and had instructed as to precisely what must be done.  The latter came by night into Rome as if on some different errand and made known his message to Memmius Regulus, then consul (his colleague sided with Sejanus), and to Graecinius Laco, commander of the night watch.  At dawn Macro ascended the Palatine, where there was to be a session of the senate in the temple of Apollo.  Encountering Sejanus, who had not yet gone in, he saw that he was troubled at Tiberius’s having sent him no message, and encouraged him, telling him aside and in confidence that he was bringing him the tribunician authority.  Sejanus, overjoyed at this, hastened to the senate-chamber.  Macro sent away to the camp the Pretorians that commonly surrounded the minister and the senate, after revealing to them his right as leader to do so and declaring that he brought documents from Tiberius that bestowed gifts upon them.  Around the temple he stationed the night watch in their stead, went in himself, delivered his letter to the consuls, and went out before a word was read.  He then put Laco in charge of guard duty at that point, and himself hurried to the camp to prevent any uprising.

[-10-] Meanwhile the letter was read.  It was a long one and contained no wholesale denunciations of Sejanus but first some indifferent matters, then a slight censure of his conduct, then something else, and after that some further objection to him.  At the close it said that two senators that were very intimate with him must be punished and that he himself must be kept guarded.  Tiberius did not give them orders outright to put him to death, not because such was not his desire, but because he feared that some disturbance might be the result of it.  But since, as he said, he could not take the journey safely, he had sent for one of the consuls.

This was all that the composition disclosed.  During the reading many diverse utterances and expressions of countenance were observable.  First, before the people heard the letter, they were engaged in lauding the man, whom they supposed to be on the point of receiving the tribunician authority.  They shouted their approval realizing in anticipation all their hopes and making a demonstration to show that they would concur in granting him honor.  When, however, nothing of the sort was discovered, but they kept hearing just the reverse of what they expected, they fell into confusion and subsequently into deep dejection.  Some of those seated near him even withdrew.  They now no longer cared to share the same seat with the man whom previously they were anxious to claim as friend.  Then praetors and tribunes began to surround him to prevent his causing any uproar by rushing out,—­which he certainly would have done, if he had been startled at the outset by any general tirade.  As it was, he paid no great heed to what was read from time to time, thinking it a slight matter, a single charge, and hoping that nothing further, or at any rate nothing serious in regard to him had been made a matter of comment.  So he let the time slip by and remained where he was.