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172
THE ACADEMY.
[AuGusf 15, 1874.
lie read in tlie light of tlie narrative ■wliicb
they resume ; they are the record of tlie
final impression of Tiberins's career ; it is
hardly a legitimate procedure to draw
out and sometimes exaggerate (a/regius
means less than immaculate) the proposi-
tions they involve, and then apply these
separately to the diff'erent stages of that
career. It would have been better, instead
of sacrificing everybody, historians and con-
temporaries, to Tiberius, to have tried to
discover a theory of his character which
would include not only the facts on which it
is Herr Stahr's merit to have insisted ade-
quately, but those facts on which contempora-
ries based their estimate. No doubt those
contemporaries were corrupt and spiteful ; *
biit it does not follow that their estimate
always proceeded fi-ora corruption or spite,
or that a historian is never to repeat and
endorse the judgment of contemporaries
unless he can reproduce all the evidence it
rested on. The contemporaries of Tibei'ius
were in a position to know if it was true
that Livia's influence made his rule milder,
and that he thought it a good thing that
Germanicus died when he did ; and a his-
torian might fairly repeat both facts without
proof, if they were believed at the time. Of
course the facts might be false ; and it is
possible to make almost any theory good if
a man will resolutely exhaust in its favour
every hypothesis which is separately per-
missible, rather than try another theory
which fits parts of the evidence more natu-
rally.
Probably the character of Tiberius is one
of the problems on which we may expect
much light from the progress of physiology,
which will reveal to us many definite pos-
sibilities of human nature, one or more of
which will prove the" key to his life. He
seems to have been one of the men whose
power of assimilation, both moral and intel-
lectual, is greater than their power of initia-
tion. In his nephew Claudius the same
contrast was heightened to a grotesque ex-
tent ; he coidd not speak coherently, but
Augustus was struck by his declamation;
when he had to establish connexions be-
tween words or between ideas for himself,
he was positively shortwitted ; when he had
to use and combine connexions already
established, he was rather clever than not.
The defect in Tiberius's power of initiation
did not amount to imbecility as it did in
Claudius, but it was accompanied from the
first by a certain perversity which contrasted
with the sheepish good nature of his nephew.
On the other hand, Tiberius's power of as-
similation was so robust as to amount
almost to genius, especially in military
matters, where his combinations were so ex-
tensive and precise as to have a look of
positive grandeur and originahty ; though
even here the element of insight and inven-
tion is less, it may be, than in less merito-
rious commanders who acted on a smaller
scale. It is to be noticed that he was a
pre-eminentlj- cautious and anxious com-
mander. We have a letter from Augustus,
showing that he accepted the demoralisation
of his troops as an irremediable fact, and
* Even this is in one sense a presumption against
Tiberius. We are to expect great faults in the best
representatives of a vicious class and period.
made his dispositions accordingly. Augus-
tus found the dispositions admirable,
and Augustus was doubtless right ; only,
without depreciating the extent of Tiberius's
excellence, it is permissible to mark that it
was of a special kind. Though he attached
the troops to him, aud they were glad to get
him back, he was not one of the com-
manders who can inspire courage and su-
periority to danger. In this connexion it
may be observed that the Claudii, whose
representative he was, seem to have had
little military aptitude. Contemporaries
seem to have been sti-uck by his inheriting
the " ferocity " and arrogance of the Claudii :
it has been questioned recently whether
all anecdotes in support of this view of the
faniilv were not invented by Licinius Macer,
because it can be shown that the Decemvir
and Appius Claudius Caecus were not loyal
to the patriciate or the nobility ; and were
proud, if they were proud, for themselves,
not for their order. It is certain that
Tiberius's manners, from the first, were
marked by the kind of reserve that is con-
sidered haughty ; and Augustus had to
apologise for him to the senate, with the
observation that his nature, not his will,* was
to blame. This is probably to be under-
stood not only of his gauclterie, but of his
turn towards severity. "We are told (appa-
rently before his exile) of Augustus gently-
reproving him for treating Ubels (on Augus-
tus) as intolerable, i.e., matter for heavy
pmiishment, because he could not see that,
as Augustus told him, the essential thing
was not that nobody should be able to speak
ill of the new dynasty, but that no one
should be able to injure it. All through his
life Tiberius underrated the necessity and
stability of the new order of things. Drusus,
his brother, who was open-handed and
popular, may very likely have underrated
this necessity still more. There is no reason
to doubt that contemporaries thought, and
quite rightly, that Drusus had some notion
of restoring "liberty," or even that Sueto-
nius had seen a letter which he had written
in this sense to Tiberius about the advan-
tages of forcing Augustus to act on his re-
peated professions, and allow his extra-
ordinary powers to expire. The sons of
Livia could have commanded continiied
employment and authority from their fellow
citizens more certainly than from the hus-
band of their mother. It is quite in ac-
cordance with the scrupulous, jealous temper
of Tiberius that if he received such a letter
he should have thought it the safest course
for himself to show it to Augustus ; even
the kindest course to his brother, as proving
the matter was no worse. Suetonius finds
in this the first instance of Tiberius's ten-
dency to quarrel with his relations. As he
certainly loved his brother, we are tempted to
set aside Suetonius's story and his reflection
as mere spiteful gossip. On the other hand
there are people whose nature it is to fret
under ties which they have no wish to
break, and always to be complaining of re-
lations whom they would miss ; and it will
be seen hereafter that Tiberius probably be-
longed to this unfortunate class.
