170 TACITUS—SUETONIUS.
Rome; but the consideration of its practical usefulness has
induced me to relate to you the history of the emperors also,
though the shortness of our time does not allow me to give
you anything more than brief surveys and sketches. All that
remains of the republican constitution are mere simulacra of
what it once was.
If we had Tacitus complete, we should have the history of
the early period of the empire in one of the greatest works of an-
tiquity. His Historiae and Annales extended over the period from
the death of Augustus to the beginning of the reign of Trajan.
With regard to the manner in which the Annales were divided by
their author, the common opinion, from which scarcely any one
has ever ventured to differ, except in points of secondary import-
ance, is that the Annales were completed with the sixteenth
book. But this is to my mind an impossibility; and it seems
to me highly probable that they consisted of twenty books, as
I have stated elsewhere. Wherever we have Tacitus for our
guide, it would be foolish to seek for any further light, but
many parts of his Annales are wanting; and in those cases, we
are unfortunately obliged to follow Dion Cassius and Suetonius.
The work of the former is mutilated in the part relating to
this period; and that of the latter is but a poor compensation
for the loss of Tacitus’ guidance: Suetonius did not know
himself what he wanted to make of his work. His history is
written in the form of biographies ; and this idea is quite right ;
but he had no plan: he wanders about from one subject to
another; in consequence of which his biographies are without
a definite character. In the commencement of his Annales,
Tacitus assumes that the previous history of Tiberius is known
to his readers. What works he would have referred to as
introductory to his history of that emperor cannot easily be
ascertained; it may however have been the history of Seneca,
the father of the philosopher Scneca, which was perhaps one
of the best2; or the history written by Servilius Nonianus,
who distinguished himself as an historian of that period.3
As therefore Tacitus does not give us an account of the
early life of Tiberius, I shall endeavour to supply it.4 He
2 See Niebuhr’s Ciceronis, Livii, et Senecae Fragmenta, p.104.
3 Quintilian, x. 1. § 102; Pliny, Epist. i. 13.
4 There are excellent materials for it in Velleius Paterculus, who, whatever
we may think of his personal character, is one of the most ingenious writers of
antiquity. He very much resembles, in his manner and affectation, the French
EARLY LIFE OF TIBERIUS.
171
Λvas the elder son of Tiberius Claudius Nero and Livia Dru-
silla. His father had been quaestor of the dictator Caesar;
but after Caesar’s death he joined the party of the republicans,
and in this he may have been in earnest. After the battle of
Philippi (711) he declared for L. Antonius and Fulvia1 when
they caused the outbreak of the Perusinian war, since he could
not expect to be pardoned by Augustus. When the war of
Perusia terminated in the surrender of L. Antonius, Tiberius
Claudius Nero fled with his family to Naples, and thence to
Sext. Pompeius in Sicily. His son Tiberius, who was born in
710, acording to the Catonian aera, was then in his second
year, and his life was in the greatest danger. As Pompeius
did not receive them in the way that Claudius Nero had
expected, he took refuge with Antony in Greece. Afterwards
he returned with Antony to Italy, as an amnesty had been
proclaimed in the peace of Brundusium for all those who were
with Antony, which was followed by the general amnesty in
the peace with Sext. Pompeius. Livia Drusilla was the
daughter of a certain Livius Drusus, who was not connected
by blood with the tribune and consul of that name, for his
real name was Appius Claudius Pulcher, and he had been
adopted by one Livius. Tiberius was thus connected with
the Claudian family, both on his father’s and his mother’s
side ; and he inherited from both his parents the fearful cha-
racter peculiar to the Claudii.
Soon after the return of Tib. Claudius Nero to Rome, he
was compelled by Augustus to give up his wife Livia to him,
She was at the time in a state of pregnancy, and gave birth
to Drusus in the Palatium. Tiberius, as the step-son of the
emperor, was educated as a young man of the highest rank,
though nobody then thought of his becoming the successor of
Augustus. Augustus hoped in vain to become a father by
Livia; but he afterwards set his heart upon Marcellus, the
husband of his daughter Julia, and then upon Julia’s children
by Agrippa. Tiberius had therefore no particular reasons for
entertaining great expectations. His education was conducted
historians of the 18th century, especially those of the time of Louis XV.; but
apart from the bad features in his character, he was a man of great experience:
he had seen much, and gives a good account of what he had seen. Where he
had no occasion to distort the truth, he is trustworthy and is an excellent
historical source: his narrative is uncommonly beautiful.—N.