This letter changed the position of Tiberius. His retirement was no longer voluntary; he had become an exile, and the difficulties of his situation were only slightly modified by the concession of “a free legation,” a nominal office frequently bestowed upon men of wealth and distinction, who wished to travel with the advantages attached to an official position. Tiberius, in fact, had to learn that there are responsibilities and positions which render abdication impossible; that having once been acting Commander-in-Chief and Prime Minister, he must always be a political personage, a force to be reckoned with; and if this fact was not apparent to him, it was very apparent to the advisers of the young Cæsars, and the worshippers of the rising sun. During the absence of Tiberius these young men had been carefully put through the training, which had been successful in the case of the stepsons of Augustus. Caius, the elder, was now nineteen years of age, Lucius two or three years younger; there was a third brother, Agrippa, born after his father’s death, and still a child, showing signs of intractability. Like Tiberius and Drusus, they were sent to learn the organization of the Empire and the administration of the Roman Legions. Lucius went to Gaul, on his way to Spain; Caius was sent to the East, and like Tiberius was entrusted with the management of the difficult concerns of the Parthian frontier; he was provided with an adviser in the person of Marcus Lollius. The habit of scientific veracity is unknown to the Roman historians; any fact is good enough for them, provided it makes good copy, and can be dealt with in a picturesque sentence or neat epigram. They pay little attention to the consecutive order of events, are not always careful to distinguish between persons of the same name, and are rather attracted than otherwise by an opportunity of attributing contradictory qualities to the same person; the time at which a thing was done is of little importance to them, the person by whom it was done of equally little; a good story is to them a good story, and nothing more; if its effect is increased by hanging it on the name of a well known man, they seldom stop to inquire whether he can be justly implicated in the events narrated; consequently it is always agreeable to find their statements corroborated by undesigned coincidences. Paterculus and Suetonius agree in telling us that the last two years of the life of Tiberius at Rhodes were made a burden to him by the sinister influence of Marcus Lollius, but they leave us in some doubt as to who this Marcus Lollius really was, whether he was the same man who was Consul in B.C. 21, and Commander-in-chief in Northern Gaul in B.C. 16, whether the Consul and the General were two different persons, and whether the adviser of Caius Cæsar was not the Consul but his son.