In fact the Revolution, which had broken the political power of the old Roman aristocracy, had been succeeded by a reaction in favour of great names and exalted lineages, which would have given the Senate a new lease of power had that body been capable of effective work. The History of Livy, the Fasti of Ovid, the later books of the Æneid, had all combined to throw a glamour over the great Roman families, and the new world of capable officials recruited from Italy and other parts of the Empire found itself despised at Rome by the futile descendants of legendary ancestors. We are told that the Emperor Caligula was ashamed of his grandfather, Marcus Agrippa, and was offended if reminded of his descent from the ignoble Vipsanian stock. Tiberius himself was evidently inclined to be a formalist in matters affecting the aristocracy, and though he drew his trusted servants from all classes and races, the deference which he paid to the Senate and the old constitutional magistrates, along with his careful observance of the old legal ritual, tended to foster aristocratic pretensions. To the memoir-writing Senators Sejanus was an upstart, and in spite of the recent precedents of Agrippa and Mæcenas and other capable colleagues of Augustus, the strict aristocracy could see nothing but evil in the “new man.” On the other hand, a large party in the Senate, representatives of the new hierarchy of officials, accepted Sejanus, as Agrippa had been accepted; they followed the lead of Tiberius, and after the death of Drusus in A.D. 23 were prepared to treat Sejanus as the second person in the Empire. If Senators of ancient descent were disgusted at the position held by Sejanus, the family of the Emperor were even more so. Drusus, a hot-tempered man, is said on one occasion to have struck him, an incident which may well have occurred when Drusus was a little boy or petulant youth, and been turned to good account by sensation-loving writers of memoirs. Agrippina could not contain herself in the presence of this new oppressor of the children of Germanicus, the great-grandchildren of the sainted Augustus, and so forth. These poor innocents were, in her excited imagination, the victims of the ambitions of Sejanus; that they were not from the moment of their birth of an age to be entrusted with the conduct of affairs did not enter into her considerations.