanus raped first by the executioner. And he would trick men into drinking vast amounts of wine, and when they were tortured he would have their penises tied up so they were unable to urinate (DOGKNOT). Suetonius, Tiberius. Tiresias

TIBERIUS attracted both types (Suetonius, Tiberius 43.1, Caligula 16.1); Vitellius was even nicknamed “Spintria” because as a boy he was rumored to have prostituted himself with Tiberius at Capri to obtain his father’s political advancement (Suetonius, Vitellius 3.2).