But when Augustus died, in A.D. 14, how was a succession to be effected? Or was there to be a succession at all—would it not be better to let the State pass back again into the hands of the Senate and people? This last was the only logical way, and it was the plan actually adopted in form. A position like that of Augustus could not pass to a successor, unless the State in its old constitutional form chose to appoint such a successor with the same authority as that of Augustus. To this, however, we must add (and it well shows the real change that had been effected by the long revolution) that no choice of Senate and people could hold good unless the consent of the army could be had. Of course, Augustus had considered all this, and had made his own plans. He would choose a member of his own family, one, that is, who inherited the name and fame of Cæsar by blood or adoption, would adopt him as a son (for he had no son of his own), make him his heir, associate him as far as possible in his own dignity and authority, and thus mark him out as the natural heir to the principate. This would make it difficult for Senate or army to refuse him; beyond that Augustus knew that he could not go. He was unlucky in losing one after another the youths whom he thus destined to succeed him, and eventually had to fall back on his stepson Tiberius: a great soldier, as we have seen, and a man of integrity and ability, but of reserved and even morose temper, and one with whom the shrewd and genial Augustus had little in common. When Augustus died there was an anxious moment. There was no reason why the principate should be confined to the family of the Cæsars, nor any reason but expediency for having a _princeps_ at all. But, after all, the will of the dead ruler prevailed, and Tiberius slipped into his place without opposition; the Senate accepted him as plainly marked out by Augustus, and the army raised no difficulty, though his nephew Germanicus Cæsar was young, popular, and in actual command of the army on the Rhine. Some mocking voices were heard, and throughout his principate of twenty-three years Tiberius had to endure continual annoyance from the old republican families, but there was no real attempt to quarrel with the principate as an institution of the Roman State.