105 



which did not permit virgins to be put to death. When the populace 

 is turned into executioners the limits of guilt and innocence are hope- 

 lessly confounded, and the stern spirit of antiquity involved too readily 

 in one guilt and one punishment all the kindred and friends of the 

 object of their revenge. For this wholesale butchery therefore Tiberius 

 has not been held responsible, but for the continuance of prosecutions 

 for several years, when the imminent danger from Sejanus and his 

 party was past, and revenge might have been supposed to have had her 

 fill. Dio, always credulous in his estimates and reckless in his state- 

 ments, says " that none of the accused were acquitted, but that they 

 were all put to death without exception." (Dio, 58, 24.) Tacitus, 

 though less sweeping in his condemnation of Tiberius, is yet severe 

 enough, and his judgment would have to stand unaltered, if his faithful 

 representation of details did not furnish us with the materials for con- 

 siderably mitigating his final sentence. 



It appears then that in the investigation of the cases arising out of 

 the conspiracy of Seganus, Tiberius was anxious that the highest 

 tribunal of the state, the senate, should exonerate him from annoyance 

 and odium. No doubt he knew that tliat august body would not err 

 on the side of leniency. His influence had most frequently to be 

 exerted to moderate the unbecoming zeal and the intemperate severity 

 of the Fathers. He was disgusted with the protracted trials and 

 executions. Of his feelings at this time we have a pretty certain 

 indication in a letter which he wrote to the seiiate, and in which he 

 said : " If I know what to write to you, Conscript Fathers, or how to 

 write, or what not to write at this time, then may all the gods confound 

 me still worse, ^than I feel myself daily perish." These are not the 

 words of a man enjoying all his natural propensities to the full. It is a 

 proof of the deep melancholy which had settled in the Emperor's mind, 

 a melancholy easily accounted for from the misfortunes of his own 

 family and the hopeless wretchedness of the times. 



A proof tliat the Emperor was not devoid of generosity or justice 

 even in this gloomy period, is furnished by the trial of a Marcus 

 Terentius, a Roman knight, accused of having been a friend of Sejanus. 

 This man, instead of denying the fact, boldly avowed it in a manly 

 speech, thus preserved by Tacitus : Annal. VI. 8. — " Perhaps it is less 

 expedient for me to confess this crime, than to deny it ; but, whatever 

 may be the consequences, I shall confess that I was a friend of Sejanus, 

 that I desired to be one, and that when I had obtained his friendship 

 I rejoiced in it. I saw that he was the colleague of his father in the 

 command of the Prsetorian cohorts, that soon after he had authority in 

 civil and military matters ; bis relations and kinsmen were raised to 



