Tiberius

Nice book.Those who defend Tiberius overlook the fact that all the appropriate successors to him died. He murdered many people, including Agrippina. I am always repelled by old men who hang onto the last few years of their lives, in dread fear of dying, by killing anyone they suspect might be plotting against them. (I am old, BTW). Tiberius fits this description perfectly. The results speak for themselves. At the end, there were only two young boys, which included Caligula, in the line of succession. An old man in that position should have carefully planned for his succession, and died or retired in peace. The idea that Tiberius wanted to retire and leave the cares of government to his successor is a joke. Tyrants don't do that.During his reign, there was an essentially complete destruction of the Roman Senate. Nobody survived his reign. It reminds me of how Stalin essentially destroyed the Bolsheviks and rebuilt the Communist Party in his image.The book does not explore the role of Livia in much detail. Perhaps I have been misled, but I think that woman as portrayed in I, Claudius, likely had much more influence on Tiberius than is discussed in this book. Again, all the logical successors to Augustus died from this and that, leaving only Tiberius, who happened to be her biological son.Anyway, if you are interested in this period of history, read this book.Always keep this in mind: History is an account of what never happened by a man who wasn't there.

My main complaint is about the quality of the paper book itself that I was sent. It is very cheap. I had started reading this book in my school's library, then I bought it because I wanted to finish the book and wouldn't have access to it anymore. The library's edition was beautiful, and although this one looks the same at quick glance, it is not. The pages are thin, the print is not fully black but a purposefully-faded gray, and the cover photo is grainy and poor quality. I'm disappointed, because I was hoping that this might make a nice long-term addition to my library. It looks beat-up after only reading it once.As for the work itself by Robin Seager, a 10/10, a must-read. Tiberius has been my favorite emperor for a while, but this is the first full biography of him that I've read. Seager is sympathetic, but honest. Hopefully, readers of this book will be more understanding of Tiberius afterwards; rather than writing him off as cruel and apathetic (which he undoubtedly was to an extent), perhaps they will understand why he was this way, and see him as the complex, three-dimensional person that he was. Parts of the book are more exciting than others. It's a downright page-turner at some points, but at other moments, it seems like simply a bland catalogue of little-known names. This would be useful, though, for a student using this book for serious research.

Seager provides a highly detailed record of the life of Tiberius. The author concentrated a good deal on the issue of succession during the Julio-Claudian period. Fate was cruel to Augustus as his preferred heirs died, leaving his stepson, Tiberius, to fill the role of Rome's most powerful man. Never truly wanting his position, Tiberius wished to do what was needed until another successor of Augustus' bloodline came of age and fame. Fate was similarly cruel to Tiberius as it was to Augustus, and the rest of his rule turned out to be unpopular and corrupt.Seager analyzes much of Tiberius' reign through Tiberius' character traits, legal trials, and the lives of those close to him. The biography is well written and informative, but prior information is needed to fully comprehend the material. For those not versed in Roman history, you might not enjoy the book as I did.

Having read a number of accounts about Tiberius, both historical and modern, my interest was taken whilst reading Robin Seager's informative book.Suetonius' portrayal has too often been taken at face value and has been too much credence. Therefore we are given a view of a man who was a monster. Which is all very well if sensation is the priority?Seager's book shows Tiberius as a person whose complex character left him vulnerable to suggestion and later in life, suspicious and fearful.When his formative years are taken into account, the reader can more easily see the seeds of paranoia which were later to manifest.This book is eminently readable, fascinating and thought-provoking. Highly recommendable to those who wish to expand their knowledge of the second Princeps of the Roman Empire.

I was looking for a biography of Tiberius Claudius Nero, and I have to say that Robin Seager's book about the 2nd emperor or Rome is very well-done. I would recommend this book, along with Suetonius' masterpiece "The Twelve Caesars", for an insight onto this complicated and tragic individual.

The Emperor Tiberius has had a fairly consistently bad press since his own times; much of that, unfortunately, seems to be due to ancient sources that have been misrepresented, or rather biased - having to largely rely on sources such as Tacitus, Suetonius, Velleius Paterculus and Dio means that a balanced and unbiased view of someone as polarising as Tiberius is unlikely to be forthcoming. Modern authors, then, have to try to be as objective as possible, yet still utilise the sources available to them - not an easy task, and there have been many attempts over the years to drill to the `core' of Tiberius as a man and as an Emperor.Robin Seager's conclusions on Tiberius are more favourable than many, and I can fully appreciate his reasoning for those conclusions. Tiberius, I believe, was a man who gave his trust to few, and only when he believed it was fully earned and valued by the recipient; and once given, any betrayal of that trust led to his implacable hatred. He loved few people, but loved those few deeply; and he was, and he knew he was, unfitted for the task as the successor of Augustus. He could rule; he was a good soldier and seems to have been respected by those he served with; he was a politician and a diplomat; but he never had the `easy personal touch' that Augustus had with so many, and which was so vital to be able to balance the demands of the growing Empire, the Senate and the People. Tiberius was a man haunted by his responsibilities, and he never came to terms with his role as the successor to the first Princeps; in a Rome that was no longer a Republic, but not quite the Empire that it was to become, Tiberius found himself neither comfortable nor capable in the role that was imposed on him. The consequences were unfortunate, for himself and for Rome; and that is the legacy that ancient writers have picked up and run with, and which modern writers find so difficult to avoid.This is a great book, offering a balanced and empathetic view of Tiberius, and a thorough rundown on the sources, and other writers' viewpoints. Totally recommended for anyone wanting to get `under the skin' of such an enigmatic man.

