No More Learning

" Tiberius was tall, and beautiful. Suetonius tells us of
his great eyes, which could see in the dark; of his broad shoulders,
his martial bearing, and the fine proportion of his limbs: he describes,
too, the unusual strength of his hands and fingers, especially of the
left hand. His health was good; because, from his thirtieth year, he
was his own physician. "Valetudine prosperrima usus est, tempore quidem
principatus paene toto prope illesa; quamvis a trigesimo aetatis anno
arbitratu eam suo rexerit, sine adjutamento consiliove medicorum. " The
Emperor Julian describes him "severe and grim; with a statesman's care,
and a soldier's frankness, curiously mingled:" this was in his old age.

_Down the pale cheek, long lines of shadow slope;
Which years, and curious thought, and suffering give. _

At Rome, is a sculpture of Tiberius; he is represented young, seated,
crowned with rays, exceedingly handsome and majestic: if the figure were
not known to be a Caesar, the beholder would say it was a God.

There is another personage in "The Annals," whose history there is
mutilated, and perhaps dissembled; of whose character my readers may
like to know something more, than Tacitus has told them: I mean Sejanus,
a man always to be remembered; because whatever judgment we may form
about his political career, and on this question the authorities are
divided, yet it is admitted by them all, that he introduced those
reforms among the Praetorian Cohorts, which made them for a long time,
proprietors of the throne, and the disposers of the Imperial office. To
this minister, Paterculus attributes as many virtues as he has bestowed
upon Tiberius: "a man grave and courteous," he says, "with 'a fine
old-fashioned grace'; leisurely in his ways, retiring, modest; appearing
to be careless, and therefore gaining all his ends; outwardly polite and
quiet, but an eager soul, wary, inscrutable, and vigilant. " Whatever he
may have been in reality, he was at one time valued by Tiberius. "The
whole Senate," Bacon says, "dedicated an altar to Friendship as to a
Goddess, in respect of the great Dearness of Friendship between them
two:" and in the Essay "Of Friendship," Bacon has many deep sentences
about the favourites of Kings, their "Participes Curarum. " I would
summon out of "The Annals," that episode of Tiberius imprisoned within
the falling cave, and shielded by Sejanus from the descending roof.
"Coelo Musa beat:" Sejanus has propitiated no Muse; and although
something more, than the "invida taciturnitas" of the poet, lies heavy
upon his reputation, he shall find no apologist in me. But over against
the hard words of Tacitus, it is only fair to place the commendations
of Paterculus, and even Tacitus remarks, that after the fall of Sejanus,
Tiberius became worse; like Henry VIII. , after the fall of Wolsey.
Livia
and Sejanus are said by Tacitus, to have restrained the worst passions
of the Emperor. The two best authorities contradict one another; they
differ, as much as our political organs differ, about the characters of
living statesmen: and who are we, to decide absolutely, from a distance
of two thousand years, at our mere caprice, and generally without
sufficient evidence, that one ancient writer is correct; and another,
dishonest or mistaken? This is only less absurd, than to prefer the
groping style and thoughts of a modern pedant, usually a German as
well, to the clear words of an old writer, who may be the sole remaining
authority for the statements we presume to question; or for those
very facts, upon which our reasonings depend. And how easy it is to
misunderstand what we read in ancient histories, to be deceived by the
plainest records, or to put a sinister interpretation upon events, which
in their own time were passed over in silence or officially explained
as harmless! Let me take an illustration, of what I mean, from something
recent. Every one must remember the last hours of the Emperor Frederick:
the avenues to his palace infested by armed men; the gloom and secrecy
within; without, an impatient heir, and the posting to and fro of
messengers. We must own, that the ceremonials of the Prussian Court
departed in a certain measure from the ordinary mild usage of humanity;
but we attributed this to nothing more, than the excitement of a
youthful Emperor, or the irrepressible agitation of German officials.
But if these events should find a place in history, or if the annals of
the Kings of Prussia should be judged worth reading by a distant Age;
who could blame an historian for saying, that these precautions were not
required for the peaceful and innocent devolution of the crown from a
father to his son. Would not our historian be justified, if he referred
to the tumults and intrigues of a Praetorian election; if he compared
these events to the darkest pages in Suetonius, or reminded his
readers of the most criminal narratives in the authors of the "Augustan
History"? From Sejanus and the Emperor William, I return once more to
Tiberius; from the present _Kaiser_, to a genuine Caesar.

It is not my purpose here to abridge Tacitus, to mangle his translator,
nor 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.