[A.D. 38 (a. u. 791)]

[-9-] The next year Marcus Julianus and Publius Nonius, regularly appointed, became consuls.  Oaths pertaining to the acts of Tiberius were not introduced and for this reason are not used nowadays either.  No one numbers Tiberius among the emperors in the list of members of his house.[4] But in regard to Augustus and Gaius they took the oaths which had regularly been the custom and others to the effect that they would hold Gaius and his sisters in greater respect than themselves and their children, and they offered prayers for all of them alike.

On the very first day of the new year one Machaon, a slave, climbed upon the couch of Jupiter Capitolinus and after uttering from that place many dire prophecies killed a little dog which he had brought in with him and slew himself.

The following good deeds must be set down to the credit of Gaius.  He published, as Augustus had done, all the accounts of public funds, which had not been made known during the time Tiberius was out of the city.  He helped the soldiers extinguish a conflagration and assisted those who suffered loss by it.  As the equestrian order pined from lack of men he summoned the foremost men from every office, even abroad, and enrolled them with due regard to their relatives and their wealth.  Some of them he allowed to wear the senatorial costume occasionally even before they had held any office through which we enter the senate, on the strength of their hopes to secure admission to that body.  Previously it would seem that only those who had been born in the senatorial order were allowed to do this.  These deeds caused pleasure to all.  But this action in restoring the elections to the populus and the plebs, rescinding the decisions of Tiberius about these matters, and in abolishing the one per cent. tax, and again in scattering at some gymnastic contest tickets and distributing very large gifts to such as secured them,—­these actions, though they delighted the lower classes, grieved the sensible, who reflected that even if the offices fell once more into the hands of the general public, still, in case the existing funds should be exhausted and private sources of income fail, many dreadful disasters would result.

[-10-] The performances of his next to be enumerated elicited the censure of all without distinction.  He caused very great numbers of men to fight as gladiators, forcing them to contend both separately and in groups, drawn up in a kind of military formation:  he requested permission from the senate to do this, and again,—­something quite contrary to the spirit of the enacted law that he might do whatsoever he pleased,—­he asked leave to put to death a number of persons, among them twenty-six knights, some of whom had already devoured their living, while others had merely practiced gladiatorial combat.  It was not the number of those who perished that was so bad (though it was bad enough) but his