ives betray even
a superficial similarity to the careers of those scoundrels.

Tiberius, feigning sickness, sent Sejanus on to Rome with the assurance
that he should follow. He declared that in this separation a part of his
own body and soul was wrenched away from him: shedding tears he embraced
and kissed him, and Sejanus naturally was thereat the more elated.

[A.D. 31 (a u. 784)]

[-5-] By this time Sejanus was so imposing both in his haughtiness of
mind and in his immensity of power that, to make a long matter short, he
seemed to be the emperor and Tiberius a kind of island potentate because
the latter spent all his days in the island called Capreae. Then there was
rivalry and jostling about the great man's doors from the fear not merely
that a person might fail to be observed by his patron but that he might
appear among the last: for all the words and gestures, particularly of
those in front, were carefully watched. People who hold a prominent
position as the result of native worth are not given at all to seeking
signs of friendship from others, and in case anything of the sort is seen
to be wanting on the part of these others the persons in question are not
provoked, inasmuch as they have an innate consciousness that they are not
being looked down upon. Any, however, that hold an artificial rank are
extremely jealous of all such attentions, feeling them to be necessary to
render their position complete. If they fail to obtain them then they
are as irritated as if slander were being pronounced against them and as
angry as if they were the recipients of positive insult. Consequently
the world is more scrupulous in the case of such persons than (one might
almost say) in the case of emperors themselves. To the latter it is
ascribed as a virtue to pardon any one if an error is committed; but in
the self-made persons that course appears to argue an inherent weakness,
whereas to attack and to exact vengeance is thought to furnish proof of
great power.

One morning, the first of the month, when all were gathered at Sejanus's
house, the couch placed in the small room where he received broke into
infinitesimal fragments under the weight of the throng seated upon it;
and, as he was leaving the house, a weasel darted through the midst of
them. After he had sacrificed on the Capitol and was now coming down to
the Forum, his servants that acted as body-guard turned aside along
the road leading to the prison, because the crow