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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 May 2015
Can there be a less promising topic than this? It is well known that Tiberius twice took time off from a busy career, first as heir-apparent and finally as emperor, but at first glance such withdrawals appear to be non-travel rather than travel. By the same token, his military expeditions seem to be tours of duty rather than travel in the sense classical scholars have constituted that rubric. Arguably the Capri stay was not travel but retirement. As the writer Norman Douglas put it, with a hint of apology: ‘In retiring at the close of an arduous life to enjoy the beauties of nature on fabled Siren shores, he was only doing what any civilised person might be expected to do.’ But there is more that can be said. In so far as such movements constitute imperial travel, there is a short but rich section of Millar's The Emperor in the Roman World as well as the detailed study by Halfmann, Itinera Principum, to read alongside ancient and modern biographies.
1 On ancient travel, two French studies are fundamental: André, J.-M. and Basiez, M.-F., Voyager dans l'Antiquité (Paris 1993)Google Scholar; and Chevallier, R., Voyages et déplacements dans l'empire romain (Paris 1988)Google Scholar. Cf. Casson, L., Travel in the Ancient World (London 1974)Google Scholar.
2 Siren Land and Fountains in the Sand (London 1957 [1911]) 56Google Scholar.
3 Millar, F., The Emperor in the Roman World, 31 BC-AD 337 (London 1977) 28–40Google Scholar; Halfmann, H., Itinera Principum. Geschichte und Typologie der Kaiserreisen im römischen Reich (Stuttgart 1986)Google Scholar. More specific in its focus is Rogers, R.S., ‘Tiberius’ travels, AD 2637’, CW 39 (1945/1946) 42–4Google Scholar. There is much of relevance in the two standard English-language biographies: Seager, R., Tiberius, 2nd edn (Maiden MA 2005 [1972])CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Levick, B., Tiberius the Politician, rev. edn (London 1999 [1976])Google Scholar. Bernecker, A., Die Feldzüge des Tiberius und die Darstellung der unterworfenen Gebiete in der Geographie des Ptolemaeus (Bonn 1989)Google Scholar, is marred by poor maps and reliance on a faulty edition of Ptolemy.
4 Suet. Tib. 7.3: Drusum fratrem in Germania amisit, cuius corpus pedibus toto itinere praegrediens Romam usque pervexit. (‘He lost his brother in Germany, and transported his body all the way to Rome, going ahead on foot the entire distance.’)
5 Suet. Tib. 10.1: tot prosperis confluentibus integra aetate ac ualitudine statuit repente secedere seque e medio quam longissime amouere. (‘Amid such a preponderance of successes, though in the prime of life and health, he suddenly decided to retire and withdraw as far away as possible.’)
6 See also Dio 55.9.1-8 on the last of these; for Dio, Augustus mismanaged a tricky situation by alienating both his grandsons and Tiberius.
7 E. Champlin, ‘Tiberiana 4: Tiberius the Wise’, Princeton/Stanford Working Papers in Classics (2007) 5, suggests that this story is out of character, imputing a folkloric origin to Suetonius’ version: http://www.princeton.edu/~pswpc/pdfs/champlin/070704.pdf.
8 Velleins gives a positive spin by taking these no doubt bothersome visits as indications of Tiberius’ maiestas though a mere private citizen (2.99.4).
9 André and Basiez (n. 1) 327-31, follows the lead of Tacitus and Suetonius; cf. Chevallier (n. 1) 228-30. For the surviving fragment of Germanicus' speech, delivered at Alexandria, Sherk, R.K., The Roman Empire: Augustus to Hadrian (Cambridge 1988)CrossRefGoogle Scholar no. 34a at p.60, and Braund, D., Augustus to Nero: A Sourcebook on Roman History, 31BC-AD 68 (London 1985) 557Google Scholar. On this speech, see also Aldrete, G.S., Gestures and Acclamations in Ancient Rome (Baltimore 1999) 115–18Google Scholar; in detail, Weingärtner, D.G., Die Ägyptenreise des Germanicus (Bonn 1969)Google Scholar.
10 Cic. Att. 13.12 refers to an Athenian mime actor, famous for running on the spot. See further Champlin, , ‘Tiberiana 2: Tales of Brave Ulysses’, Princeton/Stanford Working Papers in Classics (2006) 28: http://www.princeton.edu/~pswpc/pdfs/champlin/090602.pdfGoogle Scholar.
11 Dio 58.1.1.1: 
(‘Tiberius departed from Rome at this moment and never returned to the city, though he was frequently on the verge of doing so and regularly sent messages.’)
