Highways into Byways: The Travels of Tiberius

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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