If anything had been wanting to convince Tiberius of the evils likely to attend the perpetuation of the dynasty, this event was in itself enough to determine him in his dislike to an institution capable of producing such horrors, and under circumstances so wounding to his personal pride. A crime had been foisted on him in such a way that he could not prove his innocence without making himself the accuser of his mother. The Senate, however, insisted that Tiberius should take the whole burden of the government upon himself. His suggestion that the responsibility should be divided was met with derision; there was no way out of the difficulty but to accept the trust, and to work it in the spirit most likely to lead to the development of his own views. The Senate was, in fact, wiser than Tiberius; those of its members who took an active share in the government knew that whatever might be the views of the few remaining Legitimist families, the monarchy was essential to the Empire, and that the Imperial House could not break with the traditions of half a century. Cæsar’s heir did not merely inherit property, he inherited the conduct of an organization whose branches extended all over the world, and this even as a private person; nor again was it easy to define his relation to those provinces, and especially Egypt, which had been administered by the late Emperor as private estates. Countless officials had learned to look to the Emperor as the source of patronage. A slow change was possible, but an abrupt change would have been a revolution, and would have disturbed the sense of security in all quarters of the Empire. The succession of Tiberius had been tacitly accepted as an accomplished fact in every part of the world for the last ten years. The intrigues in the Imperial family were distressing, and doubtless painful to those immediately concerned, but they had not affected the general prosperity, nor stirred the imagination of such men as hope to fish in troubled waters. Germanicus, the only practical candidate for the chief place, was notoriously loyal to the existing state of affairs, and had never shown any disposition to disturb arrangements made by Augustus. In the end Tiberius gave way, and accepted what the Senate offered him “until,” as he said, “I come to the time of life at which it may seem just to you to grant some rest to my old age.” These words are in themselves a protest against dynastic assumptions; the power which Tiberius was to receive he would hold as associated with an office separable from his person; he was not to be once a king, always a king, ruling in virtue of mythology and portents.