Tiberius was equally careful to distinguish between complimentary tributes which had been paid to Augustus and official designations. He would not be called “Father of his country,” he would not even use the title “Augustus” as a name, though he was legally entitled to do so; he only used it in corresponding with foreign kings and potentates. Still less would he allow himself to be worshipped, and strictly forbade his statue to be erected in a temple except as an ornament. Nor again would he place the title of Imperator before his name, as Augustus had done, thereby making it personal and inseparable; he used it simply as a statement that he held a particular office. From the first he objected to the exaggerated language of obsequious persons, and demanded to be addressed as Dominus by his slaves, Imperator by soldiers, Princeps by the rest of the world. A Senator who flung himself at his feet and endeavoured to grasp his knees with an oriental exuberance of subservience suffered a rude fall, as Tiberius instinctively jumped back out of his reach. In a like spirit he checked the adulation which the Senate were prepared to heap upon Livia, and discouraged every attempt to invest her with the dangerous attributes of an Empress Dowager. Similarly he distinguished between occasions on which he acted in a public or private capacity. Unless officially presiding, he attended the law courts like any other Senator, listening to the evidence, and offering his opinion like the rest; he, in fact, lost no opportunity of showing that he held his position to be a purely official one, and while he encouraged the worship of Augustus, he refused to be included in the cult. At a later period Tiberius, in speaking to the Senators, declared that he regarded himself as their servant; his constitutional theory was that the Senate was the fountain of authority, the Emperor its first executive officer and adviser, but certainly not its master. This theory of the mutual relations of Emperor and Senate broke down, because one man, if he is capable at all, is always more capable than a number of equally capable men working together as a council: he can act more quickly, and his relations with suitors and suppliants are simpler. If a capable man is assisted by a council, the general lines of policy are his, and not those of the council, whose advice practically amounts to little more than valuable suggestions on points of detail. The dream of professors and political pedants that a country is best governed by a debating society of selected wiseacres has a never-ending fascination, but it is a mere dream, and as soon as the ostensible government degenerates into a debating society the real work of governing is done by other agencies; the alternative is anarchy.