a decree, declaring themselves prepared to avenge the prince, were they not hindered by himself.

Most unfortunately the admirable narrative of Tacitus fails us at this point; and for the space of more than two years, and those the most important of the reign of Tiberius, we are obliged to derive our knowledge of events from the far inferior notices of Dion Cassius and Suetonius. We are therefore unable to display the arts by which Sejanus effected the ruin of Agrippina and her children, and can only learn that she was relegated to the isle of Pandateria, where, while she gave vent to her indignation, her eye was struck out by a centurion; and that Nero was placed in the isle of Pontia, and forced to terminate his own life. The further fate of Agrippina and Drusus we shall have to relate.

Sejanus now revelled in the enjoyment of power; every one feared him, every one courted and flattered him. "In a word," says Dion, "he seemed to be emperor, Tiberius merely the ruler of an island*;" for while the latter dwelt in solitude and apparently unthought of, the doors of the former were thronged every morning with saluting crowds, and the first men of Rome attended him on his way to the senate. His pride and insolence, as is always the case with those who rise otherwise than by merit, kept pace with his power, and men hated while they feared and flattered him.

He had thus ruled for more than three years at Rome with power nearly absolute, when (31) Tiberius made him his colleague in the consulate-an honour observed to be fatal to every one who had enjoyed it. In fact the jealous tyrant, who had been fully informed of all his actions and designs †, had secretly resolved on his death; but fear, on account of Sejanus' influence with the guards, and his uncertainty of how the people might stand affected, prevented him from proceeding openly against him. He therefore had recourse to artifice, in which he so much delighted. At one time he would write to the senate, and describe himself as so ill that his recovery was nearly hopeless; again that he was in perfect health, and was about to return to Rome. He would now praise Sejanus to the skies, and then speak most disparagingly of him; he would honour some and disgrace others of

* Νησίαρχόν τινα εἶναι δοκεῖν.

According to Josephus (Antiq. xviii. 6.), Antonia, the widow of his brother Drusus, wrote him a full account of Sejanus' proceedings, and sent it by a trusty slave named Pallas, a person afterwards, as we shall see, of some importance.

his friends solely as such. In this way both Sejanus himself and all others were kept in a state of the utmost uncertainty. Tiberius further bestowed priesthoods on Sejanus and his son, and proposed to marry his daughter to Drusus, the son of Claudius, the brother of Germanicus; yet at the same time, when Sejanus asked permission to go to Campania, on the pretext of the future bride being unwell, he desired him to remain where he was, as he himself would be coming to Rome immediately.

All this tended to keep Sejanus in a state of great perturbation; and this was increased by the circumstance of Tiberius, when appointing the young Caius to a priesthood, having not merely praised him, but spoken of him in some sort as his successor in the monarchy. He would have proceeded at once to action, were it not that the joy manifested by the people on this occasion proved to him that he had only the soldiers to rely on, and he hesitated to act with them alone. Tiberius then showed favour to some of those to whom he was hostile; and when writing to the senate on the occasion of the death of Nero, he merely called him Sejanus, and directed them not to offer sacrifice to any man, nor to decree any honours to himself, and of consequence to no one else. The senators easily saw whither all this tended, and their neglect of Sejanus was now pretty openly displayed.

Tiberius, having thus made trial of the senate and the people, and finding he could rely on both, resolved to strike the long-meditated blow. In order to take his victim more completely at unawares, he gave out that it was his intention to confer on him the tribunician power. Meantime he gave to Nævius Sertorius Macro a secret commission to take the command of the guards, made him the bearer of a letter to the senate, and instructed him fully how to act. Macro entered Rome at night, and communicated his instructions to the consul, C. Memmius Regulus, (for his colleague was a creature of Sejanus,) and to Græcinus Laco, the commander of the watchmen, and arranged with them the plan of action. Early in the morning he went up to the temple of the Palatine Apollo, where the senate was to sit that day, and meeting Sejanus, and finding him disturbed at Tiberius' having sent him no message, he whispered him that he had the grant of the tribunician power for him. Sejanus then went in highly elated; and Macro, showing his commission to

the guards on duty, and telling them that he had letters promising them a largess, sent them down to their camp, and put the watchmen about the temple in their stead. He then entered the temple, and having delivered the letter to the consuls, immediately went out again, and leaving Laco to watch the progress of events there, hastened down to the camp lest there should be a mutiny of the guards.

The letter was long and ambiguous; it contained nothing direct against Sejanus, but first treated of something else, then came to a little complaint of him, then to some other matter, then it returned to him again, and so on; it concluded by saying that two senators, who were most devoted to Sejanus, ought to be punished, and himself to be cast into prison; for though Tiberius wished most ardently to have him executed, he did not venture to order his death, fearing a rebellion. He even implored them in the letter to send one of the consuls with a guard to conduct him, now an old man and desolate, into their presence. We are further told that such were his apprehensions, that he had given orders, in case of a tumult, to release his grandson Drusus, who was in chains at Rome, and put him at the head of those who remained faithful to his family; and that he took his station on a lofty rock, watching for the signals that were to be made, having ships ready to carry him to some of the legions in case anything adverse should occur.

