Roman Imperial Texts: A Sourcebook

23. Emperors

23 Emperors For better or worse, the emperors caught the interest and fired the imagination of people in the Mediterranean world. In this section, we examine both the concrete actions by which emperors ruled, and the stories or myths that circulated about them. TIBERIUS We consider Tiberius as the second emperor of the Roman Empire. Yet during his reign, Romans and those under Rome’s influence did not at first consider him to be the emperor of a form of government different from the Republic. 108. TIBERIUS STRENGTHENS THE OFFICE OF PRINCEPS (14–37 ce)1 In the following selection, from the biography by Suetonius, we can see Tiberius gradually taking charge and continuing the moral and religious agenda that Augustus had initiated, upholding traditional marriages and ridding Rome of foreign religions—including Judaism—in order to strengthen the observance of Roman civic religion and other religions traditionally accepted by the Roman Republic.§33. In gradual steps, Tiberius revealed the princeps, and while for a though he was remarkable for inconsistency, nevertheless he often and rather carefully took efforts to be helpful and useful for the national interest. Also, at first he intervened only that an abuse not be made. Therefore he rescinded certain decrees of the senate, sometimes proposing to sit on the bench with magistrates, or else at the side of the court area, in order to be an advisor. And if there was a rumor that one should escape freely, he would appear all of a sudden in the courts and speak to the jury, either from before or 1. Suetonius, Tib. 33–37; my translation of Latin text in Suetonius, trans. J. C. Rolfe, LCL. 209 on the bench, calling them to remember the law’s sanctity and their promise, and the gravity of the crime about which their decision was needed. If there was anything happening in public morality arising from apathy or loose living, he took in hand to correct it.§34. Tiberius reduced the costs of entertainment for the populace by decreasing actors’ salaries and limiting the number of gladiator fights on any holiday. One time, he strongly reacted against an unexplained spike in the cost of statues made of Corinthian bronze, and of gourmet fish—three mullets had been put on sale, each for one hundred gold pieces. His response was that a limit should be set for the costs of household furnishings, and that price levels should be reviewed and adjusted each year by the senate. The aediles were simultaneously to ration the quantities of food put up for sale in restaurants and diners, going so far as to prohibit pastries. And to provide a model in his project against waste, he often offered at official dinners the partially eaten dishes from the previous day, or just one side of a boar, which he remarked had all the same qualities that the whole one did. He made an executive prohibition of promiscuous kissing and the giving of New Year’s gifts after January 1. He was accustomed to give a return gift that was four times [the original gift’s value], presenting it in person, but bothered at being interrupted for the whole month by those unable to gain access to him on the festival day, he no longer continued this.§35. He was the author of an ancestral custom that married women debased by indecency be punished by such common sentence as family members imposed, with no public prosecutor present. He dissolved the oath of a Roman knight, so that he might divorce his wife after she was discovered in disgrace with her sonin -law, though he had earlier vowed he would never spurn her.2 2. Incest of mother-son varieties was considered unequivocally wrong by the Romans. Note how Paul is upset at the pride of the Corinthian church when one of its members so involved in what is only slightly different from the example above, incest with a stepmother. Paul’s description of “such a porneia that is not even found among the Gentiles” is evidence of the Roman intolerance of these forms of incest (1 Cor. 5:1-13, quotation from 5:1). See Bruce W. Winter, After Paul Left Corinth: The Influence of Secular Ethics and Social Change (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001), 44–57. 210 | Roman Imperial Texts Married women from upstanding families who themselves were known to be loose began to offer...