shroud himself in mystery, and such stories are probably the result of unfriendly attempts to penetrate the darkness. If history ventures to doubt the blackness of Theodora, that of Tiberius grows continually lighter under the investigations of criticism. Suetonius makes the emperor’s condition to have been one of mania, issuing frequently in the abandonment of all moral restraint. But in that case the authority of Tiberius, which was as firmly upheld during the years spent at Capreae as it had been earlier, must have fallen to pieces and come to an end. With respect to Sejanus, it is impossible to acquit Tiberius of blame. If he was deceived in his favourite he must have been willing to be deceived. He conferred on Sejanus a position as great as had been held by Agrippa during the reign of Augustus, and the minister was actually, and all but formally, joint emperor. Of the administrative ability of Sejanus there can be no question; but the charm and secret of his power lay in the use he made of those apprehensions of personal danger which seem never to have been absent from his master’s mind. The growth of “delation,” the darkest shadow that lies on the reign, was mainly a consequence of the supremacy and the arts of Sejanus. Historians of Rome in ancient times remembered Tiberius chiefly as the sovereign under whose rule prosecutions for treason on slight pretexts first became rife, and the hateful race of informers was first allowed to fatten on the gains of judicial murder. Augustus had allowed considerable licence of speech and writing against himself, and had made no attempt to set up a doctrine of constructive treason. But the history of the state trials of Tiberius’s reign shows conclusively that the straining of the law proceeded in the first instance from the eager flattery of the senate, was in the earlier days checked and controlled to a great extent by the emperor, and was by him acquiesced in at the end of his reign, with a sort of contemptuous indifference, till he developed, under the influence of his fears, a readiness to shed blood.
The principal authorities for the reign of Tiberius are Tacitus and Suetonius. The Annals of Tacitus were not published till nearly eighty years after the death of Tiberius. He rarely quotes an authority by name. In all probability he drew most largely from other historians who had preceded him; to some extent he availed himself of oral tradition; and of archives and original records he made some, but comparatively little, use. In his history of Tiberius two influences were at work, in almost equal strength: on the one hand he strives continually after fairness; on the other the bias of a man steeped in senatorial traditions forbids him to attain it. No historian more frequently refutes himself. Suetonius was a biographer rather than an historian, and the ancient biographer was even less given to exhaustive inquiry than the ancient historian; moreover Suetonius was not gifted with great critical faculty, though he told the truth so far as he could see it. His Lives of the Twelve Caesars was written nearly at the time when Tacitus was composing the Annals, but was published a little later. Velleius Paterculus is by far the oldest authority for any part of Tiberius’s life. He had been an officer under Tiberius, and he eulogizes his old general enthusiastically—feeling it necessary, however, to do less than justice to the achievements of Germanicus. To Velleius all defenders of Tiberius have eagerly appealed. In truth it is his silence alone which affords any external aid in repelling the charges of Tacitus and Suetonius, and the fact that Velleius published his work in the lifetime of his master deprives that silence of its value. The eulogy of Sejanus which is linked with that of Tiberius must needs shake faith in the scrupulousness of the author. It is still doubtful whether Dio Cassius (whose History ended with the year 229) in his narrative of the reign of Tiberius is to any great extent independent of Tacitus. In recent times a considerable mass of inscriptions has added to our knowledge of the administration of this emperor. The chief account of Tiberius in English is that contained in Dean Merivale’s History of the Romans under the Empire. Professor E. S. Beesly has written an interesting defence of him in his Catiline, Clodius and Tiberius (1878). The best recent history of this period is Hermann Schiller’s Geschichte der römischen Kaiserzeit (Gotha, 1883). Much historical information is given in the editions of the Annals of Tacitus, of which the best in English is that of Furneaux (Oxford, 1884); Freytag, Tiberius and Tacitus (Berlin, 1870) (following Stahr, Tiberius, Berlin, 1863), exposes the inconsistencies of Tacitus’ account. Many monographs have since appeared, written on similar lines, among which may be mentioned Ihne, Zur Ehrenrettung des Kaisers Tiberius (Strassburg, 1892); Gentile, L’Imperatore Tiberio secondo la moderna critica storica (1887); J. C. Tarver, Tiberius the Tyrant (1902). The principles of the imperial administration of the provinces by Tiberius have been treated by Mommsen in the fifth volume of his History of Rome, translated into English by W. P. Dickson (1886) (J. S. R.)
TIBESTI, a mountainous and little known region of the central Sahara, inhabited by the Tibbu (q.v.). The country was partly explored in 1870 by Gustav Nachtigal; it had not been again visited by Europeans up to 1910, though French officers had reached Borku on its southern borders. By the Anglo-French declaration of the 21st of March 1899 Tibesti was included in the French sphere of influence in North Africa.
TIBET, or Thibet, a country of central Asia. It is the highest country in the world, comprising table-lands averaging over 16,500 ft. above the sea, the valleys being at 12,000 to 17,400 ft., the peaks at 20,000 to 24,600 ft., and the passes at 16,000 to 19,000 ft. It is bounded on the N. by Turkestan, on the E. by China, on the W. by Kashmir and Ladak, and on the S. by India, Nepal and Bhutan. It has an area of over 1,000,000 sq. m., and an estimated population of about 3,000,000, being very sparsely inhabited.
|
| Emery Walker sc. |
Origin of Name.—The Tibetans call their country Bod, which
