After CÆsar Augustus came Tiberius CÆsar. His father’s name was Tiberius Claudius Nero. His mother was the famous Livia Drusilla. She was afterward taken away from her husband to become the wife of the Emperor Augustus, with whom, as we have already shown, she shared the honors and power of his distinguished career. Tiberius and his full brother Drusus,—younger than himself,—became, therefore, the stepsons of Augustus.

While still a youth Tiberius appeared in honor upon several occasions, and once he made a plea before the emperor in behalf of the King Archelaus and the Thessalians. Later he became also the son-in-law of Augustus, by his marriage to Julia, his stepsister. To accomplish this, and thus obey the command of Augustus, Tiberius separated from his first wife, Vipsania, with whom always, however, his heart remained. Suetonius tells us that one day afterward, when he accidentally met her, his eyes filled with tears and followed her as long as she was in sight. This pathetic incident does much to increase our interest in him.

His brother Drusus, to whom he was much attached, died in the year 9 B.C. when he was in military service on the banks of the Rhine. Bringing back his body to Rome, Tiberius walked on foot before the funeral train all the long journey. Augustus gave to him also the honorable mission of going to receive from the Parthians the military standards that Crassus had lost in war with that people, but which they were now willing to restore.

Tiberius performed with energy every duty that Augustus assigned to him. He rapidly, therefore, received military promotion. For thirty years he was a prominent and skillful general and acquired much experience in public affairs. He was strict in military discipline and a good administrative officer. He was sent across the Rhine nine times on important missions. Many believed him to possess those stern, Roman qualities that would fit him for the highest position. His temper, however, was somewhat surly and, like many of his contemporaries, he seems to have had little reluctance to shed blood.

He was admitted to an important and special share of the government two years before the death of Augustus. He was thirty-five years old when he came to the throne. His accession was quietly brought about by the careful management of his mother, Livia, by the support of the army, and by the acquiescence of the people.

The inheritor of a vast empire from his predecessor, Tiberius had at the outset much to do to keep its various parts in subordination. For some time he avoided foolish extravagance and insisted upon order and efficiency in the various departments. He defeated the plans of the enemies who had plotted against him, and showed much decision and firmness. He did not allow himself in the first years of his reign to come into conflict with the senators, and conciliated them in various ways. He was very obsequious, at the same time, to the wishes of his ambitious mother, Livia, who had always been watchful of his interests, and who was a great helper to his plans. The first nine years of his reign he was a conservative ruler. If he had died within that period he might have been rated by posterity as an industrious and patriotic monarch.

But even during that time he was unlike Augustus, in that he had none of those striking qualities that appeal to the sentiment and imagination of the people. He had no personal magnetism. He led in no great enterprises. He cared neither to provide nor to attend exciting gladiatorial shows. On the other hand, he was often gloomy and irritable, cynical in judgment, and fearful of the malice of his enemies. This tendency was afterward increased by disappointments in his domestic life. His marriage with Julia, the daughter of Augustus, owing to her bad character, proved to be unfortunate and unhappy. He turned against her, and fifteen years of later experience in life could not soften his attitude toward her.

The victories, triumphs, and death of his nephew, Germanicus, the son of his brother Drusus, occurred during his reign. Germanicus was a great soldier, a man of interesting character, and a sort of popular idol. While the people were giving themselves up to mourning over his death, Tiberius told them that both they and he should find the best consolation in attending to their regular duties. This seemed to them to be a very cold treatment of the occasion and confirmed their suspicions that the emperor had been jealous of Germanicus. It lessened his hold upon the affections of the people, although, to please them, he caused the arrest of CnÆus Piso, who was suspected of having poisoned Germanicus, and who committed suicide before he was sentenced.

At the same time Tiberius was completing the concentration of power in his own hands and began to employ delators, or spies, that he might detect and punish the beginnings of all plots against himself. He was suspicious of his subjects at Rome. “I have a wolf by the ears,” he said, referring to the great body of the people. This being his attitude of mind toward them, it is not strange that they lost for him their love and loyalty. His son, another Drusus, who had grown to be about thirty years old, was now associated as a consul of the empire with him.

