through him attacked all those, alive or dead, who had ever been road commissioners and had received money for repairing the highways.  He fined both them and the men who had secured any contracts from them, on the pretence that they had spent nothing.  For this help Corbulo was at the time made consul, but later, in the reign of Claudius, he was accused and his conduct investigated.  Claudius made no further demands for any sums still owing and after collecting what had been paid in, partly from the treasury and partly from Corbulo, he returned it to the persons who had been fined.  All that was later.  At this time these unfortunates one by one and practically everybody else in the City were, as one might say, despoiled.  Of those who possessed anything there was no one,—­not a man nor a woman,—­who got off scot free.  Though he allowed some of the more elderly persons to live, yet by calling them his fathers, grandfathers, mothers, and grandmothers, he got revenue from them during their lifetime and inherited their property when they died.

[-16-] Up to this time he was always speaking ill of Tiberius before everybody, and so far from rebuking others who criticised him privately or publicly he enjoyed their language.  But now he entered the senate-house and eulogized his predecessor at length, besides severely rebuking the senate and the people, saying that they did wrong in finding fault with him.  “I may do even this,” he said, “in my capacity as emperor, but you are not only unjust but also guilty of impiety[11] to take such an attitude toward one who ruled you.”  Thereupon he considered separately the case of each man who had lost his life and showed to his own satisfaction that the senators had been responsible for the death of most of them; some, he alleged, they had killed by accusation, some by damning evidence, and all by sentence of condemnation.  This he proved by having some freedmen read it from those very documents which he once declared he had burned.  And he told them besides:  “In case Tiberius really did do wrong, you ought not to have honored him while he lived, and at any rate, by Jupiter, you ought not to repudiate what you often said and voted.  But you both behaved toward him with fickleness and again after filling Sejanus with conceit and spoiling him you put him to death, and therefore I ought not either to expect any decent treatment from you.”  After some such remarks he represented in his speech Tiberius himself as saying to him:  “All this that you have said has been good and true.  Therefore have no affection nor mercy for any one of them.  They all hate you:  they all pray for your death.  They will murder you if they can.  Hence do not stop to consider what acts of yours will please them and heed none of their talk.  Rather, have regard to your own pleasure and safety solely, since that has the most just claim.  In this way you will suffer no harm and will enjoy all supremest pleasures.  You will, moreover, be honored by them whether they