103 



from another act of justice, which the historian was under the necessity 

 of recording immediately after. This was the punishment of P. 

 SuiUus, who when acting as judge had been guilty of receiving bribes. 

 Tiberius was on that occasion blamed for his severity, but the justice 

 of his decision was made apparent in the reign of his successor 

 Claudius, when Suilius, returned from exile, shamefully abused his 

 influence with that weak prince. 



If the punishment of such a man as Suilius was received with 

 murmurs, we must be on our guard, lest we should take it for granted, 

 that the persons condemned, if v/e know no more of their case, than 

 that it excited compassion, were for the most part either entirely 

 innocent or not fairly treated. It would be very wonderful indeed, if 

 in such a corrupt age as that of Augustus and his successors there 

 had been no attempts at the life of the Emperor, no plots and 

 conspiracies to subvert the established government or any other crime, 

 which even by the fairest interpretation of established law would come 

 under the head of high treason. We have hitherto reviewed a number 

 of cases, from which it appears, that Tiberius is free from the blame of 

 straining the law into an instrument of despotic cruelty. It must not 

 be supposed however, that he was secure enough to let it fall into 

 abeyance ; nor can we expect, that with the very faulty machinery of 

 the Roman law courts the existence of this law could be without great 

 danger especially to men in high stations and of aspiring ambition. 



The court, before which cases of high treason were tried, was the senate. 

 We know its abject serviUty, the eagerness of its members to anticipate 

 the secret wishes of their master, to hunt down his enemies and to 

 show their zeal in hastily inflicting sanguinary punishment. The 

 history of the state trials tmder Tiberius shows, that throughout he 

 was compelled to keep the senators in the bounds of moderation and 

 justice. Had he urged them on, whither they were naturally inclined, 

 they would have shrunk from no act of atrocity. 



Such were the judges, men whom Tiberius loathed to look upon, and 

 whose assembly he never left without exclaiming in the words of a 

 Greek verse, " What men, ready to he slaves." But they were pure and 

 honourable, when compared with another set of functionaries in those 

 fatal trials, the accusers. The Roman procedure did not know public 

 prosecutors. To bring ofTenders to justice therefore, many of the 

 criminal laws awarded to the prosecutor a portion of the fine or the 

 confiscated property of the condemned. Thus prosecution became a 

 trade, the vilest and most infamous of all ; and though false and 

 malicious informers were often punisiied (Tac. Ann. iv. 31, iii. 37, 

 ill. 56), and occasionally put down by wholesale proscriptions, the 



