THE ISLE OF CAPRI 



229 



When Tiberius re- 

 tired to Capri he took 

 with him, among oth- 

 ers, the mathematician 

 and astrologer, Thra- 

 syllus, who would be 

 an expert on optics, if 

 there were any such at 

 this time. Moreover, 

 the Emperor was the 

 greatest general of his 

 time and would be 

 intimately acquainted 

 with long-distance sig- 

 naling in its every 

 detail. 



There is a passage 

 in Tacitus that refers 

 to signaling from 

 Rome to Capri. This 

 is as follows : "Mean- 

 while he [Tiberius] 

 was upon the watch 

 from the summit of a 

 lofty cliff for the sig- 

 nals which he had or- 

 dered to be made if 

 anything occurred, 

 lest the messengers 

 should be tardy. Even 

 when he had quite 

 foiled the conspiracy 

 of Sejanus, he was 

 still haunted with 

 fears and apprehen- 

 sions, insomuch that 

 he never once stirred 

 out of the Villa Jovis 

 for nine months." 



Without undue ef- 

 fort of the imagina- 

 tion, we can picture Tiberius receiving 

 the signals from Rome announcing the 

 treachery of Sejanus, and we can sympa- 

 thize with him in this final distress. 

 Added to the enforced early separation 

 from Yipsania, his first wife, a lifelong 

 sorrow ; the disgrace of Julia, his second 

 wife ; the death of his splendid son, 

 Drusus, and other personal domestic 

 afflictions — this final disappointment, the 

 defection of his friend and trusted min- 

 ister, must have come as a cruel blow to 

 the old man. 



Photograph by Edith P. Kingman 



HIS PICTURE HANGS IN MANY GALLERIES 



This sedate gentleman is not a painter, but the most famous artist's 

 model of Capri. 



The fact that Augustus and Tiberius 

 made Capri their special retreat gives it 

 a deep and lasting significance. The 

 island was the favorite home of them 

 and their families for nearly seventy 

 years. They are the two greatest execu- 

 tives in history ruling consecutively— 

 both clear-headed, hard-working admin- 

 istrators, whose labors established the 

 supremacy of the Roman Empire and 

 brought about a wonderful period of 

 peace unequaled in history, before or 

 since. They both lived long, full lives 