Herr Stahr is undoubtedly right in insist-
* Naturae vitia esse non animi.
ing on the great injury done to Tiberius
in his divorce and second marriage. His
first wife suited him perfectly : she was
a daughter of the blufl', good-humoured
Agrippa, whose motto had been that concord
makes small things great, and discord makes
great things small. Tiberius doted upon
her, perhaps because she was friendly and
homely, and relieved him of himself as wine
did in another way (for there is not the
slightest reason to doubt Pliny's statement
that he drank hard in a quiet way ; and the
story that he, when emperor, appointed two
of his cronies, Piso and Pomponius, to
high offices after a long drinking bout,
with the remai'k that they were friends
for work and playtime,* is not like an inven-
tion). He had caught the fancy of Julia
during her husband's life, which was an
additional reason why Augustus should be
willing to gratify his wife's ambition by be-
stowing his widowed daughter upon his
stepson, although to do so it was nece.=sary
to break up a happy home. Julia soon tired
of her bargain. Tiberius was tall and hand-
some, but he was very short-sighted, aud
(to break himself most likely of a conse-
quent tendency to poke and peer) he had
contracted a habit of stalking about with
his head thrown back. Julia, whose own
manners were very good, was ashamed, for
this reason or for others, of her shy, morose,
undignified husband, and came to a conclu-
sion, too natural to need much support from
a comparison of the nobility of the Claudii
with that of the Julii and Uctavii, that her
stepmother's son was not a match for her
father's daughter. She abandoned herself
to her passions, and she emploj-ed her para-
mours to help her libel her husband. Mean-
while her sons were growing up ; her father
doted upon them ; and, though he conferred
the tribunician power for five years upon
Tiberius, he accompanied the gift with an
Eastern mission that was not unlike a banish-
ment. Tiberius had reason to feel himself
ill-used — as if his home had been broken up
in order that he might be qualified to act as
a stopgap till the sons of his false wife
should be old enough to steji into their
father's inheritance. He was probably right
in believing what a more generous man
would not have believed — what a wiser man
would have ignored, though he believed it.
His conduct was characteristic : he was not .
man enough, as Herr Stahr admits, to have
his grievance out with Augustus ; he was
not man enough to do his duty in the East
without arricre pcnsce, and come back to
fight for his position, if need were, with
another claim to public gratitude. He
simply gave way to disgust at his situation,
pretended that his health had broken down,
and insisted upon going to Rhodes and
studying philosophy. Under similar cir-
cumstances Aginpj^a had gone to Lesbos
when it was desirable to have him out . of
the way of Marcellus ; but Agrippa had not
refused his commission, though he had com-
mitted its execution to lieutenants. Tiberius,
no doubt, had more speculative curiosity
than Agrippa ; he had more of a perverse
conscientiousness ; he persuaded himself that
he had had his turn, and that it was his
' Omnium horarum amicos."
THE ACADEMY.