The career of Tiberius rose to a certain height and then gradually declined. The turning-point was when he received into his intimate confidence an infamous adviser named Sejanus. He trusted this man more than he did the experienced officers of his realm. Sejanus was utterly selfish and corrupt, and willing to stop at no point in his domination of the emperor’s mind. Tiberius began to manifest a depressed and morose spirit. He frequently retired to the island of Capri, near Naples, for relief and recuperation. There, upon the high cliffs, amid beautiful scenery and the soft breezes of a salubrious climate, he made for himself extensive gardens and villas and gathered around him servile flatterers, who ministered to his vanity and catered to his caprices. He was fascinated by oriental superstitions and employed many sorcerors and magicians. Juvenal pictures the scene of the emperor sitting on a rock of Capri with his “Chaldeans” (that is, soothsayers) around him.

Tiberius continued in a large measure to direct through others the affairs of the empire. His son, Drusus II, proved to be a man of ability and discharged well the duties that were laid upon him. But Sejanus was made prefect and had the control of the city and of the Pretorian guard. It was Sejanus who took the bold step of bringing all the soldiers of that guard,—nine or ten thousand in number,—together into one camp, where they could be more at his own bidding. This camp was on the northeast border of Rome, where the square projection in the line of the walls still indicates its large proportions. Of course Drusus was in the way of Sejanus’ unprincipled ambitions; so the latter insidiously managed to gain influence over the wife of Drusus; and these two, Sejanus and this woman, together poisoned the promising heir to the throne. Tiberius was deceitfully told that the prince Drusus had died from sickness only. It was a severe blow to his fondest hopes. He manifested great grief before the Senate and mournfully declared that he must now transfer his hopes to the youthful children of Germanicus.

Meanwhile jealousies and recriminations prevailed between Tiberius and his mother Livia as one party, and Agrippina, the widow of Germanicus and granddaughter of Augustus, as the other. Agrippina was living at Rome with her fatherless children, among whom was a third Drusus, a Nero, and a Caius. Caius, under the name of Caligula, was destined to be the next emperor. Sejanus fostered this quarrel for his own ends. He also encouraged the emperor in his deliberate purpose to make his permanent residence in the island of Capri, which Tiberius did soon after. There the luxurious seclusion of the emperor was guarded with the strictest vigilance; but day by day a regular service of couriers brought dispatches to him from the continent and from Rome. His commands, in turn, were transmitted to the capital city.

Not long afterward Livia, the mother of the emperor and the widow of Augustus,—from whose somewhat officious oversight Tiberius had effected his escape by retiring to Capri,—died at the advanced age of eighty-six, having held for seventy years nearly as much influence as any other personage in the Roman court. She had been also called Julia Augusta, on account of her marriage to Augustus and her admission to the CÆsarian family. She had combined ambition with prudence, great ability with virtue and benevolence. At her obsequies Caius, the youngest of the sons of Germanicus, pronounced the eulogy.

In my sketch of the life of Augustus I have described some of the apartments of Livia’s house, with their ancient beautiful frescoes, which are still to be seen among the ruins on the Palatine Hill. Not far from the beginning of the Appian Way the tourist, after nearly nineteen centuries, also visits, with curiosity and wonder, a columbarium, or great burial vault, so called from the niches in the walls resembling those of dovecotes, in which are believed to repose the ashes of Livia’s numerous attendants, slaves and freedmen, said to be more than a thousand in number. This gives some idea of the opulence in which she lived.

