It would seem that the Senators paid rather a heavy price for their outbreak, and that a reign of spies and informers actually did set in after the first disturbances, which followed the fall of Sejanus, had been quelled. If Tiberius became suspicious, if he became apprehensive for his personal safety, if he no longer interfered to stop trivial charges and prevent unjust confiscations, if the liberty of allusive libel was cut short, the Senate had given him very good reason for mistrusting them individually and collectively. At the same time the aristocratic party were smarting under a defeat; they had murdered Sejanus and his posterity, and cut off the greater number of his friends, but they had not succeeded in changing the constitution of the Empire, nor had they shaken the power of the Emperor, who mounted guard over them with his cohorts of Prætorians at the gates of Rome. The city itself was more or less under martial law, for the part which the populace had taken in hunting down the adherents of Sejanus had been a vivid reminder of previous disastrous events in the history of the capital. The very insecurity of the succession--for Caligula was barely of age, and not in good health, while the young Tiberius was little more than a child--impelled the aged Emperor to keep a tight hand upon the public order, lest his death, an event probably near at hand, should involve the State in civil war. Of those members of the Imperial family who had known Augustus, Antonia and her son Claudius alone survived; the former had always abstained from interference in politics, and the latter was considered to be disqualified from appearance in any public capacity. Nor had any of the numerous marriages of the daughters and granddaughters of the immediate successors of Augustus brought into the world any man of such striking ability that he seemed worthy to govern. A strange destiny pursued Tiberius; he could not retire, he could not shake off that servitude which was imposed upon him by the needs of the Roman people. As he had been compelled to return from Rhodes and share the burden of Augustus, so now he was compelled, if not to return from Capreæ, yet to feel that upon him, and upon him alone, still rested the responsibility for preserving the peace of the civilized world.