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The Dies Imperii of Tiberius1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 September 2012

K. Wellesley
K. Wellesley
Affiliation:
University of Edinburgh
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Extract

At the root of many doubts that obscure our understanding of the manner and timing of Tiberius' accession to the principate there lies a chronological puzzle whose solution is perhaps not altogether beyond conjecture. On what date fell the dies imperii of the new emperor? Three (perhaps four) precise, but incorrect, answers are provided by Josephus, Dio and Tertullian. The difficulty is not removed by the brief or tendentious narratives of Velleius, Tacitus and Suetonius which offer us no such date, or of Dio himself. It is the purpose of this paper to argue that Tiberius accepted the principate at the hands of the Senate on a date between 1st and 3rd September, A.D. 14, and that his reluctance to do so is unlikely to have been a consequence of the receipt of news of the Pannonian revolt.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Roman Studies , Volume 57 , Issue 1-2 , November 1967 , pp. 23 - 30
Copyright
Copyright ©K. Wellesley 1967. Exclusive Licence to Publish: The Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies

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References

2 The following studies, among others, are pertinent to the present enquiry: J. Béranger, Recherches sur l'aspect idéologique du principat, 1953; P. Grenade, Essai sur les origines du principat, 1961, 394–418; M. Hammond, The Augustan Principate, 1933, 73–4; Hohl, E., ‘Wann hat Tiberius das Principat übernommen?’, Hermes 68 (1933), 105–15Google Scholar; Kampff, G., ‘Three Senate Meetings in the Early Principate,’ Phoenix 17 (1963), 25–58CrossRefGoogle Scholar; F. Klingner, ‘Tacitus über Augustus und Tiberius,’ SB Bay. Ak. Wiss., Phil.—hist. Kl., 1953, 7, 26–37 ( = Studien zur griechischen und römischen Literatur, 1964, 643–51); Lang, A., Beiträge zur Geschichte des Kaisers Tiberius Diss. Jena, 1911Google Scholar; D. M. Pippidi, Autour de Tibére, repr. 1965, 125–32; Schmitt, H. H., ‘Der pannonische Aufstand d. J. 14 und der Regierungsantritt des Tiberius,’ Historia 7 (1958), 378–83Google Scholar; D. Timpe, Untersuchungen zur Kontinuität des früheren Principats, 1962, 48–56; and Weber, W., Princeps I, 1936Google Scholar.

3 Tiberius died on 16th March, 37. Dio (LVIII 28, 5) gives him a reign of 22 years, 7 months and 7 days; but when we observe that he causes him to die ten days too late, we find that he has in fact calculated the beginning of Tiberius' reign as 20th August, the day after Augustus' death. This may be thought peculiar in an author whose statement at LVII, 7 ὡς δ᾿ οὖν οὐδὲν ἔτι νεώτερον ἠγγέλλετο, ἀλλὰ ἀσφαλῶς πάντα τὰ τῶν Ῥωμαίων ἐς τὴν ἡγεμονὶαν αὐτοῦ συνεφρόνησε, τήν τε ἀρχ`ην οὐδὲν ἔτι εἰρωνευόμενος ὑπεδέξατο… apparently places the dies imperii after the suppression of the revolts in Pannonia and Germany, i.e. in October. Add to Dio's calculation that of Tertullian, Contra Iudaeos 16 (22 years 7 months 20 days). Josephus on the other hand offers a late date, 13th October: Ant. XVIII, 6, 10 (224), 22 years 5 months 3 days, for which the 22 years 6 months 3 days of BI II, 9, 5 (180) is presumably a scribal error: so Béranger 23, whose convenient table (9) provides other later and worthless estimates. Tacitus' unusual description of the year A.D. 23 as nonus Tiberio annus (A iv, I, 1) appears to burke the issue. Pippidi has shown from Egyptian evidence that Tiberius' reign did not begin before 29th August, but this information, however welcome, scarcely helps us in the present enquiry.

4 Ovid heard the same story of delay: Ex Ponto IV, 13, 27 f.: frena rogatus / saepe recusati ceperit imperii.

5 It has been adopted, with modifications, by many scholars, from Lang to Timpe.

6 Timpe 54 plausibly argues that the crucial debate, which he, like others, places on 17th September, must have begun with a formal surrender by Tiberius of his imperium and tribunicia potestas according to Augustan precedent.

7 At I, 263; and it is qualified by the cautious note at 264, 4 ‘Es kann sein, dass mit jedem funus publicum, ein iustitium, wenn auch nur für die kurze Frist wo der Trauerzug auf dem Forum verweilte, verbunden war.’

8 Cf. his attitude on the death of his son Drusus: TA IV, 8, 2; Suet., Tib. 52, 1. Iustitium at A I, 16, 2 refers only to freedom from military duties.

