Also he was given plenty of work.  His great German campaigns followed quickly; and the quelling of the Pannanian insurrection that called him back from the Rhine; and Varus’ defeat while Tiberius was in Pannonia; and Tiberius’s triumphant saving of the situation.  It was then, when the frontier was broken and all the world aquake with alarm, that he consulted his generals; the only time he ever did so.  Says Velleius Paterculus, who served uner him:—­“There was no ostentation in his conduct; it was marked by solid worth, practicality, humaneness.  He took as much care of any one of us who happened to be sick, as if that one’s health were the main object of his concern.”  Ambulances, he continues, were always in attendance, with a medical staff, warm baths, suitable food, etc., for the sick.  “The general often admonished, rarely punished; taking a middle part, dissembling his knowledge of most faults, and preventing the commission of others....  He preferred the approval of his own conscience to the acquisition of renown.”

He returned to Rome in triumph in the autumn of A.D. 12; and dismissed his chief captives with present, instead of butchering them in the fine old Roman way.  He was at the height of his fame; undeniably Rome’s savior, and surely to be Princeps on his Teacher’s death.  Augustus, in letters that remain, calls him “the only strength and stay of the Empire.”  “All who were with you,” says he, “admit that this verse suits you:” 

     ‘One man by vigilance has restored the state.’

Whenever anything happens that requires more than ordinary consideration, or when I am out of humor, then, by Hercules, I long for the presence of my dear Tiberius; and Homer’s lines rise in my mind: 

     ’Bold from his prudence, I could e’en aspire
     To dare with him the burning rage of fire.’

“When I hear that you are worn out with incessant fatigue, the Gods confound me if I am not all in a quake.  So I entreat you to spare yourself, lest, should we hear of your being ill, the news prove fatal to your mother and myself, and the Roman people be alarmed for the safety of the Empire.  I pray heaven to preserve you for us, and bless you with health now and ever,—­if the Gods care a rush for the Roman people. ....Farewell, my dearest Tiberius; may good success attend you, you best of all generals, in all that you undertake for me and for the Muses.”

Two years later Augustus died, and Tiberius became emperor; and the persecution broke out that was not to end till his death.  Let us get the whole situation firmly in mind.  There was that clique in high society of men who hated the Principate because it had robbed them of the spoils of power.  It gathered first round Scribonia, because she hated Augustus for divorcing her; then round Julia, because she was living in open contempt of the principles her father stood for.  Its chief bugbear of all was Tiberius,