Thread by @DrPJWilliams

Clearly the Roman emperor Tiberius never existed.

Busts of his head are obviously fakes. How can one person have different shaped heads?

Coins with his picture are also fakes. How can one person have so many different shapes of nose?

The noses on coins are actually good evidence against the existence of many of the Roman emperors.

How could so many emperors independently have such large pointed noses?

How could NOT EVEN ONE ever have a small nose?

Big noses are part of the Emperor Myth.

Manuscript records about Tiberius in Tacitus, Suetonius and Cassius Dio only survive from the ninth century. Trusting them is clearly as irrational as taking someone today as a source for #robinhood #joanofarc etc.

The only supposedly contemporary writer, Velleius Paterculus, survives in manuscripts from the *sixteenth* century, after printing had been invented. This was probably based on a forgery by a clever Renaissance writer.

You may as well believe in #kingarthur.

Anyway, Tacitus and Velleius Paterculus offer incompatible portraits of Tiberius, so their testimony cancels each other out.

Clearly no one really saw Tiberius. Probably the Roman empire was run by a powerful secret Collective who knew that the population would be more subservient if they believed they were ruled by a STRONG MAN. That's why they invented Tiberius, so they could rule in his name.

They also named places after him, like Tiberias. That was part of their plan to make him more believable.

Inscriptions, like this one, mentioning things related to Tiberius were also produced at the behest of the Collective. (Pilate, if he existed, may or may not have been in on the secret). Of course, the stonemasons just wrote the wording they were given.

In order to explain why Tiberius never appeared in Rome, they came up with the brilliant idea that he spent most of his time in Capri (where members of the ruling Collective also built residences for themselves, whose remains can be seen today).

As for most of the people who supposedly saw Tiberius, the #fakenews of Tacitus conveniently explained how the majority got killed, so of course, even if they existed (not always certain) no one could ask them about the Tiberius they hadn't seen.

#tiberiusmyth

So, believers in Tiberius, where's your evidence?

The burden of proof is clearly on those who believe such an unlikely figure existed.