His precautions however were needless. Before the letter was read, the senators, expecting to hear nothing but the praises of Sejanus and the grant of the tribunician power, were loud in testifying their zeal toward him; but as the reading proceeded their conduct sensibly altered; their looks were no longer the same; even some of those who were sitting near him rose and left their seats; the prætors and tribunes closed round him lest he should rush out and try to raise the guards, as he certainly would have done had not the letter been composed with such consummate artifice. He was in fact so thunderstruck, that it was not till the consul had called him the third time that he was able to reply. All then joined in reviling and insulting him: he was conducted to the prison by the consul and the other magistrates. As he passed along the populace poured curses and abuse on him; they cast down his statues, cut the heads off of them, and dragged them about the streets. The senate, seeing this disposition of the people, and finding that the guards remained quiet, met in

the afternoon in the temple of Concord, close to the prison, and condemned him to death. He was executed without delay; his lifeless body was flung out on the Gemonian steps, where for three days it lay exposed to every insult from the populace; and then was cast into the Tiber*. His children also were put to death: his little daughter, who was to have been the bride of the prince's grand nephew, was so young and innocent, that as they carried her to prison she kept asking what she had done, and whither they were dragging her, adding that she would do so no more, and that she might be whipped if naughty. Nay, by one of those odious refinements of barbarity which trample on justice and humanity while adhering to the letter of the law, because it was a thing unheard of for a virgin to be capitally punished, the executioner was made to deprive her of that name before he strangled her. Apicata, the divorced wife of Sejanus, on hearing of the death of her children, and seeing afterwards their lifeless bodies on the steps, went home; and having written to Tiberius a full account of the true manner of the death of Drusus and of the guilt of Livilla, put an end to herself. In consequence of this discovery, Livilla, and all who were concerned in that murder, were put to death.

The rage of the populace was also vented on the friends of Sejanus, and many of them were slaughtered. The prætorian guards too, enraged at being suspected and at the watchmen being preferred to them, began to burn and plunder houses. The senators were in a state of the utmost perturbation, some trembling on account of their having paid court to Sejanus, others, who had been accusers or witnesses, from not knowing how their conduct might be taken. All however conspired in heaping insult on the memory of the fallen favourite.

Tiberius, now free from all apprehension, gave loose to his vengeance. From his island-retreat he issued his orders, and the prison was filled with the friends and creatures of Sejanus; the baleful pack of informers was unkenneled, and their victims of both sexes were hunted to death. Some were executed in prison; others were flung from the Capitol; the lifeless remains were exposed to every kind of indignity, and then cast into the river. Most however chose a voluntary death; for

* See the graphic picture of the fall of Sejanus in Juvenal, Sat. x. 56 seq. The Gemonian steps (probably so named from the effect, like the Bridge of Sighs at Venice) were between the prison and the Temple of Concord in view of the Forum. Dion, lviii. 5. The practice of exposing dead bodies on them prevailed also in the time of the republic. See Liv. xxxviii. 59. Ov. Ibis, 167. Val. Max. vi. 3, 3; 9, 13.

they thus not only escaped insult and pain, but preserved their property for their children.

In the following year (32) Tiberius ventured to leave his island, and sail up the Tiber as far as Cæsar's gardens; but suddenly, no one knew why, he retreated again to his solitude, whence by letters he directed the course of cruelty at Rome. The commencement of one was so remarkable that historians have thought it deserving of a place in their works; it ran thus: "What I shall write to you, P. C., or how I shall write, or what I shall not write at this time, may the gods and goddesses destroy me worse, than I daily feel myself perishing, if I know*.” A knight named M. Terentius at this time, when accused of the new crime of Sejanus' friendship, had the courage to adopt a novel course of defence. He boldly acknowledged the charge, but justified his conduct by saying that he had only followed the example of the prince, whom it was their duty to imitate. The senate acquitted him and punished his accusers with exile or death, and Tiberius expressed himself well-pleased at the decision. But in the succeeding year (33) his cruelty, joined with avarice (a vice new to him), broke out with redoubled violence. Tired of murdering in detail, he ordered a general massacre of all who lay in prison on account of their connection with Sejanus. Without distinction of age, sex or rank, they were slaughtered; their friends dared not to approach, or even be seen to shed tears; and as their putrifying remains floated along the Tiber, no one might venture to touch or to burn them.

The deaths of his grandson Drusus, and his daughter-in-law Agrippina, were added to the atrocities of this year. The former perished by the famine to which he was destined, after he had sustained life till the ninth day by eating the stuffing of his bed. The tyrant then had the shamelessness to cause to be read in the senate the diary which had been kept of everything the unhappy youth had said or done for a course of years, and of the indignities which he had endured from the slaves and guards who were set about him. Agrippina had cherished hopes of meeting with justice after the fall of

*Suet. Tib. 67; Tac. Ann. vi. 6: "Adeo," adds Tacitus, "facinora atque flagitia sua ipsi quoque in supplicium verterant. Neque frustra præstantissimus sapientiæ [Plato] firmare solitus est, si recludantur tyrannorum mentes posse aspici laniatus et ictus; quando ut corpora verberibus, ita sævitia, libidine, malis consultis animus dilaceretur: quippe Tiberium non fortuna, non solitudines protegebant, quin tormenta pectoris suasque ipse pœnas fateretur."