It now remained for the unprincipled Sejanus to get rid of Agrippina,—the widow of Germanicus,—and her children, who caused him great uneasiness. By his exaggerated accusations, Tiberius was induced to send word to the Senate that they must arrest and condemn them. In spite of earnest opposition from the people, this was done. Agrippina was sent into exile in the island of Pandataria, now called Ventotienne, where she is said to have starved herself to death in the year A.D. 33,—the year of Christ’s crucifixion. Her son Nero was sent into another island, called Pontia. Another son, Drusus, was thrown into prison at Rome. All of these afterwards came to miserable deaths as the result of their ill treatment. But another son, Caius by name, was fortunate enough to be looked on with more favor by the emperor and to be kept by his side at the imperial resort in the island of Capri.

Sejanus, seeming now to be in full power, was made consul by the emperor, to serve along with himself. But it was not a great while before the tide turned. Tiberius discovered the utter hollowness and treachery of this man, so that in a time when he least expected it Sejanus was summoned before the Senate at Rome, the charges of the emperor against him were read, and he was thrown into the Mamertine prison. Upon others also, besides Sejanus, the wrath of Tiberius fell.

Then, disappointed by those in whom he had trusted, and embittered by his own successes in tyranny, he began to divert himself at Capri with debasing pleasures. He seemed to have thrown off all the restraint of decency and to have given himself up with his boon companions to the wildest orgies of dissipation and vice. His ancient biographers paint these scenes of his life in the darkest colors. He had broken all the fair promises of his earlier days and, instead of a painstaking ruler, had become a self-indulgent, besotted, and vindictive old man. The most charitable view that can be taken of his life at Capri is that his mind had become weakened by his gloomy suspicions, by his absolute authority and by his uncontrollable appetites.

Milton in his “Paradise Regained,” when he represents Satan as tempting Christ with “all the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them,” represents the former as saying:

It was certainly a very subtle form of temptation to suggest to a noble mind, the thought of supplanting a monarch who had become so reprobate and vile.

The youth and early manhood of the famous writer and philosopher, Lucius AnnÆus Seneca, fell within the twenty-three years of the reign of Tiberius. He had been born seven years before the Christian era, at Cordova, in Spain. His father was a man of knightly rank; and his mother, Helvia, a Spanish lady, is praised by her son for the nobility and sweetness of her character. They were people of wealth, and had cultivated tastes.

When Seneca was still a babe only two years old the family migrated to Rome. He had two brothers,—Marcus AnnÆus Novatus and Lucius AnnÆus Mela. The latter was the father of Lucan, the poet of Rome’s declining literature. The former is known in history as Julius Gallio, a name which he took when adopted by an orator of that name. It was the same Gallio who became deputy of Achaia in Greece and before whom the Apostle Paul was dragged at Corinth by the Jews, who were indignant at his success in preaching. When some Greeks seized Sosthenes, the ruler of the synagogue, and beat him before the judgment seat, Gallio “cared for none of those things.” How little he dreamed that the one thing that would keep his name before the ages would be the fact that a Christian Jew, obscure at that time, was brought for a few moments before his tribunal! But he was popular in his day for his culture and refinement and was called dulcis Gallio,—the sweet Gallio.

Seneca had the best educational advantages of his times. He studied rhetoric and philosophy. From Sotion, a Pythagorean, he imbibed the doctrine of the transmigration of souls, and from Attalus, the Stoic, a hatred of “vice, of error, and of the ills of life.” He learned in theory to commend poverty, to despise luxury, and to declare that the mind should be superior to its surroundings. He was too far from Palestine to have been brought in contact with the ministry there of Christ and of his apostles, but it is striking to remember (and here we may quote the language of Dean Farrar) that “amid all the guilty and stormy scenes in which his earlier destiny was cast there lived and taught in Palestine the Son of God, the Saviour of the World.” While the young Seneca was being guarded by his attendant slave through the crowded and dangerous streets of Rome on his way to school, Saint Peter and Saint Andrew were fisher lads by the shore of Lake Gennesareth; while Seneca was ardently assimilating the doctrine of Attalus, Saint Paul with no less fervency of soul sat learning at the feet of the Rabbi Gamaliel in Jerusalem, and long before Seneca had made his way through paths dizzy and dubious to the zenith of his fame, the Saviour of men, unknown to him, had been cruelly crucified.

