g day and night against the hysterical extravagance
of Agrippina: he had to be content, even without the sure hope of
success, if he could convince the majority that he was not a poisoner.
Authority without glory or respect, power divorced from the means
sufficient for its exercise--such was the situation in which the
successor of Augustus, the second emperor, after twelve years of a
difficult and trying reign, found himself. He no longer felt himself
safe at Rome, where he feared rightly or wrongly that his life was
being continually threatened, and it is not astonishing that, old,
wearied, and disgusted, between the years 26 and 27 he should have
retired definitely to Capri, seeking to hide his misanthropy, his
weariness, and his disgust with men and things in the wonderful little
isle which a delightful caprice of nature had set down in the lap of
the divine Bay of Naples.

But instead of the peace he sought at Capri, Tiberius found the infamy
of history. How dark and terrible are the memories of him associated
with the charming isle, which, violet-tinted, on beautiful sunny days
emerges from an azure sea against an azure sky! That fragment of
paradise fallen upon the shore of one of the most beautiful seas in the
world is said to have been for about ten years a hell of fierce
cruelties and abominable vices. Tiberius passed sentence upon himself,
in the opinion of posterity, when he secluded himself in Capri. Ought
we, without a further word, to transcribe this sentence? There are, to
be sure, no decisive arguments to prove false the accounts about the
horrors of Capri which the ancients, and especially Suetonius, have
transmitted to us; there are some, however, which make us mistrust and
withhold our judgment. Above all, we have the right to ask ourselves
how, from whom, and by access to what sources did Suetonius and the
other ancients learn so many extraordinary details. It must be
remembered that all the great figures in the history of Rome who had
many enemies, like Sylla, Caesar, Antony, and Augustus himself, were
accused of having scandalous habits. Precisely because the puritan
tradition was strong at Rome, such an accusation did much harm, and for
this reason, whether true or false, enemies were glad to repeat it
whenever they wished to discredit a character. Lastly, all the ancient
writers, even the most hostile, tell us that up to a ripe age Tiberius
preserved his exemplary habits. Is it likely,