12 Dio 58.5.1: 
(‘Sejanus was so prominent by virtue of both his overbearing arrogance and his enormous power that it seemed, in short, that he was emperor and Tiberius a kind of island governor, given that Tiberius spent his time on the island called Capri.’)
13 Rogers (n. 3) 42-4.
14 Note esp. the theme of Tiberian dissimulano: … ambiguus an urbem intraret, seu, quia contra destinaverat, speciem venturi simulans. (‘… in doubt whether to enter the City or not, or else giving the appearance of arriving because he had decided against arriving.’) On accounts of his supposed neologisms, with their textual problems, see Champlin, ‘Tiberiana 1: Tiberian Neologisms’, Princeton/Stanford Working Papers in Classics (2006), http://www. princeton.edu/~pswpc/pdfs/champlin/090601.pdf.
15 In reality, however, the Latin name of the island derives from the feminine form, caprea.
16 E.g. D'Arms, J.H., Romans on the Bay of Naples and Other Essays on Roman Campania, ed. Zevi, F. (Bari 2003 [1970]) 87Google Scholar; Champlin (n. 7).
17 D'Arms (n. 16) 165-67; Houston, G.W., ‘Tiberius on Capri’, G&R 32 (1985) 179–96Google Scholar.
18 Houston (n. 17).
19 ‘Despite a malign tendency to see islands as isolated and remote, characterised principally by their lack of contamination and interaction, they in fact lie at the heart of the medium of interdependence: they have all-round connectivity.’ Horden, P. and Purcell, N., The Corrupting Sea: A Study of Mediterranean History (Oxford 2000) 225–7Google Scholar.
20 Martin, R.H. and Woodman, T. (eds), Tacitas, Annals Book TV (Cambridge 1989) 242Google Scholar.
21 Tac. Ann. 4.41: note esp. sua in manu aditus… (‘access [was] under Tiberius' own control’.
22 McKay, A.G., Cumae and the Phlegraean Fields: Ancient Campania I (Hamilton, Ontario 1972) 99–101Google Scholar.
23 Royle, S.A., A Geography of Islands: Small Island Insularity (London 2001) 74–7Google Scholar.
24 Suet. Aug. 92: apud insulam Capreas veterrimae ilicis demissos iam ad terram languentisque ramos convaluisse adventu suo, adeo laetatus est, ut eas cum re publica Neapolitanorum permutaverit, Aenaria data. (‘He was so pleased that, upon his arrival on the island of Capri, the branches of an ancient oak, long drooping on the ground and withering, revived, that he arranged with the city of Naples to give him the island in exchange for Aenaria.’) For Suetonius, this incident evidences Augustus' superstitious nature.
25 Note especially Silv. 2.2 on the seaside villa of his patron, Pollius Felix: see in general Myers, K.S., ‘Docta otia: Garden Ownership and Configurations of Leisure in Statius and Pliny the Younger’, Arethusa 38 (2005) 103–29CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
26 Peyrefitte, R., The Exile of Capri, trans. Hyams, Edward (New York 1965 [1959])Google Scholar.
27 ‘True History and False History in Classical Antiquity’, JRS 71 (1981) 56Google Scholar. Gabba emphasises Diodorus Siculus' fifth book, devoted to islands, and its paradoxography, and the sense that humans were supposedly in closer connection with nature when on islands; see also Schepens, G. and Delcroix, K., ‘Ancient Paradoxography: Origins, Evolution, Production and Consumption’, in La Letteratura di consumo nel mondo greco-latino, ed. Pecere, O. and Stramaglia, A. (Cassino 1996) 343–160Google Scholar.
28 Clay, D. and Purvis, A., Five Island Utopias (Newburyport MA 1999)Google Scholar.
29 Julia the younger 2 BC (Tac. Ann. 1.53; Suet. Aug. 65; Dio 55.10.14); Agrippina the elder in AD 29 (Suet. Tib. 53, Gai. 15); later Octavia in 62 (Tac. Ann. 14.63); Domitilla 95 (Dio 67.14.2). See now Cohen, Sarah T., ‘Augustus, Julia and the Development of Exile ad insulam’, CQ 58 (2008) 206–17CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
30 Suet. Tib. 42: by way of variation, their other son, Drusus, was tortured in a basement of the palace.
31 Tac. Ann. 1.3; Dio 56.30.
32 Horden and Purcell (n. 19) 133. Compare the varying approaches of Hughes, J.D., Mediterranean: An Environmental History (Santa Barbara 2005)Google Scholar, and Grove, A.T. and Rackham, O., The Nature of Mediterranean Europe: An Ecological History (New Haven 2001)Google Scholar.
