Before I close this note, I shall observe that Philo speaks of Tiberius as a wise and just prince. I am very ready to believe that he was so, only where the being such was agreeable to his interest; but the good character given him here by Philo makes me at the same time greatly suspect the truth of those terrible crimes with which Tacitus and Suetonius reproach him. Nor can I think it likely that an infirm old man of seventy would have retired into the island of Caprera to indulge himself in the uninterrupted exercise of a refined debauchery, which appears to be hardly natural, and was, even in those days of licentiousness, unknown to the most abandoned of the Roman youth. Neither Tacitus nor Suetonius was acquainted with that emperor; but took these stories upon the credit of vulgar reports; Octavius and Tiberius Cæsar, and their successors, had been detested for reigning over a free people without their consent. All historians have taken a delight in bespattering their characters, and the world has taken them at their words for want of authentic memorials or chronicles in those times. Besides, as these writers do not quote any authority for what they advance, who could contradict them? They blackened whom they pleased, and wantonly directed the judgment of posterity. The wise and impartial reader will, however, readily perceive how far the veracity of historians is to be depended on, and what degree of credit is due to public facts attested by authors of reputation, born in a learned and enlightened nation, as well as what bounds to set to our belief of anecdotes, when related by these same authors, without any authority to support them. [21] We most certainly have a proper deference for whatever the Holy Church has made the objects of our reverence; accordingly, we invoke the blessed martyrs; but at the same time that we pay St. Laurence all due respect, may we not be permitted to doubt that St. Sixtus said to him: “You will follow me in three days.” That, during this short interval, the prefect of Rome made him demand a sum of money of the Christians; that Laurence had time to assemble all the poor people in that city; that he walked before the prefect, to show him the place where they were assembled; that he was afterwards tried and condemned to the torture; that the prefect ordered the smith to make a gridiron large enough to broil a man upon; that the principal magistrate of Rome assisted in person at this strange execution; and lastly that St. Laurence, while upon the gridiron, called out to him, “I am done enough on this side, let them turn me on the other, if you have a mind to eat me.” This same gridiron seems to have very little of the Roman genius in it; and besides, how happens it that we do not find a word of this story in any of the heathen writers? [22] We have only to open Virgil to be convinced that the Romans acknowledged one Supreme Being, the lord and master of all other heavenly beings.