Tiberius

Tiberius Julius Caesar Augustus (16 November 42 BC – 16 March AD 37) was the second Roman emperor and successor of his stepfather Augustus. Born to the Claudian patrician Tiberius Claudius Nero and Livia Drusilla, he was raised in Augustus's household after his mother's remarriage in 38 BC.

One of Rome's most successful generals, Tiberius conquered Pannonia, Dalmatia and Raetia, laying the empire's northern frontier. Happily married to Vipsania, daughter of Agrippa, he was compelled by Augustus in 11 BC to divorce her and marry the emperor's daughter Julia. Suetonius records that he once followed Vipsania weeping; the two were never allowed to meet again. In 6 BC he retired to Rhodes for eight years, returning only when the deaths of Augustus's grandsons made him the indispensable heir.

Adopted in AD 4, Tiberius became princeps in 14. His administrative record was solid and unflashy: he proclaimed Augustan policy as "law" for himself, supervised governors personally, established the Rhine-Danube frontier, cut public expenditure, and left the treasury with roughly three billion sesterces. Edward Togo Salmon notes that across his twenty-three-year reign only about fifty-two were charged with treason and almost half acquitted — a record at odds with Tacitus's lurid picture.

His later years were darkened by tragedy. The death of his son Drusus in AD 23 — later revealed to be a poisoning by the praetorian prefect Sejanus and his lover Livilla — pushed him into permanent retreat. In AD 26 he left Rome for Capri and never returned. Sejanus, controlling correspondence between emperor and senate, purged Julian-line senators. In AD 31 Tiberius condemned him by letter; the prefect was strangled the same day.

He died at Misenum on 16 March AD 37. The senate refused him divine honours and Caligula voided his will at once. His contemporaries' verdict was harsh, but his quiet achievements kept the empire stable enough to absorb the chaos that followed.