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Highways into Byways: The Travels of Tiberius
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 May 2015
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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.
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References
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.
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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).
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13 Rogers (n. 3) 42-4.
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34 Rogers (n. 3) 44.
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36 Joseph, . AJ 18.179Google Scholar: 
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(‘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.’)
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44 Millar (n. 3)30-1.
45 Cf. Douglas (n. 2).
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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.