senate of conspiracy. In an instant, under this blow, the fortunes of
Sejanus collapsed. The envy and the latent hatred against the parvenu,
the knight who had risen higher than all others, and who had humiliated
the senatorial aristocracy with his good fortune, were reawakened, and
the senate and public opinion turned fiercely against him. Sejanus,
his family, his friends, his accomplices, and those who seemed to be
his accomplices, were put to death after summary trials by the fury of
the mob; and in Rome blood flowed in torrents.

Antonia might now have enjoyed the satisfaction of having saved through
her foresight not only Tiberius, but the entire family, when suddenly
one of the surges of that fierce tempest of ambitions and hatreds tore
from her side even her own daughter, Livilla, the widow of Drusus, and
cast her as a prey into that sea of blind popular frenzy. The reader
has perhaps not forgotten that eight years before, when Sejanus was
hoping to marry Livilla, he had repudiated his first wife, Apicata.
Apicata had not wished to outlive the ruin of her former husband, and
she killed herself, but only after having written Tiberius a letter in
which she accused Livilla of having poisoned Drusus through connivance
with Sejanus, whom she wished to marry. I confess that this accusation
seems to me hardly probable, and I do not believe that the denunciation
of Apicata is sufficient ground for admitting it. Above all, it is
well to inquire what proofs Apicata could have had of this crime, and
how she could have procured them even if the crime had been committed.
Since the two accomplices would have been obliged to hide their
infamous deed from all, there was no one from whom they would have
concealed it more carefully than from Apicata. We must further note
that it is not probable that a cautious man, as Sejanus was in the year
23, would have thought of committing so serious a crime as that of
poisoning the son of his protector. For what reason would he have done