listened to with favour by those whose custom it is to praise all that falls from the lips of Princes, honourable and dishonourable alike, the majority received them in silence or with subdued murmurs. And Tiberius perceived this, and after a short silence said that he had given Hortalus his answer. However, if the Senate thought well, he would give each of his children of the male sex two hundred thousand sesterces (about £3,000). The rest expressed their thanks. Hortalus was silent, either from consternation or because he retained something of his ancestral nobility even in his indigence. Nor did Tiberius show him any further compassion, although the family of Hortensius fell into disgraceful poverty.” The gift made by Tiberius was private and personal; he did not make use of the public money for a purpose of which he had expressed strong disapproval. The incident is chiefly interesting as indicating that, in spite of the rude shocks given to the Senatorial system by Julius Cæsar, the body had recovered its evil tradition of assuming that it was at liberty to use the public purse to meet the private necessities of its members. Hortalus was clearly a well-known spendthrift. The Senate, in fact, tended to become more and more a high court of justice, in which its members and high officials were tried by their peers, the cases being either political or such private cases as had by long tradition fallen to the Senate as the guardian of the morality of the privileged orders. It was tenacious of its privileges, careless of its wider responsibilities. Tiberius treated it with formal respect, and did his best to make it worthy of its opportunities; if he could have avoided interfering with its administration of its own provinces, he would have done so, but he was not prepared to submit the provincials to misgovernment in order to maintain the prestige of the Senate, and the misgovernment of Proconsuls was by no means a thing of the past. Tiberius, like Augustus, supplied himself with an inner Council of the Senate, and it is possible that on most occasions this inner Council represented the whole body; but he did not restrict himself to Senatorial Counsellors, and we are told that, in dealing with provincial questions, he was always careful to provide himself with the expert evidence of men who knew the localities concerned.