years that he ruled in Rome, his common sense was obvious. The
Tiber overflowed, the senate looked for a remedy in the Sibyline
Books. Tiberius set some engineers to work. A citizen swore by
Augustus and swore falsely. The senate sought to punish him, not
for perjury but for sacrilege. It is for Augustus to punish, said
Tiberius. The senate wanted to name a month after him. Tiberius
declined. "Supposing I were the thirteenth Caesar, what would you
do?" For years he reigned, popular and acclaimed, caring the while
nothing for popularity and less for pomp. Sagacious, witty even,
believing perhaps in little else than fate and mathematics, yet
maintaining the institutions of the land, striving resolutely for
the best, outwardly impassable and inwardly mobile, he was a man
and his patience had bounds. There were conspirators in the
atrium, there was death in the courtier's smile; and finding his
favorites false, his life threatened, danger at every turn, his
conception of rulership changed. Where moderation had been
suddenly there gleamed the axe.

Tacitus, always dramatic, states that at the time terror
devastated the city. It so happened that under the republic there
was a law against whomso diminished the majesty of the people. The
republic was a god, one that had its temple, its priests, its
altars. When the republic succumbed, its divinity passed to the
emperor; he became Jupiter's peer, and, as such, possessed of a
majesty which it was sacrilege to slight. Consulted on the
subject, Tiberius replied that the law must be observed.
Originally instituted in prevention of offences against the public
good, it was found to change into a crime, a word, a gesture or a
look. It was a crime to undress before a statue of Augustus, to
mention his name in the latrinae, to carry a coin with his image