Tiberius Biography

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The first half of Suetonius’ biography of Tiberius reflects very well on him. He is described as being so humble as to be almost annoying about it. Suetonius quotes a senator saying, “others were slow in doing what they promised, but that he was slow to promise what he was already doing.” However, the second half of the biography, which addresses Tiberius’ ruthlessness leads me to believe that Suetonius did not think highly of Tiberius’ in the second half of his reign. To illustrate this, I will give a brief summary of the biography. Then I will give my reasons for believing that the first two years of Tiberius’ reign was good. Finally, I will show how Tiberius turned sour, and became like the many other bad emperors. To start with, I will …show more content…

Suetonius starts off by discussing Tiberius’ origin, then his birthdate. He moves on to discussing Tiberius’ youth, saying that it was “beset with hardships and difficulties”. This seems a bit to foreshadow the second half of the biography. This …show more content…

Then Suetonius briefly goes over some trials he participated as well as his early military career. After this, Tiberius retired as completely as possible to Rhodes and then was forced to stay there in retirement. He became increasingly unpopular from here. He finally got permission from Augustus to return to Rome after seven years in exile. After about three years of retirement in Rome, Tiberius was adopted as Augustus’ son. After being adopted, Tiberius had a more extensive military career, which Suetonius talks about at length. After this, Augustus died, and Tiberius took control of Rome. Suetonius launches into a very extensive explanation of how Tiberius’ reign was admirable for the first two years, and how he was humble to a fault as I mentioned in the first paragraph. To foreshadow the coming corruption, Suetonius repeatedly uses phrases such as ‘at first’, and ‘for the first two years’, etc. After the death of his sons, Tiberius went to Capreae. At this point he began to let his responsibilities slide, failing to replace those in high positions who retired, died, etc. Spain and Syria were even left without a consul for years. He also succumbed to the various

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