Iron Imperator: Roman Grand Strategy Under Tiberius

by Iskander Rehman

Bokförlaget Stolpe 2024

More than a century ago, a writer could casually describe the Roman Emperor Tiberius as “the recognized type of all that is most evil in a ruler,” someone who “left a name which is seldom mentioned without an expression of detestation.” JC Tarver's Tiberius the Tyrant appeared in 1902, and that complacent assessment of the successor to Rome's illustrious Emperor Augustus went largely unchallenged for most of the 20th century. There were breaks in the torpor, refreshing new looks from Robin Seager and Barbara Levick, but mostly the biographical picture of Tiberius hasn't changed since it was carved in marble by Suetonius: a grim, lightless goon who grew gradually into a lecherous old scab committing atrocities while in weird retirement from his duties back at Rome.

So the appearance of any new biography of Tiberius is a cause for guarded celebration: celebration because this figure warrants more attention, but guarded because the attention is usually uncritically manipulative. Bokförlaget Stolpe, for instance, has recently come out with a beautifully-illustrated new book called Iron Imperator: Roman Grand Strategy Under Tiberius, written by Iskander Rehman, a member of various think tanks and policy councils with no training in the classics.

It's a thing garlanded in ominous omens. Not only does Rehman seem not to be a trained historian (no great strike; Tacitus wasn't either), but in the book's Foreword, Peter Stothard writes, “If we choose to study Tiberius, what can be learned from him about present policy towards NATO, Ukraine, or China?” Since the question is asinine, and since plenty of Foreword-writers never so much as glance at the book they're introducing, it's maybe not damning – except that Rehman hits the same note, repeatedly claiming self-evidently idiotic things like “The Tiberian period does indeed offer a number of valuable insights for contemporary security managers.”

Luckily, despite the fact that the book's title and subtitle don't match, despite the fact that the writer of the Foreword thinks Tiberius has anything at all the teach NATO, and despite the fact that the author himself claims an emperor from 2000 years ago has “valuable insights” to present to modern geopoliticians, Iron Imperator has some real worth as a study of “perhaps one of the most enigmatic figures of antiquity.”

That figure has intrigued various readers through the centuries, from Pushkin to Theodor Mommsen. “For all these thinkers, it was clear that one of Rome's most overlooked and unpopular emperors was also one of its most capable – at least with regard to the formulation of grand strategy and foreign policy,” Rehman writes. “Indeed, under Tiberius the administrative apparatus of the Principate – which had been weakened by decades of profligacy, predatory usury practices, and heightened military expenditure – was remedied.” Even Tacitus, one of the old emperor's most eloquently withering critics, is given a sympathetic reading by this author: “While acknowledging many of his biographical subject's military and intellectual qualities, the normally dispassionate historian seems at pains to conceal his personal antipathy toward the brooding autocrat.”

Rehman calls Tiberius the “dour but capable stepson” of Augustus and traces his career through all its stages, from neglected lesser light in the broader imperial family to frontier warrior fighting against the Germans to heir presumptive after the oddly sequential deaths of all of the other heirs and finally to his years as emperor, increasingly disillusioned with the government he'd inherited and the men who ruled it with him. Rehman's accounting of these years is very solid, amply aided by his refusal to dismiss the ancient Roman writings of Velleius Paterculus, the only surviving source who knew Tiberius and wrote during the emperor's life. Velleius is invaluable despite his flaws, and it's nice to see him here balancing the sensationalism of the other, more lurid ancient sources.

“Throughout his reign,” Rehman writes, “Tiberius is shown to have been an attentive steward of Rome's overseas territories, closely following issues pertaining to infrastructure development and taxation even during the eleven-year period when he was living in relative seclusion on Capri.” And while this and similar conclusions whiff more of the Pentagon than they do of the Palatine, they're a welcome change from simply re-heating old scandalmongering.

Steve Donoghue is a founding editor of Open Letters Monthly. His book criticism has appeared in The Washington Post, The American Conservative, The Spectator, The Wall Street Journal, The National, and the Daily Star. He has written regularly for The Boston Globe, the Vineyard Gazette, and the Christian Science Monitor and is the Books editor of Georgia’s Big Canoe News