Tiberius, feigning sickness, sent Sejanus on to Rome with the assurance that he should follow.  He declared that in this separation a part of his own body and soul was wrenched away from him:  shedding tears he embraced and kissed him, and Sejanus naturally was thereat the more elated.

[A.D. 31 (a u. 784)]

[-5-] By this time Sejanus was so imposing both in his haughtiness of mind and in his immensity of power that, to make a long matter short, he seemed to be the emperor and Tiberius a kind of island potentate because the latter spent all his days in the island called Capreae.  Then there was rivalry and jostling about the great man’s doors from the fear not merely that a person might fail to be observed by his patron but that he might appear among the last:  for all the words and gestures, particularly of those in front, were carefully watched.  People who hold a prominent position as the result of native worth are not given at all to seeking signs of friendship from others, and in case anything of the sort is seen to be wanting on the part of these others the persons in question are not provoked, inasmuch as they have an innate consciousness that they are not being looked down upon.  Any, however, that hold an artificial rank are extremely jealous of all such attentions, feeling them to be necessary to render their position complete.  If they fail to obtain them then they are as irritated as if slander were being pronounced against them and as angry as if they were the recipients of positive insult.  Consequently the world is more scrupulous in the case of such persons than (one might almost say) in the case of emperors themselves.  To the latter it is ascribed as a virtue to pardon any one if an error is committed; but in the self-made persons that course appears to argue an inherent weakness, whereas to attack and to exact vengeance is thought to furnish proof of great power.

One morning, the first of the month, when all were gathered at Sejanus’s house, the couch placed in the small room where he received broke into infinitesimal fragments under the weight of the throng seated upon it; and, as he was leaving the house, a weasel darted through the midst of them.  After he had sacrificed on the Capitol and was now coming down to the Forum, his servants that acted as body-guard turned aside along the road leading to the prison, because the crowd prevented them from escorting him, and as they descended the steps down which condemned criminals were commonly cast they slipped and fell.  Subsequently he took the auspices and not one bird of good omen appeared, but crows flew and cawed about him and then flew off all together to the jail, where they alighted.