extravagant and insidious calumnies compromised not only the prestige
and the fame of the ruler, but also the tranquillity, the power, and
the integrity of the empire. Undoubtedly the _Lex de majestate_ did
give rise in time to false accusations, to private reprisals, and to
unjust sentences of condemnation. Although it had been devised to
defend the prestige of the state in the person of the magistrates who
represented it, the law was frequently invoked by senators who wished
to vent their fiercest personal hatreds. Nor can it be denied that
cupidity was the cause of many iniquitous calumnies directed against
wealthy persons whose fortunes were coveted by their accusers. Yet we
must go slow in accusing Tiberius of these excesses. Tacitus himself,
who was averse to the emperor, recounts several incidents which show
him in the act of intervening in trials of high treason for the benefit
of the accused precisely for the purpose of hindering these excesses of
private vengeance. The accounts which we have of many other trials are
so brief and so biased that it is not fair for us to hazard a judgment.

We do know, however, that after the death of Germanicus there was
formed at Rome, in the imperial family and the senate, a party of
Agrippina, which began an implacable war upon Tiberius, and that
Tiberius, the so-called tyrant, was at the beginning very weak,
undecided, and vacillating in his resistance to this new opposition.
His opponents did not spare his person; they did their best to spread
the belief that the emperor was a poisoner, and persecuted him
relentlessly with this calumny; they were already pushing forward Nero,
the first-born son of Germanicus, though in 21 A.D. he was only
fourteen years old, in order that he might in time be made the rival of
Tiberius. The latter, indeed, tried at first to moderate the charges
of high treason, his supreme defense; he feigned that he did not know
or did not see many things, and instead of resisting, he began to make