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Rh free, and later became estranged from his mother and held no communication with her for years before her death. The history of Tiberius s relations with other members of his family is hardly less miserable. Perhaps with any other commander than Germanicus the dangerous mutiny of the troops on the Rhine which broke out soon after Tiberius's accession would have ended in a march of the discontented legions upon the capital. The perilous episode of Arminius caused the recall of Germanicus and his despatch to the East on an honourable but comparatively inactive mission. The pride and passion of Agrippina, the granddaughter of Augustus and wife of Germanicus, tended to open a breach between her husband and the emperor. In his Eastern command Germanicus found himself perpetually watched and even violently opposed by Piso, the governor of Syria, who was suspected to have received secret orders from Tiberius. When Germanicus died at Antioch in 19, the populace of Rome combined with Agrippina in demanding vengeance upon Piso; and the emperor was forced to disown him. The death of Germanicus was followed four years later by that of Dnisus. These two princes had been firm friends, and Livilla, the wife of Drusus, was sister to Germanicus. Years afterwards it was found that Drusus had fallen a victim to the treachery of his wife Livilla, who had joined her ambition to that of the emperor's minister of state Sejanus. When Drusus died, Tiberius nominated two of Agrippina's sons as his heirs. But Sejanus had grown strong by nursing the emperor's suspicions and dislike for the household of Germanicus, and the mother and the princes were imprisoned on a charge of crime. In his memoirs of his own life Tiberius declared that he killed Sejanus because he had discovered that he entertained a mad rage against the sons of Germanicus. But the destruction of Sejanus did not save Agrippina and her two children. The third son, Gaius Cæsar (Caligula), lived to become emperor when Tiberius died in 37.

Throughout his reign Tiberius strove earnestly to do his duty to the empire at large; his guiding principle was to maintain with an almost superstitious reverence the constitutional forms which had been constructed by Augustus. Only two changes of moment were introduced. The imperial guard, hitherto only seen in the city in small detachments, was by the advice of Sejanus encamped permanently in full force close to the walls. By this measure the turbulence of the populace was kept in check. The officer in command of the guard became at once the most important of the emperor's lieutenants. The other change was the practically complete abolition of the old comitia. But the senate was treated with an almost hypocritical deference, and a pedantically precise compliance with the old republican forms was observed towards the senatorial magistrates. The care expended by Tiberius on the provinces was unremitting. His favourite maxim was that a good shepherd should shear the flock and not flay it. When he died he left the subject peoples of the empire in a condition of prosperity such as they had never known before and never knew again. Soldiers, governors, and officials of all kinds were kept in wholesome dread of vengeance if they oppressed those beneath them or encouraged irregularity of any kind. Strict economy permitted light taxation and enabled the emperor to show generosity in periods of exceptional distress. Public security both in Italy and abroad was maintained by a strong hand, and commerce was stimulated by the improvement of communications. Jurisdiction both within and without the capital was on the whole exercised with steadiness and equity, and the laws of the empire were at many points improved. The social and moral reforms of Augustus were upheld and carried further. Such risings against the emperor s authority as occurred within the Roman domain were put down with no great difficulty. The foreign or rather the frontier policy was a policy of peace, and it was pursued with considerable success. With few exceptions the duties of the Roman forces on the borders were confined to watching the peoples on the other side while they destroyed each other. On the Rhine, at least, masterly inactivity achieved tranquillity which lasted for a long period.

