Page:Tacitus; (IA tacituswilliam00donnrich).pdf/81

Rh honors himself, shunning rather than courting applause from his subjects, Tiberius was gratified when such distinctions were conferred on his minister. He permitted statues and busts of the Etruscan to be placed beside his own in the forum and the law courts, in the prætorian barracks and the camps of the legions; nor did he evince any jealousy when the senate decreed one altar to Clemency, another altar to Friendship, and set up around them portraits of himself and Sejanus.

The most terrible weapon in the hands of Sejanus was that furnished by the public informer (delatores). It did not originate with him, but he worked the machine with an energy unknown before. He had many reasons for rendering the function of informer more effective. The Cæsar was timid and suspicious, and easily persuaded, after awhile, that his life or his authority was assailed by the persons who counted his days, arraigned his policy, or spoke of his private conduct. The nobles regarded the minister with envy and contempt—with the one for his nearness to the Cæsar, with the other for his obscure origin. Again, Sejanus could not entertain a hope of succeeding Tiberius, unless he could isolate him from his own family and his immediate friends. "The imperial house full of Cæsars," writes Tactius, "the emperor's son in the vigour of manhood, and his grandsons grown up, were obstacles to his ambition; and because to cut them off all at once was dangerous, the success of his treacherous plot required that the horrid deeds should be perpetrated by slow degrees." From the army and the populace he expected and experienced no opposition. The former, although they were Roman soldiers, were rarely Roman by birth, and, even if they knew the names of old and noble families,