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58 benches whom the late emperor had suggested might contest with the son of Livia the succession to the empire. The suspicions were idle: the senate had been too long trained in subservience to have a voice of its own: but, although idle, they were not ineffectual, as the objects of them found in due time to their cost. Perhaps there was yet another motive for real or affected hesitation in Tiberius on this occasion. He loved to read men's thoughts; to analyse their motives; to balance in his own scale their words and deeds, and to draw his own conclusions as to what was merely lip-service, and what was a real desire that he should ascend the vacant throne. Their votes and voices he could easily have constrained: he preferred to draw out the actual sentiments of his courtiers. His dissimulation will hardly be accounted unwise, if we hear in mind that Tiberius at no one period of his life was a favorite of the Roman people. Their love and hopes had been lavished on his deceased brother Drusus, and now were transferred, in measure heaped and running over, to the son of Drusus, the young, handsome, brave, and gracious Germanicus.

More formidable dangers than political intrigues occupied the attention of Tiberius at the very moment he commenced his reign. The legions in Pannonia broke out into mutiny as soon as they heard of the death of Augustus; and their conduct was the more alarming from the fact that six years before there had been in the same quarter a revolt of the same troops, which Tiberius himself had been sent to put down, and which, as it proved, he had "scotched but not killed." There was the more reason for prompt action, because the mutineers could in a fort-