Seager's contribution to the Blackwell Ancient Lives series is excellent and contributes to the quality the series has especially when it comes to Roman Lives. His work on Tiberius is especially praiseworthy, created a far more complex and complete picture of the second princeps than traditional scholarship allows, balancing the need to revise Tiberius' place in antiquity while avoiding the pitfalls of some biographers to overstate their subject's goodness or importance. The book is well written and very accessible and features an excellent introductory chapter on the reign of Augustus to bring the reader up to speed before launching in to its subject matter.The picture of Tiberius is well crafted and captures a real sense of the dilemma of the man, torn between the ideals of republicanism and the duties to the memory of Augustus as his adoptive son. It is possible to see him as a reluctant princeps and Seager does an excellent job of indentifying the ways in which Augustus loomed large in Tiberius thoughts, especially where the influence was not strictly positive including the weakness of the senate in undertaking duties within the state and also the lack of certain policy on the German frontier. Seager is also good at identifying Tiberius' many good achievements especially in the earlier part of his reign.The book may surprise some with interests in the history of the Julio-Claudian Dynasty. Seager is especially critical of Germanicus (though perhaps not enough is made of Germanicus' trip to Egypt) but doesn't really settle on the extent of Tiberius involvement in his death. Equally Seager doesn't absolutely decide on Tiberius relationship with Seianus, though his overall treatment of Seianus in the account is excellent. In the closing chapters of the book Seager complies with the more traditional view of Tiberius especially in discussing his "reign of terror" and the volume and nature of the maiestas trials.I thoroughly recommend this work to anyone with an interest in the history of the Early Principate/Julio-Claudians/Roman Empire. Many people spend a lot of time studying Augustus, which unfortunately leads to a diminished place in history for Tiberius, which is disappointing given the length of his reign and the stability he brought to the empire. Hopefully this book will go a long way to redressing at least some of the balance.

Robin Seager has written a comprehensive look at the *career* of Tiberius, rather than the life of Tiberius. This isn't bad, but it does leave some important factors out as for Tiberius, perhaps more than most, it is vital to understand the man in order to understand the Emperor. And this fact isn't lost to Seager, he calls it out himself, yet we get little to no discussion of Tiberius' temperament, habits, or relations outside of how it pertains to Tiberius' career. On one hand it's an advantage to this biography that Seager barely touches on the scandalous gossip surrounding Tiberius, especially the last half of his reign. There is a very concentrated effort to not address the outlandish but instead to make sense of the reasonable. But the downside to this is that in some cases important stories are left unaddressed. For example, did a younger Tiberius try to blackmail his younger brother with a forged letter, and if so, how does this play into our understanding of Tiberius' temperament? What of his apparent hard drinking habits even before he became princeps? We read nothing.For anyone interested in the Emperor Tiberius, this book is definitely a necessity, and as a definite fan of Tiberius myself, I track with Seager's apologetic approach and he does take effort to call out at certain times when there is a limit to how apologetic is reasonable. Because of Seager's sometimes almost short-hand style, I wouldn't recommend this as an intro text as he does write with an expectation that the reader can keep up (Caligula is called Gaius, for example, and the introduction can be easy to miss).To my surprise Livia gets very little attention despite the prominent role she continued to play throughout much of Tiberius' reign, most certainly to the detriment of his patience and to their mother-son relationship, which emphasizes how much this book is focused on Tiberius' career more than not. Seager likes to drop interesting tidbits while failing to elaborate, such as suggesting that Tiberius' failing physical appearance may have also played into his retirement from the city, but doesn't bother to clarify what that means. Or, elsewhere, that Claudius' son died an embarrassing death but doesn't bother to conclude that thought to its logical conclusion- well, how DID he die then? (The boy choked on a pear, by the way).The other great failing of this updated edition are the updates themselves. They sit at the back not referenced in the main text, but would be 100% better served as referenced end notes for that is really what they are, but unless you read until the end and find that out, you will read the whole book and then realize that updated research has affected what you just read 100 pages earlier. Even if you read the forward telling you that the updates sit at the back, you still have to go there first to see how they fit into the larger narrative.Ultimately, Seager does do a great justice to the career of Tiberius and offers some insightful opinions and informative discussions about why Tiberius acted as he did throughout his life, a man who, to this day, remains difficult to peg which makes him all the more fascinating.

Tiberio è sempre stato un principe molto misterioso; i suoi comportamenti ambigui hanno poi contribuito ad offuscarne la figura. Molti studiosi hanno deciso di affrontare la materia secondo un punto di vista più aderente alla storiografia contemporanea, certe volte scendendo in apologie assurde, altre volte adottando stili narrativi troppo vicini a quelle delle fonti antiche. Seager è ben conscio che il Tiberio di Tacito, nostra fonte principale sul principe, è una 'over-simplified exagerration', ma pure rifugge agli studi revisionisti moderni; con un'accurata cronaca della vita del secondo principe, partendo da il tipico preambolo che spiega la fine della Repubblica e l'inizio del Principato, Seager ripercorre tutti i moti dell'animo di un uomo vissuto in un'epoca molto difficile per Roma, indulgendo però, talvolta, in un copia-incolla delle fonti antiche; ad esempio, nell'ultimo capitolo, lo scrittore riporta con dovizia di particolari tutti i processi seguiti alla morte di Elio Seiano, mentre sarebbe stato, a mio avviso, più costruttivo riportare solo quelli che servivano a sostenere le argomentazioni dello storico. In buona sostanza, il Tiberius di Robin Seager è uno studio solido e necessario a comprendere il principato tiberiano, che può senza dubbio andare a fianco, ma non sostituire, il Tiberius the Politician della Levick, che per impostazione risulta sì più 'accademico', ma secondo me meno dispersivo e più chiaro nelle argomentazioni.

Good