Once an accused accused his accuser; the latter went mad.  There was but one refuge—­the tomb.  If the accused had time to kill himself before he was tried, his property was safe from seizure and his corpse from disgrace.  Suicide became endemic in Rome.  Never among the rich were orgies as frenetic as then.  There was a breathless chase after delights, which the summons, “It is time to die,” might at any moment interrupt.

Tiberius meanwhile had gone from Rome.  It was then his legend began.  He was represented living at Capri in a collection of twelve villas, each of which was dedicated to a particular form of lust, and there with the paintings of Parrhasius for stimulant the satyr lounged.  He was then an old man; his life had been passed in public, his conduct unreproved.  If no one becomes suddenly base, it is rare for a man of seventy to become abruptly vile.  “Whoso,” Sakya Muni announced—­“whoso discovers that grief comes from affection, will retire into the jungles and there remain.”  Tiberius had made the discovery.  The jungles he selected were the gardens by the sea.  And in those gardens, gossip represented him devising new forms of old vice.  On the subject every doubt is permissible, and even otherwise, morality then existed in but one form, one which the entire nation observed, wholly, absolutely; that form was patriotism.  Chastity was expected of the vestal, but of no one else.  The matrons had certain traditions to maintain, certain appearances to preserve, but otherwise morality was unimagined and matrimony unpopular.

When matrimony occurred, divorce was its natural consequence.  Incompatibility was sufficient cause.  Cicero, who has given it to history that the best women counted the years not numerically, but by their different husbands, obtained a divorce on the ground that his wife did not idolize him.

Divorce was not obligatory.  Matrimony was.  According to a recent law whoso at twenty-five was not married, whoso, divorced or widowed, did not remarry, whoso, though married, was without children, was regarded as a public enemy and declared incapable of inheriting or of serving the state.  To this law, one of Augustus’ stupidities which presently fell into disuse, only a technical observance was paid.  Men married just enough to gain a position or inherit a legacy; next day they got a divorce.  At the moment of need a child was adopted; the moment passed, the child was disowned.  But if the law had little value, at least it shows the condition of things.  Moreover, if in that condition Tiberius participated, it was not because he did not differ from other men.

“Ho sempre amato la solitaria vita,” Petrarch, referring to himself, declared, and Tiberius might have said the same thing.  He was in love with solitude; ill with efforts for the unattained; sick with the ingratitude of man.  Presently it was decided that he had lived long enough.  He was suffocated—­beneath a mattress at that.  Caesar had dreamed of a universal monarchy of which he should be king; he was murdered.  That dream was also Antony’s; he killed himself.  Cato had sought the restoration of the republic, and Brutus the attainment of virtue; both committed suicide.  Under the empire dreamers fared ill.  Tiberius was a dreamer.