Tiberius was forced to divorce the wife he loved to marry Augustus's daughter
Tiberius was happily married to Vipsania when Augustus ordered him to divorce her and wed his daughter Julia. Suetonius says that when Tiberius later ran into Vipsania, he followed her home in tears, and steps were taken so they never met again. He became emperor at 55, reluctantly.
His birth came on 16 November 42 BC in Rome; his parents, Tiberius Claudius Nero and Livia Drusilla, both belonged to the ancient patrician Claudian clan, he gained a stepfather when Livia, pregnant again by Nero, left him and married Octavian, the future Augustus. At nine Tiberius gave his father's eulogy from the rostra, and in 29 BC he rode beside Octavian's chariot in the triumph celebrating victory over Antony and Cleopatra at Actium.
He entered politics at 18 as quaestor, with permission to seek higher offices five years early. In the east around 20 BC he helped recover the legionary standards Parthia had captured from Crassus, Saxa and Antony, and led troops into Armenia. In the west he conquered Raetia and in 15 BC reached the sources of the Danube. Victories in Pannonia, Dalmatia and parts of Germania laid the foundations of Rome's northern frontier.
After the general Agrippa died in 12 BC, Augustus pushed Tiberius into the Julia marriage the following year. It began well but soured, stayed childless, and ended with her father exiling her. Only after Augustus's grandsons Gaius and Lucius died young was Tiberius named heir, and around AD 4 he was made to adopt his popular nephew Germanicus, bypassing his own son Drusus.
Taking power in AD 14, he feuded with the Senate and suspected plots, yet governed efficiently and built up healthy reserves in the treasury. The deaths of Germanicus in AD 19 and Drusus in 23 made him withdrawn, and in 26 he left Rome, handing affairs to the praetorian prefect Sejanus until having him executed for treason, then to Macro. He allowed only one temple to his divine Genius and received no divine honours at death. He died on 16 March AD 37, and his successor Caligula squandered much of what he had saved. Pliny the Elder called him the gloomiest of men.
Source: Tiberius
