Accession of Tiberius
Tiberius succeeded Augustus in 14 and spent the first weeks of it pretending he did not want to. The problem was that there was no office to inherit. Augustus had governed for forty-one years through an accumulation of republican powers voted to him personally, and none of them descended automatically; the senate had to vote them again to someone else. Tiberius had been adopted as heir only after everyone else died — Marcellus, Agrippa, Gaius and Lucius — and had spent seven years in self-imposed exile on Rhodes in the middle of his career for reasons the sources cannot agree on. He was fifty-five, an experienced and successful general on the Rhine and the Danube, and by temperament unsuited to a role that required constant public pretence. The senate meeting in September is described by Tacitus with obvious relish: Tiberius speaking in circles about the burden being too great for any one man, senators trying to work out whether refusal was genuine, and someone eventually asking him plainly which part of the state he wished to be given. He accepted without ever saying so directly. The legions on the Rhine and in Pannonia mutinied within weeks over pay and length of service, which demonstrated that the succession was a military question whatever the senate voted. His reign was administratively sound and personally miserable: treason trials expanded, his son Drusus died, he withdrew to Capri in 26 and never returned to Rome. Sejanus ran the state until Tiberius destroyed him in 31. He died in 37 and Caligula succeeded.
- Year: 14 CE
- Category: Political
