s thus in a fair
way to the ends of his ambition: to be named the successor to
the Principate.

Then Tiberius found him out; and sent a message to a senate
engaged in Sejanus-worship, demanding the punishment of the
murderers of Drusus.

Sejanus had built up his power by fostering the system of
delation. There was no public prosecutor in the Roman system:
when any wrong had been done, it was anyone's business to
prosecute. The end of education was rhetoric, that you might get
on in life. The first step was to bring an accusation against
some public man, and support it with a mighty telling speech. If
you succeeded, and killed your man,--why, then your name was
made. On this system, with developments of his own, Sejanus had
built; had employed one half of Rome informing against the
other. It took time to bring about; but he had worked up by
degrees a state of things in which all went in terror of him;
and the senate was eager perpetually to condemn any one he might
recommend for condemnation. When Tiberius found him out, they
lost their heads entirely, and simply tumbled over themselves
in their anxiety to accuse, condemn, and execute each other.
Everyone was being informed against as having been a friend of
Sejanus, and therefore an enemy of their dear Princeps; who was
away at Capri attending to his duty; and whose ears, now Sejanus
was gone, they might hope to reach with flatteries. You supped
with your friend overnight; did your best to diddle him into
saying something over the wine-cups;--then rose betimes in the
morning to accuse him of saying it: only too often to find that
he, (traitorly wretch!) had risen half an hour earlier and
accused you; so you missed your breakfast for nothing; and
dined (we may hope) in a better world. Thus during the last
years of the reign there was a Terror in Rome: in the senate's
sphere of influence; the senatorial class the sufferers and
inflictors of the suffering. Meanwhile Tiberius in his
retirement was still at his duty; his hold on his provinces
never relaxed. When the condemned appealed to him, the records
show that in nearly every case their sentences were commuted.
Tiberius' enemies were punishing themselves; but the odium of it
has been fastened on Tiberius. He might have interfered, you
say?--What! with Karma? I doubt.

His sane, balanced, moderate character comes out in his own words
again and again: he was a wonderful anomaly in that age. Rome
wa