Seneca’s writings during the life of Tiberius were chiefly on subjects drawn from nature and on India and Egypt,—countries in which he had been traveling. He won a high reputation in literature. He had little to do with the imperial court. He was not brought into any personal relation with the emperor Tiberius, but not infrequently in his pages refers to that “brutal monster” and to the dangerous power of his prime minister, Sejanus. We shall hear more of Seneca farther on.

While a few men such as Seneca were beginning to reach after higher things, the reign of Tiberius was, on the whole, a period of dark skepticism, of degraded morals, of manifold intrigues. Thoughtful persons had lost faith in the old mythology, the conventional paganism. Many were longing for something better. Many had settled into the worst pessimism. Various dreadful tragedies went on in high life at Rome. There was a great deal of contention, and much confusion among all orders of citizens. Accusations and suspicions were everywhere rife.

Twice during his residence at Capri Tiberius determined to go back to Rome. Each time he started from that mountainous island to make the journey. He pursued it until he had come near the imperial city. Then, without entering Rome, he, in each case, took a meditative view of its walls and buildings and turned back, terrified, it was reported, by some evil omen. The last time, as he was retracing his route through Campania, he was taken ill at Asturia. At Cerceii he presided at festive sports in the military camp, even casting with his own hand javelins at wild beasts, which were driven before his seat in the amphitheater.

But this was too much for his physical strength. Though he reached Misenum near Puteoli, he could go no farther. There he died in A.D. 37, when he was seventy-eight years old, at the close of a reign of twenty years. His funeral was soon after conducted with formal pomp by his successor, and his body was laid in the mausoleum of Augustus, at Rome.

Such was the emperor within the limits of whose administration fell the greater part of the youth and all the public ministry of Jesus Christ. It seemed as if in his person selfish power was allowed to run to every excess before divine mercy should make its great manifestation and self-sacrifice for mankind.

We read in Luke’s third chapter that it was in the fifteenth year of this Tiberius CÆsar that John the Baptist began to preach in all the country about Judea. As Jesus was “about thirty years old” when he came to John to be baptized, we suppose Luke’s reckoning to be made from the time that Tiberius became associated with Augustus in the government. In that dark age there were many who were defying God and going to every extreme of injustice and vice, but there were others who were “waiting humbly and prayerfully for the consolation of Israel.” How startling to the former and how welcome to the latter must have been the great forerunner’s cry echoing in the wilderness of Judea: “Prepare ye the way of the Lord and make his paths straight!” Among the people who went out to hear John were some of the soldiers of Tiberius, who were then stationed in Palestine.

“What shall we do?” they asked.

“Do violence to no man, neither accuse any falsely, and be content with your wages,” was his reply.

Herod Antipas, the son of Herod the Great, had been the tetrarch or ruler of Galilee under the Roman emperor since the death of his father. In his courageous zeal, John the Baptist did not hesitate to rebuke even this Herod Antipas, because he was then scandalously living with Herodias, the wife of his brother Philip. John, therefore, was hated and thrown into prison, and there remained until he was cruelly beheaded at the request of Herodias, through her daughter, who had pleased this Herod by her dancing in the revels of his birthday feast.

When Jesus had begun his ministry in Galilee, Herod hearing about him, said:

“John have I beheaded, but who is this of whom I hear such things? It is John the Baptist who has risen from the dead.”

And he desired to see Jesus.

On another occasion some Pharisees came to Jesus saying:

“Get thee out and depart hence, for Herod will kill thee.”

And he said unto them:

“Go ye and tell that fox, Behold I cast out devils and do cures to-day and to-morrow, and the third day I shall be perfected.”

