The Senate for its part was studiously averse at first to accepting any greater measure of responsibility than had fallen to its share under Augustus; its leading members were used to a certain routine of business. Augustus had introduced a kind of Cabinet system, the ordinary business of the Senate being conducted by a small committee on which the Senators served in some kind of rotation; full meetings of the whole body were rare; the committee were in constant attendance upon the Emperor. Nobody had any wish to abandon this system, and to impose the necessity of frequent attendance upon all members of the Senate; at the same time, it was well to be sufficiently in evidence to secure a share in promotions and appointments. Hostility to the existing arrangements existed, but it was confined to some old families who were nearly powerless, and who found a safety valve for their discontent in pasquinades, and the compilation of bitter memoirs, in which every rumour, every scandal unfavourable to the existing government was carefully recorded. Tiberius had so little of the dynast about him, so little of the jealousy of the usurper, that he employed in positions of trust the men who were generally believed to have been designated as possible aspirants to the Imperial power by Augustus. Marcus Lepidus held one office after another under Tiberius, not merely ornamental offices, but those which involved active work; C. Asinius Gallus, the second husband of Vipsania, similarly took a leading part in the counsels of the Senate, and was entrusted with various dignities; his mysterious fate three years before the death of Tiberius will occupy us later on; L. Arruntius similarly lived in dignity and affluence till he committed suicide shortly before Tiberius died, having become involved in highly discreditable, but not political, transactions; another, Gnæus Piso, was the centre of a strange conspiracy six years later than this. Of him too we shall speak in greater detail; it is enough for our present purpose to record that he was holding an important Governorship six years after the accession of Tiberius. The same historian who tells us nearly all that is known of the lives of these men, and who fixes the dates of their deaths, also informs us that they were the objects of the suspicion of Tiberius, that their lives were rendered miserable by him, and that they all, with the exception of Lepidus, “soon” came to a bad end. Allowing that six years is a term to which the word “soon” can be applied, we may admit that Gnæus Piso soon came to a bad end; we shall see later on who was responsible for his afflictions. Lepidus lived to a good old age, and died a natural death not long before Tiberius himself; and though the ends both of Asinius Gallus and Arruntius were miserable, they did not occur “soon,” periods of twenty years and upwards not being usually so described.