prosecutions under this law given by Tacitus almost without exception, and invariably up to A.D. 30, show Tiberius moderating the zeal of the prosecutors, and lightening the sentences pronounced by the Senate; in fact, the abuses of the law are perpetrated by the prosecutors and the Senate, not by Tiberius; and the Emperor may reasonably have held that as it was always in his power to check the abuses of the law, its amendment, a matter of great difficulty, might be left to time, and that in accordance with Roman custom the desired result would be achieved better by an accumulation of precedents than by a formal enactment. The case of Scribonius Libo is interesting, less as affecting the character of Tiberius than as throwing a light upon the manners of the time. Tacitus does not provide us with the formal indictment, nor with the evidence; he is pleased to think that the case affords a remarkable illustration of the horrors of the “Lex Majestatis,” and omits or insinuates at discretion. The case as represented by him seems to have been rather trivial, and more trivial to us than to the Romans of that time, because we no longer believe, or believe that we no longer believe in magic. Drusus Scribonius Libo was a relative, though not a very near relative, to members of the Julian house. Scribonia, his great-great-aunt, was the first real wife of Augustus and the mother of Julia; he was therefore a distant cousin to Agrippina and her brothers. His grandmother, the niece of this Scribonia, was wife to Sextus Pompeius, and thus the young man was a descendant of the great Pompeius. Tacitus speaks of him as a young man at the time of the prosecution, but this epithet is used by the Roman writers technically of men between the ages of seventeen and forty-six, and is therefore applied to men past their callow youth, such as Germanicus and Drusus; and as Libo had been Prætor, he was certainly old enough to manage his own affairs. Libo, according to Tacitus, fell into the hands of a Senator named Firmius Catus, who encouraged him in vicious courses and lent him money, in order to become fully possessed of his secrets. This same treacherous adviser stimulated his ambition, and reminded him of the splendour of his ancestry; he urged him to listen to the promises of Chaldæans, to consult the mysterious rites of magians and interpreters of dreams. When Firmius had sufficiently implicated his victim in doubtful proceedings, he asked for an interview with Tiberius, using an Equestrian, Flaccus Vescularius, a very intimate friend of the Emperor’s, as intermediary. Tiberius refused the interview, saying, according to Tacitus, that he could get any further information through Flaccus. “Meanwhile” he made Libo prætor, frequently invited him to dinner, discovered no irritation either by look or word, and “preferred to know all his deeds and words, although he could have stopped them.”