senate. This answer threw Libo into a deep melancholy, which however he dissembled, and directed a great entertainment to be got ready, in order to pass the last night of his life in the company of his friends and relations. But the banquet was scarce begun, when a band of soldiers, surrounding the house, with a studied noise, and dreadful cries, so terrified the guests, that many of them, rising from table, endeavoured to make their escape. Libo, not doubting but they were sent to dispatch him, drawing his sword, offered it to his slaves, begging them to put an end to his unhappy life; but they, trembling, and shunning the sad task, fled with such hurry and confusion, that they overturned all the lights; and then Libo, in the dark, gave himself two mortal wounds. As he fell and groaned, his freedmen ran in; and the soldiers, seeing him dead, retired; for they had been sent on purpose to frighten him, so as to make him lay violent hands on himself, Tiberius hoping by that means to avoid the odium which he was well apprised the execution of one of the most illustrious citizens of Rome would reflect upon his person and government. The charge, however, was carried on in the senate, as if he had been still alive; but the deceitful Tiberius at the same time declared upon oath, that he would have interceded for his life, had he not prevented his clemency by laying violent hands on himself. The deceased

was, by the senate, declared guilty of high treason, and his estate divided amongst his accusers: such of the informers as were of the senatorial order (for the first lords of the senate were not ashamed to debase themselves to this vile office) were, without the regular method of election, named prætors for the ensuing year. This was the most effectual means imaginable of multiplying these pests of the empire: they were raised to the highest offices in the state, and the metropolis of the world often saw her public dignities bestowed as spoils upon parricides for spilling her best blood. We may well imagine that the servile senate did not let slip so favourable an opportunity of gaining the emperor's favour, by branding the memory of the pretended criminal. It was not enough for the conscript fathers to have condemned Libo; they issued a decree for driving astrologers, magicians, and the whole herd of fortune-tellers, out of Italy; nay, Lucius Pituanius, one of them whom Libo had probably consulted, was thrown headlong from the Tarpeian rock; and Publius Marcius, another of the same profession, was, by the consuls,

sentenced to death, and executed accordingly without the Esquiline gate."

Clemens was a favourite slave of Agrippa Posthumus, whom he proposed to raise to the throne at the death of Augustus. Disappointed in this when Tiberius secretly murdered his master, he resolved to impose on the Romans, and, if possible, acquire for himself the sovereignty. He resembled his master in his personal appearance and age. This encouraged him to assume his name and claim his rights. By employing many persons throughout Italy to support his pretensions, multitudes celebrated his arrival in the country, and rejoiced in his escape from captivity. These things being reported to Tiberius, he was sometime in suspense "whether he should order his troops to march against the audacious slave, or suffer the imposture to vanish of itself, which he was well apprised must soon happen. On one hand, he was ashamed to betray any fear of a vile slave; and, on the other, he apprehended the danger which might arise from the credulity of the people, if they were not soon undeceived. In this perplexity he committed the whole affair to Sallustius Crispus, the same whom he had employed to dispatch Agrippa. Crispus chose two of his clients, or, as some write, two soldiers, in whom he could confide, and sent them to the supposed Agrippa with a considerable sum, directing them to feign that they believed him to be the true grandson of Augustus, to present him with the money, and to pretend a great zeal for his cause. They executed his orders with great address, and, finding that Clemens reposed in them an entire confidence, they, underhand, got ready a proper band of men, seized and gagged him while his guards were asleep, and carried him without noise to the palace. When he was brought before Tiberius, the emperor asked him how he was become Agrippa? Just as you became Cesar, answered Clemens. Though Tiberius had him wholly in his power, yet so great was his fear or policy, that he did not execute him publicly, but ordered him to be dispatched in a secret part of the palace, and his body to be privately conveyed away; and though many of the emperor's household, many knights and senators, were said to have assisted and supported him with their counsels and fortunes, yet no farther inquiry was made after his accomplices."

While Tiberius thus evidently considered every means lawful which seemed adapted to destroy those whom he deemed his personal opponents he for some time gave no en

couragement to informers and public accusers; in regard to other public matters, he treated many frivolous accusations with becoming contempt. Thus "Falenius, a senator, being accused of having included, with other furniture in the sale of his house, a statue of Augustus; another, of the name of Rubrius, being accused of having taken a false oath by the name of Augustus; and Granius Marcellus being accused of having taken the head from a statue of that prince, in order to substitute a head of Tiberius in place of it, a manner of paying his court rather ridiculous than criminal; in these and other instances of the same kind, Tiberius either took no part, or gave his instructions to the senate in very liberal and manly terms. On the subject of the prosecution that was raised against Falenius, 'My father,' he said, 'was deified, that his divinity might be a safeguard and a protection, not a snare to the people. His image may, no doubt, be included, with those of the other gods, as part in the furniture of a house that is sold.' With respect to the supposed perjury of Rubrius, he observed, that if any one swear and is perjured, the crime is the same, whoever be the god whose name is profaned. Augustus is no more to be regarded in this matter than Jupiter; and either of these gods, if offended, can avenge himself. The third offence, or the shifting of heads from one statue to another, being considered as a mockery of that adulation which was so easily transferred from one to another in the succession of princes, and as some degree of ridicule on the prince himself, was not so easily forgiven; though for the present overlooked, it was reserved as a subject of future resentment."

