Nero
8. Tib.
Claudius Nero, the father of the emperor Tiberius, was probably the son of No. 7.
He was a descendant of Tib. Nero [see above, No. 1 ], the son of App. Claudius Caecus.
He served as quaestor under C. Julius Caesar (B. C. 48) in the Alexandrine war (
B. Al. 25;
D. C. 42.40), and commanded a fleet which defeated the Egyptian fleet at the Canopic mouth of the Nile.
He was rewarded for his services in Caesar's cause by being made a pontifex in the place of P. Cornelius Scipio, and was employed in establishing colonies in Gallia north of the Alps, among which Narbo (Narbonne) and Arelate (Arles) are mentioned; but the colony to Narbo was a supplementum, for it was settled A. D. 116. On the assassination of Caesar he went so far as to propose that the assassins should be rewarded.
He was praetor probably in B. C. 42. On the quarrels breaking out among the triumviri he fled to Perusia and joined the consul L. Antonius, who was besieged there B. C. 41.
In this year his eldest son Tiberius, the future emperor, was born: his mother was Livia Drusilla, the daughter of Livius Drusus. When Perusia surrendered in the following year, Nero effected his escape to Praeneste and thence to Naples, and after having made an unsuccessful attempt to arm the slaves by promising them their freedom, he passed over to Sext. Pompeius in Sicily (comp.
Suet. Cl. 4, and
D. C. 48.15). His wife and child, scarcely two years old, accompanied Nero in his flight. At Naples, while they were secretly trying to get a ship, they were nearly betrayed by the cries of the child. Nero, not liking the reception that he met with from Pompeius, passed over to M. Antonius in Achaea, and, on a reconciliation being effected between M. Antonius and Octavianus at the close of the year (B. C. 40), he returned with his wife to Rome. Livia, who possessed great beauty, excited the passion of Octavianus, to whom she was surrendered by her husband, being then six months gone with child of her second son Drusus. Nero gave Livia away as a father would his daughter (B. C. 38), but he must have formally divorced her first.
The old and the new husband and the wife sat down together to the marriage entertainment. When Drusus was born, Caesar sent the boy to his father, for, being begotten during Nero's marriage with Livia, Nero was his lawful father. Caesar, who was a man of great method, made an entry in his memorandumbook, to the effect "that Caesar sent to Nero his father the child that was born of Livia his wife." (
D. C. 48.44; Tacit.
Annal. 1.10, 5.1.) Nero died shortly after, and left Caesar the tutor of his two sons. If Tiberius was born in B. C. 42 (see Clinton,
Fasti, B. C. 42), Nero died in B. C. 34 or 33, for Tiberius, his son, pronounced his funeral oration in front of the Rostra, when he was nine years old.
[
G.L]
