s.

Germanicus, in A.D. 18, visited Athens, sailed up the Nile the same
year, and then, having returned to Syria, died of poison administered to
him by Cn. Piso, a friend of the Empress Livia. His death excited great
grief at Rome, where he was buried with solemnity in A.D. 20. Piso,
meanwhile, being tried before the Senate, and finding himself about to
be condemned, sought a voluntary death.

Tiberius was cold and unpopular in his manners, awkward and even timid
in his carriage, but a master of dissimulation. The only person of whom
he stood in awe was his mother Livia; but he lived in constant fear of
insurrection. The Lex Majestas, which he enlarged and enforced with
unusual severity, was now the source of great evil to his country. This
law defined treason against the emperor. Tiberius made it include words
as well as acts, and thus he who spoke lightly of the emperor's person
or authority might be punished with death.

From this law grew up the Delatores, or informers, persons who made it
their chief occupation to denounce those who were obnoxious to the
emperor. The informers soon grew numerous: some of them were persons of
high rank, who sought to display their eloquence, and to win the favor
of the emperor, by denouncing his opponents in envenomed rhetoric, while
others were common spies. No man's life was safe at Rome from this
moment, and the purest and wisest citizens were exposed to the attacks
of an infinite number of delators. Tiberius encouraged the informers.
AElius Saturninus was flung from the Tarpeian Rock for a libel upon the
emperor. Silanus was banished for "disparaging the majesty of Tiberius."

Tiberius, who professed to imitate the policy of Augustus in every
particular, seems to have governed with firmness and ability. He
improved the condition of the provinces, restrained the avarice of the
provincial governors, maintained good order in the capital, and strove
to check the growth of luxury; but the morals of the capital were now
hopelessly depraved, and the vice and corruption of the whole world
flowed into the streets of Rome.

AElius Sejanus, the Praefect of the Praetorians, had long been the friend
and chief adviser of the emperor. He was cruel, unscrupulous, and
ambitious--the proper instrument of a tyrant. In A.D. 21 an insurrection
broke out in Gaul, which was scarcely subdued when the Germans rose
against the Romans. The Gauls, too, led by Sacrovir, a Druid, who
exercised a superst