The disrepute which attaches to the reign of Tiberius has come mainly from three or four sources, from the lamentable story of the imperial household, from the tales of hideous debauchery practised in deep retirement at Caprese during the last eleven years of the emperor s life, from the tyranny which Sejanus was permitted to wield in his master's name, and from the political prosecutions and executions which Tiberius encouraged, more by silent compliance than by open incitement. The stories of immorality are recorded chiefly by Suetonius, who has evidently used a poisoned source, possibly the memoirs of the younger Agrippina, the mother of Nero. Tiberius loved to shroud himself in mystery, and such stories are probably the result of unfriendly attempts to uplift the darkness. If history ventures to doubt the blackness of Theodora, that of Tiberius grows continually lighter under the investigations of criticism. Suetonius makes the emperor s condition to have been one of mania, issuing frequently in the abandonment of all moral restraint. But in that case the authority of Tiberius, which was as firmly upheld during the years spent at Caprese as it had been earlier, must have fallen to pieces and come to an end. With respect to Sejanus it is impossible to acquit Tiberius of blame. If he was deceived in his favourite he must have been willing to be deceived. He conferred on Sejanus a position as great as had been held by Agrippa during the reign of Augustus, and the minister was actually, and all but formally, joint emperor. Of the administrative ability of Sejanus there can be no question; but the charm and secret of his power lay in the use he made of those apprehensions of personal danger which seem never to have been absent from his master s mind. The growth of "delation," the darkest shadow that lies on the reign, was in part a consequence of the supremacy and the arts of Sejanus. Historians of Rome in ancient times remembered Tiberius chiefly as the sovereign under whose rule prosecutions for treason on slight pretexts first became rife, and the hateful race of informers was first allowed to fatten on the gains of judicial murder. Augustus had allowed considerable licence of speech and writing against himself, and had made no attempt to set up a doctrine of constructive treason. But the history of the state trials of Tiberius's reign shows conclusively that the straining of the law proceeded in the first instance from the eager flattery of the senate, was in the earlier days checked and controlled to a great extent by the emperor, and was by him acquiesced in after a time with a sort of contemptuous indifference, till he developed, under the influence of his fears, a readiness to shed blood.

The principal authorities for the reign of Tiberius are Tacitus and Suetonius. The Annals of Tacitus were not published till nearly eighty years after the death of Tiberius. He rarely quotes an authority by name. In all probability he drew most largely from other historians who had preceded him; to some extent he availed himself of oral tradition; and of archives and original records he made some, but comparatively little, use. In his history of Tiberius two influences were at work, in almost equal strength : on the one hand he strives continually after fairness; on the other the bias of a man steeped in senatorial traditions forbids him to attain it. Tacitus is certainly not among the historians in whom our confidence grows by repeated reading. Suetonius was a biographer rather than an historian, and the ancient biographer .was even less given to exhaustive inquiry than the ancient historian; moreover Suetonius was not gifted with great critical faculty, though he told the truth so far as he could see it. His Lives of the Twelve Cæsars was written nearly at the time when Tacitus was composing the Annals, but was published a little later. Velleius Paterculus is by far the oldest authority for any part of Tiberius's life. He had been an officer under Tiberius, and he eulogizes his old general enthusiastically, feeling it necessary, however, to do less than justice to the achievements of Germanicus. To Velleius all defenders of Tiberius have eagerly appealed. In truth it is his silence alone which affords any external aid in repelling the charges of Tacitus and Suetonius, and the fact that Velleius published his work in the lifetime of his master deprives that silence of its value. The eulogy of Sejanus which is linked with that of Tiberius must needs shake faith in the scrupulousness of the author. It is still doubtful whether Dio Cassius (whose History ended with the year 229) in his narrative of the reign of Tiberius is to any great extent independent of Tacitus. In recent times a considerable mass of inscriptions has added to our knowledge of the administration of this emperor. The chief account of Tiberius in English is that contained in Dean Merivale's History of the Romans under the Empire. Mr Beesly has written an interesting defence of him in his Catiline, Clodius, and, Tiberius. The best recent history of this period is Hermann Schiller's Geschichte der romischen Kaiserzeit (Gotha, 1883). Numerous monographs relating to the reign have appeared in recent times on the Continent. The principles of the imperial administration of the provinces by Tiberius have been treated by Mommsen in the fifth volume of his History of Rome, translated into English under the title of The Roman Provinces from Augustus to Diocletian. (J. S. B.)

 TIBESTI.See, vol. xxi. p. 149, and.  

IBET, Thibet, or Tübet, an extensive and highly elevated region in the heart of Asia, comprising tablelands ranging from 10,000 to 17,600 feet above sea-level. The Himalayan mountain ranges and the transverse ranges of upper Yun-nan constitute the southern scarp,

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