remembering that it is to be an history of Tiberius.

Tiberius Claudius Nero Caesar, the third master of the Roman world,
derived his origin, by either parent, from the Claudian race; the proudest
family, and one of the most noble and illustrious, in the ancient
Commonwealth: the pages of Livy exhibit the generosity, the heroism, and
the disasters, of the Claudii; who were of unequal fortune indeed, but
always magnificent, in the various events of peace and war. Suetonius
enumerates, among their ancestral honours, twenty-eight Consulships, five
Dictators, seven Censorial commissions, and seven triumphs: their
_cognomen_ of Nero, he says, means in the Sabine tongue "vigorous and
bold," _fortis et strenuus_; and the long history of the Claudian House
does not belie their gallant name. Immediately after the birth of
Tiberius, or perhaps before it, his mother Livia was divorced from
Claudius, and married by Augustus: the Empress is revealed mysteriously
and almost as a divine being, in the progress of "The Annals." The Emperor
adopted the offspring of Claudius: among the Romans, these legal adoptions
were as valid as descent by blood; and Tiberius was brought up to be the
son of Caesar. His natural parts were improved and strengthened, by the
training of the Forum and the camp. Tiberius became a good orator; and he
gained victory and reputation, in his wars against the savages of Germany
and Dalmatia: but his peculiar talent was for literature; in this, "he was
a great purist, and affected a wonderful precision about his words." He
composed some Greek poems, and a Latin Elegy upon Lucius Caesar: he also
wrote an account of his own life, an _Apologia_; a volume, which the
Emperor Domitian was never tired of reading. But the favourite pursuit of
Tiberius was Greek divinity; like some of the mediaeval Doctors, he
frequented the by-ways of religion, and amused his leisure with the more
difficult problems in theology: "Who was Hecuba's mother?" "What poetry
the Sirens chaunted?" "What was Achilles' name, when he lay hid among the