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honest men attempteJ to oppose to this iniquitous system, proved 

 fruitless. The courts established in Rome for the punishment of these 

 otfenders were under the control of the offenders accomplices. The 

 aristocracy, represented by the senate, governed the vast aggregate of 

 countries according to their will and pleasure. The people, that is, 

 the populace of the capital, who had nominally the supreme legislative 

 power, were in reality nothing but a cumbrous machineiy, which the 

 prevailing party of the aristocracy had only to manage and regulate 

 properly, in order to work it, as it best suited their purposes. 



This state of things was thoroughly changed after the establishment 

 of the monarchy. The nobility had to descend to the common level 

 of citizens and subjects ; they had to submit their proud necks to the 

 yoke, which pressed equally on all. Despotism knows no hereditary 

 privileges, no claims and rights of a favoured class. Common servitude 

 levels all ranks. Under it all distinctions are the result of personal 

 merit, they are no longer inherent in the blood. These unwelcome 

 truths the Roman nobility began to learn under Tiberius. Under 

 Augustus two reasons had reconciled them in a certain degree to their 

 changed position. In the first place they then for the first time tasted 

 the sweets of security and peace. They had only just emerged from 

 the most desolating civil wars, in which no man's property and no 

 man's life had been safe. Any system seemed better than that, pnd 

 they cheerfully purchased safety at the price of their ancient privileges. 

 Moreover they found in Augustus a cautious, mild and liberal ruler, 

 who did all he could to smooth down the asperity of the new system 

 and to make them believe, that the change was slight and perhaps 

 temporary. In Tiberius they found a man of a different temper. He 

 let them feel the full weight of his authority, he would allow of no 

 return to the old system of extoi'tion and oppression, and though they 

 felt their total impotence and made no attempt at resistance, tliey had 

 so far forgotten the horrors of the civil wars, that they fondly cast their 

 eyes upon those times, indulged in their enthusiasm for the period of 

 their glory and liberty, and in their total impotence and in the 

 hopelessness of their servitude they revenged themselves on their 

 oppressor by the most cordial hatred. This feeling was shared by the 

 historian Tacitus to a certain degree. He was a republican and an 

 aristocrat and his "indignation and pnrtis.anship," though he disclaims 

 them, are apparent on every page. He was however too honest to 

 falsify facts and thus we are enabled, as I have attempted to show, 

 to form our own conclusions, to reject the party zeal and rancour 

 of a nearly contemporary writer and to judge Tiberius by the more 

 impartial standard of posterity. 



