The administration of justice was not above suspicion in the Roman Law Courts, and the presence of Tiberius among the jury secured a fair hearing. As Tacitus himself says, “Many decisions were given in his presence contrary to the bribes and solicitations of influential men,” and then follows the customary Tacitean comment, “But while the interests of truth were being looked after liberty was corrupted.” If liberty means the sacred right of senatorial juries and powerful men to secure maladministration of justice by means of bribes and private influence, we can hardly blame Tiberius for “corrupting” such liberty, and may be excused for not seeing any excessive adulation in the remarks which Paterculus makes in reference to the same procedure, “Confidence in the Courts of Law was restored.” “With what dignity does he (Tiberius) attentively listen to cases as a senator and juryman, not as Princeps and Cæsar!” By insisting on an impartial administration of justice, Tiberius made enemies among those who were interested in the contrary practice, and there is no doubt that many a senator relieved his feelings by recording instances of such tyranny in his private diary. It is all a question of point of view; our point of view does not allow us to stigmatize a man as a tyrant who steadily worked for the purity of the law courts. The next recorded transaction in the Senate was of a different nature; the excessive weight of a road and aqueduct had caused a subsidence of the foundations of a Senator’s house, and he had applied to the Senate for compensation; the officials of the Treasury resisted the claim, but Tiberius ordered the value of the house to be paid to the owner. Then follows the inevitable comment: “For he was fond of distributing money in honourable ways, a virtue which he long retained, when he was abandoning all others.” Even this remark is, however, not sufficiently damaging for Tacitus, and he carefully provides that his next statement should be calculated to appeal to a well-known weakness. Propertius Celer asked to be allowed to retire from the Senatorial Order on account of insufficiency of means. Tiberius, on ascertaining that his poverty was inherited, bestowed on him a million sestertii (about £8,500). So far so good; no senator could object to this, but something follows: “When others attempted to get the same relief he ordered them to prove their case to the Senate, harsh even in those things which he did in due form, through his excessive love of strict procedure. For this reason the rest preferred silence and poverty to confession and gratuities.” We shall have to record later on a particularly impudent attempt on the part of an indigent Senator to extort money for the relief of his necessities, and shall find that Tiberius had good reason for insisting that men who claimed the assistance of the Senate should give a full account of their means and of the causes of their