9 TA I, 16, 2 with Wilkes, J. J., ‘A Note on the Mutiny of the Pannonian Legions in A.D. 14,’ CQ N.S. 13 (1963), 268–71CrossRefGoogle Scholar. In view of the location of the three legions the site of the summer camp is almost certainly to be placed further from Rome than is Emona. The speed of travel by various means of transport under the republic and principate has been dealt with by many investigators: it will be sufficient to refer to W. Riepl, Das Nachrichtenwesen des Altertums, 1913 (esp. 129–36, 147–51, 188–96) and F. Stolle, Das Lager und Heer der Römer, 1912 (passim). There is a broad measure of agreement that on good roads within the frontiers Roman infantrymen could march at an average rate of 18–20 (Roman) miles per day over an extended period, and that a fast mounted courier, enjoying the facilities of the cursus publicus and in circumstances of the highest urgency, could achieve as much as 100 or even 125 mp per day. These figures, which are borne out time and again in the narrative of Tacitus, plus the knowledge of the distances involved (Rome–Emona 467 mp; Nola–Rome 150 mp), enable us to arrive at quite reliable datings for the movements of August and September, A.D. 14.

10 LI (1961), 238.

11 They were quartered in Rome or its neighbourhood: TA IV, 2, 1; Suet., Aug. 49.

12 The constitutional nicety which led Tiberius not to ask for the grant of proconsulare imperium to Drusus as he had done in the case of Germanicus is carefully noted by Tacitus: A I, 14, 3 quominus idem pro Drusc postuleretur, ea causa quod designatus consul praesensque erat. But this attitude is inexplicable if by this time Tiberius had already decided to send his son on a military mission to Pannonia. A consul designate for the year immediately following would naturally be required to be present in the Senate, and the proconsular power of a later filius principis (A XII, 41,1) was valid only extra urbem.

13 Charlesworth in CAH x suggested about 15 days for the journey (10 mp daily). This seems a little slow, for on the death of Tiberius (16th March, 37) his heir Gaius similarly accompanied the body of the dead emperor from Misenum to Rome. Misenum is roughly the same distance from the capital as is Nola. Since Gaius and the cortège entered the city of Rome on 28th March (Henzen, AFA p. XLIII; CIL XIV, Suppl. 4535), they had taken 12 days for the journey. But in A.D. 14 the season was August, not March. Despite the practice of embalming the dead, the season inspired greater expedition, as Suetonius hints.

14 The first meeting of the Senate was held on the day after the night arrival of the cortège, according to Dio LVI, 31. Apart from the Senate meetings, there was possibly a contio also (Vell. 11, 124 pugnantis cum Caesare senatus populique Romani; TA I, 46, 1 patres et plebem … cunctatione ficta ludificetur) and Tiberius is alleged to have feigned sickness more than once as a delaying tactic (Dio LVII, 3).

15 News of the revolt of the Fourth and Twenty-Second Legions at Mainz on the morning of 1st January, 69 reached Vitellius at Cologne (90 mp away) on the evening of the same day. Pompeius Propinquus' immediate notification reached the capital on or before 9th January, since its result was the adoption of Piso on 10th January (H I, 18, 1). Therefore the courier(s) covered the distance in not more than eight days. On the other hand, on the day of the adoption it was not known (16, 3; 18, 2) that Vitellius had been proclaimed emperor. This happened on 2nd-3rd January, and could not have been public knowledge at Cologne until the evening of 3rd January. The news reached Rome after the adoption, and was hushed up by Galba until his death. Therefore the courier(s) conveying this message took more than seven days for the journey.

16 As presumably at H IV, 3–10. The likelihood of several sittings in September was advanced by Lang, and has been stressed by Grenade 404 f.

17 Despite Klingner, Grenade and others.

18 In particular, observe that inde marks the resumption of continuous chronological narrative after an intervening anticipatory or retrospective digression at H II, 86, 3; IV, 47 and 82, 1; A I, 44, 5; II, 74, 1 (retaining M's interpretantur). So with dein(deinde) at A III, 25, 1; xi, 15, 1. For ceterum introducing a forward jump in the narrative cf. A II, 88, 2 ceterum Arminius … (the passage discussed in the text).

19 Or possibly from the primus senatus dies (8, 1), so that the funeral itself would fall within the anticipatory digression and could be placed about 10th September, a dating for which there is something to be said (cf. Weber 77*, n. 341). A phrase in the letter of Tiberius carried by Drusus to Pannonia ubi primum a luctu requiesset animus, acturum apud patres de postulatis eorum (A I, 25, 3) might suggest that it was written at an early date before the funeral.

20 Some light may now fall upon the strange statement of Velleius (II, 124, 2): soli huic (sc. Tiberio) contigit paene diutius recusare principatum quam ut occuparent eum alii armis pugnauerant. The alii cannot be Julius or Augustus, who both rose by arms, but slowly. Sulla's famous march on Rome, however, also from Nola, will have occupied barely a week. As for Tiberius, if our reconstruction is sound, he temporized with the Senate for four or (at most) six days. If Velleius' paene diutius is pressed—and he and his brother had good reasons for anxiety about Tiberius' accession (II, 124, 4)—the longer period may seem more probable. Grenade (403) advances an explanation which he himself acknowledges to be ‘précaire’: the cunctatio dates from A.D. 3 or 4.

21 Contrast Ovid's flattering saepe recusati with TA I, 7, 7 postea cognitum est … inductam dubitationem.

22 ibid.: dabat et famae ut uocatus electusque potius a re publica uideretur …