Tiberius

Tiberius reassesses the second Roman emperor from his birth in 42 BC through military command, dynastic adoption and accession after Augustus. Powell examines his service in the Alps, Pannonia, Illyricum and Germania, his withdrawal to Rhodes and his eventual restoration as Augustus’s chosen successor. These achievements are set against the personal losses and family arrangements through which the Julio-Claudian succession was constructed.

The imperial chapters reconsider Tiberius’s financial management, provincial government, treason trials and retreat to Capri, separating contemporary evidence from later stories of depravity and tyranny. Germanicus’s popularity, the rise and fall of Sejanus and the position of Livia and Caligula are treated as central to the politics of the reign. The biography argues that Tiberius’s formidable administrative and military ability cannot be understood solely through the hostile tradition that shaped his posthumous reputation.