The Reign of Tiberius | Page 5

to try and say what is better said in the body of the volume: but when my readers have made themselves acquainted with Tiberius, they may be glad to find some discussion about him, as he is presented to us in "The Annals"; and among all the personages of history, I doubt if there be a more various or more debated character. Mr. Matthew Arnold thus describes him:
_Cruel, but composed and bland, Dumb, inscrutable and grand; So Tiberius might have sat, Had Tiberius been a cat._
And these verses express the popular belief, with great felicity: I must leave my readers, to make their own final judgment for themselves. Whether Tacitus will have helped them to a decision, I cannot guess: he seems to me, to deepen the mystery of Tiberius. At a first reading, and upon the surface, he is hostile to the Emperor; there is no doubt, that he himself remained hostile, and that he wished his readers to take away a very bad impression: but, as we become familiar with his pages, as we ponder his words and compare his utterances, we begin to suspect our previous judgment; another impression steals upon us, and a second, and a third, until there grows imperceptibly within us a vision of something different. Out of these dim and floating visions, a clearer image is gradually formed, with lineaments and features; and, at length, a new Tiberius is created within our minds: just as we may have seen a portrait emerge under the artist's hand, from the intricate and scattered lines upon an easel. Then it dawns upon us, that, after all, Tacitus was not really an intimate at Capri; that he never received the secret confidences of Tiberius, nor attended upon his diversions. And at last it is borne in upon us, as we read, that, if we put aside rumours and uncertain gossip, whatever Tiberius does and says is unusually fine: but that Tacitus is not satisfied with recording words and actions; that he supplies motives to them, and then passes judgment upon his own assumptions: that the evidence for the murder of Germanicus, for instance, would hardly be accepted in a court of law; and that if Piso were there found guilty, the Emperor could not be touched. At any rate, we find it stated in "The Annals," that "Tiberius by the temptations of money was incorruptible;" and he refused the legacies of strangers, or of those who had natural heirs. "He wished to restore the people to severer manners," like many sovereigns; unlike the most of them, "in his own household, he observed the ancient parsimony." Besides the "severa paupertas" of Camillus and Fabricius, he had something of their primitive integrity; and he declined, with scorn, to be an accomplice in the proposed assassination of Arminius: "non fraude neque occultis, sed palam et armatum, Populum Romanum hostes suos ulcisci." He protected magistrates and poor suitors, against the nobles. He refused to add to the public burdens, by pensioning needy Senators: but he was charitable to poor debtors; and lavish to the people, whether Romans or Provincials, in times of calamity and want. Not least admirable was his quiet dignity, in periods of disturbance and of panic: he refused to hurry to the mutinous legions, or to a mean rebellion in Gaul; and he condescended to reason excellently about his behaviour, when his people were sane enough to listen. He was both sensible and modest: he restrained the worship of Augustus, "lest through being too common it should be turned into an idle ceremony;" he refused the worship of himself, except in one temple dedicated equally to the Senate and to the Emperor. Tiberius could be pathetic, too: "I bewail my son, and ever shall bewail him," he says of Germanicus; and again, "Eloquence is not measured by fortune, and it is a sufficient honour, if he be ranked among the ancient orators." "Princes are mortal;" he says again, "the Commonwealth, eternal." Then his wit, how fine it was; how quick his humour: when he answered the tardy condolences from Troy, by lamenting the death of Hector: when he advised an eager candidate, "not to embarrass his eloquence by impetuosity;" when he said of another, a low, conceited person, "he gives himself the airs of a dozen ancestors," "videtur mihi ex se natus:" when he muttered in the Senate, "O homines ad servitutem paratos:" when he refused to become a persecutor; "It would be much better, if the Gods were allowed to manage their own affairs," "Deorum injurias Dis curae." In all this; in his leisured ways, in his dislike of parade and ceremonial, in his mockery of flatterers and venal "patriots"; how like to Charles II., "the last King of England who was a man of parts." And