hardly be reconciled with facts or consistency. Most unpopular with every class at Rome, and in its immediate neighbourhood, he was regarded by the provincials as a wise, a temperate, and even a beneficent sovereign. It almost seems as if there had been one emperor in the capital and another outside its walls.
After relating the death of Tiberius, Tacitus says—"He ruled the Roman state with absolute sway. His manners also varied with the conditions of his fortune. His conduct was exemplary and his reputation high while in a private capacity, or holding dignities under Augustus. While Germanicus and Drusus were yet alive, his manners were reserved and mysterious, artfully assuming the merit of virtues to which he had no claim. While his mother survived, his character exhibited a compound of good and evil. While he loved or feared Sejanus, though detested for his cruelties, he observed a secrecy and caution in the gratification of his evil passions; but at last when all restraints of shame and fear were removed, and he was left to the uncontrolled bent of his genius, he broke out into acts of atrocious villainy and revolting depravity."[1]
The historian who penned this very antithetical character, opens his fourth book with a high testimony to Tiberius during the first nine years of his reign. He ruled indeed with absolute sway, and so, virtually, had Augustus done before him: it was the "hard condition twin-born with their greatness;" but while his predecessor had the art to veil with roses the chains he imposed, if was always the ill-luck of Tiberius to display them, and often inopportunely. For a period of eight years at least he "intrusted to the senate all the
- ↑ Annals, vi. ch. 51.
