e of
them requested the favour of a speedy death, he replied, "You are not yet
restored to favour." A man of consular rank writes in his annals, that
at table, where he himself was present with a large company, he was
suddenly asked aloud by a dwarf who stood by amongst the buffoons, why
Paconius, who was under a prosecution for treason, lived so long.
Tiberius immediately reprimanded him for his pertness; but wrote to the
senate a few days after, to proceed without delay to the punishment of
Paconius.

LXII. Exasperated by information he received respecting the death of his
son Drusus, he carried his cruelty still farther. He imagined that he
had died of a disease occasioned (231) by his intemperance; but finding
that he had been poisoned by the contrivance of his wife Livilla [360]
and Sejanus, he spared no one from torture and death. He was so entirely
occupied with the examination of this affair, for whole days together,
that, upon being informed that the person in whose house he had lodged at
Rhodes, and whom he had by a friendly letter invited to Rome, was
arrived, he ordered him immediately to be put to the torture, as a party
concerned in the enquiry. Upon finding his mistake, he commanded him to
be put to death, that he might not publish the injury done him. The
place of execution is still shown at Capri, where he ordered those who
were condemned to die, after long and exquisite tortures, to be thrown,
before his eyes, from a precipice into the sea. There a party of
soldiers belonging to the fleet waited for them, and broke their bones
with poles and oars, lest they should have any life left in them. Among
various kinds of torture invented by him, one was, to induce people to
drink a large quantity of wine, and then to tie up their members with
harp-strings, thus tormenting them at once by the tightness of the
ligature, and the stoppage of their urine. Had not death prevented him,
and Thrasyllus, designedly, as some say, prevailed with him to defer some
of his cruelties, in hopes of longer life, it is believed that he would
have destroyed many more: and not have spared even the rest of his
grandchildren: for he was jealous of Caius, and hated Tiberius as having
been conceived in adultery. This conjecture is indeed highly probable;
for he used often to say, "Happy Priam, who survived all his children!"
[361]

LXIII. Amidst these enormities, in how much fear and apprehension, as
well as odium and det