belonging only to divinity; nor, again, would he have it said that he required its attendance at his summons. He never entered the Curia with an escort of guards, or even of unarmed dependents, and rebuked provincial governors for addressing their despatches to himself, and not always to the senate.1 His own communications to the august order were conceived in a tone of the deepest respect and even subservience. I now say, he would declare, as I have often said before, that a good and useful prince should be the servant of the senate, and the people generally, sometimes of individual magistrates. Such was his demeanour almost uniformly throughout the first years of his government; it was only late, and by degrees, that he drew forth the arm of power from the folds of this specious disguise, and exhibited the Princeps to the citizens in the fulness of his now established authority. But even to the last, though capricious and irregular in his behaviour, we are assured that his manner was most commonly marked by this air of deference, and the public weal continued still to be manifestly the ruling object of his measures.2 We have here before us the picture of a good sovereign but not of an amiable man. Had Tibe CHAP. The pro mise of his reign marred by defects of demeanour. rius been so fortunate as to have died at the close of a ten years' principate, he would have left an temper and honourable though not an attractive name in the annals of Rome: he would have represented the Suet. Tib. 27. 30. 32. 2 Suet. Tib. 29. 33 Paulatim Principem exseruit, præstititque: et si varium diu, commodiorem tamen sæpius et ad utilitates publicas proniorem. CHAP. XLIV. Cato Censor of the empire, by the side of the Scipio and improbable as they really were, kindled their imaginations to feelings of disgust and horror, which neither personal debauchery, nor the persecution of knights and nobles, would alone have sufficed to engender.1 1 Tacitus, we have seen, had special inducements to do less than justice to Tiberius; nevertheless, his account of the tyrant is not on the whole inconsistent. But there is no part of Dion's history in which he fails so much as in his delineation of this Cæsar's character. It is a mere jumble of good and bad actions, for which the writer sometimes apologizes, and insinuates as his excuse that the author of them was mad. The stories, however, themselves are often extravagant and puerile. Such, for instance, is that of the architect, who, being sentenced to banishment by Tiberius from mere spite, because he had performed the wonderful feat of straightening an inclined wall, in order to ingratiate himself with the tyrant, threw a glass vessel to the ground, picked up the fragments, and set them together again, whereupon he was immediately put to death, as too clever to be suffered to live. (Dion, lvii. 21.) There is something Oriental in the turn which the fancy of Dion not unfrequently takes. CHAP. XLIV. CHAPTER XLV. CHAP. A. D. 21. Comparison rius: the man of genius and the man of ability. COMPARISON BETWEEN AUGUSTUS AND TIBERIUS. SEJANUS DISTURBANCES IN USEFUL WITHOUT BEING FORMIDABLE. (A. U. 774.). MENT OF THE PRÆTORIAN CAMP. - DRUSUS POISONED BY SEJANUS (A. U. 776.).—DETERIORATION OF THE PRINCIPATE OF TIBERIUS. DEATH OF CREMUTIUS CORDUS AND OTHERS. (A. U. 780.). - HIS MANNER OF LIFE THERE. TERIORATION OF HIS GOVERNMENT.-DEATH OF THE YOUNGER JULIA AND OF THE EMPRESS LIVIA (A. U. 782.). (a. u. 774— 782. A.D. 21-29.) I HAVE described the rise and progress of Tiberius to a distinguished eminence among Roman statesmen I have now to introduce the reader to the decline and fall of his well-earned reputation. The ruin of so fair a character, and the frustration of such respectable abilities and virtues was not the work of a day, nor the effect of any single crime or failure. The temper of the times and the circumstances of his position presented the most formidable obstacles to a sustained good government, which the Romans had not perhaps the patriotism to appreciate or support. But the honourable ambition of the second Princeps to see СПАР. XLV. everything with his own eyes, and execute everything with his own hands, was in fact itself suicidal. Augustus, with the Roman world exhausted and A. D. 21. prostrate at his feet, craving only to be moulded A.U. 774. by his policy and informed with inspiration from his mouth, had accustomed himself from the first to act by able and trusty ministers. He was wisely content to see many things with the eyes of a Mæcenas, to act in many things with the hands of an Agrippa. His bravest auxiliary he ventured generously to connect with himself by the bonds. of a family alliance. At a later period he educated the members of his own house to relieve him, one after another, of some of the functions of his station. Tiberius he associated with himself on terms of almost complete equality. But Augustus was a man of genius: he was the soul of the Roman empire: fame, fortune, and conscious ability had inspired him with unwavering self-reliance. It was impossible for his successor, bred in the sphere of an adjutant or an official, to have the same lofty confidence in himself, and to discard with a contemptuous smile the suggestions of every vulgar jealousy. Tiberius, thoroughly trained in the routine of business, might believe himself competent to the task of government; he might devote himself with intense and restless application to every detail of the public service, and struggle with the rising tide of circumstances with desperate and even gallant perseverance. But he was animated by no inward consciousness of power, and when he felt himself overwhelmed by the odds against him, he could not look around serenely |