Tiberius (56-60)

He treated with no greater leniency the Greeks in his family, even those with whom he was most pleased. Having asked one Zeno, upon his using some far-fetched phrases, "What uncouth dialect is that ?" he replied, " The Doric." For this answer he banished him to Cinara, [*] suspecting that he taunted him with his former residence at Rhodes, where the Doric dialect is spoken. It being his custom to start questions at supper, arising out of what he had been reading in the day, and finding that Seleucus, the grammarian, used to inquire of his attendants what authors he was then studying, and so came prepared for his inquiries-he first turned him out of his family, and then drove him to the extremity of laying violent hands upon himself.

His cruel and sullen temper appeared when he was still a boy; which Theodorus of Gadara, [*] his master in rhetoric, first discovered, and expressed by a very opposite simile, calling him sometimes, when he chid him, "Mud mixed with blood." But his disposition shewed itself still more clearly on his attaining the imperial power, and even in the beginning of his administration, when he was endeavouring to gain the popular favour, by affecting moderation. Upon a funeral passing by, a wag called out to the dead man, "Tell Augustus, that the legacies he bequeathed to the people are not yet paid." The man being brought before him, he ordered that he should receive what was due to him, and then be led to execution, that he might deliver the message to his father himself. Not long afterwards, when one Pompey, a Roman knight, persisted in his opposition to something he proposed in the senate, he threatened to put him in prison, and told him, "Of a Pompey I shall make a Pompeian of you;" by a bitter kind of pun playing upon the man's name, and the ill-fortune of his party.

About the same time, when the praetor consulted him, whether it was his pleasure that the tribunals should take cognizance of accusations of treason, he replied, "The laws ought to be put in execution;" and he did put them in execution most severely. Some person had taken off the head of Augustus from one of his statues, and replaced it by another.[*] The matter was brought before the senate, and because the case was not clear, the witnesses were put to the torture. The party accused being found guilty, and condemned, this kind of proceeding was carried so far, that it became capital for a man to beat his slave, or change his clothes, near the statue of Augustus; to carry his head stamped upon the coin, or cut in the stone of a ring, into a necessary house, or the stews; or to reflect upon anything that had been either said or done by him. In fine, a person was condemned to death, for suffering some honours to be decreed to him in the colony where he lived, upon the same day on which they had formerly been decreed to Augustus.

He was besides guilty of many barbarous actions, under the pretence of strictness and reformation of manners, but more to gratify his own savage disposition. Some verses were published, which displayed the present calamities of his reign, and anticipated the future.[*]

Asper et immitis, breviter vis omnia dicam?

Dispeream si te mater amare potest.

Non es eques, quare? non sunt tibi millia centum?

Omnia si quaras, et Rhodos exsilium est.

Aurea mutasti Saturni saecula, Caesar:

Incolumi nam te, ferrea semper erunt.

Fastidit vinum, quia jam sitit iste cruorem:

Tam bibit hunc avide, quam bibit ante merum.

Adspice felicem sibi, non tibi, Romule, Sullam:

Et Marium, si vis, adspice, sed reducem.

Nec non Antoni civilia bella moventis

Nec semel infectas adspice cada manus,

Et dic, Roma perit: regnabit sanguine multo,

Ad regnum quisquis venit ab exsilio.

Obdurate wretch! too fierce, too fell to move

The least kind yearnings of a mother's love!

No knight thou art, as having no estate;

Long suffered'st thou in Rhodes an exile's fate,

No more the happy Golden Age we see;

The Iron's come, and sure to last with thee.

Instead of wine he thirsted for before,

He wallows now in floods of human gore.

Reflect, ye Romans, on the dreadful times,

Made such by Marius, and by Sylla's crimes.

Reflect how Antony's ambitious rage

Twice scar'd with horror a distracted age.

And say, Alas! Rome's blood in streams will flow,

When banish'd miscreants rule this world below.

A few days after his arrival at Capri, a fisherman coming up to him unexpectedly, when he was desirous of privacy, and presenting him with a large mullet, he ordered the man's face to be scrubbed with the fish; being terrified with the thought of his having been able to creep upon him from the back of the island, over such rugged and steep rocks. The man, while undergoing the punishment, expressing his joy that he had not likewise offered him a large crab which he had also taken, he ordered his face to be farther lacerated with its claws. He put to death one of the pretorian guards, for having stolen a peacock out of his orchard. In one of his journeys, his litter being obstructed by some bushes, he ordered the officer whose duty it was to ride on and examine the road, a centurion of the first cohorts, to be laid on his face upon the ground, and scourged almost to death.