[AuGusf 15, 1874.
lie read in tlie light of tlie narrative ■wliicb
they resume ; they are the record of tlie
final impression of Tiberins's career ; it is
hardly a legitimate procedure to draw
out and sometimes exaggerate (a/regius
means less than immaculate) the proposi-
tions they involve, and then apply these
separately to the diff'erent stages of that
career. It would have been better, instead
of sacrificing everybody, historians and con-
temporaries, to Tiberius, to have tried to
discover a theory of his character which
would include not only the facts on which it
is Herr Stahr's merit to have insisted ade-
quately, but those facts on which contempora-
ries based their estimate. No doubt those
contemporaries were corrupt and spiteful ; *
biit it does not follow that their estimate
always proceeded fi-ora corruption or spite,
or that a historian is never to repeat and
endorse the judgment of contemporaries
unless he can reproduce all the evidence it
rested on. The contemporaries of Tibei'ius
were in a position to know if it was true
that Livia's influence made his rule milder,
and that he thought it a good thing that
Germanicus died when he did ; and a his-
torian might fairly repeat both facts without
proof, if they were believed at the time. Of
course the facts might be false ; and it is
possible to make almost any theory good if
a man will resolutely exhaust in its favour
every hypothesis which is separately per-
missible, rather than try another theory
which fits parts of the evidence more natu-
rally.
Probably the character of Tiberius is one
of the problems on which we may expect
much light from the progress of physiology,
which will reveal to us many definite pos-
sibilities of human nature, one or more of
which will prove the" key to his life. He
seems to have been one of the men whose
power of assimilation, both moral and intel-
lectual, is greater than their power of initia-
tion. In his nephew Claudius the same
contrast was heightened to a grotesque ex-
tent ; he coidd not speak coherently, but
Augustus was struck by his declamation;
when he had to establish connexions be-
tween words or between ideas for himself,
he was positively shortwitted ; when he had
to use and combine connexions already
established, he was rather clever than not.
The defect in Tiberius's power of initiation
did not amount to imbecility as it did in
Claudius, but it was accompanied from the
first by a certain perversity which contrasted
with the sheepish good nature of his nephew.
On the other hand, Tiberius's power of as-
similation was so robust as to amount
almost to genius, especially in military
matters, where his combinations were so ex-
tensive and precise as to have a look of
positive grandeur and originahty ; though
even here the element of insight and inven-
tion is less, it may be, than in less merito-
rious commanders who acted on a smaller
scale. It is to be noticed that he was a
pre-eminentlj- cautious and anxious com-
mander. We have a letter from Augustus,
showing that he accepted the demoralisation
of his troops as an irremediable fact, and
* Even this is in one sense a presumption against
Tiberius. We are to expect great faults in the best
representatives of a vicious class and period.
made his dispositions accordingly. Augus-
tus found the dispositions admirable,
and Augustus was doubtless right ; only,
without depreciating the extent of Tiberius's
excellence, it is permissible to mark that it
was of a special kind. Though he attached
the troops to him, aud they were glad to get
him back, he was not one of the com-
manders who can inspire courage and su-
periority to danger. In this connexion it
may be observed that the Claudii, whose
representative he was, seem to have had
little military aptitude. Contemporaries
seem to have been sti-uck by his inheriting
the " ferocity " and arrogance of the Claudii :
it has been questioned recently whether
all anecdotes in support of this view of the
faniilv were not invented by Licinius Macer,
because it can be shown that the Decemvir
and Appius Claudius Caecus were not loyal
to the patriciate or the nobility ; and were
proud, if they were proud, for themselves,
not for their order. It is certain that
Tiberius's manners, from the first, were
marked by the kind of reserve that is con-
sidered haughty ; and Augustus had to
apologise for him to the senate, with the
observation that his nature, not his will,* was
to blame. This is probably to be under-
stood not only of his gauclterie, but of his
turn towards severity. "We are told (appa-
rently before his exile) of Augustus gently-
reproving him for treating Ubels (on Augus-
tus) as intolerable, i.e., matter for heavy
pmiishment, because he could not see that,
as Augustus told him, the essential thing
was not that nobody should be able to speak
ill of the new dynasty, but that no one
should be able to injure it. All through his
life Tiberius underrated the necessity and
stability of the new order of things. Drusus,
his brother, who was open-handed and
popular, may very likely have underrated
this necessity still more. There is no reason
to doubt that contemporaries thought, and
quite rightly, that Drusus had some notion
of restoring "liberty," or even that Sueto-
nius had seen a letter which he had written
in this sense to Tiberius about the advan-
tages of forcing Augustus to act on his re-
peated professions, and allow his extra-
ordinary powers to expire. The sons of
Livia could have commanded continiied
employment and authority from their fellow
citizens more certainly than from the hus-
band of their mother. It is quite in ac-
cordance with the scrupulous, jealous temper
of Tiberius that if he received such a letter
he should have thought it the safest course
for himself to show it to Augustus ; even
the kindest course to his brother, as proving
the matter was no worse. Suetonius finds
in this the first instance of Tiberius's ten-
dency to quarrel with his relations. As he
certainly loved his brother, we are tempted to
set aside Suetonius's story and his reflection
as mere spiteful gossip. On the other hand
there are people whose nature it is to fret
under ties which they have no wish to
break, and always to be complaining of re-
lations whom they would miss ; and it will
be seen hereafter that Tiberius probably be-
longed to this unfortunate class.
