The opposition to Sejanus was twofold: there was what may be called the constitutional and personal opposition of a large party in the Senate, who refused to submit to the domination of a new man, and there was the private opposition of members of the Imperial family, Tiberius being almost alone in his appreciation of the good qualities of his subordinate. Thus the sources of our information are discredited from the outset. The memoirs of Agrippina are coloured by her mother’s long-standing feud with the Emperor and all whom he trusted, and the memoirs of Senators are equally likely to be coloured by detestation of the upstart. It is perhaps for this reason that the annals of the seven years succeeding the death of Drusus are more than usually filled with senatorial prosecutions and suggestions of unfairness. It is indeed possible that Sejanus took some pains to remove political adversaries by encouraging prosecutions against them, but, except in one instance, there is no sufficient evidence of perversion of the forms of justice, and as a rule the hostile comment amounts to little more than an affirmation of the maxims that a Senator could do no wrong, that he was always innocent if he committed suicide, and that somehow Tiberius or Sejanus, or both, were responsible for the act of cowardice which terminated his dishonoured existence. In comparison with the greater interests of the Empire, the squalid scandals which ended in the fall of Sejanus may seem undignified; but they have their interest also, not only in the obloquy with which they have covered the name of the “ablest of Roman Emperors,” but in the disparagement which through them has attached to the Empire itself. The fall of Sejanus was, in fact, the fall of Tiberius, and the sinister events with which it was accompanied have cast their shadow upon the whole subsequent history of the Emperors. A fashion was then set, and a tone was adopted, which has influenced historians for all time. The lives of the Cæsars in the pages of Suetonius are little better than a Newgate calendar; the various works of Tacitus are little better than a continued jeremiad, in which nobody is good except men unconnected with the administration, the Germans, and the historian’s father-in-law. For this peculiar attitude there was certainly no sufficient reason up to 23 A.D., and in the subsequent events till the accession of Caligula even the bitterly hostile evidence indicates that the Emperor was more sinned against than sinning.