l continued to direct the affairs
of his vast empire.

Sejanus was left to govern Rome, but frequently visited the Emperor at
his island. In A.D. 29, Livia, the widow of Augustus, died, at the age
of eighty-six years, having retained her powerful intellect and her love
of political intrigue to the close of her life. It is said that her
private charities were great, and that she remained faithful to the
memory of her imperial husband. The family of Germanicus, meanwhile,
were crushed by the arts of Sejanus. In A.D. 29 Tiberius directed the
Senate to banish Agrippina and her son Nero, and they were confined
separately upon two barren islands. Drusus, the second son, was soon
after imprisoned; while Caius, the youngest, by his flatteries and
caresses, preserved the favor of Tiberius, and was admitted into Capreae.
The emperor now began to doubt the fidelity of his chosen friend
Sejanus, although their statues had been placed together in the Temple
of Friendship on the island; and he sent a letter to the Senate in which
he denounced him as a traitor. Such was the end of a guilty friendship.
Sejanus was flung into the Mamertine Prison, and there strangled. The
people threw his body into the Tiber, A.D. 31. Great numbers of his
friends or relatives perished with him, and a general massacre filled
Rome with terror. He was succeeded in his power by Sertorius Macro, who
had aided in his destruction.

Tiberius, meanwhile, seems to have become a raging madman. He put to
death his niece Agrippina, with her two children, and ruled over the
Senate with pitiless cruelty. His companion, Cocceius Nerva, filled with
melancholy at the misfortunes of his country, resolved upon suicide; nor
could all the entreaties or commands of Tiberius prevail upon him to
live. In A.D. 35 Tiberius made his will, dividing his estate between
Caius, the youngest son of Germanicus, and Tiberius Gemellus, the son of
the second Drusus. Macro, probably fearing the fate of Sejanus, had
formed a close intimacy with Caius, and they now planned the death of
the emperor, whose feeble health, however, since he was near
seventy-seven years of age, promised Rome a speedy deliverance. Tiberius
died March 16, A.D. 37, Macro, it is said, having smothered him with a
pillow.

If we may trust the account of the Jew Philo, he left the empire in a
prosperous condition. His cruelty, in fact, seems to have been exercised
upon the great and the rich, while the people lived in