Herod’s desire to see Jesus was afterward gratified in very remarkable circumstances. He was temporarily in Jerusalem, having come south from his city Tiberias, on the Sea of Galilee, when Jesus was brought before Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor of Judea. Hearing that Jesus was from Galilee, Pilate tried to turn the case away and put the responsibility of deciding it upon Herod by sending Jesus to him for examination. But Jesus would not answer Herod’s interrogations; and so, after ill-treatment by Herod’s guards, he was sent back to Pilate, who had to make the decision after all. He passed judgment in spite of his hypocritical washing of his hands in the presence of the mob.

We learn from secular history that one cause of the unpopularity of Pilate with the people was that, in removing some Roman troops from Cesarea to Jerusalem, he had tried to bring into the holy city the military standards that bore the image of the emperor Tiberius. The old religious feelings of the Jews against any representation of the human figure, especially when, as in this case, it tended to idolatry, was roused to the utmost; and their remonstrance had to be heeded. So stirring were the events in Jerusalem taking place while Tiberius was emperor at Rome.

It was the face of Tiberius, or of his predecessor Augustus, that was on the Roman “penny” or denarius that Jesus once asked to be shown to him. Seeking a pretext for accusing him before the Roman authorities, his foes had inquired of him:

“Is it lawful to pay tribute to CÆsar or not?”

Looking at the denarius, Jesus said:

“Render unto CÆsar the things that are CÆsar’s and unto God the things that are God’s!”

The government of Tiberius had, indeed, a claim upon the tribute of its citizens, who enjoyed its protection and used its coin: but that claim should never interfere with their obligations to the Supreme Ruler of all consciences.

Again, when the Jewish rabble tried to overcome the scruples of Pilate by shouting:

“If thou let this man go thou art not CÆsar’s friend,” it was to the fear of Tiberius in Pilate’s heart that they appealed. Centurions, or captains of a hundred men in the army of Tiberius, appear in the scenes of the New Testament. It was the shadow of Tiberius over the land that was withholding from the Jews the right to put any man to death. They had to look to the Roman authorities to do this; and then it was accomplished not by the Jewish method of stoning but by the Roman method of crucifixion.

Those were Roman soldiers, “the whole band of them,” at Jerusalem, who so heartlessly derided Jesus in the Governor’s hall. We read that “they stripped him and put on him a scarlet robe.” And when they had platted a crown of thorns, they put it upon his head and a reed in his right hand. And they bowed the knee before him and mocked him, saying:

“Hail, King of the Jews!”

And they spit upon him and took the reed and smote him on the head. And after they had mocked him they took the robe off from him and put his own raiment on him and led him away to Golgotha. Those were Roman soldiers that drove the nails into his hands and feet.

“They gave him vinegar to drink mingled with gall.”

They elevated him upon the cross, and then sat down to gamble for his raiment, while they cast occasionally a glance at his dying agonies. It was the Roman centurion, commanding these soldiers, who, seeing the earthquake and those things which were done, feared greatly, saying:

“Truly, this was the Son of God!”

Afterward it was a Roman soldier that thrust a spear into the side of the crucified, to make sure that he was dead, and it was a group of them that were placed as a watch at the sealed tomb. One wonders if the miraculous facts about the life and death and resurrection of Jesus were ever fully reported to the emperor Tiberius and whether he ever gave any consideration to their deep significance.

Tiberius was not a great builder as Augustus had been. Yet he built or enlarged the imperial palace on the Palatine. It was on the north corner of the hill and overlooked the Forum. Some ruins of it remain, as well as some of the villas that he erected on the island of Capri. There are said to have been ten of the latter. Statues and other relics of them now adorn the grounds and halls of modern summer resorts near the spots which he selected. A triumphal arch was erected in his honor in the Roman Forum. After him also was named the city of Tiberias, mentioned in John vi, 23, which was built by the tetrarch, Herod Antipas, to be the Roman capital of Galilee, and which was adorned with a palace and a stadium. On the edge of that Palestinian lake, which is sometimes called in Scripture the Lake of Gennesareth, sometimes the Sea of Galilee and sometimes, from this city, the Sea of Tiberias, the traveler finds to-day its modern representative, broken and picturesque.

