Tiberius behaved on this occasion with dignity and generosity. He wrote to Augustus deprecating extreme severity to Julia, and begging that she might be allowed to retain for her own use any gifts that he had made to her. Such gifts will not have been inconsiderable, for Tiberius must have been a very rich man; it required a large fortune to inhabit the famous palace of Pompeius, and on his return to Rome Tiberius lived in the no less splendid villa of Mæcenas on the Esquiline. On withdrawing from public affairs Tiberius decided to live as a private citizen; this he had every right to do. His motive in selecting Rhodes for his place of residence has to do with features in his intellectual inclinations upon which we have not as yet touched. The silly story that Tiberius elected to reside in Rhodes because he could there enjoy unlimited debauchery may be at once dismissed on the ground of inherent absurdity. A man who wishes to conceal his vices does not select a university town, a great commercial town, the house of call for the mercantile service of the world, the spot visited by all officials on their way back to and from the capital, an island where everybody knows everybody else’s business, as the scene of his loathsome excesses; and Rhodes was all these things. Possibly an advantage enjoyed by Rhodes in being free from the direct control of a Roman Proconsul rendered it desirable as a place of residence for a man in the position of Tiberius, who wished to avoid friction with the Roman authorities. Most of the famous cities on the Greek mainland were now in a decayed condition; Corinth alone retained something of its mercantile importance, Athens had become an agreeable place of residence as well as a university town; but the cities on the coast of Asia Minor, Smyrna and Ephesus, and the islands off the coast, Samos and Rhodes, flourished as they had never flourished before. The corn ships from Alexandria frequently touched at Rhodes; she lay in the path between Antioch and Rome, and had become the meeting place between East and West. This gave a special character to her university. Athens was purely Greek, but Rhodes was both Oriental and Greek. Rhodes, though largely despoiled of its trees, is still among the most agreeable of the Greek islands, and in the days of its luxuriance was particularly beautiful. Tiberius shared that taste for islands which inspires the day dreams of many of our own contemporaries. Men only learn by experience that the secluded charms of a sea-girt residence are balanced by its inconvenience; but the inconvenience of restricted and precarious supplies would not be felt at Rhodes, the island being large enough to be self-dependent, besides being the calling place of shipping: thus Tiberius could look forward to a life spent in the pursuit of congenial and serious studies, in delightful scenery, and in the full stream of the world’s traffic.