he anticipated his certain conviction by committing suicide during the night. The public had gained their victim, to comfort them in their grief for the premature loss of Germanicus. The enemies of Piso were, however, not content, and proposed that the name of Piso be erased from the _fasti_, and that the half of his goods be confiscated; that his son Marcus be imprisoned for ten years, only Plancina, out of regard for Livia, being allowed to go unpunished. But Tiberius judged that the blood of Piso was expiation enough for a crime which nobody had committed; and, since the public had had their bloody satisfaction, he intervened openly, and, by virtue of his authority, prevented the erasure of Piso’s name from the _fasti_, as well as the confiscation of his goods and the condemnation of his son. The trial of Piso was one of the most savage of all the judicial dramas in Roman history. The trial of Clodius had been a comedy, that of Verres a tragi-comedy, that of Piso was pure tragedy and terrible tragedy. For it was an episode in the gradual extermination of the old and glorious Roman nobility, which was being brought about by the new social forces which, during the years of peace, had grown up under the shadow of the imperial authority. How sad a spectacle are these trials which from time to time recur in history! The penal law ought to be the sacred instrument of justice, which punishes the wrong-doers, and defends and comforts the good citizens. The world is, however, full of wicked passions; and wicked passions find fertile soil in political parties, social classes, and public opinion—that vague power which has come so much to the fore in the last hundred years. These evil passions, from time to time, seize hold of the instruments of justice, and convert them into instruments of torment and persecution for the torture, the defamation, and the extermination of the innocent, for whom there is no way of escape, no refuge, and no pity. These trials prove one thing,—a truth which perhaps the modern world, in which the power of public opinion has increased so much, ought always to bear in mind. And that is, that the stronger public opinion is in a state, the more necessary it is for that state to have an unperturbed, independent, enlightened judicature, armed with a vigorous and clear doctrine of justice, backed by a powerful government, which can hold its own against the most violent gusts of public opinion, and execute real justice in the teeth of the crooked malevolence of the masses. Otherwise justice can only too easily degenerate into a kind of tragic farce. PART V THE LIMIT OF SPORT THE LIMIT OF SPORT[1]