The Perverse Power of Tiberius Caesar — Rome’s Reclusive Emperor and the Scandal of Capri
- U I Team
- Nov 16, 2022
- 5 min read
The name Caligula is synonymous with depravity (thanks in part to the saucy 1979 film of the same name) But where did Caligula learn his nefarious ways? Growing up on the island of Capri under the guidance of Tiberius Julius Caesar Augustus, that's where!
The stories that surround Tiberius are both scandalous and salacious, as shocking to our modern sensibilities as they were to his contemporaries. But what made his private life so perverted? How did he abuse his absolute power? And who was the man behind the myth?
Heir by Default — The Murky Rise of Rome’s Second Emperor
Born in 42 BC into the prominent Claudian family, Tiberius Claudius Nero seemed at first destined for a life as a distinguished general rather than an emperor. His mother, Livia Drusilla, was astute and ambitious — so much so that she divorced Tiberius’ father to marry Octavian, later crowned Augustus, Rome’s first emperor.
Augustus was methodical in grooming successors, but fate robbed him of his preferred heirs. Gaius, Lucius and Marcellus, bright young men favoured to inherit the empire, died young — so suspiciously that whispers still linger that Livia engineered their demise to clear a path for her son. Whether this was calculated murder or mere misfortune, by the time Augustus lay dying in AD 14, Tiberius remained the only plausible choice.
In his youth, Tiberius appeared promising. He was a disciplined commander who expanded Rome’s frontiers in Armenia, the Alps and along the turbulent Rhine. Yet behind the martial stoicism lurked a man uncomfortable with court politics. He despised the constant scrutiny of the capital and the politicking expected of an heir.
In a dramatic gesture of withdrawal, he voluntarily exiled himself to Rhodes in 6 BC, citing his unhappy marriage to Julia the Elder, Augustus’ own daughter. Many believed he resented her for separating him from his beloved first wife, Vipsania Agrippina. Rhodes was his haven, where he studied Greek rhetoric and philosophy while Rome fretted over the succession.
When Augustus died in Nola in AD 14, Tiberius returned reluctantly to assume the purple. The Senate confirmed him, but the new emperor felt cornered by suspicion and deeply mistrustful of Rome’s elite.
He governed with indifference, delegating the day-to-day running of the empire to confidants. Foremost among these was Lucius Aelius Sejanus, the ambitious Prefect of the Praetorian Guard. Sejanus effectively steered Rome until his alleged coup plot was uncovered in AD 31, resulting in his abrupt execution.
One figure overshadowed even Sejanus: Germanicus, Tiberius’ adopted son and a darling of the public. A charismatic general adored by the legions, Germanicus died under mysterious circumstances during a campaign in Syria. Many were quick to blame Tiberius for poisoning him — another rumour that cemented the emperor’s sinister image.
Increasingly disillusioned and paranoid, Tiberius withdrew further from the city. By AD 22 he seldom set foot in Rome, retreating instead to the coastal retreats of Campania and, from AD 26 onwards, the isolated rocky island of Capri.
Capri — A Paradise of Depravity
The Villa Jovis, perched dramatically atop Capri’s cliffs, became Tiberius’ infamous pleasure fortress. Its terraces commanded sweeping views of the Gulf of Naples — but within its secluded chambers, scandal festered.
Ancient historians, notably Suetonius and Tacitus, preserve stories that read more like dark Roman pornography than sober biography. According to them, Tiberius decorated his palace with explicit frescoes rivalled only by the erotica found in Pompeii’s notorious brothels.
Here, the emperor is said to have kept an entourage of young boys dubbed his spintriae, a term translated loosely as “tight bums”. These boys, prized for their youthful bodies, were forced to engage in sexual acts for the emperor’s amusement. It is reported that Tiberius devised humiliating and sometimes torturous entertainments: during drunken feasts, guests were forced to drink excessively, then bound to prevent them from relieving themselves, purely for Tiberius’ grim pleasure.
But it was for pedophilia that Tiberius was most notorious.
Tiberius trained infants he called his “little fish” to swim between his thighs when he took a bath and nibble on his genitalia. And that’s not the only horrendous accusation to survive against him. We’re also told that he would take newborn babies from their mothers and hold them to his genitals, hoping they would respond to him as if to their mother’s breast.
Tiberius is alleged to have sodomized two boys during a sacrificial ceremony on the island, and when they complained he had their legs broken. He also sexually assaulted aristocratic women, causing one woman, Mallonia, such trauma that she was driven to suicide.
The “Old Goat’s Garden” — Scandal and Satire
By his later years, Tiberius was described as repulsively unkempt and wild-haired. He rarely shaved and cared little for appearances, earning him the derisive nickname “the old goat” from the theatre crowds of Rome. The Latin pun was obvious: Capri, or Capreae in Latin, means goat island. Romans called his palace gardens “the old goat’s garden”, a barbed joke at their absent emperor’s expense.
Myth or Malice? Assessing the Sources
The catalogue of Tiberius’ alleged perversions survives chiefly through the works of Suetonius and Tacitus, whose disdain for imperial excess was matched only by their relish for lurid detail. Suetonius, a court secretary under Hadrian, drew upon palace archives, letters and eyewitness gossip. His Lives of the Caesars remains an extraordinary source for the early emperors, though few modern historians swallow his stories wholesale.
Tacitus, more measured but equally damning, frames Tiberius as a ruler corroded by paranoia and vice. Yet both writers belonged to an elite senatorial class that loathed the concentration of power in one man’s hands, and especially in Tiberius’, for he distrusted them in return.
Was Tiberius truly the monster described? It is unlikely every story is factual. Ancient Rome revelled in scandal as much as any tabloid culture today, and an unpopular ruler provided perfect material for gossip. However, the consistency and sheer number of accounts suggest that, at the very least, Tiberius’ retreat from Rome bred secrecy and suspicion, allowing his private debaucheries to grow unchecked.
Legacy — The Emperor Who Fled Rome
Tiberius died in AD 37, probably of natural causes at the age of 77, though whispers claimed he was smothered on the orders of his successor, Caligula. His ashes were interred alongside Augustus — an irony, considering how far he had strayed from Augustus’ carefully cultivated image of dignified rule.
In the centuries since, the shadow of Capri has remained a symbol of what unchecked imperial power can become. Tourists still climb the pathways to the ruins of Villa Jovis, peering over the same cliffs from which, rumour has it, Tiberius hurled unwanted lovers and servants to their deaths.
In the end, whether entirely factual or partially embroidered, the stories of Tiberius Caesar remain a chilling cautionary tale. They remind us that behind the marble statues and Latin inscriptions, Rome’s emperors were flesh and blood — and sometimes, very dark indeed
