Moreover, if in that condition Tiberius
participated, it was not because he did not differ from other men.
"Ho sempre amato la solitaria vita," Petrarch, referring to
himself, declared, and Tiberius might have said the same thing. He
was in love with solitude; ill with efforts for the unattained;
sick with the ingratitude of man. Presently it was decided that he
had lived long enough. He was suffocated--beneath a mattress at
that. Caesar had dreamed of a universal monarchy of which he
should be king; he was murdered. That dream was also Antony's; he
killed himself. Cato had sought the restoration of the republic,
and Brutus the attainment of virtue; both committed suicide. Under
the empire dreamers fared ill. Tiberius was a dreamer.
In a palace where a curious conception of the love of Atalanta and
Meleager was said to figure on the walls, there was a door on
which was a sign, imitated from one that overhung the Theban
library of Osymandias--Pharmacy of the Soul. It was there Tiberius
dreamed.
On the ivory shelves were the philtres of Parthenius, labelled De
Amatoriis Affectionibus, the Sybaris of Clitonymus, the
Erotopaegnia of Laevius, the maxims and instructions of
Elephantis, the nine books of Sappho. There also were the pathetic
adventures of Odatis and Zariadres, which Chares of Mitylene had
given to the world; the astonishing tales of that early
Cinderella, Rhodopis; and with them those romances of Ionian
nights by Aristides of Milet, which Crassus took with him when he
set out to subdue the Parthians, and which; found in the booty,
were read aloud to the people that they might judge the morals of
a nation that pretended to rule the world.
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