of
certain others he brought about the destruction of the latter through
the medium of the former, and there was no secrecy about these
transactions.

Not only were slaves tortured to make them testify against their own
masters, but freedmen and citizens as well. Such as accused or offered
testimony against persons divided by lot the property of those convicted
and received in addition both offices and honors. In the case of many he
took care to ascertain the day and the hour that they had been born and
on the basis of their character and fortune thus investigated would
put them to death. If he discovered any qualities of haughtiness and
aspiration to power in any one, he despatched him whether or no. Yet so
much did he investigate and understand what was fated for each of the
prominent men that on meeting Galba (subsequently emperor), when the
latter had betrothed a wife, he remarked: "You also shall taste of the
sovereignty." He spared him, as I conjecture, because this was settled as
his fate; but, as he explained it himself, because Galba would reign only
in old age and long after his death.

[Tiberius also found some pretexts for assassinations. The death of
Germanicus led to the destruction of many others on the ground that they
were pleased at it.]

The man who cooeperated with him and helped him in all his undertakings
with the utmost zeal was Lucius Aelius Sejanus, a son of Strabo, and
formerly a favorite of Marcus Gabius Apicius,--that Apicius who so
surpassed all mankind in voluptuous living that when he had once desired
to learn how much he had already spent and how much he still had,
on finding that two hundred and fifty myriads were left him became
grief-stricken, feeling that he was destined to die of hunger, and took
his own life. This Sejanus, accordingly, at one time shared his father's
command of the Pretorians. After his father had been sent to Egypt, and
he obtained entire control, he made the force more compact in many ways,
gathering within one fortification the cohorts, which had been separate
and apart from one another like those of the night guardsmen. In this way
the entire body could receive the orders speedily and they were a source
of terror to all, because they were within one fortification. This was
the man whom Tiberius, because of the similarity of their characters,
took as his helper, elevating him to praetorial honors, which had never
yet been accorded to any of his peers; a