102 



Not less unfounded is the supposition, indulged in liy others, that 

 the Emperor courted solitude in order to liide the growing infirmities of 

 his old age : his bent stature, bald head, and the ugly blotches of his 

 face. Nothing could be farther removed from the temper of that 

 haughty Claudius than such weakness, -which would have reduced him 

 to the level of a fop, and even in a woman would have been disgraceful. 

 But far worse suspicions than these have found more general cre- 

 dence. It was whispered that the lowest of carnal appetites, a desire 

 to indulge without restraint in the vilest lusts and unnatural volup- 

 tuousness, urged him to shun the eye of the capital, and prompted him 

 to establish in the pleasant retreat at Capre^e a hell of sensuality. 

 The pen of a modern historian recoils from the very names of the dis- 

 gusting practices which the prurient gossip-mongers of that immoral 

 age did not hesitate to ascribe to a man who had almost reached the 

 extreme limit of human existence, and who had been so conspicuous in 

 his youth and manhood for temperance, frugality, and purity of life that 

 even the malice of anonymous slanderers could not invent wherewith to 

 reproach him. We may well ask what could have prevented him, if he 

 had been so inclined, from satiating the lowest appetites in the secret 

 recesses of his imperial palace at Rome. Was he more likely to escape 

 detection in the lonely island ? Would not the ministers of his lusts 

 surround him there also? And why should he dread obloquy for 

 sensuality which had so infected the social body that it almost ceased 

 to be a reproach ? He who so utterly despised the public opinion of 

 his contemporaries would have set them at defiance and rejoiced in 

 doing so, if his failings had been those ascribed to him.* He almost 

 courted the reproach of the servile crowd that cringed round the feet 

 of his slaves ; but he was scrupulously jealous of the verdict of posterity, 

 and he was too far-sighted to hope that he would be able at the same 

 time to secure an unsullied fame by throwing a veil over misdeeds 

 that will and must rise to greater proportions through the very mist 

 intended to shroud them. 



If this scandalous accusation were founded we should hardly expect 

 to find among the companions of Tiberius at Caprese a regular staff of 

 philosophers, rhetors, learned lawyers, and poets ; men whose presence 

 would naturally lead us to ascribe to Tiberius a very different sort of 

 life from that of an abandoned voluptuary. The Emperor had had a 

 liberal education ; he was well acquainted with the language and litera- 

 ture of Greece, and delighted in the study of the immortal works of 



* When Fulcinius Trio, one of the vilest wretches of hia time, was at length brought to 

 justice, and, before committing suicide in prison, had composed a document in which he 

 covered Tiberius with charges and invectives, the Emperor caused the paper to be read in 

 the senate. Tac. Ann. VI. 38. 



