[A.D. 32(a. u. 785)]

[-17-] Such was the state of affairs at this time, and there was not a soul that could deny that he would be glad to feast on the emperor’s flesh.  Now the next year, when Gnaeus Domitius and Camillus Scribonianus became consuls, a very laughable thing happened.  It had now long been the custom for the members of the senate on the first of the year to take the oath not man by man, but for one (as I have stated)[10] to take the oath for them and the rest to express their acquiescence.  This time, however, they did not do so, but of their own motion, without any compulsion, they were separately and individually pledged, as though this would make them any more regardful of their oath.  Previously for many years the emperor had allowed matters to go on without a single person’s swearing allegiance to his acts of government:  this I have mentioned. [11]—­At this time also there occurred something else still more laughable.

[-18-] They voted that he should select as many of their number as he liked and should employ twenty of them,—­whomsoever the lot should designate,—­as guards with daggers as often as he entered the senate-chamber.  Of course, as the exterior of the building was watched by the soldiers and no private citizen could come inside, their resolution that a guard be given him amounted to a precaution against no one but themselves, thus indicating that they were hostile.  Naturally Tiberius expressed his obligations to them and thanked them for their good intentions, but he rejected their offer as being too much out of the ordinary.  He was not so simple as to give swords to the very men whom he hated and by whom he was hated.  Yet, as a result of this very measure he began to grow suspicious of them,—­for every act in contravention of sincerity which one undertakes for the purpose of flattery breeds suspicion,—­and bidding a long adieu to their decrees he began to honor the Pretorians both by addresses and with money, in spite of his knowledge that they had been on the side of Sejanus, so that he might find them more disposed to be employed against the senators.  On occasion, to be sure, he in turn commended the latter, when they voted that funds from the public treasury be bestowed on the guardsmen.  He kept alternately deceiving the one party by his talk and winning over the other party by his acts in a most effective way.  For instance, Junius Gallic had moved that a spectacle be provided in the meeting place of the knights for those of the body-guard who had finished their term of service:  Tiberius did not merely banish him when the man was brought up on this very charge of giving an impression that he was persuading the soldiers to show good-will to the government rather than to the emperor; no, but when he found that Junius was setting sail for Lesbos he deprived him of a safe and comfortable existence there and delivered him to the custody of the magistrates, as he had once done