Herr Stahr is undoubtedly right in insist-
* Naturae vitia esse non animi.
ing on the great injury done to Tiberius
in his divorce and second marriage. His
first wife suited him perfectly : she was
a daughter of the blufl', good-humoured
Agrippa, whose motto had been that concord
makes small things great, and discord makes
great things small. Tiberius doted upon
her, perhaps because she was friendly and
homely, and relieved him of himself as wine
did in another way (for there is not the
slightest reason to doubt Pliny's statement
that he drank hard in a quiet way ; and the
story that he, when emperor, appointed two
of his cronies, Piso and Pomponius, to
high offices after a long drinking bout,
with the remai'k that they were friends
for work and playtime,* is not like an inven-
tion). He had caught the fancy of Julia
during her husband's life, which was an
additional reason why Augustus should be
willing to gratify his wife's ambition by be-
stowing his widowed daughter upon his
stepson, although to do so it was nece.=sary
to break up a happy home. Julia soon tired
of her bargain. Tiberius was tall and hand-
some, but he was very short-sighted, aud
(to break himself most likely of a conse-
quent tendency to poke and peer) he had
contracted a habit of stalking about with
his head thrown back. Julia, whose own
manners were very good, was ashamed, for
this reason or for others, of her shy, morose,
undignified husband, and came to a conclu-
sion, too natural to need much support from
a comparison of the nobility of the Claudii
with that of the Julii and Uctavii, that her
stepmother's son was not a match for her
father's daughter. She abandoned herself
to her passions, and she emploj-ed her para-
mours to help her libel her husband. Mean-
while her sons were growing up ; her father
doted upon them ; and, though he conferred
the tribunician power for five years upon
Tiberius, he accompanied the gift with an
Eastern mission that was not unlike a banish-
ment. Tiberius had reason to feel himself
ill-used — as if his home had been broken up
in order that he might be qualified to act as
a stopgap till the sons of his false wife
should be old enough to steji into their
father's inheritance. He was probably right
in believing what a more generous man
would not have believed — what a wiser man
would have ignored, though he believed it.
His conduct was characteristic : he was not .
man enough, as Herr Stahr admits, to have
his grievance out with Augustus ; he was
not man enough to do his duty in the East
without arricre pcnsce, and come back to
fight for his position, if need were, with
another claim to public gratitude. He
simply gave way to disgust at his situation,
pretended that his health had broken down,
and insisted upon going to Rhodes and
studying philosophy. Under similar cir-
cumstances Aginpj^a had gone to Lesbos
when it was desirable to have him out . of
the way of Marcellus ; but Agrippa had not
refused his commission, though he had com-
mitted its execution to lieutenants. Tiberius,
no doubt, had more speculative curiosity
than Agrippa ; he had more of a perverse
conscientiousness ; he persuaded himself that
he had had his turn, and that it was his
' Omnium horarum amicos."
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Early editions of Robert Louis Stevenson > Non-Fiction > Uncollected essays > Academy > (21) Page 172 - Tiberius |
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Permanent URL | https://digital.nls.uk/78084641 |
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Description | Review of Adolf Stahr's 'Tiberius'? |
More information |
Person / organisation: |
Tiberius, Emperor of Rome, 42 B.C.-37 A.D. [Subject of text] Stahr, Adolf Wilhelm Theodor, 1805-1876 [Subject of text] |
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Form / genre: |
Written and printed matter > Periodicals |
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Dates / events: |
1869 [Date published] |
Places: |
Europe >
United Kingdom >
England >
Greater London >
London
(inhabited place) [Place published] |
Subject / content: |
Essays Reviews (document genre) |
Person / organisation: |
John Murray (Firm) [Publisher] Stevenson, Robert Louis, 1850-1894 [Contributor] |
Description | Essays and reviews from contemporary magazines and journals (some of which are republished in the collections). 'Will o' the Mill', from Volume 37 of the 'Cornhill Magazine', is a short story or fable. |
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Person / organisation: |
Stevenson, Robert Louis, 1850-1894 [Author] |
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