Though Tiberius was past feeling, cruel, and barbarous, yet he on some occasions performed most generous deeds. The third year of his reign was remarkable for one of the most tremendous catastrophes which the Asiatics ever witnessed. Twelve of the most famous cities of Asia-Minor were destroyed by an earthquake. The news of this event no sooner reached Rome, than the emperor ordered that the inhabitants should not only have their taxes remitted, but he also sent them large sums of money. To the citizens of Sardis, "who had suffered most, he sent an hundred thousand great sesterces, and to the rest relief proportionable to their losses; nay, he immediately despatched into Asia, Marcius Aletus, a senator, who had been prætor, to view the desolations on the spot, and make good the losses of every particular; for he was fond of being liberal, as Tacitus observes, on hon

est occasions, a virtue which he long retained after he had utterly abandoned all other virtues. The inhabitants of the cities thus rebuilt and, by the liberalities of Tiberius, restored to their former splendour, erected to their common benefactor a colossus in the Roman forum, surrounded with the statues of their twelve cities, as a lasting monument of the prince's generosity and their gratitude. The reputation which Tiberius gained by this noble bounty to the public, was greatly heightened by his private liberalities; for the estate of a wealthy freed woman, by name Emilia Musa, who died this year intestate, being claimed by the treasury, the emperor generously yielded it to one Emilius Lepidus, to whose family she seemed to belong. With the same disinterestedness he surrendered to Marcus Servilius the whole inheritance of Patuleius, a rich Roman knight, though part of it had been bequeathed to himself. Neither could he ever be prevailed upon to accept legacies but from his intimate friends, utterly rejecting the inheritances of such as were strangers to him, or, out of hatred to their relations, had appointed him their heir. His bounties were, generally speaking, well placed; for, as he readily relieved such senators as were by misfortunes reduced to poverty, so he excluded without pity from the senate those who had wantonly squandered away their estates in luxury and debauchery."

No efforts of the emperor having procured him the confidence or esteem of the people, he resolved in the eighth year of his reign to withdraw himself from public notice, and intrust the administration of the capital to Drusus, his son by Vipsania, daughter of the celebrated Agrippa. To strengthen the favoured prince in his government, he was raised to the powerful office of tribune, and the senate associated him. with his father in the honours which they conferred on him. But the principal power of government was committed to one whom the emperor supposed more disposed than his son to comply with all his wishes. This was the famous Elius Sejanus, who, under guise of great modesty, cherished boundless ambition. He had been long connected with the court, and had contributed to establish Tiberius on the throne; for he had directed or assisted Drusus in reducing to obedience the Roman legions on the Danube, who mutinied at the time of Augustus's death. The prince and his able companion, however, owed his success to the influence of superstition, rather than to their own wisdom or courage. Their reasoning with the soldiers provoked their indignation instead of dispo

sing them to peace, and they were exceedingly afraid to remain in the camp. While they meditated to withdraw secretly, they learned with surprise that terror had seized the soldiers. The moon, shining in all her splendour, all on a sudden began to darken, in the midst of a clear sky, till she was by degrees totally eclipsed. The soldiery, ignorant of the natural causes of this phenomenon, and imagining that the gods were angry with them on account of their revolt, and the crimes attending it, began to show some signs of repentance. Drusus did not fail to improve this their disposition; he immediately sent the centurion Julius Clemens, and other officers and soldiers, in whom he could confide, to mix with the mutineers, and try whether they could, while they were thus alarmed, inspire them with a love of their duty. These, pursuant to the prince's orders, going round from tent to tent, and insinuating themselves everywhere, first prevailed upon the legionaries to abandon the veterans, and the three legions to separate. After this, the love of duty and obedience returning by degrees, those who guarded the gates, to keep Drusus as it were besieged, retired from their posts; the eagles and other ensigns, which, in the beginning of the tumult, had been thrown together, were carried back each to its proper place, and, after so dreadful a storm, calm and tranquillity restored to every quarter of the camp." From this time Šejanus daily increased in favour with the emperor, who appointed him to the command of the prætorian bands an office which the father of Sejanus had held in the former reign. But the first decisive sign of the favourite's ascendancy over the mind of the emperor was the marriage of the daughter of Sejanus to Claudius, one of the sons of the admired and honoured Germanicus. Though this young prince was indeed little regarded at court, yet he ultimately succeeded to the throne.

When Sejanus felt that he was the second man in the empire, he determined to be the first, and called up all his resources of invention and power to remove every one who stood between him and the throne of the world. In order to this he studied, by every device, to secure the interest of the prætorian guards. "They had been hitherto quartered all over the city, and dispersed about the neighbouring towns and vil lages. But Sejanus, pretending that while they were thus scattered, they lived loose and debauched, and could not be easily gathered together on any sudden emergency, obtained leave of the emperor to assemble them into one camp, where,