33 Suet. Tib. 72.1: bis omnino toto secessus tempore Romam redire conatus, semel triremi usque ad proximos naumachiae hortos subuectus est disposila statione per ripas Tiberis, quae obuiam prodeuntis submoueret, iterum Appia usque ad septimum lapidem; sed prospectis modo nec aditis urbis moenibus rediit, primo incertum qua de causa, postea ostento territus. (‘Only twice in the entire period of his retirement did he attempt to return to Rome, once sailing in a trireme as far as the gardens near the naumachia (‘artificial pond’), having first posted a guard along the Tiber banks to ward off those who came out to meet him, and later coming up the Appian Way as far as the seventh milestone. But he returned after having only a distant view of the city walls, without going near, on the first occasion for some unknown reason and on the second terrified by some portent.’)
34 Rogers (n. 3) 44.
35 Tac. Ann. 6.15.1-4, 27.1, 39.2; and Dio 58.21.1, 25.2. The first of these mentions his pointed avoidance of Rome's public buildings when physically close, even to the point of taking detours: … ne tecta quidem urbis, adeo publicum consilium numquam adiit, deviis plerumque itineribus ambiens patriam et declinans (6.15.4) (‘… he never came close to the buildings of the City, much less the popular assembly, but repeatedly by devious routes he encircled and avoided his native city.’)
36 Joseph, . AJ 18.179Google Scholar: 
-
(‘After some time, Tiberius travelled from Capri to Tusculum, a distance of 100 stadia from Rome; Agrippa asked Antonia to take measures to secure him a hearing against the charges Eutychus had brought against him.’)
37 The key passage for Tiberius' own movement is Joseph, . AJ 18.179Google Scholar: cf. preceding note. See, in detail, AJ 18.161-2,179–92Google Scholar; BJ 2.180Google Scholar, with Rogers (n. 3) 43.
38 Tac. Ann. 4.57.1, 59.1-4, 67.1; Suet. Tib. 39-40; Rogers (n. 3) 42; on the problematic sequence of events, Woodman, A.J., ‘The Structure and Content of Annals 4.57-67’, in his Tacitas Reviewed (Oxford 1999) 142–54Google Scholar.
39 For the Fasti Annates, see Degrassi, A., Inscriptions Italiae (Rome 1931) 13.1.320–31Google Scholar.
40 Gaertner, J.F. (ed.), Writing Exile: The Discourse of Displacement in Greco-Roman Antiquity and Beyond (Leiden 2006)Google Scholar.
41 ‘Cartography and Taste in Peutinger's Roman Map’, in Talbert, R. and Brodersen, K. (eds), Space in the Roman World: Its Perception and Presentation (Münster 2004) 113–42Google Scholar.
42 Dio 59.17; in general, DeLaine, J., ‘The Temple of Hadrian at Cyzicus and Roman Attitudes to Exceptional Construction’, PBSR 70 (2002) 205–30Google Scholar.
43 Ando, C., Imperial Ideology and Provincial Loyalty in the Roman Empire (Berkeley 2000)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
44 Millar (n. 3)30-1.
45 Cf. Douglas (n. 2).
46 Horden and Purcell (n. 19) esp. chapter 5 on connectivity; Scheidel, W., ‘Human Mobility in Roman Italy, I: The Free Population’, and II: The Slave Population’, in JRS 94 (2004) 1-26 and 95 (2005) 64-79Google Scholar; C. Moatti, and Kaiser, W. (eds), Gens de passage en Méditerranée de l'antiquité à l'époque moderne. Procédures de contrôle et de l'identifícation. L'atelier Méditerranéen (Paris 2007)Google Scholar; Purcell, N., ‘Romans in the Roman World’, in Galinsky, K. (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Augustus (Cambridge 2005) 85–105CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
47 Royle(n.23) 110.
48 On the latter, see esp. Alcock, S.E., ‘Nero at Play? The Emperor's Grecian Odyssey’, in Eisner, J. and Masters, J. (eds), Reflections of Nero: Culture, History and Representation (Chapel Hill and London 1994) 98–111Google Scholar.
49 For their helpful challenges I warmly thank the original Sydney audience (especially Lindsay Watson), as well as a subsequent one at Yale. Thanks also to my colleague, Fred Porta. For the deficiencies that remain, I alone am to blame.