bare and alone on its solitary rock. But, great as the change really
was, the skill of Tacitus has thrown over the retirement of Tiberius a
character of strangeness which, as we have said, hardly belongs to it.
What in fact distinguished it from the retirement of Augustus to the
same spot was simply the persistence of his successor in never returning
to Rome.

Capri in itself was nothing but a part of the great pleasure resort
which Roman luxury created round the shores of the Bay of Naples. From
its cliffs the Emperor could see through the pure, transparent air the
villas and watering-places which fringed the coast from Misenum to
Sorrentum, the groves and lakes of Baisae, the white line of Neapolis,
Pompeii, and Herculaneum, the blue sea dappled with the painted sails of
pleasure-boats as they wooed the summer air. The whole bay was a Roman
Brighton, and the withdrawal of Tiberius from the world was much the
same sort of withdrawal from the world as the seclusion of George IV. at
the Pavilion. Of the viler pleasures which are commonly attributed to
him in his retreat we need say nothing, for it is only by ingenious
conjectures that any of the remains at Capri have been made to confirm
them. The taste of Tiberius was as coarse as the taste of his fellow
Romans, and the scenes which were common at Baiae--the drunkards
wandering along the shore, the songs of the revellers, the
drinking-toasts of the sailors, the boats with their gaudy cargo of
noisy girls, the coarse jokes of the bathers among the rose-leaves which
strewed the water--were probably as common in the revels at Capri. But
for the more revolting details of the old man's life we have only the
scandal of Rome to rely on, and scandal was easily quickened by the veil
of solitude and secrecy which Tiberius flung around his retirement. The
tale of his cruelties, of the fisherman tortured for having climbed the
cliff which the Emperor deemed inaccessible, of criminals dashed into
the sea down the steep of the "Salto di Timberio," rest on the gossip of
Suetonius alone. But in all this mass of gossip there is little that
throws any real light on the character of the island or of the buildings
whose remains excite our interest there; we can only guess at its far
wilder condition from a story which shows us the Imperial litter fairly
brought to a standstill by the thick brushwood, and the wrath of
Tiberius venting itself in a ruthless thrashing of the centurion who
ser