Empire probably reached the limits of perfectibility; it would not have been improved by collecting deputies from all parts of the world, and expecting them to be responsible for the executive. Representative institutions have not prevented official corruption or no less deadly incompetence, nor has the absence of really free parliaments impeded the advance of some modern nations; those diseases of the body politic from which the Roman Empire is held to have suffered in a special degree, corruption and official formalism, have not been unknown in communities blessed with Houses of Representatives duly elected and accredited. A multitude of counsellors neither protects an Empire from corruption nor ensures wisdom in the conduct of its affairs, while the conscience of any corporate body is notoriously duller than that of each individual of which it is composed. The Roman Emperors were wise in respecting local institutions, and in not imposing a strict system of centralization, for it is unfortunately impossible to retrace our steps, and when once the local life has been killed, it cannot be revived. Decentralization as a matter of mechanical convenience is possible after the central authority has drawn to itself all the prestige of political life, but this is purely administrative decentralization; when once the central government has absorbed the vitality of local political life, it cannot give back that which it has taken away. It was good for the Empire that the Senate should not exclusively attract the ambition of capable men from the Provinces, and on the other hand that the energies of the Emperors should be distributed over a wide area. The Emperors had no time for universal tyranny, and the extravagancies of Caligula, Nero, and Domitian were scarcely felt outside Rome itself; they certainly did nothing to shake the foundations of that fabric which had been so wisely laid by the first two Emperors. XVII Sejanus One of the most trusted public servants of Augustus was a Roman Equestrian named Seius Strabo; he hailed from an Italian, or rather a Tuscan, city, his family having been long settled at Vulsinii, and was thus exposed at Rome to the reproach of being a “new man.” Seius Strabo was content with administrative work, and did not aspire to high senatorial rank. Augustus made him commander of the Prætorian cohorts which formed the garrison of Italy, and afterwards entrusted him with the most important office in his gift, for he made him Governor of Egypt, that valuable appanage of the Roman Emperors upon which the corn supply of the capital depended. Seius married into the Junian gens, the gens of Brutus the Liberator, and his son could in consequence claim affinity through his mother with the most honourable Roman houses. This son was adopted by a member of the Ælian gens, and thus became known as Ælius Sejanus. He married a daughter of Apicius the Epicure, a very wealthy man, but notorious rather than distinguished.