disturbed by fresh burdens, and that they should be able to endure the old ones exempt from the avarice or cruelty of officials. There was no such thing as personal outrages or confiscations of property. The estates of Cæsar were few in Italy, his establishments of slaves were modest, his household confined to a few freedmen; and if ever he was at variance with a private person, he resorted to the ordinary processes of law, the ordinary courts. All this he kept up until things were changed by the death of Drusus, not indeed graciously, but with a repellent manner, so that he was generally an object of terror.” These words, except for the last sentence, differ but little from those employed by Paterculus in enumerating the blessings enjoyed by the Roman people under the sway of Tiberius, though Paterculus does not limit the good administration of the Emperor to the period which ended with the death of Drusus. It is indeed difficult, when we read the record of the actual transactions of the Senate, to form any other opinion than that advanced by Tacitus in the foregoing summary; even in the case of the “Lex Majestatis” it is the Senate, not Tiberius, who show a tendency to abuse the powers which it conferred, and the rare occasions on which the Emperor himself allows an accusation under this law to be pressed are those on which the strictest republican virtue would have demanded its application, viz., when the misconduct of a provincial governor had impaired the dignity of the State. It is true that this extension of the operation of the “Lex Majestatis” had not been familiar to the Republic, and that the provincials had been held to be protected sufficiently by the laws against extortion, but it might reasonably be held that a Roman magistrate disgraced his country no less by maladministration in the Provinces than by cowardice in the field, or a disgraceful treaty. In fact, this probably was the real grievance which caused the Senatorial Annalists, whose diaries were read by Tacitus, to fill their memoirs with bitter animadversions on the abuse of the “Lex Majestatis,” and the professional advocates who were a terror to delinquent Senators. Incapable or corrupt governors, who might have escaped punishment on some technical plea, if they had been accused formally of extortion, were now confronted with a fuller examination into their conduct under the vaguer charge of having impaired the dignity of the State. Tiberius constituted himself the guardian of the dignity of the State; it was his duty to do so. In upholding the purity of the administration, he was upholding the Empire, but he was also declaring an emphatic negative to the theory that the Roman Senate was at liberty to deal as it pleased with its Provinces. The restoration of the Senate, begun in some degree by Augustus and continued by Tiberius, was attended by this inconvenience, that it revived the pretensions of the survivors of the Oligarchy, and though the majority of the Senate