PAC expresses its sincere gratitude to Princeton University Press for generously providing this excerpt from Tiberius & His Age: Myth, Sex, Luxury, and Power (2024) by Edward Champlin, edited by Robert A. Kaster.
Chapter 4 The Death of the Phoenix (p.95-97)
Much of this evidence for an alternative Tiberian thought-world is fragmentary, obscure, eccentric, sometimes contradictory. Yet the many threads can be woven into a complex image, one shared by both Tiberius and at least some of his subjects. Three central strands should be emphasized. First, there is Tiberius’ very special relationship with fire, amply attested and indeed unique: his ability to pass unharmed medios per ignes. His rule was predicted by flame, he himself was a Sun, and he welcomed the prospect of the world’s ending in flames.
Second is the promise of return. The reappearance in his day of the phoenix is crucial. The fiery bird is an overwhelming symbol of the First Citizen in the 30s CE: unique, regal, wrapped in symbolic colors, dwelling in a lofty and re mote earthly paradise, in perfect felicity, the close companion of the Sun, impervious to its flame. And the passing of the rara avis duly marked the passing of kings. But the phoenix, its return potentially signalling the end and the beginning of the Great Year, was also assured of rebirth, even if the world was destroyed by flames and it was sola superstes.
Third are the Eastern roots of the image. Tiberius’ self-portrait was deeply influenced by familiarity with Persian Zoroastrianism, as filtered through Hellenistic erudition: its fundamental concerns are with fire, invulnerability, royal felicity, and ultimately ecpyrosis and resurrection. As a young man, Tiberius certainly came into contact with Zoroastrians and their religion during his expedition to the East, through Cappadocia and into Armenia, and he was not the first Roman aristocrat to be deeply learned, a master astrologer, and perhaps even a magus.75
That Tiberius Caesar was indeed a practicing Zoroastrian is confirmed by a unique artifact. Published some fifty years ago, its significance has evaded notice. The facts are these.
The object is an exquisite chalcedony intaglio, greyish and slightly yellow toward the center, an oval, convex on both sides and some thirty-three by twenty-five millimeters. Deeply cut into it is a portrait head of Tiberius in left profile and crowned with a wreath of myrtle. By universal consent, it is a masterpiece from the golden age of Greco-Roman gem-cutting.76 Its creator has been identified as the Augustan master Dioscurides; the Tiberian portrait is that of a young man, perhaps in his thirties; and the myrtle wreath gives us a precise date. Myrtle was the reward and symbol for an ovatio, and the thirty-two-year-old Tiberius celebrated an ovatio in 9 BCE for his military success in Pannonia. On January 1, 7 BCE, he celebrated a triumph in honor of his success in Germany. Thereafter, he must have been portrayed wearing triumphal laurel. Our intaglio must therefore have been cut between myrtle and laurel, in either 9 or 8 BCE.77
The gem was first published in 1968 by the distinguished archaeologist Henri Seyrig, who wrote that a travelling friend reported that the object had been “on the market” in Tehran, where he was told that it had been found “in Elam”—that is, in the area also known as Susiana, in the west and southwest of ancient Iran, deep within the ancient Parthian / Persian Empire.78 An inscription has been deeply and carefully cut around the oval edge of the gem, neatly framing the bust of Tiberius. It is in Middle Persian and dated by experts to the third or fourth century, in the early Sassanian period. It reads to the following effect: “O Mihrag, son of Frahad, behold the luminous paradise.”79 The name is significant, to be rendered in Western terms as Mithra, son of Phraates. Mithra is, of course, universal and meaningful. Phraates indicates that the owner was of Parthian, not Persian descent, Phraates indeed being the name of several Parthian kings, including two contemporaries of Tiberius. What follows is “a typically Zoroastrian religious formula, an invitation to admire the luminous splendor of paradise.” That is to say, Mihrag is assured that the soul of one who has lived a good life will pass into the infinite light of the sun, for “paradise is luminous, fragrant, spacious, full of every blessing and goodness.”
The piece has two physical peculiarities. A hole has been drilled into it, centered at the base of Tiberius’ neck, and presumably meant for some sort of pin or screw: the piece was meant to be displayed, perhaps worn. And the inscription has been incised in reverse—that is to say, the gem was converted for use as a seal.80
If ever there were a case where image and text join to make an object, Mi hrag’s gem is it. We have a masterpiece of Hellenistic gem-cutting that portrays a Roman princeps as a military victor. His face has been drawn with an eye of extraordinary size, consonant with a canonical presentation of Hellenistic roy
alty, and of Julius Caesar and Augustus, to mark “Jovian omnipresence, pro found intelligence, and a fine knowledge of men.”81 Two or three centuries later, the gem was the priceless possession of a Parthian of highest rank—we may well suspect a member of the Arsacid family—who carefully transmuted it into a testimonial for his Zoroastrian conviction of eternal life. If we believe that there is otherwise strong evidence to indicate that Tiberius was a Zoro astrian, the next step is inevitable: his convictions were known and his reputation treasured in the East for centuries after his death. Not a saint perhaps, but surely a magus.82
All of which leads to the conclusion that, in an Age of Return—in an age when many of his subjects believed that Pan had returned, that Jesus had re turned, that the Phoenix had returned—Tiberius Caesar acted as if he too would return, whether resurrected alone or with the human race. What he and others really believed is beyond conjecture, but Dio assures us that he frequently repeated the old line, “When I am dead, may earth be mingled with fire,” words perhaps first spoken by Priam, King of Troy, as his city and his life ended in flames. When Tiberius recalled the line he well knew, as did his learned audience, what followed. There is a second line to the quotation that commentators ancient and modern ignore, but that Tiberius and his companions would appreciate:
When I am dead may earth be mingled with fire.
It matters not to me, for with me all is well.83
Edward Champlin is professor of classics and Cotsen Professor of the Humanities, emeritus, at Princeton University. His books include Nero, Final Judgments: Duty and Emotion in Roman Wills, 200 B.C.–A.D. 250, and Fronto and Antonine Rome.
Robert A. Kaster is the Kennedy Foundation Professor of Latin, emeritus, at Princeton. He is the author of, most recently, How to Do the Right Thing: An Ancient Guide to Treating People Fairly (Princeton).