TIBERIUS (Gr. TLIMptos, nertaining to the Tiber), the third emperor of Rome.
He is mentioned by name only by St. Luke, who fixes in the fifth year of his reign the com mencement of the ministry of John the Baptist, and of Christ (Luke The other passages in which he is mentioned under the title of Caesar, offer no points of personal allusion, and refer to him simply as the emperor (Matt. xxii:t7, sq.; Mark xii:14, sq.; Luke XX :22, sq.; xxiii:2, sq.; John xix :12, sq.).
His name in full was "Tiberias Claudius Nero, the second Roman emperor, successor of Augus tus, who began to reign A. D. 14, and reigned until A. D. 37. He was the sdn of Tiberius Clau dius Nero and Livia, and hence a stepson of Augustus. He was born at Rome on the t6th of November, B. C. 45. He became emperor in his fifty-fifth year, after having distinguished him self as a commander in various wars, and having evinced talents of a high order as an orator, and an administrator of civil affairs. His military ex ploits and those of Drusus, his brother, were sung by Horace (Cann. iv. 4, 14). He even gained the
reputation of possessing the sterner virtues of the Roman character, and was regarded as entirely worthy of the imperial honors to which his birth and supposed personal merits at length opened the way. Yet on being raised to the supreme power, he suddenly became, or showed himself to be, a very different man. His subsequent life was one of inactivity, sloth, and self-indulgence. He was despotic in his government, cruel and vindictive in his disposition. He gave up the affairs of the state to the vilest favorites, while he himself wallowed in the very kennel of all that was low and debasing. The only palliation of his mon strous crimes and vices which can be offered is. that his disgust of life, occasioned by his early domestic troubles, may have driven him at last to despair and insanity. Tiberias died at the age of seventy-eight, after a reign of twenty three years." (Smith, Bib. Diet.) (See CyEsAR.)