HKB
most criminal narratives in the authors of the "Augustan History"? From Sejanus and the Emperor William, I return once more to Tiberius; from the present Kaiser, to a genuine Caesar.
It is not my purpose here to abridge Tacitus, to mangle his translator, nor to try and say what is better said in the body of the volume: but when my readers have made themselves acquainted with Tiberius, they may be glad to find some discussion about him, as he is presented to us in "The Annals"; and among all the personages of history, I doubt if there be a more various or more debated character. Mr. Matthew Arnold thus describes him:
Cruel, but composed and bland, Dumb, inscrutable and grand; So Tiberius might have sat, Had Tiberius been a cat.