While Tiberius was out of town, Gaius Lutorius Priscus,[4] a knight, who took great pride in his poetic talents and had composed a notable funeral oration over Germanicus for which he had received considerable money, was charged with having composed a poem upon Drusus also, during the latter’s illness.  For this he was tried in the senate, condemned and put to death.  Now Tiberius was vexed, not because the man had been punished, but because the senators had inflicted death upon any one without his approval.  He therefore rebuked them and ordered a decree to be issued to the effect that no person condemned by them be executed within ten days, nor the document applying to his case be made public before the same time.  This was to ensure the possibility of his learning their decrees in advance even while absent and of rendering a final decision on such matters.

[A.D. 22 (a. u. 775)]

[-21-] After this, when his consulship had expired, he came to Rome and prevented the consuls from acting as advocates to certain persons by saying:  “If I were consul, I should not do this.”

One of the praetors was accused of having uttered some impious word or having committed some impious act against him, whereupon the man left the senate and taking off his robe of office returned, demanding as a private citizen to have the complaint lodged at once.  At this the emperor showed great grief and molested him no further.

[A.D. 23 (a. u. 776)]

The dancers he drove out of Rome and would allow them no place in which to practice their profession, because they kept debauching the women and stirring up tumults.

He honored many men, and numbers of those who died, with statues and public funerals.  A bronze statue of Sejanus was erected in the theatre during the life of the model.  As a result, numerous images of this minister were made by many persons and many encomiuma were spoken both in the assembly and in the senate.  The consuls themselves, besides the other prominent citizens, regularly had recourse to his house just at dawn, and communicated to him both all the private requests that any of them wished to make of Tiberius and the public business which had to be taken up.  In brief, henceforth nothing of the kind was considered without his knowledge.

About this time one of the largest porticos in Rome began to lean to one side and was set upright in a remarkable way by a certain architect whose name no one knows, because Tiberius, jealous of his wonderful achievement, would not permit it to be entered in the records.  This architect, accordingly, however he was called after strengthening the foundations all about, so that they could not move out of position, and surrounding all the rest of the arcade with thick fleeces and cloths, ran ropes all over it and through it and by the pushing of many men and machines brought it once more into its previous position.  At the time Tiberius both admired him and felt envious of