ce. This time, however,
they did not do so, but of their own motion, without any compulsion, they
were separately and individually pledged, as though this would make them
any more regardful of their oath. Previously for many years the emperor
had allowed matters to go on without a single person's swearing
allegiance to his acts of government: this I have mentioned. [11]--At
this time also there occurred something else still more laughable.

[-18-] They voted that he should select as many of their number as he
liked and should employ twenty of them,--whomsoever the lot should
designate,--as guards with daggers as often as he entered the
senate-chamber. Of course, as the exterior of the building was watched by
the soldiers and no private citizen could come inside, their resolution
that a guard be given him amounted to a precaution against no one but
themselves, thus indicating that they were hostile. Naturally Tiberius
expressed his obligations to them and thanked them for their good
intentions, but he rejected their offer as being too much out of the
ordinary. He was not so simple as to give swords to the very men whom he
hated and by whom he was hated. Yet, as a result of this very measure
he began to grow suspicious of them,--for every act in contravention
of sincerity which one undertakes for the purpose of flattery breeds
suspicion,--and bidding a long adieu to their decrees he began to
honor the Pretorians both by addresses and with money, in spite of his
knowledge that they had been on the side of Sejanus, so that he might
find them more disposed to be employed against the senators. On occasion,
to be sure, he in turn commended the latter, when they voted that
funds from the public treasury be bestowed on the guardsmen. He kept
alternately deceiving the one party by his talk and winning over the
other party by his acts in a most effective way. For instance, Junius
Gallic had moved that a spectacle be provided in the meeting place of
the knights for those of the body-guard who had finished their term of
service: Tiberius did not merely banish him when the man was brought up
on this very charge of giving an impression that he was persuading the
soldiers to show good-will to the government rather than to the emperor;
no, but when he found that Junius was setting sail for Lesbos he deprived
him of a safe and comfortable existence there and delivered him to the
custody of the magistrates, as he had once done with Gallus.