A radical new portrait of the infamous Roman emperor

Rome’s second emperor, Tiberius (42 BCE–CE 37), has traditionally been seen as a villainous hypocrite—treacherous, grasping, vindictive, and depraved. But in Tiberius and His Age, Edward Champlin draws on vast and diverse evidence to show that Tiberius was—and was seen by contemporaries to be—recognizably human and far more complex than the monster of the hostile tradition that began with Tacitus and Suetonius.

Focusing on the overlapping themes of luxury, sex, power, and, especially, myth, Tiberius and His Age examines Tiberius’s standing as a folkloric figure in the Roman popular imagination and his conscious use of mythological themes to consolidate his power. It argues that the striking stories of Tiberius’s sexual depravity, which literary sources passed on to later generations, are ultimately incoherent fictions, the work of a brilliant fantasist who hated the emperor. The book’s portraits of three important figures in Tiberius’s circle—the gourmands Asellius Sabinus and Marcus Apicius and the emperor’s lieutenant, Sejanus—provide new perspectives on the emperor and his age. Tiberius’s passions for astrology, gastronomy, and mythology, which have often been seen as eccentric scholarly diversions, are revealed instead to be central to contemporary Roman debates and keys to understanding his personality, his power, and the lasting image of Roman emperors.

Incisive, witty, and original, Tiberius and His Age presents a startlingly new picture of Tiberius and the culture and politics of the early Roman Empire.

"In this bracing revisionist portrait, Champlin dismantles centuries of slander to reveal a Tiberius who was less monster than myth-maker. . . . With sharp readings of figures like Sejanus and Apicius, this erudite and sardonic study reframes imperial eccentricity as political strategy, offering a vivid lens on Rome’s early Empire." - Indulge Magazine

"This book is a landmark. The Tiberius we are presented with is an imaginative and idiosyncratic individual, a refined intellectual, and a man with keen religious and astrological interests. It took a scholar of Champlin’s learning and imagination to sketch such an original and fascinating figure." - Greece & Rome