It was to me a memorable night when, many years ago, I encamped, with some friends, among its ruins and watched the storm, which, as often in the days of Christ, had come up suddenly and was raging on the waters. The fishermen, Simon and Andrew and James and John, as they plied their craft of old, could see across the waves the walls of the palace by day and its gleaming lights by night. And not far away in the city of Capernaum, on the shore of the same lake, Matthew, when he was an unpopular publican or tax-gatherer, sat at the seat of the customs and took in the tribute money, which was for the treasury and government of Tiberius at Rome.

It is not more than fifteen miles away over the hills to Nazareth, where Jesus was brought up; and we may well suppose that the wonderful boy sometimes came from there and looked down from the precipitous cliff into that deep natural basin where the lake lies and upon this city of Tiberias upon its bank. The shores were then inhabited by a great and busy population. About twelve miles long and six miles broad, it was then dotted by many a sail. Caravan roads connected its cities, and many races and languages were then represented there. Any youth from a rural home would take rich delight in coming thither and so getting into touch with the great outside world. And it was the scene of so much of his holy manhood’s ministry that it seems almost a desecration that the name of Tiberias should also have been fastened there. It has now little more to attract the eye than the circling banks, the rippling waters and the blue haze on the surrounding hills. Yet to the Christian student, acquainted with its past and in love with the character of Him who lived and taught there, it has taken on an interest that belongs to no other locality on earth.

It is thought to have been in the reign of Tiberius that the two granite obelisks, known as Cleopatra’s Needles, which in the nineteenth century before Christ had been set up by Thothmes III, a monarch of Egypt, before the Temple of the Sun at Heliopolis, were removed to Alexandria and placed in front of a temple dedicated to CÆsar. In our own time they have been carried very much further from their original location. One of them stands on the Victoria Embankment in London. The other is in Central Park, New York. The latter is 68½ feet high and nearly 8 feet wide on each side of the base. Who knows but that Joseph and Mary on their flight with the sacred child into Egypt from Bethlehem looked with wonder on its curious hieroglyphics at Heliopolis? At any rate, as it stands now in the park of an American city, it is a venerable and heavy link between the life of to-day and far distant ages.

Tiberius sits in the Vatican Museum. That is to say, his marble effigy does. It was discovered in modern times at Veii in Italy and has been pronounced by antiquarian experts to be a genuine representation of him. He appears as a young man of fine figure and handsome face. With his right hand he holds up a baton, with his left he grasps a sheathed dagger between his knees; and this seems to be a fitting emblem,—though not perhaps intentional,—of his cruelty. Drapery is thrown over his shoulder and across his lap. On his head he wears a wreath. The ribbons that fasten it hang down behind his neck. His forehead is intellectual. The hair is cut straight across it. The face is smoothly shaven. The lips are thin. The other features are of generous size. Some may discern in the figure the promise of a strength and wisdom, which, also, was not fulfilled. Others may see in the face only weakness and a consciousness of posing. At any rate, the statue helps us to make history real to the imagination.

Why was this wicked man elevated to such honor and power? The thought comes to us that we have no such ancient portrait of the meek and lowly Saviour, who, while Tiberius was reigning, “went about doing good” and inviting the weary and heavy-laden to come to himself for rest. No sculptor from among Rome’s eminent artists was, of course, ever commissioned with promise of rich reward to perpetuate in bronze or marble the form and features of the despised Nazarene.

This is one of the many facts that remind us that the highest worth has often to wait long for its appreciation. But that appreciation will come at last. A few may turn aside from the busy streets of Rome to contemplate in the Vatican gallery this cold semblance of the unworthy man who petulantly ruled the world when the cruel cross was erected outside the walls of Jerusalem and when the yearning arms of Love Incarnate were stretched out in pain upon it. But the Victim on that cross has gloriously triumphed and has won His throne in millions of human hearts.