Tacitus' portrayal of the emperor Tiberius has called forth a superabundance of comment. This note, therefore, will be brief and directed to a single question, provoked by some of this recent work; namely, how far are we entitled to draw conclusions as to Tacitus' powers of psychological analysis or as to his philosophical outlook on the basis of this portrayal? A generation ago Marsh concluded that Tacitus' psychology was superficial: ‘That a man could successfully conceal his real character till he (...) was nearing seventy and then throw off the disguise did not seem to Tacitus in any way improbable.’ Arruntius, he concluded, must be regarded ‘a better psychologist than Tacitus’ in view of his different judgement of Tiberius as recorded by the latter. (shrink)

It is often claimed that in the ancient world character was believed to be something fixed, given at birth and immutable during life. This belief is said to underlie the portrayal of individuals in ancient historiography and biography, particularly in the early Roman Empire; and tc constitute the chief point of difference in psychological assumptions between ancient and modern biography. In this article, I wish to examine the truth of these claims, with particular reference to Plutarch and Tacitus.