"When I am dead, let fire o'erwhelm the earth."[15]
Often, also, he declared Priam fortunate, because that king involved his country and his throne in his own utter ruin. These records about him are given a semblance of reality by what took place in those days. Such a multitude of the senators and of others lost their lives that out of the officials chosen by lot the ex-prætors held the governorship of the provinces for three years and the ex-consuls for six, owing to the lack of persons to succeed them. And what name could one properly give to the elected magistrates, whom from the first he allowed to hold office for an unusually long time?
Now among those who died at this time was also Gallus. Tiberius himself said that only then (and scarcely even so) did he become reconciled with him. Thus it was that contrary to the usual custom he inflicted upon some life as a punishment and bestowed upon others death as a kindness.
[-24-] The twentieth year of the emperor's reign now came in, and he himself though he sojourned in the vicinity of Albanum and Tusculum did not enter the City; the consuls, Lucius Vitellius and Fabius Persicus, celebrated the second ten-year period. The senators so termed it in preference to "twenty-year period" to signify that they were granting him the leadership of the State again, as had been done in the case of Augustus. Punishment overtook them at the same time that they were celebrating the appropriate festival. This time none of those accused was acquitted, but all were convicted,--the majority from documents contributed by Tiberius and the statements under torture obtained by Macro, the rest by what these two suspected they were planning. It was rumored that the real reason why Tiberius did not come to Rome was to avoid being disgraced while present by the sentences of condemnation. Among various persons who perished either at the hands of the executioners or by their own acts was Pomponius Labeo. He, who had once governed Moesia for eight years after his prætorship, was, with his wife, indicted for receiving bribes and voluntarily destroyed both her and himself. Mamercus AEmilius Scaurus, on the other hand, who had never governed anybody nor received bribes, was convicted because of a tragedy and fell a victim to a worse fate than any he had depicted. Atreus was the name of the composition, and in the manner of Euripides[16] it advised some one of the subjects of that monarch to endure the folly of the ruling prince. Tiberius, when he heard of it, declared that the verse had been composed against him at this juncture and that "Atreus" was merely a pretence used on account of that monarch's bloodthirstiness. And adding quietly "I will have him play the part of Ajax," he brought pressure to bear to make him commit suicide. The above was not the accusation made against him; instead, he was charged with having kept up a _liaison_ with Livilla. Many others had been punished on her account, some with good reason and some as the result of blackmail.